Cameron Reilly’s done a podcast followup to his Age article encouraging people to “get off the bench”.

Listening to it reminded me of something I once wrote:

“Every person has the potential to create a great work of art; to work for the benefit of humanity; to become a spokesman or a great leader; to do good. Your role as a member of the human race is to reach your potential, and to help others to reach theirs.”

– Me, obviously feeling philosophical, January 1996

PS. Call me an imbecilic philistine, but I didn’t know Moleskine is pronounced “molly skeena”. But apparently they’re Italian, so fair enough.

PPS. Cam’s helping to run the MODM (Melbourne’s Online Digital Media) gatherings to talk about various aspects of this new digital thingamebob age we’re living in. I’d hoped to go to the meeting next Thursday night, but alas something else has clashed with it. Maybe next time, it sounds kinda interesting.

An inspiring post by Cam on The Age “Startup Stories” blog:

Here’s something I really believe - the human race needs all hands on deck right now. Take a look around you at the politicians and corporate leaders and ask yourself these questions: “Are these the best people to be running things? Do you feel comfortable with the knowledge that the future of the human race, of all life on this planet, is in their hands?”

We need you to get off the bench. Stop waiting for someone to tap you on the shoulder and tell you that it is your time. It isn’t going to happen. You need to get off the bench and start using your time, your intelligence, your energy, your ideas, to make the world a better place.

I have this motto - if you have the ability to make the world a better place, and you choose not to use that ability, then you aren’t much better than the people who are deliberately messing the place up.

Okay, I know it isn’t the most succinct of mottoes, but hey, it’s my first one. I’ll get better as I go along.

Read the rest of it.

I can’t say I’m going to go quit my job (not even for six months), but it does remind me of why I do the extra-curricular stuff I do, and why I’m always on the lookout to learn new things and try and make a difference.

If you’re worried about climate change, and the glacial (!) rate government is addressing it… and you’re in Melbourne, try this: on Sunday morning the Bayside Climate Change Group are getting together people for a human sign on Sandringham beach at 10am, to say “HALT CLIMATE CHANGE NOW!”

(I’m assuming the team co-ordinating don’t all have dyslexia, or we might end up with “A MECHANICAL WELT THONG!” or “A GALACTIC MENTHOL WHEN?” something.)

It’s just near the station and there’ll be extra trains to help people get down there without driving. Various media etc will be in attendance, naturally, to highlight the crowd’s efforts. After the sign there’ll be an expo with displays and so on to find out more.

More info: Bayside Climate Change Group / PTUA / Metlink

The great thing about election day is you can exercise your right to democracy, and have a sausage too.

Daniel’s election day sausage tally: 2.

PS. Sunday night. Result probably what most people expected. Interesting to see that the ALP misinformation worked — some people were asking Greens helpers if they were preferencing Libs. (They weren’t — they preferenced ALP in all but a few seats, and didn’t preference the Libs in any seats. And let’s not forget how ALP preferences got Australia its first Family First senator in 2004…). At time of writing it’s looking doubtful the Greens will hold the balance of power in the upper house, which would have made things interesting. I spent election night at my sister’s place, enjoying good food, drink and company, and many phone calls about results coming in.

What I’m pondering for this Saturday’s state election is who am I going to put last? It’s not like a Federal byelection, when every man and his dog decides to run. No, in my district there isn’t a huge assortment of weird and wacky parties, nor are there any independents. All you’ve got are ALP (sitting member), Libs, Greens, Family First and the Citizens Electoral Council.

Apart from CEC, I happened to compare transport policies of the parties while helping to compile an election scorecard for the PTUA.

What’s particularly enlightening if you read the Family First literature is that it’s all just a bunch of policies of (in my opinion) varying degrees of benefit, but marketed under the FF banner. You wouldn’t want to be against families would you? Then you MUST support building a freeway through Melbourne’s northeast green wedge! And that’s just the start — they want billions of dollars of new freeways. Family First says it’s good, so it must be good for families! What crap.

As for CEC, well it’s a little hard to find anything of actual relevance to state politics on their web site. The only thing relevant to transport is a picture of a maglev train on their banner. Ah yes, maglev: very fast, fantastically expensive, a technology that has been implemented commercially precisely once.

And they appear to be stringently pro-nuclear, with their leader Lyndon LaRouche claiming if we don’t build reactors then the world economy will collapse and we’ll turn into dingoes. Or something like that. Indeed, in this as in other issues they appear to blindly follow the beliefs of LaRouche. Which I guess is okay if you really believe one bloke has the answer to everything. Maybe if he’s God, he might. I wonder what he thinks of the South Morang rail line, or building a railway station at Southland? Perhaps as long as the trains are nuclear-powered.

So, it would seem the competition for who goes on my ballot last is pretty hot.

And there’s lots more in the upper house.

The streets were closed to traffic, the barricades went up. Yes, the Bentleigh festival was on again.

But 15km away from the sausage sizzles, roaming families, showbags and Humphrey B Bear, some streets in central Melbourne were blocked-off for the third day, for the G20 meeting. Hearing about the violence in Collins Street on Saturday, it seemed like a world away.

I can’t for the life of me understand the motivation of the few dozen protestors who turned violent unless it’s simply to have a go at the police, and generally cause trouble. It seems a long way from the vast majority of people attending who were simply trying to highlight important issues such as environmental destruction and poverty.

Bono was on Lateline on Friday night appealing to the Australian government to give 0.7 percent of GDP to aid for eliminating poverty.

I support that. And even better, I’m going to rejig my regular charity donations to make sure I’m personally donating at least 0.7 percent of my income to charity. By my calculations I’m currently over that (1.008%), though some of it is going to Greenpeace, which doesn’t directly work on poverty issues.

Now, when will my government join in?

Rosa Lee Long, Queensland’s only sitting One Nation MP, was returned in her seat of Tablelands in the Queensland state election on Saturday.

I only mention this because she’s actually a distant (non-blood) relative of mine. On the Chinese side of my family there are a mass of Lee Long family members, and I understand Rosa is the widow of one of my dad’s cousins. The irony of a member of a party that is widely perceived as racist having been married to a Chinese man was not lost on the media, and her return even made the international media.

(Isn’t it funny how overseas media use the generic term “lawmaker” when talking about other countries Members of Parliament.)

The Howard government is doing it again.

It’s just like the republic debate all over again. Back then it was not Do you want a republic, it was Do you want a republic with a Prez replacing Her Maj and the GG, appointed by a two-thirds majority of parliament.

This time the energy inquiry being set up is not How can we satisfy our energy requirements cleanly and cheaply, it’s Can we go nuclear?

Is it too much to ask to approach these questions without a predetermined outcome in mind?

Apparently, yes.