As soon as they’re on the wrong side of the free market they demand government intervention.

I think it’s pretty good for what it’s trying to do, which is relay scientific data to non-technical readers.

Judging by their ships, they have gravity generators which are small enough and have a small enough ratio of energy consumption to energy generation to be used in something like the Millenium Falcon.

Indeed and it’s quite clear that the Falcon has two gravity planes perpendicular to each other: 1. the plane that supports everyone on the main deck (cockpit, crew lounge, etc.) and 2. the gun battery gravity plane at 90 degrees. This is easiest to see in A New Hope during the TIE Fighter battle in the escape from the Death Star. Han and Luke are sitting back-to-back, separated by a short corridor that sits perpendicular to the main deck. I don’t think most people notice this because it’s not obvious.

This is an insightful observation.
I was raised Catholic as well, stopped going to Mass when I left home in my early 20s, and just never missed it. As a child I think I believed but as an adult religious belief seems completely unnecessary.
My son, who was raised an atheist, is now deeply religious—he’s a Benedictine monk (no, we didn’t see that coming!)—but even when visiting him religion seems like a lot of nonsense to me. (He’s happy and we accept his choice despite not sharing his beliefs.)

Some Australian cockroaches definitely fly but don’t seem to do it very often. They’re quite noisy when they fly—kind of like the propeller sound you make if you trill your tongue—and there’s nothing worse than hearing that sound suddenly stop very close to you. ‘Oh fuck! Have I got a cockroach on me?’ I hate them.

lazy and unprofessional

This is a key aspect of Trumpism: it’s all about the grift and that means the shortest path to money.

Yes, additive colour theory is based on red, green and blue (RGB). These are the colours you see if you look at your TV screen very closely.

Subtractive colour theory uses cyan, magenta and yellow. In printing black, abbreviated ‘K’, is added for contrast—CMYK. These are the inks used to print the dots you see if you look closely at a magazine photo.

I think people are confused by this because they’re taught a bastardised version of subtractive colour theory, using red, blue and yellow, at a very early age.

I think the Easter Billy thing may have been a fund raiser for the Save the Bilby Fund, though I’m not sure. Did some work with them in Charleville some time back, as part of a student field trip looking at design concepts for what eventually became the Bilby Experience. Great people.

From what I can remember they’ve had good success in rebuilding the bilby population.

Good luck getting Optus, a communications company, to promptly and accurately communicate with its customers.

I could see this degeneration happing about 5 years back when our vice chancellor started calling herself ‘president’. They gave up on it after a few years but it’s very clear where their priorities lie.

It wanted to end its suffering. Blue jaunt.

Some protestors I saw interviewed on TV wanted to abolish Australia Day entirely which doesn’t seem right to me. Many countries have a date that celebrates nationhood. Also, good luck convincing Australians to have one fewer public holidays.

How about we have a public holiday for ‘Arrival Day’ and another for ‘Survival Day’? Two public holidays are better than one.

Yay, the first Australian head of state!

I remember marching against this stupid war and naturally the Howard government ignored public sentiment in favour of boot licking.

It’s so embarrassing how Australian governments appear to be so obsequious to US administrations. Surely you’d earn more brownie points by holding out for a while than being first to tow the line.

Indeed. As always when it comes to identity there’s a difference between how we see ourselves and reality.

There are several aspects of the Australian identity that look unflattering to modern eyes—gambling and drinking to excess come to mind. These things change slowly but they do change.

Incidentally I do think innovation is a valued aspect of the Australian identity.

I use Reeder on iOS and have for yonks. I was using it with Feed Wrangler (for synchronisation) until it folded and then I just imported my feeds into Reeder directly so it syncs across all of my devices.

The loss of Google Reader was a blow to RSS but it’s never gone away and a great way of getting your news and information.

It’s disgusting. It reminds me of how backwards Queensland was in the Joh years.

Man, that thing is hideous.

And yet it often leads to more satisfying narratives.