Neat little speed camera idea.

Stockholm, Sweden has adopted a Volkswagon “Fun Theory” competition winning idea by Kevin Richardson that not only tickets speeding drivers, but photographs drivers that are going under the speed limit, entering them into a lottery that uses the speeding fines as its prizes. More proof, as if it were needed, that incentives matter.

Radley Balko on speed cameras, statistical tomfoolery and perverse incentives here.

Pictures from the Queanbeyan flood.

A few pictures I snapped around town, as of 10.30am. All from the east side.

The McDonalds roundabout, completely submerged:

The car dealership next to McDonalds:

The block of flats just before the main bridge. The park next to it was also flooded:

Carport from the block of flats on the corner of Mowatt and Trinculo. There were a lot of cars submerged in that area:

The river from Mowatt Street. You can just see a sign that sits on the side of Trinculo Place. Trinculo seems to be completely under:

Another shot of Trinculo Place:

This is the park next to/behind Hungry Jacks:

The same park. Unfortunately it looks like the art centre has been completely swamped:

UPDATE: More photos available here.

Photo of the day: Vanuatu.

A beautiful and fascinating country.

Richard Wolstencroft responds.

A couple of weeks ago I posted something about the Sex Party and Melbourne Underground Film Festival director Richard Wolstencroft, linking to a website that purported to show him to be something of a racist. Today I arrived back from Vanuatu to find he has left a comment defending himself, and since I don’t exactly have the time nor the will to interview both men in depth to form any sort of sound opinion either way, I’ll post his full comment below:

Dear Andrew,

I see you have bought in to Shane Lyons (Harald Dohrns) site and spiel.

I would like to add a few things if I may?

Lyons accuses me of being a racist Neo Nazi which I strongly contend I am not.

My official response to his hate/defamation site can be found here that explains a few things:

http://blogs.crikey.com.au/cinetology/2010/09/07/ferocious-film-politics-ex-muff-volunteer-launches-smear-campaign-against-festival-director/

Lyons has been stalking me in person and online for nine years under names like Loonar Watch, even falsely accusing me of writing racist posts on Melbourne Indymedia under a pseudonym. He has been cowardly hiding on my Facebook under an alias to access my page for close to two years. He also stalked many of my friends on their pages (and published their posts!) including my ex girlfriend (!) where that Latino comment came from. That is the only comment I regret as I was jealous at that brief moment as this guy was abusing her physically in LA. I might have stooped to a stereotype there.

Sure, I say a few outrageous things. So, do many others on FB. A Jewish pal of mine on FB says things that make what I say look tame. But, he’s not often serious or only doing it to stir the pot… as I often am.

As for “censoring his site” I merely asked for the copyright violating and stolen screen shots from Facebook not be used. WordPress agreed with me. His excuse of “fair use” is total bullshit. You can’t stalk someone’s private FB site steal their copyrighted writings and repost them. He is breaking Facebook privacy laws, also. I am merely protecting my Freedom of Speech and my own work my stopping him using those posts. I will continue to do so.

Also, this nincompoop continuously makes out I am racist and a Neo Nazi and posts things all over the place, twitter, etc. What he is really up to is defamation. He has a Gigantic grudge against me as he is a total failure in the film community that he wanted so desperately to be a part of. I gave him a chance in 2001 to collaborate but he soon scared everybody at the festival with creepiness, including myself! So, we thanked him nicely (I drive him home from meetings a few times to be a nice guy!) but didn’t invite him back. Since then: its been Revenge! Psycho obsessed revenge. How far will he go? He wished a friend of mine dead who was a benefactor and old pal when heard he contracted cancer. My friend did see this post and died about a year later. In my opinion Lyons is a dog.

There is a difference with defamation and free speech, also. The latter I support, the former I do not. I can’t create a site calling you a rapist and expect to get away with it. Nor should I.

So, that’s what that is about. The post above explains my views on his site, my politics and my Transcendental or Libertarian Fascism ideas that is all about over coming, transcending fascism and creating a Libertarian utopia of sorts. That many say is not even fascist in any meaningful sense. Not such offensive ideas. I use the “f” word because I love to be provocative. It is also just arm chair posturing. Fuck knows why my own personal political opinions even matter that much!

That’s my two cents…

Best Regards

Richard Wolstencroft

 

Photo of the day: Kiama.

Something about being close to the ocean makes everything awesome.

Australian Sex Party kicks off Victorian campaign… with fascist!

The Australian Sex Party are set to launch their Victorian election campaign today. Headlining this little shindig is the director of the Melbourne Underground Film Festival Richard Wolstencroft, who is facing possible criminal charges over a zombie porn film he screened as part of the aforementioned festival. So far, so good. The Sex Party are vociferous defenders of free expression (which is why I voted for them after the LDP in the last election) and so it makes sense to hear from someone who has been directly affected by Australia’s woeful censorship laws.

The only problem is that Richard Wolstencroft, valiant paladin of free speech, shut down a blog post that showed him to be a Nazi sympathiser, a wannabe fascist, a crude racist and, well, kind of a dickhead. On the issue of free speech I’m about as fundamentalist as you can get, so I don’t object to him expressing his hateful views. I do, however, find the Sex Party’s decision to have him headline their campaign launch to be utterly fucking stupid.

All one can offer is a Kyle Broflovski-style: really, Sex Party, really?

(HT: Chris Berg)

In which I take an explosive, runny link dump.

More good stuff from around the net:

Here is Brendan O’Neill channeling Julian Simon in an excellent piece about natural resources.

Don Boudreaux has a great op-ed detailing something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. The main thrust of the article is the creativity unleashed by markets but it touches on the nomenclature problem in politics. There is a weird disconnect between the name and perception of certain movements and ideologies that is divorced from reality; progressives who seem to be against progress, liberals (American usage) who don’t much favour liberty, etc.

The always awesome William Easterly has a long piece up at the NYRB focusing on the way government aid money is used to fund tyranny. This is sort of related to my point above, inasmuch as the reality is at odds with the way it is perceived, or the way it sounds. Thus to speak out against “aid” is transformed into “you hate poor people, you racist, poor people hatin’ son a bitch”; after all, it’s “aid”, it sounds nice.

And, just for the heck of it, some more zany action from dictator and gigantic arsehole Hugo Chavez. Enjoy.