On the impracticality of a cheeseburger

At 2 minutes to 12, with a lunar eclipse fading in the sky, I finally learned my ‘something new’ for today. I can rest easy.

A cheeseburger cannot exist outside of a highly developed, post-agrarian society. It requires a complex interaction between a handful of vendors—in all likelihood, a couple of dozen—and the ability to ship ingredients vast distances while keeping them fresh. The cheeseburger couldn’t have existed until nearly a century ago as, indeed, it did not.

via Waldo Jaquith – On the impracticality of a cheeseburger..

To: My Elected Rep Re: Your Concience

Dear Sir/Madam

As my duly elected representative in a representative democracy, I write to remind you that your ‘Concience Vote’ in parliament does not belong to you.

You are elected to reflect the collective conscience of my electorate. The extent to which you reflect it will determine your success in the next ballot.

Please do not think that because you have been freed from the confines of party policies that you are entitled to reflect your personal views in parliament. You were elected because people believe you reflect views that closely match their own, and made promises which people felt were worthy of support. You are your electorate.

However, it is unreasonable to expect that you will be in-step with your electorate on every issue, especially those which carry significant moral and ethical contention. You must consult widely and reflect the view of the electorate in your conscience vote.

You are not in Canberra as my gladiator or superstar. I will not support your ‘courageous’ or ‘deeply held’ convictions if you cannot claim a broad consensus. I expect you to vote against your personal beliefs if you cannot convince your own electorate – your own neighborhood – of the merits of your position. If you are unable to represent my own position in Canberra, I will still support you if you can show that my own view is in the minority.

Because your conscience vote does not belong to you, it is not a commodity that can be bought or traded. You do not have my permission to consult with anyone other than my fellow electors when deciding the vote you will cast on my behalf. I expect you to be transparent and explicit about this process.

I wish you well in parliament. Please consult me, represent me, and let me know how you get on.

David

Tech in Times of Trouble - Fires in Perth and WA

It looks like this week’s ‘Morning Cafe’ with Rod on the wireless was a timely one – lots of bushfires underway or likely to be caused by continuing hot weather in Perth and WA.

We spoke about some of the ways that technology can help you stay informed when trouble strikes, but the real trick is preparation: knowing who to trust for information, and what to do with it.

(More episodes here)

Related Posts:

BONWAG Turns 17

Another big BONWAG Birthday – it’s reached the age of consent for South Australia and Tasmania, but still has a year to go in Queensland.

To think that all those years ago there was no such thing as a ‘blogs’, ‘social networks’ or ‘web content management systems’ – BONWAG was ahead of its time as a web journal, lovingly crafted out of raw, grain-fed ASCII and free-range command line FTP and terminal sessions. It’s been many years since I needed to CHMOD 777 my CGI (as Geoff Petersen would say: is that code? Why, yes: yes it is.)

In the past year, I’ve probably shoveled more words into Twitter than this blog, but fear not – fairding.com will remain the one stop shop for all flavours of bonwaggery – from MySpace and Geocities to Unthink and Google Plus, and whatever comes next.

(BTW: why is is that even today, no-one ever gets the ‘fairding.com’ joke?)

For a dose of history; visit the first post, or visit the archive of the earliest known version of BONWAG.

From the Archives: Nine Eleven

Here’s a description of my first trip to New York in the September of 2001.

This story, ‘Sneakers‘, written well after the events, describes some personal connections with NYC which became more significant in hindsight.