duncanriley.com

Category: General

  • Want to see real racism?

    This is from a show in the United States called “The Young Turks” on the so called “racist” KFC ad.

    According to the guy in the show, the ad is “stereotypical…pushing a stereotype. When I’m thinking race or something…they’re trying to make the target look bad or worse than they actually are…which it does. With a superior race over it….here this drum beat and dance to it, you give them chicken and they become all civilised. This white guy is so civilised, sitting in his own seat…these black folks, a woman putting her but in her face.”

    The girl chimes in: “they’re so unruly, uncivilised, so rowdy, jumping up and don, and they can’t sit down unless you give then fried chicken.”

    The one problem: both are being racist themselves in presuming that their culture is superior to those from the West Indies. There’s nothing stereotypical in the ad: having both been to Australian vs West Indies games before, and even working many years ago for the WACA, I’ve seen exactly first hand how West Indies fans behave.

    So are they saying the way the fans from the West Indies behave is wrong? Because Australians don’t see it as being wrong; quite the opposite, in the cricketing world the West Indies fans are well loved and appreciated because they are so passionate and good fun.

    You see, when you criticise other cultures, calling other people “uncivilised,” (like the girl did in the video), you’re the one being racist. I wonder how the Windies fans feel about being called uncivilsed by Americans, and at least one white one at that?

    For the record, some archival footage of real West Indies fans in action.

  • Is It Still Racist When Indians Kill Indians

    No, that’s the caste system isn’t it?

    Still, given what happened in Australia during the Schapelle Corby arrest and trial, we’re not exactly innocent when it comes to xenophobia.

    The Advertiser: Two detained at airport over Singh murder

    POLICE are refusing to reveal the identities of a man and a woman intercepted at Sydney Airport last week and questioned over the murder of Indian-born fruit picker Ranjodh Singh.
    The Indian-born pair, believed to be seasonal workers from Griffith, was stopped at the airport’s departure lounge on Monday as they were about to board a flight to Nepal.

    Then of course there’s fire guy

    News.com.au: “It is understood police are investigating all possible causes of the fire, including that Mr Singh lit the fire himself.”

    Is it racist to set yourself on fire?

  • Stilgherrian Is Right

    Sea Shepherd? Gave my opinion 2 years ago

    Sea Shepherd of course claim it was a deliberate attack. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t. Thing is though, guys, if you don’t want to be involved in a collision at sea, don’t fucking well deliberately put your boat so close to another.

  • Finally Fixed The Site

    Completely reinstalled WordPress here. The DB was the most fun: a full import borked the site again, so when with cutting and pasting the key tables from the SQL db into phpmyadmin, one at a time to check if they’d break the site or not.

    comments seem to be working, although the template needs some work.

    Either way, I no longer have to fear fighting WP every time I try to post here…which means more posting 🙂

  • Lets Lay The Abbott Bias On Hard

    I may not be the biggest Tony Abbott fan in the world, but likewise the coverage in the MSM of Abbott’s shadow cabinet appointments today was so bias as to be cringe worthy.

    Yeah, remember that the MSM is suppose to report on facts?

    So when I hear on nearly every news service that Abbott rewarded the conservative right, how is it that when you read the fine print you see names like:

    Scott Morrison.
    The member for Cook who only got there by shafting the actual preselected candidate on the basis of left wing interference from Liberal HQ in NSW?

    Morrison is one of the leading left wingers in NSW. But he’s a newbie, maybe you can excuse that the media didn’t get that, and that Abbott claimed that he’s a rising star.

    No, where there’s no excuse is on an old lefty: Phillip Ruddock, who also got elevated today. The MSM know that he’s no conservative, indeed he’s perhaps the most left wing parliamentary member of the Liberal Party, and has always been to the left of half of the ALP right.

    There’s no excuse anymore, because the MSM in Australia has literally gone nuts in terms of bias now. Doesn’t matter where you sit, because EVERYONE knows about Ruddock, it’s old history. The media is perhaps now nothing more than a cheer squad for the ALP…well, perhaps they always were 😉

  • Nichenet Turns 10

    Roughly 10 years ago (the exact date I don’t recall, except that I’m sure it was 99) I registered my first business name: Nichenet.

    Two business name registrations later and Nichenet became Nichenet Pty Ltd in around late 2006-2007.

    The name came about when I was asked to pitch for the design of a website. I couldn’t pitch as an individual, so I had to come up with a company name. I didn’t win the contract, although we were shortlisted.

    I’m not overly superstitious, but I know of two superstitions: one is that horses with 7 letters in their name have a higher strike rate in Australian racing…it’s why so many horse names have 7 letters. The other one was that in China, 8 is considered lucky.

    The latter won because nichenet has 8 letters.

    It’s a name that I still don’t own the .com for, but none the less one that I’ve been happy to stick by over the years, because most of what I’ve done has been niche….hence the name

    Time flies fast when you’re having fun, and I would never have thought in 99 that 10 years later that Nichenet would be the company behind a fairly successful blog and that I’ve been working online exclusively for nearly 5 years.

    So far,so good.

  • Rudd-erless while Oil Spilled

    Those who know me know that I’m no tree hugging hippie…sorry greenie, but there are things you do, and things you don’t do.

    Like let oil spill into the Timor Sea for 2 months before plugging the hole.

    Where was Rudd during this time? Surely if the inept operators couldn’t have fixed it with X number of days, the army, navy and anything else we could have thrown at the problem should have been called on to fix it.

    Still, with his poll numbers heading south, the image of Sri Lankan boat people covered in oil might make for some interesting imagery 🙂

  • John Hartigan, your shipment of fail has arrived

    skitched-20090806-104912.jpg

    John Hartigan, CEO of News Ltd in a speech July 1 talking about the decline of newspapers

    I mean, at its most basic, it?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s just bad reporting. There?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s almost no evidence.
    For starters, newspaper ad revenue in Australia has been growing ?¢‚Ǩ‚Äú not declining over the past 5 years as it has in the US and the UK.
    Even in the past year, the decline in ad revenue in Australia is a fraction of what?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s been happening overseas.

    ABC’s AM this morning (August 6)

    Now this slump in profits comes mainly because of plunging revenue, particularly in the newspaper industry. Rupert Murdoch says his papers in Australia have endured a 30 per cent slump in classified ads and a 12 per cent drop in display ads in the fourth quarter, and that’s thanks mainly to a drop-off in car and real estate and employment advertisements, Tony.

    Take away question: did Hartigan deceive the market July 1? That’s a fairly significant fall, perhaps not as hard as the US, but likewise you couldn’t describe it fairly as a fraction either.

  • If you’re going to give 16 year olds the vote, why not take it further

    WTF: Push to give 16-year-olds the vote in federal elections/ The Oz

    The idea clearly reeks of Rudd looking for extra votes for the ALP given that under 18’s would be more likely to vote in that direction. But having said that I’m not dead against the idea: “young” people should have a say to some degree.

    But if we’re going to give 16 year olds the right to vote, why not take it further. Reduce the legal age for alcohol and tobacco to 16 (note that it’s not that long ago that the legal smoking age was 16.) Why not give 16 year olds the right to obtain a full drivers license as well?

    If we’re not, why offer the right to vote. If you’re not old enough to legally take responsibility of a car or old enough to buy alcohol, why would you be old enough to vote? Voting is an adult responsibility that doesn’t exist in a vacuum: as a society we’ve decided that 18 is the magic “adult” number for many things. It would only be fair then that if we were to redefine that age to 16 for voting, we should do it with the others as well.

  • Personally, I’d blame the parents

    Fourth Geelong student commits suicide: News.com.au

    Suicide is a terrible business, but it’s not helped by quoting mentally deficient adults in newspapers either.

    The opening paragraph…and the sub-headline used on the front page of news.com.au reads

    A GRIEVING mother has blamed the internet for the death of her 14-year-old daughter.

    Yes, the internet KILLED her daughter! It reached out and grabbed her, causing her to kill herself…or something like that. But wait…

    I want to tell people to keep their kids off the rotten internet, it?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s a horrible place,?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢ she told the Geelong Advertiser.

    ?¢‚Ǩ?ìI can guarantee you that if she didn?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢t go on the internet on Friday night she?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢d still be alive today.”

    Yes, the internet is to blame clearly. But here’s where we pull out some more details. You see, we’re actually talking about a case of school bullying, backed up with cyberbullying (despite what the article says, the two are rarely not linked.) As for the person who was bullying her child? We’ll clearly she’s not to blame…

    ?¢‚Ǩ?ìI don?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢t blame the girl either, these are just kids throwing comments at each other for God?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s sake, but she (Chanelle) obviously could not see past what was going to be done to her,” she said.

    Yes, you see it wasn’t the bullying that caused the suicide….it was the internet! And it wasn’t related to this…no….

    She said Chanelle was having trouble with some friends from school, but it was a minor issue that had not changed her mood at all.

    Now remember how she was having a minor issue at school?

    ?¢‚Ǩ?ìWhen you?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢re 14 years old, who knows, if you don?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢t think you?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢ve got any friends ?¢‚Ǩ¬¶ maybe that?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s not worth living and obviously it wasn?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢t for her

    .”

    So lets get this straight: the child was being severely bullied at school, the mother considers it a minor issue, ignores it, the child kills herself, and the mother blames the internet and not the child or children that drove her daughter to commit suicide to begin with.

    You know if I had a parent that dumb I might consider ending it all as well. It’s also cheap fodder for News Ltd to be publishing that does nothing to help in the fight against teen suicide…indeed publishing this crap actually causes more damage by perpetrating bullshit reasoning for teen suicide while all but ignoring the real reason behind the loss of this girl.