The
questions for the citizenship test are a waste of time and effort. It is feel good politics that adds to the overhead of an individual being in sync with the asinine bureaucratic machinations of the nation-state. One of the questions is who was the first Prime Minister of Australia. The multiple choice questions do not impart any of the drama that went into that episode of Australian history.
The options are: a. Sir Edmund Barton, b. Sir Henry Parkes, c. John Curtin and d. Sir Robert Menzies.
When the Commonwealth was established it was up to the new Governor-General to ask a politician to form the first government. The Earl of Hopetoun was the first Governor-General and had previously served as the Governor of Victoria.
It was assumed that Edmund Barton would be asked to form the first government, instead Hopetoun asked William Lyne, the NSW Premier. It made sense, NSW was the biggest colony and Lynne was leading the government in that colony, but the federalists would not have a bar of it. Lynne had originally told Barton he would not try to form a government, but try he did.
The federalists such as Deakin declined to form government under Lynne, who was forced to ask Hopetoun to request that Barton form a government. Lynne did serve in the Barton Cabinet but after Deakin took over Australian politics with the Fusion Party, a forerunner to the Liberal Party, Lynne was on the outer and denounced Deakin. Lynne died soon after losing his seat in 1913.
Multiple choice citizenship tests do such a great job at pointing out how diverse, interesting and rich Australian history is (not).
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.
