Labour Day
In honour of the stonemasons and building workers of Melbourne, who brought the world the 8-hour day in 1856, we've got a three-day weekend. (Think about joining a union.)

Ace Low
I recall reading some time back that Annie Proulx had decided to quit novel-writing in favor of short stories. The first Proulx novel I read was The Shipping News, which was wonderful (if a terrible movie), and while Accordion Crimes didn’t live down to the reviews, it didn’t live up to the expectations its predecessor set. Postcards was good, but no more. That Old Ace in the Hole, Proulx’s last (or latest) novel turned up in a second hand bookstore clearance sale, where I picked up a nice hardback edition for about five dollars, and it falls someplace in between the others. It’s not as good as Shipping News, but sometimes rises to that level, sparkling in particular when some of the locals get to telling stories to Bob Dollar, the rather ill-defined central character, whose main purpose seems to be to record impressions and listen to other peoples tales of the past. Minor characters pop up, sometimes with entire chapters devoted to them, for no purpose whatsoever, leaving the impression that the reason Proulx has abandoned novels for short stories is because her novels have become a string of stories she struggles to connect with somewhat less-than-deathless prose. While I have no objection to indeterminate endings, this novel’s conclusion seems to wind itself up against everything that’s gone before it, if largely because the protagonist is such a nonentity. Even the denouement is perplexing, a rationale for the book’s title more than anything else. Clearly Proulx loves the old stories, loves the lost people and cultures and land, and if nothing else Ace establishes that love and does a fair job at making a record where one might not otherwise have existed of the sounds and sights of a part of the America that is smothered in corporate agriculture, losing its character to the facelessness of modern, urban society. Proulx has an ear for dialect and dialog and an eye for telling details and sweeping vistas alike, but as good as the writing often is that’s not enough in the end. Maybe her stories are better. I’ll have to try those next.

We’ll Miss Him by that Much
Don Adams, 82. Get Smart was one of the funniest shoes shows (yes, the shoe, too) I’ve ever seen, and if the comic genius of Buck Henry and Mel Brooks was the driving force, Don Adams’ delivery was its essential delivery vehicle. Tennessee Tuxedo, too.

Welcome Back, Carter
Now he recommends conservation? While Jimmy Carter had his oil policy imposed upon him, Bush’s troubles are a compound of natural disaster and disastrous management of Middle East policy, the latter a significant point of difference between the two presidencies. While Bush fancies himself a latter-day Reagan, with the fiscal extremism to prove it, he shows none of the subtlety, such as it was, of that administration, let alone even an iota of the compassion of the preceding incumbent. Is this how it has to go in American politics: soft followed by hard, peace followed by war, Carter-Reagan/Clinton-Bush? It still comes down to selfishness: the economic prosperity of the 1990’s led to not just complacency but a level of get-it-while-you-can greed readily exploitable by the sons of privilege who’d been living that lifestyle all along. There’d have been no suspect rebuilding contracts and a solid reconstruction plan under Carter – or Clinton, for that matter. If you insist on talking about moral values, I’d suggest looking at your own behavior first: mote vs. beam, and all that.

Erosion
With Howard convening a national anti-terrorism summit between himself and the state leaders, it looks like the new powers recently granted in Victoria, the broad powers already in place in NSW, and the sweeping draconian changes proposed by the opposition in the federal parliament are poised to become our new reality. Lots of people are very happy about this, but when you listen to what they’re saying, the return to the 1930’s parallels are frightening. Morris Iemma, Premier of NSW, openly acknowledges that the proposals represent a permanent elimination of civil liberties. Howard isn’t so honest, proposing only that sunset clauses are “unnecessary” because noone can tell him when the threat of terrorism will end. Well, that’s true enough: it won’t end. Certainly not under any existing policy in force today. But the ability for police to lock down a suburb or to enter your home in force without a warrant or any other mechanism to ensure reasonable suspicion, to arrest and hole you without charge or access to a lawyer, to act without any requirement that you ever learn why or have any recourse for redress, these are laws that won’t make us any safer than the laws we have but send us heading pell-mell towards a full police state anyway. This is how fascism occurs. Head-in-the-sand pundits will say there’s no parallel - and they’re right; there isn’t – but there doesn’t have to be. I don’t believe Bush or Howard or Blair want to be the next Axis triumvirate, but without the controls developed over the last two centuries to ensure democracy’s survival, the potential for its destruction is easily achieved despite best intentions. Checks and balances – an executive matched against a legislature with both accountable to an interpretive standard managed by a strong judiciary – keep us safe. Every time we circumvent those controls, we make the future a dark place to contemplate. No wonder nobody much bothers about human rights in China anymore. We’re becoming more like them every day.

Canon Fire
Catholic Archbishop George Pell has weighed in on the literature debate, advocating the books and methods he is most comfortable with, in opposition to the use of modern critical methods and texts. While “road signs” and “advertisements” may not meet the standards of a large number of people as literature, there needs to be more in the analysis of the curriculum than whether or not schools are teaching enough Shakespeare, by my reckoning. Critical analysis isn’t simple. Learning to read isn’t hard. Putting the two together, however, is the biggest trick of all. How many children have been turned off from reading anything, let alone anything more difficult than a supermarket circular? While many will be quick to accuse literary criticism tools as the precipitating factor, there’s more involved. I was lucky to grow up in a household that valued reading, even just for its own sake, but that didn’t fail in its efforts to engage in analysis. Other children aren’t so lucky, and they perpetuate the attitude for generations. How many times have you heard the argument “I don’t like novels because they’re not true”? “Art for art’s sake” isn’t going to help these people much. And how many people do you know who don’t read the weekend edition let alone a daily newspaper, relying instead entirely on television for information, news, and entertainment? How many of them are swallowing the Fox line without being able to restate it in their own words? I meet them every day, and if they had learned to analyze what they read, they might now be able to question what they’re told, rejecting or accepting it as the content deserves. Introducting them to substantive reading through movies, television shows, advertisements, or cereal packets, might allow them to attain the ability to move beyond simple forms of communication to more grand and substantial texts. I assume Pell is a smart enough man to know all this. That being the case, his argument with the literature curriculum isn’t Shakespeare vs. a tin of tomatoes, but with the ideological content some literature may have, or – worse – the ideology of the analysis. This is fearful thinking and leads to book bans and other demonizing practices. It’s unworthy of an educated person.

Underground
The cross-city tunnel may or may not work to alleviate inner-city traffic congestion. Until people start using it, we’ll never know. However, there should be little doubt that people will use it. Anecdotally, those who avail themselves of the underground roads network appreciate the ease with which they navigate great swathes of the city they’re not otherwise interested in. What is normally a relatively dense area of backed-up traffic is for these few merely minutes of car-free cruising. M. and I, riding with our friend Kris out to Rushcutters Bay and a nice Japanese lunch in Paddington (Wasavie, very nice, too), stuck to surface streets and could see the effect the tunnel’s had: traffic jams up and down William Street and nobody much using the tunnels. For our jaunt, it wouldn’t make sense to pay the high toll. At $4 just for the cross-city, then, potentially another $4 for an outward-bound stretch beyond that, there’s little point unless you’re going to make use of the whole thing. And let’s not mention the e-tag-only requirement, which adds the burden of being perpetually out-of-pocket by at least $80. Still, people will use it in the end. Word will get around of the minutes-from-Darling-Harbour-to-the-Sydney-Cricket-Ground ease and so forth, and motorists will head in. The harbour tunnel, plus cross-city, plus eastern distributor combination will bring the traffic in over time, after which it will be “as above, so below”: everyone stuck in traffic.

Now That’s Leadership
What I love about the Labor party in its role of opposition is it’s always delightful tendency towards one-upmanship. Not content with Howard’s incremental approach to the removal of civil liberties, Kim Beazley is proposing vast new police powers, near martial-law levels of detention and investigation. (Maybe we really should pay attention to Mark Latham’s criticisms, before there’s no difference at all between the parties.)

Champions [Over] the West
Just stealing another Big Ten song: the Swans have their first Grand Final win in 72 years. (You'd think they'd sold Babe Ruth or something.) Cheer, cheer the red & the white.

Sung to the Tune of Notre Dame's Fight Song
Cheer cheer the red and the white
Honour the name by day and by night
Lift that noble banner high
Shake down the thunder from the sky
What though the odds be great or small
Swans will go in and win overall
While her loyal sons are marching
Onwards to victory

Some of the lines don't seem to quite scan, but so what? Go the Swanies!

Premiership Chances
The Swans had their chance to take their first premiership since moving to Sydney improve dramatically last night, when mainstay Barry Hall’s suspension was lifted, letting him play on Saturday in the Grand Final. Perhaps I’m too accustomed to a different standard of athletic violence. Watching the various football codes here has been a bit of an eye-opener. In both rugby and Aussie Rules, there’s no padding, no helmet more elaborate than’s needed to keep your ears attached, and a penchant for tripping and shoving just short of clotheslining your opponent that’s only just shy of pure mayhem. For all the talk of “king hits” and so forth, it’s a wonder there aren’t more paralyzing incidents, let alone career-ending injuries. So when Hall rabbit-punched St. Kilda’s Matt Maguire in the opening quarter of last week’s semi, it was an obvious tactical move. No official saw it happen at the time, and videotape review is rarely clear enough to make a substantive finding, as in this case. While I thought at the time that Maguire was bunging it on a bit, Hall’s punch was swift and deliberate and straight into the diaphragm. While it’s useful to have a policy of reducing the penalty for an early admission of guilt, and the offense occurred early enough in the match that you could say it made little difference to the outcome of the game, Hall’s excuse is an obvious lie (except for the line: “I wanted to make a physical impact on the game”), and he got off because this is sports-mad Australia and Sydney’s best shot at a Grand Final in decades. I’ll still barrack for the Swans, but this is no way to clean up the game.

Child Labor
With the industrial relations legislation changes yet to be announced in any detail, John Howard has commenced his war on labor with a drive against apprentices and trainees, setting a new federal-level commission in power over their wages, cutting them out from the awards system. While the commission won’t go into operation straight away, the government will in the meantime set the wages. Tightwad Howard can’t be expected to actually pay fairly, but this will surely allow lots more plumbers to hire school kids and welfare moms for dirt-floor prices. The university drop-out rate is not a valid argument for this move; it’s all about cheap labor in an increasingly struggling economy. But someone’s got to pay for those rising petrol prices, especially if Howard can’t get that rise in the excise he wanted.

Up or Down
Senator Harry Reid’s made his decision on John Roberts: he’s not getting Reid’s vote. As the leader of the minority party, this is bound to have an effect, but it’s not likely to block Robert’s ascension to the Supreme Court, a position he doesn’t deserve by anything I’ve read about the man. While he’s an experienced lawyer before the court, he’s not an experienced judge, having been knocked back once from an appointment to the federal judiciary, and only attaining a position there in the last couple of years. He may be relatively innocuous, but his arguments before the court have been suspect and his answers to many key questions during the confirmation hearings were, ultimately, dishonest. He won’t comment on cases he thinks he’ll have to decide during his tenure, but he will comment on others – but nearly all are as likely as not to come up, except Roe vs. Wade. His explanation is a dodge, and therefore a lie, and a judge who’ll lie isn’t worth the paper his law degree’s printed on. While Reid won’t mount a filibuster, we can still hope for a substantial “no” vote. Little enough consolation for having to live with another Clarence Thomas on the highest court in the land.

Cops
I’ve been a fan of the police procedural mystery novel over the hard-boiled detective ever since I first read one of the Martin Beck stories, The Laughing Policeman, perhaps the most famous of their 10-book series, having been made into a movie with Walter Matthau and Bruce Dern (hey, and Louis Gossett Jr, too; amazing the things you find out). Years later, after the Counsellor travelled to Sweden or anyway became friends with some Swedes, I found that locally Martin Beck’s pretty passé. Yes, the books are dated, but that doesn’t mean they’re not good. Just as mysteries they’re excellent, and the characters are marvellously drawn. Turns out, however, there’s another Swedish series, written by Henning Mankell, following police detective Kurt Wallender. A review of his latest, The Man Who Smiled (not yet published in the States or UK), has piqued my interest. The latest back home is Firewall, which I’ll be on the lookout for in the library.

Festivalia
Having enjoyed Little Fish so much, we took in an early session of the other notable current Australian release, Look Both Ways, which has won a prize in Toronto. M. and I both came away with serious reservations, yet somehow agree that in the end this is indeed a good movie. Neither of us thought the acting was particularly good, and even when it was, the lines given to the characters would be cliched. The animation and photo montage segments were only intrusive in the first fifteen to thirty minutes or so, when the director seemed incapable of letting them go long enough to let the story progress of its own, but were otherwise visually interesting, even stunning, and a nice device into the characters’ minds. The supporting characters, however, were generally briefly drawn and one dimensional or unlikable. As is the fashion lately, it’s a movie with intersecting story lines, like Grand Canyon and Magnolia and . . . I forget the other, more recent examples, but you get the ones I mean. Like those, it relies on artifice and is only as successful as its devices can make it. Yet somehow it ends up feeling bigger than the sum of its badly fitting parts. Maybe that’s the appeal of these kinds of movies: the synergy they create. The narrow field of play never feels small, and even the small-minded characters have their focus on larger things. I don’t expect this to do well in America, but it will likely, as in Toronto, do well enough overseas in general. While I think it leaves out a lot it would have done well to include, for a small budget production, it’s worth seeing.

NZ
I only started watching the New Zealand election this last week, and the tactics of the National Party there have been appallingly personal, attacking incumbent PM Helen Clark’s looks more than her policies. Under Clark, New Zealand has been independent and progressive, forging a path quite distinct from that of other western nations, notably Australia, so for all their troubles, they’ve also been quite admirable. The rise of a separate Maori Party was surprising, since Clark’s New Zealand has done much to support the rights of the indigenous population, rights very obviously under threat from the Don Brash’s Nationals (along with other things). That Brash has managed to secure what looks at this time to be 49 seats to Labor’s 50 (out of a total 120) is not surprising in this age, when so many are opting for a new, selfish conservatism, most successfully until these latter weeks under George W. Bush, if only because of his taking the Presidency of the world’s “last superpower.” In fact, Brash’s success looks even less anomalous purely in its antipodean context, where John Howard has held sway beyond Bush’s tenure, but with no less devastating effect on society’s commitments to its underprivileged members, and with similar “moral’ underpinning. A coalition appears likely with the Maoris, Greens, and Progressives, but they’re no less apt to opt for selfishness of their own than what the right wingers evince in their policies.

The Next Catalytic Converter
Joe Williams has a device that improves the burn rate in your car from 35% to 97%. It’s a hydrogen-generator that feeds into the engine and allows more fuel to be converted into energy, reducing emissions and corrosion, improving mileage by 10% to 40%. Is it the best of both worlds, good for the oil companies and for the environment? If nothing else, it could be the first positive step toward getting off the crude. (Via Metafilter.)

Union Now
I'm becoming less impressed than I was - and it was little enough to begin with - by new Senator Barnaby Joyce. He's talking deal on voluntary student unionism", but after the deal he caved in on over selling Telstra, he's starting to sound like his ambition has more to do with being the hammer his party uses to beat out noise than an independent force within the Nationals trying to get a good deal for his constituents, that is, no ambition at all: he's just a tool. Well, that's pretty much politics as usual here, isn't it? Only the party leader gets to make any substantial noise, usually, with everyone else just singing harmony. Until they're forced from the leadership, of course, after which they can say what they like.

Mutants Among Us
Man, this guy could be one of the X-Men, couldn’t he? I mean 30,000 volts of electricity. If he could control the discharge, he’d be all set for superhero stardom.

(Yes, technically, he’d be Electro, and have to become a villain, but them’s the breaks.)

Nobody Walks in Parramatta
Car culture begins in the Outer West, and Parramatta is the big-suburb demarcation point. This is where “auto alley” is, the strip along Parramatta Road – the main drag from the city out to the west – with what seems to be every car dealership in greater metropolitan Sydney. And car culture is typified by “hoons” – drivers with no skill but an aptitude for speed and noise and generally rather badly behaved. However, here in hoon heaven, the police have decided that the Church Street pedestrian mall is danger to itself and others and recommend that it be opened to automobile traffic. The council says that at night the mall is given over to derelicts, junkies (and let’s add the homeless, who are otherwise unspecified – but I’ve been there at night and can testify to who else is present) and is therefore unsafe and unattractive to – let’s face it – shoppers. The police are evidently helpless, since they’re recommending the change, and if there’s nowhere for these unattractive elements to be, the only people who’ll go there are patrons of the various retail stores and restaurants. Harold Scruby, pedestrian advocate and council gadfly, is actually recommending a “shared use” area, but I think he must be getting tired of always being knocked back. No, says I, keep the mall. If the winos and junkies are the problem, deal with them, address their problems effectively. Eliminating the mall only pushes the problem someplace else for someone else to address. Greenways and pedestrian precincts should be part of the social fabric of a municipality, not simply handed over for increased spending and taxation opportunities. What’s really driving this change? Given that Parramatta has just instituted metered parking up and down the main drags, could it be parking revenue? It wouldn’t surprise me.

Deported
Scott Parkin has been deported from Australia as a threat to national security. He’s a peace activist, whose worst crime was to dress up in a tiger suit and run around in Exxon’s offices one time. He came to Australia on a tourist visa, but was arrested just prior to conducting a workshop on non-violent protest and after he’d participated in a small demonstration outside the Forbes CEO Conference last month. The U.S. has no intention of putting him on a watch list or otherwise restricting or investigating him, and Australia has declined to tell anyone, including Mr. Parkin, any details of the reasons for his deportation. Over at Barista there’s a report that the government gave the opposition a private briefing, and that Labor has subsequently decided not to object. The comment by William Burrough’s Baboon that the government is having a trial run of its new anti-terror deportation provisions is a little extreme but not outside the realm of possibility. In any event, Mr. Parkin will be charged AU$20,000 for the privilege of not flying home on his own return ticket, but I’ll bet the Qantas food is terrible anyway. (Will they just charge is credit card, or send a bill? If he never comes back to Australia, and he won't be able to, can Amanda Vanstone really expect to get the money?)

Update: The bill's only AU$11,700: AU$4,235.03 for the flight (must have been first class - how nice; he probably came down in coach) and $6,675.39 for the cops who flew back with him (I guess they went coach, but they'd have had to stay sober, so the free drinks up the front would have gone to waste anyway). Why send guards along in the first place? Did they think he'd parachute out on the way? And if they'd used Flight Centre, I'm sure they could have gotten a better price. Typical government waste.

Habitat for Humanity
Democrats Abroad Australia is hosting a fund-raising effort in Martin Place tomorrow, 16 September, at 6 p.m., in conjuction with Habitat for Humanity to collect donations for the relief efforts in the Gulf Coast states post-Hurricane Katrina. I suppose, with Ophelia currently flailing the North Carolina coastline, there'll be more need than ever for the charity. Everyone's welcome - this isn't an ex-pats-only event. Check the website for more information.

Wrap
Last night M. finished shooting on her short film. What? M. had a short film in production? Yes, and I didn’t say anything about it, but now that major filming has ended, there you have it: a 15-minute short soon to undergo post-production. There’s ADR for one of the actors, editing, and all that, at which point it’ll be ready for submission to the festival circuit. Production so far has been much longer than it might have been, but the co-producer (M.’s role was not limited to writing the screenplay; she also cast the actors and extras – including myself, the only non-professional in the bunch – costumed the men, and gathered sponsors to provide meals, clothing, and some of the equipment) had consented to using her own home as the set, and the availability of some of the other crew was limited, forcing everything to be done on weekends, a schedule that got further extended when the cinematographer turned out to have run himself out to a ragged edge and had to limit himself to one day a week. Editing, for which the services of a professional in possession of a credit on an Academy Award-winning film have been engaged, will begin in November.

And before I say anything more, I think the screenplay is right up there, one of the best things M.’s done, so if the finished product lives up to the potential, it’s going to get some good attention out and about. It’s based on some research she’d done for an article back in NYC that was published on Salon.com on fetish salons.

The evening work ended once the exhausted actors ran through the final scene one more time, then again, then slower, then had stills taken, then just did some quick outdoor night shots; and then we packed up the gear and sent out for some Thai curries and spring rolls, which were great (by that time, it might hardly have mattered, but the food really was good). We sat around the table telling stories, relaxing, and getting into a fully jovial state until after 11, at which point we all realized just how tired we were and went our separate ways home.

M., of course, will see the movie before me, or at any rate the rough-cut edit, but eventually, late November, I suppose, we’ll have a screening for cast and crew and all the extras and sponsors and various helpers-along-the-way. Since my boss consented to appearing in a crowd scene, I might be expected to feel some level of anxiety over what she’ll make of it, but it’s not like I didn’t tell her the basic plot going in.

Book Report
I’ve finished reading Kafka on the Shore, the latest novel from Haruki Murakami, and while it isn’t quite the grabber The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle was, it’s still, as usual, really good. It’s a bit sexier than usual, and also a bit more brutal, especially about a third of the way in, when some distinctly unpleasant things happen to the cats, a plot element Murakami thankfully dispenses with thereafter. Neither of the two central characters are ever brought into direct contact, which suits the alternating, third-person/first-person narrations, but instead, minor characters are used to thread the story together. The story is a lot more explicitly magical than other Murakami novels, and that’s not something I’m entirely happy about. Although it’s translated from Japanese, what I experience as Murakami’s distinctive style comes through. Whether it’s because of his prose being so readily translated or the translator is so adept, the novel, as usual, manages to be highly worldly, distinctly Japanese, and unique to the environment it creates for itself all at the same time. I’ve read a few other Japanese novels, but Murakami shows how well he’s mastered the form, well beyond anyone else I’ve read yet (although I hear Amy Yamada’s supposed to be good).

The Old Grey Lady's Retirement Fund
At US$50 a year, a subscription to the NY Times on-line would be cheap, except it's way more than I want to spend for on-line content. I'll make do with the stuff they post for free and look elsewhere for the rest.

Boycotts
The emails continue to arrive on the Day without Petrol idea (1 September in the States, as noted earlier). For Australia, it's going to be 22 September. I still don't think it will actually have a net effect, but why not do it anyway? With the price per litre going the way it is, it can't hurt.

Spring
It's a half a month off yet, but spring has come, if today's weather is any indication, despite Australia's calendric demarcation of the seasons, let alone any equinoxial (if that's a word) focus. Last I looked, we were 22c in the shade, and although the clouds were large, they weren't thick, so at its height the afternoon was well up around the low 70's: pleasant, indeed. This is the biggest problem in my life, well, aside from all the more mundane issues of money and so forth, althought these are related, after all, because what I'm talking about is how much, having come to Sydney and experiencing on a sustained basis, beach life, I know now how ready I am to retire. Bring it on, I say, but after the lottery win.

Better keep working.

Looting and Profiteering
Both are war crimes. I mention them, however, in the context of New Orleans, where President Bush is blocking the Red Cross from the city while allowing Blackwater, the federal contractors acting as mercenaries in Iraq, to go in, assisting in disarming and relocating the citizenry. He's also suspended the law requiring federal contractors from paying their employees the prevailing wage for the type of work performed in the area where they're operating. So any locals hired for the clean-up won't get a decent wage and volunteers aren't welcome. Good thing ol' horse-show Brown's back in D.C.

Australian Cinema
Next, we'll go see Look Both Ways, but rather than attending in chronological order of release, we skipped off to see Little Fish, the newest offering, starring Cate Blanchett, Hugo Weaving, Sam Neill, Martin Henderson, and Noni Hazlehurst, and marking the Australian debut (and for all I know return to screen acting) of 21 Jump Street's Dustin Nguyen. It's a remarkable cast in what might have otherwise been a small, intimate movie, but the quality here, not just in the performances, but generally,, is tremendous. Neill's always good as quietly evil, and Weaving is better in this than in pretty much anything I've seen him in before. It goes without saying that "our Cate' is excellent; she never disappoints. As M. pondered as we queued for entry, it will be interesting to see how this does overseas. It's right up there with Lantana, if not even better, more proof that when Australia gets it right, it does it up big. Rather than the slapstick and/or suburban comedies, Australian drama is unlike anyone else's, probing into ordinary lives in ways that Hollywood is too often too busy to bother over. This is one to be sure not to miss.

Deterrence
The PM is proposing some new laws to prevent terrorism in Australia, including sticking up surveillance cameras everywhere like they have in England, increased powers of arrest and detention, jail time for incitement, and fines or jail for leaving your bag somewhere. Other than the obvious decrease in overall civil liberties, which is especially worrying in the case of the arrest and detention proposals, I don’t think the cameras are an effective deterrent – they’re more likely to serve an investigatory purpose after the fact than to provide any particular utility beforehand – and the new luggage laws are, as Kim Beazley points out, ineffective – more likely to snare some harried family member trying to shepherd the kids through to the boarding area than anyone intent on wiring themselves up as a bomb. The net effect of these laws will mean more harassment of ordinary citizens and less interruption of business operations at airports and railway stations.

So it’s a jobs program. No, really: you'll need operators behind those cameras, first of all, then more lawyers for all the arrested citizens, more guards to cover the shifts for the longer detention periods - not to mention the increased handling requirements will mean building programs for more jails and a volume-based increase for service providers to law enforcement - and the airlines and railways will be able to handle more traffic because they're not so frequently disrupted by having to address lost luggage problems. The benefit to the economy will be immense, especially once the labor law changes go into effect and employee turnover goes into hyperdrive.

Breaking Quarantine
If there’s one food I love, it’s tomatoes, and if there’s one kind of tomato I love above all others, it’s one that actually tastes like a tomato. Whoever invented that ripening gas did a real disservice to the world, so I’m on the lookout for a way to grow my own heirloom tomatoes. First: get the seeds into the country. . . .

Free PC
Malcolm Turnbull, millionaire-turned-politician, would like everyone in Australia to have a free, lifetime email account. Of course, most of us already have one, at least if we’ve heard of Yahoo!, Hotmail, or Google. What we don’t have is free internet access, regardless of how “cheap” broadband is. And a lot of us don’t even have a computer. Yeah, it’s an “innovative” idea, but I don’t think Mal’s going to buy me a PC. I can picture him, however, as the next “Dell dude.” (If he is going to hand out computers, can I have one of these?)

Day of Prayer
While the Red Cross manages to provide relief to the Katrina refugees, and FEMA dithers, the Right Reverend George has announced a day of prayer next week, reinforcing his government’s two-pronged disaster-response themes: delay and empty promises. While the rest of the country – and much of the world, generally – has already included the Gulf states in their prayers, and have already moved into direct action, Bush and Cheney continue to make speeches and avoid answering pointed questions. I’m sure a lot of people will be comforted to know that people are praying for them, and it’s unworthy of anyone to question the power of prayer during times like these, but a lot more people would be a lot more comforted if they could get their hands on those debit cards or enrolled onto Medicare and Food Stamps and so forth. If independent aid organizations are managing the business of providing for these people better than the Feds, then I’m with Senator Reid: skip FEMA. Cheney’s answer on Michael Brown’s appointment neatly side-stepped the issue of qualifications, but I’d still be interested in what favors were being returned that put a horse-show manager in charge of such an important post. And what’s behind gas prices - which are growing even as far afield as Australia? Is this price-gouging, profiteering? With two oil men in the top spots, can the Federal government answer that? Maybe, if we can get an independent inquiry, we can find out. It would be a more worthwhile investigation than anything we got out of Ken Starr.

PAC
Some additions to the on-line political resources I’m tracking: Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and Swing State Project are websites devoted to promoting Democratic candidates for re-election or to supplant Republicans, each a great place to help get people like Rick Santorum, that moral abyss, out of national office. Progressive Punch, along with Progressive Majority, are websites to assist in tracking and supporting progressive candidates as well as the voting records members of Congress and the Senate. And of course Democracy for America, the site Dr. Dean turned over to the greater good.

Old Man
When I read Jason Kottke’s Popcorn Hacks, I soon realized that I am an old, old man. Why does popcorn work? Because there’s a bit of moisture inside the kernel that, when it turns to steam, cooks the corn and bursts and outer membrane. Why does microwave popcorn work? Because it does the same thing as the application of heat: turns the liquid into gas. So for you kids playing at home that never cooked up popcorn on the range-top, you don’t actually need to “stir the kernels around with a spoon so they don’t burn”; just keep the pot moving, shaking the kernels. And you don’t need “protective eyewear so that when the first kernels pop, you don’t get hot butter-like liquid in your eye”; you just need a lid for the pot. The rest of the instructions are just like what we used to do as kids.

Ol’ Mess
Forced evacuation of the entire city of New Orleans is now underway. The mayor cites his power under martial law and claims the risk of fire and disease is too great to allow anyone to remain in the city, even in undamaged homes. Only 10,000 people are left, other than rescue workers, law enforcement, and Halliburton. Nothing Bush could have done – other than to have funded the damn levees – could have prevented this situation, it seems. I’ve heard reports that only the French Quarter, out of all the historic neighborhoods of New Orleans, may come through with its character intact. Rebuilding, getting the thousands of displaced residents back in their homes, is urgent.

Aid to the region is set to increase from $10 billion to nearly $52 billion, some of which is being distributed directly to refugees in $2,000-debit cards, to “get them some cash in hand, which allows them, empowers them to make their own decisions about what they need to have to restart their lives,” according to disgraced horse-manager and present head of FEMA, Michael D. Brown. Mr. Brown’s statement is expressive of the President’s attitude toward the situation and poor people in general: help yourself, because we don’t think we should have to; only morally weak people don’t have money. (For an example of this kind of thinking, both specifically within the Bush administration, and in the United States historically, last week’s issue of The New Yorker included an article on the health care system by Malcolm Gladwell that provides some great insights.)

Well, $2,000 isn’t going to get anyone very far toward rebuilding their lives. It won’t even pay for the period of time they’ll be homeless, let alone recompense them for lost wages. These people are going straight on the dole, many of them for the first time, and many will stay there for a very long time to come. Inquiries are all well and good, and while Bush can’t magically rebuild New Orleans or the devastated businesses that have supported the city, he can ensure that every effort is made to pump out the water, rebuild the levees, clean up the mess, restore the infrastructure (public and private), and subsidize the return of jobs. I only hope $52 billion will be enough – and that it’s actually spent where it needs to be. Aid packages are often more promise than substance, and the money often ends up boosting some corporation’s price-earnings ratio or lining some CEO’s pocket rather than feeding someone or putting clothes on their back.

While Bush couldn’t run an oil company or a baseball team (and hasn’t done much of a job with the national economy or a war, unsurprisingly), and Michael Brown couldn’t run a horse farm, they’ve got to run this reconstruction – not just for themselves, but for all the people of the Gulf coast. Lives were at stake before the storm; they’re still at risk.

Qualifications
Suddenly faced with a second Supreme Court nomination, compounded by the vacancy being the Chief Justice’s seat, the President went for the unexpected and named John Roberts, previously his choice to replace Sandra Day O’Connor, as his selection for the Rehnquist robes. I know the ABA has rated Roberts as qualified for the original appointment, but I’d seriously question his nomination as Chief Justice, so I’m glad to hear Senator Harry Reid calling for more time and additional scrutiny. The guy’s been a federal judge – a judge at all – for only a couple of years, before which he was an ideologically suspect government counsel and trial lawyer, albeit with Supreme Court experience. It seems a mighty big step up to make him the top dog at this stage. Of course, it represents an easy choice for Bush: he doesn’t have to attempt a more polarizing nomination either to the additional vacancy or separately to the position of Chief Justice, and by not naming Scalia to the post, as I suspect was probably the more generally anticipated option, he makes an end run around at least some of the opposition. Bush still needs to fill an empty seat, but he may think he can put up one of his wing-nuts without generating a filibuster, Attorney General Alberto Torquemada, for example.

Meanwhile, as the fallout from New Orleans continues, every effort is being made to minimize the damage, unlike the administration’s actions before the storm. Fresh from shoe-shopping, that death’s head Condoleezza Rice, along with fellow ex-Cold Warrior Donald Rumsfeld, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Dan Bartlett, are touring the area in advance of Bush’s second visit, with everyone staying mum on any criticism levelled at them from the Democrats, but alongside a concerted push towards blaming the Democratic administrations of the city of New Orleans and State of Louisiana. While these latter are not without blame, we shouldn’t forget the mismanagement of Bush’s federal government. This is the administration that claimed to recognize the need for greater coordination between agencies, but which has, as much through cronyism in its appointments as in its fundamental antipathy towards direct government management of infrastructure and services, consistently failed to put in place the conditions necessary to ensure smooth operations, whether in military deployments or in response to natural disasters. It’s past time the “age of spin” came to an end; we cannot trust these people.

Grey Power
If the NSW Health Department is really concerned, there’s a simple solution to reducing the potential problems of recycling grey water: eliminate phosphates and salt from cleaning products. Growing up, I remember when Suffolk County banned phosphates, and half the housewives drove into neighboring Nassau County who hadn’t joined the ban (and where the water table ran downhill into Suffolk, making the ban somewhat less effective) to buy foamier soap. That didn’t last, as the inconvenience wasn’t really worth it, and, in the end, the non-phosphate stuff did the job anyway. The quantity of fecal matter entering the environment through grey water recycling would be negligible, and the e coli danger along with it, not to mention that it only requires the filtration of 3 meters of soil to clean out pretty much everything in a litre of water. I don’t have enough plants on the balcony to manage the run-off from my washing machine, or I’d be watering the plants a lot less often (and yes, M., I know I’m supposed to do it more often already).

Rehnquist Requiem
It's just one disaster after another: with Chief Justice William Rehnquist dead, there are now two open spots on the Supreme Court, one of them paving the way for Scalia to don the stripey robes. Roberts' nomination is sure to reach confirmation, even though he's pretty much a right-wing ideologue in favor of overturning Roe v. Wade, and having supported, if not openly espoused, a variety of policies and political entities, including the former apartheid government of South Africa, and we've seen a lot lately of the kinds of extremists the Bush Administration wants to put forward for federal judgeships, as well as their callous indifference to the rule of law and international standards of justice. If their neglect and mishandling of New Orleans is any indication at all, and I think it is, we can only expect Bush to thrust the Supreme Court back into the judicial dark ages. I hope the Democrats in the Senate are getting ready for a fight.

How Not to Apologize
The Coalition now has two methods of apology: none at all, as pioneered by John Howard, and without even a veneer of sincerety, as practiced by Tony Abbott, who, after openly mocking John Brogden, then went on to pretend to offer offering an apology. How do people continue to take these creeps seriously?

Update: Leaving a message on the answering machine - when it's public knowledge the guy you insulted isn't even home, particularly - isn't an apology; it's a cop-out. Mealy-mouthed acknowledgements that what you did was "tacky" don't get the job done either. Didn't Tony Abbott's parents teach him any manners?

Since landfall, New Orleans has been a disaster area. It was already, of course, with its endemic poverty, and waiting to happen, too, with the reduction in funding for levee maintenance, not to mention that the evacuation plans relied on an every-man-for-himself scenario, leaving the poor to fend for themselves, a situation that has resulted in huddled masses in the Superdome and convention center, where there is no support to speak of and crime is running high, right along with all the other failures in services, such as fresh water and food supplies that the looters are working to supply, well, all right, some of them.

But where are the 30,000 troops? And will the $10 billion actually reach anyone who needs it? While some are callous enough to suggest not rebuilding, we are talking about people's homes, people's lives, that they've spent years trying to build up and maintain. Stories of the family that drove off to Disney World because they couldn't go home right away are poignant and heartwarming at the same time, but they don't give the true picture of what's happening back where the chaos continues its reign.

12,000 National Guard are on the way, but that's still a long way from being where they're needed now, let alone being the 40,000 requested. The Red Cross and various other aid agencies are doing what they can, but they're few in number, and we are talking about the richest, most powerful nation on earth, aren't we? We can do more than show up a day late and start spouting platitudes, offering fly-over assessments as if they meant something. I know Bush and Hastert didn't create the hurricane, but they're not helping; they're standing still and looking for ways to retreat. Compassionate conservatives? No such thing.