Julian Assange has won another Award The Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism details can be found here
I’ve just watched this interview with Martha -quite interesting
Mathamagic
How do you work out the square of two random 5 digit numbers. This man shows you how
Carbon Footprint Nonsense
- Carbon Offset
- Carbon Footprint
- Carbon Trading
- Carbon nonsense
I am getting increasingly irritated by the fuss about carbon. If you assuming global warming is the biggest problem the world currently faces I do not agree that reducing carbon is the solution. I believe a focus on reducing pollution and clean efficient technologies is a good idea to help the environment but to blindly just to to reduce you “carbon footprint”
Global Problems
- Potable water shortage
- Food shortage
- War
- Destruction of the natural world (you kill this we all die)
- 95% reduction in all food crops genetic diversity in the last 100 years.
- x acres of farmland turned to dessert
- Genetic modificated organisms are currently cross-pollinating with natural occurring species which could screw up all the rest
- The countries we live in are run by people with more power everday caused by erosion to our civil liberties increasing
Gun Ownership vs Homicide Rate
An assumption I have always had is that more gun ownership causes more murders. Recently I’ve heard some things that made me question this assumption so I have completed a little basic analysis and thought I’d share my findings.
My Analysis
I took the homicide rate per country from wikpedia (the countries were ordered by homicide rate). I then went to another website called http://www.gunpolicy.org/firearms/region to get the % people with guns. I amended the gun ownership figures to the top and bottom and a few countries in the middle. I didn’t get all the % of gun ownership figures because it was too time consuming and I didn’t have time.
Results
>>For the full Spreadsheet showing all 186 countries in order of homicide rate click here
Comment
My analysis did not come out as expected. According to table I put together I can say there is no clear correlation between gun ownership % and homicide rate . If it plays a role then I can defiantly say it not the lead cause. The US leads the world in gun ownership and it has a high homicide rate for western countries (5 deaths per 1000) compared to say the UK which is (1.28 per 100) or Australia (1.3). There were a number of Nordic countries such as Switzerland (45%), Norway (31.3%) , Austria (30%) that have high gun ownership that were in the lowest 10 for homicide rates.
Conclusion
Based on this quick bit of analysis it looks to me like war and poverty do look like they correlate with homicide rate but gun owenership does not have any appreciable correlation.
My spreadsheet can be found here
I would appreciate any thoughtful comments. If you have better data that show things in a different light then I would appreciate it if you could send it me and I’ll continue this post once I look at that.
Graphic Design on a Shoestring
The image above I had made up for $150 using 
The way it works is that you setup a prize action and people submit designs you then choose the one you like. If you don’t get any you like you don’t pay. Below is how I briefed in my design and the ad I put up. I received 2 designs , the one I choose went through 1 iteration.
The project is a Rock Show based upon the movie I imagined- details can be found on www.carolinetowers.com
Below is my brief
A poster is required for the action movie “Caroline Towers”
Summary
3 Main Characters – Richard Steel (hero), Leader of the resistance, Architect
About
- Huge building
- Lower floors = lower class
- Lower floors being filled in and occupants murdered so the tower can continue to grow.(The big secret)
Poster Style
below are some I like
More Details
I was absolutely stoked with the results , especially when you look at the awful drawing I did above for guidance! I would recommend the site for anyone after artwork. Anyone else had any experience with 99 designs. As ever any comments are most welcome
Downloading the internet
Having local copies of useful stuff on the internet is handy when your not online. The internet is also constantly changing which means that just because something useful is on there now doesn’t mean it always be as useful in the future. For this reason I like local copies of some key items 1. How to download the wikipedia I used okiwiki 2. How to Download all your google docs You can now download all your google docs in one go easily. Click Actions -> Download -> All items 3. How to download maps onto your iphone I use offmaps but its a bit annoying. I also tryto zoom around on my iphone in the maps application to put the maps in cache (although is teduios)
Buying all major stuff online
We are getting screwed by retailers in Australia. Australia is a country full of duopolies and monopolies. I was recently sent this video which discusses our two largest retailers.
Due to the high cost of the AU dollar and the reasons above nowadays there are a large number of items that if you don’t buy them online your are being irresponsible with your money. I have been able to save 50% on the shop price on these two items.
Item 1
ENGL Valve Amp (nice!) 60% $1300 saving including shipping from Germany
bought from Thomman
Item 2
Protien Powder 50% $100 saving
bought from https://www.completehealth.com.au
RIP Myspace
As readers to this blog may know I am in a band called Jimmy Yukka & His Amazing Band. As part of being in an active band anytime from 2003 you were obliged to get your band on myspace.
In that band I wrote a song about it (below).
I wrote that song a couple of years ago. Myspace now has an all new look that format. Maybe the new format is quicker to load and has some really neat features and maybe it doesn’t crash all the time.
I’m never gonna know though because I won’t be trying the new myspace. Die myspace
….Die……Die…….Die
Bank Reserve Requirements 2011
I went to my bank to get some money to by my new car the other day. I needed $4000. They told me that officially I needed to give 24 hours notice for cash withdrawl over $2,000 however they had enough today so they could give me my $4000. Now my bank is probably a bit smaller than ANZ but I found this quite startling. It got me wondering about how much money banks have in reserve.
A note about Reserve banking . Banks don't need $100 dollars to lend you $100.The US has a requirement that the banks have to at least own equity worth 10% of the total loans outstanding. So if Citibank only actually owned $10 then the sum of all the loans they could make could not exceed $100.
So I did a little investigation and what I found (with a quick look on wikipedia) concearned me somewhat. I knew that the US had a 10% requirement I didn’t know though that the UK and Australia does not require any reserve requirement whatsoever. So they can make money loaning money they don’t have. I wish I could do that.
Country |
Required reserve (in %) |
Note |
|---|---|---|
Australia |
None
|
Statutory Reserve Deposits abolished in 1988,
replaced with 1% Non-callable Deposits[5] |
Canada |
None
|
|
Mexico |
None
|
|
New Zealand |
None
|
1999 [2] |
Sweden |
None
|
|
United Kingdom |
None
|
|
Czech Republic |
2.00
|
Since 7 October 2009
|
Eurozone |
2.00
|
Since 1999[6] |
South Africa |
2.50
|
|
Switzerland |
2.50
|
|
Poland |
3.00
|
|
Chile |
4.50
|
|
India |
6.00
|
as per RBI. |
Bangladesh |
5.50
|
Raised from 5.00. Effective from 15 May 2010
|
Lithuania |
6.00
|
|
Pakistan |
5.00
|
Since 1 November 2008
|
Taiwan |
7.00
|
[7] |
Latvia |
8.00
|
|
Jordan |
8.00
|
|
Malawi |
15.00
|
|
Zambia |
8.00
|
|
Burundi |
8.50
|
|
Hungary |
2.0
|
|
Ghana |
9.00
|
|
United States |
10.00
|
Wikileaks and Julian Assange
Julian Assange is an Australian citizen that has recieved many awards for journalism and peace (see the full list in wikipedia) just this month he won a peace medal from the Sydney Peace Foundation and he has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize see reuters article here
On Friday I watch the video below
High tech terrorist
In an article in the The Huffington Post Vice President Jo Biden was reported as calling Julian Assange a high tech terrorist. The Uk’s Daily Mail quotes potential US presidential candidate Sarah Palin as demmanding that Julian Assange is hunted down like Osama Bin Ladin.
The court case
Julian Assange is fighting a court case that could see him be extradited to Sweden (and then the fear is extradited to the US on some terrorism charge). He is only required for questioning. This is very unusual for an individual in the EU to be extradited just for questioning on a crime – especially unusual where no charges have been laid. The case has been widely missreported in the media but is actually about is him having fully consensual sex with two woman on different occasions whilst not wearing a condom (this is against the law in Sweden) . The case was started after one of the women went to the doctors to be tested for STD where she explained she had consensual unprotected sex with Julian after which the police started proceeding against Julian. The offense is of “minor rape” where the accused can be found guitly of rape even of the the person raped consents (?). This does not have an equivilent in the UK or Australia, an article explaining this was published in The Australian newspaper.
To hear two feminists on the radio station Democracy Now debating the charge and whether a charge of consenting rape is approprate click here.
The US strategy to contain Wikileaks
In an ironic twist of fate the US strategy to contain wikileaks was leaked to wikileaks. Democracy Now recorded an interview about 12 months ago with Julian Assange where he discussed this leak (unfortunaltly I cant find the episode please add a comment to this article if you can find it) . The key components of the strategy were
- Link the organization to one person specifically
- Assassinate the persons character
- Lay down the importance of the leaks
- Attack its source of funding for the organisation
Any of that sound familiar?
About the video screening on Friday
The video at the top was screened in the Federation square in the centre of Melbourne buy the Australian journalists Union ACTU during the presentation a number of Australian journalists praised Julian Assange for his work. After that at the Melbourne State Library a guy called “Robert Foster” from the juice media made an impromptu performance on the steps. After a bit of digging I found this video
EXTERNAL SOURCES
- Julian Assange wikipedia page
- ACTU statement on the free membership given to Julian Assange
- Democarcy Now with the feminist debate about the case Mr Assange is called for questioning
- The Huffington Post Vice President Jo Biden was reported as calling Julian Assange a high tech terrorist. The Uk’s