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How Ground Zero looks today.

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Tony Abbot on Insiders yesterday (29/8/10):

Look the three rural independents – they’re all adults, they’re all patriots…

Patriot – A person who submits to the will of the Liberal party.

Every person and their companion animal of choice is wading into the post election debate so why not join in the fun.

No political analysis just a personal observations on why I voted for The Greens and not Labor. The simple reason is real moral leadership. Not “moral” in the limited, bigoted, intolerant sense as usually employed by family first types, but real leadership that doesn’t demonise a disadvantaged group for the sake of votes.

What Labor did, by matching the Liberals in rhetoric regarding the boat people, advocated any moral leadership and made it beholden to a bunch of irrational xenophobes in a land locked electorate who feared the arrival of a few thousand people by boat many of thousand of kilometers to the north. The stupidity of all this wonderfully captured by The Chaser.

I suspect if Labor had ignored the ignorant it would not have made much difference to the campaign. The Liberals were brilliant in forcing Labor to fight parts of the campaign on their own terms.

Labor does have some good policies such as the NBN and the Mining Tax but failed to even sell those properly to the electorate. And the ridiculous intransigence on gay marriage shows Labor lack any electoral guts whatsoever.

I’m not stuck to The Greens. I’d be happy to rejoin the Labor fold. But for that to happen Labor will need to become a braver, more confident party. One that is not afraid to bring real leadership (ala Hawke and early Keviun Rudd) and not be captive to News Ltd, marginal voters nor the careerist party executives who lack any vision beyond the next poll. The destruction of NSW Labor next March may help rid Federal Labor of the cancerous influence of the NSW right once and for all. But I somehow doubt it given the propensity of those most responsible for Labor’s stumbling, bumbling, fumbling campaign to acknowledge reality.

I do know some good people in the grass roots of Labor. I hope their voices can find a way to be heard as the party would do well to listen to them and not the hollow voices that guided Labor to electoral disaster this time around.

In a strange election that will be contested right up until the 21st, no-one should be surprised that Julia Gillard has announced that Labor if reelected will extend the school chaplain program for another three years and extend it to another 1000 schools.

Gillard may be an atheist but she is a politician above all else. Self interest and a desire to be re-elected are the primary motivations rather than a consistency in beliefs. Where every vote counts, any principles go overboard in attempt to find favour with any special interest group. And while the Christian lobby doesn’t have as much power as politicians give them credit for, they are are noisy and that works.

Over at Gladly, the cross eyed bear there is an interesting 3 part series title A Cast Against School Chaplaincy. Glady raises some very important concerns about school chaplains and their ability and qualifications to deal with many student issues that will require counseling.

Real damage can be done to students via this program.

Iran, the leading light of countries with a dark ages mentality, has decided via supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei that music should not be taught nor practiced in Iran. A proclamation doomed to failure as music is one of the most powerful forces on this planet.

Iran does seem to have a thriving if isolated underground music scene. Below are two clips from the documentary Global Metal with interviews from people involved in Iran’s metal scene and interesting comments about metal on the Middle East in general.

Michael Mullins has a post on Eureka Street on the idea that Gillard’s atheism belongs in the closet.

And while Mullins does take Perth’s Catholic Archbishop Barry Hickey to task for his intolerance, Mullins fails to note his own in declaring that atheists should remain in the closet. Amusing his tagging of Gillard’s mild statement on her lack of beliefs as being “out and proud.” Obviously religious politicians can say whatever they want but heaven forbid an atheist politician making a reasonable statement concerning their views.

Mullins then uses Hickey as a proxy to be concerned at the rise of an European style secularism hindering the rights of churches. I doubt this would happen in Australia given the difference in cultural contexts.

Anyway, Gillard is not the first Australian atheist prime minister. The idea of Prime Minsters needing to profess a faith is very new and mainly the fault of Rudd’s god bothering on his way to Prime Minister. You only need to look at the US to see what happens when religion and politics mix. Mammon always wins with God relegated to just a few catch phrases to win over the gullible.

I was thinking about the National Broadband Network (NBN) today (as you do on a bank holiday).

I can remember a debate online back around 1996 or 1997. It was about mp3s. There was one chap who was arguing that no-one will download mp3s and there was no future in the format. Remember this was when most people had a 33k modem and ascii was still a viable medium for porn. Of course, history proved this fellow wrong as once modems and broadband became more prevalent, the mp3 format via some good fortune became the standard format for music files.

Now this is not the most rigorously researched piece but I wager that when the NBN is completed, the technology will develop to take advantage of the network and provide a lot of money to smart people with ideas. This will lead to a changes how we do things both personal and business.

Of course you have to wait and see if I am right but the NBN if completed will prove to benefit Australia far beyond the telcos.

Gosford council have approved an Exclusive Brethren hall for Kariong. This was against the council’s own officers. The ridiculous bit:

But councillor Jeff Strickson urged approval, saying traffic impact would be small.

“We’re talking about a maximum attendance of 90 people,” Cr Strickson said.

“A lot of people will walk so we’re talking about maybe 15 cars once every six weeks.

There is an Exclusive Brethren hall just down the road from my place. At lot more than 90 people attend their and even with the car park, the street outside and the pub car park fills up pretty quickly a couple of times a week. And looking at the religious affiliation for Kariong, there are only 23 people that list their affiliation as Brethren. Strickson is being very flexible with the facts.

I’m sure the same consideration would have been given if an Islamic group had proposed a similar venue for Kariong.

The rise in zombies as a literary horror genre is to be welcomed. As their undead cousins, vampires, are defanged by their popularity in the paranormal romance genre, zombies seem to be thriving. Their attributes being that no-one can really envisage a romance with a shambling, rotting corpse that wants to eat you (though David Liss does have zombie sex in his short story “What Maisie Knew” ).

But as with Liss, the best stories aren’t all about zombies. Zombies are just the background for ruminations on how human behave (in both awful and noble ways) to each other. Robert Kirkman’s excellent The Walking Dead series is becoming less about surviving zombies and more about surviving other humans.

And hence we arrive at Mira Grant’s (author Seanan McGuire under another name) “Feed“, a story about bloggers in a post-zombie apocalypse world covering a presidential campaign.
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Brut, who make cologne for blokes, sponsors Channel Nine’s coverage of the NRL and as such, you will see an ad similar to below. This the original version from last year.

As a post from Sociological Image says:

The woman is, quite literally, an object, to be “modified,” and then posed with his other belongings. And as we see, being “brutally male” is associated with drinking a lot, driving powerful vehicles, having hot women, and probably engaging in the type of risky behaviors that partially explain why men in many industrialized nations live shorter lives than women.

And too rightly complaints were lodged such as one by Miss T. The outcome of the complaints were also noted by Mumbarella in 2009:

Two ads judged to be demeaning to women have been censured by the Advertising Standards Board.

The ASB has found that a commercial for Brut Max anti-perspirant and a late night ad for the Girls Gone Wild adult mobile service were both in breach of advertising rules.

The Brut ad – made by ad agency Loud for advertiser Pharmacare – featured a robot collecting macho-friendly objects such as a surfboard and a football . It then picks up a doll, which it indicated is “rejected” before turning her into a woman in a bikini, which it collects.

A voiceover for the ad – aired during NRL and AFL broadcasts – concludes: “Brut – still brutally male”.

Defending the ad, the advertiser said: “”When making the commercial we made sure that: Tara, our model was portrayed as comfortable and happy, and a real person. -The Robot acted gently, engaging and not threatening or menacing.”

Referrring to coverage of sex scandals involving footballers, the board described the media placement as “unfortunate”, and added:

“The Board considered that the advertisement objectifies the woman and represents her as a desired possession of men. The transformation from a doll to this particular buxom, very attractive woman dressed in a bikini also objectifies a particular type of women and perpetuates a stereotype of ‘desirable’ women.

So the ad was modified.

Spot the difference? Why yes, the concession was not to place the woman in the back of the ute. That sure is progress.

Now this NRL season, I have seen a third version . The difference now is that the Barbie doll that is rejected and modified has been removed. But the woman still comes out of the chute with all the other objects to be collected by the robot.

Brut really don’t get it.

They obviously believe they have tapped into a demographic but that should not excuse Brut of using crass gender stereotypes and sexism to sell a product. I love my footy but I resent being told that, as a bloke, the ad is representative of my gender.

The tag line “Still – brutally male” is disgusting with the implication that violence is an essential part of being a man. And while I do think the NRL has made ground in regards to gender issues over the years (scandals not withstanding) the endorsement of this ad by the NRL’s broadcaster is a sign there are still ways to go.