Life's little lessons learnt from Cyclone Yasi

Drought-driven dust storms, tropical cyclones, east coast lows, out-of-nowhere tornadoes, storm surges, floods, bush fire - it seems Australia has seen them all over the last twelve months, so this blog post reprinted with kind permission of Island View over at Blogging Townsville contains some hints for the disaster next time......

What I learnt from Cyclone Yasi

While Yasi's winds here were equivalent to a severe Category 2 or weak Cat. 3 cyclone there are some useful things I learnt (or were reminded of) for next time:

1. The wind follows the land - the gullies and valleys - just as fires and flash floods do
   
2. Get a manual coffee grinder
   
3. Solar houses don't have to wait for the power to come on
   
4. Get an alternative mobile phone charger - car, solar, wind-up, whatever
   
5. A surprising number of people build stupid houses in stupid places
   
6. Building on or immediately behind the foreshore dune is dumb - it's a sand dune for god's sake! It has a purpose - to move, to replenish the beach!
   
7. The ONLY media that works/adds value in a crisis is local ABC radio and a battery powered receiver - it must be defended at all costs
   
8. There is no such thing as too much duct tape
   
9. Don't assume that because there's a cyclone, it's gonna rain - fill the bath all the way
   
10. Emergency alert text messages are great - if you have a mobile
    
11. Charge the camera beforehand - taking pics on the mobile chews up battery time
    
12. Tell everyone beforehand to only text you and not to ring
    
13. Get more ice beforehand, fill the fridge up with it (unless you have a solar house of course)
    
14. The Internet is invaluable until you lose power - but only because in enables you to track the cyclone closely.
    
15. News sites are hopeless and Facebook is downright dangerous in the hands of a teenager who can't discern rumour from fact or possibility from probability.
    
16. Print media is useless unless they can can get an edition out before the power comes on
    
17. The BOM site is fantastic but I suspect most people don't know how to read the forecast maps
    
18. Most people have no idea of the country on which they live or how it works
    
19. Most people (and journalists) have no appreciation of the geography of Queensland
    
20. Don't wait for the last minute to buy your beer supply and when you do don't forget to get extra for all of those chats with the neighbours after
    
21. Always be nice to the Ergon and CityWater guys - they are worth their weight in beer at the very least. They do an amazing job in appalling conditions

And finally, when everyone is locked down and until the storm passes, you are starkly reminded that ultimately in this world, you are on your own baby.


Magnetic Island, 9 February 2011

Excuses used for not reading blogs

It has happened so often now that I am moved to comment on the number of times someone (usually a journalist) tells me that they are aware of a particular post on North Coast Voices BUT….

a) only stumbled upon it when I was searching for something else on the Internet

b) someone read it out to me because I don’t have time to read blogs

c) a friend of a friend told me a bit about it

d) remember hearing about it somewhere or other

To these four common 'explanations' I often like to mentally add another two for my own amusement:

e) the cat dragged it in and left it on the mat

f) I didn’ t actually read it – it was blocking the bedroom door as I tried to make it to the bathroom this morning ;-)

What is fascinating about this attitude is the level of shame it appears to conceal. Apparently online reading is actually a vice akin to one of the seven deadly sins – especially if you are a professional journalist.

It certainly gives me the silent giggles whenever I hear that BUT.

Cartoon from Savage Chickens

Boing Boing blog comes out fighting over word association defamation claim & ACS:Law flounders over mass mail out

Boing Boing blog on 17 January 2011:

Boing Boing has been on the receiving end of one or two stupid legal threats in our day but this one from the firm of Lazar, Akiva & Yagoubzadeh takes the cake, the little cake topper, the frosting and all the candles, as well as the box and the cake-stand and the ornamental forks……………..

There's no legal merit to this, of course. "Commercial libel" is damned hard to make stick (that pesky First Amendment!), and it takes a lot more than a blog post that contains the words "academic" "advantage" and "scam" to make a workable legal case.

No, this is pure legal thuggery, a completely indiscriminate bid to intimidate bloggers and publishers into censoring themselves by threatening dire legal consequences.

And the sad thing is, it probably works. Most people don't know the law (see EFF Bloggers' Rights articles), and can't afford to ask a lawyer what they should do in a situation like this. All we can hope is that the next time someone gets a letter over "academic advantage scam" or similar false positives, they get to this blog post and discover that our legal pals at Dewey, Cheatham and Howe Lazar, Akiva & Yagoubzadeh know even less about the law than they do about the Internet.

Boing Boing again on 20 January 2011:

According to this article in California Watch, the tutoring company Academic Advantage has fired the law firm of Lazar, Akiva & Yagoubzadeh over its ridiculous legal threats against Boing Boing.

For those of you who missed it, Lazar, Akiva & Yagoubzadeh sent us a letter alleging that we had caused "possibly irrevocable damage" to the reputation of its client, Academic Advantage, by publishing a blog post that contained the phrase "academic advantage" and, later, in one of the comments, the word "scam." Neither the original post nor the comment were related to the Academic Advantage tutoring service, and besides, US law clearly places responsibility for message-board posts on the poster, not the people who put up the message board. Lazar, Akiva & Yagoubzadeh's threat was one of the sloppiest, most careless piece of lawyering I've ever seen, a breathtaking example of depraved indifference and bullying.

Text of the original 13 January 2011 legal letter (apparently written by one of the law firm partners) which caused all the fuss can be found at Chilling Effects here:

We represent The Academic Advantage, Inc. (“The Academic Advantage”). It has come to our client’s attention that there is a link on your website which defames The Academic Advantage. This unlawful and impermissible link address is causing my client significant and possibly irrevocable damage.
The Academic Advantage is a well regarded company and community leader, which has received recognition from numerous public officials, including from governors and senators throughout the country, as well as high accolades from scores of parents and children. Unfortunately, however, the BoingBoing website has created an association of “scam” with the Academic Advantage. The following hyperlink is where the libelous web address can be found:
http://boingboing.net/2009/07/16/autism-as-an-academi.html

Enclosed is a printout of the webpage for your convenience.

It is clear there is no purpose to this web address but to falsely accuse the Academic Advantage of being a scam or at least associating the Academic Advantage with a scam. There is absolutely no helpful reason for the website to have the words “Academic,” “Advantage” and “Scam” which leads me to believe it was created for malicious purposes. Claiming that our client’s tutoring services program is a “SCAM” is prima facie defamation and designed to do nothing more than damage our client’s reputation.
We are respectfully requesting that BoingBoing immediately take down any and all such links from the website in order to avoid any further damage to our client’s reputation and business as well as an unnecessary escalation of these matters as between my client and BoingBoing. The Academic Advantage provides tutoring services to thousands of children, from Kindergarten through Twelfth Grade. Given the nature of our client’s services, involving the tutoring of young children, false accusations of lying, cheating, and stealing is particularly damaging to our client’s business. BoingBoing cannot in good conscience allow this hyperlink to remain.

Please kindly remove or rename the above listed link from your site immediately. If you have any questions or would like to discuss things in more detail, please feel free to contact me. In the meantime, I thank you in advance for your cooperation in resolving these matters.

While over at ACS:Law the problems flowing from a mass mail out to alleged copyright infringers and data breach are perhaps a little more serious and, its now blank original homepage and new web site under construction says it all.

A word from Petering Time

Pete has been in contact to say he is staying north of the border for the foreseeable future to help mates rebuild after the floods and, will be exchanging PC keyboard for hammer and screwdriver.

He insists that this has been the most dramatic excuse he has ever had for not catching the biggest fish of his life.

Hopefully we will see him back home before mid-year.

Seasons Greeting from all at North Coast Voices in 2010

Season's Greetings

To all our readers

And to those Australian and overseas bloggers

we regularly read ourselves

From everyone here at

North Coast Voices

Have a happy and safe time during this year's festivities

As is our usual custom we will be taking a holiday break from

Christmas Day 2010 until New Year's Day 2011.

Animated image from fanpop!

May the gods bless the Australian Broadcasting Commission.....

ABC News on Friday 26 November 2010:

The editor-in-chief of The Australian is threatening to sue a journalism academic over claims published on Twitter that he told a staff member what to write in regards to the paper's coverage of climate change.
In an article published on The Australian's website, Chris Mitchell says he will sue Julie Posetti for defamation because of tweets she made purporting to quote a former rural reporter for The Australian.
Ms Posetti tweeted alleged quotes made yesterday by Asa Walhquist at a journalism conference at the University of Technology, Sydney.
Ms Posetti posted: "Walhquist: 'In the lead up to the election the Ed in Chief was increasingly telling me what to write.' It was prescriptive."
In another tweet Ms Posetti claims Walhquist said: "'It was absolutely excruciating. It was torture': Asa Walhquist on fleeing The Australian after being stymied in covering #climate."......

ABC News has now published audio of a relevant section of Walquist's presentation to the 2010 JEAA Conference (on what I think is Day 2) which appears to support Julie Posetti:

Audio Part One

Audio Part Two

Since those tapes surfaced The Australian appears to be backing down from its hardline stance with this admission on its Media Diary Blog:
Her Tweets are a fair summary of what Wahlquist said.

Sadly (and probably due to those legal threats) the Twitter account julie_posetti appears to have been deleted by its owner, however I'm sure that this incident will make for great reading in Ms. Posetti's work-in-progress thesis The Twitterisation of Journalism.

Julie blogs at http://www.j-scribe.com/ and will be tweeting in future at JounTweet.

* Jonathon Holmes writing on this situation in 140 characters of legal nightmare

Update:

Julie Posetti's original Twitter account appears to be online once more.

Now I've heard everything! A Press Council LOL

Darryl Mason 28 Nov 10 5:23 pm
Considering The Press Council couldn’t even get Piers Akerman to publicly apologise after he said intellectually disabled people can’t understand “plain English”…no thanks.
http://tinyurl.com/y94fc5n

mUmBRELLA gives the cyberspace laugh of the week by reporting:
"Prof Disney suggested that the Press Council could seek to regulate bloggers . He said: “At present, only one of the Council members publishes solely on-line. The Council will continue to invite other on-line publishers to become members and thus subject to its regulation. This reflects a desire to avoid unnecessary duplication, inconsistency or gaps between the regulatory processes which apply to print and on-line publications in the area of news and current affairs. Consideration will also need to be given to the possibility of encouraging membership by serious bloggers who focus on the same area.”
I'm with Darryl Mason - when the Press Council begins to seriously address the ethical failings of paid professional journalists, then it can raise the possibility of extending the juristiction of its 25 member toothless tiger.

North Coast Voices celebrates its third birthday with a give-away

In October this year the regional group blog North Coast Voices reached the three-year milestone in its daily publication of news and opinion.

To say thankyou to our readers and celebrate this occasion we are giving away two sets of two flora and fauna studies by well-known NSW North Coast photographer Debrah Novak.

These photographic studies are signed and mounted but unframed.

The first reader from outside of Australia who sends an email with the subject line "Birthday" to northcoastvoices@gmail.com after 9am GMT/UTC on 10 November 2010 will be sent one set, provided they supply a legitimate return email address required to arrange mailing.

The first reader from within Australia who sends an email with the subject line "Birthday" to northcoastvoices@gmail.com after 9am AEST on 10 November 2010 will be sent one set, provided they supply a legitimate return email address to arrange mailing.

Clarencegirl, Clarrie Rivers, WaterDragon, K. Roo and Petering Time

* NCV contributors listed in the blog sidebar and their families are of course ineligible in relation to this birthday offer.


Image from The Impulsive Buy

Update:

Congratulations to Michael from Leeds, U.K. and Sharon from Woolongong, NSW.

Your wildlife studies are on there way and we hope that you will enjoy these examples of NSW North Coast flora and fauna.

Around the traps in the last few days.....

A bit of free promotion APN didn't need?
With the euthanasia debate heating up, I was amused to see that APN Outdoor received a bit of free promotion on the nightly news last week after one of its outdoor billboards advertising in Yagoona ran a large advert promoting the pro-choice position. Probably won't please the bishops.

Fine print on the back of that NBN envelope?
NATIONAL Broadband Network users will not be able to use their telephones in a power failure unless they pay for a back-up system.
Telstra copper lines will be replaced by NBN fibre as part of the $11 billion deal with the federal government.
NBN Co has a hands-off approach to ensuring lines will be available at all times.
Customers will rely on the fibre network for broadband and fixed telephone services. Each home and business will need a network termination unit for power.
The unit needs a standard 240 volt, 10 amp power outlet and without that it cannot work.
If the unit loses power, telephone lines will not work unless NBN users have a back-up battery system, an optional item under NBN Co guidelines.
The peak electrical body says NBN Co and the government must ensure service providers guarantee basic telephone services or people's lives could be in danger in emergencies.
The company says it will not supply, install or maintain the battery back-up. That means network users will have to purchase a back-up unit and battery, and ensure the unit is next to a power outlet.
Users must buy the back-up unit from their NBN service provider. The 12V 7.2Ah sealed lead acid battery for the back-up costs about $50. {The Australian 22nd October 2010}

NSW water raiders using #agchatoz to tweet their displeasure....
nswirrigators: 464 pages of Volume Two of #basinplan just released online. Saving the environment by ruining a forest? http://tinyurl.com/3x4umuw #agchatoz
nswirrigators: 3.30pm on the day #basinplan volume two was meant to be released and nothing yet. These people do not learn... #agchatoz #abcrural

A victim of friendly fire
"This is a debate that Australians need to have about the future of banking, and the banks now are clearly ignoring the government," Mr Hockey has said. "The Australian people need to know where the banking system is going."....
Liberal MP Don Randall launched into a withering attack on Mr Hockey's suggestion, labelling a "typical lunatic fringe idea" from the Greens - until it was pointed out that it came from the Coalition's top money man. "It's really going to have a negative effect on our economy ... it's really a worry". {news.com.au 21st October 2010}

Ad astra takes on Tony
Take the attack on the Government by Tony Abbott over the contemporary court martial of three Australian soldiers in Afghanistan. In a particularly contemptible assault he accused the Government of ‘stabbing the soldiers in the back’ and not giving them the support they deserved, of abandoning these men fighting as they are for their country. It was a powerful and aggressive strike. Yet what did the mild-mannered Stephen Smith say? He said Abbott’s words were ‘unfortunate’. Too right they were, but in the hurly burley of politics, words hardly like to make headlines, hardly likely to effectively rebut the Abbott charges.
I would have preferred him to say to Abbott: “How dare you have the temerity to make such outrageous accusations. It was the Howard Government, in which you were a minister that created the process for such trials of servicemen thought to be in contravention of the rules of engagement, and it had bipartisan support from Labor. You know perfectly well that in this process Government has no part to play, nor have politicians or politics. You know that this Government wants the process YOU established to bring about a considered outcome and that it wishes to play no part in it. Yet you come along with this completely illegitimate accusation which you know is dishonest, in order to score political points. And you were only too willing to enlist Alan Jones to promulgate this deception, something he was only too ready to do. Worse still, you allowed him, without contradiction, to denigrate the female prosecutor for laying the charges, even although you knew that she was acting completely in accordance with the process the Howard Government established. How dare you behave in this disgracefully disingenuous way, cast aspersions on those involved, and the Government too, although it is NOT involved. This is worse even that the usual low standards of political discourse which you employ. You are a disgrace.” {The Political Sword 22nd October 2010}

Too much fiction in Pollieville, U.K.?
A BRITISH MP enraged her constituents and her party after letting slip that her blog, which tells people how hard she works, is "70 per cent fiction".
Nadine Dorries, a Conservative MP for Mid Bedfordshire in southern England, made the admission to investigators during a sleaze inquiry that cleared her of abusing the Government's expenses system but found that she misled voters. {news.com.au 22nd October 2010}

A priceless piece of hypocritical copy

An anonymous Townville Bulletin journo criticizing anonymous bloggers..........

"WHEN reporter James Massola "outed" an anonymous blogger in The Australian newspaper last week, he received death threats and a torrent of personal abuse.

How dare someone in the mainstream media name one of these increasingly puerile bloggers, self-appointed guardians of righteousness and all that is wrong about society and, in particular, newspapers.

Grogs Gamut was named as a Canberra public servant and the reaction from his mates was as predictable as it was boring.

Those who hide under the veil of anonymity, taking cheap shots to satisfy their trendy social agenda, don't like it when they are thrust into the real world."

Hat tip to Blogging Townville's Anon and proud if it: Part 2.

Journalism and ethics - can they ever share the same bed?

I'm still trying to puzzle this out.
After interviewing a blogger apparently on the proviso that his anonymity would be preserved, a journalist later decides to out that same blogger on what seems to be a personal slow news day.
Or was old fashioned jealousy at the root of this unethical outing?
This is James Massola in justification mode:
"As I wrote on August 7 after interviewing Jericho (preserving his anonymity) about the piece that sparked debate: "Across Twitter a conversation bubbled and crackled as journalists and readers debated the merits of reportage from the campaign trail. Such a public conversation about journalism was unimaginable five years ago. If for no other reason, the incident demonstrated why Twitter, and blogs, matter."
So why did I out Grog if I thought he should keep blogging?
As a prolific blogger and tweeter, Jericho was putting information in the public domain to provoke discussion and debate. It might have been a hobby, but by engaging directly via Twitter with dozens of journalists, Jericho and his views became part of the public debate - and in an age in which the dissemination of information has been democratised, his scribblings had an influence."
Whatcha been drinking Jimmy?

Defamation litigation against Internet search engines continues and yet another blog thinks it's teflon-coated

In 2004 there was a shooting incident in a Melbourne suburb which was reported in The Herald-Sun at the time in an unexceptional manner.

Very little was heard of the incident after that until sometime between 2007 and 2009 a blogger appears to have created a post based on a second published news report.

This post was apparently capable of being read as a series of imputations that would lead the reader to believe that the named victim was associated in some way with unlawful activity. That original post is no longer displayed by Internet search engines.

The matter is are currently before the Court in what seems to be two separate defamation cases.

Which should have made OzSoapbox rather wary. Instead in July this year this second (and apparently unrelated) website owned by a Taiwan-based blogger has blithely proceeded to justify the Court's 2010 decision that parts of the original post were capable of giving rise to defamatory imputations and that litigation could proceed.

Indeed, OzSoapbox went even further with this particular comment after its 3 July 2010 post concerning the defamation litigation:

ozsoapbox
July 9th, 2010 at 4:02 pm ozsoapbox(Quote)
_______________________________________________________
Buddy, Id be very careful with this article and what you are
implying, the person in question will be very interested in this,
that is for certain.
____________________________________________

That sounds a bit threatening.

I'd have thought [redacted by North Coast Voices] 'd have his hands full trying to get rich
suing search engines to send out hitmen after me.

If geographic distance didn't save Yahoo! and Google from being served, one wonders if OzSoapbox will also find itself involved in litigation.

Oops, fly's undone!

Came back from fishing to find that one of my drafts has sneaked its way into today's posts.
Now removed. Sorry all!

2010 Election Campaign Day 12: Hustled by Christian Louboutin?

Maud up the Street (who enjoys public access to Teh Netz at her local library) alerted me to the oamimb website which is offering a very odd service:
"This is an example of a WordPress page, you could edit this to put information about yourself or your site so readers know where you are coming from. You can create as many pages like this one or sub-pages as you like and manage all of your content inside of WordPress."

Click on image to enlarge

North Coast Voices looking for enthusiastic blogger interested in arts & entertainment

North Coast Voices is looking for a person living on the NSW North Coast who is interested in arts & entertainment and, who would enjoy blogging about our local artists/musicians/events etc., with an eye to a little gentle promotion of the Northern Rivers region.

This offer is open to those living in the following shires:
Coffs Harbour, Bellingen, Clarence Valley, Richmond, Tweed and Kyogle.

There is no wage, expenses or compensation attached to this offer - it would be done just for the love of blogging.

All our current contributors are enthusiastic amateurs so inexperience is not a bar to acceptance.

Contact NCV Admin at northcoastvoices at gmail dot com to apply to join the team.
Please use a legitimate return email address so that you can be reached easily to discuss details.

Blogosphere's veracity is on the nose with Australian internet users?

It hurts to have to admit it, but if the team at Essential Media Communications are correct then Australian internet users are generally more likely to trust the word of shock jock Alan Jones on air than believe what bloggers opine online.

Click on image to enlarge

ABC TV and radio news and current affairs were the most trusted media (25% and 20% respectively have a lot of trust).

Commercial TV news and current affairs programs have the highest consumption, but only 9% say they have a lot of trust in them.

And although consumption of newspapers and internet news sites is very similar, newspapers are considered more trustworthy (62% compared to 49% have a lot/some trust in them).

[Essential Report weekly online survey 10-14 March 2010]

Wibbling widgets, Clarencegirl!

Sometimes the moon and stars just don't align and blogging becomes an obstacle race rather than a pleasant ride through cyberspace.

This is one of those times.

Most of North Coast Voices' regular contributors are down for the count at present due to injury or illness and, that leaves me holding the fort for the next week or so.

However, my PC has taken full advantage of this opportunity to create mischief and become highly dysfunctional - my apologies in advance for any spotty postings over the next few days.

Is this going to be the year of takedown notice?

It was only the eleventh day of the year when I took a look at the Chilling Effects database to see if there had been any movement on its Cease & Desist list.
I was rather surprised to find that there had been 29 takedown requests since 1 January 2010 - the majority alleging copyright infringement.

Seems the music and film industries are starting the year off as they mean to continue. Even hustler.com was yelling about copyright protection - something it has been doing since November 2009.

The blogger Patrick Frey from Patterico's Pontifications also started the year with a takedown request from a photographer, which was publicly refused on 9 January 2010 in a post on that blog.

Cryptome (an American whistleblower site) had one of its hosted webpages deleted at the beginning of the year, in response to Microsoft's November 2009 request which alleged unlawful sale of its product. The emails exchanged are here.

Cryptome held firm on another takedown demand in late 2009, this time by Yahoo! which objected to Internet users knowing how much it was charging the U.S. Government to supply information about their accounts and, a very interesting series of ISP spying price list links can be found below that email exchange.

As I write, the Chilling Effects C&D file now contains over 3,000 entries and rather surprisingly only about eleven of these involving allegation of defamation.

Thankfully Wikipedia does not feature yet this year, as this October 2009 letter indicated that it had entered deep water with one of its posts and the wiki team probably would like a quiet 2010.

The international whistleblower site Wikileaks hasn't woken up for the year yet, so I don't know how it is faring.

A light-hearted look at the echo chamber of the Internetz

When cruising cyberspace it's obvious that there's a great deal of repetitive comment out there perpetrated by lazy mainstream media and the blogosphere - everyone wants to get in on the act when it comes to teh topix o teh dae but few are prepared to do any hard graft required to come up with an original angle.
Media releases are not looked at with a critical eye on source, content or motive, but are simply churned back out through the giant sausage machine which is online publication. {yes, I admit that's not exactly an original observation either!}
Here's a light-hearted look at that echo chamber section of the Internetz:

Monsanto's statements are part of a 21-page paper titled "Observations on Competition in the U.S. Seed Industry." In it, the company argues
That opening turned up seven times in Google's search engine results on the 9th January.

He says the state laws have robbed farmers across Australia
Thirty-six instances of this sentence beginning were found in indexed mentions of one farmer when I went a-Googling his name.

big words
This two word language summary featured in over 1,000 online discussions of Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.

silvertail
The particular descriptor used on more than 3,000 occasions when talking about former Liberal Party leader Malcolm Turnbull.

dour Scot

Something British PM Gordon Brown has been labelled according to 15,000 Google items.

Paris Hilton scandal
This topic was an obvious favourite for in excess of 16,000 journalists, bloggers and YouTube video makers.

world government
A phrase which almost takes the cake when used over 300,000 times in discussions concerning a global response to climate change.

Barack Obama the antichrist
This characterisation turns up more than 700,000 times on Google when people are expressing views on the U.S. president.

I Can Has Cheezburger
Mention of this funny interactive website occurred in Google's index at least 7,670,000 times last time I typed the site name - which probably goes to prove that Internet users are a lot saner than our habit of parroting the latest gossip or rumour (without bothering to fact check) might otherwise lead sensible people to believe.

Favourite word picture of 2009 and other quirks

Favourite word picture of 2009:
"just got booted out of the conference center..."
{The limp lettuce leaf in any Oz political salad, Senator Steve Fielding, tweeting at COP15}

Least favourite second incarnation on the Internetz:
The Project for the New American Century (PNAC) died years ago. This think tank had fun slogans like "American leadership is both good for America and good for the world", "a Reaganite policy of military strength and moral clarity" and "a secure foundation on unquestioned U.S. military preeminence.
Unfortunately Kristol and Co are now up and running again at Foreign Policy Initiative which started up in 2009. The new website tells us that "The United States remains the world's indispensable nation -- indispensable to international peace, security, and stability, and indispensable to safe-guarding and advancing the ideals and principles we hold dear."

Most predictable election result:
"Preference data for the Bradfield by-election has now been published by the Australian Electoral Commission, making it possible to assess the success or otherwise of the Christian Democratic Party's tactic in nominating nine candidates for the by-election.Standing nine candidates has been costly for the CDP, as none of its candidates reached the 4% required for return of deposit or to attract public funding. In total the nine candidates received 2,524 votes or 3.58% of the vote, but 1,054 votes or 1.49% were recorded by James Whitehall who had the Number 1 position on the ballot paper and so received the donkey vote." {Antony Green's Election Blog 25th December 2009}

A quote to remember:
"As Boris said over on Stoat, "If there's something stupid to believe, there is someone on the internet who believes it." {From Rabett Run 21st December 2009}

The growing litigation pile belonga Monsanto:
"A mountain of lawsuits against Monsanto and related companies have been removed to federal court.This summer and fall, 161 lawsuits were filed in Putnam Circuit Court alleging Monsanto and related companies are responsible for causing cancer." {The West Virginia Record 23rd December 2009}

Worst OZ commercial decision of 2009:
iSnack 2.0 - nuff said!

Something for the 'Obama is the Anti-Christ' assorted nuts:
"The first family arrived on the island of Oahu and President Obama and his wife Michelle started Christmas Day with a gym workout at 6.40am, returning more than an hour later. The first couple did not exchange gifts, aides said, and did not attend church." {The Sydney Morning Herald 27th December 2009}

A little festive season hysteria:
"Police from Blacktown Local Area Command want to dispel rumours circulating on a social networking website that a man, Dennis Ferguson, is living in Doonside in Sydney’s west.The claims have been investigated by police, in consultation with the Department of Housing, and the information posted on the website is incorrect. This is a case of mistaken identity and the resident of a street in Doonside is not Dennis Ferguson as has been reported on the social networking site. Police are urging those people transmitting false information to cease immediately." {NSW Police media release 22nd December 2009}

Most disturbing statistic of the year:
"NSW Council for Civil Liberties secretary Stephen Blanks said a pattern of police shootings had emerged in the past year. Four people have been killed by NSW Police this year." {The Sydney Morning Herald 27th December 2009}
This propensity to ape a fictional vision of police machismo by using deadly force appears to have been growing steadily in recent years.
Between 1990 and 2007 87 people were shot and killed by police in Australia and the most dangerous time of day to have an aggressive confrontation with police seems to be between 4pm and 8pm.

Most likeable blog:
Still Life With Cat - Clarencegirl once told me that this was a quietly insightful, gently humorous, venom-free zone and I wholeheartedly agree!

That unwanted prediction for 2010:
"ELECTRICITY, gas, water and public transport costs will all increase in 2010, while the average grocery shop will make a bigger dent in the family budget." {The Sydney Morning Herald 27th December 2009}

Most laughable Oz politician of this any year:
Just take your pick! Abbott, Abetz, Tuckey, Minchin, Pyne, Joyce, Fielding, Keneally,............

The Arsehat of all Arsehats in 2009:
Andrew Bolt - for services to Oz's racist underbelly, the anti-science lobby and general contrariety. {See almost any post on his Herald-Sun blog}

Pic from Crikey