I was actually thinking about this today when I read Scott McLemee’s piece in Inside Higher Ed - this decade has no name. The “Naughties” never caught on (and for good reason probably). The 2000s is ambiguous. That, I reckon, has done something odd to our time-sense. Maybe there’ve been more periodisations like post-s11, but I, for one at any rate, had hardly realised the decade was coming to an end despite the 08 thing.
What’s interesting about McLemee’s take is that he argues there may be no recognisable Zeigeist in a cultural sense for these times, and when you think about it, in an age where the medium is not the message but the culture is the commodity, the absence of a brand is puzzling. Continue reading ‘Mysterons’
Well, Mark might not be picking apart the 2020 list, as it’s too obvious, I’m an obvious kind of person…A few hours Googling later, and we have a horribly superficial, uninformed commentary on the 100 (well, 86 actually) listed delegates to the sustainability sub-summit.
Discussion and the annotated, commentated list over the fold.
I’ve tried to avoid the obvious “let’s pick apart the participants” angle on the 2020 summit in my column for New Matilda today. I’m trying to keep an open mind on it, really I am! But I just can’t see how you get 1000 ideas and run them through a sausage machine and end up with anything other than something that was probably worked out in advance or otherwise bland. I tend to think the most successful sessions might be ones like health where there’s a pre-established policy discourse that’s fairly clear - which would enable discussion to be productively structured.
I guess I tend to be a cynic about these sorts of things overall - as I’ve argued before, I don’t think they’re either properly elitist or demonstrably democratic. So I suspect there’s a worst of both worlds element to it - and the pr moves are very see through indeed.
As I predicted, the Queensland Liberals yesterday canned Lawrence Springborg’s Pineapple Party.
A decision on whether the Liberals would sign up to The Borg’s “United Conservative Party” will now be delayed and referred to the federal working group considering an amalgamation. This effectively buries the push, and there will not, as Springborg had demanded, be put to a vote of the Liberal membership.
Liberal leader, Mark McCardle, has publicly stated that parliamentarians should now stay out of the debate, and get on with the job of opposing Anna Bligh, which is effectively a rebuff to The Borg who has staked all his chips on the UCP succeeding.
Under Springborg’s short lived predecessor, Jeff Seeney, there was strong speculation around the corridors of Parliament House that the Nats were wooing individual Liberal MPs, particularly at the height of the farcical coup against former leader Bruce Flegg, when the Libs couldn’t agree on a leader for over a week. Privately, Liberals are now warning that a repetition of such overtures, hinted at by Nats close to Springborg, would not be tolerated and would call the Coalition into question.
In breaking news, marketing drones continue to lack imagination, sticking to the apparently conventional wisdom that if you want women to buy things that both men and women tend to use and want, just run up a version in pink and do a fluffy/flowery/frilly ad campaign. Butterflies are good. In June last year (in an essay provoked by the launch of a special shopping flight from London to Paris named Fly Pink) the Guardian’s Vicky Frost summed up the extension of pinkification from childhood to adult women as follows:
It is now possible for women to experience their entire day in pink. You can work out with a pink yoga mat and weights; adorn your windscreen wipers with pink wiper wings; cook dinner on a pink George Foreman grill and style your hair with hot-pink hair straighteners. You can even see off would-be attackers with a powder-pink Taser gun.
My response to the whole Fly Pink concept was this photo-essay, Puking Up Pink. Documentations of the pink consumer ghetto on feminist blogs abound, especially the Pink Alley in toy departments, but it is the continued extension of pinkified marketing into the adult world which is being most keenly examined. Twisty anayses the latest version she’s found: women’s vodka.
There’s also little doubt that for once, a vox pops story in the papers is probably spot on. Kevin Rudd and Anna Bligh aside, most Quincelanders won’t welcome the bestowal by the Man of Steel Mark II of the title of “honorary Queenslander” on one George W. Bush. I certainly wouldn’t be welcoming Bush if he ever popped in to claim his crown. But it did get me thinking about a delightful little incident recounted in the Robert A. Caro biography of a more genuine Texan, LBJ, who made an unscheduled stop near Winton in Northwestern Queensland during World War II when his navy plane’s navigational equipment failed on route from Darwin:
… they hit the ground with scarcely a jolt. Australian ranchers suddenly appeared, and, recalls one of the crew, “Right away Lieutenant Commander Johnson gets busy. He begins to get acquainted. They tell him where we are and some of them go off to get a truck to take us into town where we can telephone, and more keep coming, and Johnson is shaking hands all round, and he comes back and tells us these are real folks - the best damn folks in the world, except maybe the folks in his own Texas. Pretty soon he knows all their first names, and they’re telling him why there ought to be a high tarriff on wool, and there’s no question he swung that county for Johnson before we left. He was in his element. I know he sure swung the… crew. He can carry that precinct any day.”
I have a feeling Kevin Rudd might have read the Caro biog. Of course, whatever other sterling qualities Texans have, a sense of irony probably isn’t among them.
Since we don’t live by politix alone (I sincerely hope), what did people get up to this weekend? Join in, share some tales, regulars and lurkers all!
I had a really pleasant weekend - Friday drinks, then dinner at Thai Wi-Rat in the Vall, and sweets at Gerbinos. Saturday I caught up with friends for brunch at Moray Cafe, popped into town for a bit of science fiction bookshopping at Pulp Fiction, and then went to Brian’s place for a joint birthday dinner (mine was actually ages ago but I was sick at the time, and his was much more recent) where we sorted out the problems of Australia and the world (sorta), looked at some old photos from Brian’s days on the farm as a teenager, and exchanged presents - Brian got a history of Prussia and I got a bottle of Cragganmore single malt! I can also recommend anchovy sauce. Today - internetting, sleeping!
Here’s some photos left over from last week’s peregrinations around the ‘hood.
If you’d like to see a larger image of the photos, click on them then click on “full view” once you’re inside the gallery.
The Search Foundation is holding a series of roundtables in capital cities leading up to a national conference in 2009. The idea is to stimulate discussion in order to contribute to a reimagination of the objectives of the left in Australia. I’m speaking at the Brisbane event on April 20. Prelimary details available at this link:
I think this sort of thing is fabulous - it’s very easy to lose sight of longer term goals and the necessity of developing both a realistic critique of Australian society and aims which go beyond the necessary every day struggles for various causes or for electoral victory. So I hope and trust it will be very worthwhile.
The event is invitation only, but if you’d like to be put on the invite list, please email Rachael Jacobs at this address.
At 8 pm tonight the lights in your city may well go off for Earth Hour. In 2007 it was Sydney, in 2008 Earth Hour has spread to 24 global cities, next year the world. At the home site you can upload a snappy video or click on the cities list (it was as slow as a wet week when I did it) or if you live where I do go straight to Brisbane and maybe get a “Gateway Time-out” screen as I did.
This one sent to me via email might be better. I suspect it’s on the Courier Mail server.
The Brisbane City Council is suggesting that you go to vantage point to look at the city that you can’t see. Sounds good, if you walk there and don’t use your car. So what are you going to do?
Is it just me or does KRudd like those metaphors about summits?
/Kevinista rhetorical question
Meanwhile, back here down in the foothills, the press got a list of the summit participants this morning from Glyn Davis, but those of us who are outside the magic media circles can’t find the full list on the official website yet. My grumble isn’t just about media management (though the selective reporting from the meejah highlighting Hugh Jackman and Claudia Karvan as participants is going to work against the message Davis and Rudd want out there), but also about the supposed participatory and inclusive nature of the thing. Are those of us not summiteering left hanging while the great and good wait for their moment in the sun in tomorrow’s papers?
Beyond this particular bitch, there was a broader opportunity to use the techniques of e-democracy to widen and broaden the scope of this thing. It’s been missed. That’s disappointing.
Update: The full participant list is now online at New Matilda.
Brendan Nelson’s been at one of the regular talkfests organised by The Australian and the Melbourne Institute - the “New Agenda for Prosperity Conference” - having his say on industrial relations.
The day after Julia Gillard buried AWAs (or did she?), Dr Nelson’s taken time out from his compassionate crusade to resurrect the Coalition’s support for statutory individual workplace agreements:
The proposition is for an AWA with a different name and a better safety net. “The Coalition has heard the message from the electorate about AWAs and we no longer support them,” he said.
“Having said that, it is important for Australians to understand that we continue to support individual statutory agreements with a fair no-disadvantage test.”
Nelson, meet Labor trap.
Given that even mining companies were being quoted in the Fin Review yesterday as being “relaxed” about the absence of individual statutory agreements after 2009, this can only be about pure ideology. Which is, of course, what got Howard into so much trouble. The Coalition’s inability to paper over the cracks of the Howardian legacy just ensured Labor gets to run the scare campaign it wants to run at the next election.
This folly was perhaps predictable. What’s more interesting is one of the other themes from Nelson’s speech The Australian decided to highlight in advance of its delivery. Continue reading ‘Tangled up in blue’
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Alles vergängliche ist nur ein Gleichnis.
I’ve tried to avoid the obvious “let’s pick apart the participants” angle on the 2020 summit in my column for 
[I’m trying to see 
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