Does On Topic Media have no shame?
Does On Topic Media have no shame?
Here is an example of On Topic Media’s latest job advertisement as advertised on Seek.com.au:
Ref: http://www.seek.com.au/Job/review-fun-leisure-activities-for-weekendnotes-com/in/sydney/19731662
Review Fun Leisure Activites for WeekendNotes.com – On Topic Media PTY LTD
Review Fun Leisure Activites for WeekendNotes.com
WeekendNotes is an email newsletter which gives readers ideas for fun and interesting things to do in their city.
Click Here to view the WeekendNotes Sydney website.
We are looking for entertaining writers to review fun things to do in Sydney.
For examples of the kind of articles we are looking for see the WeekendNotes Sydney Archive and the WeekendNotes Melbourne Archive.
Writers are paid $3.30 to $30 upfront per review which should take around from 10 to 90 minutes to write.
Productive and popular writers should earn around $20 per hour in upfront payments.
For more more information read the WeekendNotes Writer FAQ.
To apply follow the instructions on the FAQ, or send an example WeekendNotes article to apps@weekendnotes.com. Do not click on the Seek “apply” button.
Application articles should be between 150 and 400 words long.
Articles should be both entertaining and informative, and written in a relaxed informal style. Choosing an interesting idea for something to do is just as important as good writing.
We are looking for things which can be done on any weekend in Sydney such as a good picnic spot or restaurant review, as well as upcoming events.
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After using a similar tactic some years ago for their Orble.com blog site On Topic Media hire very few people at all. Writers were lured with an ad placed in seek.com.au offering cash for submitted articles. There were usual promises of an easy job that should take only half an hour a day and the possibility of being a paid writer. Yet how many people were actually paid.
The site grew from a few hundred writers to a few thousand where the only payment going to any of the writers was via Google Adword accounts that the writers had to set up themselves.
You do not have to be a genius to work out that very few people made more than a dollar a day. In short if money and a fair wage was your motivation to work for On Topic Media then you were duped.
Why is On Topic Media still using this lure for the naive and unsuspecting? How many people will donate their time to a time wasting venture that basically does not even pay for the internet connect needed to upload to their site.
Worse still writers find that there is little honour in the writing fraternity and no protection from stalkers and cyber bullying that was routine practice on Orble.com. A situation that was so toxic that one writer was temporarily banned for complaining about his wife’s photo being subjected to racial slur. The cup of ethics does not follow over from the owners of On Topic Media.
Now we have this ad slipped into website of Seek.com.au posing as a legitimate role for some aspiring writer. With the track record of Orble.com to look back on, one can only image what horror will spring forth from this latest recruitment drive. If you can call it that.
Update:
It seems that Ontopic Media have no shame at all:
here is their latest ad on the Seek New Zealand website
Persistent little blighters.
The End of Bin Laden – celebrations and calibrations
The End of Bin Laden – celebrations and calibrations
There is little doubt that many people are convinced that Bin Laden had it coming when a team of US Navy Seals burst into his room and shot him in the head. A man who had killed so many people in such cruel and cowardly ways had now met his own cowardly death. The details of his killing have been sketchy with the story changing several times. Initially it was implied that he armed, then that he was using his wife as human shield, then that he was unarmed and not using his wife as a shield. The most recent reports indicate that he unarmed in his room with his wife when the Navy Seals burst in. His wife moved forward at the Navy Seal and was shot in the legs whilst Bin Laden ended up being shot in the head.
The confusion of details and contradictions of stories has become media fodder and spawned another flurry of wild conspiracy theories. Even before the details of the raid were released journalists and bloggers were already claiming that Bin Laden was assassinated. They went further and with absolutely no evidence condemned the action because it was, wait for it, “an assassination”.
The core of the bleaters may have their suspicions, but suspicions without supporting evidence are little more than speculation and prejudice. For example the prominent Australian Ex-Pat human rights lawyer with flowery English accent Geoffrey Robertson QC has had this to say about Osama Bin Laden, “This man has been subject to summary execution, and what is now appearing after a good deal of disinformation from the White House is it may well have been a cold-blooded assassination.”
The colourful very left of left Bob Ellis has this to say in the wake of the death of Bin Laden, “How shabby the Americans are. How secretive and stupid…” and later “… How creepy. How overpaid for their shoddy scheming and their bungled midnight raids…” and still he has more to say… “What klutzes they are. And how dearly we all must pay for their clumsiness, in a rejuvenated al-Qaeda and acts of terror without end, in this country too. And an atomic war, perhaps.” Wow, what an imagination. I am envious. If only I had a cup of what Bob Ellis is on. Atomic war because Osama Bin Laden is killed?
Another ABC Drum writer call Antony Loewenstein is equally upset that Osama has been killed. “The murder of bin Laden wasn’t justice, as claimed by Obama and a range of commentators. It was a targeted assassination, an art perfected by Israel, and an illegal tool that has not made the Zionist nation any less likely to face attack from designated enemies. America will be no different.” At this point I am confused as to why Loewenstien would even bother mentioning Israel in an action on the opposite side of the planet. Perhaps is compulsively obsessed with the phrase “Zionist Nation.”
Again the Drum has employed another person mope over the death of Osama bin Laden. This time it is Ruby (Soho) Hamad who in her own words, “Once again, the United States has resumed its self-appointed role as the world’s police, prosecutor, judge, jury and executioner. And whilst there is plenty of backslapping, foam-finger waving and jubilant talk of ‘justice’, there has not been nearly enough said about the other victims of that evening…” And her winning line, “…Bin Laden did not die alone that fateful night. And when he sank to the bottom of the ocean, he was weighed down, not merely with rocks or stones, but with the hopes and dreams of millions who dared to believe a better America, and a better world was not far on the horizon.” After reading this I felt like inviting Osama Bin Laden over for a cup of tea and a few nibbles as I quietly apologized to him for being upset about the 3000+ he did murder on 9/11.
The examples above are not alone in their duplicitous guilt complex about Osama bin Laden death. Yet none have explained how you can safely and peacefully arrest the head of a terrorist suicide cult. Were they expecting that someone would knock on the door of the terrorist leader’s compound and hand him a summons to appear in court? Or were they expecting Obama to rely upon the diligence of the Pakistan armed forces to do their job? Even the second scenario is silly when you consider that Bin Laden was living in a huge complex, no more than a kilometre away from a Pakistani military training college. He was in the neighbourhood and no one knew he was there? One could forgive Obama if he smelled a rat. He could also be forgiven for sending in the Navy Seals where a negotiator with a megaphone was doomed to fail. We can even forgive him for being happy that such a horrid person can no longer harm anyone. After all Obama could have ordered a cruise missile to flatten the compound rather than risk his elite commandoes on such a dangerous mission.
How Osama bin Laden died is now going to be the stuff of legend, fiction, news editorials and wild conspiracy theories. Claims that he was ceremonially executed are still wild conspiracy theories. These are usually held by the kind of people who are worried about black helicopters, Area 51 and the lizard people. However the fact that he is dead, despite how (even if he had died peacefully in his sleep), is a great relief to millions around the world.
Osama bin Laden was not some Boy Scout idealist who was fighting for a better, fairer world. He was a thug who oppressed women; murdered thousands of civilians in cold blood; destabilized the world; surround himself with child soldiers and suicide bombers. And metaphorically speaking, if he is to face the hereafter I doubt very much there will be any virgins lined up for him at all. In fact he would more likely be thinking that the hole in his head was least of his punishments.
Perhaps some of people mentioned above grieve too much when a monster is killed. Osama was not a retired old gentle man in a smoking jacket, was still planning major terrorist actions up until his death.
All I can say is that the best thing to come out of burying Osama bin Laden at sea is now we can all go down to the beach and piss on his grave.
Metaphorically speaking of course.
Bin Laden Dead
News has just broken.
Bin Laden was killed by US forces.
President Obama has just addressed the nation to announce the event.
Osama Bin Laden’s body is now in the custody of the US forces.
The Manga Bible – Extreme
The Manga Bible – Extreme
David and Goliath – Eat your heart out Jack Chick
At first you think it is a joke. Then you begin to look and realize these guys are serious.
Those crazy Manga dudes are all over the world and my life would not be complete without my weekly dose of Japanese Anime. Yet when looking up news stories on the Times on Line to rip off a Blog about I found the new winner. The Manga Bible – Extreme.
You would expect such a venture to be like all the other picture Bibles that are around, colourful images and serene setting that look like something from Cecil B DeMille film lot. However in this version you get something very different and very Japanese in style. Even the clothes in many of the cells have that Seven Samurai fashion.
Even the Black and White cells have a dramatic quality
Unlike Jack Chick’s Track comics there is not the same bigoted edge to distract and annoy the reader. The artwork is in a completely different style and perhaps could be described as God meets Kabuki.
I love the colour of this cell.
I don’t see the Manga Bible as causing a great flood of converts and can be appreciated on its artistic merits alone. How many people have converted to Taoism since Manga was introduced? Yet despite the messages in many of the comics and films the appreciation has been for its unique perspective and imaginative visuals.
Chick’s Tracts always enjoyed burning people in Hell for absolutely no reason.
Perhaps it is the insanity that this new perspective that makes it so interesting.
So whether for a laugh or just for the appreciation of fine Manga styling it is worth a further look.
The website can be found here:
http://www.themangabible.com
and
For those he really need a laugh you can check out the truly warped mind of Jack Chick here:
www.chick.com
Using One Ideology to Judge Another. Is it a Farce?
Using One Ideology to Judge Another. Is it a Farce?
Dedication
No two people think alike on every subject. Even within the confines of an ideology there will be people of differing opinions, interpretations and application. Even the most sophisticated ideologies cannot dictate to every nuance of the mind, despite many claiming to able to. By their nature two ideologies cannot be the same. This may sound obvious but when people are advocate one ideology sometimes they characterize everything else as part of the same antithesis. The good versus evil scenario can play out in many secular ideologies as much as it does in many religious ideologies. Enemies, villains and heroes also play their part along with stories and mythologies. In the end an ideology is an all word view that must be correct to the ideologues that support it.
We can chase our self delusional tails around by trying to claim that we do not have an ideology (or philosophy) but it merely means that you are choosing another ideology that rejects all others. By default you believe in something as being the ‘noble’ motives for what you do.
Ideologies conflict all too often and it does not require a diametrically opposed viewpoint to create friction. China and the USSR were continuously chiding each other for their lack of adhering to the proper principles of a Socialist State. Trotskyites argued with Stalinists and Maoists on Universities not so many years ago over what outsiders might see as minute differences. Even within religions we have battles over modernism, orthodoxy, fundamentalism, authority, interpretation and adaptation. Similar issues play out in politics as the conservatives fight with liberals and even they fight within their own factions for the domination of their ideological driven policies.
So essentially we are living in a world where a lot of people are disagreeing with each other. We have ideological power struggles where the loser fails to get their policies implemented. But in the soup of ideas which one is correct? Confused? If you are devoted an ideology then there will be no confusion as the answer will always be your ideology. Now try to convince others that you are correct.
Advocacy and Condemnation are the common methods employed to convince others that one ideology is better than another. Often the more complicated ideologies can rely heavily upon advocacy and sell the positives of what they promote. The less sophisticated seem to rely upon condemnation to blacken their enemies and make their own seem like something less tarnished. Advocacy has pit falls if it fails to adequately explain proper reasons for why it is so good and missing pieces of the puzzle can lead to scepticism. Why should we believe something that fails to give proper reason to do so? Condemnation despite being less sophisticated is a much easy to use because it requires less explanation of your own failings and instead relies upon the accused having to defend their record first. This method can also be used as a diversionary tactic employed because somebody has no convincing basis of their ideology. The other problem occurs when an unscrupulous ideologue cherry picks, distorts or fabricates evidence to heap scorn upon a competing viewpoint.
Judging the value of any idea or proposal can be made even more complicated when the noise of competing ideologies is added. If the proposal is purely ideology driven then people have a right to ask if it is an ideology that they subscribe to. If not then why complicate the matter with ideological battles?
The finality of promoting and ideology is never certain because others will have their own ideas about the matters involved. Condemnation may seem like a great tactic but it does little to explain why what you are promoting is any better. What is it that you are trying to promote? What is the all world view that you claim to be the correct one? How will your ideology be implemented? Who will run you new world order? Why will it be free of the same evils that you claim that other ideologies are infected with? Why should we believe it to be so? Every time that you claim that the other way is wrong what is you basis for it? You can try to claim that something is ‘self evident’ but that is a circular statement that proves nothing. What are the essential principles upon which you have built your ideology and why are they superior to other principles? Can each of those principles be defended on their own? Or are we to assume that they are correct. Everything starts with a premise, so why is your premise better that someone else’s?
Sure it is easy to sit aloft and heap scorn on a list of enemies but it is not so easy to defend a better way. To judge a long list of enemies based upon what you have decided as being right is little more than saying that it is wrong because you say so and that is that. It may be enough to convince some people but others do require valid reasons.
And Devotion
First published May 11th 2008
Stop treating us like children over the Global Warming science
If I have one plea to the media, the politicians and the learned professional who are running the debate over AWG it is to stop treating everyone else like they are uneducated children.
There is a perception in my mind that the speed of the debate and how it was presented is not helping anyone understand the science that is involved. Instead we are being presented with loaded language that presumes a position before any evidence is presented. How is it that the debate over global warming is rarely about the scientific evidence but more about the tribal loyalties or those who speak? We have terms thrown about that are designed to trigger emotions such as “denialist” and “warmist“. Both terms do no one any favours because both terms have negative connotations that are no different than calling someone a “tree hugger” or a “planet killer“. It is reminiscent of loaded terms such as “progressive” and “reactionary” or “liberal” and “conservative”. It may be emotionally satisfying to use such terms in an essay but they betray an unwillingness to even acknowledge that alternative viewpoints should even be considered. Articles laced with such language undermine their own scientific and rational credibility. In essence a scientific subject is being so polluted with emotional triggers that the ability of the reader to dispassionately and accurately decipher important information is severely hampered. Where is the clarity that we all deserve? Lost, I am afraid, in a sea of straw men, weasel words and ad hominem attacks.
Another major failing of the Global Warming debate is the how quickly the name of science is invoked as a conversation stopper. We often hear a politician use the phrase: “I believe the ‘science‘ on global warming,” or the more evasive version; “I believe what ‘the scientists’ are telling me about global warming.” In the first case science is used as an abstract without any reference and in the second case it begs the question of who those scientists are and what they are actually saying. In both cases we are being given a declaration of belief and an absence of any scientific evidence. And in science evidence is paramount.
We should take this question of evidence based science even further and demand more of it. Appeals to heart rather than the head are of no assistance to a person trying to make life changing decisions based upon which scientist a politician chooses to believe. The authority and standing of the scientist may be very impressive but it is inconsequential to the accuracy of evidence that they present. Or as Carl Sagan listed in his baloney testing kit: item #3 “Arguments from authority carry little weight (in science there are no “authorities”).
So far all I have done is highlight the problems with the reporting of publicity campaigns surrounding the AWG debate. The reality of modern media savvy politics is that short sound bites are often utilized to pass on the message in an easily quotable manner. It is hardly an environment where complicated scientific debate is given much of chance. However if we are meant to have any confidence that any controversial policy is being implemented for rational reasons we really need to subject all claims to the hard light of public scrutiny. Handing the debate over to hard core activists, career driven politicians and cherry picked experts is contemptuous of those who are looking for honest answers.
What we really require is a proper debate based upon all the available evidence. Sure there are some people who claim that the science has been settled and that we should move on, but I am yet to see that winning shred of evidence. Perhaps I missed it. Or perhaps the evidence is such that it only convinces the already convinced.
My request is simple enough. Present all the evidence that props up the claim that Global warm is manmade and is causing a catastrophe, then subject the evidence to criticism. If the science is iron clad then it should easily pass the test. If the science is not settled then we will see each claim evaporate. Either way at least we will all be better informed and perhaps more amiable to whatever future challenges we must all face.
For goodness sake George Orwell was not the only writer that ever lived.
I am of the opinion that when people try to start a discussion forum, whether it is in a pub, in a newspaper or online, they go through certain phases. Just like the old management model of how groups operate we have the Forming, Storming, Normalizing and Performing phases, in discussion groups we have the Forming, Storming… and that is about it. Forget about Normalizing and Performing better as Storming phase is perpetual. “Forming” is of course, when the forum is open and everyone is on their best behaviour trying to win the approval of someone else and set up their small cliques of agreement. After some time when everyone knows each other the niggling differences begin and there are differences of opinions. A little while long and those differences of opinions turn into irreconcilable points of view and finally they become an anathema. In one foul swoop we have a group that has gone from agreeing to disagree to one that is full of enemies trying to hammer their enemies with an intellectual trump card. Actually there is very little intellect involved as the fights often revolve around scanning the internet for a quote by Orwell or worse merely invoking his name to make a case. “You are being Orwellian…” some may say or “You are Big Brother…” and “I know what Orwell would think of this…”
Ah… Orwell…
Was there ever a writer so quoted in so many arguments? Was there ever a writer quoted so often by people who have never read his writings? Even to invoke his almighty name is to claim some kind of moral high ground. Just like a crazed preacher may use the Bible like something to beat people with, Orwell is now the modern equivalent of Bible bashing. It is not Orwell’s fault. He died in 1949. However having written two good books “1984″ and “Animal Farm” he has become the stuff of legends, especially for lazy wannabe intellectuals who think there contribution to society should be in the form of being a “Great Sage” (Just like Orwell).
The problem with quoting Orwell is that everyone does it.
