Donovan’s Brain
When called upon to correct a brain in a jar, it’s important to do so privately, because those things have powers and you might get fried. I mean fired.

Just Say No
Now we all know just how effective abstinence really is. Why is America so afraid of addressing sociological problems with effective policies?

Number 13
There’s no such thing (almost) as a bad cup of coffee in this town, which is a good thing.

Because Dressing the Cat in Doll’s Clothes Isn’t Enough
Fake nails for kitty. Yes, they’re really for sale.

Class Participation
There’s a perceived problem in NSW schools: too few male teachers. A federal government proposal is being floated to amend the sex discrimination laws to provide “men only” scholarships to encourage more men to become teachers. Now that I’m working in the educational system myself, I get to have an opinion. Male role models can be few and far between for kids, and the schools may be a good place to start in providing access to exemplary men. Certainly, given the state of sports, with S(ex)MS cricketers, let alone the allegations presently under investigation in rugby, the behavioral ideals we’d instil in our children are unlikely to be found on the playing field these days. Politics doesn’t always offer the best examples either, but I don’t think unlevelling the playing field in education is going to help change that. The shadow minister for education, Jenny Macklin, is right that “the real barriers to men becoming teachers and staying in our schools are pay, career structure and status,” and giving out scholarships doesn’t change any of this. It may encourage a few more men to elect to pursue an education degree, but that doesn’t necessarily translate into more men at the front of the classroom. The educational system needs to be perceived as a talent pool, but more usually is seen as a dead end for dead-enders. It isn’t, any more than a liberal arts degree isn’t an education that provides skills applicable in business. If teachers are paid what they’re worth, that would help improve their perceived status in the community. I've considered this as a course of action for myself, at least to provide a place to go if my career stalls again, and the sad truth is that I can't afford it. I don't think I'd like it as a career either, or I'd have gone that way twenty years ago. But who says this is such a problem anyway?

Number 12
Because there’s no reason to stop adding to the list and I haven’t found anyone else to join in yet, another fabulous feature of Sydney is the Botanical Gardens, particularly the foreshore area from the Queen Elizabeth II Gate around Farm Cove and out to Mrs. Macquarie’s Chair. When you’re done with that, you can wander over to Woolloomooloo, a neighborhood particularly notable for its maximal use of the letter “O” (among other things).

In the Attic
They are creatures whose name says it all: Squirrels. I didn’t know Emerson was a fan. I guess he would have been operating before we knew about CJD.

Wormwood
Too bad the surgeons couldn’t remove his spleen, too.

Performance Enhancement
Speedo appears to be firmly out of the business of budgie-smuggler swimwear with its latest line of full-body suits, but there will still be those people on the beach whom it is better to ignore.

The Peasants Are Revolting
A shared pet peeve in our household is the ubiquity of those Che Guevara stencils. I’m relieved in a way to know that they are not just the logo of choice among (mostly) college students here, but do these people know whose face it is they’re wearing and what implications it has? Alberto Korda, the photographer who produced the original image, has said he doesn’t mind all the reproductions so long as are used to serve the ideals of the revolution, and with all the anarcho-syndicalists running around these days, maybe that’s what is taking place. But I doubt it.

Sydney, Continued
It may be too early to start another 10 places not to miss in Sydney, but it occurred to me last night that the Dixon House food court is one such less obvious of the city's amenities that should be on a list somewhere. No website, but anyway, yes, it is a food court, one of those places where vendors operating from cheek-by-jowl stalls serve out inexpensive meals quickly. This is not, however, your typical food court, as at some giant mall, where Pizza Hut and McDonalds dominate the offerings. This is Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Cambodian, Thai, Vietnamese, etc., all fresh, flavorful, and wokked out to you at incredibly low prices. The top dish: lahksa, a spicey Malaysian noodle soup. We only ever found one place in NYC that served it, and it wasn't very good. The lahksa at DHFC, on the other hand, is so good we can barely stand to go a week without one. Given the cafeteria ambiance and the close proximity of Chinatown, we usually get take-away. I admit I haven't tried the lahksa on offer anywhere else, but why bother?

RIP
Spaulding Grey is dead, apparently a suicide. It’s very sad. Swimming to Cambodia was terrific, and I regret never having gone to see him perform live, now more than ever. His work produced its imitators, but nobody I can think of ever matched the content.

Top Ten
I haven’t been keeping up with the Manhattan User’s Guide, but I did have to review their latest offering: a selection of 10 Great Things about the city as seen by some local ‘bloggers. Entertaining, and an interesting idea for some Sydney content. I don’t think there are any local ‘bloggers following this (mostly just Yahoo searches for crossword puzzles), so I’ll have to poll my friends. Is it fair to eliminate the easy ones?
1. the Harbour Bridge.
2. the Opera House.
3. Bondi. An obvious choice, but the surf is excellent, the sand is clean, and the amenities are all in place.
4. Thai food. Outside of Thailand itself, I’ve never had tastier, fresher southeast Asian food.
5. Mardi Gras. Sure, it was two weeks after everyone else had their parties, but this year 300,000 people turned up for the parade even in the pouring rain. Spectacular. I’m really glad they got the money to keep this up.
6. Govinda’s. Dinner and a nearly first-run movie in comfort and style, courtesy of the Krishnas.
7. Gleebooks. The best bookstore in the city.
8. the Sydney Swans. Does this count? Really, it’s AFL I enjoy. The Swans are therefore the default team for me. You can have one of the others.
9. Coogee Yes, another beach. There are a lot of them, and they’re terrific.
10. Sydney Explorer Bus Tour. It’s hop on-hop off, there’s a terrible taped commentary, but it goes places and lets you see things you might miss otherwise. Also the Bondi Explorer, which I’ve actually taken (twice now) and will probably take again.

Is It Bad to Enjoy a Comic Strip That Isn’t Even Published Anymore?
There are three games existing right now that bear a striking resemblance to Calvinball: one is cricket, because you can’t understand the rules and it has wickets; one is Australia Rules Football, because you can’t understand the rules and it uses flags; and the other is rugby, because you can’t understand the rules and people get really badly hurt sometimes. Sadly, none include the use of a mask. (Thanks to Metafilter, as always.)

What If They’re Vinyl?
The 100 albums you should remove from your collection immediately complied on Jaquaro is comprised of the blindingly obvious, some home truths, and many historical revisionist assessments. Nix Transformer or Hunky Dory? Are you kidding? And I’m keeping all the jazz I have on this list (no, I don’t have Bitches Brew, which only leaves the Coltrane anyway; says something, doesn’t it?).

Out
Eliot Spitzer has made what I think is probably the best response to the issue of allowing same-sex marriages that I’ve heard so far, short of granting the licenses that is. It’s not entirely weasely to leave it to the courts, even if it might seem that way at first glance, because he’s looking to the law the way it needs to be examined, and for which adequate methods of challenge exist toward changing it. Until George II legislates his version of morality, that is.

Whose Sydney
Sydney is divided into local councils, and the NSW government has just forced two of them to merge: South Sydney (where I live) and City of Sydney. The two council governments have been dissolved and elections will soon be held to form the new membership, including a new Lord Mayor. The rationale is simple: NSW wants fewer councils because they cost money. But there’s more to it than that. The NSW government is headed by the Labour Party, but City of Sydney was Liberal. By merging the city with South Sydney, a Labour bastion and more populous to boot, NSW hopes to force a Labour Council into place with their mayoral candidate, Michael Lee, thereby giving their development plans – for Sydney’s foreshore, for example – a nod-and-a-wink edge over any potential opposition and getting the tax revenue this will occasion. Bob Carr appears to be having trouble managing Sydney’s growth, and this council merger appears to me to give him an easy out. Development will be funded by the richer city tax base at the expense of the Labour Party electorate’s standards of living in South Sydney. Enter Clover Moore, an independent and perennial thorn in Carr’s side. If I had a vote, that’s where I’d put mine. I like the idea of spiking irresponsible development plans by an underhanded state government, and I like Moore herself, not least for her proposal to end the sale of animals in pet stores, a practice well-known for its cruelty.

The Factory Floor
I must have the most interesting job in the world that isn’t in IT but pretends to be while at the same time also not being part of HR. Is there even a name for what I do? So far there isn’t anything that makes sense, at least not to anyone who hasn’t made up the title in the first place. I’ve been a Human Resources Information System Analyst, but I’m not a systems analyst, which is a specific IT role; I’ve been a Business Process Engineer, but I’m not an engineer, which is someone who drives a train or has an advanced degree that I’m not even going to pretend to understand, although it sometimes involves building things, often bridges; and now I’m an HR Analyst, but I don’t do any recruiting, appointments, or “employee relations” (which is where you’d expect the analysis part, except it’s not that kind; you need a PhD to be an analyst, unless you’re just a social worker, and then you can do it with a Master’s). I like Business Process Engineer best, so far, because it sounds the most like something is getting done that isn’t just data entry. Of course, back when I started down this path, data entry was the biggest part of what I did, but that soon changed to getting the data back out in new and interesting ways. As this function became something businesses saw as valuable to their bottom line, lots of software was developed to help, one of the biggest now being “PeopleSoft,” which from the fact of their name should have been a dud, but they were clever, the software is pretty good, and they reputedly got their start by landing the U.S. Department of Defense as a client. Lots of little players are still out there, although following PeopleSoft’s acquisition of J. D. Edwards last year, it looks like the latest round of big-fish-little-fish is well underway. Sometimes, though, the big fish have eyes bigger than their mouths, as with Oracle’s attempt at a hostile takeover of PeopleSoft. Oracle, PeopleSoft, and SAP form the top three big-business ERP software providers, so it’s no wonder that the Justice Department has finally come out against the merger on anti-trust grounds. Given that many States are PeopleSoft clients and had filed suit themselves, I’m only surprised it took this long. At least it keeps me in business, even if no one knows what I do for a living.

Projection
If there’s any merit in digital photography separate from analog, it’s the ease with which projects like Sky Hi make it on to the internet. (Via Idle Type.) Well, that and The Lord of the Rings

School Days
Ah, March and the first days of autumn. The light, the air: I hearken back to the first days of a new school year. Sure, all the kids here have been back for two months now (and taking up more than their fair share of space on the trains, especially with those gigantic daypack bookbags they all carry now – don’t they know about wagging off homework?), but my senses have been blunted from years of northern seasonal change. That would be “honed,” but everything’s backwards now, not to mention undeciduous, so I’m left without some cues. Luckily, Australian school children all wear uniforms, so they serve a similar purpose to that of migratory birds: sudden flocks appear and you know a new school year has begun, just as you know winter approaches when the sky is studded with V’s of geese, starlings, etc. Now the air clears as the heat abates and a week of rain washes out the humidity of the summer. It will get warm again, but not those high-30’s temperatures that afflict even the Harbour and Beach suburbs, let alone the Outer West, and before long it will be possible to wear a jacket when going out in the evening. Football has started up, too, both “footie,” i.e., AFL and rugby, although it’s still pre-season for the Swans, et al. Before I lost my job last year, I had considered signing up for membership at the club, but it appears I’ll have to wait a bit before I go down that path. It doesn’t come with much besides cheap tickets anyway. Perhaps I’ll just head to a Rabbitohs match and round out my sporting experience of Australia.