Enjoy free internet news while you can… (updated 7pm)

This is something that may see a lot of change in the coming decade.

Today's Moir cartoon

Today’s Sydney Morning Herald is a trifle thin, as is the wont at this time of year, but it does have quite a lot of interest in it. Like everyone I am giving thought to what motivates people like the young Nigerian who attempted to blow up the Delta Airlines flight. There is an interesting article on that, and I fear that I even agree with Miranda Devine today!

So I’m doing this really cool course at Yale…

Now there is something I couldn’t have said at the beginning of the Noughties when I had just entered the wonderful world of the Internet via dial-up and Windows 95. But today I can.

Faith and Globalization

Course Description

The impact of religious faith is profound in a world where political, economic, and social spheres are increasingly interconnected. Intentional and sustained reflection on the crucial issues of faith and globalization can lead to the kind of reconciliation and peaceful coexistence that life in the 21st century demands.

Mother Ninglun’s Almanack for the 2010s: 1

Let us get out the crystal ball and the tarot and tealeaves as this decade hasteneth to its end.

From Cosmos Magazine

Depending less on tealeaves but not pretending to certainty, a number of scientists addressed the 2010s in Cosmos Magazine in 2006.

Bare-faced self-promotion

Not that I am bare-faced, as you may have noticed from my self-pic. 😉

No, what I am promoting is Neil’s Sydney Photo Blog. It is, I am pleased to report, having its best month for 2009 right now, but further visitors are always welcome.

This one of Moore Park is from January 2009

This is in Railway Square, November 2009

Even more Christmas 2009

See also Christmas 2009 and More Christmas 2009.

These are from the “official” photos of the Christmas Party at St Peters.

The group shot -- Sirdan and I on the right

The less usual part of my present is in my left hand.

My blogging history

2000 – that’s when I began with a small site on something called Talk City – free template and all that. I was a late starter with computers: 1999 was when I first went on the Internet at work, and 2000 at home. On the old Talk City site I started a diary, or rather continued one I had begun in private on my old Brother Word Processor. There’s evidence of that time at Blogging the Noughties: 1 – 2000 on Floating Life.

I chose the name Wu Ninglun at first to keep my students away from what I wrote: all it is is a Mandarin version of Neil Whitfield. But they soon found me; nonetheless I persisted with the Ninglun right up to the present, though this blog, as you will note, is under my real name.  Go to (which I have just updated) to see what still “belongs” to me on the Net.

Bit of a milestone over on Floating Life.

• Since 1 Dec 2007: 155,000+ hits for Floating Life (WordPress stats)!
• 419,000+ visits to all the Floating Life blogs since 7 July 2001.

So I’ve been a decade on, variously, Talk City, Angelfire, Geocities, Tripod, Diary-X, Blogspot, Journalspace and, of course – and most successfully – WordPress.com! Not to mention MySpace, Facebook and Twitter…

Globalisation — an example new to me — with extras on The Rabbit and Zimbabwe

I followed up a story from Yahoo Seven News just now: Aussies say “no thanks” to 20 million Christmas gifts.

How many unwanted gifts did you get under the Christmas tree? If you’re Australian, the number is likely to be more than one, amounting to a nationwide total of 20 million “useless” presents, according to a survey…

Examples of unwanted gifts ranged from underwear, socks, bath products and inappropriately sexual items to a tandoori spice rub for chicken given to a vegetarian and a dog bowl for a dogless recipient, a brick and cellulite cream, an eBay statement said…