Jerry_Atrick

Sorry - you're right - I meant father christmas and how Santa Claus is now commonly portrayed.

A little patronising, don't you think calling established academia that have to go through a process of qualification/accreditation and have their work peer reviewed? Ahh.. so not so self appointed experts. .I will quote from Ernie Dingo (as quoted int eh Guardian report): "Dingo says before that occasion, “We couldn’t do it to white people because they wouldn’t understand, and there was too much negativity.”" I am not sure of your grandparents background, but given that comment, could it not ne that the Aboriginals they frequented with did not dosclose everything about their ceremonies and cultures? What rigour did your grandparents go through to establish the totality of Aboriginal culture? I don't know, and I don't think you do, either. Anthoroppologists look for other evidence as well.. documents, drawings, etc. Aboriginals have a rich artistic heritage that captures life. Could it be it "grandad's stories" are captured in the art.. And because of the lack of documentation/writing, passing knowledge (and dare I say ceremonies, religion, etc) from generation to generation is avery strong part of Aboriginal culture, so even if it was simply grandad saying it, and the previous gandad and the previous one, etc.. and probably also doing it, may (and I stress may) be good enough. And is that not how cultures are evolved over time? The reality is I don't know a lot about it and I go to accepted western expert who studyt it in accordance with accepted western practices as with all other studies to find out.. I don't know.. But I doubt your grand parents know.. and your just saying what grandparents passed down. So could that not also be doubtful? In other words why would your grandparents word be better than theirs.. who, you know, are the population we are discussing?

No, I watched it live through watchafl.com.au.. I got up and did something else. As I do on the Grand Final when they sing the national anthem. Doesn't interest me, I do somethmg else. I am not forced to watch it.. Why is that so hard to comprehend?

Really.. My brother is a member of the Tigers and goes to their games (even this year) and yes, they have the ceremonies but he isn't forced to watch them. Your not forced to watch them on telly. Make a cuppa and calm down.

To be clear as I am workign at the same time and didn't edit in the timeframe allowed what I wanted to say, I meant this: I should be very clear - I personally don't give a toss about what anyone thinks about welcome to country.. But when people start spouting BS as facts to justify their position, or apply double standards, then I get riled. What you think of it is of consequence to me.. But don't tell me BS to try and have me form an opinion. I do prefer facts. (That is not aimed specifcally at you, @red750, it's rhetorical).

I don't have to. You don't have to, and neither do Muslims. Can you please advise where you have to attend or listen to Welcome to Country. Because I was in Aus not that long ago.. and didn't see it once - not even on the telly, let alone the pubs I visited (and I made sure I went to a few). My brother who is visiting here at the moment and I had a couple of drinks last night and got talking about it; and he has never been to one and can't remember sitting through one. ever. I watched the GWS Sydney game on the telly and I didn't see it. Why is it imposed on you and not him, nor I when I watch Aussie events where Welcome to Counry is staged? (Actually I may make a point of watching one now to see what the hoo-hah is about). Again, statements don't seem to tally with observable facts, and presented in a way that is... divisive. I should be very clear - I personally don't give a toss about what anyone thinks about welcome to country.. But when people start spouting BS to justify their, or apply double standards, then I get riled, because they are tyring to impose nothing more than an opinion as fact or are discriminating with no basis for that discrimination. So give me the evidence and fine.. I may not agree with your position but we are all different.

By what measure? I don't know. I should have used to the words, "may help" (I had had a few last night so forgive me not entirely lucid in my expressions). But, if you have an audience of people that you can express part of your culture to who, as it turns out know very little about it, then does that nor afford them the opportunity to instill some interest in some of that audience to learn a bit more? It is obviously not successful, and is enduring a tirade in all walks of Aussie society. But why is it offending of people's sensitivities when people can, like many other things that offend their sensitivities, ignore it. Everyone, including the senator talks about wokeism and how bad it is, but isn't getting upset about Welcome to Country, an example of wokeism in the sense that it seems to be offending delicate sensitivities and whipping up a frenzy about it? It really is simple - if you don't like it, ignore it. No one is forcing to you watch or listen to, or attending it. BTW, it has no meaning to me and when it comes on when I am watching something (usually an AFL final), I don't actually recall what I do.. I choose not to take too much notice of it. From what I read (even from the supposedly "dissenting" Aboriginals, of which there don't seem to be too many), there is much more agreement on the ceremony. But just like the myth that propagated that Welcome to Country was invented by Ernie Dingo, I am less likely to believe press and more likely to believe more reputable sources which almost all conclude Welcome to Country is an authentic tradition in Aboriginal culture but there are differences in what that ceremony is in different First Nations countries. I would suggest you read the Guardian article I posted (irony of referring you to the press) or go to Google Scholar and search origins of Welcome to Country. Here is an easily digestible article which touches on it (see P 124, extracted from a bigger journal): https://openjournals.library.sydney.edu.au/LA/article/view/14269/12768. I find it really odd that in the overwhelming evidence that Welcome to Country is authentic, people dig their heels in about its inauthenticity.. without citing any real evidence to support their position. I would take and those from similar origins, whether they state Welcome to Ceremony, that over anything messrs Murdoch, Stokes, Costello, and the like, which is what we normally do, right? You learn a new thing every day. I had never heard of the word, mullock, before. I am going to use it at work on Monday "there's a lot of mullock around here". Why would you want to exclude learning about an aspect of someone's culture.. Surely the "legal" (social?) aspect of one's culture is what drives much of everything else about that culture. In fact, understanding some of the differences between the "legal" aspect of their culture helps understand some of the perceived difficulties in living alongside them (I am not only referring to Aboriginal culture, by the way). Surely you can both learn about their sociological aspects as well as the more scientific aspects. And it is the sociological aspects that hold the key to successful integration, is it not? Or, are you saying, as I am rejecting their culture, I don't want to learn about it and they just have to succumb to our culture? This is what I am observing. There is a culture that is on display that you don't have to a) partake in; or b) even watch. That actual performance may or may not be authentic , but the ceremony as a concept is real and proven. It may, like the performance referenced, contain scientific inaccuracies based on a mistake, or, let's go with the senator; factual inaccuracy based on their religion (or spiritual beliefs). Let's look at another couple of ceremonies, both within the same religion foisted upon us. Christmas and Easter. Same broad religion, worshipping the same (arguably fictional) god. Let's start with Christmas. One country starts the ceremonial rituals on the 5th of December and it runs through to the actual celebration and opening of presents on Christmas eve (Germany). Others have their dates on the 5th/6th January. So we can't even agree on the date of the birth of the fella (nor as it turns out the death/supposed resurrection as orthodox Easters are on a different date). and the ceremonies/riutuals performed are very different between different counties... And even the central character through which we celebrate - Santa Claus - is not the embodiment of anything other than Coca Cola's invention in the 30s. How authentic is that in 2,000 years of Christianity? Yet no one complains or is offended by it.. Or the other myriad of ceremonies we are continually creating or modifying as society moves.. So, even if Welcome to Country is a "new" ceremony and is not rooted in 60,000 years of tradition, or it has changed over the years, so what? When I was a kid no one heard of Halloween or Valentines Day, but f! me if another kid comes around asking for a treat and tries to stuff hs hands full of them, he will meet an early end (just kidding, but you get my drift). All of these other ceremonies are foisted on us.. Go to a shop in October and they have the Chrissie decorations up and belting out tunes that have been repeated time and time again. Well, actually, even my kids complain about that. Why are Aboriginals held to a standard others aren't? Well, I am going to call it out. I don't think it is positive racism. I am sure everyone of us, if interviewing candidates for a job would pick the Aboriginal who is marginally better over a caucasian who is equally competent in all but a minor area. But it is the unconscious bias that pervades our society and this is just one area where it looks like it is rearing. In the face of credible evidence to the contrary, people are still claiming Welcome to Country was made up by Ernie Dingo or not autentic, but can't offer evidence to the contrary. And the standard is that the ceremony is different (or new) as if it has to stand still over miillenia, yet our ceremonies are forever changing; we are inventing new ones (or invigorating irrelevant ones) and have dropped others (isn't there talk about what to do with the Azac Day ceremonies). We are all getting upset at something that we can totally ignore if we don't like, and it does not make one shred of difference to our lives. Even if Welcome to Country is totally unsuccessful at providing xome appreciation of Aboriginal culture, given we now (as a country) recognise native land rights, if it is an important spiritual ritual for those that have a native connection to the land, why deny them that? It masy be spiritually important to them. Geez, I was in church not too long ago for a wedding. When the, in my mind, religous crap was being spurted, I started singing my currently favourite songs to myself and ignored their resurrection rubbish (in my view - but I am only putting it here to highlight that I can choose to believe/listed to it or not, and I am not saying someone who believes it is somehow being divisive, because I beleieve people the right to believe what they want. If I was to make a hoo-hah about it, it would not be them that is divisive. It would be me. And that is my point about the divisiveness thing.. It's not the Aboriginals that are being divisive; They are not forcing anyone to do anything. They are partaking in what is a cultural ceremony that has been around for millenia. It has no impact on you or I; why are we (non Aboriginals) making such a hoo-hah about it? Who is being divisive? Comes back to unconsious bias, IMHO. If anyone has credible evidence that Welcome to Country is not a very long standing feattur of Aboriginal Country (i.e. made up recently), then I will happily eat my words if it stands up to scrutiny. And I am not talking about an individual ceremony, or even possibly single Aborignal nations that didn't have them, bvut, as is claimed, it is totally unauthentic or never pre-dated Ernie. If anyone has evidence that our veremonies have survived intact without change for millenia, then I will also eat my words (again, not individual ones, but, most of them) It doesn't mean one has to want to do it, like it, agree with it, etc. etc. But if one is basing one's judgements on facts they continually reject without being able to offer evidence to the contrary, quite frankly, we are in MAGA terrirtory.. (Flameproof, kevlar jacket on)

I said a return - not necessarily a direct monetary return.. But, at the end of the day, when the VFL became the AFL, money became a more priortised element of the game. Despite me thinking that one of the reasons for welcome to country at AFL games will be for them to present themselves in a better light, it really has bugger all to do with the imposition on society that seems to be perceived of Welcome to Country when there are so many other rituals we have to endure that no one seems to complain about.. but these are complained about as if one is obligated to attend and respect them.. which they aren't. I agree with the first statement.. .However, the other way of thinking is that it helps promote and understainding of the culture and I will take that opportunity. Sometimes we should be looking at the potential upsides rather than the downsides. Unless you have intimate knowledge of First Nations peoples feelings (which I certainly do not claim to have), suppositions of how they may react or feel should probably be muted. One person who probably had a closer affinity to how First Nations people would react has declient to continue his valuable contributions on these good forums.. for reasons well known.

Because if you incorporate recognition of the usual greeting, and then recognition in native land via Welcome to Country, you can say, "See, we are inclusive and are sympathetic/empathetic to First Nations culture.." The the AFL Commissioners (the folks who worry about, amongst other things, the money) wouldn't spend the money they didn't think think there was a return involved. That is not to say they couldn't care about First Nations cultures and racism, etc.

I honestly believe it helps the AFL pedal socially inclusive credentials.. yes... especially given there are segments which are alledged to have been not terribly sympathetic to First Nations culture.

Yeah - sorry to hear about your wife - as Litespeed says, hope she is OK.

Oh.. and the politica machineyry in Australia (and the rest of the world, for that matter) are whiter than kit gloves and when the rarity of fraud happens, the perpatrators are also broght to justice and the system has the checks and controls that ATSIC doesn't? Please! I am not excusing fraudsters, but why single it out as an Aboriginal issue?

My point about the welcome to country tirade from the seantor was it is a bit rich when his party seems to be representative of a religion that equally spreads BS like talking snakes, arks, pparting seas and the like, I think I used the term pot calling the kettle black (i.e. it's not OK for Aborginals to do it, but anyone else and it barely rates a mention). I wasn't going down the rabbit hole that we have been down before about the authenticity of the ceremony, but since others have, I will bite Are youy getting it shoved down your throat day in day out? Really. Even if you wer at the game, it is a ceremony and you can totally ignore because it happens about 100m from where you're sitting and you have a crowd around you. Hardly call that shoving itdown your throat. We have things shioved down our throat every day we don't want - ads, religion (yeah - we still get the Wtinesses and others knocking on the door pedalling their crap - a few weeks ago I had and older ocuple thank me for at least teating them courteously). Politicians? Sports? We filter out what we don't want to partake in and get on with life. When was the last time you were at a Welcome to Country ceremony? And what sort of shit have First Nations people had and continue to have shoved down their throat that in repugnant to them? I thought we dispelled that myth. You have to remember that Ernie Dingo did not invent Welcome to Country. It has been going for Millenia and different first nations had different rituals for it - not all involving buring gum leaves or whatever. What Ernie Dingo did was perform it for non-First Nations people for the first time (alledgedly): https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/feb/23/ernie-dingo-and-richard-walley-on-the-40th-year-of-their-welcome-to-country And there are a plethora of resources including reputable anthropological studies on it.. Unless, of course, like the good senator, they are all woke fabrications. Just Google Origins of Welcome to Country. Amazing how myths propagate to fit a collective agenda. It's only divisive by people who want that division - like that senator. Seriously, what impact does it have on the every day lives of Australians? I would suggest its a nice way for them to deflect from real divisive things like their government policy on, oh, I dunno, Robodebt maybe. Or other grave socially divisive policies they have. But lets forget that and worry about an Aboriginal in the middfle of a sports field performing a ceremony to give some sort of social cedibility to the AFL. Yeah.. right. I think I have dealt with the fabricated charge. What - do you think the singing of the national anthem at the Grand final is done for free. The singer does it because he or she gets paid handsomely for it. But, that is oK, right? The worlds biggest business untul not so long ago is an institution that is centred on ceremony of BS - the Catholic church.. SO what if they want to capitalise on their rituals? On the national anthem before the Grand Final - I find that a waste of time and don't even like the song. And we get all sorts of BS thrown at us.. And can you provide evidence of how a Welcome to Country ceremony influences government policy? If it does, I would not be voting for that government next time. and Maybe - I can't comment, but given Ernie Dingo claims to be the first person to have performed Welcome to Country in from of non First Nations peoples, it could be that they didn't do it in front of non First Nations peoples so your father (OT) and yourself (BT) didn;t get to see it and there was no need for you to know about it. I understand where you're coming from, Spacey. So, how many times have you had to close your windows because of a Welcome to Country ceremony? And, of course, if you were at the game, sitting in the stands, that thick smoke would of course have been a threat against, what, all the car and truck fumes, and of course aviation fumes that drive and threaten asthamitcs? Good thing your objections are such that you don't drive your ICE car and lucky you are so dedicated that you keep your aircraft grounded, right? Because they are much more of a threat to asthamitcs than a Welcome to Country ceremony.. And weren't you a smoker? My mother was, and I recall in those days (and many smokers these days) will smoke in confined areas with children. But, these are all non-Aboriginal things, so that is excusable and OK, or do you object to them as wwll.. And the Sydney fires you speak of - were they started by Welcome to Counry ceremonies - of course, each of then involves destroying the country you are being elxomed to. Fair Dinkum, Spacey... what can I say? And, of course, iof you have an ailment that is sensitive to smoke, you don't have to participate.. It isn't a bushfire that they do, after all.

And they have them... and the lord said flatten them

Sometimes, I do beleive in dog albitey. And as he or she knows that I don't believe in him or her, he sor she (or it) want's to make my life a pain.. Yesterday, the sparkies were due to come in and do the final work to allow us to finish the kitchen. Of course, I am in London Tuesday and Wednesdays, and as I didn't leave work until late (about 8pm, I wasn't home until after midnight. I woke up this morning, expectng to see everything done in the kitchen electrically - lights fitted, power points fitted, light switches installed, etc. The builder was then going to work on the floor staining. I raced into the kitchen and it is exactly as it was in the photos I posted above. In the village, we get the occasioanly power black out.. aseverywhere does. And yesterday, we had one. For the first time ever in the village, an agri hedge trimmer snipped through a pwoer cable at one of the properties on the edge of the village, and there was a power outage of the row of houses righ up to ours. The rest of the village was fine. It ook the hole day to restore power. The sparkies coudln't work because they needed their power tools. You can only larf at this point.

Sometimes, you realise you're in the wrong job. I joined this company after laws made being independent in what I do here untenable (i.e. the country is broke, let's to a tax grab). I joined relatively junior and in three years have risen through the ranksfairly quickly. to where I was before I joined the firm. And, to be honest, I spend more of my day reviewing and approving invoicces than actually delivering stuff. I went in 6 months from loving my job, to waking up in the morning with a groan thinking about the day ahead. When on Monday morning, you are waiting for Friday, it is not a good sign. Today, in a video meeting, with my manager and the camera, I purposely started yawning, looking around the room and totally disengaging. And over the last few months, I have been having what I call "career limiting discussions"; making shore a spade is called a spade ans making known we are now largely shovelling ship. So today, my new manager, who although I think could do her job a lot better, I like and could work for said, "we are creating a new set of roles. As you know we can't promote, but I want you to apply for this role." Obviosuly, the role was a step up from where I am now. And, yes, iot would look great on the CV. If you asked me even 10 years ago if I would think I could hit that level, you would have had to cart be off to hospital as my sides would have burst laughing. I responded politely, "Well, thank you." She asked if I was going to apply for it. "No - I doubt very much I will apply for it." She was flabbergasted.. I explained that the work I do now was not what I signed up for. It finally sunk in that I am now well and truly a flight risk and is offloading a lot of stuff I do to others already. A great weight has been lifted from my shoulders.

Reminds me of my last aviation medical.. after the ECG.. Worried look on doc: "Er.. have you ever been referred to a cardiologist?" Me. "That is not a great thing to hear... No"... Him: "Well, you are now..." Me thinking to myself, "Great! Jussst great.." Two weeks later at the aviation cardilogist (Still with the RAF): "I have already told that examiner he needs a new ECG machine... but lose some flab, anyway"

Indeed - welcome back.. This place, with our antics and no reality checks, is a mess 😉

Robbie Williams was my initial thought, too.. The ghost of Christmas past?

I presume it is photoshopped, but it is funny! And, yes, I have a simple mind.

OK.. I haven't seen it, and I would suggest not many people on the forum have, either. So, I went looking for it.. on Youtibe, because you can bet your bottom dollar that if it was a controversy, then Youtube would be litterd with examples of it. I found three - two from Sky News (Australia) and I thought there was one from the Daily Wail, but can't find it anymore. Let's say it was stated that welcome to country was claimed to be around for 250,000 years.. Could it not have been a slip of the tongue.. Presenting in front of a large crowd can result in nerves getting the better of people? Have we not seen that before. And let's nto forget, the party this senator is a member of has is alleged to have been somewhat infiltrtated by Hillsong cchurch people.. And I am guessing if this is the most pressing thing a senator comes upo with in terms of issues facing the country, he is not far from that cult. You know, those that believe in Adam and Even, and I am guessing that is purported to be quite a bit earlier than the 100,000 years of homo sapients, replendent with a talking snake, and belief in Noah's ark, which cannot be true unles it was hundreds of millions of years ago to let evolution re-evolve all of the land creatures creatures it was missing.. And then that would not quite add up to two of the more modern animals, but would be two brontasouruses, etc. Yeah.. Believe it or not, Aboriginals have their own religions and beliefs, unfounded, just like everyone else. For example, they believe they were in Australia (or their country in Australa) from the Draming time... https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/evidence-of-first-peoples. Now, is somehow non-Aboriginals totally unfounded and religious beliefs more real and justifiable than Aboriginals? So, maybe they thing dreaming started a little over 250K years ago.. and welcome to country did start around 250,000 years ago.. It is a wrong belief, but science has rebuked most of the crap in other religions, but other religions get a free pass? Personally I would rather be in the crowd at the SCG sitting through a ceremony even if I didn't like it, as I could don my headphones or just talk to the others around me, ignorning it than say have to endure wfts of cigarette smoke in publoc - and infringement of my rights not to smoke that I cannot escape. FFS, Some perspective, please.

Was in London the last couple of days, and my fingers aren't designed for phones... To expand the above post... Yes.. I have had experience at parallel programming, and this is the book that started me off on it: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0134437063?linkCode=gs2&tag=uuid07-21 As mentioned above, there are three main types of parallel programming (ignoring quantum computing theory, which is heading towards commericisation): Fork/Join: This is effectively milti-processing. A controller type program will fork a process off, and that process will have its own memory space. All master/slave process communication is peformed using inter-process communication, which is available between otherwise un-related processes. An example of this is, ay Microsoft word. You have a document open. You open a new document from within Microsoft word, and it forks a new word process. The new word proccess has total control of the document and the original one doesn't see it at all. This example is a little contrived as it is not actually what is commonely referred to multi-processing.. but is just illustrative. Network processors, operating systems, etc, use fork.join a lot. They care considered heavyweght because with each new process spawned, the execution and address spalce, as well as memory, queues, etc has to be set up for the new process. A real example will be an electronic trading process. The master process will forkl off a pricing process, and signal watching process, and an order placement/execution process. They will use inter process communication to send messages between them to facilitate trading. The master process may be watching over them making sure things are operating smoothly and kill processes, if for example, the market watcher sees the prices going crazy or something. Mutli-treading: This is allowing a single process to branch of finto multiple execution thread. This is considered lightweight as each thread shares the memory and address space of the main process, and only needs to load local to that thread memory. So, they are much faster to initiate, and use less system resources. They do however suffer from rce conditions, where different threads alter the main process memory contents unexpectedly to other threads and causes bugs, which are notoriously difficult to track down. This is because of the way multi-processing works. This form of parallel or concurrent processing is used for sub-tasks of a program. For example, your browswer uses them because it is downloading at the same time as loading a page on Tab 2 while you are reading this post. Although, due to the lightweight nature of threads, they are used more where one would normally use multi-processing where performance is required. Going back to electronic trading, I can have a thread for each of the items listed above, which will run faster and as the memory is shared, will allow much faster communication than inter-program communication. So, if I am building a low-latency (microsecond actions) high frequency trading platform, I would go to the bother of using threads and writing extra code to protect form race conditions. GPU programming: This is basically combining multi-processing and multi-threading in one. The overheads of setting up a GPU process are minimal, becuase the GPUs have thousands of cores and their own address spalce, execution space etc. You effectively set up the memory areas and attach a thread to a core. Sort of. I am going through it slowly. However, it is not simple programming in higher level languages live Java or c~ or Python, because you need to understand the chipset language or follow a standard language such as CUDA and embed that in your programming.. The cores in a GPU have a very limited instruction set and are designed to only manipulate bit streams (streams of 1s and 0s) into a signal for the monitor, but for simple arithemtic operations, they are perfect as you can run massively parallel simple computations extremely quickly and chain them toapply more advanved algorthms still a lot faster than the CPU set up. It's great fun, and a challenge - that's for sure.

I had an interesting discussion with a young Russian woman (c. 30 years ols I would guess) at work yesterday... She was very much for Trump winning the election. Reason: He would go easy on Russia. She wa very unhappy about the Whitehouse thinking of allowing Ukraine to be able to use long rangle missiles to attack inside of Russia. I could only say, "Oh, the irony... "

There's a reason I am moving back to Oz

Hmm I call a fake