Australia had a scare this morning when it was revealed that a man reportedly had ebola and was taken to hospital for treatment under guard. Well there you go, I've been trumpeting on about it for a while now, and Australia didn't care, instead preferring to focus on menaces which probably don't exist, just to raise the terror threat alert and feed off the paranoia and stupidity of the general public. The whole concept of national security organisations is the greatest exercise in specious reasoning I've ever seen. If nothing is happening, then the agencies are doing their job. If something happens, then they need more funding to expand and limit people's rights and so on. It's a no win situation. Maybe a freakonomics-esque solution is the key? If there were not these kinds of agencies, would attacks stop? Hmm that's too hard to tell, but I know that no country would ever take the risk. But it turns out he probably just has malaria, and was lying because he had been arrested by police.
I read a really interesting article that based on the items you like on facebook, they can generally build a very accurate profile of who you are. They can guess gender, race, age, religious affiliation and sexual preference. Isn't that scary? Then just who does that information go to? Just remember, it's not just about what you choose to put in your profile, but it's about your interactions on the format.
Apparently a tape recording has been released of the Australian Army executing german prisoners of war in world war 1. How come we didn't know about this before? You can bet that won't see very much traction in the media despite the war crime and all the emphasis most nations love to put on other nations when they defeat them in war, or when they just don't like them. Here's the thing about warfare, all sides commit war crimes. It's just that the winning side gets away with it. The public doesn't care because in their eyes, the army is infallible, and they will seek excuses to justify acts of brutality and criminal aggression. People are always quick to write off such behaviour as "just a consequence of war" or "post traumatic stress" or "letting dogs off the leash". That's not right. A serious crime has been committed, regardless of the context of war. Imagine if it was German soldiers who executed Australians? You can bet Australia would never let Germany hear the end of it. We'd write songs about it, have big shrines to it in our War Memorial and commemorate it every year. What hypocrisy. Now people just don't want to know. Absolute disgrace of a nation I tell you.
In other exciting news, on wikipedia I read that they've found one of the ships from Franklin's lost expedition! That's huge news! In my ignorance, I had always assumed that they had found the ships because we know about the fate of the crew. I recall reading a magnificent book about the exploits of the HMS Terror and the Erebus in Primary School. I believe it was from the same series that published Dr Robert D Ballard's books about the discovery of the wrecks of the Titanic, the ISIS, and the Bismark. The book even showed some of the mummified and frozen corpses of the crew. Haha probably not appropriate for the primary school library, but of course who is checking that stuff?
I'll be interested to see what becomes of the find and whether they can shed any more light into what happened on that fateful journey.
I'm just tearing through things and it's already lunch time. Time just taken up by meetings and useless things. But I have got work to get through today, so it may have to be a shortened one for this entry. But let's see...
I'm wondering, does the concept of family only exist to hold you together until you're inevitably torn apart by other families? Think about it from the perspective of children/siblings and not parents for a second. You band together as a unit and protect each other, but then eventually you will all grow up, find partners, have children of your own and start your own families. The core family ceases to exist as it once did. Your family only existed so that another could take its place. How weirdly poetic. But also so final. The genes drive us. It takes me back to metal gear solid and the question as to whether genes drive our fate, or whether we are free to choose.
Oh man, still 2 and a half hours to go! This isn't cool at all!! Okay, work has been good. I've gotten a fair bit done and now there's probably nothing left for Friday. That's ok, I can just take it easy and relax. But my problem now is that I still have an hour and a bit to go until I can get out of here.
Sometimes you just have to get things done, by hook or by crook. It'll be interesting to see what happens from here on out.
I'll call it a day here.
Joaquin out.
