Stuff – Bruce Llama http://www.brucellama.com That's one crazy Llama Mon, 04 Jan 2016 02:22:31 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.5.4 New TV’s http://www.brucellama.com/2011/12/29/new-tvs/ Wed, 28 Dec 2011 22:15:03 +0000 http://www.brucellama.com/?p=2505

All around the suburbs you can see old TV’s dumped on the side of the road.  The owners are hoping that someone will take them away, they probably still work.  But you know, there’s a new sort of TV available now.  They’re flat screens.  Bigger and brighter.  And it’s christmas!

Everyone has to have one.  Or two.  Or four.  One for each room.

Now, let’s talk about using up the valuable resources of which we have a limited supply.

What about those that don’t have much?

New phones, new tablets, bigger faster computers, just how much do we consume?  How much do we need to consume?

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]]> Committing Suicide – Part 2 http://www.brucellama.com/2010/06/07/committing-suicide-part-2/ Mon, 07 Jun 2010 12:05:30 +0000 http://www.brucellama.com/?p=1475 [SOURCE]

Yesterday I blogged about Foxconn.  It seems that the workers in their China factory are so overworked that some of them committed suicide.

Foxconn have decided that that isn’t acceptable and have given their workers a 60% payrise.  Wow, that’s pretty impressive!  There are conditions:

  1. Doesn’t come into effect until October (So stiff shit if you feel like killing yourself now)
  2. It’s performance based after a 3 month review (How do you get better performance if you already work 12 hour days, are only allowed a 10 minute break every two hours and get yelled at all the time?)
  3. There are no details on how the performance is to be assessed.

Sounds like to me it’s just lip service.  And what will Apple do when they discover the cost of their parts has increased?  Will they pass that cost onto you the consumer, will they absorb it, or will they simply go to another manufacturer?

Nice move Foxconn, let’s hope you are really sincere in trying to save the lives of your workers.

 

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]]> Committing Suicide http://www.brucellama.com/2010/06/06/committing-suicide/ http://www.brucellama.com/2010/06/06/committing-suicide/#comments Sun, 06 Jun 2010 10:02:28 +0000 http://www.brucellama.com/?p=1468 [SOURCE]

Are you the owner of any computer equipment?  The answer is yes, unless someone has printed this out and handed it to you, you are probably reading this on some sort of device with a screen.  Chances are that Foxconn have had a hand in some component on the device.

I’ve sprayed before about our use of technology and how we rely on China to get our stuff.  We have things made in China because it’s dirt cheap.  Making stuff so cheaply means that we enjoy most of our products at a very low cost and we can consume more.  More consummation means higher profits for big companies and lets face it, that’s the way our system works.

But here’s the human face of our lifestyle.  People are killing themselves.

”Life is meaningless,” said Ah Wei, 21, his fingernails stained black with the dust from the hundreds of mobile phones he has burnished during a 12-hour overnight shift. ”Every day I repeat the same thing I did yesterday. We get yelled at all the time. It’s very tough around here.”

He said conversation on the production line is forbidden, bathroom breaks are kept to 10 minutes every two hours, and constant noise from the factory washed past his ear plugs, damaging his hearing.

Now, they’re making this stuff for you and me.  We let them make this stuff and turn a blind eye to how it’s made.  We buy the stuff from big companies that outsource the manufacturing to the cheapest company they can find.

How can we fix this?  How do we get the companies to pay their workers a decent wage?  Why does this have to hit the press before the CEO’s of big multi-nationals step in to make sure all their staff, including those far away, are adequately looked after?  Finally, what can you do, as a consumer, to ensure that the stuff you buy is made in a fair and ethical way?  You think on that.

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]]> http://www.brucellama.com/2010/06/06/committing-suicide/feed/ 1 Super heroes http://www.brucellama.com/2009/08/29/super-heroes/ Sat, 29 Aug 2009 05:36:12 +0000 http://www.brucellama.com/?p=831 [SOURCE]

This Llama encourages you to read about Gary Burns.  Now here’s a guy who’s on a mission.  He actively pursues homophobia and puts a stop to it.

Its great to know that there are people like this out there.  True superheroes who have little self interest.

It’s one thing for me to bang on about my perceptions of a misguide world and come up with great ways to try and fix it, without leaving the comfort of my star trek chair, it’s another to take the nasty perpetrators of hate head on and get results.  What a gutsy effort, nay a fucking gutsy effort.

The Llama waves his willy at you Gary Burns… wonder what he looks like in tights and a cape….

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]]> Atheist Blogroll http://www.brucellama.com/2009/08/11/atheist-blogroll/ Tue, 11 Aug 2009 03:59:56 +0000 http://www.brucellama.com/?p=723 Bruce Llama has been added to The Atheist Blogroll. You can see the blogroll in my sidebar. The Atheist blogroll is a community building service provided free of charge to Atheist bloggers from around the world. If you would like to join, visit Mojoey at Deep Thoughts for more information.

I visit some of the sites on The Atheist Blogroll, and even shamelessly steal their ideas because I don’t have to worry about standing before any fuckwit god and explaining myself, and all the atheist’s keep telling me that they’re really good.

Check them out.

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]]> The fairy congress http://www.brucellama.com/2009/07/11/the-fairy-congress/ http://www.brucellama.com/2009/07/11/the-fairy-congress/#comments Sat, 11 Jul 2009 01:42:02 +0000 http://www.brucellama.com/?p=622 250 gather in field near Twisp for fairy congress.
Grown people, adults, 250 of them have been to Twisp for the ninth annual Fairy and Human Relations Congress.  That’s right a fairy congress, apparently, just outside Twisp the veil between their dimension and ours is thinnest.  I would content that there is something in the water akin to mad cow disease.

It seems that not one of the fairy heads have actually seen a fairy, but no matter.  The fairies are watching over us, just like angels.

It’d be good if Twisp would disappear into the fold between the dimensions and take the 250 fairy lovers with them.  None of them are grounded in reality and need more that a little fairy dust to wake them out of their stupid outlook on life.

I’m sure they’d find it much easier to cope if they took a decent look at themselves and asked a few questions.  The top one being “Why have I never seen a fairy”.

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]]> http://www.brucellama.com/2009/07/11/the-fairy-congress/feed/ 1 ANZAC Day http://www.brucellama.com/2009/04/25/anzac-day/ Sat, 25 Apr 2009 11:55:33 +0000 http://www.brucellama.com/?p=499 Today is ANZAC Day, a day when a bunch of Australian and New Zealanders stormed the shores in Gallipoli.

The day has become a remembrance day for all those who have died in wars.  There’s a lot of them.

The television news tonight was full of stories from the various Dawn Services around the world.  It was all very touching, provided you can put up with the crappy flowery language of the reporters.  Australians in their thousands descended on places in Turkey and France to remember.  Locally, grand children and great grand children of 1st Word War veterans marched with veterans from the 2nd World War and other wars.  Again, all very touching.

I am grateful for old timers efforts in the wars.  I’m not sure that any of it was directly responsible for my freedom. Dying on the shores of Gallipoli or the Western Front probably did little to protect us back here in Australia.  I’m aware that Darwin and some other areas in the top end came under direct attack. While nasty, not really sure how that would have affected the rest of the country, it was the 40’s after all and the only way to get to Darwin was by camel.

War is horrible.  Those who fight and die in war need to be remembered.  We need to show our gratitude toward them.  The face of the world would surely be different if Germany or Japan had won.

I’ve long thought that we should fight those battles only that help to protect our citizens.  Again and again our citizens are sent far away to die for someone elses cause.

We must not forget those that die.  We must not forget the pain of war.  Likewise, we must not glorify it.  There is nothing glorious about killing others, no matter who they are or where they come from.

Lest we forget.

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]]> Phone madness http://www.brucellama.com/2009/04/03/phone-madness/ Fri, 03 Apr 2009 03:35:17 +0000 http://www.brucellama.com/?p=433 [SOURCE]

The whole debate about whether or not mobile phones cause brain tumours is interesting, but clearly not a concern enough for us to stop using our phones.

What’s more scary is that while driving to the office, I was following a young woman in a car who was talking on her mobile while holding it to her left ear with her left hand.  With her right hand she was holding a cigarette and putting that in her mouth and then flicking the ash out the window and in between resting her arm on the window frame.

This means she was steering the car with her little finger or thumb while holding a lighted cigarette and talking on the phone,  she may also have been using her knees, and it also means at times she had no hands on the steering wheel.  Just as well the wheels are properly aligned.

As I followed her, we crossed a busy major road of 4 lanes, passed through a school zone and a small shopping centre.  Somehow she managed to turn left, without letting go of the phone and by sticking the fag in her mouth.

She’ll never get a brain tumour.  She’ll get a bus in the side of the head.

Stupid.

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]]> Bruce Does Pod -3 http://www.brucellama.com/2008/10/26/bruce-does-pod-3/ Sun, 26 Oct 2008 01:51:27 +0000 http://www.brucellama.com/?p=215 http://www.brucellama.com/wp-content/uploads/podcasts/brucellamapodcast3.mp3
Download in OGG format (right click and save)

In my 3rd podcast I talk about the current stock market crisis, look at twitter and George entertains us with his view on a couple of websites.

Links:
Twitter
Ugly People
Men who look like old lesbians
Jake Stone

Creative Commons License
Bruce Llama Podcasts by Bruce Llama is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Australia License.

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]]> Twitter http://www.brucellama.com/2008/07/02/twitter/ Wed, 02 Jul 2008 06:57:42 +0000 http://www.brucellama.com/?p=102 SOURCE

I’ve been messing around with Twitter, and I’m yet to realise its full potential.  I can see how it does have potential to be a really powerful tool in getting your message out quickly to your supporters.

Trevor Cook over at Corporate Engagement talks about how email is too difficult to get your message out these days, and twitter might be the way of the future.

I’m following a few people here and there, its interesting, but not really a great social networking tool for me.  I guess as more people start to use it it might become more useful.

A quick sample of some comments posted just recently:

“24C in London. Work. Pool @ Shoredich. Picnic dinner. It’s rain for the rest of the week so have to make the most of it, right?”

“work monday then went to lisarow, which smells really familiar. um then went to g-town saw jayde went to work, almost time for french”

“work work work”

There is some good stuff in there too, I like OilCrash – it sends a tweet every time the price of oil goes up or down a whole dollar per barrel.  That’s very clever and really appeals to this Llama who watches the price of oil with a great deal of interest.

So, off I go to do some twittering….

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