News of the So-Called "Blogosphere"
I check in with Berlinblog periodically because the posts are frequently humorous, always well-composed, and the site offers access to other ‘blogs than the ones I encounter elsewhere on a regular basis, selected with taste and discrimination. There isn't an extensive list of 'blogs, but the ones selected reflect well on the quality of the source. Witness: Klondike Kate, which is a little homey in its language for my taste, but has the kind of humor and overall point of view worth a look in. I noted Kate's recent list of conversation measures to help reduce the country’s dependency on foreign oil. Remember the oil embargo, Kate? Jimmy Carter may not be remembered fondly for his domestic policies, but turning down the thermostat is one of his administration's recommended measures that’s familiar from those days, as is scheduling trips in the car. Plastic bags is one that a lot of people don’t think of, but so’s another of Carter’s bits of advice: turn out the lights when you’re not in the room. Growing up on Long Island and being subject to the high rates of the local power company, LILCO (since deceased; now the Long Island Power Authority, LIPA, which immediately puts me in mind of lipo-, and you can guess where that takes me), we pursued this agenda well before and long after the embargo, and I swear it works, as does: decide what you’re looking for before opening the refrigerator (and when you’re putting groceries away, try to put the ‘fridge and freezer stuff away all at the same time) to reduce the loss of temperature – but that’s not one Klondike denizens need necessarily to consider a priority, I suppose, depending on the time of year. I haven’t added this to my own list of ‘blogs, because that would be poaching (no, not the definition about the eggs).

Two Fathoms
I’m enjoying the latest documentary, on Mark Twain (the name coming from the steamboat days, referring to the depth measure for “safe water”: two fathoms, hence the header on this post). For all that I acknowledge the man as an American master of storytelling, I can’t say as I’ve enjoyed everything of what I’ve read, but put that down to what is now an archaic style (not that that ever affected my taste for Henry James and Joseph Conrad, among others). Life on the Mississippi has terrific moments, and Huckleberry Finn is a great story, but some context is very useful in understanding what Clemens’ accomplishments really consisted of, especially as the effects he achieved have continued to vary as much as they’ve continued at all. I took some particular note that Huckleberry Finn was banned in Boston, not because of its treatment of slaves and slavery or because of any otherwise salacious content, but because the grammar was bad as a result of its using the narrator’s vernacular. So it’s very useful to listen to the experts on the subject, although it remains remarkable that there are so many experts to inquire of. Now that I am transplanted to a new home, I wonder, while considering Clemens, what similar documents I might pursue in Australian letters. I know there are remarkable lives and adventures and stories to be told, and I’m sure they have been; but it’s going to take some digging, I suppose, to find them. I’ve had a bit of an introduction to contemporary Australian writers, and I’ve certainly enjoyed what I’ve read. Pursuing a course of literary history nevertheless seems like a worthwhile endeavour, given my life as a reader.

Technology and Service Providers
I've been told that adding a "comments" feature would be worthwhile, and I've been pointed to a site offering 'bloggers the capability, but I'm not sure I want to go this way. I'm a little uncertain of how this feature works, and it appears that klinkfamily is hosting the comments. I'm all for free web services, as witness my use of blogspot, but I wouldn't want to get myself into a situation where content is denied because the provider can't afford to offer it anymore. Blogger and blogspot seem pretty stable, and the advertising requirement they impose (as well as the lack of technical support) seems reasonable. I've got my email address on the page, so readers with something to say can let me know that way. I'm happy to acknowledge the receipt of comments and discuss them, but I have to consider how much I want to offer a public forum and how much I want this 'blog to be a journal before I take it any further. Besides, I have enough trouble getting anyone to post anything on the guest map.

Beatniks from Space
It's been over twenty years, but back in the day this was a crowd I was excited to hang with in Ann Arbor. So it was especially nice to hear from Rick van Valkenberg, even if the message consisted of little more than an ad. Beatniks from Space was a literary journal published by Rick and Denis McBee as the principals of the Neither/Nor Press. They were kind enough to include some of my efforts, and I understood at one point that they'd had sufficient sales thereof to recoup their costs. The Gary Reith piece is not one that I ever got to reading, but I have a copy, so once we're unpacked I'll make it a priority. I have read short fiction by Reith, and he was a prescient and compelling writer, by my recollection. As the publishing effort wore on, Rick pushed the Beatniks into public access cable, producing a show called Video Void. He later moved to NYC, which is where I saw him last, on the lower east side, running a store front poetry space, a la the Nuyoricans. I do wonder occassionally what ever happened to Denis.

Welcome to the City of the Future
I've heard that Michael Hutchins, the deceased lead singer of INXS, once referred to Sydney as the “city of the twenty-first century.” I’m not one to take the word of pop stars about sociological phenomenon, but it's an interesting idea, and appears to have some validity, if mainly in potential. I'm very new to the city and not much of a sociologist or historian; neither do I boast any other particular expertise appropriate to the discussion. I’ve been looking around and trying to get the feel, and this is what I've come up with so far. Sydney is arguably Australia's premier city, and as such occupies a position at the cutting edge of how the next hundred years play out. It faces all of the same problems as other major, established cities of the world, technologically and culturally, for example, in infrastructural development and immigration-related changes.

Getting Around. I've previously mentioned the Olympic Park, specifically its railway station, as an example of a disconnection between existing infrastructure and the need for development. CityRail and the RTA are working on the problem of moving large numbers of people around a fairly extensive area, but the results have been mixed: the light rail line running across Sydney starts at the southern edge of the business district and proceeds west, connecting very few suburbs in a notably inefficient manner. The suburban trains are, on the other hand, very effective, but the equipment is seriously old. (It also exhibits the same problem with graffiti NYC faced in the subways for many years, but that's a separate issue.) There’s also a monorail looping through the CBD, but it appears to be there mainly to serve tourists, as it goes nowhere in particular through areas not particularly essential to the business life of the city. The busses are terrific, and this variant of surface transport is evolving with only a few hiccups, largely due to the aging of the fleet and lack of replacement equipment.

What's Around. The suburban sprawl of the city is a major factor in the development of Sydney's infrastructure, of course, and the usual response to the need for change continues to occur: motorways, ring roads, distribution tunnels. Sydneysiders, and Australians generally, has a deep and abiding fixation on having a house, and this has meant that people live ever further from where they work. A couple of developments have followed this trend. For one, business has been moving out of the CBD. They've been able to do this because of the population density outside the city and because the transportation system has been developing to meet the demands of the two groups, although it hasn't really been keeping up very well, from a mass-transit viewpoint, the focus seemingly being on supporting the existing car culture. It is still a small population, by some measures, at around 3 million, but sometimes it seems like they’re all driving.

Who's Around. The population is growing, too, largely by immigration. The biggest group of immigrants is Asians, naturally, and there are plenty of benefits to be had from this influx, even if there are some problems, too. (I wouldn't want to make too big a deal out of the presence of Asian gangs; this appears to be a problem many cities have had to contend with. Other immigrant groups have brought crime with them, and it appears to be a function of being an ethnic underclass in an urban and alien environment. This isn't a problem that just goes away – what problem is? – but serious effort within the community as a whole and by the immigrant group will stem the tide. These efforts are already underway and already taking effect.) Increased population density, however, is altering the landscape. In the CBD, I'd point other cities to Sydney's street furniture, which is not only functional in every regard to the concerns of city planners, but a modern convenience not to be in any way underestimated. Just go to NYC and try to find a toilet; you'll see. Housing is also easily among the primary concerns in cities, and here in Sydney high-rise developments are pushing out the old single-family homes, not limited to the city center, either. More and more are going up in the suburbs, even the towns further out than the Inner West. Given that Sydney has a delightful climate (by and large; it was damn hot this summer, due to global warming, unquestionably), developers do try to at least give a nod to the outdoor life the population has traditionally embraced, so all the new buildings have courtyard access or a balcony. Ritzier developments will have a terrace and often a roof garden with common access rights. They aren't all ugly, and they aren't all gigantic monoliths or sprawling complexes, either. Many of them remain quite small and boutique, which keeps a homier feel. But you can see the cranes pretty much everywhere. The housing boom isnt going to stop soon.

What It Costs. Even though the economy overall has had a few adjustments over the last few years, largely in the IT sector, but also in Finance, there appears to be a good deal of money around, and most of it's being spent on real estate. This makes it harder for average people to afford to buy a home, but easier for some to invest, a cycle feeding on itself. As more people buy investment property, more rental property is available, but increasing the cost of buying in. It's also having an effect related to the construction boom I mentioned above, insofar as investment is eased when applied to apartments, since the cost can be spread out across a number of buyers. The builders benefit, too, as they can achieve a higher return on their capital outlay, so long as the demand continues. The focus on houses by a significant part of the home-buying population, however, makes this class of real estate overly reliant on investment-minded purchasers, and they need renters. The cycle goes both ways, and in the end it's robbing Peter to pay Paul, as the saying goes, except for the immigrant influx, which makes continued growth in this sector possible.

Cities have other effects, particularly on the environment. Population size puts cities beyond the ability of their immediate area's natural resources to sustain, so the food and water have to come from elsewhere, naturally resulting in a pretty significant imposition on the water are minerals etc. of those regions. Australia being in the midst of a drought should not lead anyone to discount it as a fairly arid place to begin with. The “red middle” isn’t red because the plants there use something other than chlorophyll. The national population is sustainable overall, and within any given region that's true, too; it will be sustainable for some time to come, even as the population grows. There’s room here, but not forever. At some point, we’re going to have to get quite a bit smarter than we have been on land and water use. Some regions and some industries have already begun. There are towns around the country that have already imposed mandatory year-round water restrictions, for example. The housing industry is beginning to experiment with more efficient designs. That's a development of particular interest, especially as the reliance on single-family homes continues unabated, and Sydney continues as the most under-air conditioned hot place in the developed world. Yes, air conditioning is a long-term problem as much as it is a short-term solution. So building self-sufficiently energy-efficient homes is a promising technological advance, one that will surely have benefits around the world, particularly in the developing nations, where the cheap-but-wasteful technologies of the previous century go out of use as unsustainable. Sydney looks to be one of the premier places on earth to pursue this need.

A Place in the Sun
Darwin may be closer, but it's not a major city, and while Brisbane may be major for Australia, Sydney is the first big city of Australia in its proximity to Asia. This puts Sydney in the position of being Australia's ambassador city to the Pacific region, a role extremely important for the country, and in some measure unattainable for any other Western city. San Francisco and Vancouver in North America, Lima in South America have served in this capacity to one degree or another, but Australia is undeniably the Western nation in the East. Some people fear it, others embrace it, still others try to ignore it, but this position isn’t going away, and ought to be taken as the opportunity it represents. China is a force to be reckoned with, but nobody lately seems to be reaching out to them, and they tend not to reach out themselves. Japan's economy and its position as an economic power globally can fluctuate so wildly as to seriously impair financial well-being well beyond their borders. Indonesia is the largest Muslim nation on the planet, and as such is a cultural tsunami waiting to happen. Australia is in a geographical position to be the Western world’s mediator. It’s also in a developmental stage where it could explode upon the world stage in this role, should it choose to do so. Perhaps more than anything else about Australia, this is what will make Sydney the city of the twenty-first century.

Internationalism
I've been enjoying the timezone breakdown on Sitemeter, but the latest resource I've added, a global guest map (via Rebel Prince, is interactive fun for everybody! Nifty. I'm very interested in how it breaks down, assuming anybody ever clicks through.

Backlash
Terrorism and war inevitably give rise to concerns about “backlash”: the tendency we have to believe the worst of whatever group the individuals perpetrating these acts may belong to. One of the first things you may hear following an act of terror is concern for the innocents of the community, those who belong to the overall group, but not to the splinter, sect, or faction involved. Yes, there were incidents of one kind or another after the WTC murders and Bali atrocity, and they were quickly condemned, as is only right. Punishment was meted out where it was possible to do so. But I haven’t seen any evidence of a backlash following the initiation of hostilities in Iraq. At least, not until now. This is an insidious example of backlash, not least because it come from an official source. But unlike when racist members of government speak their prejudices directly and can be effectively suppressed by their colleagues and the public, Minister Nelson’s remarks are subversive and might track under the radar. He should be roundly criticised for his remarks and actions. I am gratified by Queensland Premier Peter Beattie’s stepping up on this. Private letter, indeed.

Larger picture note: the action of the US government against Iraq may legitmately be construed as "backlash." Just because we picked an easy target doesn't mean we didn't look for a bunch of Muslims to bash. Shame on Bush.

Patrician Passing
R.I.P., Daniel Patrick Moynihan. How did Jesse Helms and Strom Thurmond out live you?

You Know Things Are Bad . . .
when Australia is in the Times. It would be nice to see some good news on this country in that paper. Always with the negative waves, Grey Lady. I would like to say, however, that while the peace protestors overall are right to demonstrate, pursuing a worthy goal, there are many people out there who are using the war to act out their personal frustrations, just as we’ve seen in the anti-globalization protests over the last few years. These are troubled, opportunistic individuals, and they blight democracy. Unfortunately, their activities are used as a pretext by the powers that be to ignore the voices that stay on topic and restrict or otherwise impair the civil liberties of all of us. These are the kinds of actions that make politicians seek to increase police power, and make police act out their own frustrations. I am appalled whenever I see water cannon being used against citizens, just the same.

The White Air
I feel a sense of expanse and peacefulness here in Sydney, and it is somewhat to do with the fact that wherever I am, I can see expanses of sky. The light here seems brighter, whiter than anywhere else I’ve been, but even those cities where the buildings are less tall and less crowded together than NYC have a different feeling than here, even oppressive sometimes. Los Angeles is wide open to the sky, yet it remains mired in traffic, earthbound. Chicago is greyer than you’d expect, even in summer, as is San Francisco, and, of course, London. Paris is so beige I may never understand why it’s called the City of Light. Or is that “Lights”? I was only ever in Berlin during the Cold War, so maybe it’s changed, but it was pretty gloomy. But even on the overcast, rainy days of early autumn, Sydney seems bright, it seems to spread out before you like a picnic blanket. Perhaps the proximity to the ocean and the harbor’s deep reach through the city has something to do with it.

Thank Goodness the Cold War’s Over . . .
and now the Russians are our friends. I don’t suppose I should blame them, really. It’s not like we hadn’t set Hussein on his way, and our military-industrial complex is no less opportunistic.

The new world order we face has gone from progressive to regressive in a remarkably brief period of time. It is not so very long ago that everyone was speaking of a “peace dividend,” a result of the “fall of communism” and the correlative decreased need for high defense expenditures. We never got it. The Clinton health plan, for example, was beaten flat even before it was formulated, and nobody ever cuts taxes anyway. We did think we could rely on the world to become a better place, and for America to be free of its self-imposed obligation to protect the world from anti-capitalist forces. We mocked the ubiquity of Starbucks and Nike and other symptoms of globalization, even as we relied upon their reach across the face of the globe; this would, after all, provide us with the comforts of home wherever in an ever-smaller world we happened to be. It was mostly just funny when the French demonstrated against McDonalds. It didn’t so much matter if every toy on the shelf at Christmas had been manufactured in China, possibly using prison labor. The repressive regimes of the Middle East weren’t a problem: they were business partners, and it was their countries they were repressing anyway. The US had stood athwart the world, fearless and armed to the teeth, amidst the perils of the Cold War, waged on behalf of individual liberty. But when that passed, we started to realize that the triumph was about a system of capitalism that overlooks individuals. This is globalization in its essence, an economic phenomenon driven by the US and facilitated by the collapse of the Soviet regime, dragging along the rest of the world as participants with varying degrees of reluctance. Some would argue that the independence of the United States has always been about economics, but that’s just cynicism. The freedom enshrined in the Constitution is undeniably collective, but it affirms the essential requirement that individuals, too, are free within that system of independence. (It’s a remarkable construct when you consider it, nearly fractal.) Has it come to this, though, that systems are predominant? Are collective industries more powerful and more important than the individuals that comprise them? Isn’t this what gave us Enron and Tyco? Isn’t this the same problem that doomed the Soviet Union and South Africa’s apartheid? We spent decades breaking down systems in favor of individual rights, but we’ve been spending the last twenty years, indeed even just the last two years, undoing the freedoms we thereby achieved, among others for good measure. What are we setting up for ourselves when we pare away layer upon layer of our formative principles? And can we face the future, will we be capable of envisioning and grasping that future if we allow government to be driven by the values of business over those of a responsible philosophy?

We fear the world too much, and it fears us in return.

Joseph Cornell
I’ve just been reading a recent New Yorker article on this artist, whose centenary it is (approximately). Cornell has been one of my great favourites, along with Robert Rauschenberg and Marcel Duchamp. The mystery of his boxes, the strange intimacy they evoke even as they deny access, is a deeply uncanny experience. If I was an artist, I’d want to be capable of producing work like Cornell’s. I’d rather not be like the artist himself, however, as he was evidently quite a weirdo. The Art Institute of Chicago had an exhibit of Cornell when Meera and I were there July 2002, and it was a real highlight for me.

Why We Are in Iraq
This isn’t Bosnia or Haiti or Somalia. Those were humanitarian military actions, and even, in the case of Bosnia, when Europe wouldn’t act and didn’t want the US to act, or, in the case of Somalia, where the people we were trying to help didn’t want us there, this is purely a war, pursued not for the sake of aiding a weak state suffering at the hands of a stronger belligerent, not to prevent totalitarianism from taking over free states; this is war for the sake of lashing out, war waged to punish, war against a target easy to find. We can say that Saddam Hussein is a tyrant, that he threatens the peace of the Middle East, that he has or will or would deal with terrorists, that he tortures, maims, rapes, and kills his citizens, that he wants and has, will use and has used weapons of mass destruction, and these things are all true. They have been true for 20 years and would be true for 20 more, so it’s undeniable that it’s long past time the world acted to put a stop to him. What a shame, then, that the world wouldn’t act, and that the US and its “coalition of the willing” now suffer the opprobrium of the world for finally acting against this evil man. But wasn’t there a better way? Couldn’t this have been done sooner and without having to go it alone? Must the US act the thug? And now that the war is underway and soldiers are dying and civilians suffering, what can we hope for and what should we do? I will not support this war, but I hope it succeeds. I will not condone the actions of the US, but I will not excuse Saddam Hussein. I am left only to believe we will not abandon the Iraqis to corporate greed and the kind of political turmoil left in the unfinished jobs of the past decades, first among them, Afghanistan and the “war on terror.”

Yeah, Baby
I know I am not deck. I am fin. So what? Hip-hop did this, too, and I still don't know many of those words, either. Dog. I'll just have to use the words I know. Back to Henry James; that'll help.

Exhibitionism
I sometimes encounter sights truly sublime or delightfully ridiculous, for which I should be at all times possessed of a camera - maybe, like photojournalists of old, two or three camera bodies and a variety of lenses, so as to make best use of film speeds, color versus black-and-white, lens choices. I have a point-and-shoot, however, and an SLR the light meter of which is broken (plus it’s otherwise completely manual, and I have trouble remembering which way to go with f-stops). I’ve brought the camera to work with me and have snapped off a few shots. This morning the sky was a deep indigo, satellites still visible above, houses and trees just sufficiently lit by the minimal street lighting to be silhouettes. Here at Olympic Park, a ferris wheel, stripped of its gondolas, stands in a parking lot, framed by the hushed athletics venues, nearly invisible in the bright, white light of Sydney’s sun. But even the shots that do come out well are not so easily shared anymore, being out of reach of Snapfish (a service I recommend) as well as being at a postal remove from my family that pretty much precludes using the mail to distribute the images I capture. I suppose someday I’ll break down and buy into Blogger Pro™, but that will have to wait until the mortgage has been reduced a bit.

The Autumn Leaves
Last night as I walked up Glebe Point Road the season felt like autumn for the first time. A fresh breeze was whipping through the trees, whose leaves soughed in that dry rustling that announces the approach of winter (a dry rustling quite distinct from that produced over the course of the summer’s drought). The evenings have been cooling off, and the mornings lately have been less hot as well. Clouds gather overnight, presenting their constituent elements for illumination by the sun at the end and beginning of each day, providing the varieties of color only seen at this time of year. Strange to think that as it warms and thaws back in my previous haunts, here it is curling up for hibernation. Well, maybe not hibernation. In fact, although there are deciduous trees here somewhere, all the leaves are green still. There’s more rain and cooler weather, but no color change in the plants and animals. It feels like the last days of August, just before school was to start, days when I’d want to go swimming or spend the afternoon among trees, intent upon summer activities that would soon be strange: the beach was never the same in September as in July, no matter what the temperature was. It was as if the world turned itself upside-down within its envelope of air, and we breathed a different atmosphere than we had been. And now I live where that air came from, and the world has turned again, so that I inhale the northern hemisphere’s former season, and they begin to breathe ours, an exchange of respiration newly strange to me again.

Cheese-Eating Surrender Monkeys
The sound bites coming out of this war are marvellous. I am pleased to see that the discourse in Australia’s Parliament is just as high as I've come to expect from the US Congress.

Transistor Radios
Globalization brings strange changes to the world, changes which appear sudden, but which have actually been happening under our noses for all of human history. The rapidity of these changes is greater as a result of the content and media of delivery to some extent, but they are no different now in kind than when Marco Polo followed the Silk Road to China or when American frontier explorers sought a Northwest Passage. The conflicts that arise from this process also hasn’t changed, but it has perhaps in some measure become more desperate. Whereas in the past the drivers of globalization wielded overwhelming force and the populations they affected could only bow before them, over the years the ability to impose or resist change has equalized. This is, in fact, the design principle behind the Kalishnikov automatic rifle, the weapon designed by the Soviet Union for their own use and as a central catalog item in its overseas arms sales, that it should be simple to manufacture, simple to maintain, simple to distribute, simple to use. Highly successful, wasn’t it? But one turn of events evidently unanticipated in the equalization of power insofar as weaponry is concerned is that even the forces arrayed against globalization, against modernity itself, are also capable and willing to wield these weapons in their struggle. Even as they resist, they embrace the technology of change. The internet, satellite telephony, radiological devices are all part, or desired as part, of the arsenal. Remember the Taliban? How did they get jets, or the pilots to fly them? They didn’t have many, but they had some. We all recognize now that Osama bin Laden turned the tools of globalization on their heads: videos, cell phones, internet banking, and most diabolically: airplanes. We should also recognize that Saddam Hussein has for 20 years sought to do the same with biological and chemical weapons, pursuing nuclear technology with great seriousness, and not for generating electricity. It’s an amazing time to be alive, unquestionably, even if it isn’t very peaceful. Only decades ago, we had Japanese radios that were a joke, but they were the product of the reconstruction of that country following World War II, and they soon outstripped anything else being made, as did many of the other products Japan brought to the market. Intent upon relinquishing the past in favor of a future of more generally distributed well-being, Japan flew into the modern world to become one of the world’s great nations. They weren’t the first, won’t be the last. The populations of the earth are struggling to determine their fates, individually and collectively, and some of them are looking backwards, even as they march relentlessly forward. The countries of the Middle East have continued feudal traditions long beyond their use-by date, but they cannot continue this way for long. Meanwhile, the United States seems to be embarking on a backwards journey of its own, retreating into Europe’s imperial past. Is this what we have become, what we truly seek? The right motivations for military action in that troubled region are plain, but don’t let anyone tell you this isn’t about the oil. If it wasn’t, Bush’s government would be able to tell you that control of Iraq’s oil fields is a tool toward effecting change in the region on the whole, a long-range method of allowing the people there to grasp the future on their own behalf. We can hope, however, that this is what comes to pass.

Epping
For the past three months I’ve been working at the Sydney Olympic Park, which is a very strange place to keep an office. The Games facilities are all still in place – Telstra Stadium is home to the Bulldogs – but there is very little activity here. The suburb (Homebush) very nearly didn’t exist prior to the 2000 Olympics, and it very nearly doesn’t now. The vast plazas surrounding the buildings here stretch into the distance, dotted with small bunches of Asian tourists, dwarfed by the imposing structures. I have to remember to bring a camera with me over the next two days, because the Park presents some remarkable views and some amusing disparities (chief among them the rather attractive and terrifically modern train station, to which, every ten minutes, the most dilapidated trains in all of NSW travel), but also because the project moves to a new suburb on the other side of the Homebush stretch of Sydney Harbour: Epping. I look forward to the move because it will be an easier commute, if a few minutes longer, and because there will finally be somewhere to get lunch! The pub, however, isn’t much, and it’s on the wrong side of the tracks.

Lawyers, Guns, & Money
The legal pundits were out in force last night, discussing PM Howard’s assertion that the war on Iraq is legal under existing UN resolutions and that Australia is therefore free to join Bush’s coalition. I’m sure that the governments in that coalition have their own lawyers making the case, but the news programs trotted out the opposition, and their case seems equally valid. I suppose that in the end one side will be proved “right” by the discovery or failure to unearth Saddam Hussein’s arsenal of poison, but from my point of view, one of the more compelling indicators of the illegality of the war is that the US is buying its allies. As Meera pointed out, Australia has no vested interest in the deposing of Hussein; they are not a target, as such. Instead, it is the promise of a successfully negotiated free trade agreement that seems to compel Australia to support the war. Similarly, the promise of $6 billion in aid seems to keep the discussion underway in Turkey. And when you look at the list of the other countries among the public 30 - Afghanistan, Albania, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Colombia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, El Salvador, Eritrea, Estonia, Ethiopia, Georgia, Hungary, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, the Netherlands, Nicaragua, the Philippines, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Spain, and Uzbekistan – a fair number of them are very clearly among those dependent on US aid and trade. There are yet, according to Colin Powell, another 15 nations, who decline to be named among the supporters publicly, and they won’t be China, Russia, France, Germany, or any of the other major nations of the world, will they? No, outside the UN, to get its war the US has had to make payoffs. Bribery is illegal most places in the world, even in America, but that’s how business is done, and, as Michael Corleone said, this [war] isn’t personal: it’s business.

The Road Warrior
When I was a kid, I learned and grew up with the knowledge that the Russians had nuclear missiles aimed at the US and that we had an arsenal of these weapons aimed at them. We could at any time go to war, and that would mean the exchange of hundreds of thousands of tons of radioactive material exploding across the globe, and that we could not reasonably expect to survive such an exchange, none of us. And yet I was never afraid. I never believed the Russians would fire first, and I knew we would not fire unless they did. Nuclear deterrence was a waste of time, and so was building more and more ICBMs. The Chinese weren’t a factor. Neither was France. When Israel got the bomb, I still didn’t believe they’d use it. When India and Pakistan joined the Atomic club, I was a bit more worried, but still I relied upon the idea that fundamentally nobody would ever be so stupid as to start shooting off nukes. Ronald Regan didn’t believe the arms race was a waste of time, and his belligerence seemed to go to good effect in putting an end to the Soviets and the need for maintaining these weapons. Perhaps he was cleverer than I have ever given him credit for. He didn’t, after all, ever fire the nukes, nor did he succeed in building SDI. Perhaps he never meant to. Perhaps it was all a bluff, magnificently played out on the world stage. We’ll never be sure, will we? But now we have George W. Bush. President Bush II clearly models himself on Regan as much as on his father, Bush I. The big difference is that despite surrounding himself with Regan’s and Bush I’s advisors, Bush II still doesn’t have the brains to run a bluff (let alone a country). And now Saddam Hussein has called him on it and the UN players have folded their hands and the US, along with Britain and Australia, is going to war. Yes, there’s 48 hours for Hussein to find a place to hide – France, maybe? – but I don’t believe he will. Hussein is going to stand and fight (to the degree that his soldiers do, at any rate, and that won’t be small; we can expect Scuds, and we’d better expect chemical rounds). And no matter what I read of the thinking behind acting against Iraq and the plans for the Middle East and peace in our time (to quote another who embroiled us in foreign wars to our detriment), they rely upon the idea that people act according to logic, to statistical probabilities. It’s just not true. We can’t accurately predict what will happen, what Syria and Iran and the Saudis will do. We are headed for trouble. I’ll be happy to be proved wrong, because right now, this war, I’m a little nervous. (Apropos of the movie referenced in the heading above, at least I’m in the right place, although I’ll have to get a motorcycle and some football pads. See, I'm not that scared.)

I 'blog, you 'blog, he/she 'blogs . . ."
A couple of additions to the Links section: M(ake) 1, because it belongs to Andrea and it's good to catch up, and 1015, because I found it by accident (a wanderlust referral I traced back via sitemeter) and enjoy it. Especially when I recognize the neighborhood from my days in NYC. (This is always a nice entertainment, usually restricted to times spent watching movies or television shows set there, an activity I hope to expand to my new home city - just one score so far.)

Avec Fromage, S'il Vous Plait?
The United States House of Representatives should give up government and go into comedy. They are the funniest people on the face of the earth. If they'd add a laugh-track to C-Span, they'd top Seinfeld's ratings in no time. Three House office buildings' cafeterias have renamed "French Fries" "Freedom Fries." First of all, in France they call them pommes frites. Second, they are not a French invention: they're Belgian. Third, IS THIS WHAT YOU IDIOTS ARE WASTING TIME ON? Why, I oughtta. . . .

Sources
I consider The New Yorker to be one of my primary sources of hard information about politics and culture. The information to be obtained from that periodical has a clear liberal bias, but it can’t be said that they shy away from the hard questions, or at least not entirely. The criticism can be harsh, often snide, for that matter, but I’ve always trusted the journalistic integrity. When Art Spiegleman resigns and complains of a sell-out, my first inclination is to question my assumptions, but then I remember: Spiegleman is a cartoonist, and while he’s entitled to his opinions, I don’t have much evidence that he’s also a philosophical genius or in any way any better informed than the individuals and collective he’s condemning, any more than I do any of those other cartoonists touted as cultural critics of high significance. In fact, it strikes me that his problem with The New Yorker isn’t that they’re kowtowing to Bush (because they don’t, so he can’t), but that in the face of the Bush policy toward Iraq, they haven’t changed the magazine’s tone or content any more than to editorialize a bit more than they might have in “The Talk of the Town” when the President makes yet another ethically-challenged, blood-thirsty statement, as he did in the last State of the Union, regarding the assassinations that have apparently taken place recently of Al-Qaeda members. The articles otherwise continue to present as much of all sides of each issue under discussion as they can, allowing the reader to make up his or her own mind, albeit with a liberal audience fully intended. So I continue to read The New Yorker, and I continue to allow it to shape my opinions, on this matter as on others (although I may still watch movies they’ve savaged).

Wandjina
Travelling through and around the US over the years, I have had the opportunity to observe the pains to which the country went to construct road and rail ways through it, particularly evident in the cuts dug and blasted out of solid rock. If you’ve never noticed them, you ought to have a look, to the extent it does not impede safety, because the rock bears evidence of more than the hand of man. As observed in many essays over the years by John McPhee (and collected in Annals of the Former World), vast, unimaginable forces have shaped the earth, and we can observe the effects by means of what many of us would otherwise regard as mere quotidian conveniences. (They’re not, of course; great effort went into these deconstructions, great labor by otherwise ordinary men, and worthy of no small admiration.) Now as I travel in and around Sydney, I can see into the earth here, too, by the same means, and I am interested by the differences, not just in the stone, but in the stratifications evidencing the geophysical forces that have shaped this region. The cuts are often not terribly deep, but the layers are terrifically flat. I imagine this is much like what you’d see in the Midwestern US, if such road cuts existed there, which they largely do not, from my observation, simply because it is so much easier to go around than through, given the room (and the predeliction some such builders reportedly had toward drama). In Sydney, however, the cuts are present – perhaps because development has gone through the usual stages but in a different order than occurred in the US, sprawl being followed by population density, as well as the restrictions of Australia’s green rim enforcing limits to habitation that the US did not face, thus feeding the populace back upon itself after it had met its natural boundaries. . . . It’s all speculation; I’m not a scientist, physical or sociological. It feeds imagination, however: this is a country that has been trodden out flat by the creator spirits of the Dreamtime, and marked in sigils and runes for the people to know their homes. It is a manuscript.

The Welfare State
Now that I’m living in a country that subsidizes health care, I am more aware than previously of the differences between the United States and other developed nation: employee benefits. Here, employers can focus on granting lots of vacation time. They don’t have to shell out to offer medical and dental benefits to their employees. There are no life insurance premiums or disability coverage costs. If I need to see a doctor, I can, and that doctor will get paid by the state, leaving aside the Howard government’s efforts to eliminate the welfare state, and doctors’ efforts to get paid more. If, however, a person dies or becomes disabled, there is nothing. No death benefit, no income protection, whereas in most of the US, there is worker’s compensation and state-mandated (and income taxed) disability insurance – it doesn’t pay much, but it’s there – and most employers offer at least 1 x annual salary in life insurance. So now if I want my mortgage covered in the event of my untimely demise, or my salary replaced should I become unable to work, I have to purchase coverage on my own, putting me out in the cold, cruel world where the uninsured of the US have been living. Well, except for the health care part, and that’s the more important. On Monday night, I put my personal details in the hands of the Walter Neff’s and signed up for some insurance. It’s amazing what you have to do to get an affordable premium. I’m not allowed to go diving – sky or SCUBA – or play contact sports of any noted roughness, or I’m not covered. I have to swear up-and-down to my good health and lack of HIV and offer blood samples should they suspect I’m pulling a fast one. On a philosophical level, I don’t believe this is anything but gambling, and the odds, as usual, are in favour of the house. It’s not probable that I’ll die before age 65 or become disabled. It’s possible, sure, just not likely. So over the next twenty years, they’re gambling that the money I pay in won’t get paid out, and if I’m honest, I’m covering their bet with my money. I’m not, after all, betting that I will be disabled or die; I’m betting that I won’t need the coverage, and hedging by paying the premiums anyway.

Al-Qaeda and the Problem of What’s Right
When I consider the imminent war, I have to keep in mind that the rhetoric of the Right is not just rhetoric. There is valid content in what these people are saying. Iraq will cozy up with terrorists; it’s been doing so. It will do it more and more as the threat level increases, and we can fully expect the terrorists to act according to their own plans and timing, which may or may not coincide with what happens in Iraq. If we go to war – when – Iraq will not be Saddam Hussein anymore. But that won’t change what the terrorists do, just who they work with to get their ends met. So Iraq is a threat to world peace. That must change, and the war is likely to remove at least Iraq as a threat. But other threats remain, so the question remains, too: what do we do about the terrorists? Because that’s the question we started with. So long as the activities in the Middle East were largely confined there, we were pretty happy to let them continue to kill each other. Back when the PLO were hijacking every plane they could find, pushing old men in wheelchairs off the deck of cruise liners, and shooting Olympic Athletes or travellers in Rome, the world took a great deal of interest in putting a stop to these activities. It worked, too. So now we have to do the same with a new group of players, but the old group of supporters still exist. What do we do when Iraq is out of the picture as a state sponsor of terrorists and Syria and Iran and Saudi Arabia and all the other regional governments that have spent decades paying off, training, and concealing terrorists are still out there, handing over money and guns and whole towns, just so the terrorists will act outside the region? Is war, over and over, the only answer? Do we just turn to the next country and say “You’re next”? Bush seems all too ready to go that way, and I’m not easy in my mind that it won’t be the next step. I certainly don’t expect the Syrians to just stop. Southern Lebanon is owned by Hamas and Hezbollah. The Saudi royals aren’t going to quit their country so long as a drop of oil remains under the desert. I am resigned to the war, and I believe it will remove a terrible dictator from power and one of the great dangers to the world, but I don’t have to support it, not when I believe that more needs to be done to address the fundamental issues: what is America’s place in the world, and what are its responsibilities toward the Middle East? Where are the terrorists, and how can we be sure they’re neutralized? I won’t claim any answers; I’m smart enough to know I’m not smart enough. I think, nevertheless, we need to be in Syria and Jordan and Egypt and even Iran and Libya, et al., right now working diplomatically, trying to help these nations remove the threats they created, with no small help from America (and Asia and Europe; there’s plenty of blame to go around, if you’re honest). Yes, the US shares the blame for how it’s acted in the past with these countries, so it needs to work toward a position where it can share the credit for doing what’s right, now. Going to war is bound to accrue more blame, no matter how much good it does.

Overnight Stay
Last night - a more-than-usually relative term when 'blogging about NYC from Sydney - a guest's misplaced bag triggered the evacuation of five floors of the Waldorf Hotel. (This is where Meera and I had a bit of our honeymoon, in a suite that would have been "Presidential" in any other city in the world, easily engulfing four of five apartments of the size we lived in there, which is the main reason I even bother to reference this story.) Naturally, Colin Powell, who's staying there right now, so he's within easy reach of the UN, was not among those removed from the building - even though he's the reason an unattended suitcase in the car park caused the level of concern it did; and yes, that's is fair, despite the fact that NYC lives with a hightened state of anxiety over such items than it did in the past, because, nevertheless, five floors of a luxury hotel would not have been evacuated if the presence of Mr. Powell didn't lead officials to respond with full drama; the matter would have been simply handled, quietly and efficiently, as such matters have always been dealt with, even since September 11. No, it's the war on Iraq, and the threat it raises to the US that put the guests on the street and snarled traffic for two hours. Sure, it's just two hours, and some salesman's bag strewn across an empty lot someplace on an island in the East River, but sustained anxiety levels like this can lead to a stroke or heart attack. And why, if they had the owner of the suitcase, was it necessary to use explosives on it? There goes the poor guy's walkman. And his nice suit for the meeting tomorrow. Will he be recompensed? No, he won't. The lesson: never leave your bag unattended; Colin Powell will blow it up.

Commutation Costs
The straphangers of NYC are about to face an increase of $0.50 per trip on the subways. This calculates to $20 per week, or $86 per month, based on a 260-day working year (which doesn’t account for holidays and vacations, but neither does it account for working on weekends, so it balances out pretty much). I’ve screamed bloody murder at every fare increase myself over the years, and with good reason, from my perspective, which may be a little unfair, given that I am not running the subways, so my expectation that profit should go into the system rather than the pockets of executives may be out of line. There are millions using the busses and subways every day, and at $1.50 per trip, I’d have thought the system could keep its price in place, but it’s been eight years, and everything costs more than it does back then, so I suppose it’s reasonable. I don’t travel very much longer here in Sydney than I did in NYC, although the distance is a fair bit further, and I’m paying AUD$3.80 each way. This does, however, get me a bus ride and a train ride, and the system is zoned, as is done for public transport in many locations. NYC seems to be getting off cheap, but don’t forget that the population using their system increases beyond imagination every morning. Although the suburban lines are also going to increase in cost, someone may want to look at how revenues are allocated in order to achieve a fair balance between cost and benefit.

Resident Alien
We've gone and done it now: exchanged contracts on an apartment in Surry Hills. We're more than happy with what we've accomplished here. The apartment is huge (3 bedrooms), and we got it cheap. Well, relatively. This is the Sydney housing market after all, which seems second to none, or maybe second only to San Francisco, as the world's most expensive. Balcony, air con (reverse cycle, so there'll be heat over the winter; Sydney housing does not tend toward central heating/cooling), and did I mention 3 bedrooms? And parking - which is especially a point to relish, as Surry Hills doesn't tend toward much beyond metered parking on the street usually (and since we don't have a car as yet, it's potentially a source of income to offset the debt. The precinct of Surry Hills the block is located in is toward the edge, not far off the Central Business District, but it is becoming as much a trendy area as any along Crown Street, and offering considerable convenience for us in terms of shopping, transportation, dining, entertainment, etc. Reservoir Street isn't the greenest street in Surry Hills, but most office block conversions don't offer nearly as much in amenities or enviornmental niceties. But the best part of all is without question: the vendor is painting the unit for us, which at 1300+ sq. ft. would have cost us plenty. The developers have been terrific throughout this process, and deserve a lot of credit and thanks. So does Meera, upon whom the burden of locating, selecting, and negotiating has fallen throughout our search. She's thrilled with our purchase, and so am I. A happy real estate tale from Sydney.

The Weblog, or Why I Am Not a Journalist
It’s all well and good for webloggers to take themselves and their activity seriously. This is public discourse, a form and often a forum for the dissemination of ideas, and insofar as webloggers wish to distance themselves from the early days of the internet, during which it seemed everybody with a PC had a home page and on that page there were pictures of the baby or the dog/cat, it is important then that some effort is put into making the weblog’s content worth the time and effort to read it. This will often require the weblogger to be highly skilled in satire, familiar with conducting and documenting research, versed in the rules of grammar, syntax, and – please, please – spelling, and, because of the medium, sufficiently familiar with HTML to include a link now and then that works. Beyond that, there have been lately any number of efforts to regulate, or anyway advise on or recommend proscriptions for weblogging, some of which are very good, or at least thoughtful, including Rebecca Blood’s discourse on the ethics of weblogging, which I find myself largely in agreement with, excepting two points in particular of the six: Rule 2, Link to it if you reference it – sorry, but I’m busy. Well, I’m not really opposed to this rule, you’ll understand, because if I am ‘blogging about something off the web, I will link to it. But if web material exists on something I’m writing about, I may decide to slack off and let you find your own way to it. It’s not a business. Rule 4: Do Not . . . Delete. I agree completely. It’s dishonest to delete an entry. Archiving isn’t working very well for me, however, and neither does it work well if the ‘blog gets too long. So I’ll damn well zap out any post over 30 days old, and boo-hoo. One of the best points of ‘blogging is the dynamic content. That has to mean content goes away as much as it means content appears. If the archiving feature was working correctly, or I was running my own page, I’d ensure the historical depth. I am not by any means attempting to evade responsibility or to fudge at standing by my opinions. But this isn’t a business, again, and you’ll have to get over it.

Mardi Gras
I’ve been slack, I admit it. This past Saturday was Sydney’s annual Mardi Gras parade, and we were invited to a colleague’s apartment to observe the festivities. Mardi Gras in Sydney is very much of a kind with the Carnivale celebrations of Rio, Venice, etc., insofar as it consists largely of throngs of people crowding the street and a parade wherein the participants ride elaborate floats (usually themed, often according to the political viewpoint of the Krew - a New Orleansian nomenclature - directing the particular contingent), sometimes with a band, always dressed in outlandish costumes, dancing, and generally showing off. Sydney’s Mardi Gras is distinct from all others I’m aware of in that it is run by and primarily a celebration of Gay and Lesbian culture. Its roots are in the Gay Rights movement, and the free-form organization (to put it generously) reflects its ad hoc origins and the freedoms the Gay and Lesbian community espouse. The parade is vastly colourful and hugely political, and tuned to a disco beat. Although this year’s parade nearly didn’t happen (there was trouble getting funding, and the television deal the parade’s enjoyed for some year now never happened), the 25th Annual Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras parade was, as always, an enormous success. My colleague’s apartment faces directly onto Oxford Street, where the parade takes place, at the corner of Crown Street, so our view was unparalleled. A stage was set up just down Oxford at Taylor Square for the parade organizers to direct the celebrations, and was just out of sight, but the parade’s the thing, and we didn’t miss a second of it, including a delightful send-up of John Howard and the impending war on Iraq, and a salute to Nicole Kidman's nose in The Hours. I can’t confirm that it is an annual ritual, but before the parade itself began, an anti-parade proceeded against the line of march, dressed in black, wearing the traditional red ribbons, and bearing banners calling to the observers to “Remember,” in tribute to the AIDS dead. The parade itself began with a roar, produced by the Dykes on Bikes, a surprisingly large number of lesbians on motorcycles (it's worth getting your class C license, I'd say, just to be able to join this group, and apparently a fair number of so-inclined women agree), who were greeted with great delight and fanfare by the spectators. Once this anarchistic group had passed, the parade itself soon began, and didn’t quit until after 10 p.m. There was music, lights, costumes, and a tremendous spirit. It was a terrific party, even if no one was tossing doubloons or beads to the crowd (a la New Orleans). Sydney’s Mardi Gras is world-class and like no other at the same time, much like the city itself..

Not a Drop
Regular readers may recall my previous rants over the issue of the drought here in NSW, which still has not broken, despite recent rainfall. I have in the past raised the spectre of “water wars,” a political/environmental scenario you’ll hear more about if you haven’t already, and which is affecting politics throughout the world more and more. This is, you’ll recall, the secret behind The Two Jakes, the sequel to Chinatown, albeit on a local level, but the issue of city versus country isn’t the only level at which these concerns operate. Although here in Australia, states are vast tracts of land and there is little cross-over concern, that’s not to say there isn’t any. Still, the problem doesn’t appear to be quite so large as that faced for many years now by California and it’s neighbours, or as is now coming up even between East Coast states. Of course, NYC and Upstate have long had a bitter divide over who gets water from where, especially when sulphur or iron make showering, not to mention brushing your teeth, an exercise in stoicism. (If you’ve ever had to, you know what I mean. It’s hard to explain otherwise.)

The Bug
Here in NSW, the “pokies” are a source of endless debate, and are the scapegoat for all who consider gambling a more pernicious evil than any other afflicting society, including perhaps alcoholism, despite the presence of a “TAB” in nearly every pub in every town. Well, I’ll admit that video poker slot machines are certainly a blight, and they are indeed a source of trouble for anyone prone to gambling addiction. Despite regulatory efforts to require the pokies to be run only six hours a day – and there are proposals to reduce that further to just three hours – whether you’re pumping your dough into the slots or plunking it across the counter attempting the Trifecta, making this kind of gambling more accessible rather than less, strikes me as irresponsible. New Jersey is currently looking at installing video slots at the racetrack, a revenue-increasing move that seems to be adding insult to injury. Let’s be honest: state-regulated gambling is just another hidden tax on the poor. That’s an inflammatory statement to some people, but only because they’re not going over the evidence, instead making excuses based on their own behaviour. Nearly everybody, regardless of income, has purchased a lottery ticket at one time or another, especially when the top prize reaches ludicrous proportions, but when you are at the corner store buying a newspaper or cigarettes, who do you see standing at the counter buying twenty dollars worth of one-dollar tickets, going over elaborate betting schemes with the clerk, and buying multiple, colourful “scratchies” (which are put into immediate play, while the machine behind the counter whirs out ticket after ticket, and recycled for every “free play” prize – and don’t tell me you believe the free play isn’t just another come-on, like the marketing of “Mother’s Day” specials and similarly gift-oriented games)? Who? Yes, people whose income is less than yours. The older they are, the poorer they are, the more tickets they buy. They’re poor, and they could really use the extra money, if they could just hit that prize. They can’t; the odds are six million-to-one, or worse. Instead, they pump hard-earned money into the state lottery system, dollar after dollar, and all they get in return is more lotteries to pay into. That’s right, isn’t it? You’re not fooled by accounting tricks and political promises, are you? You know, just as much as anyone else, that the promise of the lottery as an alternative to increased taxes, that the money would go to schools, or police, of whatever the politicians told you, is a lie. The money pays for the lottery itself, first, and then for the prizes that grow and grow. How often do you see a prize over a million dollars? Every week. How often do you see the prize grow to $20 million or more? Every month. How do lotteries achieve these prize figures? By trapping more money from more people, most of whom simply cannot afford to spend money this way, but who believe they cannot afford not to spend the money. The promise is false. The ranks of millionaires are not being increased by lotteries and gambling. The ranks of the poor are being deepened. State-run lotteries bring money to the state for accounting gimmicks to fool the public into believing political promises are being kept, and the money comes from the pockets of those whose income is so low as to be out of reach of the state to one extent or another. Individuals and families living at or below the poverty line do not pay significant income taxes (although any income tax is already too much for a large enough number of them), and lotteries have become the state’s answer to ensuring a revenue stream from a population they would otherwise be unable to touch, except in paying out money in welfare support. State lotteries rob Peter to pay Paul, as the saying goes, and government shouldn’t be taking with one hand while claiming to pay with the other. This is Tammany Hall politics, and just flat-out wrong. Whew. Ranting is hard work.

March 3, 2003
It's 030303! I'm going to play the numbers.