Our Expanding Universe
Remember that bit in Annie Hall where the young Alvy Singer tells the doctor why he won’t do his homework anymore? “What’s the point?” he says, “the universe is expanding.” That’s kind of my reaction to the news that the Earth may survive the sun’s demise. Oh, no, wait; I’m more like the doctor: “It won’t be expanding for billions of years yet.” Also, since all life on the planet would be wiped out, am I expected to retain some proactive nostalgia for a big rock? Only a physicist could be that sentimental, apparently.

Six Years
ObL’s putting out more video than Britney, and the best we’ve got is speculation on what his beard means?

Black and White and Red All Over
Pedestrian safety is a problem in Sydney, as Sydney City Council is now aware. Despite red light cameras, “zebra” crossings, and other measures designed to ensure a foot-friendly city, from Circular Quay to the Blue Mountains, drivers here are among the most aggressive I’ve ever seen. O.k., it’s not the kind of chaos you see in Asian metropolises or the wild-style driving of Rome, but it also isn’t volume or just carelessness. Admittedly, jaywalking is an issue, although far less so than Professor Gehl seems to be suggesting, but I don’t have a problem with traffic buttons at the crosswalks (if they work; usually they’re just there for a placebo effect). Whether or not Sydney is “like a doughnut” is debatable. There was a long period of time when commerce essentially drove out residences, which is a shame, since the result has been that after dark there are only a few venues hosting events or otherwise having any value in attending – you can go out for a night on the piss anywhere, so you might as well do it close to home, instead of spending premium prices for the same result; meanwhile, how many nights do you want to spend at the Opera House, when for a fraction of the price you can go see The Bourne Ultimatum or rent a DVD?

(By the way, Matt Damon is Jason Bourne, and those movies are better than drugs; you come out feeling totally jazzed, fast and alert, your brain buzzing with the theme music. What a trip. Who cares if the ending is implausible?)

I’ve noted before, however, that Amsterdam closed its CBD to traffic, and London’s got (and NYC wants) a CBD toll. Reports from London suggest that measure has been very effective, reducing time stuck in traffic significantly, something on the increase in Sydney, notably on weekends. Apparently, traffic during the week is so bad, people are waiting for Saturday to come into the city, with the result being massive jams building up seven days a week. As the population builds in the western suburbs, without the commercial enterprises to support them locally, whether in employment or entertainment, they’ve all got to funnel into the center, so there’s just one more factor at work.

Melbourne famously kept its tram system, whereas Sydney lost ours decades ago, so its last 15 years of transformation may have been more easily accomplished than what we can manage. I’ll be interested in hearing what the professor comes up with, if anything, or the Council – our Lord Mayor, Clover Moore, is no stranger to taking on the lightning rod issues, so she may go for broke on this one – and also hearing what happens after he’s spent time in my hometown, where he’s off to next.

We Didn’t Start It
Howard uses the ‘s’ word: ”Sorry you’ve been inconvenienced,” he says, but it’s not his fault, or the fault of the NSW government, or the police. No, it was all the fault of people who “would threaten to resort to violence” - would threaten, notice; because there was no explicit threat, just the usual fear-mongering. Besides, it was only ever about Bush, wasn’t it? Does anyone think for a minute that downtown Sydney would have been fenced off if Bush hadn’t been visiting?

Meanwhile, while the police reject out of hand that they went over the top on security, reports of their actions, particularly regarding the demonstrators, are pretty unambiguous. There were only 18 arrests, including a man on his way to brunch with his children, and four of whom were released without charge, one who threw a dart at a cop, and one who squirted ketchup at a pro-Bush demonstrator and hit a nearby officer. Some reports have indicated that leaders of the Stop Bush protest march were targeted after their demonstration from a list held by police, indicating that although they complied with the terms of the march dictated by police and under court order, the police went after them anyway.

(Stop Bush is pretty useless, since he’s only got a little more than a year left in office, the protestors are pretty much all Australians and therefore unable to influence him or his party or American politics generally. Stop Howard, I say.)

Police in this country have a long, troubled history. Rampant corruption, with multiple scandals subject to Royal Commission investigations, a predilection to “verballing” suspects (i.e., making false statements to back up an arrest or ensure a conviction), and a documented tendency towards heavy-handed and even brutal tactics whether dealing with individuals or groups, all contribute to fostering the divide between the police and the community, and become self-reinforcing. Law and order is necessary for a functioning society, but we’re also supposed to be a democracy. None of this is helped by a complicitly quiescent press.

APEC was just a dog-and-pony show, but the excess security and police actions will further damage Howard’s standing in the polls.

Ghost Town
One good thing about APEC is that so many people have left town, getting a seat on the bus and train isn’t an issue.

I was home with the flu for Bush’s arrival and first press conference, but I shouldn’t have watched. That man’s tone of voice drips with insult. The substance of what he says is more or less reasonable, but he comes off as a bully. Of course, he is a bully, so it’s not really a surprise, but it’s still annoying. That, and he won’t answer the question posed, although most politicians refuse to provide a direct response.

The pictures of the “exclusion zone” are remarkable. The security fencing and the massive police presence are clear evidence of just how far democracy has degenerated. I accord a fair share of blame to those “black hat” protesters who attend these events with the intention of inciting the police (although I also note that the police commonly use provoking tactics, and even agents provocateurs, themselves) and committing acts of violence or property damage; there’s no excuse for them. My main complaint remains, however. We have given in to fear – or our leaders have – to such a degree that significant numbers of Sydney residents have left town for the duration, and great swathes of public land, including major tourist attractions, have been set aside, reserved for APEC delegates, most of whom will spend very little time anywhere near them. Bush’s calvacade was embarrassing. Hundreds of Secret Service agents accompany him and his party. Snipers are deployed on rooftops and in helicopters. Police cruise the foreshore in boats and on jet skis. Does anyone think any of this would be in place if Bush wasn’t attending?

Surveillance cameras and special emergency warning systems have been set up throughout the CBD. Special police powers of arrest have been granted. Along with the CBD fence, how much of this will be reversed, and when? The fence went up quickly, but will it come down as fast? I suppose it will, as businesses are already being seriously damaged throughout both the exclusion zone and the “declared zone” (an area where free passage is allowed, but where the police have more leeway in their actions than otherwise).

APEC is one of those events, like an Olympics, where the benefit to the city hosting it is highly touted by the government, but where that benefit will never accrue, offset as it is by the immediate costs. In this case, in addition, many businesses are actually suffering, due to necessary deliveries not taking place or because access by customers is prevented. Also, many delegates support staff have cancelled, so the “tourist” influx won’t have happened, hotel rooms will be empty that wouldn’t have been otherwise, restaurants won’t get their expected bookings, and so on. There will be no trade agreements signed, and any promised economic cooperation that does eventuate will take decades to show any benefit. It’s a farce, more about selling coal and uranium than anything else.

Resign or Be Prosecuted: How Quaint
Never forget that Alberto Gonzales is the man who drafted the legal opinion that authorized torture. He should never have been allowed to resign. He should have been impeached. I hope, however, that he managed to put some money aside for retirement: anyone who hires him will be revealing their own moral deficiencies in doing so.

Who Wrote These Questions?
In the sample 20 (of 200 possible) questions for prospective citizens, I’d do pretty well, but I truly wonder about the phrasing. Look at question 5, for example, “What is the floral emblem of Australia?” Floral emblem? You mean “national flower,” maybe? Who talks like that? Question 7 reads “In what city is the Parliament House of the Commonwealth Parliament located?” What pedant wrote that? Q17: “In Autralia, everyone is free to practice the religion of their choice, or practice no religion: true or false?” How does one practice no religion, watching football on t.v. instead of going to church? Maybe being able to parse the questions is part of the test.

Whose Sky Is It?
Sydney residents will be issued black-out glasses during APEC to ensure they cannot watch the fireworks display, exclusive to attending delegates.

Hosed
During APEC, in addition to a fence, nearly 3 meters high, surrounding parts of the CBD (and including some of the major tourist attractions of the city), police will be equipped with a water cannon and busses converted to serve as mobile detention centers. Security is a concern, naturally enough, and it’s important for the police to be prepared. It’s a little suspect, civil liberties-wise, that 200 beds are to be freed up in local jails by allowing some criminals home detention. This suggests the expectation of mass arrests beyond mere readiness, and the arguments in favor currently popping up on blogs always hark back to previous protests where “black hat” activists have turned up to derail otherwise peaceful protests. The presence of George Bush and the “globalization” agenda of the conference are nearly certain to ensure some disruption.

Those justifying such police-state interventions, however, are often the same self-styled libertarians decrying the “nanny state.” Of course, what they mean is only that they object to being taxed and seeing that money spent on poverty relief. The diminishment of civil rights is far more concerning to those less selfish.

Over the decades of my life, there has been an eruption of personal freedom, but also a concerted effort by reactionaries and power-seekers to reverse the trend. At the Munich Olympics, in 1972, global terrorism made itself most pointedly felt, and for some years, planes seemed to be hijacked quite regularly, yet we were never made to feel such fear so thoroughly as we are now being bullhorned into. Such measures as are being enacted in NSW serve to add to irrational anxiety, as well as to add one more and one more and one more cut to the thousand-cuts death democratic societies the world over seem to be suffering.

Christopher Hitchens had a piece in Slate not long ago, talking about “Rage Boy,” the iconic face of Islamic anti-Western protest. He makes a good point. “Rage Boy” doesn’t scare me, but he does scare others, a lot of others, and it’s become typical to respond to that fear by figuratively locking up the women and children and valuables, i.e., giving the police the power of indefinite detention, reducing the right of suspects to legal representation, authorise warrantless wiretapping without judicial review, and, as in Sydney, for September 7-10, removing the presumption of bail for anyone arrested in any police action around APEC.

This latter is not unlike what Bloomberg accomplished during the last Republican National Convention, and those cases are still clogging up the courts, as is likely to happen for any similar arrests here, two weeks from now.

It’s wrong to commit vandalism, and violence begets violence. McDonalds may be a symbol for some people of what’s wrong with capitalism, globalization, or the World Bank, if you can manage to stretch that far, but throwing a brick through the window of a franchise isn’t going to help you get your point across. Arresting 200 (or more) protestors, well, that does send a message: we’re in power; you’re not. Shouldn’t we be spreading freedom, instead of constantly trying to bury it? No wonder some many people in the Third World don’t trust our motives. We’re constantly betraying them.

Making Housing Affordable
The proposal to provide a tax deduction on first-home purchases isn’t bad, although Peter Costello thinks so. The problem with the Treasurer’s objection, however, is its short-sightedness. He claims that sales would be subject to capital gains as a result, but that isn’t necessarily so, since it’s entirely reasonable to impose a turnover time limit, whereby only sales occurring within the precluded period would be subject to taxation, and, like the tax deduction itself, apply the rule only to the primary residence.

I think there’s a lot more involved than tax deductions, but I wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss the idea.

Policing the Bardo
No reincarnation without authorisation. Or maybe China’s just worried you don’t need a passport to move the next Dalai Lama into the U.S.

Standardized Cool
School children across the country, both public and private, already wear uniforms, including hats, so why not sunglasses? Will the kids be able to pick out the style they want, with frames in the school colors, or will they be standard-issue models? Even then, uniforms vary in style from school-to-school, with the ritzier private schools kitting out the kiddies in straw boaters on the North Shore versus public school tykes in foreign-legion style headgear out west. Will the Wollstonecraft boys and girls get mirrored shades while the Windsor kids rely on non-polarised plastic from the chemist? I shouldn’t make fun; it’s a sensible thing to do. Most of us, by the time we’re adults, have already suffered some eye damage.

Dead Pool
First Tammy Faye Baker, now Leona Helmsley. Didn’t they cell together? Maybe Martha Stewart should be careful crossing streets for the next little while.

Own Goal
You might get away with it if you’re just a State pollie, or a Council member, and even then only if the press doesn’t have an issue with your performance, or your party’s for that matter, but once you’re in Canberra, I’d suggest not hitting the piss too hard when you’re on a junket, and especially, I’d recommend not going to any bar called ”Scores.” I suppose it’d be a simple enough error in judgment that would let you think it’s a sports bar, but that’s the same error that sees you going into a bar advertising “dancing” because you thought it might be a disco, instead of a topless dive. And offering “I’d had a lot to drink” as an excuse probably isn’t going to help you any more than “I called my wife as soon as I got back to the hotel.” Peter Costello’s assessment that his program would have been too full to have time to go out to ogle the girlies is fatuous wowserism, but I’m not at all surprised that the NY Post reporter, Col Allen, who warmed to Rudd so well, didn’t invite Pete for a similar excursion. Petey’s a dullard.

No Guests
Security is a natural enough concern, with so many international politicians coming to town, so I guess having the police check out your balcony for assassination sight-lines makes a little sense (but very little; common sense arguments abound). Still, can they really outlaw guests? Maybe I’ve been planning a big dinner party for the September 8-9 weekend, all my friends and relatives on their way, invitations sent, RSVP’s received, wine chilling in the fridge, deposit down with the caterer. . . . You’re really going to cancel my party? Are you worried a guest might bring an RPG? Play at Lee Harvey Oswald?

Inserting APEC into my living room is pushing the friendship.

(When Al Gore was visiting the 92nd Street Y, I had a phalanx of motorcycle cops sitting under my window for about two hours, running their engines, until the fumes were more than even I could stand - and I was a smoker back then. When I went out to complain, I was subsequently prevented from re-entering my building until Al had moved on. I got a very polite apology from the Secret Service in the end. And probably a case file.)

Graduation
Christopher Hitchens is right about Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, but, as he also is, with tedious frequency, he’s wrong, although it’s largely a matter of his inability to simply enjoy something without reference to himself. I’ll give him make-up points, though, for not introducing any major spoilers.

The final volume was a lot of fun, although the camping did get dull. J. K. Rowling has considerable skill in weaving a compelling plot across 759 pages. I was up until 2 a.m. finishing the book, simply because, having reached a point where I felt I might put the book down, there was enough impetus to read on that I gave in at every turn.

Yes, much of the resolutions to difficult problems did end up being a little too Star Wars, Return of the Jedi for me, and I never did think much of Harry as a wizard per se, and Ron and Hermione are never much more than secondary characters at best, but none of it matters. The books did, in the end, what they always promised to do. It would have been easy enough for Rowling to have wrapped the whole thing up in one book, to move on to other literary efforts, but the conception of the 7-book series, to see HP through High School, essentially, puts a close to the adventures no other method could have achieved. Harry would not stand up in adult fiction, and we’ve seen every inch of his maturation. These may not be books I’ll ever go back to, but they’re vivid enough in detail to stick around anyway.

Records
Barry Bonds is the new king of baseball, home runs, anyway, but will his record come with an asterisk? When Hank Aaron broke Babe Ruth’s record, for years all you heard was the dead ball/live ball debate. And when Roger Maris hit his 61-in-a-season, he really did end up with a footnote, because the season was longer in his day than it had been in Ruth’s day. What do we make of baseball’s pumped-up players, then? This year’s Tour de France saw drug scandals galore, toppling the leader just days before the end of the race, after all. Next year’s Beijing Olympics will surely raise the issue of China’s team-building practices again, although, admittedly, the focus there will be on what might be called “athlete farms.” The time will surely come when drug use and other, more or less risky practices come to be the norm. Already, professional-level sport performance is out of the question for the vast majority of us, so maybe it could be an equalizer. Just think of what some high-plateau training could do for your initial marathon entry, let alone a little blood-doping. Drugs and medical intervention techniques are extending our healthy lives well beyond what we might once expect, so it wouldn’t be anything really new, would it, if some 80-year-old grandpa took gold in the not-so-distant future.

More Money
Interest rates are up again, and everybody’s got something to say about it. Opposition leader, Kevin Rudd, Prime Ministerial hopeful, says PM Howard’s bluster over past high interest under Labor show’s he’s out of touch, unconcerned with the reality of the effects. But the PM, recently shown poll results characterizing him as dishonest and arrogant, rejects such criticism, as he does any criticism, for that matter. (Arrogant, moi? I reject that.)

Mortgages will be well up over 8% now, and likely to rise further still, perhaps even before the next election. Keep in mind, only the PM knows when that will be, but most people are tipping November. That’s about when the rates would be likely to rise, too, just in time for Labor to take over the government. If we’re headed for an economic downturn of any duration, let alone – and God forbid – a recession, the rates will go up even more under the next government, regardless of who’s in the Lodge.

If it’s Labor, it will cement their reputation for economic mismanagement and we can look forward to a swift return of the Liberals, and by that time, much of the present crop will have retired or at least been relegated to the back bench. While that itself might seem a good result, keep in mind that Mr. Howard has empowered the far right wing of his party, much as Reagan did in the States, so we’d be looking at a George W-style leadership coming to power.

Labor’s best hope to manage the economy is to act in consultation with the civil service, a practice Howard decided to abandon, in favor of his own brilliance. That’s why I feel a little leery over this latest 2.0 promotional effort from Rudd: Kevin 07. It’s a little “presidential,” don’t you think?

2.0
Yeah, yeah, I’ve got a Flickr account, and Googlepages, and a blog, and a Twitter profile, and, now, a Facebook entry, but to be honest, most of this stuff is just junk, a waste of ones and zeroes. Fickr’s o.k., if you want to sign up for a “professional” account and store all your photos online, but I hit the limit and haven’t had much cause to upgrade; I get more value out of Moo calling cards, but don’t want any calendars, stickers, or prints, and have no use for U.S. postage made from my photos. Twitter was fun for all of five minutes, but frankly, I’m not that busy, or too busy to be sending up 140-character updates with any frequency. And Googlepages offers little more than the kind of static “homepage” people were playing with back in the 1980’s, although I can see some measure of utility in setting up a “portal” to my various other Web 2.0 efforts.

There was so much fuss over Facebook lately, however, that I had to have a go, and now that I have, I can see it affords a level of interactivity that other applications don’t, but it’s all self-promotion, really, like piling up “adds” on MySpace. And the applications don’t work nearly as well as would make them of any substantial utility. I thought, for example, that the Visual Bookshelf feature would allow me to catalog my books, but there’s no organizational capability, and the “recommendations” feature keeps offering me books I’ve already added. Amazon must have that technology locked up.

I’ve heard that Facebook is being used or developed towards a more professional networking site, but the limits imposed so far prevent anything substantial being done. You’ve got to be a member of a group in order to join a group, unless it’s an open group, like “Australia”. Great. That’s helping.

Still, it’s keep up or fade into the Luddite past. Maybe I ought to get an iPhone. When they reach Australia next year.

Darfur Force
I can’t believe this didn’t make the front page of any of the on-line newspapers I read, but the UN is sending 26,000 troops to Sudan, at last. Everybody else is more concerned with Murdoch’s take-over of the Wall Street Journal. Now, China’s still managed to impose some use-of-force caveats, and the troops will only move if Sudan holds up on their end, and there’s still the composition of the forces to be managed, itself, I’m sure, a logistical nightmare, all the more so because the U.S. can’t be in much of a position to help out. But good on Gordon Brown for getting this started.