Scott Adams lays it down on Intelligent Design – to some extent (right at the end) he’s making some of the mistakes he criticised in saying that don’t misrepresent the issue (Atheists aren’t the only ones that believe in evolution), but otherwise a fairly thoughtful post.
Sydney Race Riots
I was going to write about this sooner but following the completition – for the most part anyway – of the site’s design I decided to go for a full format and in the process have been busy, as well as loosing internet for the better part of the day. Anyway.
There’s plenty of news reports around – CNN, BBC, Forbes (problems grow to Adelaide & Perth), The Age (mostly AP reports); hell, Google News has 1000+ stories on it – so it’s pretty much reached international incident status [aside: this is what it takes for Australia to get on the news? sheesh]. Each report has its own spin, as the media is wont to have, inevitably, but these are the facts that i’ve gathered so far:
- 2 Lifegaurds get bashed by a gang of “youths with Arab or Middle Eastern appearance” (all of which have now been arrested by the way).
- A week of simmering tensions ensue, with much anger at the supposed “attack on the Australian way of life”, since lifegaurds are an integral part of the Aussie beach culture.
- Sunday: Rally of “white” Australians in Cronulla – a prominent beach suburb with a overwhelming majority of Australian residents, generally above average economic profile. Majority of ‘rally’ participants are from other parts of Sydney as Cronulla is easily accessible by train, young, and fuelled by alcohol. Rally quickly turns ugly as people with non-“white” skin are attacked simply for being in the area. Police step in and riot ensues. Ambulance attacked while treating on the victims of the mob.
- Sunday night, Monday night – gangs of “Arab youths” go to suburbs of Cronulla and Maroubra – a similar suburb, but further north and closer to the city. Cars smashed and various other incidents of violent vandalism. A number of arrests made.
Guest post meme
Inspired by this post, I’m taking submissions for a guest post or two, to be published around Christmas-New Year. Please email me if you have something that might be of interest to me & those who read this site. No set topic, and no editing on my part if selected!
Welcome to Pushing the Sky
I’ve always liked Sundays – I was born on one. I think the week starts on a Sunday – I’ve always liked the idea that you start the week chillin’. So I figure what better day to launch Pushing the Sky than on Sunday? Monday’s for the bug fixing, because I’ll be annoyed anyhow.
Some of you may like what I’ve done with the place, and some of you may not. Some of you will be viewing this in Internet Explorer or Safari, and I’m here to tell you that I don’t like your browsers. I’m no CSS expert, so I don’t know why Internet Explorer (or Safari) should be interpreting the CSS rules in this particular way, and thus I have to deliver a substandard design to you guys.
Back to the guys’n’gals in Firefox. You’re seeing the originally conceived design for this site. Pretty, ain’t it? I certainly hope you think that, it’s been no small amount of effort to put this site together and add something of a personal touch to it.
Back in the early days of the dke project, I tried to define something of a mission statement for myself. I imagined that the site would turn out to be something of a challenge for me, getting me to test out my design skills as well as increasing my abilities in HTML – those were the days when Notepad was my editing companion. Intially inspired by Jack and Annie’s sites, I drew on what basic skill I had and designed… well, not much. Failing so comprehenively to even get going on my mission statement, I spun it out into a blog and chucked all those things that I thought to say, and put it out there in the deluded hope that someone was listening. Eventually, I heard someone listening, and talking back, and since have been onto a good thing. Never quite on a good thing, just onto it =)
But I digress, as ever. Welcome to Pushing the Sky, more randomness from yours truly. I’ve expanded my design skills in the years since the dke project first started – I’m thinking to do a gallery or a theme switcher to let everyone check out from where I’ve come – and I hope this one is just a little innovating. Much has gone on behind the scenes for me to even concieve of this design, let alone execute it as I have, conceding much to the capabilities of XHTML & CSS, and for their help I am indebted to the various top blogging sites that I have stolen ideas from, and Jack for doing his sounding board thing, letting me bounce ideas & betas off, and I thank him for his tips and patience through my whiny whinging.
I do believe I’m getting carried away as is. The design is what you might call stable, though it will remain in something of a constant state of evolution as I tweak lines here and there, as well as bits of the design which don’t reveal themselves at first glance (i.e. when I realise I forgot to take care of something). I’ve resisted the temptation to go completely Web 2.0 with a bunch of flashy javascript & ajax out of simple concern for bandwidth and actual relevance/usefulness. But hopefully it doesn’t look out of date =)
The site remains a little empty at the moment; obviously it takes time to fill all the gaps in. And I am also still considering whether I should wrestle with the archives to integrate the dke project’s archives – any votes in favour? Let me know.
Enjoy!