Generation Gap
The Casssandra Pages have an interesting discussion happening on “baby boomer” culture vs. the subsequent generations, prompted by Beth’s discovering elsewhere what is also to me a surprising level of vitriol being hurled at those of us in our forties and fifties.

I’ve suspected for some time now that a significant number of the internet commentaries I follow are written by persons much younger than myself, and that they regard my generation as having caused much of the damage in the social, political, and physical worlds, and while they have a point, it’s not a very good one, even though the defense available is also much the same as the rationale these same critics often provide for why their ideas of how society should proceed are superior: incrementalism.

Those of us born in the post-World War II years up to about 1963-4 are, first of all, not as monolithic a group as we’re often portrayed. While a generation is usually considered to be a period of about 20 years, that’s a much bigger block of time than can reasonably be considered to have a formative influence over such a large population, especially because we’re talking about the years in which television became the defining medium of communication. Al Gore, in his recent address to a media conference in New York, discussed the effect of television on American society, and the “kids today” should read it. After all, while sociologists might say the baby-boom generation created or at least coined the “generation gap,” there’s always a gap; there always has been. The difference, if any distinction can be drawn, is that the gap occurs faster, at decreasing intervals, so that the 20-year generation has shrunk by now to at most a ten-year period. While my wife and I share many of the same formative cultural experiences, they’re more shared in kind than in their specifics, even leaving aside the continental separation. Nevertheless, with only five years separating us, our attitudes towards society and culture and our politics are substantially the same, whereas many people I meet substantially younger than myself have much different attitudes. I’d also suggest that this is happening in a relativistic fashion, so that as members of a generation age, their relative differences shrink, while the differences from succeeding generations grow. (There’s also the “I’m becoming my father/mother” effect to be considered, in which you can no longer distinguish the lyrics in pop music and become disenchanted with all elements of popular culture generally in preference to the forms known from your own defining decade, a concept discussed in an earlier post, wherein the decade in which you were at your best physically and stylistically remains in force throughout your life thereafter, especially as expressed in your wardrobe.)

But with a faster pace of change overall occurring outside the individual, where a slower pace of change increasingly takes hold – call it cultural inertia – for one generation, while the other keeps pace, frustrations are inevitable when institutional change doesn’t likewise keep up with the generation then coming of age. My parents were Republicans, even campaigning for Barry Goldwater, just as my older brother had become politically aware and at a time when he was also tuned in to the spirit of the age as it were, and this led to years of conflict over the dinner table, arguments raging on either side, one for increasing the pace of change, one for moderation, if not the status quo.

The changes of the 1960’s and 1970’s have been positive, in many cases, even as the restrictions imposed against other changes have also, in some cases, been positive, just as in both cases there have also been harmful results. The generation of free love (hardly a new concept anyway, so more properly birth control) and recreational drug use was also the one to usher in significant changes in civil rights, if not from within the halls of power, then by numeric force. These have been countered by draconian anti-drug legislation - a “war on drugs” – and the continued attempts to legislate reproductive health. What really characterizes the “revolution” we grew up in is a sense, mostly among our own children and their own, of failure.

The environmental movement is fragmented and ineffective, and the boomers who have joined the power centers have been either impotent to make any substantial changes or complicit in maintaining business as usual. Corporations pander to boomers even while they ruthlessly exploit Generations X and Y. What television ad doesn’t include anthemic music from the heyday of the Who, the Rolling Stones, and others? Only the one that are designed with an ever-younger target audience in mind, embedding themselves into the consciousness of children who will grow up dedicated consumers of branded merchandise. Among politicians, we’ve now had two boomer Presidents, one of whom never got enough “free love” and one who is utterly incompetent. The rest are devoted to cronyism, self-aggrandizement, and lining their own pockets at the expense of everyone else, with only a few notable exceptions – and who’d trust them under the circumstances? Enron and Tyco – run by boomers, and into the ground at that, again from greed. Other massive conglomerates, a buzzword that signalled evil to our generation – just get bigger and more powerful, while the earth’s icecaps melt and the Third World descends further into starvation and violence.

Some look at the so-called “greatest generation” and think to ourselves we are pigmies riding on the shoulders of giants; those who came before are nearly all gone now, and what was our lofty perch is just standing on our own two feet, face-to-face with ourselves, our children, our children’s children, and our failures. We are mired in our own incompetence, itself born from having taken it easy in our youth, relying on our parents to make it all right, as if we would be youths forever and never have to face our responsibilities. Personal debt soars out of control even while prices rise ever-higher, easily keeping pace with our incomes. What will be left behind for X and Y?

If we’re honest, we and the X’ers and Y’ers, what’s left is the same thing that was left for us, for our parents, and theirs, and so on, down the generations. With few exceptions in recorded history, each generation actually has built up, moved forward, progressed beyond the one before, but the pace of change isn’t a continuum. Progress is achieved suddenly, the way, in spring, one morning you see the buds on the trees greening, then, without ever seeing the change, the trees are in full leaf. The change was incremental, yet sudden, and this is the paradox we often fail to realize. The Baby Boom is making things happen, and as the energy of some of its members flags, new energy is applied from beneath. Sure, we rode our parents’ shoulders, but when our turn came, we carried them, too. This is happening now. We’ve had great moments and we’ve had failures, and the same will happen again and again. The great shame we face now is how we can hope for our successors to work according to our higher ideals rather than from selfishness, because that’s what I hear more than anything else coming from the mouths of the “kids today.”

So much effort is expended over “when will I get mine,” and the perceived vastness, in size and influence, of the boomers, compels the answer to be “only when I take it.” There are those of my generation who use this agenda for their own ends, such as the current incumbent in the White House, just as there are many in the X and Y years who aspire to higher goals and purposes than any we ourselves once envisioned, and I have my doubts that any of them will ever “get it,” even as they will often say of us. But it’s just another generation gap, just another failure to communicate, and just as easily resolved. Incremental change doesn’t satisfy anyone, either those forced into it, those stubbornly opposed to it, or those who would leap ahead into the future.

We could do more, we can and must, to provide food and shelter for those with none. The revolution isn’t over; but it has become a quagmire. With help we may yet struggle free and see AIDS drugs provided freely, for example, and drugs and medical techniques developed without a profit motive driving the pace, and a clean environment, and we may have these things without some of the compromises we’re making now. I won’t say “wait your turn,” but I will say if you really want change, if you want your share, first, learn to share and then stop complaining.

Through the Park
M. and I had a very nice day yesterday, roaming down through Hyde Park, where we saw some of Art & About: a series of large-format photos hung between the light stanchions lining the central pathway in the upper section of the park, just below the Archibald Fountain, many of which were remarkable. Although, inexplicably, the event doesn’t start officially until today (why waste the 3-day weekend?), this particular element is a favorite of ours. We’ll review the brochure for any remaining exhibits we’d like to make a point of seeing.

Later, we made our way through the Domain into the Botanical Gardens, where we visited the bats and indulged ourselves in the early summer’s heat and sun along the harbour, then back up to Darlinghurst for a spot of lunch. It’s a lovely way to spend time in such weather, although if the temperatures keep up this way we’ll have to switch to the beach before long. We’ll probably do that anyway.

Why You Should Wash Before Eating
I worked for a number of years with a woman who suffered from an ulcer. She seemed a happy and carefree person, if sometimes given to bouts of great stress over her job, and we all tried hard to help out so as to relieve her and keep her stomach calm. Sometime towards the end of my tenure with that firm, I’d heard that ulcers weren’t stress-induced, and I’ve since had occasion to wonder if J. had ever followed up on the news, which she’d initially dismissed, as the rest of the medical profession did for years, apparently, that the root of her trouble was bacteriological. Perhaps now that Dr. Barry Marshall and Dr. Robin Warren have won the Nobel Prize for their discovery of H. pylori, she’ll have done a course of tetracycline and have done with her troubles at last. (N.b.: Australia often pulls in the scientific Nobels, especially medicine, so along with socialized medicine – assuming it lasts – M. and I are in the right place for our old age, aren’t we?)

Cronos
The Counsellor points out the take on Bush’s new Supreme Court choice as characterized by Dahlia Lithwick in Slate.com: a “double-Cheney”, Harriet Miers selecting herself for Bush to nominate. Well, she’s a lawyer, and technically, I suppose, that makes her qualified. In a pig’s eye. As White House Counsel, at least she’s not America’s own Torquemada, Alberto Gonzales, but if there’s one thing we know about the Bush White House, it’s that rewarding loyalty and sycophancy are what W.’s all about. Naming an insider is the safe choice, and naming someone with no judicial record is even safer: there’s nothing to offer any insight on ideology that isn’t protected under either the client-attorney relationship or Executive Privilege. Her tenure as a bar association president is meaningless. However, her remarks at her nomination press conference, that her duty was to “strictly apply” the constitution according to the “founders’ vision” are indicative of the kind of inane literalism that extremist reactionaries like Bush prefer, ignoring that the world changes in two-and-a-quarter centuries and that the case-law principles enshrined in our government grow along with it. The selection of Harriet Miers is an attempt to put a stop-clock vote on the highest court in the land, more Thomas and Scalia drivel to tip the balance towards an unnecessary and even counter-productive conservatism. It’s a stealth nomination and should be opposed.

Bali, Again
Another terrorist attack on foreigners in Bali, clearly a reversion to 2002, given the timing, and undoubtedly the same group. Indonesia's harsh justice system will surely deal swiftly with the perpetrators, once they're caught, and hopefully this time the leadership will also be accountable.

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.

The Fallen (Culture) Warriors
There’s a report that the recently-closed Valhalla cinema may yet be revived, and if there’s ever a sign that the movie business isn’t as imperilled as it likes to say it is, this is it. An art cinema, devoted to the kinds of movies that don’t make it to the multiplex, and offering a rare, true big-screen experience, the Valhalla had revenue problems to be sure, not to mention something of a mildew problem (but that seems fairly common in Glebe), so the proposal to turn it into a mixed-use business – office space, a café, and especially a DVD shop, shows how this kind of operation can survive in an era where the very nature of the industry is on the cusp of major change. Piracy is often touted as the primary cause of the fall in revenues for films, but other, more objective analyses suggest that more fundamental, audience-based changes are taking place – home entertainment technology, for the most part, making the cinema experience less relevant to a growing segment of the population. This shouldn’t, however, undercut the cinema experience. Advances in home audio and the trend for technology prices to fall almost in direct proportion to innovations still don’t duplicate the big-screen projection. While digital video approaches ever-closer to film’s richness, there are still things you can do with the latter that can’t be done with the former – ask any cinematographer.

And speaking of movies, I’m starting to be more interested than I was in The Constant Gardner, an adaptation of the LeCarre thriller, a book I’d picked up when I was working late one evening and needed something to occupy myself with other than the internet while some processes took up the majority of my workstation’s capacity. Like most of his books, that I’ve read, it was quickly engaging, but has to be, as well, easily the most bleak. Nevertheless, with Ralph Fiennes and Bill Nighy in leading roles, I’d probably go see any movie, but these two seem superbly adapted to filling their respective positions in this one. It won’t play at the yet-to-be-revived Valhalla, but I’ll suffer a trip to Hoyt’s for it anyway.

Perfect
Of the 24 “perfect” albums complied on Philosophistry from Plastic’s “poll” (and there’s a bit of internet nostalgia; I used to try to rack up the “karma” back before I started posting my own content), I’ve only ever heard 1/3 in their entirety, and none of them strike me as meeting the standard, i.e., not a bad track in the bunch. Having never heard even one track off OK Computer, the top-rated album, I’m perhaps not in a position to judge any of the list, and to be honest I have trouble thinking of any record I’d put up for inclusion. If I said Eno’s Another Green World, is it because the trend towards “ambient” music was already evident, and I never actually hear all of the album even when I allow it to play through? Most jazz albums I’ve heard, especially the be-bop classics, could claim perfection as far as I’m concerned, but the measurements I’m using probably aren’t particularly critical, let alone musical, given that I don’t really know what I’m hearing, unlike many other listeners, who are capable of identifying the sources, whether a straight blues riff or “I Got Rhythm,” much the was some people can identify samples in rap. Is perfection possible? How long does it last? What I thought of once as the most remarkable album of all time, at any given time, isn’t such at any later time, say, after a year, let alone after five, ten, fifteen. . . .

1 September
There's a grass roots boycott being touted around the email circuit for tomorrow, advocating that no one buy any gasoline for the day. It seems we're moving backwards faster than I'd thought, returning to the Carter era, except only in the sense of malaise that was so evident then, with none of the can-do spirit that had us patiently enduring alternating days for fill-ups and switching off our cars at red lights lasting longer than 30 seconds. For many people a day without petrol is just going to mean hitting the bowsers on the 31st for more than they'd have purchased, so I don't believe for a minute that it's actually going to hurt anyone who deserves it if people stay away from filling stations for the day. I'd still do it, if I had a car, because if enough people join in, even if the net effect is nearer zero than not, the blip would be noticable. And because corporate interests drive the present national administrations of the CoW countries (and others), registering a protest there is almost sure to be more effective than camping outside Crawford or the White House or the Lodge or 10 Downing or wherever.

I read a short story in the latest Griffith Review that attempted to creatively summarize the conditions these efforts are trying to achieve: ordinary, individually powerless people, reaching critical mass to effect change. The story was moderately successful, but the concept is one that those of us who oppose the Bush Administration's abuse of power need to keep in mind. We can't let up the pressure; we must increase it. No more rolling over by the Democrats, no more votes without debate, no more lies.

Resignation Redux
After Bob Carr resigned, I wondered what the effect might be on Labor’s hold on NSW, but perhaps I worried needlessly: the opposition leader, John Brogden, has also quit, although only as Liberal leader, not as an MP. While he offers six beers in quick succession as a bit of cause-and-effect, he doesn’t seek to excuse his behavior, and his apology and stepping down from the leadership are honorable actions in themselves. He might have done both before he got caught out, but it’s not worth quibbling over. In any event, he wasn’t a particularly effective opposition leader, reduced as many such are to complaining more than offering alternative solutions, and Carr’s departure and his successor looked to make things more difficult for Brogden rather than less. Well, assuming Morris Iemma can get the trains to run better. And the hospitals.

The USA Patriot Act & You
I suggest going to your public library and checking out some books on Islam and physics right now. See if you can get a "Harry Potter" book, too, and really freak out the thought police: magic, religion, and the A-bomb; think of the possibilities.

Welfare-to-Work
Do most single parents stay home, or do they work outside the home? There are certainly those who rely solely on benefits and child support payments, but surely there are many who also have at least part-time jobs. So is the government right that their revisions in the welfare scheme will provide an extra $58 per week for most persons in this situation, or the National Centre for Social & Economic Modelling, who claim a reduction of $86 per week, with a gain to the government of $114? Pretty sweet for the Coalition, if the latter, and I’d sure appreciate another $3K annually if it was me if the former is correct. I’m suspicious of this government’s economic claims, however, especially when it comes to the social safety net. Knowing they’d prefer to eliminate government protections in the health and well-being of the citizenry, and firm in my belief that support for families means something different to them than it does to me, I’d err on the side of opposing their changes.

Secrets & Lies
I don’t for a minute believe that the matter disclosed to the public by Herald Sun reporters now being prosecuted for protecting their sources are in any way entitled to government secrecy. Matters of national security have such protections, sure, but not paying benefits to widows & veterans? That’s just sleazy, and so’s trying to pretend the public would be informed in the fullness of time and prosecuting reporters who caught you out.

Creation & School
I've added an image to the sidebar that I got off Preya's Dreaming of Hanoi, although it doesn't include the Flying Spagehtti Monster link, because I think it's one of the more inspired satires coming out of the nonsensical debate of teaching religion in science classes. Check Boing Boing for additional FSM links and information.

There Goes the Neighborhood
When I saw the headline, I knew it wasn’t my co-op, because I didn’t live across the street from the 92nd Street Y, but around the corner. Still, it’s fascinating to hear about the old ‘hood and what’s happening there and wonder what all my neighbors must be thinking to discover a crack den just down the street, let alone the couple who bought my flat (assuming they’re still there). Of course the line between Upper East Side and the ungentrified Spanish Harlem, although traditionally 96th Street, was always blurred, and Lexington Avenue was never going to be Park Avenue, so a little bleed-over isn’t entirely unexpected, especially while the party bar-to-patron ratio in the area was so high.

I’m not sure what it is about me and inner-city living, but I seem to always end up near a dodgy gin mill: in Queens, the Mocambo Lounge featured “dancing” (yes, the exotic kind), and in Manhattan I had Brother Jimmy’s Bait Shack pounding out the frat-boy doof-doof into the small hours. The Royal Albert, the next block over from where I am now, may not be a problem, despite catering to the backpacker trade and devoting more space to pokies than pool, but the “working travellers accommodations” (English and Irish visitors with little money to spend on where they sleep and little interest in much else besides getting sunburned and drinking heavily) next door more than makes up for it. If I wanted quiet, though, I guess I could have elected to live way out in the countryside someplace, but I’m a city kid in the end, if just for now, so I put up with it where I can, and call the Rangers when I need sleep.

Good on Ya, Cobber
Australian colloquialisms are an interesting sociological study. Generally, the forms of address are used as levellers, bringing everyone’s station into line with everyone else’s, dissolving class distinctions, undoubtedly originally as a reaction to the class-based oppressions of the early penal colony and settlement origins. “Mate,” the universal salutation and categorization, has long been used with both broad application and great subtlety. More or less. I recall hearing soon after my arrival here that “Mate” was what you called someone when you disliked him or her, while you called your friends “Bastard.” Although I haven’t experienced the latter to prove its truth, I’ve heard and experienced the former in application, and it’s true enough. I recall one instance when M. put such venom into calling someone “Mate” that the situation she was addressing was nearly instantly rectified, the person on the receiving end recognizing the error of their ways. So I can understand why they’d ask guards at Parliament to stop addressing visitors that way, even though the instruction banning “Mate” only lasted until it became public knowledge. I’m with Roger Price, the minority whip: “let’s not get above our station,” he said; good advice for politicians everywhere.

Red, but in Tooth & Claw
If you can think of a better plan for the Midwest, go for it. I think the "American Serengeti" is the best solution to the problem of those red staters who "just don't get it" I've heard yet.

11,220
Clock time 82:15, less 08:08 for 74:07 “real time.” I feel better. Now if I can find some race photos, everyone will be happy. Meanwhile, there's this one:

Skills Gap
The federal government has made a lot out of the dearth of unskilled workers and young people going to trades, but little has been done to improve the situation, unsurprisingly. Still, with the industrial relations protections about to suffer the heavy hand of the Coalition (and don’t expect much out of the Senate hearings, if any), you might be forgiven for thinking the government’s claims of productivity increases, should they actually be realized, would gladden the [black] heart of any Liberal. Instead, a new effort to increase immigration by skilled workers is now being undertaken. After all, once the protections for existing workers have been removed, additional competition for jobs should see amazing gains in productivity – through increased depression of wages, anyway.

And while we’re on the subject of what Howard and his cronies are doing to screw the population, they want to sell Medibank, too, the government-owned “private” medical insurance scam, I mean, supplement to Medicare. Well, they’ll need to sell something in order to fund the losses they’re likely to incur when they sell the remainder of Telstra and have to come up with more than the projected AU$3 billion for bringing rural services into line with what’s on offer in urban Australia, not to mention that putting the scheme (truly) into the private sector is the only way to even potentially achieve the kind of competition necessary to relieve the premium burden presently loaded onto every citizen sucker enough to sign up to get the tax rebate.

Finish
90.23 - well over what I'd hoped for, even subtracting 5 minutes for the time it took from the gun to when I actually crossed the start. Thank goodness there was a staggered start at the City-to-Surf today; with 60,000 participants, the field was so large, unless you were one of the elite, or even just among those in the first three starts, you never saw a clear line, dodging and weaving all the way. Nobody much was throwing elbows, but there were those who just wouldn't hold their line long enough for you to slip through a gap either.

This is probably the most fun race I've ever run in, not to mention the longest (as well as being the longest run I've done at all since High School). Definitely next year. And I'll manage not to screw up timing myself next time, too. Or maybe I'll just lop off those extra ten minutes from the first gun in addition. Yeah, 75.23 sounds really good. Not realistic, but good.

Debut
Sunday will be my second race in Australia, but the first iconic run: the City to Surf, 14K of fun. I've been training the last couple of months, working up to the distance, with my longest training run about two weeks ago at 12K. I'm looking to do anything better than 80 minutes, but with all the tens of thousands who'll be out there on the 14th, I'll probably have to keep my own clock. While the weather turned a bit chilly the past few days, Sunday promises 21 degrees, which will be quite pleasant I think. The gun goes off at 9:30 a.m., which is reasonable, and I'm stuck in the second start. This will also be the debut of the Keith Richards Athletic Club in Australia. I know I should have signed up with that as my team name, but it'll have to wait for next year.

The Australian Bill of Rights
Right now, it’s a chimera, although depending on your political persuasion, maybe a basilisk. In any event, although there have been proposals and proposals for proposals and proposals for discussion of proposals and . . . stop that, it could go on all night. Just mention Bill of Rights, and there are plenty who’ll get up on their high horse to tell you why there shouldn’t be one. Janet Albrechtsen, for example, head stooge for the Murdoch press here on all matters small-l liberal, says a bill of rights means the terrorists win because activist judges will let them. It’s the “activist judges” she’s really concerned about, as you can see from the devolution of her argument into whether Roe v. Wade should be overturned in America. She talks about how Tony Blair has been thwarted in combating terrorism in Britain by such judges, and how precedents put “traditional judges” in a quandary over their rulings. Both arguments are hogwash. Judges aren’t making policy decisions, they’re ruling on the law. Britain, American, and Australia all have a long-standing tradition of common law – where rulings by judges affect the application or applicability of laws. A bill of rights doesn’t change that, it’s just more law. Britain, for example, has no free speech, no separation of church and state, and very little else of civil rights actually encoded within the body of legislation, and neither does Australia. The U.S. relies a great deal on its Bill of Rights, and that was its purpose, as with the rest of the Constitution. There’s an argument to be made over whether or not a bill of rights is needed and arguments aplenty to be had over what it should contain. But the legal tradition is already established to support all forms of legislation.

Having grown up with such rights, perhaps I’ve always taken them for granted, even now, living without them. I ought perhaps to be more cautious in the things I say publicly, but a lifetime of protection ingrains a sense of entitlement. Personally, I’d like to see a bill of rights in Australia, and Britain, for that matter. I’d like to see Australia become a republic, whatever form it might take, and to protect specifics of the kinds of things that make up the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, a felicitous phrase to broaden all humankind’s ability to achieve peace and harmony. It runs against the pragmatic grain of many politicians and much of the public here, but that doesn’t diminish the concept’s worth. Because I’m a small-l liberal, I don’t have any qualms about following a live-and-let-live philosophy, one that doesn’t require the legislation of morality, and that allows differences to enhance society at large instead of being subsumed in favor of one particular mind set.

I don’t see any hope of progress in human rights as civil rights under the present governments of the U.S., Britain, or Australia, although thankfully the U.S. Constitution is still – for now – the law of the land, and I don’t see a lot of hope coming from much of the opposition, but I’ll stay in the struggle, for what it’s worth.

Excelsior
I’ve been meaning to mention Get Up, a newly launched political action website on the model of Move On. I’ve only just signed on for updates, so I don’t know a lot about them, but they were evidently fired up by the Coalition’s Senate majority, and there’s nothing wrong with that. In Australian party politics, it’s too easy under these conditions for the majority to override without or with only a minium of debate any objections, an especially worrying situation under the present regime, intent on they are on a return to the 19th century (or earlier), so I welcome any effort to ensure the government is aware that they are under direct scrutiny. It hasn’t mattered much to this crowd, but it can’t hurt to keep up the pressure. Although there’ve been accusations of this group being (merely) a Labor Party “front,” those are simply irrelevant if not asinine. Onward & upward!

Microbial
We had the nephews over this weekend, twin eleven-year-olds, very sportif, so we took them bowling. I love bowling, although it isn’t the sport I remember from my misspent youth, where you sat between frames drinking and smoking. Bowling alleys otherwise are the same, and the same world over, I’d say, redolent of wax and shoes. As fun as that was, it was over pretty quickly, so even though we’d already watched the night before our now-traditional video (A Series of Unfortunate Events, which was fun enough, if Jim Carrey’s ad libs weren’t a bit too already-dated), we went to see War of the Worlds. This has been touted as Spielberg’s anti-Schindler, an allegorical war movie for our war-on-terror times, similar to the original intent of the Wells story in putting man’s inhumanity to man in a larger perspective, but while the movie is certainly more true to the original than the 1953 version, and more bleak (as noted by many critics, a church is destroyed early in the attack, while in the Cold War-era adaptation it’s a place of ultimate refuge), you’re hard pressed to come out of the theatre with any message, having been subjected to a tour-de-force of tension in what is, largely, just a chase movie. Tom Cruise may yet grow up to be a good actor – he’s given a bit more to do here than his usual insouciant hero role, but also a bit less. The finale is pure schmaltz and entirely inexplicable: how Boston comes off better in this than New York is beyond understanding, unless it has something to do with the Kennedys or the Kerrys. It was a fun movie, even for its dark tone, and well done, too, worth the price of admission. I can’t help think, however, there might have been something else a bit more challenging and therefore a bit more enjoyable. Maybe something with subtitles next.

Willing
If Japanese Prime Minister Koizumi wins his early election, it will be touted as a triumph for the “coalition of the willing” co-conspiritors, but there is plenty more at issue here than that, especially since Japan is already planning their withdrawal, especially the life savings of many of his citizens, which, like Bush with Social Security in the U.S., Koizumi is intent on putting into the stock market. I expect him to get through, but while there may be some basis for calling this a vote-of-confidence on government-sponsored pension reform, this isn’t a referendum on Iraq.

Baby & Bath
Anyone expecting John Howard’s industrial relations version of Sherman’s March to include the recently awarded parental leave provision are Pollyannas with the brains of Polly-parrots. Such leave flies in the face of everything Howard is attempting to do with his IR changes as well as defying his long-standing and well-evidenced antipathy to women in the workforce. Mommies stay home and take care of babies, and Daddies go to work every day to make money in John Howard’s world. He will punish any who defy that convention, and has been carefully structuring the pensions schemes to ensure such stability, even well before the coalition started in with the “one for mom, one for dad, and one for Australia” population proposal. Inflation may not be a worry right now, but that doesn’t mean a sea change coming, one that may mean longer hours and harder efforts to make ends meet.

Right Rights
The “global struggle against violent extremism” is being used to erode civil liberties we’ve taken for granted for all of our lifetimes or fought to preserve against other external threats for the last hundred years and more. As the threats from the terrorists continue and as they act out their murderous agenda, confusion and fear mount, even among those best suited to deal with the problem, and we make it easier for liberty and democracy to be curtailed. That there are those among us who continue to make their hatred for us clear only exacerbates an already difficult situation, but an eye-for-an-eye mentality only leads worse to worst. In this climate of fear, it’s all too easy for a radical conservatism to take up other, unrelated causes, and to push through transformative legislation to alter the very character of our nations, and do so unopposed. Our opposition politicians, on whom we might otherwise rely to offer checks and balances against extremism – the non-violent kind – have largely become bystanders, enthralled as they are to popular opinion and re-election. It’s important to choose your battles, of course, but more and more often, every battle looks more and more important.

Design
Creationism, the belief now being touted as “intelligent design” doesn’t belong in science class, where evolution is taught. And despite the Command-and-Creep’s suggestion that it should be taught “so people can understand what the debate is about,” even Kansas shouldn’t be fooled into putting it on the curriculum, unless they’re going to start teaching religion, in which case they can have an entire semester devoted to the various creation myths from around the world. If it’s understanding the debate that’s at issue, teach a philosophy course, or put it on the debating society’s topics list. Pro: the emperor of Japan is descended from the Sun. Con: It was the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

Blues
Continuing my efforts to wean myself from retailers and other corporations whose political donations favor the GOP, I've begun an experiment related to signing up as a Barnes & Noble affiliate. Rather than parasitically maintaining a wish list on Amazon, I'm going to use B&N links in the sidebar. Although they don't have the recommendations facility of Amazon, that's not a feature I put much trust in anyway, so although this is more public, it's not dissimilar from the "what I'm reading" "what I'm listening to" sidebar items seen on other blogs, and if anyone actually buys one of these things (for themselves, of course; I'm not fishing for gifts), I stand to benefit as an affiliate as well as using this as a memory aid. If the pages load too slowly, I may reconsider, but once started on the advertising path, it's precipitous incline.

Regime Change
Fahd’s been sick for a long time, and Abdullah’s been pretty much acting king for that period. Now the House of Saud has a new king officially, but the challenges he faces are the same as he’s been dealing with – or ignoring – all along. There are two expectations now: reform and violence. Reform won’t come soon, and the violence is more likely to be repression of dissidents than it is in a realignment of the ruling family’s power structure, but I fully expect to see some changes take place and some acts of terrorism followed by harsh police actions. As usual with the Arab Middle East, I also anticipate being confounded in my expectations. And meanwhile, if nothing else, the continued dominance of the Saudi royal family is good news for the regime-changers in D.C.

It's Your Supreme Court
The Democrats are collecting questions for Judge Roberts in his confirmation hearings, and, yes, I'm looking at you, Counsellor. (Via Metafilter.)

Cats of the World Wide Web
No, Sarah Boxer, the reason cats feature so heavily on the internet has nothing to do with their self-referential intensely navel-gazing lifestyles, and it's certainly not their ability to ignore their owners' internet time. It's because they'll get up between you and the keyboard until you feed them. They don't like flash photography much, so that's as good a way as any to deter them or otherwise make use of their intrusion. With dogs, when they interrupt, it means you have to take them for a walk.

Searching for Geppetto
The design that's been approved for the new PATH hub at the former WTC site look pretty cool, but then again, I think I'd feel like I was being swallowed by a giant, skeletal whale.

The Day Before
I finished Umberto Eco's latest, The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana, on the train in this morning. I've been a fan since discovering The Name of the Rose, even through The Island of the Day Before, and in another way especially his essays, so when I saw the reviews of this one, I did my usual: I didn't read any more of them than enough to know that this was an "illustrated novel", experimental in applying images as part of the text. Although I did also get the impression that it wasn't particularly a success, I was very pleased just the same to get it for my birthday (thank you, M.), and by-and-large I can say I enjoyed reading it. It isn't, however, a success.

Queen Loana starts out well, as the story of a man who has lost his memory following an unspecified illness, except for everything he's ever read. This leads him, and the novel, into a search for his past through the textual evidence he's left behind growing up, at which point the novel spirals into a maniacal list-making exercise in nostalgia, unrelieved for the next two thirds of the book, at which point, having suffered a relapse, we spend the remainder reliving his childhood from the point we departed consciousness through to late adolescence, a significant portion of which was recently published as a short story in the New Yorker, where it was a lot better for the redactions.

The writing is still good, for all that, and there are moments throughout that lead to - unfortunately unfulfilled - expectations almost sufficiently thrilling in themselves, leaving me disappointed that nothing promised was ever really met. Even for fans I'd say, go ahead, buy it, if you must, but wait for the paperback. Meanwhile, I'll be more cautious next time I'm buying Eco's fiction.

A Dingo Has Cut the Wire
So Telstra admits it can’t sustain equality of service in rural areas to that of the cities. Where’s a Wichita lineman when you need one? No, seriously, what’s the problem here? Maintenance? Installation? Mobile coverage? I suppose maintenance and installation really go hand-in-hand, although the former would be the greater burden, I expect, than the latter, since the population growth seems centered on the cities. Nevertheless, even inclusive of providing enough signal relay towers the issue presents itself more as budgeting than as actual costs, not budgeting enough in order to pad other areas, like profits. This often happens in large corporations, regardless of government regulation, although that can add a layer of bureaucratic costs eating into the operation. And with thieves like Steve Vizard in the upper echelons, acting as if there just isn’t enough money that isn’t theirs, it seems as likely an explanation as any other. I don’t object in principle to the full privatization of Telstra, but without substantial competition, they need a closer eye on them than they’ve even been getting. Maybe the new guy can manage things better.

Quitting Time
I'm surprised, and I'll bet I'm not alone, to hear that, effective next Wednesday Bob Carr will no longer be Premier. It's two years before the next election, or thereabouts, so it's a bit more sudden than his stated reason of wanting more leisure time would account for, but after 10 years, he probably is pretty jack of it. Even though I find myself disenchanted with him these last couple of years, what with the rail debacle, the desalination plans, and the attempted coup in the merged City/South Sydney councils, he's had a good run, and I hope he'll enjoy retirement. I wouldn't dismiss the idea of him going up for a Federal seat, but I wouldn't be surprised if he really does go home and stay there.

You’re Fired
Shame to use that title, but it’s too appropriate to the growing trend towards the abolishment of unfair dismissal protections. Peter Costello, the man most likely to succeed Howard someday, at least for now, supports eliminating this protection for all, not just Howard’s timid exemption for companies of 100 or fewer employees. While “compassionate conservatism” was never a catch-phrase here, Howard and his ilk are members of that same neoconservative revolution that would eliminate welfare and social justice programs in favor of a return to the debtors prisons and work houses of the Dickensian era. Already it’s been shown that Australia has the worst record in the industrialized world at supporting women’s right to work outside the home, and Howard’s rhetoric and the actions of his government on child care and unemployment benefits for single mothers demonstrates their conviction that women working is immoral and the root cause of the breakdown of society. This latest development in industrial relations isn’t being contemplated by the present government, but make no mistake, it will come back on the agenda. The time to support workers’ rights is now.

Party Planning
Democrats Abroad Australia has a new website, courtesy of our former vice-chairman, Scott Forbes, who has moved back to the U.S. It’s pretty much “proof of concept” at the moment, but will provide a resource for the state chapters to organize their meetings, as well as for the national group to get the word out on events and issues important to the membership and anyone else interested in American Democratic politics. There may be a bug or two to work out, but this site will eventually fully replace the use of Meetup.org, the Yahoo.com group, and other, disparate internet efforts, giving us a robust organizing tool.

Pixies
I remember when I first heard Surfer Rosa, visiting my brother in San Francisco. Like many of the groups for whom I developed an enthusiasm, they didn’t last long, although unlike others they didn’t proceed through a series of personnel changes prior to disbanding. But after a whirlwind tour, complete with “authorized bootlegs” of each show, they’re officially back together and releasing a new record. I’ll buy it, too, but not without some trepidation. It’s nearly 15 years on from when they last put out a record, and that one wasn’t so well-received by the critics. I might be better off with Frank Black’s Honeycomb instead, or waiting for the longed-for Australian tour. (Thanks, Beth, for the heads-up on this.)

Suddenly Thirsty
It's a big ad, all right, and now I want a beer. (Thanks to The Swanker for the link.)