i've looked at clouds from both sides now

...and I still don't understand cloud computing.

Surely you need a box or something somewhere to connect..only connect, baby...

Meanwhile, Les Macdonald of Balmain gets it right in the SMH today.

Learning from our failures

It is a testament to the durability of ideology in the face of reality that we still have American consulting groups recommending the failed ideology of privatisation ("Push to privatise apprentice training", October 29).

These are the same US consulting groups that for 30 years have recommended to US companies that they send the jobs of US workers offshore, to the point where the US now lacks a viable manufacturing base. These same consultants said the US
would create post-industrial jobs in sophisticated service industries such as finance, IT and science.

But the IT and science-based industries also moved to China and India, leaving only finance and the low-skilled, low-paid service jobs. Again, with the active encouragement of the same consulting firms, the US government deregulated its finance industry. Reality intervened to turn that industry toxic. Why anyone with a functioning brain would continue to listen to the recommendations of such failures is beyond me.

Les MacDonald Balmain

Only I don't think it's just Amercan consultants still pushing that particular tired old barrow. Ideology is not only durable, it's kind of...expandable. Give it half a chance, it'll populate all the nooks and crannies it can find.

Meanwhile, here's a young man with an incipient problem. The video is a ripper, but apart from the young man's rant I was mostly taken with the Chrissy Amphlett clone standing behind him (maybe the next act?) and when the kid doing the videoing said "Holy God" at the end. As it was Corpus Christi College, could you expect no less I suppose.

Through most of the rant I was thinking, "hmmm, young Liberal stockbroker type in the making", except I rather suspect he might harbour Che Guevara-ish tendencies. Look out Mr Headmaster when you get back from India.

Unsettling, no? So let me lead you back to quiet contemplation: here's a picture of a blue garden setting in a green garden, which I am sure will give you lots to think about.