The Art of Innovative Consumption - Part 1

When competition is lacking and prices rise, are there still choices? Often there are not, certainly not obvious and appealing ones. However, with some creativity and resourcefulness, we as consumers have the ability to move about the market place and fins alternatives in ways business doesn’t factor into its modelling because they are not statistically significant. Doing this can save us a great deal and can enrich our lives in surprising ways. This article will introduce some alternative approaches to being a consumer and discuss some of their merits.

            Being an innovative consumer is a good way to save money. However, other benefits include reducing waste and choosing to support companies and businesses that are good employers and choose environmentally sustainable business models.

            A good first step for many in terms of becoming an innovative consumer is to shop around. Simply calling a few businesses out of the Yellow Pages for quotes is better than nothing, but often the quotes are altogether too similar and the results can be disappointing. Therefore, assuming that one has made a decision to obtain a particular product, one needs to think creatively about alternative ways to obtain it. This means looking beyond the brands and retailers that market directly to one’s own location and demographic and searching further afield.

Though prices are said to be set through supply and demand in the market place, this is slightly misleading because it suggests that there is one marketplace. There are in fact many, and the same product may be competing in several. For example, buying a desk top computer from a major retailer can be a costly business, with retail mark ups in excess of fifty percent and manufacturers using the most basic possible parts in order to keep their profit margins as high as possible. If we compare their prices with some smaller computer shops they may appear reasonable, since many small computer shops aim to compete for the same market segment by keeping prices only slightly lower and offering a similar quality product. It is only when we actively go in search of businesses appealing to a different target market that we are able to see any real difference. For example, if we look for businesses that aim to sell computers to the IT savvy, we see that we are able to obtain a similar system for less than half the price. We may need to wait in line for it and have someone talk to us in high speed jargon with a strong accent, but if we knew what we were after in the first place and did our homework, there it would be. What is more, we would have many options and be able to buy something tailored to our individual needs.

A crucial aspect of innovative consumption that makes the above scenario possible is our ability to do research and know what products will suit us before we approach whomever is selling them. Reading the tech blurbs on the Harvey Norman website it is sometimes difficult to imagine that the products and technologies they offer have anything to do with the jargon and model codes that are used to represent products in the catalogues of IT catalogues. Their language is modified to suit their communication team’s target audience, of whom you may unwittingly find yourself a member if your knowledge of language is restricted to commonly known terminology. To be a truly innovative consumer, you have to learn specialised vocabulary. Learning one or more second language also helps as will be elaborated in part two. Stay tuned.

To be continued…

In the mean time, here is some further reading on the subject. Proceeds appreciated by this blogger. 

PM Will be Swayed by Party on Gay Marriage

I've argued all along that Julia Gillard would back marriage equality in the end. By the looks of it, her party do already. This is a clear indication that it's only a matter of time. Resisting this kind of progress is futile and altogether silly. 

Note: Censorship has been added to protect the identities of the people posting.

Poverty

If those people who starve to death or die of preventable or treatable diseases every day were our friends, would we let them suffer and die? Of course not. Your friend is suffering, you help. Where are these people's friends then? Why are we not reaching out and making contact and being their friends? Can't we communicate globally with the click of a mouse now? Can't we socially network with them? Well, not really: they have no computers or Iphones now, as well as having no food. Does that make their problem twice as bad? It may. If we do all our communicating online, then how can they participate? Could we solve the problem of world poverty by setting up a Wifi network and handing out free Iphones instead of handing out food then? Could we run tours where people pay to be shown the reality of poverty and human suffering in the hope that once rendered visible it would no longer be tolerated?

Sadly, people have tried that using photography and television and it didn't work. People got used to seeing poverty. Now it's just another annoyance and we want it to go away. Well? Make it go away. Not just away from us, back to it's forgotten corners of the earth, but away properly so that it's victims can live in peace and have something to eat and a chance to study. 

Conscience Votes for Life and Death Issues

The Star Observer, an important community publication, today published predictions by an anonymous senior Labor MP that prime minister Gillard would call a conscience vote on the issue of marriage equality. It was suggested that this was a political move, designed to minimise any possible damage to her popularity that could be caused by ongoing public debate over the issue and that she would otherwise find her own position at odds with the majority of her party.

The source quoted was apparently concerned that a conscience vote could be used in this way, as normally they are used only for matters concerning 'life of death issues.' Making a distinction of that nature though, is not as straight forward as it may sound. Certainly the prevention of marriage isn't in itself going to kill anybody. However, what is at stake here is the issue of discrimination. Upholding the right to marriage equality will bring about profound cultural change by freeing us from a sticking point that contributes to the perpetuation of socially constructed difference. Discrimination without social structure becomes an obviously unacceptable act of individual aggression and will recede. Discrimination and social stigma are life and death matters, arguably far more significant than the examples the source used, such as abortion. They are, therefore, worthy of a conscience vote. 

The prime minister's motivations in this matter are certainly going to be subject to a great deal of speculation. Political convenience is certainly a possibly, but it would seem out of character. This is a prime minister who has got a huge amount of legislation and reform passed under difficult circumstances. It's worthwhile considering that she in fact hid her support for a price on carbon until it became politically achievable. It is therefore entirely possible that she has done the same in this instance and is playing her hand carefully with the intention of making marriage equality a reality. When the opportunity does arise, change will occur and no doubt the prime minister's actions will be instrumental. The prime minister is obviously no great social conservative and probably isn't all that reverential toward the institution of marriage, since she hasn't pursued it with her partner.

Marriage equality will certainly be brought about within the next couple of years. There is enough public support and there are plenty of MPs beginning to support it. We all have to keep pushing for it in public debate, but we are now at a stage when we can do so with a great deal of confidence. 

Community Detention; Finally.

In my previous post, 'Immigration Officials Getting it Wrong in Australia,' I pointed out that it would be far more humane, as well as more cost effective, if asylum seekers were to live in the community, rather than being detained, while their claims were processed. Today, finally, the government have announced that at least some of them will now be able to do so. An article in the Australian today read as follows: 


"Under a plan announced by the Prime Minister today, all asylum-seekers will be processed on Australian soil with community detention and bridging visas provided to those unable to be processed within the existing detention centre network." The Australian, 13/10/2011


This will not help the many asylum seekers who do fit in to the current detention facilities, which is a great shame and pity. However, it is certainly a huge step in the right direction and marks a divergence from the government and opposition's 'race to the bottom,' which has consisted to date of each party trying to outdo the other for sheer cruelty and abuse of human humanity's right to flee persecution. Let us hope it is the beginning of a broader rethinking of policy in this area. It is important that we all continue to pursue this issue in the spheres of public debate and to communicate some sense to the politicians. 

Mental Illness, Metaphor and Stigma

This BBC article highlights some concerns regarding the use of mental illness related terms in a metaphorical sense, usually in jest. The concern is that in using the terms to describe undesirable properties of people, phenomena (such as the weather) and other such things. It's a very valid concern. Language works powerfully at the level of assumption.

This is an issue that is no doubt going to polarise people into two camps. That will mean that the debate is bipolar, since it will have two poles. On the other hand, perhaps some of us will ourselves be in two minds about it. That would mean that a point of separation or cleavage, also known as a schism, would have occurred in our mind, which in ancient Greek would be phren as in phrenology. One who possessed a schism in his or her phren would no doubt have to be called a schizophrenic even if the term had not been thought up by Paul Eugen Bleuler in the study of hysteria and various related disorders a hundred years ago. The origins of the word are covered here.


The problem is, these mental illnesses have been understood and studied for only a very short time and the language used to describe them has generally been around much longer. The two halves of the word schizophrenia come from ancient Greek and, as I have demonstrated, putting them together makes a lot of sense in some contexts. With words like bipolar, that has been done long before the disorder came to be described by science.


Bleuler's understanding of schizophrenia was no doubt very different to how schizophrenics would like to be perceived today. Though he did argue against the idea that it was a form of dementia, highlighting examples of where intelligence was enhanced, not impeded, in his time the disease was seen as hereditary, leading to the forced sterilisation of sufferers in some places. Because the understanding of the condition to which the term referred at the time of its coinage was so different to what we mean by it today, we could say that the word possesses not one meaning, but many. Each time the meaning of a word changes within the field of study to which it is central, it leaves behind offshoots, because people who heard it, learned its meaning and started to use it as part of their own vocabulary do not necessarily follow the change in meaning or definition. The word doesn't just enter into our language culture once, but many times. Schisms develop between its meaning in popular culture, its meaning in science, its meaning among patients and practitioners. Some groups claim the right to take ownership of it and wrestle over it with others.


The term schizophrenia the latter use of the term as described by the Oxford Dictionary, to which objections are being raised, has been around for quite a while in scholarly literature. It was used by Lacan and by Jameson and many others. Given this, I don't think the dictionary has any choice but to include it. Jameson's 'Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism,' for example, uses various condugations of the term

The word bipolar means having two opposite ends or sides. We describe a magnet as a bipolar magnet. Anywhere, human or otherwise, where we wish to describe this property, the word is used. Our BBC article uses the example of calling the weather bipolar. Though there is no evidence one way or another, it is quite possible that people have been calling weather bipolar, because that is sometimes an apt description, since it may alternate between extremes, since a time long before the disorder was recognised.

I have a great deal of sympathy for victims of stigma. When I hear, for example, school children calling something they don't like 'gay' I get very annoyed with them. I accept that there is a need to give language and perception the odd tweak to ensure that discriminatory assumptions are not preserved in its meaning after they have been successfully combated in other spheres of communication. However, the examples in the BBCs are article are less clear cut than that. Perhaps some of these people need to pause a little and think about whether there really is any stigmatisation going on or not.

Just remember: if language had a mind, it would be schizophrenic.

This guy missed the point!

http://www.thewildeast.net/news/2011/01/taiwan-is-celebrating-100-years-of-what/

This Keating fellow seems to think that pointing out inconsistencies in the narrative of progress somehow undermines people's cause for celebration. He gives a lot of examples. However, it is clear from the comments that by the end of the article the Taiwanese people among his audience are not impressed.

Not everyone in Taiwan particularly likes the KMT (Nationalist party) and yes, there have been periods when their rule has been oppressive. This is part of a complex progression  and struggle that has led to the Taiwan of today. Like the history of many nations, the history of Taiwan is complex and at times regrettable. Of course! What country exists for which the same can't be said?

Like any nation, if the people of Taiwan are to be given a happy future, then their history has to be celebrated in terms of the creation of the beautiful lives they now lead and the home they now inhabit. Whatever happened, this is where we are now. If the past was bad, then we celebrate surviving it. If it was good, we celebrate achieving it. Taiwan today is a happy and beautiful place and 100 years of KMT history has been undeniably significant in shaping it. That's all the cause we need for celebration.

中华民国一百年 *English

Today, many Taiwanese and non Taiwanese and somewhere in between people around the world are celebrating the centenary of the founding of 中华民国 (the republic of China), which is now the official title of Taiwan. There are complexities about this which continue to be debated. Arguably Taiwan was separate from China since about 1680. However, what is clear is that the events of 100 years ago were highly significant in the forming of the amazing and unique country that we know as Taiwan today. 

Being from Australia, it's hard to see why there is so much controversy. Australia is just as new and few Australians look to their British ancestors (many of us don't even have British ancestors) in assessing our identity. We find it extremely hard to relate, I think, even to images and voices of the Australia of the 1950s. People change quickly. Language and culture change, perhaps even more quickly. Clinging to past associations, can bring only suffering.

Somehow I have to reconcile two contradictory urges. On the one hand, I hate nationalism and all it stands for. There is no satisfactory distinction between racism and nationalism, because no universally applicable definition of race exists that can stand independently of either culture or nationality and the phrases 'we are better' and 'they are inferior' ultimately convey exactly the same meaning. 

  On the other hand, I do love Taiwan. When I'm there I feel nothing by joy most of the time and when I meet Taiwanese people, wherever I am in the world, I feel drawn to them as if to my own family. 

  I wish nations didn't exist, I really do. They can't last forever and of course there will be a new world order in the future and probably sooner than we think. Will it be any better? It would be hard to do much worse and the programs of regional cooperation such as the EU are a good start, despite the complexities they involve. However, right now, in the context of how the world is, Taiwan is a bastion of inspiration, creativity, culture, friendship and education in a world where all these things are lacking. 

If new nations like Australia and East Timor can be internationally recognized, then surely Taiwan must also. Most nations are cowardly and two faced, treating Taiwan as a nation state, placing embassies and recognizing its passports while calling it part of China whenever the all powerful PRC happen to be watching. Citizens of the world need to make it clear to their governments that this kind of dishonesty and cowardice is unacceptable. Therefore, I hope that people will make a point by displaying Taiwan's national flag (you can copy and paste the one below) and making this an issue for public debate. 

Why Guns are Cool

In Australia, funnily enough, we don't seem to have guns.

That's not to say they don't exist at all. Some farmers and people who live out in the country have them. So do the police and the army. Perhaps the security people who protect politicians have them but they must keep them hidden. Also, very occasionally, you do hear of gun crimes. There are underworld gangsters and some motorcycle gang members who somehow come up with an illegal, unregistered firearm. You usually hear about them when they've just been arrested for shooting each other.

Still though, guns in Australia are somewhat of a rarity. If you have them, your not exactly considered normal. If you have one for private use then it's almost certainly of a variety designed for shooting at things that aren't likely to retaliate.

Things weren't always like this here in Australia, of course. I do have dim memories of a time when gun ownership was, though not an everyday pastime, common enough that it probably wouldn't have raised an eyebrow if you heard that someone had a semi automatic or a self loading shotgun. That was before the new gun laws that were introduced after the Port Arthur massacre. You can watch some rather unclear footage of parts of it here, but I must warn you, it's shocking. After that happened, the federal government, with the support of about 85% of the public, bought back guns considered particularly dangerous, such as self loading, semi automatic and pump action weapons, and toughened licensing for all other types of guns. There was an amnesty period during which the guns were to be turned in by their owners to police stations and I remember the newspapers showing photos of the guns laid out on sheets like museum exhibits. Of course some unregistered guns must have escaped the buyback scheme and are still out there somewhere, which is why they sill turn up from time to time.

That was back in 1996/7. It all seems a long time ago now. As I said, guns really are a rarity here. There existence usually seems like a distant phenomenon, like something you see in news stories about other countries but can't imagine ever facing yourself.

I understand that gun ownership is still a very significant and controversial issue in the USA. There seems to be a huge amount of rhetoric on the internet from people, particularly in the southern states, about their 'right to bear arms.' Of course this is hard for me or anyone here in Australia to understand, since I don't think we've ever had such a right and if we did, it was taken away a long time ago. In the cities, we don't even have the right to carry a pocket knife if the blade is more than a few centimeters (I think it's about 3 inches, but don't quote me on that) or if it's the kind of blade that you can flick out quickly.

I do, however, have a Nerf gun. Actually, I have to admit, I have several. Nerf guns are a kind of children's toy that shoots foam darts. They usually don't hurt very much, even when they inevitably get you in the eye. One of mine has laser sight too. I have no idea why, but even as an adult I find these toys absolutely thrilling to play with. When I'm at home alone, I practice sneaking about and surprising imaginary enemies with them or practicing my aim by shooting my reflection in the mirror (the suction cap darts are the best for this).

Why is shooting a Nerf gun so much fun? It doesn't even do anything to whatever it hits. It certainly isn't useful for anything. Somehow though, it get's the heart racing and ignites some sort of warrior instinct in me. It's the same feeling I get when I drive dangerously fast around corners in a car or when I'm sailing a boat on a windy day. It's exhilarating!

There's more, too. I was reading about the traditions of pheasant shooting the other day. An old man who was interviewed proudly showed off his ancient fowling piece. It had shiny polished bits and beautiful timber and looked like something that was made to be held. It had a history. It had been with him all his life since he inherited it from his father. That reminded me of sailing too. The wooden bits were like the tiller of a lovingly crafted timber boat. I love boats. Boats have a tradition and a beautiful, thrilling feeling that goes with them. Boats are part of my 'culture.'

So I get it, I really do. When all those people in America are having their outcries against the lefties (hay, I'm a lefty!) taking their guns away and interfering with their rights, I get it. I have sympathy. I can see how they (or you, if your a gun owner) could love their guns.

I can imagine myself, if i were born in and lived in a culture like that, lovingly cleaning and maintaining my gun, taking it apart and reassembling it with pride, indulging in the satisfying metallic click as each component moved into place. Not many things we come across are well built and strong and mechanical like that. I can see myself going to a range and shooting it and feeling the power and the glory of holding the key to sudden death in my hands. Blasting things to smithereens must be an amazing feeling, too. All very harmless, I'm sure, since I would be a responsible gun owner and never point my weapon at anybody and never leave it loaded or in reach of children. Yes, I could be a gun owner and a very happy one at that. Guns are cool.

I'm not there though. I'm here in Australia. I've never lived with guns or experienced any of those amazing feelings, though once, as a small child, I did hold a rifle that belonged to a friend's father. The point is though, here in Australia, all the guns I see are on TV. Generally they are in the hands of soldiers and are being used to kill people. Then, if I change the channel, there may be a movie of the guns in America. They're usually being used to play cops and robbers: yes, more killing. Of course I know the phrase that's appropriate here: "guns don't kill people, people kill people." Well that may well be true. Yes, people are the ones doing the killing. The thing is though, here in Australia, in my own country that I see every day, is people not killing each other. Just to make sure I'm not living with a false sense of security, I did check: the USA has a murder rate of 5, compared to Australia's 1.3. How do we keep it so low? Well we don't have the death penalty and innocent people don't have any weapon with which to defend ourselves. Perhaps we're good at communicating with each other. Based on this observation, I humbly suggest you modify your saying: guns don't kill people: people with guns kill people. I get where the Americans are coming from, but I'd still much rather live here than there.

Asylum Seeker Detention Unlawful and Extreme - Conversation.

Earlier I shared a link to this article on Facebook. I commented that though I have very little respect for Sky News I was glad to see someone making this point.

A response from another friend prompted me to clarify a few points. The conversation went as follows:

Me: "Hate sky news, but yes, it is certainly an extremist act to lock people up indefinitely when they have committed no crime and haven't even been given a trial."

Friend: "Do we really want those people on our roads though? If yes, you know they will keep coming."

Me: "Roads? That seems like a very strange thing to say. There have never been enough asylum seekers to make any noticeable difference to traffic congestion and wouldn't be even if their numbers doubled or tripled. Anyway, since government policy is to try to increase the population with things like the baby bonus, any extra people, especially ones who have already grown up and gained skills and life experience, should be welcomed. I'm not all that pro population, but surely giving homes to asylum seekers should be a higher priority than having more babies born here."


Friend: "I disagree with you. Bear in mind that tax payers money will go to them, and they won't have the education needed to adapt in Australian culture. before they are released, and are allowed to live within us, the government must create some sort of education system, and ensure they find a job when they are released. we simply cannot release people in a new country. It's like releasing an animal in the wild, whre they'll have to find their own prey to survive, they'll grab the first one and think that's only there is. we have to educate them on what is prey and what is not. I have got my permanent residency in Australia the hard way, and so should they. if the requirements to come to Australia is an academic transcript, it must be followed."

Me:  "There are some things you need to consider here: 1. They have a legal right to seek asylum and to have it granted if they have genuinely fled from danger. This is international law and Australia must either adhere to it or give up it's international reputation, if it has not done so already. Australia, as a country, is committing a crime by imprisoning people illegally. It's an infringement of the universal bill of human rights and of Australia's constitution. 2. There are many ways and reasons to come to Australia and academic transcripts are just one of many criteria. 3. Migrants with or without transcripts have been shown historically to be of net benefit to the economy. Many unskilled immigrants set up small businesses and others perform jobs for which labor otherwise has to be imported in the form of temporary workers from Asia because locals won't do it. Such work includes fruit picking and work in food preparation for factories that supply supermarkets. 4. The cost of detaining these people while their claims are assessed is about four times as much as it would cost to allow them to live in society and pay them social security money.

I agree that there need to be proper educational resources made available. Our primary and secondary schools can be pretty hopeless and because refugees are often allocated to a school level based on age rather than ability, it is often difficult or impossible for those who arrive as teenagers to progress through the most direct channels to university. There are other ways, but of course that needs improving. Also, two terms of specialized ESL schooling, which is what is offered with a refugee visa now is obviously insufficient. Australia has a duty of care to these people and it is in the national interest to provide better education and integration services, both because it will help the economy by enhancing skills while reducing dependance on welfare and because it demonstrates a requisite level of respect for people's livelihoods upon which the country's reputation depends.

Anyway, there is not necessarily any need to increase refugee intake in order to make the system more humane. Simply providing social security and a place to live in the community would be far less costly than detention. Once claims are processed, people who are found to be genuine refugees are currently allocated to any of the refugee intake countries, not necessarily Australia, based on their intake quotas. The only differences would be a. a reduced cost to the tax payer and b. freedom for the asylum seekers during the processing of their claims."

Other friend: "The solution's remarkably simple, really - massively increase the resources devoted to processing the claims, and pay for it by not having to pay for such lengthy detention. The only arguments I'm aware of against this plan are purely political.

The main rhetoric I hear from the other side is along the lines of "we shouldn't make ourselves a soft target", and it's only just occurred to me to think that through properly. If we actually care about our legal obligations (or, y'know, human rights and welfare), we should want to be a very soft target indeed for genuine refugees. We don't necessarily want to be a "soft target" for those we don't judge to be genuine refugees, but it's utterly barbaric to achieve this deterrence by punishing all asylum seekers (or even any asylum seekers). As a modern democracy, what we should do with false claimants for refugee status is to process their claims quickly and thoroughly, and then promptly kick them out.

*****, Australia is fundamentally an immigrant nation - we've had wave after wave of immigrants more than twice as long as we've actually had a nation, and technically we're all immigrants anyway. I've heard quite a bit of rhetoric about the newest batches of immigrants, but I've not yet heard a substantial argument for why this particular episode is in any meaningful way worse or more dangerous than any other. The numbers are trivial in context of our existing population - we've dealt with much more significant waves in the past - and in stating your argument you're making some fairly serious claims without actually providing any evidence.

As ***** notes, overall population is a separate question. I also have grave reservations about overpopulation here, but the "boat people" we're talking about here are utterly insignificant to that debate. The vast majority of refugees come by plane anyway, and the vast majority of illegal residents are people (especially students) overstaying their visas. The public panic about "boat people" overrunning the country has no basis in fact."

Me: "I'm afraid that solution just makes too much sense to ever happen." 

Hope this clears up a few popular misconceptions.  

Immigration Officials Getting it Wrong in Australia

According to this article there are significant numbers of errors occurring in the processing of claims for asylum in Australia. Two thirds of the asylum seekers challenging the rejection of their claims for refugee status in the federal court have had their challenges upheld on the basis that the department had made legal errors or failed to exercise fairness. In the majority of those cases, the department admitted to the errors before the legal proceedings were completed.

There are over two hundred more cases waiting to be heard.

This number is obviously unacceptably high. For asylum seekers to make a court challenge to a decision by Australian government officials requires them to overcome significant barriers, such as lack of knowledge of the Australian legal and immigration systems, backgrounds in countries where they may be accustomed to having limited rights, language difficulties and the anxiety and self doubt brought on by long periods of imprisonment in immigration detention centers. There must surely be large numbers of injustices that are not challenged in the court system and no doubt many asylum seekers give up or accept unsatisfactory decisions out of fatigue, frustration or lack of comprehension.

The current system is absolutely unacceptable. It would be far more fare and humane if asylum seekers could at least get on with their lives and live among the rest of us while their claims are processed. That would cost less than detaining them and would give them access to friends, supporters and other services we citizens take for granted.

Motorcycle maintainance

Robert Pirsig's classic Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance has influenced a lot of people's lives. There are come very interesting conceptual arguments in there. One of my favorites is the bit about how people can see technology as things that work and make sense or from the outside, as something that performs and looks a certain. If we relate this to Bowker and Leigh Star's concept of the 'Black Box' we see that this divide is highly political. There are enormous commercial interests at stake in keeping people on the 'immediate appearance' side. Those who see technology as underlying form have to be harnessed as employees and swear to protect trade secrets, lest the knowledge that is of commercial value be spread to the consumer. Barriers such as safety, warning stickers, warranties, special little screws that require a star bit (you can buy a set at your local hardware store, but they're not as common as normal screw drivers) and jargon are all barriers that must be overcome in order to see underlying form. They have all been proliferated and strengthened since the time of Pirsig's writing. Commerce has grown progressively smarter, when it comes to the protection and regulation of knowledge.

As consumers, on the other hand, we have a great deal to gain from crossing the barriers and seeing underlying form. Just as commerce becomes smarter, consumers gain ever more access to information and we gain the ability to share knowledge and collaborate through the internet.

If 'Zen and the Art...' were written today, then perhaps it's protagonist would have to work harder to get inside his immensely more complex machine, but he would also be able to summon the combined help of motorcycle enthusiasts worldwide to his aid from some mobile device. I wonder what the results would look like.

More on this later...

FB Group: WHOF

This is a good group on FB I've been supporting. More than 100k followers, which is a good start. The really impressive thing is that the followers seem to be very diverse and include people of all sexualities, including heterosexual. The internet is a place where opinions are expressed freely, which is great. Often people express hatred and discrimination and when that happens, they really need to be challenged. Groups like this can help a lot because knowing that you have the support of large numbers of people online makes it a lot easier to challenge discriminatory views and people in groups like this can share information and ideas that can help in promoting a less discriminatory culture. It can be really distressing for some people seeing discriminatory views expressed online, but at least each time those views are expressed there is an opportunity to reply with compelling arguments that may bring about change.