The Null Device

2001/11/10

Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck fuck. There go the last vestiges of a fair, pluralistic society. (Ever wonder what would have happened if the "Joh For PM" campaign in the 80s had been successful? Well, you're looking at it. How much do you want to bet that they'll be talking about economic sanctions against Australia in a few years' time? (Or at least progressive-leaning Australian emigrés in London and New York will.)

Howard's about to claim victory on the ABC. Must resist urge to put heavy object through TV...

One piece of good news: the Greens have doubled their vote, and have done extraordinarily well. This was partly at the expense of the ALP (who didn't present enough of an alternative), and partly at the expense of the Democrats (who showed themselves to be too driven by expediency, something that not even Buffy Stott-Despoja's glowing charisma could gloss over). Given that they're probably the only party with both integrity and sanity, I hope that they'll keep up the good showings.

(Whom did I vote for? In my seat, I voted for the Greens, with preferences to the Democrats and Labor, and the Liberals last. Interesting to note that the Greens got 15% there, taking a big chunk out of the (ultra-safe) Labor member's margin.)

Another thing I noticed was that, in their Senate how-to-vote card, the Liberals gave their first and second preferences to the two Religious Right parties, the Democratic Labor Party (conservative Catholic anti-Communist crusaders turned "family-values" stalwarts) and the Christian Party. Goes to show how much they have left the idea of "liberalism" behind.

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Has anybody else noticed that the music in Björk's Heirloom (off Vespertine; the track where she goes on about her recurring dreams) is identical to Console's Crabcraft (on the Sadness Is In The Sky #15 CD)?

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The Guardian reports a growing split in the US-UK alliance concerning the war; in particular, the British are uneasy about elements in the Pentagon pushing for an all-out assault on Iraq:

One British minister said that bombing Iraq would be catastrophic because women and children would be killed and the consequences for the US and Britain in the Arab world would be unimaginably dangerous. He warned that US and British embassies in the Arab world would have to close and British civilians would have to be advised to leave the area. He feared that moderate Arab regimes would be swept away.

Meanwhile, former First Daughter Chelsea Clinton, now at Oxford, is offended by the anti-American sentiment of "peace demonstrators":

"I bristle at these suggestions. The idea that anyone believes America would enter into this conflict capriciously boggles my mind, and the notion that the United States is acting without regard to the Afghan people is offensive," Ms Clinton wrote in the US magazine, Talk.

Maybe someone ought to tell those uppity Brits that if it wasn't for the good old U.S. of A, they'd be speaking German now, so just shut up and toe the line.

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Damon Albarn condemns war on Afghanistan at MTV awards; spontaneous bonfires of Blur CDs erupt across America.

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Linux geekery: A great big list of Linux sound hacking links. Everything from sound processing libraries to revolutionary new DSP APIs to file reading code to MIDI classes for Python and Tcl. Also, CDfs, which lets you mount a CD (including multiple sessions and audio tracks) as a special file system.

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So here it comes, everyone; the election is nigh. And who am I going to vote for? I'm going to give my first preference to the Greens, followed by the remaining parties in inverse order of obnoxiousness and chance-of-winning. In the Senate (always fun), Murgatroyd is likely to get a relatively high preference from me.

Whom are you going to vote for?

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