Some weeks ago I saw some unusual black billboards popping up around town; they asked rhetorical questions and gave nothing more than a Web address. This is a common method used by anarchist and anti-corporate groups trying to recruit people — pose a difficult question then direct people to your site with more details, and do it in an ad so that you’re appropriating the very means of the corporations you’re trying to bring down.

Instead, it was just an ad for Coke Zero.

What’s up with that — a foreign corporation using its huge marketing budget to imitate the very techniques that small grassroots organisations try to use against them? “Sorry sir, we ran out of ideas, but we know those far-left political groups are a threat to sales. Why don’t we just copy their tactics?” (And what’s the deal with that ‘blog’?!)

P.S. How disappointing, but entirely unsuprising, to see Lleyton Hewitt drop out of the Aussie Open. All those people who were pinning hopes on him to be the first Australian winner in ages have been proven wrong (again) and somehow I doubt that his form will improve enough to let him win in future. Meanwhile, that dude Chela looks like one to watch …