There has been
a gas pipeblast in Mexico which local rebels have claimed responsibility for. These are
examples of John Robb's global guerillas. Because the cost of warfare has decreased so much, the heavily centralised political, urban and economic structures are unnecessarily exposed to shock and delivery failure. Energy is one of those susceptible systems.
Australia is uniquely situated to decentralise two very susceptible systems; water and energy. Because Australia periodically goes through water failure where the big central systems such as dams cannot meet demand; then there needs to be a decentralised approach. Rain tanks and conservation being the obvious.
This decentralisation has obvious advantages; one it reduces the cost of local government as water becomes primarily a household responsibility, two, conservation becomes one of personal responsibility, and three, it isolates the water supply from a centralised disruption such as drought, salination, poisoning, terrorism, etc.
Energy is another where Australia is well situated. The sun is a massive producer of energy we just have not worked out to harvest it efficiently and cost effectively yet. However, if we start seeing centralised failure of energy delivery systems, it will become cost effect quickly. There will be the same advantages from a decentralised (and networked) approach to energy as there is to communications and water.
The same goes for our political structures. Australia unfortunately has moved to a heavily centralised federal government. It dominates taxation, policy and revenue. This is a structural weakness in the current environment. Like water and energy, decentralised political structures protect against shocks and central failure.
Australian politics need to decentralise and remove power from the national government in order to increase the health and robustness of the Australian political system.
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.
