Hippie-whip: (verb) To exploit someone’s strongly held alternative values and beliefs for the purposes of tricking them into going out of their way to help or support you. The subjects of a hippie-whip are compelled to act in your interests as it is a way for them to demonstrate their commitment to their hippie values.

Their daughter enjoys being a vegetarian, not because of any noble principles, but simply because it’s a way for her to “hippie-whip” her parents into making a fuss over her and her vegetarianism.

Phone leg: A British synonym of phantom phone, the experience of feeling your phone vibrate in your pocket when in fact it hasn’t. You are either imagining it or mistaking other vibration sources for your phone. Commonly occurs when driving in the narrow cobble-stoned streets of London. More likely to occur if you are talking about someone behind their back. You suddenly think they’re calling you, feel an immediate twinge of guilt, followed by immense relief when you realise it was just phone leg.

Ed: “Hang on, my phone’s going. Oh no it’s not. It’s phone leg. I thought it was my daughter. Do you get phone leg?”
Rob: “Yes, but I try not to keep it in my leg.”
Ed: “What are you, a terminator?”

ESL speak: The change in speech that happens (sometimes unconsciously) when an EFL speaker is talking to an ESL speaker. The EFL speaks louder & slower, uses clearer syllables and sometimes adopts the accent of their ESL audience. Useful when ordering Chinese or Indian takeaway over the phone so it is more easily understood. Has no racist motivations at all but is simply a practical way to assist communication.

EFL: “I have one beef-a-black-been, laaj spesha frai raice, tree dim sim.”
ESL: “Ok, be ten fitteen minnas. Ba Bai.”
Friend-of-EFL: “Dude, that was some nice ESL speak.”
ESL: “Tayn-you. Mehbe I shudda orda sam sprin roos a well.”
Friend-of-ESL: “OK you can stop now you friggin racist.”

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I’ll be the first to admit that if you can be bothered getting your hands dirty, LaTeX makes documents look pretty damn sweet. But there are times when the fuss of setting up distros and then beating LaTeX into submission just isn’t worth it (positioning figures, anyone?). If you just need to throw a quick document together, but want people to think you’re a LaTeX pro, you can get passable results using Word 2007 with a few tweaks:

1. First, download the Computer Modern and Latin Modern fonts. Word 2007 supports the OpenType format so get that. Don’t be disheartened by how these fonts look onscreen – some look like total arse, but let’s face it, these fonts were not designed for the screen at all. They look fine when printed or even in a PDF if you zoom in far enough. And stick with “LM Roman 12″ as it has the proper bold font, others may look strange. You can find even more fonts if you install a LaTeX distro like MikTeX and search the installation folder for *.pfm files.
2. If you want to approximate BibTeX-style references, get the IEEE citation stylesheet for Microsoft Word 2007 and extract to C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12\Bibliography\Style.
3. Set up your heading sizes and turn on 1.2.3 section numbering. I can’t be bothered explaining how so here’s a sample word document to get you started.
4. Make sure you use the LM fonts for all figures and diagrams for consistency. However, for built-in equations, you’re stuck with Cambria Math, which Microsoft built especially for equations, but it doesn’t look too bad.

When you’ve finished your document it should look something like this PDF of the sample template linked to above.

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Reconciliation in this country needs to stop being about what white fella thinks is best for indigenous Australians. As a nation, our reconciliation vocabulary only extends to telling this culture how to live their lives based on our own ideals. Has anyone ever stopped to ask the indigenous population what THEY want?

I’m not going to make a video or write a story. You are the journalists, that’s your job.

I want to see this on the 2010 series of Hungry Beast: a vox pop asking indigenous Australians the question “What do you want?” You can come up with more specific variations of this question in order to extract the kinds of answers you need e.g. “When will you know that true reconciliation has been achieved in Australia?”

And really ramp up the White Guilt in your editing. I mean seriously. Thrust that knife into our cold, shriveled, white hearts and rotate. Maybe interleave the vox pop interviews from white and indigenous Australians in a way that illustrates the contrast between our views on what is needed vs. what they actually want.

More ideas

Observation: There is an emerging trend for white Australians to vocally express their White Guilt. This may soon become a new mainstream form of Patriotism, replacing our previous forms: racism and getting drunk.

The kind of White Guilt I’m talking about doesn’t lead to action or solve practical problems. It’s more of a passive attitude that’s adopted by whites so they can wash their hands of the mistakes of governments past. Plant a flag in the moral high ground and one is free to enjoy life in the prosperous Australia we know today, despite the historical events that lead to its creation.

For successful reconciliation, the minority needs to feel like the engineer of their own emancipation. Epic bloody battles for freedom help with this. I’m definitely not suggesting we have one but Australia’s indigenous history is lacking this kind of epic empowerment that is present in other nations, e.g. USA.

Germaine Greer made an insightful observation recently: in indigenous youth culture, getting arrested is seen as a rite of passage. This illustrates my previous point. We can’t just tell indigenous Australians that reconciliation has been achieved. They have to feel it. This will sound ignorant but based on observations of analogous situations, I think it will help if the minority feel like they’ve earned it; like they had to fight for it. If equality is simply handed to them on a platter by Whitey, they don’t own it.

Maybe Investigate New Zealand. They have their own Maori TV station, the Australian equivalent of which seems a long, long way off.

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See the full set here.

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Firstly, the Nexus One has no multitouch, which is a deal breaker. Secondly, it’s not yet available in Australia (according to Google). However, I recently discovered that Apple has suckered me into being a permanent iPhone customer without me even realising it.

I’ve bought a few paid Apps for my iPhone. I can’t remember how much I’ve spent but it would be about $45. I was not conscious of it at the time but these apps I’ve paid for won’t work on any other phone. If I switch to an Android phone (or any other phone), I’ll be losing that investment. I guess I could buy an iPod Touch but what’s the point of carrying around two relatively bulky smart devices, and one where my apps only work over WiFi? I guess all I can hope for is that the iPhone hacking community figures out a way to run Android on the iPhone. Now that would be a “superphone”.

On a related note, do the Android apps have to be open source? Regardless, without an iTunes App Store equivalent, and hence the prospect of cashing in big time, devs won’t be as motivated to develop for Google’s platform if they don’t see a clear business model or way they can make money from it.

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1. Arrested Development. I know, it’s like six years old, but I finally got around to watching all 3 seasons of this awesome series. The quality of the comedic writing is simply amazing. There are so many set-ups for the ultimate joke which you don’t see coming. And the clever yet subtle tie-ins with previous episodes make it well worth a couple of re-watches.
2. True Blood. I didn’t think I would get into this series, especially in an industry so saturated with Twilight piggy-backs. True Blood is more than “just another vampire show”, it’s raised the bar for this genre by just being so damn compelling. The Season 2 story was a bit slow for a while and Bill Compton’s incessant chivalry makes me want to puke or just stake the guy, but apart from that it’s great.
3. Battlestar Galactica. This series wound up this year to a semi-surprising climax with it’s 4th and final season. I’m glad it didn’t go longer as even Season 3 was starting to suffer from “filler bloat” which is where they pad out the main plot with pointless episodes to stretch it to 22 episodes or whatever. BSG remains in my opinion one of the best shows OF ALL TIME.
4. Heroes. What can I say, I’m a sucker for punishment when it comes to this series. Season 4 has introduced some new characters, mostly original. Still has a good amount of mystery but the overall plot is pretty obvious. I used to watch Heroes for the powers but these days they’re a dime a dozen. Now I watch for Sylar, the evil antagonist who is really the only character that still has balls. He knows what he wants. He wants to kill everyone with powers, steal their powers and rule the world as the only one with powers. I respect that, you know. Too many characters these days are just lolly-gagging around while they “discover” their “destiny”. Snooooore.
5. The Big Bang Theory. This show was hella funny even if it does reinforce geek stereotypes. Then there was S02E07 where Sheldon is a complete bastard prick. That turned me off the show because real people would not accept his behaviour, nor even care enough to react. They would simply ignore him or get a restraining order. The artificial construction of Sheldon’s character became even more apparent to the point where I stopped believing and started being angry at the writers. This has happened before and it’s an edge I am only rarely pushed over, but when I am it’s not pretty. But if I can ignore that one episode, it still makes my top 5 for the year.

So what have I missed? Did you watch anything last year that I don’t know about? Besides Dexter and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, which are both on my to-watch list.

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It’s the classic “stalled elevator device” which is often used in film and TV dramas: trap your characters in a confined space to force character development. Simple. If you’re pressed for time, throw in a real annoying bastard (such as Robert Carlyle’s character) for some added tension to speed things up. However, after three episodes, SGU hasn’t moved past this basic device. If Wright and Cooper plan on stretching this to multiple seasons, no amount of pit stops on random, cliched planets, or dodging close calls with the Sun will make this format sustainable.

The next logical progression of the Stargate franchise became obvious to me after watching True Blood. Here’s a series in which vampires are “out of the coffin” as they put it, meaning the existence of vamp-kind is a fact, and also public knowledge. The series is thus speckled with parallels to historic struggles for minority equality. This results in a portrayal of the “vampires are real” world which is actually convincing, and believable.

The Stargate franchise needs to burn those NDA’s and just go public already! A few episodes in SG-1 touched on the idea, mostly via trips to planets whose Stargate program has already gone public. The challenge would be to develop this idea beyond “Stargates are glorified airports” while minimising the amount of political drama. District 9 showed us that seemingly far-fetched science fiction concepts can be handled with effective realism by drawing parallels with historical events (e.g. refugees).

At this early stage, I’m ready to applaud the creators for daring to diverge from the classic Stargate format: a power struggle between humans and an oppressive alien force. Defeat one, and another one comes along to replace it, and keep the series going. In SG-1, we had the Go’Ald, the Replicators, and finally the Ori. In Atlantis, it was the Wraith. If SGU reverts back to the power struggle format, I’ll stop watching.

Another potential direction, which would likely be more interesting, could be a prequel of sorts following the “Ancients”, their culture, technology (and the creation of the Stargates), and ultimately their path to ascension. If the series was different enough to its predecessors, it could work. It could explore themes such as “with powerful technology, comes great responsibility”, something we know defines the Ancients, who are always held up as the perfect race. With their superior genetics and technology, ultimate wisdom, and curious intervention restraint, they are an example of something we humans should aspire to become. So let’s see it, already! The ascension story arc could also deal with more “spiritual” themes, which would be something refreshing for the franchise.

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This kid shot to “Internet” fame to the tune of 7.5 million views in a little over 2 weeks for his adorable rendition of “I’m Yours” by Jason Mraz on the ukulele. I stumbled onto his equally impressive performance of While My Guitar Gently Weeps. The middle of the video contains 44 seconds of seriously hardcore jamming. I felt it was just begging for the Guitar Rig treatment to truly express this kid’s inner rock legend! Enjoy!

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Now don’t worry friends about this ever getting through parliament. The motivation is most probably a grab for conservative votes, and if it pisses too many people off, the lost votes will offset any gains. So we’ll most likely see some form of watered down filter, which may not be entirely evil.

In its current form, the filter simply has too broad a scope, which is the main point raised by  Google, and one I half agree with. While a tightly scoped filter (as used by Germany and Italy) which excludes specific material such as child pornography may appear to have benefit, it does not address the real crime, which is the fact that this material is being created in the first place. What are the governments of the world doing about that? Blocking child porn sites is akin to the government putting fingers in its ears and going “La La La! If I don’t know about it, it isn’t happening!”

If we can agree (UN-style) on specific classes of materials that no one should access, and if filtering does not impact speed, then It might be OK. However, when dealing with the Internet, blacklist filters simply don’t work. They are impossible to maintain and proxy sites pop up faster than they can be blocked. I’ve seen 10-year-old kids circumvent the NSW Department of Education’s filtering system like they were punching through a wet paper bag. The Department switched to a whitelist filter in 2008, but that doesn’t stop VPN’s and future loop holes that haven’t even been discovered yet.

In schools, it then becomes a discipline issue. Filtering students inside the school network is a requirement, as there is a clear duty of care and it is not feasible to manually police kids on the internet, just as one can’t police everything they talk about in the playground. But restricting the surfing of every adult Australian citizen is a completely different ball game and dangerous territory. We are responsible for ourselves; it is not the government’s job to decide what information we should and should not access.

UPDATE: This is the ultimate irony:

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FUCK. OFF.

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