festival on
Email Article Today is a public holiday in Australia, but allied with World Architecture Day, Sydney was also holding the Sydney Architecture Festival. Now while I have absolutely no idea about architecture, I do enjoy from a lay point of view. I didn't have a lot of time available, but I did make some time to drop into Customs House to check things out. I would have liked to have done one of the tours out to Cockatoo Island but just couldn't fit it into this weekend. Which is a bit of a shit. Maybe next year eh? Hopefully things will have sorted themselves out a bit more.
After my quick visit to the Festival I headed off to catch up with a friend for a movie. His choice. Big action movie fan so Babylon A.D. wasn't really a surprise. Interesting choice I have to say while I think Vin Diesel is a total hotty (although he is getting a bit old) this movie is not at all good. Probably give it a miss - because even the director thought the studio had turned it into a piece of shit.
Earlier in the week I noticed that Barry Brook from the University of Adelaide decided to challenge Australia to go renewable. Much in the same way as Al Gore did with the US year ago, Barry said we should attempt a nation-building project over the next 10 years - in the same vein as the Overland Telegraph or the Snowy Mountains Scheme - to satisfy all of our electricity needs from renewable sources. He noted that 80% of Australians support carbon trading and that Australia has more than enough wind, geothermal and solar energy to make this bold scheme a reality - but do we have the political will?
His argument is simple. Coal and oil are becoming scarce, while at the same time renewables are becoming cheaper as the the technology and economies of scale improve. If we use our current terms of trade windfalls to decarbonise the economy - we will be in a lead position to sell these new technologies to the rest of the world as they catch on. The argument is that the funds from the carbon trading scheme should go straight into upgrading to cleaner energy sources. Also if we redirect the $10bn in subsidies to fossil fuel industries to the renewable sector - this would help us along. Effectively we would turn into a clean energy exporter.
I hope everyone enjoyed their long weekend. Back to work tomorrow.
a fall out boy
Fall Out Boy have a bunch of quite fun tracks, but the standout has to be self proclaimed 'half gay' boy Pete Wentz. I'm reminded of Pete because of his appearance on this weeks episode of Californication. I really like the tatts. Yummo. Pity his half gay status means that he isn't gay and he married Ashlee Simpson earlier in the year. But he says he likes making out with guys - I'd be happy with that.
lazy sunday
A bit of a slow day. I had a little bit of work to get done in the morning and then I headed out to Kinokuniya for a while to pick up some Lonely Planet guides for Chicago and Washington DC (I already had New York). I had Beejive (and MSN) on on my phone and a close friend messaged me for a chat - I think I ended up spending an hour plus sitting in one of the bookstores comfy chairs just chatting over 3G. I have to say, Beejive makes that very easy to do (sans for a couple of bugs).
I was interested to read that one of the cars that will be coming out to the Australian International Motor Show which starts in Sydney at the end of next week is the Nissan Mixim concept car. It has pretty radical styling but I quite like it. It is a purely electric car which has controls more like a game console than a conventional vehicle. It runs on lithium ion batteries and has two electric motors (one for the front wheels and one for the back). They claim it can do 180km/h and can cover 250km without recharging - which is a shitload more than more electrics are claiming. Recharge it on GreenPower and it is produces zero emissions. My kinda car - pity it will never get produced.