Following the Second World War geo-politics became dominated by the Cold War between Communist and Capitalist ideologies.

When the Cold War ended free-market capitalism was often seen as the victorious ideology and successive Governments in the US and around the world pursued free-market economic policies and de-regulatory practices.

It seems however, that just as the fall of the Berlin Wall left communism discredited as a political and economic ideology, so to has the recent financial crisis, the result of a lack of effective regulation and oversight, discredited the notion of pure free-market ideology.

Seems like the answer to the debate between socialist style Government control and intervention and free market capitalism is not about one extreme or the other, but as always somewhere in the fuzzy middle.

But the comparison goes deeper than just against issues. It’s wacky. The way it’s stylised is really crazy. If you ever wanted to study colour grading, puppeteering, CGI, prosthetics or a range of film techniques you wouldn’t need to go any further. Bright, bold colours and entertaining ways of showing fruit (in individual ice-cubes, anyone?) are actually more interesting than it seems. If you can get past the long monologues of Robbie Rotten (or the original Icelandic name Glanni Glæpur), his character is insane – is he puppet? Is he human? Where does the prosthetic stop and the man begin? Why doesn’t he change clothes normally, rather than use a contraption? Why don’t they ever know it was him?

And if I ever create a hero that flips everywhere possible, is named Sporticus, and is indeed the creator and writer of the show (he was a famous gymnast in Iceland) then I’ll consider this life a life well lived. As a deus ex machina of a hero, Sporticus is just as good as Captain Planet. Maybe even better. He has a moustache and his own blimp. And doesn’t need to be summoned, his crystal on his shirt will do it for him.

So it’s wacky, it has a message. How many people my age remembers the Captain Planet theme song, I wonder? Perhaps this time in 10 years or so there’ll be a ‘retro’ nostalgia to Lazy Town, people singing the theme song and laughing (or many of the other Eurovision-sounding songs). I know I’ve got the theme song stuck in my head already. Lovely.

But first, as Colonel, Snaykeemcgee and Dex will agree, we have to clear the backlog of assignments and study we have to do.

For example, let’s take a look at my assignments due for the last 4 weeks of semester:

1. 10 minute presentation for a concept for a comic book
2. Answer 15 questions on various design topics and write a report on them
3. Find a magazine cover, pull it apart, put it back together and explain why mine is better
4. 5 minute presentation about Function, Behaviour and Structure and how they relate to each other
5. Create a brochure explaining why an artists exhibition is so great and why you should attend
6. Rustle 5 crocodiles and 2 drop-bears. Compare and contrast their attack behaviours in less than 350 interpretive dances
7. Write 2500 words about chairs
8. Write 2500 words about the university faculty’s website (which has some glaring flaws)
9. Write, draw and publish a comic book. From scratch.

Yes, fun. With a capital F (and lower case un). But on the upside, the comic features none-other than… ZOLTAN THE ASSASSIN! Yes, our very own Zoltan. It is currently titled, Zoltan the Assassin. Catchy huh! More details to come

I use (and recommend) that Wikipedia be used as a starting point for research – instead of starting a search for “beetroot” on Google and haphazardly searching for information a search on Wikipedia will give you a much better idea of what to look for along with some useful data (which should then be confirmed from a different source).

Wikipedia is no-different as far as I’m concerned from picking up a copy of the Encylopaedia Britannica. In terms of its accuracy, I’ve never spotted anything which was completely incorrect – there were minor mistakes, but the beauty of a wiki is that changes can be made.

Speaking to people involved in academia, there is a general feeling that Wikipedia is being used as the sole source of information in research assignments – even at second year university.

But, without people knowing that you have to research a subject through multiple sources – and getting it from primary sources whereever available – I fear that society will get to a point where ‘research’ will wholly comprise a Google search and a quick glance at the result from Wikipedia.

The real concern is that, in time people will blindly accept incorrect information simply because its on [insert popular website here]. For example, people used to believe what they heard in the newspapers because it “has to be true”, this belief later migrated to radio – a famous example being Orson Welles radio broadcast of War of the Worlds. This belief further moved onwards to television and now it is starting to become ingraned to the internet – possibly the largest cesspool of crap humanity has ever invented – and also, potentially one of the most useful ways to share valid information.

Not that Christmas is bad, its a good excuse to see family and have a nice relaxing day with a BBQ or five. But rather it’s the completely overblown retail response to it. Although I’m not particularly religious it seems the actual meaning of Christmas has been lost… I’ll rant more about this over the next month.

There will also be some exciting MON News coming soon! Soon as I’m on holidays… Grumble grumble grumble…

Oh, and also, thanks CityRail for telling us about Town Hall station this morning – sitting outside of Central for 20 minutes to be told there was a “police operation” at Town Hall instead of the truth that an air-conditioner had caught fire really proves why we dislike you.

However, with its better speed, it’s also expected that it’ll be better in every way – less hassle, and all that. It definitely sounds better, when I remember the days of early dial-up which always cut out. Especially since in the early EARLY days my service provider didn’t have a local number so silly me hooked it up to the one all the way in the city…expensive times. We’ve since moved up and have ISDN, which is not quite broadband but ‘better’ than regular dial-up…well, the only difference for me is that it connects almost instantly, but it goes silly when it randomly disconnects as you have to restart the entire computer.

I’m not sure if I want to get broadband at all, since it doesn’t seem to be working in an area that most definitely should (being practically in the city). In fact it just doesn’t connect. According to the Internet Service Provider (I don’t know why that should be capitalised even if it’s an anogram, or even why I shouldn’t just blurt their name out, but for now I’ll resist) the problem was the back-to-base alarm using the phone line that meant this didn’t work. We needed some sort of ‘splitter’.

We got the alarm switched off, and yet it still didn’t connect. So back to ol’ tech support, when the guy ‘helped’ me out by doing mediocre stuff – restarting the computer, checking the plugs are in, etc. When they start getting you to do stuff like that, you know they don’t have a clue.

The result was that they lodged a problem with the ADSL line with the phone company. Unfortunately, I can’t seem to get any update on its progress in the ‘queue’, as they have an internet company themselves and so the other ISP is probably not an issue to them.

Round and round we go. The most annoying part is that bills have needed to be paid since we got the package, as it’s a contract (12 or 24 months, I can’t remember, in order to get the ADSL modem for free).

Anyway, that’s my rant for the day. I’ve been kind enough to not include the company’s name in this whole thing (well, the three companies who keep sending me on the delightful merry-go-round of ‘progress’). I used a lot of quotation marks in this blog, there’s quite the sarcasm here.

Rosa Parks is credited with sparking the civil rights movement in the US when, in 1955, she refused to give up her seat on a public bus for a white man. Her act of defiance saw her jailed and fined, but it also began a 381 day boycott of the bus system which marked the start of the civil rights movement.

I hope that Parks’ death triggers reflection, not just in the US, but everywhere, on how far we have come (if at all) in ending racial discrimination.

The Australian Government has introduced even tougher anti-terrorism laws. These laws further infringe on our civil rights. The Government claims that these infringements are justified because they protect them from terrorists.

But let’s analyse this concept a little further…

The Government claims that we are a target of terrorists because of who we are, because we are a free, democratic, nation.

What makes this nation and democratic free? Our civil rights.

If our civil rights are infringed upon isn’t the government doing what it claims the terrorists are trying to do?

Just a thought, feel free to disagree.

As Drew mentioned in his first entry, this blog is going to be a place where the members of Middle of Nowhere productions will record any sort of random thoughts they have. I like the egocentric nature of blogs that assumes our random thoughts are worth reading, but that’s for another day.

To confirm the random nature of this blog I wanted to quickly write some thoughts I had after watching a documentary on the sinking of the Titanic. The Titanic would have to be one of, if not the, most studied disasters of all time, but in every documentary you see they are all very busy explaining the science of the sinking. We (the Western world) is so obsessed with the scientific explanation of every thing (I notice with a sense of irony that CSI:Miami is currently running in another room). This documentary I was watching was going to great lengths to explain weaknesses in the steel, the way the ship broke apart, things like that. And I thought who cares?

How the ship sunk shouldn’t be the main point of inquiry. It struck an iceberg and because of some structural weaknesses it sunk. But the real tragedy was not scientific but social. It was social factors that ensured the boat was being pushed to travel as fast as possible, social factors that led to it being drastically understocked with life rafts, and it was social factors that led to the decision to load the first class passengers on first and release the rafts when they still had plenty of available space.

It was these factors that should be the main subject of research and interest. It’s of little relevance to know that the ship sunk because the steel was too weak, or too many water tight compartments were flooded, what we should be trying to understand is why so many lives were lost when those deaths could have been avoided.

In light of the tragedy in New Orleans I think this is a reasonably relevant message.