Just when I thought the bizarre ‘go on, have more kids’ ads from Anzac Day had faded into obscurity … the crackpots emerge with a new round of ads in every major daily in the country!

See page 57 of today’s West Australian. The guy running the show even went on national TV yesterday morning.

Their site is unchanged, except for the forums that were promptly removed when comments unfriendly to their cause appeared, and their comments on immigration which disappeared after people cried ‘racism’.

Pretty much every opinion on these ads that I’ve read agrees that this is the work of a crackpot, racist, or misogynist (or all of the above!). So I’m left to wonder … what on earth do these people hope to achieve?

A week ago I went and bought myself a PowerEdge SC430, the Dell server that is super-cheap thanks to a current special.

It arrived yesterday. My inner geek has not stopped drooling since.

While I’m not a fan of the Pentium D, at least it’s a dual core chip, and this box has all of the coolness of a server (snap-lock case, easy disc drive install) for a ridiculous price.

Meanwhile: to Alinta/AGL I say “yay compromise!” and to this I say “hear, hear!”

Federal Cabinet met today and launched a raft of crazy new policies (no, literally, they’re crazy. It’s like they intend to call an election tomorrow or something).

• The most worrying proposal, and the one getting all the airtime, is the plan for a smartcard to replace every other Federal card service. I’m glad they didn’t go for the big goal of Australia Card 2.0, but will this card really be all that different? Sure it’ll help to make health services less inconvenient, but the data mining possibilities are enormous. Then again, maybe I shouldn’t be concerned — after all, SmartRider still doesn’t work correctly
• Also widely discussed is the plan to sell Medibank Private. I have no take on this issue other than to say “what, you’re surprised?”
• Not so talked-about is Downer’s announcement of a new focus for Australian government aid in our region, right alongside his reprimand of China and Taiwan over ‘chequebook diplomacy’. It actually seems like a good plan, although I doubt it’ll have the far-reaching impact that it aims for.

Some of my other discoveries today:

• This post about the consultancy McKinsey struck me, since I’ve previously considered applying to work there, what with their campus recruiting being so very very slick. Two years in a row they’ve sent me shiny postcards saying “come work for us”!
• What’s up with Google and the Da Vinci Code cross-promotion? Have they gone and sold out to a film company?
• On the topic of Google: drinking out of coconuts! Maybe I should try to get a job there instead.
• And finally: I want one of these.

First there was e-mail spam. Although I’ve been getting a massive influx of it lately, between SpamAssasin and Thunderbird I’m coping okay. (P.S. if you receive spam from vwnhy@dview.net, it’s not me, I swear!)

Then there was comment spam. I was (and am) mildly annoyed, but Akismet is awesome.

But now I’m being spammed on my mobile phone! Some months ago a crazy marketing company called me and lots of other people to try to get us to use some premium 1900 service. Today I got a missed call from 0381029565, and 4 Wise Monkeys confirms that it’s the same firm doing the same thing. Again. Grrr.

I was considering ranting about a few different things today, such as the rained-out Anzac Day parade, the worrying developments in US copyright law (that may well be copied over here), or the UN’s rather depressing new report on human trafficking.

But then I read today’s newspaper and saw the full-page ad by some crackpot in western Sydney that’s trying to get people to go and pop out a few more kids.

What the?!

How on earth do these people figure that (assuming their campaign is wildly successful) an Australia of 25 million will be able to achieve anything that the Australia of 20 million cannot?

Fortunately, the site’s forums seem to have already been hijacked by people who agree

Update 26 Apr: It seems the crackpots don’t like to hear dissenting opinions — they went and pulled the forums from the site. Also, see some other comments on the ad.

My login for this blog is azza-bazoo (which will look familiar to anyone who’s ever IMed me). This was fine in the old version of WordPress that I used to have, but WordPress 2 (quite annoyingly) refuses to allow me to edit a user with a hyphen in its name in the admin panel.

The fix: Rudd-O’s super-handy WordPress allow dashes plugin.

Other than that, and some annoyances caused by the whizz-bang Midas post editor, this version of WP is awesome.