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.