People of Australia: do not fear the Donut. Accept the donut.

Now for a bit of the ol' Tasmanian Tie-Dye:

And don't blink now, it's the Eye o' Perth:

According to Aussie state-run media:

It has since posted a disclaimer above the national loop feed putting the images down to "occasional interference to the radar data".

"The Bureau is currently investigating ways to reduce these interferences," the disclaimer said.

Worship the Donut!

I had no doubt whatsoever that the Democrats' (and by extension, the US media's) insistence on the character assassination would backfire:

How is it that the media's approach has changed so dramatically in just the past couple of weeks? Perhaps the Democrats simply went too far when they claimed that tea-party protesters had shouted racial slurs at black congressmen during the ObamaCare weekend.

[From Strange New Respect - WSJ.com]

I really couldn't figure out what they were trying to accomplish there. The vote was going, it was decided before the name-calling began. Public opinion obviously had no meaning once they started filing into the Capitol (and probably not before that, either).

There was no way that they could think that making shit up about the 3rd-party opposition, which the Tea Parties represent, could raise public opinion by 30 points in time for the bill signing. Was there?

The blogger in me isn't dead, it's just sleeping. A few years ago, I was what the Old Economy referred to as a Producer. Nowadays, what with the Twitter and the Facebook, it seems that everybody has become a micro-producer, and a macro-consumer.

But this kind of economy is obviously nonsense. In a situation where the consumption so completely outpaces the production, it follows (in my little analysis) that quality of what we consume decreases rapidly.

People used to jab at bloggers, saying that it wasn't worth reading because, hey, who cares what your cat is doing? But think about the endless fluff that rolls by on your Twitter feed. The Facebook statuses, while interesting to me because I know the producers, carries little actual value with them. They just make you feel good.

If I compare what my connections are doing in the social networky present to what the people on the blogroll used to put out in a day of energetic blogging, well, let's just say the world has taken a turn for the stupid.

What accounts for the discrepancy in production and consumption? Could it be that somewhere the machines are running, thumping underground, lulling us Eloi toward the dinner bell? Don't come crying to me when your Twitter roll cold-cocks you and you wake up with your feet tied and an apple stuffed in your mouth.

Not me, man, I'm gonna hip-check that witch into the oven, just like Hans showed us. I'm mixing shit up, but you know what I'm about.

Source: US Department of Energy

As a matter of fact, I do see this as the endgame of Obamacare:

The networks are the creation of a handful of North Korean defectors and South Korean human rights activists using cellphones to pierce North Korea's near-total news blackout. To build the networks, recruiters slip into China to woo the few North Koreans allowed to travel there, provide cellphones to smuggle across the border, then post informers' phoned and texted reports on Web sites.

[From North Koreans Use Cellphones to Bare Secrets - NYTimes.com]