Travelogue, part 2 Christo. I've missed all the installations he's done since I first learned of him, including the Central Park "Gates", so I didn't, even after reviewing the web site, have much sense of what the "Big Air Package" was going to be like. We trained out from Berlin to Oberhausen, where a disused "gasometer" stands, and where Christo has previously had an installation. It was built in 1929 and was the largest in Europe. It is indeed enormous, a tourist destination in its own right, apparently. Christo's installation on this occasion was an "air package", which is the format he started out with, back in the sixties, and has come back to now and then since. This is the biggest. There is no clear way to describe the experience other than "awesome".

Travelogue, part 3 So, after Berlin, we flew to Pisa, where we didn't stop, but caught a train up to La Spezia and then on to Riomaggiore, the southernmost town in the Cinque Terre region. This was a true highlight of the trip. The landscape was incredible, mountains straight up out of the sea, terraced for olives and grapes, but much of it still wild, too, with each of the five towns along the coast being perched and clustered right on the edges. Italians seem to like their cats, too.

Travelogue, part 1 So, first up, Berlin: Special notice in Berlin: Holocaust Memorial, designed by the same guy who did the WTC in NYC. Very evocative. Also, the Jewish Museum was very extensive and effective. And then there's the Walk/Don't Walk signs. West Berlin has the usual format. East Berlin, however, had it's own, which has been preserved. It helps orient you to where you are in the city, too, I think. It's all very different from when I was there in 1988, not to mention October being a bit cooler than August, and having locals to guide us through. Checkpoint Charlie has an enormous McDonald's on what was the eastern side, and many of the old East Berlin sites now host staged photo ops, like guys dressed as soldiers or in bear suits or Mickey Mouse, even. Segways everywhere, for the tourists, and otherwise the city is bicycle-mad. They keep a sense of their history well, without overindulging guilt. The role of Germany in the modern world is acknowledged with appropriate humility, as well as the divisions of the Cold War. I'm glad they're keeping what's left of the Wall. Some of that deserves to be pointed up, too, including the East Berlin Gallery section, which had a section of the Wall painted with pictures of other, current walls around the world. We still do these things to each other, and are insufficiently shamed by it.

Inscriptions Did I actually buy an inscribed (2nd edition) copy of "Sincerely, Willis Wayde"? Or is that someone else's signature? US$8.14 seems a little low for such a thing. Thanks, Strand Books!

Home Again Something longer later, maybe a series, certainly some pictures, but for now: that was an epic trip. Berlin was amazing, 25 years on from my last trip there, just ahead of when the Wall came down. Now, Checkpoint Charlie, where I stood and watched the East German and US armies monitoring the crossing, there's a big ol' McDonalds. On what was the eastern side. Cinque Terre was the best part, and Rome was anarchy. NYC was a nostalgic trip, including a visit to the Frick (no "Girl with Pearl Earring" this time, as we were just a couple of days ahead of a new show), but with enough new stuff all over town to keep it as interesting for me as it was for first-time visitors. Enough local knowledge remains to get around, but not much more, so advance research would have been a good idea, as data roaming was insufficient and WiFi only sporadic to know what we needed when we needed it. The trip to Mom & Dad's in NC was brief, but we got enough of the South, or that part of it, to satisfy some parts of interests for all involved, cat-head biscuits being a good starting point, if authentic pulled pork didn't get done in the time allotted. Well, there's enough barbeque around Sydney we can say we know what we'd missed. Nobody does biscuits, though, like Big Nell. I'm not looking forward to reviewing 3000 photos and picking through them for posting here, but I'll get it done eventually.

The Mob I enjoy science fiction. Sure, a lot of it is polemical, or, worse, just fantasy, but some of it really has some science in it, and that can be really fun, especially going back and seeing the stuff that's already come true. Like John Brunner's "The Shockwave Rider." Interestingly, this is a response to Alvin Toffler's "Future Shock." What it does with that, however, is remarkable, especially, perhaps, in retrospect. The book predicts the internet, and very well, including smartphones, to an extent. The computer viruses and so forth are believable and a good prediction of what such interconnectivity would bring. ave The society in Brunner's novel may not be quite what 1975 thought 2013 would be, but it's not all that far off, in the bigger picture, if not the particulars. But one thing has always stood out to me since I first read it. Governments rely on threat and trauma to survive. The easiest populace to rule is weak, poor, superstitious, preferable terrified of what tomorrow may bring, and constantly being reminded that the man in the street must step into the gutter when his superiors deign to pass him by. What's being described here is the resemblance of government to organized crime. Government is the mafia, more so than the mafia has been for a very long time. There are those who will say, in Australia, that's Labor, because of its union origins. False. Or false in any modern sense. The unions have been long ago relegated to irrelevance by the Liberals, who operate more in line with what we know of as the Mafia. The Liberals legitimize their . . . business, just like the Mafia families were just "olive oil importers" or whatever. We can't see the true power brokers, and that's the point. Is it any different in the US? The GOP is run by business interests. How unlike the mafia are the Koch brothers, for example, buying politicians to deny climate change and preference petrochemical businesses over its alternatives? We need to wake up to the lies. The data is at our fingertips. And the power of our votes and our dollars can have an effect. But more importantly, we must all speak out at every opportunity. Object to the lies. Tear off our own blinders and let anyone who hasn't done the same know that it only hurts for a little while, and then feels a whole lot better.

Bridge Run The Sydney Running Festival includes a marathon, half-marathon, 3.5k Family Fun Run (walk across the bridge with a pram), and the 9k Bridge Run, which has been my elected option the last three years. This year saw nearly a four-minute improvement over 2012, and just a little slower than 2011. I credit work for particpating in the Global Corporate Challenge, a fitness-promoting program that encourages you to walk "10,000 steps" or more per day, which ran over the last four months. I included training runs in that program, but breaking training was compensated for, it seems. It's tremendous fun running across the Harbour Bridge, somewhat less so through the Domain, when the streets narrow and the course loops back on itself, so your pace, for those of us not destined to actually compete, can be forced to a shuffle as you look for a gap through the walkers and (even) slower participants. The reasonable starting hour makes it a good choice, although by 9 a.m. at this time of year it's getting warm: 20 degrees by the time I got to the finish. I'd go for another half if it didn't start at 6:15. There's still the Sydney Morning Herald Half, in May, or maybe the new one out at Olympic Park at the end of October (not this year, though, which I'll miss even the 10k event, due to only just having completed a long overseas trip).

The Poor You Will Have with You Always Tony Abbott's Liberals have won the 2013 federal election. What a shame for the country. Abbott ran on Labor's budget deficit and the large number of illegal entries by asylum-seekers by boat. The "budget emergency" was a furphy: the LNP's proposed budget needs only $0.6 billion to return the country to surplus in the same period of time Labor would have re-attempted. But Labor made too many promises over too many of each of the last three years that we'd be back in the black "next year". And large numbers of fools believed that deficits are inherently and always bad, even when we can see how Britain and other European countries are struggling with austerity economies, how the US struggles to keep on track (blaming Obama all the way, despite the Bush tax cuts and two endless wars he started). And fear of Muslims, a nice dog-whistle issue since the days of John Howard, make all refugees arriving by boat a deadly threat to the nation. We'll all be wearing burkas next! Labor's lurch to the right on that issue also had large numbers swinging against them. Without being a viable third party in their own right, Greens preferences helped staunch the damage, but xenophobic mainstay Pauline Hanson got into the Senate. We can only hope that she will challenge Tony Abbott's agenda just on principle, if she actually has any, for his attempt to have her imprisoned back when she was first standing for a federal seat. But too much of her agenda coincides with his to be truly hopeful on that point. Bye-bye carbon tax/emissions-trading scheme and hello warmer planet. I may have a coastal property sooner than I'd like, as in at all, under the circumstances, but I can't say I won't be paying for it, as Tony's plans for the country mean people like me will carry the weight for the wealthy. The acceptance speech Abbott gave started out ungraciously and ended up with a promise that Australia is "open for business". That is not a promise I am anxious to see how it plays out. I can't believe the country voted for this guy.

City2Surf The biggest foot race in the world went off this morning with 85,000 entrants, including me. Better result than last year by a fair bit: 84:49 by my clock. We'll see what the official results are, but that should be pretty close. I finished behind my bib number, but that watch is pretty accurate: 84:46.

Where's Whaley? Thar. The container ship was on the horizon line, so probably too far to see all the activity, except on sonar, but we got quite a show. The last twenty minutes or so had lots of breaches, tail slaps, and even some waving, although I doubt it was any of it for our benefit. The northern migration is nearly over, so it's lucky we got booked in when we did or we'd be waiting for them to head south again, which won't actually be all that long from now. Might have to do another cruise, if we can get as good a deal as we did with Sydney Adventure Cruises. A Groupon deal, and not much of a discount, really, but worth it.

B-Grade B’s been travelling, so I’ve been occupying myself in the evenings by going to see movies she’s not interested in. First up, World War Z. I don’t know if Brad Pitt means to have a career in movies about devastating global plagues, but he does a good job of being sane in this one, and resourceful. The movie’s not scary, not a horror movie at all, really; it’s a medical drama. No, really, although none of the doctor characters seem to be notable at diagnosis or developing a treatment. What the movie’s really good at is getting across what it feels like to be in the middle of a mass panic. I can well imagine what it would be like to be under attack without knowing where the next blow will come from or if it will come at me while watching this movie. It’s also good at conveying just how baffling disease can be, how impossible to stop, much like Steven Soderbergh’s Contagion, even if it is at the same time and throughout less medically realistic. It’s a better movie than zombies would lead you to believe. Last night was monsters, big ones: Pacific Rim. I can see now, without having to ever bother about seeing them, why the Transformers movies would be fun. But I went to see this because it’s Guillermo Del Toro’s tribute to the rubber suited Japanese giants that occupied Saturday afternoon monster movies so ubiquitously in the sixties and seventies. Del Toro does monsters so very well, and he gets to do big ones here. The movie hits every stereotype, every stock speech (except “some things mankind was not meant to know”) and reprises dozens of alien invasion tropes, but it’s still big entertainment. If you want a quiet movie, this isn’t it. There’s enough tension to be satisfying, even though you know the outcome already. It really left me wishing Del Toro had been successful in getting Lovecraft’s “In the Mountains of Madness” green-lit.

Sealed So the Pope’s updating the rules around sexual abuse crimes, but he’s also beefing up the laws on leaks. The two are in conflict. This is what the Church hierarchy doesn’t get: secrets are at the heart of the problem. Were there child abusers? Yes, there were, just as there were and are all the hell over the place, not just among priests. Nearly every institution having caretaker responsibility for children has had some problem with abuse. The Roman Catholic Church, however, has institutionalised hiding from and avoiding responsibility for the crimes of clergy. Happy as they are to put some idiot butler in jail for leaking financial documents, they have shuffled pedophile priests and cooked their finances to avoid responsibility, as if that would solve the problem. There’s a doctrinal problem they need to contend with. If the seal of the confessional is inviolable, then some things need to be sins beyond the reach of the “sacrament of reconciliation.” The Church cannot be a law entirely unto itself if it will not operate as openly as law, in fundamental principle, should. Not all the Ten Commandments rise to same level of harm. Murder and sexual abuse are not equivalent to talking back to your parents or petty theft. (If a priest steals your car, however, I think the civil authorities should be notified.) The Church operates in the world and needs to acknowledge this, not try to bury its secrets deeper.

Slower & Slower, But Faster than Last Year City Mile Dash may not be the Fifth Avenue Mile (although if James Packer was really smart he'd sponsor it and keep it going after he builds his giant casino), but it's a mile race and a good cause, plus a nice break in the middle of a working day. Weather was great, and I think the course, which made some sharp turns, felt faster than last year. Maybe that's because I was a whopping seven seconds faster myself. Hey, at that rate, I could shave a whole minute of City2Surf this year!

Ol' Baz Sure Can Throw a Party Baz Luhrmann's Great Gatsby isn't F. Scott Fitzgerald's Gatsby, not in the story and not in the character, or at least not entirely. It's a hell of a party for significant sections of its overall running time, but it shies away from the characters too much, and that also means that the performances are often more style than substance. It's hard for actors as good as these not to perform well, and so they often do, but not to the best effect, which, I think, is down to the writing and the directing. Luhrmann captures what would have been the spectacle of Gatsby's ambition, and the undercurrents that he kept hidden, and, in the end, the undertow that was his undoing, but it's plasticised, too much of a film of a film by a great fan and student of the films of the forties. You can't make a musical of Gatsby, and I think that's where this movie ends up. Plus, we should have gone for the 3D option. Even in 2D you're very aware of the 3D effects, in the long pull-back shots that bring the foreground forward and push the background back. I don't know what that's called, but in those and many other shots, the effect would have been stronger with the glasses.

Pubrock Good news from the real estate front: The Annandale Hotel has been bought, purportedly by someone who will keep it as a pub, and hopefully keep the live music going. The Annandale is a storied Sydney music venue, from back in the day, although fallen on hard times and afoul of newly nearby residents who don’t appreciate the noise. (Why move next door to a rock ‘n’ roll venue if you’re just going to complain?) But nobody’s contacted me about my piece of it: I bought a brick so shouldn’t I, as a part-owner, get a cut? Maybe it’s because my name doesn’t appear on the “honour roll” – maybe I didn’t buy enough bricks. But since I’ve got the shirt, I should show up at the closing, right?

Impending Fun Last year I managed to get together a team from the office to run the City Dash, but alas, this year I am a team of one for the Cancer Council NSW's annual mile run fundraiser. It's not Fifth Avenue (and there's no Donald Trump, thank all the powers), but it's still a heritage thing for me, and I don't mind the fund-raising aspect. In fact, if any Australians ever still see this, feel free to chip in. I promise to run as fast as I can. That's as much as I can promise, and it ain't much, but oh, well.

Fun, Fun, Fun Every year I go to Vivid. There is always something worth going to. Last year, maybe I made the wrong choices, but not this year. Kraftwerk reprising their 8 iconic albums was not to be missed. The Sydney Opera House, however, should be ashamed. Look at the view from our seats: For this I had to go into a lottery, because the Opera House knew demand would be huge - and it was. Sold out on the floor immediately, and a secondary lottery set up for the balconies, including those so far off to the side that the tickets came marked: "No view; listening only." It was a little better than that, but only just. Lucky for us the people in the pair of seats in the very front row didn't show up. We moved up and got this much better: Still shameless, but we could use the 3D glasses for the animation on the screen behind them, and leaning forward could see them at work. Hilarious, really. I mean these are serious musicians, but aside from sometimes adding a bit of a live chant and twiddling dials and so forth they could have beamed it in over the internet. But I wouldn't have missed this for the world. They invented this stuff, and it's technically and artistically important, even for pop music. I think they had fun, too, but it was a little hard to tell. But on Sunday, the view we got from our walk across from Palm Beach was from the best seats in the house, even if it was a 60 degree slog to get there for the first kilometer or so. Nice weekend, all up.

Not Enough Honestly, if I was in charge of the IRS, I'd focus on TEA Party groups, too. These are [semi-]organized groups of people dedicated to tax avoidance. They don't want to pay taxes. Why wouldn't they cheat? Go ahead, audit every last one of these anti-social creeps.

Heart of Glass I understand why that review I read of Iron Man 3 was so . . . angry. I don't remember if it was the NY Times or the New Yorker, I think the Times, but they were really upset with the whole terrorism thing. I get it: it was very effective, at least for me. It was triggering. I've been angry, too, all this time. I was, of course, able to enjoy the usual moments of humor in the movie, the lessons to be drawn from the little kid, and the political polemics about war and the environment and the overreach of government and so on, blah, blah, blah. No different, really, from any of the other comic book movies. It was exciting, fast-paced, a thrill ride. And also hit me in a way that no other movie I've seen since 2001 has done in regard to the events of September 11. And it didn't even take place in New York or, except peripherally, Washington DC, let alone some lonely field in Pennsylvania. Although there was that bit in the rural midwest. That was pretty spooky. But the Avengers trashed NYC and I didn't experience it the way I did this film. Space aliens aren't the monsters that scare anyone much anymore, maybe. Mostly it was the performance and presentation of Ben Kingsley, which is, I suppose a tribute to the actor and to the screenwriters who crafted the part and the plot around him. It was a very effective presentation of what we've come to know of as terrorism, specifically of the al Qaeda variety. Even if it was, in the end, more a caricature of Osama bin Laden, it still worked. What it was was exploitative. That's what terrorism does: it exploits fear. That's what art does, including mere comic book movies, it exploits our emotions. But this was an exploitation that hit home where other instances have not. I suppose I have changed in ways that I have tried to channel more than to fathom since 2001, so I was a little caught by surprise to find myself so affected. It was just a movie. As good as any of the others of its genre. But I'm still angry. Anyway, Guy Pearce was very good, the pace was managed well enough, Robert Downey, Jr., may be looking for something else to do after the second or third Avengers movie is in the can, probably he is already, and Ben Kingsley, well, even his big reveal didn't change how I felt walking out at the end. Glad it was over, that I didn't have to see any more of that - was it a Mcguffin? no, I don't think it was, quite. Maybe I'm done with the super heroes, the "real cool cats with a heart of steel." Well, until the Wolverine movie comes out, anyway. Meanwhile, I can be angry at Obama, for not closing Guantanamo, and I can be angry at the Republicans for not letting him, and I can be angry at the crazy extremists who still think blowing things up is a path to a solution for their problems. I can be angry at Big Oil for working every angle to avoid responsibility for killing the environment, at the NRA for exploiting whatever convoluted rationalisation then can to prevent simple gun control measures to keep people safe, and at every otherwise decent person who makes up stupid excuses for the bad decisions of the GOP, the NRA, the terrorists, Obama, or anyone else. But I'm not mad at the movies, or at art. They do their jobs, usually, even though they are sometimes exploitative, like Iron Man. At least in that case the conflict is built into the story from the start.

Chechnyans Really? Wow. I thought they were mad at Russia. 19 and 26 and one's dead so far. Stupid, hateful bastards. Good riddance. Alas, poor Chechnya, you cannot ask for sympathy ever, past, present, or future, if this is what you export.

Cruel Leaving aside for the moment that it is probably inappropriate to the event, but how cruel to set off a bomb at the Boston Marathon, and to have it go off four hours into the event. This is when the most ordinary people would have been coming through, people like me, in fact. It's so deliberately targeted at being mean. I am reminded of the Swedish killer, Brevik, who went after children in the same way. In this case, I am left at the moment to wonder what the motivation was, what could possess someone to do this, and this way Annoyed, of course, at the media, who seem intent, post-Benghazi, at scoring points on who calls something "terrorism" first. This is obviously terrorism, regardless of motive, or whatever else unfolds in relation to it. Nevertheless, when officials use the term they have a specific meaning in mind, which the media are ignoring just so they can point fingers, or, even better, get politicians to do it for them, generating more acrimony, more noise, more "news". Shame. Annoyed, too, at the inevitable politicians who will use this to deny that gun control is still a problem. It is; it's separate; deal with it - and this, too. Very sad for the injured and the killed and their families. Heartfelt condolences and sympathy.

Part of the Family Annette Funicello was a regular presence in our house, on television, that is, and is better remembered than any of her fellow Mouseketeers. She died tough, though, developing MS and living for 25 years with the degenerative disease. Her charity will continue, and leave a more lasting legacy than her television shows or films, but there are still some heartbroken boys remembering a first crush out there, I’ll bet.

Thatching I don’t want to celebrate anyone’s death, except maybe a few people’s, and Margaret Thatcher had only a minimal direct effect on anything I experienced during her period as Prime Minister, so, too bad, so sad, and let’s all move on. Nevertheless, I was in England in that period, and I remember the society I encountered, a concept she denigrated and did all she could to despoil. It was a very troubled time, much more oppressive than a free society would be expected to be, although you also need to keep in mind the IRA, whose activities certainly weren’t helping. (But Bobby Sands, remember, too.) There’s a reason, more than just the excesses of “prog rock,” that we got punk music there and that it went the way it did, with its hard political edge. We got that in the States, too, although remember we also had St. Ronnie. I had no regard for Ronald Reagan, and insofar as his regime and hers fed into the triumphalism of each other, allowing them greater leeway in crushing unions and demonising the poor, that’s a big part of how I will remember Thatcher, right there in the same special circle of hell occupied by the Gipper. Not that I expect them to languish there alone for long. No small part of Clinton’s policies was all that dissimilar from Reagan’s, nor Blair’s from Thatcher’s. In fact, they could not have enacted the “reforms” they did without Reagan and Thatcher having been so successful in wearing down the opposition. It’s a great shame to all of us in democratic countries that we haven’t been able to develop the political will to truly stand in opposition to the kinds of policies Thatcherism represents. We have yet to see, in the US or Britain or Australia, a national government devoted to uplifting its citizens. We seem endlessly to play at “culture wars”, pitting rich against poor, a game only the rich can win, which seems the intent. Daughter of a shopkeeper, Thatcher betrayed her class, when she could have made things better.

Boom I really can’t figure out North Korea. Throwing missiles around, let alone nukes, isn’t going to make them any friends, let alone reunite them with their prosperous southern cousins. The whole Kim dynasty thing is mysterious, too. Could the latest in the succession actually be the real power, or is this the military throwing up a façade? I don’t believe the they’ve got intercontinental ballistic missiles, but they seem to have rockets capable of hitting Japan, Russia, South Korea, even Indonesia, and possibly Hawaii, Alaska, and northern Australia. (Poor Darwin; last time it was Imperial Japan.) I’m similarly sceptical of their nuclear capabilities. Even assuming the actually do have the bomb, it doesn’t seem they’ve achieved the degree of miniaturisation required to stick one on the end of missile and launch it anywhere, which puts South Korea at risk, still, but fewer other places within their range otherwise. So what do they want? Well, they’re starving over there, and freezing, in winter (except, maybe, the military, who at least appear to have warm coats), so maybe they want a war, one they can lose. Losing a war isn’t the same as saying, hey, look, this whole business since the 1950’s was a mistake, so we’re going to change it up and see if the South will have us back now, so we can have jobs and fuel and food again, sorry. That’d be a loss of face. But losing a war, that lets you bluster along pretty nicely, all in all, except if you get hanged, or shot, or otherwise killed. Look at the collapse of Yugoslavia. The leadership over there did quite well for a very long time. And there’s always exile. Some murderous monsters managed to live peacefully and comfortably elsewhere in the world for many years after they lost their jobs. That might be a little harder to get away with if you throw nukes, but less so otherwise. I’ll bet Pakistan would take in a couple of Kims, although it might not be quite the safe haven these days that it might have once been, given how the U.S. managed to fly in and zap bin Laden. Maybe not. Could be this is just a little more of their usual bluster, trying to get the rest of the world to agree to food donations and fuel oil shipments and so forth in exchange for them stepping back from the line they’re threatening to cross. It’d be a loss of face, too, to ask for help, so getting it offered and accepting it, reluctantly, means they get to goose-step through the streets but go home to a bowl of rice instead of eating grass. Are they really all that crazy? Are there none who question their leaders? No Winston Smiths? It’s decades of propaganda, control, and punishment. It’s possible. It’s terribly sad.

61% What do I know? I'm not even in the census anymore.

Straight Up We hit the Enmore Theatre on Sunday to see Tedeschi Trucks, on the basis of their recent live recording CD, which includes some find blues singing from Susan Tedeschi and some very flash guitar from her husband, Derek Trucks. We had fun, but wondered at the stage configuration and sometimes lack of engagement from the performers, although there's a lot to be said for musicians that just get on with playing instead of capering. The music is pretty much just straight-up rock 'n' roll, which is no bad thing, and they concentrate hard on getting it done. The two drum kits were maybe overkill, but as one of the few live performances I've seen where that configuration is at work, I did get at least an inkling as to why you'd bother. Tedeschi Trucks were supported by Trombone Shorty, a New Orleans-inflected funk band, definitely worth checking out. I may have to hit the record stores to secure a copy, especially with the guest line-up.

Control vs. Out of Control The NRA solution to gun violence in schools is more guns. They have, over the years, prevented any scientific study of gun violence, but will categorically assert that the reason there are shooting at schools is because they are designated gun-free zones and therefore attractive to anyone with a gun and a grudge or whatever other motivation they may have to go shoot someone. This is a false narrative, of course, as many mass shootings occur in areas with no such designation. The idea that the “good guy with a gun” is an effective disincentive to deranged killers fails to note the “deranged” component of the equation, not to mention also that even trained individuals are shooting themselves and others regularly, as well as losing their guns from their cars, homes, offices, etc., although these things don’t get reported on a national level. How many times have we read of some idiot teaching his dog to retrieve guns who ends up getting shot by Fido? You won’t find it in the New York Times, but in your local paper you may very well. Check your police blotter, if your paper publishes one. Such stories are often treated as humorous exceptions, but they add up and they mean that people with guns are dangerous to themselves and others, regardless of whether they are themselves criminals. It is sensible in a country with millions of guns that those weapons should be regulated, like the militias they were meant, 200 years ago (when there were also a lot more dangerous animals in close proximity to humans, and when feeding your family required some deer to supplement what you could grow yourself), to empower against tyranny. How the NRA became the bastion of murder instead of an amateurs’ society devoted to actually keeping people safe around guns I cannot understand, just as I cannot understand how what is actually such a marginal group can wield such disproportionate political power. Well, that last point I think is probably attributable more to the lack of courage our politicians routinely exhibit than to any actual power the NRA may have, although they do have far too much money for advertising than is good for the country, clearly. Keep writing to and calling your representatives in Congress. We have to fight these bastards. Peacefully.

The Harder It Gets Jimmy Cliff, at the Metro, Thursday night, kicked the evening off with "You Can Get It If You Really Want", and had the crowd dancing and singing along right away, and pretty much never let up. He performed many songs, his own and those of others, from the soundtrack of the movie that made him, and reggae, famous, all over the world, as well as songs from the rest of his catalog. His band were very tight, right there, driving the evening, especially his backup singers, one of whom acted the role of MC as well, keeping the crowd engaged, as if he needed to. I haven't kept up with Mr. Cliff for many years, and while it's nice to know he's got a new record, the songs he performed from it being of good quality, even the anthemic "One More", his defiance of any suggestion of having peaked too soon, the audience around us seemed very up-to-date with every song sung. "Many Rivers to Cross" remains one of the most beautiful pop songs to come out of the '70s reggae scene, and no one can fail to hear the plaintive soul of the Melodians "Rivers of Babylon". All up, a consumate entertainer, maybe struggling a little to stay at the top of his game, but no less beloved or deserving of admiration.

0.0025 Why does Justice Kennedy say "We have five years of information to pose against 2,000 years of history or more"? Because he's not Jewish? Because he doesn't know that marriage as a formalised, state-sanctioned ritual administered by churches is actually a development from the Middle Ages? And why, then, do I feel I cannot trust him to rule well in this case? If I reckon Alito, Roberts, Scalia, and Thomas are nearly certain to rule against anything that advances equal rights to gays & lesbians in regard to such a ludicrously divisive issue, Kennedy now becomes the fifth vote in the majority ruling I expect. Maybe Ruth Bader Ginsberg can be counted on, at least in regard to California's Prop 8, and maybe Kagan and Sotomayor, but what about Bryer? Can I hope that Kennedy might yet come up to bat for the other side? The remarks off the bench during the arguments aren't always instructive. I hope for the best.

Swell Music Season Start A bit of a pun, that, as last night we went to see The Frames at the Sydney Opera House, billed as "Glenn Hansard & The Frames", a result, apparently, of Mr. Hansard commencing a solo career or side project, in addition to his previous efforts following the film Once as the Swell Season, with Marketa Irglova. Hansard spent a portion of the show, which ran for about three hours, alone on stage, or duetting with Lisa Hannigan, who also opened the evening. I spent some years remembering and forgetting to follow up on my brother's recommendation to listen to the Frames, finally only buying a relatively recent release by the band and enjoying it no end, not to mention how much I think Once is a lovely movie. The show gave me a chance to hear songs from across their catalog, which goes back about twenty years, and left me thinking I've got some catching up to do. Any band with a title track song named after a Werner Herzog movie (Fitzcarroldo) has to be ranked among the very best arts bands of all time - but they are more, really. Hansard spoke of his "busker's arm" problem, in which he strikes his guitar harder than is necessary under amplified conditions. "I've finally found strings that will stay on, but the guitar suffers," he told us, and sure enough, his two acoustic guitars, as can be seen in Once have indeed suffered, with holes worn into them along the striking pattern above and below the resonator. But this is more the point: he and the band are entertainers. They are having a great time, but all the better when the crowd is with them. Encouraging the Sydney Opera House attendees to forget themselves and their prestigious environment for the evening, Hansard and the band had us singing along, snapping our fingers, and, if not dancing in the aisles, engaging otherwise, including, at one point, helping out with forgotten lyrics. (We might all have been better served, however, with less participation during the instances when Hansard or the ensemble assembled at the edge of the stage to play without amplification - a bit too big of a venue to transmit the sound effectively, at least for the songs performed.) We were also treated to an acapella rendition of the Bright Eyes tune "Devil Town", during a broken-string hiatus. I haven't seen a performance as purely fun as this in a while. They walked off the stage at 11:30, playing as they went, Leonard Cohen's "Passing Through", and as we left the Opera House after them, I swear they were still playing in the dressing rooms. Just too much fun to stop.

New Traditions I first encountered Chinua Achebe when I was pursuing my Master's at the University of Michigan, under Lemuel Johnson, for whom my thesis was probably adequate but perhaps never as good as he'd hoped to see, in his first year directing the program of study he developed, devoted to African literature of the diaspora. We studied so many wonderful authors that, at the time, we had no idea of, those of us in the program, and I found that experience broadening in ways that Achebe's most famous character, Onkokwo, would have been bewildered by. But I guess that was part of what Achebe was after. Achebe's novels, those that I've read, are marvelous explorations of traditional society on the cusp of destruction. They see into the effects colonial policies would have years and decades after, with profound insights into the social and psychological damage the inherent and inherited loss of identity would cause, and included enough criticism of the post-colonial government, especially of Nigeria, that Achebe ended his days in exile, but no less revered and admired for all that. The politics of African nations are fraught with dangers for its artists, but they remain fearless, and many have produced works of great quality, deserving of even greater recognition than they have achieved. Achebe, though often criticized by some of those who followed him, was among the very best, whether others may be considered to have surpassed him or not. There are now highly skilled Nigerian writers, many producing world-class material. They owe a debt to Chinua Achebe. On a side note, I am very sorry to have learned of the passing of my professor at Michigan, Lem Johnson. Professor Johnson, as the link above will show anyone who reads it, was a brilliant and accomplished man and scholar. He taught me a lot. He was near-infinitely patient with me, and I'm sorry he's gone. I hope that some part of his program will survive, so that the literature he championed in my time with him and thereafter may continue to receive the attention it deserves.

Disarray I am so tired of Presidents standing up in front of Congress and saying "the state of the Union is strong". It isn't. This is evidenced by the nonsense spouted by Marc Rubio in the GOP response. It is evidenced in the fact that the Republicans also have a "tea party" response, and that they invite insane jackasses like Ted Nugent, who have actually threatened people, including the President, with guns, to attend the address and comment on it. It is evident in every single businessperson who claims that the ability of his or her employees to have health care is a threat to free enterprise. Every State that gerrymanders its electoral districts to ensure a Republican majority or that seeks to disenfranchise its voters - its poor voters, minority votes, Democratic voters - proves that the U.S. political system has fallen into disarray. Gun control is necessary. Tying the minimum wage to the cost of living index is a good idea. Supporting education and business initiatives are positive steps. Fixing the electoral system is a priority. All those election observers we send to other nations would report on our own elections positively. But only because the electoral frauds the Republican extremists want us to believe are a problem simply aren't. If they look at the actual structures of the system, however - and let me assure you that here in Australia and elsewhere in the world than America they do - the criticisms are harsh. Obama should have called out Boehner. He should have called out McConnell. Hell, he should have called out Reid, for that matter. Name names and shame them to their faces. Ryan, Cantor, Rubio, every damn one of them. And then tell his Democratic "friends" to get up off their asses. If you want something done, you've got to do it yourself, said the little red hen, and to hell with the socialist metaphors.

Wrasslin' The IOC shouldn't drop wrestling from the Games, it should go to the WWE format. Or revert to the more traditional Greco-Roman format: naked and greased up with olive oil.

Popery I'm happy to see Ratzinger resign, because it shows he maybe has a better sense of reality than you would normally get from the higher-ups in the Roman Catholic church, but instead of a Latin American or African pope, I'd rather see a woman. Now that would be progress. New blog label: "Anybody but Pell".

Credit Where Creditors Are Due Because I own a piece of it, does the Annandale going into receivership mean I get paid out? (I'd rather it would stay open, even if I don't go all that often.) Something's wrong with this city: first the Hopetoun, then the Sando, now the Annandale. Music is going to be relegated to theatres only before long, and that's going to make it even more expensive than it already is.

Southern Holiday
We took the public holiday to drive down to Mollymook for a beach holiday.  In terms of traffic, our timing couldn't have been better, as we saw kilometers of cars lined up going nowhere from about Nowra nearly down to where we were headed, a beach house - well, a house near a beach - that I'd be more than happy to share with two other couples, who'd easily fit, even with a couple of kids.  Maybe that Tasmanian set someday.

The weather, on the other hand, was awesome.  It bucketed down rain all through the four-hour drive (which we stretched a bit, in consequence, and for lunch), and all night thereafter.  It was torrential, a result of the cyclone up north, traveling down the coast.  The floods in Queensland and northern New South Wales were pretty much as expected, although Bundaberg got surprised when their river jumped its course, but all we got was cold and wet, impressive though those conditions were.

The storm surge, when we went out the following day, was still strong, although pictures (or my photography, that is) hardly do it justice.



The next day wasn't much better, but by Wednesday evening it was clearing.


Thursday was the best beach day we got.


On the drive down, even in the rain, we could see the tremendous damage caused by the fires a couple of weeks ago.  The evidence was just as stark on the return journey.


What's nearly as impressive as the fire damage is the fact that these trees are, at least most of them, still alive, as you can see in the top left.  With all the rain we got, the lush, green country we traveled through will soon return to its fullness, even in these sections.  I'd say you'll see the evidence before very much longer, after we get a little sun, too.

Punditry Fail

Gerard Henderson writes a regular column in the Sydney Morning Herald, and he is, like many of his ilk, dependably predictable.

The fashionable left-wing view of former president George W. Bush is he invaded Muslim lands and instituted draconian national security legislation - the embodiment of which is the Guantanamo Bay military prison. According to the leftist line, all this was a manifestation of a world view labelled neo-conservatism.

Of course, al-Qaeda's attacks in the US - which culminated in the events of September 11, 2001 - took place before the ''coalition of the willing'' (US, Britain, Australia and Poland) invaded Iraq. Also, Bush was never a neo-conservative since he has been a political conservative all his adult life. But facts rarely suffice to diminish a convenient theory. And Bush - war monger overseas and human rights oppressor at home - is a phenomenon widely referred to at universities and within sections of the media.

Well, Gerry, how was it not a manifestation of Bush’s policies – which were disingenuously referred to as “neo-liberalism”, not neo-conservatism – when he was the architect (ostensibly; Cheney was the brain[-in-a-jar] behind the administration, after all) of the actions, when it was his Defence Secretary’s bungles that screwed up first Afghanistan and then Iraq?

As for al-Qaeda’s “attacks’ [sic] “in” the US, can you enlighten me as to which ones occurred before [culminating] “in the events of September 11, 2001”? If you mean the USS Cole, that was not “in” the US, and if you mean the ’93 bombing of the World Trade Centre, that wasn’t al-Qaeda. As you damn well know.

Apologists for Bush like to point out that Obama has ordered more drone strikes than his predecessor, and they like to claim that there are no general protests being raised against them. That, too, is false.

Conflating the actions of France’s President Hollande in Mali with Bush’s actions in Afghanistan and Iraq doesn’t help the argument either. In Mali, after all, there is a legitimate government being supported by European efforts, not toppled. And adding Algeria to the mix again points to a fundamentally different set of conditions as if it was equivalent.

That’s the kind of fuzzy thinking that got Bush into trouble and America mired in wars that have made getting out of the financial crisis it’s in significantly more difficult, as well as making any effort to help others nearly impossible. It’s also the kind of misdirection that left many people believing that Saddam Hussein was involved in September 11 and believing that letting Osama get away wasn’t a big deal.

It’s flat-out ignorant. It certainly doesn’t deserve a paycheck.

It’s the Stupid Economy

When politicians here talk about how they’re going to be all about the economy, they mean inflation and they mean interest rates and they’re blowing smoke.

I don’t care what Tony Abbott thinks the unemployment rate is about
because he isn’t really going to do anything about it, at least not anything I want from government.
I want Medicare and I want major infrastructure builds, including the National Broadband Network (even though my internet speeds are fine, thanks), because these things help people and that’s what government is for.

Government isn’t just about the economy, and when that’s the focus all kinds of people get hurt, especially the most vulnerable of us. Cracking down on dole bludgers was a great gimmick for Reagan and Howard and Thatcher, but it hurt people and had absolutely no net effect for the rest of us.

Are interest rates too high? Where? Greece? Not here, so why are house prices so crazy? That’s not unemployment and it’s not government spending. It’s a lack of oversight.

Labor reneged on its budget surplus promise? I never wanted them to make that commitment, especially not when they were trying to keep us out of the GFC, which they managed well. Deficits are not evil in themselves and don’t represent mismanagement. It’s amazing that there are still people who think it’s like a credit card.

Every government spends money. I know how I want them to spend it, and vote for the party with the policies that spends accordingly. Promising to not spend is not going to win my vote.

Hot
We've had to add a new colour to the weather maps to account for temperatures higher than we've ever charted in the last hundred years.  And over the last week we've had terrific wildfires in Tasmania, New South Wales . . . well, pretty much everywhere.  And yet . . . .

When I moved here, Australia was in the midst of a mult-year drought.  This only officially broke in the last couple of years.  In fact, this year and last have been pretty cool and definitely wetter than my earlier experience.  Fire was a big deal then, too, and often started even before Christmas.  This year and last, that hasn't been quite the case, at least not anecdotally, if news media reportage constitutes anecdotal.  But after seeing the Tasmania reports, when we were told that yesterday would present "catastrophic" danger of fire, most of us took it seriously (except, allegedly, for three teenagers, who thought they'd see what happened if they set one off; thankfully the fire service were able to deal with it, and the police were quick to locate the suspects).  After all, with all this rain, there's been a lot of growth, and that means plenty of tinder for bush fires.

So it proved to be.  Not many properties affected, but lots of fire and tough conditions.  And yet . . . .

Today is cooler, which makes fighting fires easier, but the temperatures are set to soar over the coming days and to stay high for a while, including and in some respects to do a "heat dome" over the middle of the country, which is causing a pressure system to stay in place longer, allowing hotter temps, and hence the need for an expanded colour scale.

And yet in the news reports of the fires and of the weather nobody says "climate change".  Nobody says "global warming".

I heard one news reporter asking a meteorology expert whether the conditions were a change, a "new normal", and if we could expect more and worse.  Neither one said "climate change" or "global warming", but danced around the topic.

Not helpful.  Long periods in the high 30's, in the 40's, and expectations of temperatures in the 50's don't just mean we're going to have to be more careful about fires, that we're going to be hot sometimes.  They mean we're on "watch and act" status with the expectation of hearing the call to evacuate . . . globally.

Climate change is real, and cleaning out the gutters and cutting back the bush around our homes is only going to help a little.  Even when we use those activities metaphorically.

(Here's a map showing the weather move across the country.  No hot pink yet, but it'll come.)

This Is Why We Can't Have Nice [Schools]
The NRA, after skulking off into what turned out to be wholly temporary obscurity, including shutting down their Facebook page (they have friends?), has returned with some truly awe-inspiring gun-nut belligerence.  Armed guards in schools is what we need to keep our kids safe, and less violence in video games and t.v. and movies (and in the home, maybe, do you think, like fewer guns lying around . . . o.k., no, not so much that part).

Never mind that there are plenty of schools already with armed guards, including at Columbine, even when that school massacre was perpetrated, more guns is always the answer.

Write to your representatives in Washington, in your State capitol, in your county government, in your municipality . . . write to everyone.  Tell them you want regulations and tell them they can't have your vote if they take one more dime from these asshats.

I'm writing to mine every day until I get an answer and a commitment.

Update
Arm the priests!

Hellhounds on the Trail
Really?  The name of the company that sold the rifle used in Connecticut was Cerberus? As in the three-headed dog that guards the hell of ancient Greece?

And we wonder about American gun culture.

It's damned.

I don't care what else they do, these people need to step up, and not just sell off.

A Port Arthur Moment
In 1996, a madman killed 35 people in Port Arthur, Tasmania.  The response included something unexpected from the Prime Minister at the time, John Howard: gun control.

How many mass shooting has the U.S. had now?  Had even just since Columbine?  Had just in the last year?

Mr. President, it's your Port Arthur moment.  The hell with the "fiscal cliff".  Make gun control happen.

Light Speeds

The plan to build a light rail link from Sydney’s eastern suburbs, starting at Randwick and travelling through Surry Hills, to the CBD, including closing off a stretch of George Street to traffic, is a good step forward, at least for the beach suburbs, up to a point, but isn’t going to do much beyond that.

The traffic sticking points aren’t limited to getting to and from work in peak hours along Anzac Parade or the airport. The real problems are coming in from the south, where you’re suddenly dumped into single-lane entries through Newtown, or from the West, where Parramatta Road becomes a bottleneck, or from the North, where the bridge traffic has to be funnelled into the streets of the CBD.

Light rail already exists in part of the inner west, but serves a limited community and is vastly underused in consequence. Extending that part of the system would make sense, but faced considerable community opposition because the planned extensions were so poor. (Residents in Ultimo and Pyrmont, for example, can walk faster anywhere they want to go in the CBD than waiting around for a tram was going to help with.)

So thank goodness the foresighted planners this time have also included another 33 kilometres of highway to dump cars into the city, and a truncation of bus service.

Three to five years before we take one step forward, two steps back, and three over to the side to wait until something better gets some funding.

Paying for It

This is a damn shame. Unions have been trouble from the start, although usually trouble for employers trying to exploit their employees, but also admittedly because of corruption, such as the infiltration of unions by organised crime and the kind of machine-politics exploitation exemplified in On the Waterfront. But the drive to eliminate collective bargaining from American workplaces isn’t about those problems. Legislatures enacting these bills talk about economics, and that’s true, but not the way they’d have you believe. Unions, public or private, aren’t taking employers (which, in the case of public service unions would be taxpayers, ultimately) for a ride. They’re trying to get a good deal for working people and the deal is often predicated on pensions. Pensions aren’t money now; they’re money later. Instead of having the money up front and saving it, employees rely on their employers to help pay for their retirement. The problem comes in, then, when those employers find themselves faced with the bill for the agreement. Then they want to renege. They’re welshers.

Knowing that you will have to cut a deal from time to time, and that the deal will mean less cash in hand now or later, incentivises employers to find a way to disarm workers. Republican legislatures are complicit in making sure that working for a living only lasts as long as employment itself does. They clearly believe that unless you are an employer yourself you’re not worth the cost of your labor, certainly not after you’ve stopped working. That’s why they want to gut Medicare and Social Security and unemployment benefits. They call these things “entitlements” and talk about “dependency”. And we let them get away with it.

There’s nothing wrong with regulating unions. Killing them doesn’t help the economy, however. It means only that the 1% have a better chance of growing their share of the economy at the expense of everyone else.

These are people who believe they shouldn’t have to pay for what they use. They think we should pay for it and are doing everything they can to make that happen.

$
The problem with the House Republicans isn't that they can't do math or aren't honest - or, anyway, not the main problem - it's that they have Boehner as leader, and he is on record as having specifically run for national office because he thought his own taxes were too high.  And this is characteristic of every single one of these asshats: they are selfish, they never learned to play well with others, and they admit it, every day, but the jerks that elected them and keep voting for them are equally selfish.  Except for the ones who can't do math and aren't honest.  Well, maybe them, too.  Go, Whigs!  It's coming true faster than you realize.