How to tell if your country is illiberal 2 Jul 2009 When the People’s Republic of China is less censorial censorious than your own country, you might be living in an unfree country. The PRC has bowed to demands by its own users and not put the Green Dam Youth Escort internet filtering software mandatorily on every computer sold in its borders. Meanwhile, it turns out that the Great Wall of Australia will filter out adult games, including Second Life. Even the Christians recognise this is more draconian than censorship in China. These games aren’t illegal, mind, just unclassified, because there is no adult classification category in the Censorship Board scheme, and the filter will block all RC (refused classification) games irrespective of why. This includes accessing Second Life domains, as well as downloading the game, which can still legally be bought in person. Have we had enough of teh stoopid yet? Censorship Internet filtering Politics Religion
Evolution A quotation 14 Jul 2007 A religious body or faith community that speaks only with only exclamation points but no question marks misses the complexity of creation and the beauty of evolution. Rabbi Kendall in Stuart, Florida Read More
Evolution Nationalism and evolution 3 Dec 2007 Way back in the 1910s, when human evolution was poorly known, some trickster, probably Charles Dawson, its discoverer, set up a hoax: Piltdown man. This was enthusiastically accepted by many British experts because it made Britain, and in particular, England, a leading locale in human evolution. This was the era… Read More
Genetics An old question: genes and responsibility 1 Nov 2009 Here’s a judge doing what generations of philosophers and theologians haven’t been able to do: determine when determination is determinative: In the report, [scientists] Pietrini and Sartori concluded that Bayout’s genes would make him more prone to behaving violently if provoked. “There’s increasing evidence that some genes together with a… Read More
When everyone’s finished putting up proxies and Tor nodes for Iran, I guess we’ll have to turn around and do it for Australia. I’m trying to fathom just where your government is going with this. It’s almost as if there is somebody advising your PM and Cabinet who secretly wants to utterly undermine the whole thing by making it so outrageous that it will become politically impossible to support.
Apparently Evil Incarnate — I mean, Sony — shipped with the Green Dam software ahead of schedule. Par for the course for them, really. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like we’ll have any change to the ratings classification any time soon either; Atkinson is still dragging his heels with the public consultation, and even if Labor loses at the next state election in SA (March 2010), the Liberals would not introduce the much-needed R18+ classification. (I know for a fact that the Shadow Attorney-General here in SA is in favour of introducing it; however, the rest of the party is against her.)