Fitzroyalty

Hyperlocal news about Melbourne's first suburb: Fitzroy 3065

farewell 2007

It was an intense year for me. I’m sure at some point in the future the only things I will remember are the spectacular surprises – seeing Lewis Hamilton finish third in his debut Grand Prix and meeting Tori Amos four times – the rest will fade into the past.

johnston st fitzroy brunswick st

good riddance Charles Court

Forner WA premier Charles Court is dead at last. The Liberal who made Jeff Kennett look like a complete socialist will not be missed. The only thing he did that I noticed as a child in Perth when he was premier was that he shut down the Perth – Fremantle railway line. I went with my parents to a protest against this, which was my first political rally. What a visionary he was to see that public transport reduced the profits of his oil industry mates, and hence had to be removed.…

back to the future

I accept that there was a ‘stolen generation’ of Aboriginal Australians, and that these children were forcibly removed from their families for political and ideological reasons that had nothing to do with the quality of their lives with their families. Many children were removed because the white government thought it knew best, not because the children were neglected or abused.

Now, white government officials are so paranoid and politically correct that they prefer to allow Aboriginal children to be neglected and abused by their families and their communities than to expose themselves to the accusation that they have removed children from the care of their families for political purposes.…

Facebook stupidity part 2

Facebook responded to me about my issue with being warned for exceeding the unknown number of posts using the Notes app (which I had uninstalled or deleted months ago):

Facebook has limits in place that restrict the rate at which you can use certain features on the site, including posting or importing too many notes. Unfortunately, we cannot provide you with the specific rates that have been deemed abusive.

Your account was warned because you exceeded Facebook’s limits on multiple occasions.

Facebook is a Stalinist regime

This morning I got to work and logged into Facebook to update my work related group, the Australian Screen Business Network. I found a message as follows:

social issues media internet intellectual property customer service

This is odd because I no longer use the default installed Notes app – and I deleted it some time ago. I was using it to display the RSS feed from my blog in my profile. I deleted Notes after discovering the app Flog Blog, which did the job much better.…

summer sunset

This was taken on the evening of 13 December. Sunset on my balcony is one of the best things about living in Fitzroy.

fitzroy

the value of education

In the politically correct era, arguing that people are born with different abilities and different innate intelligence is close to taboo. Suggesting that different cultures have different effects on individuals is also suspect. Judging the value of a particular culture, and the extent to which it shapes and encourages intellectual and emotional growth in individuals is an extremely controversial issue.

I like to read widely in the fields of sociology and cultural anthropology, particularly in relation to contentious contemporary issues like race, gender, intelligence, social responsibility, employment and recreational drug use.…