We’re going away on holiday to Adelaide for the next eleven days. Mother-in-law’s birthday party next weekend. It’s unlikely that I will be updating my websites till then (apart from the dynamically changing stuff), in which case I’ll see you all on November 10.

Oh, and if you’re in the US, get out there and vote on Tuesday, and vote out of office the GW Bush administration that threatens us all. There’s only one practical way to do this, and that is to vote for John F Kerry. And if you have Green Party candidates running for local office on your ballot, give them your consideration.

There, that’s my interference in another country’s domestic politics out of the way

Much ado in the media today about the discovery of a extinct “hobbit”-like human species which lived in Indonesia about 18000 years ago.

Homo floresiensis is the name given to this new species. Reports from National Geographic News (they apparently have a program coming up on the subject) and Nature magazine.

There wouldn’t be too many people still around who can remember the Red Sox last World Series win back in 1918. Even that great Bostonian, JFK the First, would have been less than 18 months old when they did it. The question now is whether Boston can make it a double: the Red Sox today, and the junior senator from Massachussetts (JFK the Second) in the presidential election on Tuesday?

A great, and concise, comment on the Red Sox win at guff.szub.net:

Residents of Hell take up ice skating

You may already know that the Boston Red Sox just won the World Series, a 4 game sweep against the St. Louis Cardinals.

I’d voice my congratulations, but nobody in Boston can hear anything over the celebratory rioting.

More reaction to be added to this post as I come to it. Keep your eye on the Fire Brand of the American League, the Most Valuable Network’s Red Sox blog site.

Jeff Gordon (not the Nascar driver) of the St Louis Post-Dispatch has filed his report on Game Four.

Brainwagon.org’s baseball section has Podcasts, but not for Game Four yet. He does, however, point out that the Curse of Bambino came to an end with the first World Series game to be played during a total lunar eclipse.

It took less than a minute for the Boston Globe to put this up on their home page:

More later. Congratulations to the Boston Red Sox on their first World Series title since 1918.

Now I know why I am always refused a connection to GeorgeWBush.com. I was sure that there weren’t that many computer-literate Republicans out there to deluge his site with hits.

Here’s a Netcraft report on access response times (complete with graphs) on access to the Bush website from within the US and beyond. Several news reports on the web since the Netcraft release, here is the Free Internet Press report.

BoingBoing.net has a great collection of observations on the situation, including ways to get around it - although they now appear to be blocked as well.

I am impressed by the person who registered georgewbush.co.uk. Click on the link and see where you end up (no it’s not porn). But in the absence of any overseas access to georgewbush.com, I recommend georgewbush.org.

According to the BBC, Netcraft president Mike Prettejohn speculated that the Bush/Cheney campaign office might have decided to “cut costs”. In an election campaign where more than a billion dollars has already been flushed down the toilet, yeah right…

From the Poynter Institute’s Email Tidbits column today by Steve Yelvington. I see uses for this…
http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=31&aid=73502

Posted by Steve Yelvington 5:49:04 PM
Podcasting and the Rise of Personal Media
I’ve been looking at podcasting these last few days. Podcasting is a rip/mix/burn term — ripped from iPod, mixed with broadcasting, and burned into new types of RSS readers such as iPodder, Doppler, and for Mac users, iPodderX.

Podcasting, like RSS, is simple. RSS2.0 feeds can contain “enclosures,” which are little more than the URL of a downloadable media file. A reader who knows about enclosures can automatically download audio (or potentially video) files overnight and synch them to an iPod or MP3 player, or on a desktop computer. It’s portable and helps solve some of the irritating practical problems of fat media over the Internet, but more importantly, it feeds a new phenomenon called “personal media.”

People are creating their own media space with these devices, disintegrating other peoples’ products (such as music albums) and reintegrating the parts in new ways. That’s rip/mix/burn. It cuts broadcasting out of the loop. I talked with a woman the other day who has not listened to radio since she got an iPod two years ago. “How do you learn about new things?” I asked. “From friends who are DJs,” she explained. Not all of us have such friends, and we do need some sort of outside input into our personal space.

Podcasting adds that input: value-added programming, new information, news … chosen by the consumer, heard on the user’s schedule, in the personal-media environment. Much of the early experiments documented at audio.weblogs.com are terrible, self-indulgent dreck, but quality programming also is emerging.

Seattle’s KOMO, Boston’s WGBH, and Future Tense (Minnesota Public Radio) program host Jon Gordon have been experimenting with podcasting of programs and segments. This is not radio, and it’s not yet clear how programs should be presented and packaged in this medium, but broadcasters that want a future in this personal-media space should take heed. If you’re conducting such an experiment, I’d like to know about it.

August 4, 1984, and the All Blacks beat the Wallabies 19-15 at Ballymore in Brisbane. Australian coach Belford Parrott explains why:

http://www.abc.net.au/triplej/hack/jones/aj4.ram

(Source: Hack, Triple J, ABC radio.)

A few articles published over the last few weeks that I think are worthy of attention:

By Naomi Klein: James Baker’s Double Life (The Nation, 12.10.04): The conflicts of interest surrounding James Baker, GHW Bush’s Secretary of State, now GW Bush’s special envoy - and also on the payroll of, and an equity member in, the Carlyle Group.

Also by Naomi Klein: Why is war-torn Iraq giving $190,000 to Toys R Us? (The Guardian, 16.10.04): Dealing with the reparation that Iraq still has to pay resulting from Saddam Hussain’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

From Juan Gonzalez: The war’s littlest victim (New York Daily News, 29.9.04): On the effects of the USA’s use of depleted uranium during their occupation of Iraq.

From George Monbiot: Exploitation on Tap (The Guardian, 19.10.04): About the privatisation of water in South Africa.

My whole body smells like a lunch box!
- Chen Chong-yi (Democratic Progressive Party, Taiwan), 26.10.04

What a great moment for democracy it was in Taipei on Tuesday. A debate about whether a multi-billion dollar arms budget should be placed on the parliamentary agenda this Friday turned into an open battle of its own.

“You’ve got no shame!” screamed Chu Fong-chih of the opposition Nationalist Party, after throwing a take-out box of chicken and rice at Chen Tsung-yi, a legislator from the ruling Democratic Progressive Party who backed the special budget, the China Daily reports.

Associated Press has vision of the fracas. I wonder if there is a Hansard available?

I guess over in Beijing they will see this as a perfect example of how their offshore province is totally incapable of governing itself. But would it enhance proceedings in the House of Reps in Canberra? Could this be a new tactic for ALP house business leader Julia Gillard to try out? And how would Bronwyn Bishop handle it if, heaven forbid, she gets elected Speaker?

Goodness gracious. The Boston Red Sox are one game away from their first World Series in 86 years. My prediction of 4-1 to the Cardinals is being shot to smithereens.

4-1 was in fact the score, in runs, of Boston’s win at Busch Stadium in Game Three which has just ended. Now that they’ve come this far, I hope the Red Sox win game four simply because it’s the last game I’ll be able to watch before we go on holidays.

Ooh they are excited over at the Boston Globe. The Herald seems to be lagging a bit at the moment as I write - still previews of the game although they do have the final box score. Pedro Martinez was the winning pitcher in his first (only?) World Series appearance. Keep an eye on the sports pages of El Nacional as soon as they update.

On the subject of Martinez, it would be remiss of me not to mention the Dominican Players blogspot, which tracks Dominican Republic players in the major leagues.

Is the Curse of the Bambino about to come to an end? (ie, the Red Sox have not won a World Series since they traded George Herman Ruth to the Yankees) While we are in woofing mode, here are the Red Sox stats from the 1918 season, and detailed scores and stats from the 1918 World Series, when they beat the Cubs (sigh) 4-2.

But let’s not forget the Cards completely. Here is a report by Jeff Gordon of the Post-Dispatch.