topicalhuman.com

Well, I’m going on holidays tomorrow. I’m going camping with some family and friends to the Oxley National Park in New South Wales, Australia. So I guess the site isn’t going to get any further updating until the new year, but I’m going to get stuck into it then. Ciao!

Over the last few days residents of Sydney, Australia, have been confronted with some serious violence and racial hatred. The flashpoint of this trouble has been the beachfront community of Cronulla, in the south of Sydney. The trouble has apparently arisen over simmering tensions between the mostly Anglo-Australian (i.e. white) locals and youths of Middle-Eastern extraction. You can read the back-story here, here and here.

I’ve been to Cronulla before, and it’s a beautiful place. It’s a real shame that such ugliness has to raise its head at all, especially in a place that seemed as nice as Cronulla.

Sadly, for a number of years now the Middle-Eastern community, and particularly the Lebanese community, has been battling an image problem created by a few bad eggs. Like all Islamic communities throughout the “western” world, they have had to deal with suspicion and some misplaced resentment following the Twin Tower Attacks of September 11, 2001. There was also widespread anger a couple of years ago when some youths, apparently of Lebanese extraction, were convicted of raping a teenage woman in Sydney. Sadly, it seems that the wider community lacks the discernment and wisdom not to judge the whole community on the actions of a few degenerates.

I have no doubt that some of these Lebanese, Syrian, Pakistani or whoever youths have been acting like jerks. I have no doubt that a few of them have even acted like criminals. But to have a riot over that is lawless at best, and morally and socially corrupt at worst. Sadly, the next time I hear someone refer to Australia as a melting-pot of cultures, I’ll have to disagree. Sydney, meet Paris, meet Los Angeles.

I’m still working out some of the finer points of how I want this site to look, but I’m pretty happy so far. One of the things I’m excited about is the drawing of the boots above. I’m still planning on tweaking the way it presents in the header, but all the hard work was done by my friend Steve Cox. He drew these boots freehand - the original is a simple lead pencil sketch on a piece of A4 copy paper. The boots are a pair of Doc’s that belong to his wife. I’m blown away by how well the picture came up, although I’ve asked Ben to transfer them to white so they stand out a little better against the blue background above.

I like the having the boots on my site - I think that Doc’s are high quality, good value footwear, and they are also cool! I don’t mind being associated with these things, even if it is drawing a long bow!

I pretty much asked Steve on a whim to draw me a picture of a pair of Doc’s, because I thought it might look cool on my new website. A couple of days later he rang to say it was done. I reckon Steve is damn talented, and if you’d like to know how to get in touch with him to help with any artwork, just leave a comment below.

This is my first “live” post to my new website. This is where I plan on airing my thoughts on a range of topics to anyone who may care to listen. It is my personal site, so it will deal with things that interest me. Music, Sports, Film and other topics will all factor in to these musings of mine. I also co-own and work in a great small business called Shift Control, so naturally topics of a Business nature will also rear their head here. Typically, the type of business articles posted here will be those that are too broad or abstract to be posted at Shift Control.

I plan on enabling comments, and I am planning on taking a fairly liberal approach to these comments. As the name of this site suggests, I have a lot to say, but I also strongly believe that everyone has a story, an opinion or a point of view that is worth hearing. I hope that all readers of this site feel welcome to join the conversation - the more the merrier! Also, the more participants there are, the better informed the conversation will be. So thanks for coming, and make yourselves at home.

You may have noticed that I refer to this presence on the internet as my (web)site, and not a blog. True, it is a blog (click here if you want to know what a blog is). However, I believe a blog is merely a variation (albeit a very useful one) of a website. A website is already a concept well understood by most people, and I don’t think confusing the issue for the masses by introducing an ugly term like “blog” helps anybody (except the geek elite perhaps).

For those who may be interested, I am using WordPress to create this site. I have had the help of my brother Ben to get this up and running. Thanks Ben!

I hope you get something out of this project of mine - I’m sure that I will.