Powderfinger is playing at a Queensland ANZAC Day event and it is being televised on Sunrise
. I see the Last Post and a Rock Band being played one after the other as being incompatible.
I don't accept the 'they thought for our freedoms' arguments. As someone who has read letters of WWI servicemen, they are mainly about 'taking it to the Hun' and other nationalist rah-rah language. Not about saving democracy, that is a modern political theme, not one from the time that comes through in the letters.
ANZAC Day has got a party atmosphere, what with all day drinking and gambling. I celebrate it similarly, we throw a BBQ in the United States each year and use it to introduce Australian staples such as meat pies and sausage rolls to our American friends. Not to mention my palette starved of such essentials.
By the same token, I don't fire up my guitar amplifier to eleven and play slide guitar with a tinny of VB at the end of the last post. Let the actual dawn service ceremony breath first before kicking into celebratory mode.
ANZAC Day has and will succumb to the bright lights of Las Vegas, it is inevitable as it is so popular a day. It won't be let alone. The ANZACs are important to Australia, not because of Nietchze style national-blooding, but because they went overseas thinking they were Britons and came back knowing they were Australian.
The cultural clashes were endemic
. Approximately 8% of the nation went overseas, only the modern diaspora has become globalised in larger numbers per capita. WWI was significant for Australia for many reasons, more than just nationalist history.
Phoenix Eats Out is the restaurant review site for
Phoenix,
Scottsdale and
Old Town Scottsdale which lists the modernist and contemporary restaurants, taverns and bars in the greater Phoenix area.
This is the list of the most popular restaurants pages from phoenixeatsout.com that have been viewed the most;
My personal favourite restaurants in Phoenix are
AZ88,
Postinos,
Bomberos with
Grazie,
Humble Pie,
Orange Table,
The Vig,
Fez and others coming close behind. View the complete list with the photo-journalistic style images on
phoenixeatsout.com
Arizona is an outdoor state and has lots of hiking in the city and around the state. Phoenix is unusual for most cities in having several large mountains in the center of the city with great hiking. Anyone who comes to Phoenix has to do the
Echo Canyon trail on Camelback and the
Summit Hike on Squaw Peak or Piesta Peak. The views of the city, suburbs and surrounding mountains are wonderful from Camelback and Piesta Peak.
For more experienced hikers there is the McDowell Mountains in North Scottsdale that has several difficult and strenuous hikes in
Tom's Thumb and
Bell Pass. Alternatively, you can hike the highest mountain in Arizona. At 12,600 feet
Humphrey's Peak is a long and difficult hike.
Between 2004 and 2009 this site,
southsearepublic.org, was a constitutional blog based on scoop which focused on Australian and global constitutional issues.
One of the strongest aspects of it was the development of constitutions by those involved in the blog. These constitutions are the outcome:
The constitutions were built using principles from Montesquieu's separation of powers, the enlightnment's universal political rights and the ancient Athenian technology of sortition and choice by lot.
South Sea Republic started in 2004 as an Australian constitutional blog in 2004 based on scoop software. It was an immigrative outgrowth of Kuro5hin. The archives for each year since then;
The articles are ordered by views.
I am an Australian living in the United States as a permanent resident.
I am a software developer by trade and mostly work in Java and jump between middleware and front end.
I originally worked in the New York area of the United States in telecommunications before moving to Washington DC and
working in a mix of telecommunications, energy and ITS. I started my own software company before heading out to
Arizona and working with Shutterfly. Since then I have joined a startup in the Phoenix area and am thoroughly enjoying myself.
I do a lot of photography which I post on this website, but also on flickr. I have a photo-journalistic website which lists
the modernist and contemporary restaurants in phoenix. I have a site on the
Australian Flying Corps [AFC] which has been around since the 1990s and which I unfortunately
lost the .org URL to during a life event; however, it is under the
www.australianflyingcorps.com URL now.
The AFC website has gone through several iterations since the 90s and the two most recent are
Australian Flying Corps Archives(2004-2002) and
Australian Flying Corps Archives(2002-1999) which are good places to start.
