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Braething in the solidified air of Chinese economic progress.
http://theworstofperth.com/2008/03/14/air-china/
The Worst of Perth
Did you notice I didn’t do any of that exceptionally tedious I’m first stuff? I did however spell breathing wrong. I blame the particulates.
The Worst of Perth.
The Worst In Perth:
Exceptionally tedious or not ….Third!
Living out in The Bush has its advantages – no grimy particulates, no smog, no noise-pollution …. only the occasional spray-drift, bushfire smoke-haze and huge flocks of screeching birds.
I had a most amusing time yesterday reading this Wikipedia page: Lamest edit wars
I was particularly taken by these two-
* Invisible Pink Unicorn – Edit war over what pictures (if any) to include of an invisible parody deity, and how to caption them.
*Mojo Jojo – A long running revert war that began in June 2004 and continued into August 2005 over whether categorizing a mad scientist — whose goals are to destroy The Powerpuff Girls, crush their hometown, and conquer the world — under Category:Villains violates NPOV (Neutral Point Of View).
However, my favourite has to be this
*Should the term “period” or “full stop” be used to describe a full stop (or period)? An edit war and heated discussion on the talk page broke out over this very issue.
It’s time to ride Possum’s Pollercoaster!
Not to be missed next Tuesday 18 March: Desert Heart, a documentary by David Batty of Bush Mechanics fame.
Members of the Yulparija tribe who left the Great Sandy Desert forty years ago visit their country. They now live on the sea at Bidyadanga south of Broome. An art movement based on their traditional country flourishes there today.
ABC1 on Artscape at 10:00 pm Tuseday.
A moving and inspiring story!
Up early enough for everything about to be covered in mist. Eventually, parrots, crows in surrounding trees, horses whinnying, then cildren shouting as they run around playing in the yard next door. All the time musing on whether fundies of all religions are in a permanent state of bi-polar disorder with sweeps from depressive3 guilt about being damned or manic ecstacy about being saved. Or just the Xtans? Train of thought begun by reading the chapter about the Great Awakening in Bushman’s Puritans and Yankees so early in the morning I suppose.
The new millenium transport hardware is comming along.
This
http://www.vectrix.com/Portal/1/Language/47/Page/1/Home_(US).aspx
mixed with a bit of this
http://www.motorcycle.com/manufacturer/bmw/bmw-c-1-cityscooter-13940.html
but give it 2 wheels at the back so that it stays upright at the lights and that will do just fine for me. I was surprised to notice the other day that I had clocked up 11,000 kilometres on my Yamaha 400cc scooter. I do have to smile at the people putting $80 into their tanks while I fill up with $15. The whole idea of filling up from the factory power outlet and no oil changes while riding aound with no noise other than the wind appeals to me no end. I occasionally turn the engine of coming down the mountain in the morning and listen to the bell birds. Very pleasant.
What do other people think about all of this
http://www.iec.ch/online_news/etech/arch_2007/etech_1007/focus.htm
?
Greg Dening has passed away.
Plans for the Regent Theater to be turned into a live theater venue again.
http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/news/general/brisbane-deserves-for-regent-to-become-live-theatre/2008/03/14/1205472077248.html
I heard Greg Denning give a paper at a History & Film Conference at LaTrobe, back in ‘93. He was wonderful.
I’d be interested to hear peoples thoughts on Aurukun elders calls to have the kids sent away to school outside the community especially in light of the Aurakun thread on LP in Exile.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/its-not-safe/2008/03/13/1205126112217.htmlGood link, Cowgirl. It is good when the community calls for help. There may be a number of ways to …….and here is the thing…….to what… bring into line? normalise? make like us? Certainly to improve peoples chances to survive well as a community would be a good objective, but I doubt that the optimal way of achieving that is the quick fix “drag em all off and fix em up somewhere else”. It is my observation that keeping families together is an objective of modern social readjustment. Only the social service profession as a whole will have the best thinking on this one. It amazed me when a couple in another country who had kept their children locked up in the back shed for many years living in their own muck, fed through a hole in the wall, and unable to speak properly, were allowed to retain custody of the children after treatment. But that just may be what works. I don’t know, and would be very reluctant to force an opinion.
RIP Greg Dening — a seriously original thinker and passionate about his subject. Whenever I read fiction set in the past (which at the moment almost all Australian fiction is) I remember something he once said (in a review of an Australian novel I won’t name here because I am a coward; Dening was brilliantly bagging it) about the dangers of trying to reproduce history in fiction, when there’s always a point beyond which we can have no understanding of a bygone world: “The past is not just us dressed in funny clothes and speaking funny speak.”
Kevin Rennie [9:00am]:
That’s good news. “Bush Mechanics” was a terrific series. Repeats please, A.B.C.
That’s very sad news re Greg Dening, PC.
An inspiring lecturer and writer.
It was also sad to hear of Peter Cullen’s passing.
SC @12: I thought of the difficulty of finding solutions that were simultaneously radical and yet compassionate, that acknowledged the depth of disorder in the community while springing from consultation with those who are most deeply concerned with the outcomes. The article that I read yesterday also alluded to the breakdown in respect for elders and the extremely high rate of offending and reoffending. In that context, and combined with the all too frequent devastation of whole generations;the young adults and the middle aged, by disease and disorder, I can see why Martha Koowarta, as an elder, is saying that the only option left for the community is to focus all efforts on rescuing the very young. And that is a devastatingly sad proposal. I keep thinking of people thrusting their infants into the hands of soldiers during the fall of Saigon.
In that prior thread I was disturbed by how the spectre of the report into Black Deaths in Custody overshadowed the discussion. This article by Prof Atkinson helped me to see that discussion in the context of violence against indigenous women.
Sorry bad formatting. Article here.
Further on that topic, Helen Hughes usually gives me the heebie jeebies, but she had a compelling and somewhat agonising segment on Counterpoint. They took two girls whose education had been entirely dysfunctional in the NT and arranged special tutoring in Sydney. There was rapid improvement. It’s worth a listen.
The problem is, though, that what she did is just not practical as a systemic solution.
The Worst In Perth [1]:
That finger lickin’ church savin’ young girlies from sin must have happened since I was in Dalian. Definitely approve you inclusion of it in your list. Second Prize surely goes to all the garish sh*t on and around the First Gate To The Celestial Kingdom at ShanHaiGuan between Beijing and Shenyang – what’s the difference between World Heritage Listing and Worst Heritage Listing?
Brian [20] and Sublime Cowgirl:
Nothing wrong with working from the particular [and individual] to the general [and systemic]. You have to start somewhere – even if the first few steps are faltering and sometimes sideways or backwards. If you don’t try, you can’t succeed. Besides, too many of the failures in Aboriginal advancement have come from grandious plans; time to try something a bit more practical.
[[hey, the post serial numbers are back}}
I’m cool with that, Graham. I was thinking, when I went to boarding school we had the sons and daughters of missionaries from PNG with us from an early age, I think from about mid-primary. They could only afford to go home for the Christmas holidays.
It’s an expensive solution and I couldn’t see it happening except for a few select cases. That still leaves exactly the same problems back in the communities. Helen Hughes was saying the education there was useless from day one. She says she’s only seen the like of it in the ghettoes in Washington, where some teenagers couldn’t read the bus signs.
That’s a slightly expanded version of what I was thinking.
My son drew my attention to footage of the explosion that happened recently at an army base in Albania. The story and vision via
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/03/15/walban115.xml
And if that wasn’t scary enough..
“A spokesperson of the Albanian Defence Ministry said that if the warehouse where the missiles were stored caught fire, the consequences would be “unforeseeable.”
I notice that a favourite punching-bag of this website, Greg Sheridan, had a pompous column in the Oz’s ‘Review’ section this Saturday, titled ‘Little magazines that could’. The link doesn’t seem to be online, but it was certainly one of Sheridan’s more craptacular efforts – he criticised the Spectator, for no other reason, seemingly, than that Mark Steyn has stopped writing for them, and that the film reviews (which Steyn wrote every two weeks) are now written by Deborah Ross, who, according to him,
is appalling, occasionally even resorting to four-letter words as a substitute for wit…
(Paraphrase)
(In fact, Deborah Ross is a versatile – she’s also written restaurant reviews for a number of years – and enjoyable critic who has a gift for engaging readers with her self-deprecating wit, but, significantly, without the tedious political asides Steyn occasionally put into his reviews.)
Sheridan offers, by way of contrast, the right-wing (not that there’s anything wrong with that) Quadrant and The Weekly Standard.
My immediate thought was to respond to Sheridan with more of those horrid four-letter words he thinks are a substitue for wit. Greg: stuff off, you twat.
I read that, TimT.
Lots of blather about how crap blogs are too.
I wonder if it’s possible for the Oz to ever publish a weekend edition without some praise of Quadrant somewhere!
I’ve just read David Stratton’s autobiography, ‘I Peed on Fellini’. Near the end he writes about being taken to task for his review of ‘Jarheads’ , a film about US marines in Iraq, by Sheridan. Apparently, Sheridan went into a lather about it being another example of dreaded left-wing bias by the ABC. The usual stuff. Stratton points out that the nature of a film review measn that it can only be his personal opinion, not an ‘ABC opinion’, as that’s simply not possible. But Stratton’s real kicker is to point out that he’s also the Oz’s film reviewer, and had he reviewed the film for the Oz, his opinion would have been the same. Would that then make it the The Oz’s opinion? And what would Sheridan think about that?
Yet another example of the silliness of the Culture Wars. But Stratton also makes the point that responses such as Sheridan’s really does make it harder for the ABC to present something that could have been seen as ‘left-wing’ opinion. I hope those days are over and I also think it’s imperative the the government shake up the ABC Board asap.
I’m not sure if this comment should be on the thread about carer “cuts” or not, but have put it here as all the baloney on that followed on from lies published in the OZ, as Tanner implied today on Insiders. When are these right wing liars going to be brought to account? Silly question, I suppose, since the answer is almost certain to be never. Note too that the Federal Liberal Party is continuing in the grand old Howardian tradition of always telling a lie when the truth is inconvenient. The whole exercise about cuts to carers’ and seniors’ allowances was based on lies from The Australian and more lies from the Opposition. Seems Turnbull has assumed Howard’s mantle as Australia’s most practiced liar. Pity, I had expected better from him. But then again, for a moment I forgot he’d joined the Liberal Party.
Let’s not forget either that the press are never all that friendly to Labor governments!
Paul it’s the nature of the animal. As I pointed out last week, the same tribe drum this sort of crap up while ever Labor’s in government. They do it because they can and do get away with it. Happy headbuttin’.
I remember when Hawkey was re-elected in 90, I was down in Sydney. Within about a couple of days, the papers (including Fairfax – so often alleged to be liberal or risibly “the left”) had resumed the drum beat of anti-Labor stories.
Joh B-P used to talk about feeding the chooks, well it would be wise to note that with Labor gov’s the chooks turn into buzzards. And you can spell that any which way!
However, it’s worth remembering that the anti-Rudd bleh in the media didn’t save the Tories last year!
Absolutely, Mark.[1.26 pm] But this attack by the Australian is particularly viscious, trying as it does, to cast doubt on one of Labor’s core valuess, caring for the poor and disadvantaged. If the Libs had done the same thing they probably would have been lauded as economically responsible geniuses! Perhaps because the younger generation that voted for5 Rudd had never experienced a Labor Government before, Rupert and Company are trying to confuse them about what Labor really stands for.
While I’m very critical of the ALP when it strays from its principles, I also know there are certain values it never departs from, which is one of the reasons I didn’t fall for the Oz story.
Jason Koutsoukis in the Sunday Age is trying to fly a couple of kites over Japan and the Aust Public Service. Japan supposedly furious Rudd’s China trip leaves them out and he has a secret Keatingesque “do them slowly” for not letting blood flow among dept heads who were close to Howard. Look for one or two “serious and sinister” conspiracys a week to flow from our balanced MSM.
“But this attack by the Australian is particularly viscious, trying as it does, to cast doubt on one of Labor’s core valuess, caring for the poor and disadvantaged.”
I agree. From the Australian and the opposition you could expect it, Paul. After all, the whole thing was their invention. Bad, undirected and unfair policy has been rammed down the economic orifice, of all, and presented as a win for carers.
Too bad that, so many, who you would expect to know what the game was all about, have leapt to the support of continued un-means-tested arrangement.
It is surely fair enough that an incoming government, be left in some peace, to consider new options before their first budget. And sad, that the best interests of all have been railroaded by yet another media beat up.
If only, joe2. We live in a capitalist society and to expect the media to give any centre-left government, no matter how centrist, a break let alone fair play, is unfortunately naive.
Paul Burns [27]:
Brilliant. And if the the Liberals are stupid enough to replace Nelson with Turnbull we really will know that they are on the verge of extinction – wonder what will replace them?
“…the grand old Howardian tradition of always telling a lie when the truth is inconvenient”.
I wouldn’t say that’s uniquely Howardian. It’s a grand old tradition of politics full stop.
Nabakov,
The operative word is “always”. Now and then politicians do tell the truth. The distinction with Howard was he always lied.
The distinction with Howard was he always lied.
Thanks, I needed some Irony-Man Food this morning, and I’m all out of Nutri Grain.
Well, Tim T,
I supose the distinction with Howard and the Libs is they operate on the maxim: Never tell the truth when a lie will do.
Why? Because after 11 years of moaning and kvetching about the compliant media, all of a sudden compliance is exactly what we want? Because governments make budget decisions based on pure economics and pure ideals alone and are never influenced by political factors? Because at this moment there is not a single industry body, gov dept or non gov body with a vested interest in budget decisions using whatever means available to shield their own bottom line? Because democracy means waiting with bated breath for decisions to be made for us?
Zorronsky [34]:
Quick. grab that crystal ball and give me the winner of the 2008 Melbourne Cup – I’ll make a fortune!
If the Japanese are terribly peeved or wailing-and-weeping that Kevin Rudd is not going to visit Japan on this world trip, somebody had better let the Japanese know. It will be real news to them too.
Let me guess the next shock!-horror! story – Kevin Rudd mixes jam with peanut-paste on his toast each morning. is it? L-O-L!