Google is right to change the results of South African searchers looking for images and information about the Sharpeville massacre because in the end it’s better for Google to be in the South African apartheid market than out of it, and they’d be out if they let them see images like this. Giving them access to some information is better than none and little bits will slip through because you can’t censor everything.

What about the ANC you say? Well the South African government considers them terrorists so it’s only really obeying the laws of South Africa to change the results of a search for them.

I think it’s clear Google shouldn’t boycott the South African government because in the end what can Google really do? What would a boycott ever achieve?

Google is staying true to it’s motto “Don’t be evil” by making compromises that you absolutists simply don’t understand.

Note: I am not saying I am high and mighty, but then I don’t go around telling everyone I have a motto of “Don’t be evil”. Nor am I a multi-billionaire who can do what they want without it affecting their material circumstances. I just thought I’d point this out, especially because of the fanboy responses on this story compared to this one.

Aztec Gold is a gluten-free beer sold by Silly Yaks in Northcote. Recently I have had two in-store, but have been waiting for the local bottle shop to get some in to do a review. I rode out and got a sixer today from the bottle shop just down from the Silly Yak bakery itself. The afternoon was around 28C (historical averages for Nov are around 22C, but with 2005 shaping up to the hottest year is decades the temp today is no surprise) and it’s a ten minute ride or so each way, so by the time I got back I needed one.

The ingredients listed on the bottle are: “water, malted sorghum, amaranth, hops and yeast”, the main problem with a gluten free beer is replacing the malt so the sorghum and amaranth are filling in for today. No preservatives or colours are added, while that still doesn’t get it to the standard required for the sinisterly named “German purity laws” it is good to know it’s being done minimally.

Pouring the beer into the glass with a bit of a splash will get you a nicer head than angling the glass, the head doesn’t last as long as normal beer either but not to worry as I got a sizable head in my trusty frosted glass:

As can be seen the colour is a nice amber. The taste is hard to describe, one of the areas lacking most in language is the vocabulary pertaining to taste. What can be said is that it’s a very good facsimile of normal beer with a smooth taste. Nutty is probably a word that should also be used with regard to the aftertaste. The malted sorghum and amaranth are definitely at work here to get you a different result, but it’s not too a radical change. The site bills this as a pale ale and I would agree, but perhaps it’s a little heavier than say a tasmanian pale ale.

I used to love my beer, I recently did the gluten challenge (which allowed me to access normal beer for the first time in quite a while), and I did a very brief stint on the Farrar Hall drinking team back in my days at Monash and in the end all I can say about this beer is that it’s very good. However, priced at $25 for a six-pack this is going to have a hard time winning over converts who aren’t coeliacs but I imagine economies of scale will perhaps lower that price to a more reasonable point in the future. That said, it’s worth a gander if you see it on a shelf near you.

Swapped over to wind power on with my power company which should add about $16 dollars to the bill per month. That isn’t that much for me, I will just cut down on some chocolate and desserts I shouldn’t be eating anyway.

Pros:
Sense of moral superiority

Cons:
None, I never liked birds anyway.

I am selling my old chess set, I rarely use it and it’s simply taking up room here. It would be better for a chess fanatic to own and make the most of than for it to sit in my cupboard. It’s my first time using ebay, not sure how it will all go but the interface seems to be ok. Auction going on here.

Quiggin links to this wonderful piece that shows just how corrupt the sets of practices surrounding torture can get. Quiggin also notes there are few who would actually defend Bagaric’s position on the right, their refusal to condemn is equally interesting. But I would have to say this issue really can’t be divided into the simplistic left/right stuff as the true liberals on the right and progressives on the left won’t have a bar of it.

There may even be a case for Bagaric’s removal from his position as head of school of Deakin law (retaining his job, just not the extra title). Is it appropriate for a law school to have as it’s symbolic head a person who does not advocate the basic principles of liberal democracy? He should be allowed to make his case from a professorship, or apply for a position in a political science department… but should someone be able to lend the weight of their title as HoS to publish such beliefs? Already there was a letter in the op-ed pages of The Age from one of Bagaric’s colleges who was (rightfully) trying to distance Bagaric from the sentiments of the rest of the department. It’s a difficult question, because you always have to be wary of academic censorship, so I think Bagaric should certainly retain his job, and should not be silenced, but perhaps such a special title and position isn’t appropriate. Would a racist be allowed to exist as the head of school of a Cultural Studies department, or a creationist as the head of a biology department in a secular university? Sure, let them speak, but the head of the department should represent prevailing views of the department (or else how are they supposed to represent it? or lead it’s research agenda for that matter?). In the end it’s up to Deakin Uni and his colleges as to whether he still has their confidence, and while I know it’s not black and white he certainly doesn’t have mine.

This also forms part of a block of attacks being made on the presumption of innocence we are told more and more that: torture is ok at home, that ASIO can detain people without lawyers, that we should have mandatory detention of those seeking asylum (from regimes we are fighting for being evil no less), and while we’re at it - lock up children too, the Indonesian court system is fine and we shouldn’t criticise it, that US torture somehow isn’t that bad because such policies make us safer.

More interesting coverage from the world of blogs

My second gripe, before I get on to how cool it is, is that people are still using MP3 and not an Ogg container with Vorbis (better than MP3) or even FLAC (a lossless codec which I use ripping CDs) encoding. An MP3 decoder can’t be bundled with free software programs because it violates the patent (which notably they didn’t enforce until MP3 became popular). Notably CBC is trialling Ogg Vorbis and the BBC has people working on an open source video codec.

Here is a screencap of the feed reader I use for linux, Liferea:

You can see I am subscribed to a number of blog feeds which are automatically updated, which is a nice central way to keep an eye on things. You can also see I have ABC, BBC and CBC radio feeds (aka. “podcasts”) from the experimental trials. The way Liferea handles opening files isn’t great, it just sends it to the default system browser, so I just pass a copy of the URL of the mp3 file to wget and download it. Before Liferea I was just opening the xml and getting it from there, but that’s hardly a fun way to do it.

This opens up the interesting topic of what effect this sort of “download and keep” system will have on the media. It seems that the publicly funded broadcasters and the amateurs already have a viable model, I am not sure what commercial broadcasters are going to do. They are starting to take a look (and at other things too). I suppose in some of the networks news is run at a loss anyway and just serves in a network prestige role, but others will have some difficulty making a transition. On a slightly unrelated note I just saw Network recently, which I recommend highly (esp. the character Arthur Jensen’s speech)

Interesting commentary on some things newmedia (more blogs) from onlineopinion contributer Hugh Brown in his pieces here and here. There is also a directory, podcast.net, which I have yet to check out fully, but it looks very nice.

update
With trackbacks and comments making debate very lively, it is interesting news that the NY Times Op-Ed page will not be available for free any more (with many saying they will not link to it anymore). Looking at the discussion of the Balgaric affair and Hugh Brown’s comments I link to in this entry I would have to say that any media would be foolish to try and make gated enclaves. But perhaps the NYT will become a more common example of the sucessful gated community model as seen in The WELL.

I think I have to reconsider my copious linking to The Age also, as it requires registration. I don’t notice these days because I have the bugmenot firefox extension. Well worth checking out.

Here is a video (1mb) of Maddy, the family dog, who now resides in New Zealand. I haven’t embedded the video, as it’s a low res .avi from my brothers still photo camera that records 15fps with no sound; however, I do have a .mov of her that I will add later (7mb on the front page isn’t acceptable).

Possibly the greediest dog in the world.