The Null Device

2002/12/12

Family values masquerading as social justice: The conservative government of Australia extends its social-engineering-through-taxation scheme, with a plan to punitively tax non-breeders and use the proceeds to pay people to have children ("be fruitful and multiply", as the Good Book (which was written back in the days when the world was underpopulated) says). The amount of tax Australians pay is becoming increasingly dependent on their divergence from John Howard's model of Judaeo-Christian family values. It's chequebook paternalism, folks.

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10 reasons why Mary Hansen was cool. Damn right; she sounds like she was a very cool individual, the world will be a little emptier without her. Why is it always the cool people whose lives end up being cut short in absurdly meaningless accidents, and never the crashing bores whose irritating antics fill the media?

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Mary Hansen, member of experimental ba-ba-ba ensemble Stereolab, died in a bicycle accident in London on Monday. She was 36. (via a bunch of people)

(Which shows (a) how absurd and fleeting life is, and/or (b) the brutally anti-human nature of car culture/speed-obsessed modern society. But, above all, is quite depressing.)

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