The action that you choose to take should take into account the possible situation that you are in. For instance, if you have agreed to call every 30 minutes and miss a call in, phoning back is not a useful safeguard if the battery in your phone has died. For this reason it can be beneficial to split communication methods so as to not allow for a single point of failure. For instance, you may choose to write three blog posts within 24 hours to inform your safety line that you are still alive (for now) and even give away information on your whereabouts (photographs are especially good, doubly if they include Geocodes). Unfortunately this mechanism is susceptible to attack, and could also become unavailable if the country you are visiting happens to ban your website (again a potential single point of failure). You may even be travelling in an area where they don’t have internet access or mobile phone coverage.

Depending on where you are travelling and how much you want to mitigate risk you may need to invest in a good satellite phone (or two), an EPIRB satellite beacon or simply forego the holiday and spend the time in your fallout shelter, shotgun in hand watching the door. You do have a fallout shelter, right?

Better yet, why not utilise the system that has been used throughout time and take a buddy with you. At least then if you both lose your kidneys you get a wonderful shared experience to end your vacation.

So, having now “hooked up” with someone he has has to turn back to his friends in Australia to perform a very important duty: “Keeping track of his kidneys”. Unfortunately this plan was enacted too late and didn’t have enough detail to properly react to this scenario. Fortunately he still claimed to have his Kidneys less than 24 hours ago, but I can’t be certain he has them at the time of writing.

Don’t think this is purely limited to the stealing of Kidneys. Other problems you need to keep aware of include:

• Stealing other organs. Sure, kidneys are the main ones, but you’ve already crossed a line, so why not harvest some other organs while you are at it, such as your liver or corneas.
• Kidnapping. Even if you don’t have anyone back home willing to fork out for your ransom, you may still be worth something to kidnappers who can send your bodyparts in the place of genuine kidnap victims in order to encourage the ransomee (is that even the right word? If not, it is now) to fork out the dough.
• Slavery. Don’t underestimate your worth on the slave market.
• Being accidentally married and thus being financially responsible for your new bride/groom’s entire family

So with all these things that can possibly go wrong who in their right mind would want to even travel overseas? I’ve heard culture and life experience are a couple of reasons.

So that you can continue having life experiences that don’t involve getting you addicted to drugs and becoming someone’s sex slave in their dungeon, you can arrange a plan to communicate your whereabouts and status to the outside world. Depending on the level of the problem, a quick call to the local embassy or a crack team of mercenaries will be ready to assist and extract you from any situation lickety split.

Unfortunately my friend consulted someone else to make these arrangements, who despite their many years of watching violent television and films has not been left as paranoid about how to prevent or deal with these situations as I. It’s important to take life lessons from movies.

The first and most important step is regular communication. How regular will be dependent on where you are going and what sort of access you have to communication equipment. Communication can be either one-way or two-way. If the communication is one-way you need to establish a protocol for verifying the validity of the communique and a plan if the communique is malformed. Most importantly is the need for a duress word. This word needs to be arranged in advance when their is a high degree of certainty that the person is not under duress.
Duress words

The best part about duress words is their ability to add extra meaning to your message. For this reason it is important to have more than one. Using these words you can communicate important information to give an approximate location, description of the problem and even a rough count of how large the team of mercenaries should be.

It is important that the duress words be able to be slotted in with your normal messages without arising suspicion. Poor choices of duress words include “help”, “I’m being kidnapped” and “get me the f@# out of here”.

Because the duress words are supposed to be so normal it is possible that a duress word may accidentally be used in a communique. That’s why it is important to have a procedure to follow when a duress word is received, a communique is late or malformed. Usually this procedure would have varying degrees of action as you increase your state of readiness. You can either use numbers or colours^[1] (or a combination of the two) to help make it easy to determine where in the process you might be.

In my next post I’ll describe what steps to take as you move from one alert level to another.

1. That’s right, colour is spelt with a “u” [back ↩]

This tells me three important things:

1. I should write more posts about proposing, relationships, etc
2. There must be a shortage of good information on the Internet about this topic
3. The people of the Internet will listen to anyone for advice

With that out of the way, let’s start to explore this topic that the Internet seems to deem me an authority on, proposing.

I am a student of film and television (in the sense that I watch a lot of it). Most of what I’ve learnt about life I have picked up from movies and TV. Most importantly I have learnt that life is not at all like what I see on movies and television. There is no guarantee of a happy ending. Indeed, things don’t seem to quite end or wrap up nicely as they do on film. That’s why I like film and television. I watch it because it isn’t what I see around me every day, but I can still apply broad concepts.

Proposing is all about managing risk. Indeed, everything about life is about managing risk. Risk is what makes life enjoyable. Knowing the answer to every problem is not quite as gratifying as solving the problem.

So where was I? Right, proposing and risk. The trick I suppose to dealing with the risk of proposing is to break it down in to the factors that contribute most to the risk. By recognising these factors, it should become easier to pick the best time to propose, or even if you should.

Factors are likely to be different for each person, but it is probably best to look at the long term goals and aspirations of each side to see how well they combine. If sleeping with as many people as possible is your goal and your partner’s is to be involved in a committed monogamous relationship, perhaps your long term prospects aren’t tied well together. Similarly, if you are looking to travel and explore the world and you partner wants to settle down and start a family you might also be on the wrong track.

Ideally you want to find a partner whose life path travels parallel or intertwines with yours. There is obviously going to be some compromises along the way, but when one path winds to the left, so must the other for the relationship to continue. Of course, compromise has to go both ways.

Perhaps the hardest part of accepting the risk of proposing is to accept that there is no right answer to the question (the question being “will you marry me?” if you have lost track). A “no” can be a positive step as it may make it clearer that your paths are diverging. Similarly a “yes” may lead to further trouble down the road if those paths diverge.

But as I was saying earlier, the risks in life are what make it interesting. Importantly, these risks can come with great rewards. So if you are prepared and ready, take the plunge and best of luck to you.

Several countries (Poland included) have enough balls to boycott the olympic games because of the problems. I wish we could do the same, but not because I think it would make China change their behaviour, but because it would at least affirm our true position.

Seriously, picking on monks? That’s just rough.

I don’t like conflict. I tend to avoid it in day to day life, but sometimes conflict is necessary to reach a resolution. If Tibet wants to be free I say let them be free and we should support them in any way necessary to achieve that freedom.

In true Harry Potter style, the owl (pictured left), swept into my brother’s room. I heard the commotion as Nathan shouted at the owl to get out of his room. Investigating, the owl was resting quietly in corner, but with some encouragement and the use of blanket (or possibly Invisibility Cloak), I was able to persuade the owl to leave the room through the open window.

This particular owl has been sitting outside my brother’s window for many months now. Is it merely a coincidence that the owl entered now? I think not.

True to their word, iTunes Plus was launched today, the last day of May^[1]. Despite that there was no initial announcement regarding the Australian iTunes store, fortunately it was included.

So what is iTunes Plus? Well, it’s the same music plus an extra 128kbps (adding up to 256kpbs) minus the DRM that makes it more difficult than it should be to move from one computer to another. Oh, and it’s also plus an extra 50 cents (Australian store).Eager to upgrade my library I fired up iTunes this morning and discovered that I needed to update it. iTunes 7.2 is needed, presumably because there is a lot of integration of the store with iTunes the application. After updating I had trouble connecting hopefully because everyone else was upgrading their libraries too. Upgrading my library wasn’t as easy as I’d hoped. It didn’t hit me in the face quite as much as the complete my album feature does. But I managed to get through to iTunes plus to be greeted with a new set of terms and conditions.

After getting through all that (as far as I recall, the main difference was that iTunes plus purchases exclude some of the restrictions listed in the terms and conditions) I finally saw that I had 8 tracks that could be upgraded. Hopefully more will be available over time.

Unfortunately connectivity issues with the iTunes store prevented me from downloading the files straight away. Fortunately iTunes is fairly fault-tolerant and they are sitting in my download queue.

I haven’t yet run into any roadblocks with the iTunes store DRM yet, but I haven’t had to re-install OS X. You are able to burn tracks to CD, place them on up to five computers and as many iPods as you like. This is obviously a big restriction if you don’t have an iPod. These restrictions are all lifted with iTunes plus.

You may however be interested to know that your full name and email address is apparently embedded into the file^[2]. So don’t go putting them up on your favourite P2P network. I wouldn’t be too concerned about this, although some have pointed out that it makes it more difficult to resell. I see it as being somewhat similar to having my name and phone number in a book I bought. The other issue is that people are concerned about people stealing iPods. Personally I think you’ve got bigger problems if someone is stealing your iPod (they can likely steal other things too).

Of course, you aren’t allowed to use tracks from iTunes as a ringer on a mobile phone (even with iTunes Plus, although there is no technical restriction). Personally I hope this condition is just about good taste. It will be interesting to see if this changes when the iPhone is released.

1. Apple Launches iTunes Plus [back ↩]
2. Apple hides account info in DRM-free music too [back ↩]

With lots of experience in writing about when to propose, what to do with rings, etc. I thought I was in a perfect position to start a relationship. What a mistake!I’m not a huge fan of the “clubbing” scene, but that doesn’t mean I like to be confined to the house. The probability of two people who don’t like “clubbing” to meet at a club is incredibly low. With this first test in mind I am left with finding people at work or on the Internet.

Sure, I get emails all the time from “Sexy Ladies” who seem to want to be my sex slave, but this seems a bit too forward for me. I’ve always thought that sodomy shouldn’t happen on the first date. I’m a bit conservative that way. So, surely people who share some common ground with me would be using the Internet, right? And if they were, they were likely to be on Internet dating sites.

I thought I had found the solution through a logical process. Unfortunately, after being on a site for over a year I have received no responses. Not one. Something was wrong. I had also tried to initiate contact with several people, each of whom responded with either a rejection or not at all. I was beginning to feel quite discouraged.

From this experience I think I’ve worked out what one of the key problems with this is. People are looking for perfection. If you don’t have rock hard abs and can bench press twice your body weight, you shouldn’t bother. This negates the effect of finding compatible personalities. Unless of course, my personality is so utterly offensive it scared everyone away.

So now that the Internet has failed me, I guess it’s time for Plan B, asking random people on the street.

1. not to each other [back ↩]

Meanwhile, in Australia, Prime Minister John Howard and opposition leader Kevin Rudd are debating to what extent Australia is responsible to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions. Both have acknowledged that a reduction of emissions is needed. Australia and New Zealand count for approximately 1.1 percent of the worlds contribution to global warming^[2]. John Howard has expressed that any targets need to be considered carefully, emphasising that Australia’s global warming role doesn’t compare to that of the United States and China^[3].

In Australia, one of the primary ways to reduce carbon dioxide emissions is through the use of renewable energy. A report from green groups suggests that a move to renewable sources of power, such as wind and solar could generate new jobs^[4]. This is the sort of financial incentive that is needed to move towards a real reduction in carbon dioxide emissions.

Australia is also behind in the federal government’s projections to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, according to a report by the Climate Institute^[5], suggesting Australia is not on track to meet its Kyoto targets. Federal Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull disagreed with the findings of the report, pointing out that it omits offsets from land use.

Whether the issue of tackling global warming is significant to Australia or not, the Queensland public are concerned about climate change^[6]. Whether the Australian economy is perceived to be able to bear the weight of strong action will be a key factor in what position Australia will take in the years ahead.

1. Schwarzenegger: Make environment sexy - NEWS.com.au [back ↩]
2. as cited in An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore, 2006, page 251 [back ↩]
3. PM Howard lays into Rudd’s green credibility - NEWS.com.au [back ↩]
4. Green energy could fuel job boom: report - ABC [back ↩]
5. Garrett, Turnbull at odds over climate change report - ABC [back ↩]
6. Qld public frets over climate change - ABC [back ↩]

Travis Taylor and Bob Boan have written An Introduction to Planetary Defence. Taylor, with degrees in astronomy and physics and Boan, with consulting experience for the defence department (article doesn’t state which country) and NASA^[4].

This bizarre array of articles suggests that the possibilities are moving more into the limelight. Maybe we need a bit of alien interruption to get things working again.

1. Scientists find most Earth-like planet yet - ABC [back ↩]
2. British bookies scared of aliens - ABC [back ↩]
3. Rio Tinto researchers find ‘real life kryptonite’ - ABC [back ↩]
4. Are you ready for the aliens - NEWS.com.au [back ↩]

Are you looking for a hobby that simultaneously demonstrates your writing skills, while allowing you to voice opinions on topics you are passionate about? Are you passionate about the environment? Are you self-motivated? Do you have excellent written communication skills? If so, this may be a great opportunity for you.

Whilst at this time, The Mill is unable to provide financial remuneration (it is currently being run at a loss with no income streams), we will provide a solid foundation upon which you can demonstrate your skills and will provide full written references for all members of our team. With further expansion and the creation of income streams on the cards for the future (The Mill and i-think Twenty-Two are currently working on an exciting new collaboration) we hope to be able to remedy this situation and will look at performance-based remuneration options.

In the meantime, the opportunity exists to get your foot in the door and to provide a stepping-stone for your career. The following opportunities are currently available:

Muse - 2 positions available

If you are constantly trawling the internet looking at news articles, this may be an ideal position for you. The position requires that you submit 1-2 current news or blog articles per week, with a brief (10-20 words) commentary for how you you think The Mill should approach writing a full article on the topic. Citing additional sources for further information on an article would be valuable. The ideas and suggestions that you provide may be used in the creation of articles for The Mill to be used at the discretion of the writing and editorial team.

Writer - 1 position available

Are you able to step back from a news item and analyse it? Can you spark interesting debate, looking at both sides of an issue? Can you be provided with an idea and run with it? If so, this might be the position for you. As a writer, you will be expected to produce 3-4 articles per week, based on your own ideas, or be allocated a story submitted by a Muse. (Articles are allocated by the editorial team based on who would produce the most interesting article). As a writer you are also free to elect to take on an article idea submitted by a muse without being allocated it directly by an editor.

Work of writers is subject to editorial review, where the editor will check the article for spelling errors and ensure the integrity of the article. Editors may prevent your article from being published if it contains blatantly incorrect information, does not provide adequate references, or is blatantly commercial in content. Editors will always provide the writer the opportunity to review their work so that it can be published under the high level of integrity expected of The Mill. Writers are also able to have their work reviewed by other writers.

This position provides you with the opportunity to work in an editorial environment, whilst allowing your creativity to be set free.

Editor - 1 position available

If you have excellent writing skills, strong ethics and a passion for exceptional content, this position is for you. Editors review article content for correctness and sufficient referencing, as well as providing feedback to writer’s when more information or clarification is required. Editors are also free to publish their own articles, which they are expected to keep at the same level of quality. Editors are expected to produce at least one editorial article each week.

Editors are answerable to the Chief Editor, who will review their work.

How to apply

To apply for any of these positions, or for more information, make a comment on this post and we’ll email your shortly to start the recruitment process. Don’t put your contact details in the comment as if you’ve commented before it will be put on the site immediately.

We’re looking forward to your applications and your participation in the next step for The Mill.