I can't think of a better metaphor to describe the current Minister Of Communication's fetish with cleansing the Indonesian web sphere of porn just in time for Ramadan this August. He certainly has his windmills lined up. But who is he kidding really? By his own lieutenant's admission his ministry is incapable of blocking more than 3000 porn sites per day. The Internet porn business creates some 4 million sites per day - created by some of the most Internet-savy people on the web. So, according to my math. the government may at best be able to block some 40,000 sites before Ramadan. That leaves only a mere 39, 960,000 porn sites for the porn crazed, sex staved, uberhorny, morally challenged rakyat to nibble on before their annual month long abstinence. This solution will be as much use as issuing spoons to Jakarta residents to prevent flooding during rainy season. I'm not even going to bother with the sms text porn,sms picture porn and cell phone porn movies flying around the country for years now. You don't even need the Internet for that shit.
Here is some free advice for the good minister. You wanna limit the effects of porn? Start with your kids. Watch a porn video with them or at least sit them down for a nice chat. Trust me, they will probably be so creeped out from watching/discussing porn with their parents that any possible mystique will be totally and irretrievably lost. Failing that you could foist off your kids sex education on the public school system or leave it to the dvd merchants in glodok. Implementing blanket bans may garner the morality vote but really its a fig leaf covering your own inability to deal sensibly with the problem.
Friday, July 30, 2010
Sunday, July 25, 2010
Things Missed
Its time to go back to work. I've enjoyed this little trip to Canada even though I nearly froze to death.
Certain things you just can't take with you.
Here are some in no particular order
Good music and bookstores - I've missed shopping for Cd's. Buying music online just isn't the same.
Morning crosswords - nice way to take your coffee
Boats and big brothers - I enjoyed the unscheduled lesson on sailing without the rudder, but I really don't care to try that again.
Large furry animals - you know who you are.
Old friends. Funny how you can pick up with them where you left off the year before.
Working Bureaucrats (especially the folks that helped with my passport).
Big skies and cruise control - no better way to see the province.
Hot rum toddies - nothing better after a cold day on the water - or a cold day for that matter - Well, come to think of it, anytime is a good time for these babies.
Alberta Beef - I think I haven eaten an entire cow (bit by bit) over the last three weeks. Cutting my steak with a spoon and washing it down with a nice Italian red - heaven!
Hi Speed Internet - Oh the joy of it!
Family
Did I mention large furry animals?
Certain things you just can't take with you.
Here are some in no particular order
Good music and bookstores - I've missed shopping for Cd's. Buying music online just isn't the same.
Morning crosswords - nice way to take your coffee
Boats and big brothers - I enjoyed the unscheduled lesson on sailing without the rudder, but I really don't care to try that again.
Large furry animals - you know who you are.
Old friends. Funny how you can pick up with them where you left off the year before.
Working Bureaucrats (especially the folks that helped with my passport).
Big skies and cruise control - no better way to see the province.
Hot rum toddies - nothing better after a cold day on the water - or a cold day for that matter - Well, come to think of it, anytime is a good time for these babies.
Alberta Beef - I think I haven eaten an entire cow (bit by bit) over the last three weeks. Cutting my steak with a spoon and washing it down with a nice Italian red - heaven!
Hi Speed Internet - Oh the joy of it!
Family
Did I mention large furry animals?
 |
| Jake the oversized puppy |
 |
| waffle...latest addition to the clan |
Thursday, July 1, 2010
Addictions
I read The Hobbit in eighth grade. In that time I was travelling in the Kananaskis country and perhaps it was the combination of story and scenery that did me in. I was hooked. Upon finishing The Hobbit I immediately sought out The Lord Of the Rings and spent the next year reading it over and over again, ever trying to squeeze out the last bits of trivia from its appendices. A few colleagues from school shared my addiction and we would happily debate the geography of Midde Earth or how to pronounce Osgilliath, Mithrandir, Orthanc and other names and places from Tolkien's World. But if I thought I was an LOTR geek, than these guys take the cake. Imagine making movie prequels - this is geekism on a whole new level. I actually sat down and watched both these films, the first concerning the heritage of Aragorn, and the second centered on the hunt for Gollum. For actors working on a pretty low budget - the project cost only $40,000 or so - I thought it was a very reasonable effort. Enjoy the films - they are after all still free.
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
On Oil Spills
That BP spill in the gulf is going on for some time now. Its certainly become a problem, judging from all the lawsuits being filed for BP, Haliburton, Transocean, and Cameron. Eventually all the facts of this tragic event will be unearthed in the discovery process (I think discovery is the correct legal term). In the meantime its worthwhile to note a few points about how the industry operates and the political games being played by the government.
The US government has threatened to take over relief efforts on this well. Personally I doubt that the Feds have either the technology or the expertise to perform this kind of operation. Given their impotence its sadly amusing to hear them carping away as they are. Probably the best they could hope for would be to hire another oil company and put them in charge of capping and clean up - wouldn't that be interesting? The experts in this field are most likely to be found in the Gulf coast oil industry where they drill some the most deep and difficult wells in the world. The feds couldn't organise blankets during Katrina - have they suddenly become well control experts?
There will probably be several lengthy investigation into all aspects of this disaster. Each of the companies involved have been investing heavily in compliance (ass covering) for the last 10 years or so. In an industry where every action is scrutinized and reviewed the problem will be actually a surplus of information. Even a minor service failure or departure from routine procedure warrants a page in the End-Of-Well Report. Whole forests will be needed to publish the report on this well.
There is a strong need to find out what went wrong on this well, and how it can be avoided in future. Eleven men during a routine operation. Beyond any possible environmental impact this may have its crucial to remember that lives have been lost. Without knowing the causes it will be difficult to confidently drill into these deepwater environments in the future, not to mention finding crews to do the work. The nature of the tendering process puts safety at a premium these days and company records have to be available and traceable in order to qualify to tender. In other words, without resolution on this issue it will be very difficult for the companies associated with this well to get other work. Large multi national companies such as BP are especially anal in this regard.
The press has gleefully taken the opportunity to bash the industry. I suppose it doesn't sell a lot of newspapers to focus on what went wrong and make even a cursory check of the processes involved. Instead we are reminded of the "scandalous rapacious greed" of the multinationals and how this spill will singlehandedly destroy the planet. As to multinationals its worthwhile to note that the largest of them Exxon Mobil is only the 17 largest oil company in the world. The 16 larger oil companies are all National Oil Companies (NOCs). In reality the largest oil companies in the world are political tools with no real accountability to the public. If this disaster had to happen then the best group for it to happen to is a large multinational oil company - at least there is an internal process of accountability. Its also worth noting that Governments at every level take a cut on every barrel of oil produced - oil is probably the single most heavily taxed commodity on the planet. Just who is being scandalously rapacious here?
The question of environmental damage is certainly a tricky one. Certainly there will be damage. Predictions of wiping out the wetlands are, in my opinion, wild hyperbole. For one thing oil has been seeping naturally into the gulf for millions of years, quite a volume in fact. So why isn't the gulf a wasteland? There are microbes in the ocean that actually live on oil. These microbes, when left to themselves have done a pretty amazing job in cleaning up spills such as the Amoco Cadiz spill in 1978 and the Exxon Valdez in 1989. Human intervention by way of detergents and bioremedials often do more harm than good. Problem is of course that mother nature takes time. The people affected want the problem fixed right now which is which is reasonable but not realistic.
Its important to me personally that the root cause of the BP blowout in the gulf are determined and drilling practices are refined to minimise the risk of this kind of accident ever happening again. I have no desire to test drive first hand the ejector pod type lifeboats currently in use. Knee jerk calls to stop drilling and/or end today our dependence on hydrocarbon fuels may sell at lot of newspapers but really help no one in the long term.
The US government has threatened to take over relief efforts on this well. Personally I doubt that the Feds have either the technology or the expertise to perform this kind of operation. Given their impotence its sadly amusing to hear them carping away as they are. Probably the best they could hope for would be to hire another oil company and put them in charge of capping and clean up - wouldn't that be interesting? The experts in this field are most likely to be found in the Gulf coast oil industry where they drill some the most deep and difficult wells in the world. The feds couldn't organise blankets during Katrina - have they suddenly become well control experts?
There will probably be several lengthy investigation into all aspects of this disaster. Each of the companies involved have been investing heavily in compliance (ass covering) for the last 10 years or so. In an industry where every action is scrutinized and reviewed the problem will be actually a surplus of information. Even a minor service failure or departure from routine procedure warrants a page in the End-Of-Well Report. Whole forests will be needed to publish the report on this well.
There is a strong need to find out what went wrong on this well, and how it can be avoided in future. Eleven men during a routine operation. Beyond any possible environmental impact this may have its crucial to remember that lives have been lost. Without knowing the causes it will be difficult to confidently drill into these deepwater environments in the future, not to mention finding crews to do the work. The nature of the tendering process puts safety at a premium these days and company records have to be available and traceable in order to qualify to tender. In other words, without resolution on this issue it will be very difficult for the companies associated with this well to get other work. Large multi national companies such as BP are especially anal in this regard.
The press has gleefully taken the opportunity to bash the industry. I suppose it doesn't sell a lot of newspapers to focus on what went wrong and make even a cursory check of the processes involved. Instead we are reminded of the "scandalous rapacious greed" of the multinationals and how this spill will singlehandedly destroy the planet. As to multinationals its worthwhile to note that the largest of them Exxon Mobil is only the 17 largest oil company in the world. The 16 larger oil companies are all National Oil Companies (NOCs). In reality the largest oil companies in the world are political tools with no real accountability to the public. If this disaster had to happen then the best group for it to happen to is a large multinational oil company - at least there is an internal process of accountability. Its also worth noting that Governments at every level take a cut on every barrel of oil produced - oil is probably the single most heavily taxed commodity on the planet. Just who is being scandalously rapacious here?
The question of environmental damage is certainly a tricky one. Certainly there will be damage. Predictions of wiping out the wetlands are, in my opinion, wild hyperbole. For one thing oil has been seeping naturally into the gulf for millions of years, quite a volume in fact. So why isn't the gulf a wasteland? There are microbes in the ocean that actually live on oil. These microbes, when left to themselves have done a pretty amazing job in cleaning up spills such as the Amoco Cadiz spill in 1978 and the Exxon Valdez in 1989. Human intervention by way of detergents and bioremedials often do more harm than good. Problem is of course that mother nature takes time. The people affected want the problem fixed right now which is which is reasonable but not realistic.
Its important to me personally that the root cause of the BP blowout in the gulf are determined and drilling practices are refined to minimise the risk of this kind of accident ever happening again. I have no desire to test drive first hand the ejector pod type lifeboats currently in use. Knee jerk calls to stop drilling and/or end today our dependence on hydrocarbon fuels may sell at lot of newspapers but really help no one in the long term.
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
Ohh The Irony
Apparently there a new sheriff in town over at the UN Comission On The Status Of Women. You will never guess who it is (Hint: not Gloria Steinem).
Ladies meet your new buddy. At least he smiles sometimes.Check first to see if he has any rocks in his hand.
This is absurd. Don't even get me started on the boobquake guy.
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