Fred Nile has been a very naughty boy. I sent him an email to rub it in.

Today I chat with Rob James and Andrew Blanda – two guys who, with their mate Raz Chorev, are trying to do something to raise awareness of male depression.

What are they doing?

They will embark on their first major ride in September 2010, from Sydney to the Glen Helen Resort, NT, (joining Steve Andrews from the Black Dog Ride), in an Australia-wide initiative to educate the community about Male Depression.

Listen in as we chat about depression, something that one-in-five Australians suffers from at some point in their lives.

I did a live show for the first time in ages tonight! Of course the topic of discussion was last weekend’s federal election. Thanks for everyone who tuned in live! Choose between the video or the audio version of the show below.

For future reference, you can catch the live show here on Monday nights about 8pm QLD time.

Ewan Saunders is the Socialist Alliance’s Brisbane candidate in the upcoming federal election. I caught up with him recently to talk about socialism, climate change, indigenous communities, and the Socialist Alliance’s policies on subjects like Iraq, Afghanistan and immigration.

As I mention during the show, if you’re interested in hearing more about “participatory democracy”, then listen to my 2008 interview with Richard Moore.

Galen Strawson is a British philosopher and literary critic who works primarily on philosophy of mind, metaphysics (including free will, panpsychism, the mind-body problem, and the self), John Locke, David Hume and Kant.

Like I have argued here many times, Strawson doesn’t believe that Free Will exists. According to his ‘basic argument’:

1. You do what you do, in any given situation, because of the way you are.
2. So in order to be ultimately responsible for what you do, you have to be ultimately responsible for the way you are — at least in certain crucial mental respects.
3. But you cannot be ultimately responsible for the way you are in any respect at all.
4. So you cannot be ultimately responsible for what you do.

Sounds good to me.

Here’s an article that he recently wrote for the NYTimes.

While waiting in the Apple Store Chermside today (waiting, that is, for them to replace the hard drive on my 5 month old 17″ Macbook Pro for the second time in a week), I started reading the Zero Carbon Australia 2020 report. The report was recently released by Beyond Zero Emissions, a non-profit group based in Melbourne. Their report details how Australia can become a zero carbon-emitting country by 2020. In their introduction, they remind us that Australia has the highest carbon emission per capita ranking in the entire world.

I had forgotten that fact, so I tweeted:

Let’s remember during this election that Australia has the highest emissions per capita IN THE WORLD. We are a disgrace.

A few hours later I saw this tweet in response:

I wish to express my utter disdain for what @Vzzzbx just retweeted from some twat called @cameronreilly (see next tweet)

I don’t know who this Ches Trulson guy is, but it always amuses me when someone just slags me off and doesn’t try to debate the facts. It’s usually the sign of a limited intelligence. But I popped over to read more of his Twitter feed, just in case he was someone to take seriously.

Here’s a sample of his Twitter feed, following on from the ‘disdain’ post:

We live in a first world country, this means our emissions are worse than much of the world. Bad? Sure.

France is also a first world country, but their emissions are one-third of Australia’s. And France’s emissions per capita have reduced by 40% since 1979, while Australia’s have grown by 40%.

It’s also really fucking big, and our population is spread across a large area. Again, bad. We also have a varied and harsh climate. Bad.

Russia is a pretty big country as well and their climate is pretty harsh. Their emissions have dropped by 30% since 1992, while Australia’s have grown.

Except of course, that none of that is practical to change, or any of our fault. Yet I should feel ashamed? Get fucked.

This is what amuses me the most. “None of that is practical to change or any of our fault.” That kind of lazy, defeatist attitude is precisely WHY we are the worst emitters in the world. Huge brains like Ches just throwing up his hands and saying “not my fault”. Of course it’s not your fault, Ches. Meanwhile, the ZCA2020 report says it *is* practical to change – in fact, we could be a zero carbon emission country within ten years – if we can get people like Ches to pull their heads out of their asses.

I’m all for living sustainably, but Aus is not a significant problem IMO, and making us feel bad about it is helpful in no way whatsoever.

Aw, diddums. Did Bad Cameron make you cwy? Grow up, dude. It’s precisely because we are a first world country that we are a significant problem. The rest of the world (read: the developing countries who are still trying to pull themselves out of poverty) are looking towards the first world countries as guidance. If we don’t seem to be taking this stuff seriously, then why should they? Australia should (IMHO) be leading the world on this issue. We have the wealth. We have the political stability. We have the intelligence (well…. some of us). Perhaps most importantly, we have huge sources of renewable energy. Let’s lead the world for once in something other than sport and racist actors.

Hard to argue convincingly over twitter, but whatever, rage subsiding.

Well here’s you chance, Ches. Argue convincingly here. If you can.

Oh, and this from a guy who does marketing for cigars and pergolas? Hilarious.

Yeah I see what those things have to do with each other. No, wait…. I don’t. Please enlighten me. Of course, this is all coming from a self-confessed “car nerd”. I guess when you’re a “car nerd”, the whole idea of reducing carbon emissions is likely to induce cognitive dissonance.

On other Twitter fronts….

My mate Ben Wilks took umbrage to my retweet about how stupid Gillard’s “small Australia” policy is.

@cameronreilly umm, ok. Population has doubled in the last 15 years. Property prices and traffic ARE QUALITY OF LIFE. Seriously, WT?

Actually, Ben – no. Property prices and traffic are NOT quality of life. At all.

This whole “small Australia” policy is seriously dysfunctional. Here’s why:

According to the IMF, Australia ranks #10 in GDP per capita.

On top of that, we have one of the lowest population densities in the world.

If we can’t have quality of life while we are one of the wealthiest countries in the world with one of the lowest population densities – then we are seriously messed up.

This all reminds me of a story Clive Hamilton (he of the internet filter) wrote about in one of his earlier books, Affluenza.

I don’t have the book in front of me, so I’ll paraphrase it. He wrote that the average net household income in Australia has increased by something like 300% since 1950. And yet when you survey the Australian population and ask them “do you have enough to get by”, something like 75% of people say “no”.

We’re messed up, dysfunctional.

When you have an individual who has everything going for them and yet they feel oppressed, it’s often a sign of a psychosis or mental illness.

When you have an entire population who has everything going for them and yet they feel like they don’t have enough to get by, what does that say about the general psyche of the country?

(pic via suburbanbloke’s flickr)

Made for me today by SaschaV:

1. Take one Gecko Glove.
2. Take one re-usable plastic handle from the top of a monitor box.
3. Take your Stanley knife and make a couple of slits in the back of the Glove.
4. Insert the ends of the handle.

Ta-da! Now you have a convenient handle for your iPad. Sascha told me he contacted the folks at Gecko to see if they would be interested if he put together an instructional video on how to make one, and got a ‘yeah whatever” response.

Australia’s most impressive media entrepreneur, Julian Assange, explains how Wikileaks works and provides some insight into recent events, in this recent interview with Wired’s Chris Anderson at TED.

Assange is trying to use the internet to change the world. He is what Peter Ellyard would call a “Future Maker”. I’m constantly motived and inspired by Julian’s quietly bold approach to tackle world governments and corporations. He’s spot on in this interview when he says a good approach to figuring out what the most important news is, is to discover what corporations and governments are spending a lot of effort and money to keep secret.

Recently I’ve been reading ridiculous suggestions that Wikileaks is a “honey trap” for whistleblowers. The idea seems to be that Wikileaks gets potential whistleblowers to come forward, and then they are arrested, Manning’s recent arrest is taken as being a sign that something is rotten in Denmark. The only problem with this scenario is that stuff is being leaked. It would be seem a bit of a stretch to think the establishment are allowing their dirty laundry to get exposed in an effort to create a temptation for potential whistleblowers to come forwards. As Julian says at the beginning of the video, Wikileaks has released more leaks in the last couple of years than the rest of the world media COMBINED.

Getting an iPad?

Here’s my TOP 15 apps you should definitely check out.

Zinio: the iPad is great for reading magazines and although the Zinio app is (at present) a little clunky, it does the job.

Sketchbook: draw everything from simple diagrams and flowcharts to works of art.

Word Monkey: awesome game to work your brain.

Lifelike Clock: the app that wakes me up in the morning.

Analytics: check your site stats on the fly.

GoodReader: read PDFs with ease, great integration with Dropbox.

1Password: never forget your passwords again.

ABC (as in Australian Broadcasting Corporation): Watch TV, listen to the radio, read the news.

Reeder: Amazing RSS reader that integrates with Google Reader.

Dropbox: Get access to all of your files from your iPad.

Evernote: Take notes, retrieve notes, anywhere, anytime. I live in this app.

Twitterific: Very slick Twitter app.

Remote: Control your music collection from your iPad. Will be nicer when they come out with a true iPad version.

Stanza: Read the latest books and the classics. Unlike Apple’s iBooks app, you can actually buy books to read outside the USA. And they are usually a quarter of the price.

Osmos: AMAZING game, probably the most beautiful iPad app I’ve seen. Mesmerizing.

More recent Chomksy video. This one has him speaking about the continued imperialist policies of the USA under the Obama administration and the fate of the people in Gaza.

Brilliant analysis by Noam, as always. We’re lucky to have him.

In this video, he describes why the USA and France should be paying REPARATIONS to Haiti, not handing out AID.

How man people have read the entire bible, cover to cover? Well…. I have. A few times. And now I’m about to do it again. This time, however, I’m going to record it. That’s right – the entire bible. Old and new testaments.

Why? Because it’s a fascinating, confusing, humorous and scary piece of literature. And everyone, Christian or not, should know what it says. Ninety-nine percent of all of the Christians I’ve ever asked have told me that they HAVE NOT read it cover to cover, even the people who actually think it is the literal word of GOD. Pretty amazing.

So anyway – now all of you lazy people don’t have to read it, because I’m going to do it for you. And I’ll even explain it as I go.

The show will get its own website soon, this is just a preview.

UPDATE: This show now has its own site.

It’s been 18 months…. time to try again!

On December 6 2007, I had this crazy idea about collaborating with people on Twitter to write short stories. I called it TWITTORIES (a portmanteau of Twitter and Stories). I invited 140 people to sign up to write 140 characters each of the story. Our first attempt, a story called “The Darkness Inside“, made it to about 99 entries before it ran out of steam. The main issue back then, I think, was that many people who signed up for twittories just didn’t check their twitter messages very often. So when they were alerted that it was their turn to write, they just didn’t show up. And it stalled.

About a year later I tried again. This time the story was called “Action” and it lasted 54 entires.

Well, another 18 months has passed and I’ve decided it’s time to try again. I still think Twitter could be an amazing tool for collaboration and there are obviously a lot more people using Twitter now and they are using it more often.

Go to this wiki page to register your name for the new, as-yet-unnamed, twittory. The first person to sign up gets to pick the name of the twittory and write the first 140 characters.

My guest today is Adam Shand, investigative journalist / author from Melbourne. He was a guest on #293 discussing his book “Big Shots” which focused on the Melbourne “Gangland Wars” and Carl Williams. On this episode, Adam discusses Carl’s recent murder and his allegations of police corruption in Victoria. We also chat about Adam’s new book “King Of Thieves“, about the “Kangaroo Gangs” from Australia that stole their way across England in the 60s.

On this episode, Chrissy and I chat with our friend Angus Scown (@angusscown) about living on a hippy commune (Angus, his wife and kids live at Crystal Waters, an eco-village a couple of hours north of Brisbane) and why Australia needs a MINISTRY OF ETHICS.

Chrissy and I were smoking Perdomo Lot 23 Maduro cigars and Angus was smoking a Perdomo Patriarch Maduro cigar.

I’ve put up a new post on the LOTU blog about why the scientific method is the best way to work out how the world really works. This is for my friends and family who don’t get it.

Remember the Mumbai attacks from 26/11/2008? Apparently, it was allegedly planned by an American-Pakistani man called David Headley (born in Washington DC, raised in Pakistan until age 17, then lived in the USA with his mother). He was arrested last October in Chicago and since then the Indian government has been refused direct access to him.

Guess what? He was an undercover DEA agent.

Guess what else? His half-brother is spokesman for the Prime Minister of Pakistan, Yousef Raza Gillani… who himself escaped an assassination attempt on 3 September 2008…. 23 days before the Mumbai attacks.

Guess what else? The US won’t extradite Headley (whose real name is Dadood Gilani) to India for trial.

Guess what else?? The Indian opposition thinks he might be a CIA double agent working inside LeT, the Pakistani militant organisation.

Hmmm… DEA…. Pakistan’s Prime Minister… CIA…. India…. it’s all smells very fishy, don’t you think?

Iowa State University will take delivery is a partner with NCSA & IBM* in the development of Blue Waters – the world’s first supercomputer to be able to sustain 1 petaflop – in 2011. (source: FoxNews). IBM says Blue Waters will have a peak performance of 10 petaflops. (source: Wikipedia)

Blue Waters, an implementation of PERCS technology, is planned to be composed of:
- more than 25,000 eight-core POWER7 CPUs with 32MB on-die L3 cache running at 4.0 GHz (200,000 cores)
- more than 1 petabyte of main memory
- more than 10 petabytes of disk storage
- half an exabyte of archival storage
- up to 400 Gbit/s external (Internet) connectivity

Why is this important?

Well, according to Ray Kurzweil (listen to 2005 my interview with him here), the human brain probably has a computational level of 20 petaflops. (source: The Enlightened Blog)

And we all know that Moore’s Law says that theoretical computing speeds double every 2 years. That means we should have a supercomputer doing 20 petaflops by 2013.

Take THAT, stupid Mayans.

* The first draft of this post said Iowa State was “taking deliver” of Blue Waters. My thanks to Trish Barker from National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) for sending me an email pointing out that “while Iowa State is a partner on the project and scientists from Iowa State will use the supercomputer to do big science, the supercomputer will be here at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign”.

She also gave me these additional links:

Overview: http://www.ncsa.illinois.edu/BlueWaters/
The hardware: http://www.ncsa.illinois.edu/BlueWaters/system.html
The building: http://www.ncsa.illinois.edu/AboutUs/Facilities/npcf.html

I just heard this on Triple J. Awesome song.

Keep watching until the 2 minute mark, when she starts to convulse in something similar to an epileptic fit and the boss man has to call an ambulance. Funny how Jebus descending on someone looks eerily similar to either a fit or a Satanic possession….

If you became, not only a superhero, but a world famous superhero whose identity was public knowledge….

And if your superpowers came not from a burst of interstellar radiation or gamma rays or a spider bite or anything else you had nothing to do with, but instead came out of your own genius and willpower….

Would you become a complete dickhead?

If you’re Tony Stark the answer is – YES.

That’s basically what IRON MAN 2 is about. The guy is, without a doubt, a dickhead.

We’ve already seen this in the last (please, Darwin, make it the last) SPIDEY film, with Peter going all jerko with the help of the symbiote – but in IRON MAN 2, Stark doesn’t need any help. He’s just an egomaniac dickhead.

AWESOME.

Cuz I’m pretty sure I’d be a complete dickhead if I had a suit like that, too.

Okay, let’s cut to the chase. What did I like, what didn’t I like?

SPOILER ALERT!!!!!

LIKES:

The film is less about fight sequences and CGI effect (thank Darwin, ZERO 3D), and more about characters. Favreau made a smart decision casting RDJ. He sells it 100%.

Robert Downey Jr – I’ve always been a huge fan and IRON MAN 2 is the perfect film for him. We all know RDJ has a history of substance abuse. Well now Tony Stark has serious problems, too. (By the way, I reminisced during the film about those long-gone days when Downey’s addictions got the better of him and his AIR AMERICA co-star, Mel Gibson, was the SANE one who swept him into rehab….).

Sam Rockwell – perfect casting as one of Stark enemies, HAMMER. He invents a range of killer androids called…. wait for it… the HAMMEROIDS (and he’s a real pain in the ass).

Jon Favreau – again the director plays Stark’s driver Happy Hogan, but fortunately this time he gives himself more action and screen time and he’s awesome.

Mickey Fucking Rourke – just cuz he’s Mickey Fucking Rourke. Nuff said. Sean Penn STOLE his Oscar.

Garry Shandling – cuz he’s Garry Fucking Shandling.

The Suitcase Armour – yeah you know why. It makes ZERO sense, but it’s just awesome.

Cap’s unfinished shield that Stark somehow gets hold of and uses as a prop.

Sam Jackson’s additional screen time.

AC/DC playing the intro AND the outro music. Yeah baby.

Sam Rockwell’s little James Brown dance.

Iron Man gets his triangle arc reactor.

John Slattery (aka MAD MEN’s Roger Sterling) as Howard Stark. Nice casting.

The teaser scene nearly nobody stayed around for after the final credits. It’s AWESOME (even though most of the people in the cinema who DID stay around for it with me were going “whaa?”, like they had NO IDEA what they were looking at. Pity the fools.)

DISLIKES:

Don Cheadle replacing Terrence Howard as Rhodey – why??

Rhodey just jumps into the Mark 2 suit and knows how to fly it and work the weapons? WTF? And how the hell does he power it? Does he have a hidden arc reactor in HIS chest cavity??

The whole “Tony Stark Has Holographic Computer Screens About 100 Years Beyond STNG”. Why??? It isn’t necessary and just breaks my suspension of disbelief.

Scarlett Johansson – meh

Larry Ellison’s cameo. Okay, I laughed, cuz we all know Downey’s portrayal of Stark has to be based on Larry (dickhead), and if it had just been a cameo I would have let it go, but all of the blatant Oracle branding in the film was awful. Audi I can live with. But Oracle??? Yuk.

Paul Bettany’s voice replacing Jude Law’s as Jarvis. Threw me. Thanks to Valeria in the comments for smacking me upside the head on this one. I could have *sworn* Jude Law did the original voice. WTF?

More tech-related stuff like how quickly Stark, Natasha and Ivan can hack into the most secure systems in the world in 3 seconds. Again, why do bullshit like that when it isn’t necessary?!? You know a lot of your audience are going to be geeks and that kind of shit just pisses me off. The screenwriters couldn’t think up something believable? Was that too hard?

Tony invents a new element… in three days. WTF? Please shoot me.

Well… the film isn’t perfect, but it was still a fun couple of hours and I’m looking fowards to taking my kids and Chrissy on the weekend for another look.

The best thing about it is the exploration of themes such as

“Would having these powers make you into a dickhead?”

and

“What’s Mickey Rourke hiding under that long god-awful hair he’s had for the last four films?”

Late last week, Chrissy and I sat down with Hugo Sharp for a cigar and a chat about the latest news in politics, religion, science and philosophy…. oh and cannibalism.

Here’s the list of stories we chatted about:

Maxim Golovatskikh and Yury Mozhnov ‘killed Karina Barduchian and ate her’

Every Black Hole Contains Another Universe?

Iraq Body Count

Bolivian President Blames Capitalism for Global Warming

(via Wikileaks, probably the most exciting news operation on the planet at the moment)

Last week I launched a new TPN podcast callde “Cigar Talk”.

The basic format will be my partner in Perdomo Cigars Australia, Jason Nelson, and I talking to people who appreciate a fine cigar. Episode one features Filip Pilioras from Paladar Fumior Salon in Brisbane, his friend Nick and ChrissyD! Check it out below and go to Cigar Talk to visit the site.

On March 23, 2010, this site predicted that China and Russia would use a “HAARP-like instrument” to create earthquakes on the US West Coast.

On 28 March, 2010, a 7.2 earthquake hit Baja California.

Coincidence?

And in today’s news, there are concerns that these strange images appearing on the Australian Bureau of Meteorology’s site are evidence of HAARP being used to create violent weather in Australia. Believe it or not.

This morning I ran a quick experiment. I searched through News.com.au’s site for stories that mention Facebook in the title to see what percentage of those stories had a negative slant. My theory is that large media companies such as News are scared about the amount of traffic Facebook is getting, as it’s decreasing their own readership thereby affecting the revenue they can generate from advertising. So they are running Facebook scare campaigns.

News Corp, of course, has even more reason that other media companies to be hatin’ on the Facebook, because they own MySpace, Facebook’s biggest competitor.

So – on with the results.

NEGATIVE STORIES

Facebook pedophiles stalk TV star, 11

Police probe students’ Facebook hate group

Spook’s wife in strife over Facebook post

Pupil’s Facebook slur against teacher

Facebook affair behind murder, suicide

Teacher dies after nude Facebook photos

Facebook used to organise Auburn racial riot – police

Nicole Kidman bullied on Facebook

Teenager fired from job via Facebook

Fake police Facebook page fools users

Premier Bligh writes to Facebook boss

Facebook removes kill-a-prostitute page

Teen’s death posted on Facebook first

Parents use Facebook to trap paedophile

Facebook deal forces computer clean-up

Rail bash teen’s mates turn to Facebook

Smiling in a bikini on Facebook costs Canadian woman her insurance

POSITIVE STORIES

Facebook extended to iPhone, iPod Touch

Pure Digital Sensia radio goes on Facebook, Twitter

Orangutan photographer a Facebook hit

Thief nabbed by Facebook detectives

So… out of twenty-one stories, there are FOUR positive stories (19%) and SEVENTEEN negative stories (81%).

The question is – does this show a bias in coverage?

Discuss.

The very financial product that triggered the GFC – subprime mortgages, aka banks making home loans to people who can’t afford them – is apparently the hot new thing on Wall Street – again.

“Subprime-mortgage securities are rising at an accelerating pace as the U.S. begins to encourage reductions to homeowners’ balances, which may lead to fewer foreclosures and a quicker end to the housing slump….Senior-ranked bonds tied to borrowers with poor credit will mostly benefit after the Treasury Department said for the first time it would seek to cut the size of mortgages, reducing the likelihood that loan modifications will fail, according to JPMorgan Chase & Co., Morgan Stanley and Barclays Plc. (Bloomberg)

According to the Smirking Chimp:

This is how it works: The new program offers incentives to banks and other deep-pocketed investors (in mortgage-backed securities) to slash the principal on underwater mortgages which keeps people from strategic default or foreclosure. Sounds good, right? But here’s the catch: When the mortgage is refinanced, it’s converted into a FHA-backed loan which provides an explicit gov-guarantee. So, for a slight loss on the face-value of the MBS, the investors (ie–investment banks, hedgies, etc) are able to resuscitate their moribund securitizations (MBS) and reap hefty gains. It’s like taking Fido’s steaming pile on the front lawn and turning it into the Hope Diamond. Abracadabra!

Geithner has figured out how to put together a bailout that will cost taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars without any money actually exchanging hands. The value of the putrid mortgage-paper will soar because of the gov-underwriting, and the ginormous losses won’t be realized until the mortgages start blowing up sometime in the future. That’s when FHA will be put-to-pasture along with fellow-homicide victims, Fannie and Freddie. Pretty clever, eh?

So, the cutthroat speculators and bunko artists who fleeced us all with their dogshit subprimes, have returned for another dip at the public trough. That means taxpayers will get scalped on the same investments a second time. Hey, it’s a double-whammy!

I’m currently reading “The Creature From Jekyll Island” and “Whoops!“, two books about how the U.S. Federal Reserve, Congress, The White House and Wall Street have been working together for nearly a century (The Fed was created in 1910) to fleece the American public. The thing most people don’t understand is that The System is designed to encourage stupid risks which deliver massive profits to a small group of bankers for a decade, then collapse, only to be bailed out by the American public. It’s been going on for a century and isn’t about to stop anytime soon, because Congress and The White House are all on the payroll.

Tonight we try something we haven’t done in a long time – Chrissy joins me on the podcast. We lit up a Perdomo Lot 23, sat outside on our deck, and talked about a lot of things including:

- Why comics are like classical music (I recommend reading DMZ and KICK-ASS) and admire the work of Aussie Ben Templesmith
- The head of Australia’s Reserve Bank is ANOTHER crazy Christian running the country
- The rise of Dominionism in Australia
- More evidence that evil oil companies are paying a small handful of scientists to oppose climate change
- The very small list of scientists who actually oppose climate change
- The very LARGE list of scientists who support climate change

If you enjoyed this show, you can stay in touch by following Chrissy and Cameron on Twitter or by joining our Facebook page.

I’m posting this because finding out how to do this was bloody hard and took WAY too long. It’s taken me HOURS AND HOURS AND HOURS to work out how to do this – but I worked it out and now I come down from the mountain to share this information with you.

How To Set Up Multiple Domain Aliases For Google Apps using Apple Mail or another IMAP Client

If you are using Google Apps for your businesses and you have multiple domains that you have set up as domain aliases in Google Apps and you want to use an IMAP client such as Apple Mail to be able to send from each of those domain aliases – here is how you do it.

First you have to set up the domain aliases under Google Apps itself (Mail > Settings > Accounts > Add another email address you own), completed the MX record re-direction, etc. That’s the easy part (although, depending on how moronic your domain hosting provider is – such as Melbourne IT – it could take days to work out).

Now… Inside your IMAP client, where you fill out your account name and email address, just type in all of the email addresses you want to use, separated by commas. Click on the image to expand and see what I mean. Just use the main domain’s IMAP and SMTP gateway. These domain alias addresses will then appear in the FROM drop-down when you are composing a new message. EASY. But this took me HOURS and HOURS and HOURS to find an answer to. Hope it helps someone out there.

If you want to do the same thing on your iPhone, it’s even trickier because for some reason there is no comma on the keyboard when you are typing in the FROM address! You have to do it like this:

In the iPhone create an IMAP account, not a google account as it limits the fields you have access to. So this means use the “OTHER” option when setting up the new account. Set it up for your main email address (the address you us to sign-in with). Make sure that is working and that you can send e-mails properly.

Now, go into notepad on the iPhone and type in the emails that you want to use separated by commas. Be sure to start the list with the comma as well

i.e. ,me@maindomain.com, user@alias.com, user@alias2.com

Highlight everything and copy to the clipboard.

Now go back to your e-mail config and replace the contents of the address field with the info from the clipboard.

(source)

Over the last couple of weeks I’ve been thinking about how the film The Godfather is actually a brilliant and accurate allegory for United States foreign policy. I just sat down to write a blog post about it – and found out someone beat me to it. Read this, it’s brilliant.

I just want to add that we should have seen this all along. After all, what is the first line of the film?

On today’s show: my thoughts on Nicaragua (including a quick history of the oppression of the Nicaraguan people by Spain and the USA), why cigars are awesome and a few words on Obamacare.

Bret Stephens at the WSJ writes a glowing “Ode To George W Bush” as the liberator of Iraq who gave them the golden calf of democracy. He neglects to mention that Iraq is an OCCUPIED TERRITORY with 115,000 U.S. troops still there at last count – one U.S. soldier for every 270 Iraqis. That’s the same kind of democracy that you get when Dillinger points a shotgun in a bank teller’s face and gives you the choice to open the vault… or not.

Dear Apple Australia,

I would like to complain about your product quality and customer support.

I’m an Apple convert. I worked at Microsoft for a long time and so my conversion to Apple was a bit like a religious conversion. I remember buying my first Apple product, an iPod, in 2004 just after I left Microsoft. I felt guilty even buying it, like I was doing something dirty. By the time I bought my first Mac in 2007, I owned a couple of iPods, and an iPod touch and my conversion was well and truly complete.

But the last couple of months have really tested my faith in Apple.

It started on Jan 2 this year when my barely-two-year-old Macbook Pro 17″ died on me. When I took it into the Apple store at Chermside (Brisbane), they told me that the logic board had died and would need a replacement – at the cost of $2500. I had evidence to show that it wasn’t the logic board, it was the Nvidia chip, but the Apple folks disagreed with my analysis. I left it with them for two weeks to examine it but all I heard back was “it’s the logic board”.

Unfortunately I had bought this Mac at a Myer Store in Melbourne and they hadn’t sold me on Applecare, so I was screwed. A two-year-old $4000 Macbook Pro, dead in the water. I wasn’t happy.

Anyway, as I’m an Apple convert, I ended up buying a brand new Macbook Pro 17″ towards the end of January. I bought it via Apple Finance and it cost me something like $5000 including Applecare. It’s tricked out with 8Gb RAM, a 500GB drive, the anti-glare screen, etc. And I love it.

UNTIL… about two weeks after I bought it, the logic board DIED. So, I took it into the Apple Store at Chermside. The “Genius” there confirmed that diagnosis and said they’d put a new logic board in – but it would take 3 – 5 days. Why? Because they didn’t carry any logic boards that fit my machine in stock and would have to order one in, which would take 3 days, then would take them another couple of days to swap them over. I explained to the Genius, whose name was Joel, that I was traveling overseas at the end of the week and I *really* needed may laptop to be fixed before I left. He said he’s try to get it done for me quickly, but this still means I’d have to live without my MBP for a few days – which means a few days of no productivity, a few days of not getting my work done. I edit video and audio on my Macbook and without it, I’m screwed. TOUGH SHIT.

When I told Joel about the problem I’d had with my old MBP, he suggested I bring it back in so he could look at it.

So about three days later, when the new logic board came in, I went all the way back to the Apple Store and Joel said if I could stick around an hour, he’d get one of the engineers out the back to put in the new logic board so I could take it with me on my trip that evening. Great.

He also looked at the OLD MBP and confirmed the logic board was FINE, it was the graphic chip – GRRRR. So he said he’d get it fixed for me also. That’s great but WHY DIDN’T THEY TELL ME THAT A MONTH AGO SO I DIDN’T HAVE TO SPEND $5000 ON A NEW MBP???

Anyway… I leave the old MBP with Joel and take the new one, with the new logic board, home with me. Later that night, just as I’m packing to go to Nicaragua for a week, I turn on my fixed, less-than-a-month-old MBP and discover:
1) it won’t sleep
2) it won’t shutdown
3) the left fan isn’t working
4) the microphone isn’t working
5) the right speaker isn’t working

As I was leaving the next morning, I couldn’t take it back to the Apple Store until after my 8-day trip. So I jumped on the Apple site to try to book a Genius appointment for my return. AHA! The Apple store only accepts booking for five days in advance. So it’s IMPOSSIBLE to book an appointment for 8 days in advance.

So I rang Applecare and explained to the guy on the phone my problem. He said that he too could only book an appointment five days and so “you’ll need to call back in a few days”. I explained I was going to be in the jungles of Nicaragua WITHOUT A PHONE OR INTERNET for the next week and I wouldn’t be able to call back. “Well.. I can’t help you”, he said.

I lost my temper then and said “listen, LEAVE A MESSAGE FOR THE APPLE STORE IN CHERMSIDE AND TELL THEM I’LL BE COMING IN AT 11AM ON SATURDAY FEB 6.” Jesus. What a moron this guy was.

Okay so… I go to Nicaragua, taking my half-working-less-than-a-month-old-$5000-Macbook-Pro with me. I come back, go straight to the Apple Store in Chermside again. This time I see a new “Genius” called Marc. Marc checks my new laptop and confirms – the logic board needs to be replaced – AGAIN.

Oh and guess what – they don’t have any of them in the store, so, yep, I’ll have to wait another three days for them to order a new logic board in. Then I’ll need to COME BACK to Chermside again, leave it with them while they fix it, then come back to pick it up. That will make five trips to the Apple Store in two weeks to get a less-than-a-month-old Macbook Pro working like it should.

I tell Marc I’m not happy about all this and I want to speak with the manager. So that’s when I meet JARROD.

Jarrod’s a scruffy looking guy, probably about 25 or 26. I explain to Jarrod my problem. I started by asking why they don’t have replacement logic boards in stock and he replied “well we only carry the older ones, because the new ones don’t fail”. Well that hasn’t been MY experience,

I went on to tell Jarrod: “I’m not happy. I paid $5000 for a top of the line Macbook and it’s still not working and I don’t want to keep coming back here.” He said they’d fix it. I said “Well I know you will, but that’s not the point. I’m not happy about having to keep coming back here. What are you going to do to make me happy?”, I asked.

Jarrod said they’d make me happy by fixing my laptop. I explained “That’s not going to make me happy. That’s the very LEAST you’re can do. That’s what you should have done THE FIRST TIME. I want you to make me happy.”

Jarrod asked what that would take and I told him I didn’t know. “Be creative,” I told him. But Jarrod didn’t want to be creative. All Jarrod could offer was to fix my Macbook. Again.

When I told him that’s fixing my Macbook isn’t really good enough, that’s just the basic level of what they SHOULD do, he replied “I think you’ll find our service is better than you’d get anywhere else.”

OH REALLY, JARROD?

I think if I bought a top-of-the-line laptop from Dell or HP and it failed TWICE IN THE FIRST MONTH, they would at least send a courier to pick it up from my office and then deliver a new one or a fixed one back to me. I wouldn’t have to visit their office FIVE TIMES IN A MONTH.

But Jarrod didn’t want to help. Jarrod didn’t want to make me happy. Jarrod let me leave the store MAJORLY pissed off that I’ll have to come back TWICE again in the next week just to get this problem resolved.

And all the while I was having this conversation with Jarrod, he was SMIRKING, like this was all some kind of big joke. I was NOT laughing. This is wasting my TIME and my ENERGY. And it means downtime, which costs me MONEY. And Jarrod seemed to think this was some huge joke.

One good note (kind of) – the old Macbook Pro that I took in on Jan 2? Fixed. It was the graphics chip after all. So I didn’t really need to buy the new one anyway.

As someone who extols the virtues of Apple all the time to friends and family and who has converted a few people to the Apple world, I have to say – while I love the products and the company, the Australian operation leaves a LOT to be desired. The quality control and customer support that I’ve experienced in the last couple of months has been terrible. Except for Joel. Joel’s a keeper. I think I might hire him.

Anyway Apple, you haven’t lost me as a customer – yet. I can’t go back to Windows. I guess I’ll wait to see what Google’s Chrome OS looks like.

I just thought you’d like feedback from a VERY unhappy customer. For what it’s worth.

Sincerely,
Cameron Reilly
twitter.com/cameronreilly
0400455334

It’s been fascinating to me to note the difference between the way the media has been treating the two Americans who have lashed out at their government in the last month – John Patrick Bedell, who shot a couple of Pentagons guards, and Joe Stack, who flew a plane into an IRS building in Austin – and they way the media treats civilian deaths at the hands of US and NATO troops in Afghanistan. The media, completely unable to even explore whether or not men like Bedell and Stack might have had genuine grievances, have immediately closed ranks to write both men off as being crazy. There’s no investigative reporting, no genuine inquiry into what would make these US citizens commit acts of suicide to make a point about the actions of the US government. Both men have just been tarred and brushed. The media grabs quotes from family and friends that make it sound like each man was a loony and then they editorialise with descriptions to back that up.

Some examples:

On Bedell:

The Washington Post just puts it in the headline “Pentagon shooter’s spiral from early promise to madness”.

The Boston Globe, in its first paragraph, says Bedell “crisscrossed the country in a frenetic and sometimes doped-up state”.

The Mirror in the UK claims he was a “conspiracy theorist”.

The Associated Press claims Bedell “a history of mental illness”.

CBS News leads with the headline that Bedell was a “nut”.

On Stack:

The Christian Science Monitor refers to Stack’s online writing as a “lengthy, disjointed screed”.

USA Today says his writing “drips with cynicism, paranoia and narcissism.”

Of course, the 535 Afghani civilians who were murdered by US & NATO bombs in 2009, are just “collateral damage” or “civilian casualties”. When one out of every three people killed by US bombs in Afghanistan is a civilian, that’s just unfortunate. Obama is actually increasing the use of drones, not decreasing them. The media makes no psychological analysis about the people who are sending in drones that kill THOUSANDS of innocent civilians, men, woman and children. They don’t ask whether or not those people, the politicians or the soldiers, are paranoid or suffering from a mental illness. The issue isn’t even broached.

The lesson? When “we” kill civilians, it’s justifiable. But when someone, even one of our own, attacks us, then they suffer from a mental illness.

According to CatholicCulture.org:

Father Jim Denham, a priest of the Diocese of Maitland-Newcastle, will be sentenced next month on 29 counts of child sexual abuse. Twenty-seven of the 40 men who allege abuse by the priest are seeking a settlement with the diocese.

Sentencing for this reprobate has apparently been dragging on since JUNE 2009. I wonder what shady deals the Catholics are trying to pull in the background so they can save a few more bucks?

Keep in mind always that these incidents are NOT just “a few bad apples” – sexual abuse was systematically hidden and protected by Catholic leadership from the Popes on down for decades. Why haven’t we had a Royal Commission into Catholic sexual abuse in this country yet, like they did in Ireland? Especially as we know that many Irish priests were moved out there when they got themselves into trouble?

I’d like to take a short break from talking about geopolitics and organized religion to pimp a new business I’m launching today: Instyle Pergolas!

Instyle Pergolas & Gazebos is a family owned company that’s been running for many years in SA and we’re now expanding the operation to QLD, NSW & VIC. We provide the Australian market with high quality outdoor lifestyle products such as Pergolas, Carports, Decking, Gazebos, and Outdoor Features.

What do I know about building gazebos? Not much. This is another business I’m involved in with my business partner Jason Nelson (the other business being PerdomoCigars). Jason’s the guy with the building experience – I’m just the marketing guy. We’re going to be marketing our services mostly online which is where I lay down my phat skllz.

After spending most of the last five years building an online media business with no discernible source of revenue and then spending the last year also doing digital strategy for a range of clients, it’s exciting to be working on digital strategy for some fairly traditional businesses that a) have the potential to make some money and b) I have a stake in. It’s also fun to have a business partner again. Being an entrepreneur can be pretty lonely at times. Even though you might have people you can talk to about direction and strategy, at the end of the day it’s all up to you to make things happen. Having someone with a complimentary skill set and experience that you can share the load with, means you don’t need to be everything to everyone all of the time.

So if you are looking for add a pergola, carport, decking, gazebo or other outdoor feature to your house, give us a call! And if you want to relax with a premium cigar, go Perdomo!

One of my favourite “new atheists” is Angie Jackson aka “Angie The Anti-Theist”. At only 27, she’s been blogging, tweeting & YouTubing up a storm for the last two years since she googled her grandmother and discovered she had spent her whole life growing up in an extreme Christian cult. Now she’s fighting again faith in all its forms.

Al Jazeera reports that the last surviving member of the Bo tribe from India has died. The 65,000 year old people – who were 5,000 strong when the British invaded that Andaman Islands in 1858 – are no more. Would love to know how people from the UK feel about this. And what you’re going to do about it.

I got back today from a trip to Bangkok for a couple of days. The purpose of the trip was to pay a site visit to Club Perdomo Bangkok, a gentleman’s club built around Perdomo cigars. I’ve recently taken on Perdomo Cigars Australia as a new digital strategy client and, as someone who loves a cigar every now and then and who has come to appreciate the Perdomo brand over the last year, it was a very exciting trip. If you’re interested in such things, you can read about it on the Perdomo blog.

Insightful as always, award-winning Australian journalist John Pilger has written his assessment of what’s happening in Haiti. Here’s an excerpt:

The theft of Haiti has been swift and crude. On 22 January, the United States secured “formal approval” from the United Nations to take over all air and sea ports in Haiti, and to “secure” roads. No Haitian signed the agreement, which has no basis in law. Power rules in an American naval blockade and the arrival of 13,000 marines, special forces, spooks and mercenaries, none with humanitarian relief training.

When I was last in Haiti, I watched very young girls stooped in front of whirring, hissing, binding machines at the Port-au-Prince Superior Baseball Plant. Many had swollen eyes and lacerated arms. I produced a camera and was thrown out. Haiti is where America makes the equipment for its hallowed national game, for next to nothing. Haiti is where Walt Disney contractors make Mickey Mouse pjamas, for next to nothing. The US controls Haiti’s sugar, bauxite and sisal. Rice-growing was replaced by imported American rice, driving people into the cities and towns and jerry-built housing. Years after year, Haiti was invaded by US marines, infamous for atrocities that have been their specialty from the Philippines to Afghanistan.

Not for tourists is the US building its fifth biggest embassy in Port-au-Prince. Oil was found in Haiti’s waters decades ago and the US has kept it in reserve until the Middle East begins to run dry. More urgently, an occupied Haiti has a strategic importance in Washington’s “rollback” plans for Latin America. The goal is the overthrow of the popular democracies in Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador, control of Venezuela’s abundant oil reserves and sabotage of the growing regional cooperation that has given millions their first taste of an economic and social justice long denied by US-sponsored regimes.

Today I’m chatting about Haiti. To understand why many people are concerned about the USA sending thousands of marines into Haiti after the recent earthquake, you have to understand the history between these two countries. Of course, you won’t hear much of this in the mainstream media, as they tend to have amnesia. However a little research shows that America has had its corporate paws all over Haiti for a century and the Haitian people have suffered as a result.

My first No Illusions podcast for 2010! Today I’m talking about the Australian Government’s “clean feed” with three guys who know a lot more about it than I do: Stephen Collins (@trib), Peter Black (@peterblackQUT) and Jim Stewart (@jimboot). This episode was recorded with a live studio audience. Well, okay, they weren’t in a studio, they were on my uStream channel, but I’ve always wanted to say that.

So instead of Christmas, we celebrated the life of Anaxagoras, history’s first recorded scientist and atheist. And instead of giving my kids presents, we gave them power vouchers. Chrissy and I made up our own books of vouchers for the kids. They give the kids some extra power – for example, the ones I made up say things such as:

“This voucher entitles the bearer to spend an hour at the park alone with Dad.”

“This voucher entitles the bearer to get out of doing the dishes when it’s his turn.”

“This voucher entitles the bearer to a trip to Laserforce.”

They basically let my kids have a little bit of additional power than they normally would.

The vouchers Chrissy made up for the kids are similar, but contain special ones that let the kids go busking with her but keep all of the proceeds.

I was pretty happy with this approach and I think the kids were excited as well. The last thing they needed was more stuff they would have thrown in the corner after a few days and forgotten all about. And it’s better for the environment. And it forces me to spend more quality time with my kids. It’s a win all round, I think.

Tech disasters are like being attacked by a Great White – you never see the danger coming until it’s too late.

Yesterday morning I shut the lid on my two-year old Macbook Pro 17″ to take a shower. Fifteen minutes later, when I opened up the screen again, nothing happened. I tried re-booting it, taking the battery out, etc, but it still wouldn’t boot.

So I dropped it into the Apple Store at Chermside. They called me today to inform me that the logic board is dead and that it will cost $2100 to replace it. An entirely new Macbook Pro only costs about $3500.

Luckily everything was backed up, but my only other machine is a 3 year-old Vista desktop, so it’s not compatible, even in this day of “cloud computing”. Chrissy is also letting me borrow her baby Macbook for urgent Mac-related stuff. But I really need to replace my Macbook Pro asap.

So I’m in the market for a new Macbook. My last one was kindly sponsored by a Canadian company in return for advertising for a year on this podcast. I’m hoping to find someone else willing to do a similar deal. If you’re interested, please email me.

In case you missed the announcement, I recently launched a new TPN podcast: The Peter Ellyard Show. Peter has been a good friend and regular guest on this show for several years. We worked together on his latest book, Designing 2050: Pathways To Sustainable Prosperity On Spaceship Earth. Peter has a massive amount of experience in environmental issues and as a futurist, so I decided he needed his own show. We’ve already got two episodes out, the most recent being an interview with WeForest’s Bill Liao, while he was at COP15. I hope you’ll check out the show.

We just got back from the first Brisbane meetup around #nocleanfeed. It was a pretty huge turnout, I’d guess 100 people. Well done to @nicholasperkins and everyone else involved in pulling it together.

I gave a short talk, mostly trying to convey the idea that this isn’t a campaign that we will win by trying to be RIGHT. This isn’t about FACTS. This is a propaganda war about ideology, the ideology of the Christian Right, a group that Conroy, Rudd, Abbott and Fielding are all card-carrying members of. And you can’t fight a propaganda war by trying to be RIGHT. The only way to fight a propaganda war is to counter it with your own propaganda and by knowing how propaganda campaigns actually work. There’s no use taking a knife to a gun fight.

As a long-time student of people like Chomsky and Pilger, I have some understanding about how modern propaganda works. I quote tonight from 20th century French philosopher and Christian theologian (not often you’ll catch me using a Christian theologian to make a positive point) Jacques Ellul who explained that modern propaganda isn’t telling lies, it’s about telling half truths, limited truths and truths out of context. That’s what Conroy et al are master of. They don’t lie when they talk about the feed, they just limit their use of the truth.

So we need to fight a propaganda war. Fortunately, we are all very-savvy little new media / social media types, so this shouldn’t be too hard to do, as long as know what kind of fight we’re getting into.

The one idea that I didn’t have time to get across tonight was that I don’t think we can win this if we just focus on the mandatory filter. It’s too thorny an issue and too easy for Conroy to deflect criticism . I believe we need to make this a battle against the ALP. I believe we need to focus on weakening their credibility in the upcoming election by getting in their faces on a range of issue where they have either under-performed, such as the environment, indigenous welfare, immigration, etc, or where they have just flat-out turned out to be as bad or worse than Howard (the internet filter, bailing out the banks, failing to rein in corporate executive salaries, etc).

We need a campaign that attacks the ALP’s credibility and performance across the board. We need put pressure on then across multiple fronts, not just on the filter. It’s pretty clear that the mainstream media will give them an easy ride in the upcoming election. So it’ll be up to social media to put the heat on them.

Rangan Srikhanta is the Executive Director, One Laptop per Child Australia. On this show he chats with me about their efforts to get laptops into the hands of kids living in remote regions of Australia. The idea to speak with OLPC came out of a recent Geeks Who Care meeting we had in Brisbane. OLPC have a terrific program running called the “Window of Opportunity Initiative” which enables all of us to contribute to getting these wonderful devices out where they are needed.

I was reading more of Clive Splash’s writing over the last few days and it struck me why I’m always getting into arguments with people about how we’re handling climate change. The problem, I think, stems from the fact that, to me, our approach to tackling climate change is about ETHICS. And the people I get into arguments with, aren’t talking about ETHICS – they are talking about ECONOMICS. And while ECONOMICS is a subset of ETHICS, the reverse is not true.

Ethics examines morality, good and bad, right and wrong, justice, etc. And economics has to be part of ethics. We need to consider how ethical the system of economics in our country is – does everyone have equal opportunity, enough money to afford a reasonable standard of living, access to health care, education, etc.

Economics, on the other hand, doesn’t care anything about ethics. Economics just thinks about the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. How ethical a particular system of economics is, is not the concern of the study of economics.

Unfortunately, I can’t find an ethics portfolio in the Federal government. There is a Treasurer, who worries about the economy, but nowhere to be found is a Minister for Ethics. I think we should have one. The Ministry of Ethics would take the lead on issues such as our treatment of our indigenous population, the handling of boat people, whether or not we should have equal rights for LGBT, and how we handle climate change.

And I think, in future, when I’m having debates with people over climate change, I’ll make sure I clarify at the outset whether or not we’re having a discussion about ethics or economics.

Image credit:

It was announced today that Dr Clive Splash has resigned from the CSIRO because the organisation was censoring his attempts to criticize Cap and Trade schemes. As I’m meeting Dr Peter Ellyard tonight to discuss the current ETS situation, I reviewed some of the materials on Dr Splash’s site. Here’s a short excerpt of a piece he wrote for Adbusters in 2008 (the bold parts are mine):

Well, we’ve been here before. Major international political attention was first paid to climate change in 1988. At a meeting in Toronto, governments agreed to 20 percent cuts in CO2 emissions by 2005. The same year, the Hamburg World Congress recommended 30 percent cuts by 2000 and 50 percent by 2015 (with some dissenters). However, instead of government action, we only saw the IPCC established to “study” the issue further. A decade later, Kyoto’s few percent emissions cuts for developed economies were still seeking ratification. Businesses in the US spent $100 million fighting the Kyoto Protocol, claiming it would hurt the economy. The highest per capita polluters, the US and Australia, withdrew and remained outsiders in the international consensus of concern. Underlying this government backtracking, delay and timid target-setting is economic power politics.

And here we are, 21 years later, with the Rudd government still pussy-footing around, trying to appease the fossil fuel industry, and the new “leadership” (and I use that word with derision) of the Liberal Party sticking to their 1988 rhetoric.

I’m sick of it. We need a people’s revolution.