Back to normal - everything is stuffed

For my international readers, you may have noticed a slight drop in the quantity and (let's face it) quality of my blog posts lately. This is because Australia in January is pretty much closed down. Because we live on the upside down part of the Earth, the seasons here are the opposite of that in the Northern Hemisphere. This means that we have Christmas AND summer holidays at the same time. Add to this the fact that our convict forefathers decided to arrive on January 26th 1788 and we basically have a 4-5 week period of nothing but hot weather and holidays.

If anyone wants to invade Australia, do it during early January.

But now that Australia Day is over and done with, the kids are about to go back to school and Australia returns to normal again. My son is about to enter 3rd grade (the equivalent of "the third grade" in America) and my daughter about to go into pre school. This means that I should be able to blog better and more often.

Anyone who has been perusing the economic news lately knows that there have been some massive job cuts announced - not just here in Australia but all over the world, especially in the US. 2008 Q4 GDP will be released this Friday and I am expecting a big drop - at the very least a contraction of 1.0% or more.

I also remain convinced that the US Dollar is ripe for a crash, even though the currency has firmed in recent weeks. As I have pointed out before, there is no real reason why anyone would want to hold US Dollars at the moment - treasury yields are ultra low, the US Property market has popped and the Share Market has crashed. While the rest of the world isn't too wonderful economically either, the US is the centre of the storm and will suffer more and suffer longer than the international community. Although I am not a financial advisor (yet) I would counsel investors to invest in Euro, Yen and precious metals and sell off their US assets before the crash gets underway.

The upcoming dollar crash will be the final "event" that will plunge the US and the world into the second great depression. High oil prices (2004-2008), the bursting of the subprime bubble (2006), the credit crisis (2007-2008), de-leveraging (2007-2008) and the Bear Market (2008) were all previous events that have hit the US in the last few years.

Despite my natural relief that Bush is no longer occupying the White House I have little confidence that President Obama will be able to achieve much in the first 2 years in terms of repairing the economy. Big spending seems to be the only solution and this will frighten the markets further considering the sheer amount of debt the Federal Government has already gotten itself into before the credit crisis hit - and this fear will put downward pressure on the dollar.

Once the dollar has crashed, the only recourse will be to follow the policies outlined in The Washington Consensus, which will inflict upon America harsh austerity measures. A dollar crash will force the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates and force the Federal Government to rein in spending - the very opposite of what is currently being applied (low interest rates and lots of deficits spending).

While a part of me remains Keynesian, the Austrian part of me argues that policies and practices that created the problem in the first place should not be used to solve the problem. in other words, if America's situation was caused by unrestrained spending and injudicious borrowing, then why assume that more spending and more borrowing will solve the problem? Balance needs to be restored - and that means that America needs to save more and borrow less, to produce more and to consume less. It is therefore more important for China and Japan to stimulate domestic spending in their own countries - a process that will increase US exports and reduce imports to the US - than for the US to indulge in more spending.

This is not to say that some deficit spending may be required in the US - just not as huge an amount that is being touted.

But, the dollar will crash and no one listens to me anyway. It'd be nice if I could make money out of being right.

How to search for things on my blogsite

Just a quick explanation for anyone who is looking to find certain things on my blog.

In the upper left hand corner of your screen you should find a button marked "search blog". Next to that, to its left, is a space for you to type in a keyword.

For example, if you want to find any article pertaining to my wife, just type "wife" and then click the button "search blog". All articles with the word "wife" will appear - some of which will be articles about my own wife, others will be articles where the word appears but has nothing to do with my own wife.

Another way to search for articles here is to use Google Advanced Search. A simple way to do it would be to go to Google and type the following:

wife site:http://one-salient-oversight.blogspot.com/

And then press "search".

This will give you a list of links from my own website where I use the word "wife".

If you want to search for something else, replace "wife" with the word you are looking for when you are typing into google. For example, if you want to search for "cat", type the following:

cat site:http://one-salient-oversight.blogspot.com/

But the great thing about using Google is that Google has what is called Google Cache. If you are searching for something that I have decided to remove from my blog for whatever reason, it is still present in the Google Cache. If I have recently deleted an article, you can still find it by clicking the link marked "cached" on the results when you do the Google search I have outlined above.

There are some really nasty people out there who write horrible things on their blogs and, when they are found out, remove the offending page. You can catch these horrible people out by using the Google Cache. They may have removed content from their blog or website, but the Google Cache can always be used to catch them out.

So, if you're looking for something that I may have deleted, it will still turn up on Google Search, thus proving my dastardly deed of covering up something. But you have to be quick, however, because I think the Google Cache eventually updates itself and removes the "dead" page after about a week.

But, then again, I haven't deleted any articles for ages. The last time I deleted an article was a month or two ago when I accidentally posted something twice. This means, of course, that if you use Google to search my blog, everything you see in your google search will be there.

Besides, I don't write dastardly things. Feel free to read through my website to see for yourself and remember that any absence of evidence pretty much means evidence of absence.

Blogging is good for you

From the department of shamelessly cutting and pasting an entire article:

WHEN the first blogs (short for web logs, or online diaries) were posted in late 1998, they were a novelty. Today, blogging is so ubiquitous that health professionals have begun investigating the health effects of blogging as an activity - concluding that blogging can foster critical thinking and feelings of connection.

While some commentators have characterised bloggers as lonely, desperate souls in search of validation for their meaningless lives, recent medical research has indicated that the opposite might actually be true: bloggers appear to be less lonely and feel more connected and supported than those who don't blog.

Swinburne University researcher James Baker, along with Swinburne colleague Professor Susan Moore, will soon publish a paper in the journal CyberPsychology & Behaviour which concludes that people who blog feel less isolated and more satisfied with their friendships.

Their research focused on new MySpace users and tracked their emotional states after two months of social networking and blogging.

It found that all respondents felt less anxious, depressed and stressed after two months of online social networking - but those who blogged felt better about their situation than those who didn't.

Researchers in the US have concluded that blogging also makes bloggers better thinkers. US neurologists Fernette and Brock Eide conducted a survey of the blogosphere and posted their results on their own site. The research began with the proposition that our mental activities actually cause changes in the structures of our brains -not only what we think, but how we think as well.

They decided to focus on blogging because it represents a significant new activity that might be changing the way people think, and concluded that blogging can be a powerful promoter of creative, intuitive and associational thinking.

The sheer ease of being able to publish a blog online promotes spontaneous connections and fosters creativity. The neurologists also concluded that blogging promotes critical and analytical thinking because blogs, at their best, are rich in ideas and promote active exchange and critique.

Those academics' assessments are shared by bloggers.

The active exchange of ideas between bloggers is what keeps Melbourne blogger Helen, from Yarraville, hard at it on her blogspot, Blogger on a Cast Iron Balcony. Being part of the conversation about contemporary Australian politics has become a creative outlet for her.

"With people that you know offline - not through blogs - you like them and spend time with them but you can't always talk about interesting things with them," she says.

"You can't just go up to a stranger in a pub and button-hole them and start talking about interesting things, either. But with blogs you can find a community of people who are interesting to talk to."

And while Helen is not one of those bloggers who like to reveal all about their personal crises online (and there are plenty who do), she still derives emotional support from her online network of friends.

"When I went through my own personal 'dark night of the soul' a few years ago, I certainly got an emotional boost from people reading my blog, liking my writing and having the mastery of that," she explains.

"I would definitely say that I was saner as a result of blogging."

Part of that increased sanity is derived from learning the craft of writing and receiving immediate feedback on her work.

"With my blog I have to write posts that people want to read. If I don't write in a way that is interesting then no one will read it, and I like that - it's sink or swim," Helen says.

Another blogger who shares her enthusiasm for blogging is Claire Robertson, a Melbourne artist and author of the hugely popular Loobylu. Robertson says that the discipline of sitting down to construct a readable 400-word post has definitely made her a better writer.

"My dad is my grammar and spell checker but I find I am getting far fewer phone calls from him these days saying 'you've got an apostrophe in an 'its' that shouldn't be there'," she laughs.

When her second child was a baby, Robertson found the rigours of keeping up her blogs took too much time from her young family so she put her blogs into hiatus for a year. Early this year she began posting to Loobylu again because she missed the creative community she had been part of.

"Now that I have life under control a bit again, I am doing my own creative work and feel I have something to say again," Robertson says. "I love documenting my art and the development of my work and I love the feedback I get from other people who are doing creative things, too, or who just appreciate what I am trying to do. I like that others are blogging about the same sorts of things and I feel a bit like I am part of something bigger - that there are people out there who are like me, who 'get' me."

Another blogger who draws inspiration from being part of a greater "whole" is "Suze", a blogger from inner-city Sydney.

Her blog, Personal Political, derives its name from the principle that the personal is the political, so she provides insights into her life as well as comments on current affairs.

Suze says that she attempts to provide some alternative to the mainstream thought and news.

"I don't think I always achieve this, but ideally I see my blog as an alternative to the increasingly banal, superficial and celebrity-obsessed mainstream online media," she says. "I like to write. I like to grapple with the complex and difficult aspects of daily life. Blogging is a very easy avenue for doing both of those."

On the more personal side, Suze says that her blog posts help her to sort out mental dilemmas in her own mind, as well as discuss them online.

"For me, it's a two-sided process," she says. "There's the writing, which helps me in itself, and there's the comments in response, which also help. So when I have problems, it's not that I directly seek help, but the process of blogging can be therapeutic and the community really is a community."

Indeed, many bloggers find that their online and offline communities blend and intersect in ways that complement each other. Loobylu's readership includes her parents, overseas family, offline friends and new friends she has made online. She says her blog helps her to find connections more easily with new friends.

"I find people really respond to me differently once they have read my blog," she says. "It can be initially strange realising that they know much more about me than I know about them but then it's like there's a sudden connection and they might start chatting to me about things that we have in common which we would have never found out about otherwise."

Steven Noble, Sydney author of the blog Life in Chippendale has also found that his blog has helped him to form connections with people in his local community.

"I will sometimes go into my local, the Duck & Swan, and see someone I know. They'll introduce me to their friends and say something like 'this is the guy who does Life in Chippendale' and that helps to start a conversation," he says.

Noble's blog is part of a sub-genre which focuses on specific geographical locations and celebrates the physical communities around them.

Brian Ward, author of Fitzroyalty, focuses on inner-city Fitzroy, while The Adventures of ShinyShiny and Halfeman is a project of two bloggers who walk the streets of Melbourne recording obscure details and eating ice cream.

While Noble uses his blog as a forum to discuss development issues in the tiny Sydney suburb of Chippendale, his blog also documents his exploration of the quirks and gems in his local neighbourhood. "I have always been interested in neighbourhoods," says Noble.

"This is the neighbourhood that makes sense to (my partner and I) so we have been willing to invest more in creating links to the people in it."

Noble's approach clearly works. Far from the stereotype of being lonely people holed up in their bedrooms, bloggers might actually turn out to be the cornerstones of our future communities.

I like the bit where they talk about blogging. The article speaks a lot about it.

AAAAAAAAA

A blog post with every single category marked (I'm doing this for scribefire)

How to argue effectively

This should be required reading for anyone who comments anywhere on the internet. If you don't you're an ass hat.

Busy

Doing something else at the moment. Will return to blogging shortly! Don't go away just yet!

Font changed

Do people have any problems with this font?

Reasons for blogging?

From the department of altruism never existed:

Blogging may help people feel happier and more satisfied with their friends, according to Melbourne researchers.

The findings, from researchers at Swinburne University of Technology, show that after two months, new bloggers felt more socially connected than those who did not blog.

Psychologist James Baker said this suggested that blogging could actually be good for people - helping them to feel part of a community.

"It makes people feel closer and more connected," Mr Baker said.

"That's good because there's been a fair bit of press about the dangers of blogging ... so you'd hope there's some sort of benefit."

The research, conducted by Mr Baker and Professor Susan Moore, is based on two surveys, with the first asking 134 new users of the social networking site MySpace whether or not they intended to blog.

The results, published in the latest edition of the journal CyberPsychology & Behaviour, showed people who intended to blog were more psychologically distressed than those who didn't intend to blog.

They had higher levels of depression, anxiety and stress, and were more likely to use self-blame and venting to cope and also less satisfied with the number of friends they had.

Two months later the researchers followed up 59 of the same group of MySpace users, this time comparing those who had blogged to those who had not.

The findings, which have been submitted to a journal, showed the bloggers were happier about the number of friends they had, both online and face-to-face, and were more likely to reach out to these friends for help.

'They felt more socially integrated," Mr Baker said. "They felt that their friends were a better fit and they connected better."

The researchers are planning further research that will look at the experiences of a larger group of bloggers.

Ron...

I've changed the font colour to be dark grey rather than black. I read somewhere that certain "people" find too high a contrast "black on white" to be disturbing, which makes me wonder how they read the newspaper or even pdf documents.

Of course you're not one of them. Let me know if it is better.

Poll fixed up

Please vote again. I had forgotten to allow multiple answers.

I'm going back to teaching

For all of 2007 I basically functioned as a "house husband" after I returned from teaching in Griffith. It's had its advantages - not least the time to blog a lot - but I've decided to go back to work.

This decision is not so much an emotional one but a practical one. As many of you know my mother in law is ill with cancer. There's a very good chance that she might die this year. My wife, who has been working at Centrelink as a Social Worker, needs to stop work to care more for her mum.

So, Anna will be finishing up work this Friday, and I will begin - again - a period of "casual teaching" whereby High schools in our area who have sick teachers will ring me up and ask me to work that day. This sort of work isn't always reliable, but as Autumn is around the corner, more teachers will catch colds or go on professional development days and need their classes taken care of.

Today I visited four schools - two Christian schools, a private non-Christian school and a small public school near our home that specialises in children with physical disabilities. I handed over my resume, filled in forms, spoke to people in charge, etc etc. My experience is that once you have taught at a school once and "proved" yourself to the right staff members, you tend to become the no. 1 person they call when they need someone. When I was working like this back in 2002/2003, two schools in particular would call me up. Most of my work would come from these two schools, with one or two others thrown in as well.

Will this affect my blogging? I don't know. Usually if a school rings me up it occurs between 6.30am and 8.00pm, which means that I need to be up and showered by at least 6.30am. I may be able to spend a bit of time blogging in the "early hours" as a result. At night, though, with no lessons to prepare or exams to mark, it will be easy to blog.

So anyway, if people could pray that things work out that would be wonderful!

I hae a cod

Tay away. You miht ctach one from vsiting my bog site.

Writing fiction

As a small percentage of you know, I have used this blog to write some short stories. The last one I wrote was titled "F-14 Short Story" (mainly because I couldn't bother finding a good title). The one before that was titled "November 22, 1963" and explains, in prose, my theory of what really happened when JFK was assassinated.

I also have two other blogs which I never update. "Entropy" is a TV-like script I wrote about 10 years ago. Think of "X-Files" and "Brazil" and "Pulp Fiction" all mixed together. Caldera is an idea I had a few years ago for an alternative Police Drama, but didn't go beyond the ideas.

Lately I've been toying around with another idea. What I'm going to try to do is write a Police Drama story based in a fictional county in West Virginia. I've got the basic stuff thought up and Chapter One is nearly finished.

My aim is to write a chapter a week - about 2000 words - of one scene. This won't be a serious project (I'll licence it under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Australia License which allows anyone to modify it, copy it and use it for commercial purposes without having to pay me) and it'll be done as a bit of fun. I'm not trying to become an author or anything silly like that - I just feel like I want to write and I have a good idea.

At this stage I'll be publishing every Friday. I will be including swear words in the dialogue and there will be descriptions of violence.

A Reminder

When I write an entire section in italics, it means that I am quoting. I may actually believe in what the section quotes, but please don't attribute the quote to me. Nor should you assume that I agree with everything that has been quoted. Nor should you infer anything much about my character or belief by looking into someone else's writing that I have quoted.

Why am I saying this?

Here is a QUOTE from a guy called Matthew who left a comment on a recent post I made about Wade Burlson and Al Mohler:

I have just stumbled across your site and based on this posting it is clear that you have not really studied Dr. Mohler. You are also full of contradictions. If you seriously think that Calvinism has no Biblical warrant then how do you explain God having control over creation and God saving anyone. God chose to redeem his people some that one must believe to be a Christian and is a starting point for Calvinism. Lastly, you imply that Mohler is a open theist. You are just flat out wrong on that. Listen to his radio show and read his blog. You will see that although you might not agree with the man all the time you must respect him. Not only for what he did at Southern Seminary but for the simple fact that he standing in the gap and trying to convey Biblcial truth to an unbiblical society.

What poor Matthew is complaining about is not what I wrote, but about what Wade Burlson wrote about Al Mohler. He has read a quote that I copied and pasted from Wade Burlson's site and somehow believed that I had written it, even though it is clear from the posting and the italics that I was quoting. Moreover, he has also assumed from this posting that I somehow believe that "Calvinism has no Biblical warrant", which sorta goes against everything I have said on this blog. Check my FAQ and you'll see that I'm a five-point Calvinist.

I'm having a Blog Break

No particular reason. Just feel I should lie back for a week. Back soon.

Upgrading Computer - no posting for a while

Guest Bloggers anyone?

Would anyone like to write an article? I'm not short on writing them myself but if anyone out there wishes to write in a blog post about something then I'll seriously consider it. Ron, Dave, Beamer that means you.

Hols

On hols. Back soon.

Don't forget to vote for your favourite canned food.

Infuriating

1. Writing detailed comment (300 words?) on a Christian blog site. Takes me 15 minutes to write properly.
   
2. Finished comment. Entered the security code and pressed "publish".
3. "Wrong security code" says the next screen. "Press the back button on your browser"
4. Press back button.
5. My comment (300 words) is gone.
   

The eye

What's it symbolise? It is my great eye of judgement, looking down upon you saying "you have a speck there!".