CO-OP

I have a wonder soup which I make every week. I try to have a cup everyday. It is designed for general health, but particularly it is infused with cancer fighting foods. It's quite easy to make, just put the following ingredients in a blender:

Half Head Cabbage ! Carrot 3 Onions 2 cans diced tomatoes (any tomatoes will do) 1 red chilli 1 green chilli 3 cloves of garlic 4cm slice of ginger Some Jalapenos Cloves Rosemary Parsley Salt Peppercorns Tumeric

Blend this heavily, for best results use a cheese grater for the carrot and chilli beforehand.

Pop into a saucepan, add two (unchopped) sticks of celery (remove celery before serving) to leech while boiling.

You will need to boil until the spices and chilli overwhelm the cabbage taste. Play with spices as necessary.

Put in fridge and microwave a cup in the mornings or afternoons. The soup will be quite hot, thanks to the chillis, but the whole mix is very good for you.

I guess it is a stretch, but I love this type of thinking. For one, if they could make it work then it would be a fantastic use of space, which is your primary concern for public transport in heavily urbanised areas.

It is important to be realistic, but I also think that this type of thinking is notably absent from U.S. society. The thing that defines Chinese innovation for me is that it is based almost exclusively on urgent necessity, which is always a great environment for progressive ideas.

The same thing is happening to me. It is the Reddit disease and I have it big time. Read 'Is Google Making us Stupid' (http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/is-googl...) for some good perspective.

Essentially, the human brain will adapt to the environmental situations it finds itself in. They find cab drivers (obviously) have more highly developed spatial recognition than the rest of us, for instance.

In my case, for about 2 years I have been doing most of my reading on Reddit. Most articles were small - 30 seconds to a minute of reading at most. Then I would swing to another. As such, my brain structure has adapted to this situation, but it is terribly ineffective at tackling tasks which require constant attention (my essay marks have been steadily going down).

So I've decided to go into rehab. Taking a holiday in mid-August for about 3 months, and I have bought/downloaded a huge amount of very very heady reading material (including the crem-da-la-crem of heady mind fuck material - Heidegger's Being and Time) which I intend to use to rewire my brain.

It's a tough question. But in my mind it is more related to the Australian political culture than it appears. And I note a lot of parallels between the formation of modern states and the advent of internet legislation. I'll try to explain my view - sorry if it is an essay :P.

Essentially, the nature of a modern state is the governing body has monopoly of force over a geographical area. By extension, this allows certain advantages, namely extraction (which from a one dimensional or conventional perspective can be viewed as taxation or army conscription) or coercion which again, from a one dimensional perspective means the ability to force a society to act in a certain way. For instance, one could view the inquisition to be coercing (by means of force) the population to a particular religious doctrine. Or from a modern perspective

Now, the space of the internet in it's current form can be interpreted as anarchic - a power vacuum of sorts. The nature of a politician is to expand into all power vacuums in a given area - it's what they do. The vehicle is legislation. As the internet grows and becomes more a part of our society than ever, the need to control this vacuum is more important than ever. China has been especially proactive in this regard, but more states are following suit (consider the US is also looking into a RealID programs).

But the thing that is so bad for us Australians is that our political culture is very ambitious. For decades our society has been screaming out to appear as a major player on the world stage. The politicians, understandably are more fundamental on this issue - as all people in a position of power will be.

This has changed our political policy to a form of 'any means necessary' legislative agenda to modernise and to expand Australia's power and thus influence AND importantly to appear to the world as an example of modern proactive state making. This is paramount - our leaders perception of ourselves on a world stage. They crave world recognition.

A more obvious example will be the former prime minister Kevin Rudd's ambition to increase Australia's population to 60 million - an almost threefold increase on a land whose space and water is already on the brink. A detriment to society is ignored in favor of this increase in power.

The current internet legislation is essentially a conglomeration of these factors. And due to a series of conservative rule (and by extension the right-leaning attitude of the two popular governing parties), this new approach to modern state making has often come in the form of very conservative legislation.

Again, I am sorry for this essay. However, I prefer to view this problem from a structural standpoint, instead of any ideological agenda. Though I think this still may be a factor, IMO the system is more to blame.