RSS feedI’m sure you’ve noticed the introduction of Wonka chocolates over the past few years, but did you know that the brand is owned by Nestlé? Their domain name was registered way back in 1997, and is a play on the great Roald Dahl novel Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which I can’t link to because the site uses badly designed frames. Hollywood made a film, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, which wasn’t too bad considering, although thankfully only Gene Wilder could have played Wonka.
Anyway, not only have Nestlé registered the Wonka name, but have also registered a whole bunch of the confectionaries from the book and film. If ever there were a finer example of a large corporate commoditising and trivialising one of the world’s great childhood fantasies, then I’m yet to hear it. No longer will Wonka® chocolate and the Everlasting Gobstopper® make the hearts and minds of adults remember back to a better time, and once again corporatism has hammered yet another nail in the coffin of childhood dreams and fantasies.
You know what to do, show them you care, by helping to bring them down from being currently the world’s largest food company. But then it depends upon your definition of food, doesn’t it?
So I’m at the checkout for the local supermarket, emphasis on super, waiting to pay for my apple, and I notice the lady in front with a bunch of turkish delights, the Cadbury kind. So the checkout guy’s swiping all her stuff, and gets to the three delights and the empty turkish delight wrapper, which he throws in the bin under the till, and then keeps on swiping. Turkish delight, $1.20, lady’s face, priceless, checkout guy, clueless.
Illustration by Mirko Ilic, courtesy of Village Voice. (linked, because they don’t let you embed unless they’re the referer)
GW wants to amend the U.S. Constitution to outlaw non-man/woman marriages, based upon literal interpretations of the bible, which of course contravenes the first amendment separation of church and state. While we’re being literal, here’s are some more amendments GW should consider.
If there are no acceptable men to be found in the town, a woman shall ply her father with wine and have sex with him in order to produce progeny to carry on the family name (Gen. 19:31-36).
Personally, I’ve always enjoyed the second amendment, the right to wear short sleeves.
The ABA have decided to cancel the temporary license for Sydney based community TV station C-31. Community media, such as radio and television, are an important independent and alternative voice to the mainstream media. Think of them as a local mini-ABC or SBS. The ABA have granted the UHF 31 permanent license to TVS (Television Sydney), an organisation of academic institutions, including AFTRS (Australian Film Television and Radio School), who while having extensive television background, have never been involved in community television. Meanwhile, C-31 will be forced off air for 8 months until TVS are up and running. Here’s a SMH story about the cancellation which leans slightly towards C-31, written by UTS journalism student Sunanda Creagh.
While C-31 have done a fair job holding the frequency for these past however many years, perhaps it is time we started to take community television seriously. I’m not saying that an AFTRS affiliated group is the best way to go, but it must be a step forward from C-31 whose web site was last updated in 1995, or you can go to their non-existent…
much more official-looking CTS home page
There is also a transitional 1996 CAT TV web site, which points you to the correct non-existent web site.
In a 4 September 2003 response to the ABA, C-31 explained their lack of minutes for the past 4 years (Q2.2), no clear program approval policy (Q2.3/Q2.10), and inequality in voting rights (Q2.4), amongst others. I’m not sure who to blame, but the members should be up in arms about not just failing to get a license, but their board failing to meet a number of minimum requirements for the existence of a community based group.
Community television in Australia has had a long history, but until now, the ABA haven’t assigned or taken seriously, the need for a permanent and professional looking community television station. OptusVision came close, when as part of their cable license, Optus were required to fund a community cable station, which was run in-house. Unfortunately it went under with Optus cable.
In Melbourne, in what has seemed to be a succession of channel 31 groups over the last two decades, there is Channel 31, who have a fucked up frames and tables based web site, minimum fixed width 740 pixels, some weird gif animation wasting 70% of their screen real estate, and it gets worse when you try to click on something. Sure, it’s a community group, but that doesn’t mean they can’t be a little more professional about it.
In August 2002, FACTS (Federation of Australian Commericial Television Stations), now called CTVA (Commercial Television Australia), complained to the ABA, about C-31 in Sydney and Melbourne selling airtime to RTV (Renaissance TV), community television for the 50+ age group. The ABA replied that community television didn’t come under the commercial regulations violated by the complaint, but at least the commercial stations are taking notice.
For more information, check out the ABA’s Community licenses page, or you can view the actual license applications on their Sydney community TV applications page.
Community radio and television. You don’t have to listen to it, but it is important for your right to freedom of expression that you at least support it.
Bush merchandise made in Burma, an icon for child labor and sexual slavery. Come on GW, move on! (from GLOBALIZE THIS!)
Another weekly dose of stuff. Goodle, for all the good news (via Kevin Fox). Lessig on how he failed to save the public domain. Michael Giagnocavo on disassembling .NET code, brings back sweet memories. Gina Trapani, a Richard BF regular, on how to Help the Googlebot understand your web site (via commoncraft of all places) [coincidentally, I now have the no. 1 Google result for she bangs richard, which is embarrassing]. Collection of old TV test patterns and stuff (from BoingBoing) [by the way, the 11th March BoingBoing loads 67 items with the page. Come on guys, that’s just nuts!]. Another article on how to reduce spam, more for those with web admin knowledge (via Kuro5hin). Amusing offensive word count for the various versions of Linux kernel source code.
I have no idea why I keep thinking about the Bloggies. Like who really cares? Perhaps it is because so many Australian weblogs were nominated, and actually won categories. How on earth could the fantastic John Howard, Prime Minister have had so many nominations to be in the top 6 for Weblog of the Year? The tyrrany of distance is quickly fading to a distant memory. Now, if only this were the case for us Australian software developers. As great as the John Howard weblog is, it doesn’t seem to have a feed, so it doesn’t make it onto my regular reading list. Anyone want to start a petition?
A timely lesson in research. the null device (cool name), posts on why people have got St. Patricks day wrong, saying St. Patrick was Roman. He quotes Patrick Farley and his Bring Back the Snakes Day post as his source.
According to the History Channel, which is a great history site by the way, St. Patrick was British (assuming Welsh), and taken to Ireland by raiders at the age of 16. Roman? Unlikely.
Then again, Patrick does call his blog Patrick Farley Exposes His Ignorance. I assume this is sarcasm, as he does get the rest of it right.
Another cool Australian photoblog called Jinky Art, which recently won Best Australian Photo Blog in the 2004 Australian Blog Awards. Interesting, considering another Australian photoblog, shutterbug, just won Best Photography of a Weblog in the 2004 Bloggies.
Weblog awards are like the Oscars, we dismiss them because they’re everything we hate about commercialism, blandness and the dumming down of the populous, but we’d all love to win one.