So here goes: This letter in today’s Oz alerted me to the intriguing possibility that a bit of judicial activism by the High Court over WorkChoices might have been enough to save the Howard government from electoral oblivion.

While the High Court’s 2006 judgement on WorkChoices makes an unassailable case for the legal correctness of upholding the legislation, let’s pretend things were different. If the High Court judges had gone all activist and concocted a convoluted Constitutional argument to strike down WorkChoices, then the result of the 2007 election might have been very different.
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Madonna’s new CD: blech

Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god (not sure why I wrote “oh my god” three times other than that celebrity gossip is usually replete with repetition and hyperbole), Mariah has gotten married again.

Celebrity gossip fans will know that Mariah used to be married to some bloke and then she stopped being married to that bloke. Now Mariah is married to another bloke.

No word as yet about whether she looked too skinny and/or too fat in her wedding gown, but if I was a betting woman I’d suggest (insert body fascist comment here). 

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* GetUp has a new petition: Climate Need Not Corporate Greed. The premise is simple: call a spade a spade and make emissions trading actually impact emissions rather than just transfer $$$ to polluting industries. Also worth signing because it may be leverage against a tendency to overallocate that has been a consistent problem that previous cap and trade schemes such as US Markets in SO2, BP’s internal scheme and the EU ETS have had to come to terms with.

* The BBC Reports that a plan for national Personal Carbon Trading for the UK, arguably one of the most ambitious, complex and comprehensive Neoliberal projects in recent times, has been shelved. DEFRA research into the proposals to give every adult in the UK a personal ‘allowance’ included interviews with 92 people. The money quote is one for all the national psycho-social historians, “Just straight away it reminds me of going back to the war and rationing.”

* NSW Govt has announced it plans to join HSBC, NAB, Coldplay et al by becoming carbon neutral by 2020. The plan will include state-run operations like police, hospitals, schools, and power-stations. It looks like most of the emissions reductions will be made by eating koala buying carbon offsets rather than making significant changes to BAU.

* PhD Comics has some sustainability tips

Now have a look at Laurence’s new website banner.

He’s stolen our bridge!

Note also the Liberal blue. The Nationals’ Green is entirely absent from his increasingly self-centred branding. And he’s obviously trying to position himself as an urban (and urbane) man. Sharp suit, no tie in a lot of the pics, new haircut, and symbols of Brisbane surrounding him constantly. The moleskins and the rural signifiers have been banished.

The article doesn’t cover stalking or the right to privacy, which raises some questions. It also doesn’t really adequately get to grips with the sociological phenomenon of why we talk about such folks and what they feel about it all. Any thoughts?

When we looked at polar bears recently I was left with the feeling that their future was very much bound up with the future of the Arctic ice. They at least have the prospect of meeting the grizzly bears being forced further north and producing lots of little grolar bears - hybrid offspring of the polar bear and the grizzly.

No such luck for the koala bear which is highly specialised to a diet of gum leaves, which, it seems are tuning sour.

Prof Hume [University of Sydney] will present new research at a major science conference in Canberra showing that increases in CO2 decrease levels of “good” nutrients and increase toxic nutrients in eucalypt leaves.

It gets worse.

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The Pope would also know very well that in Catholic sacramental and moral theology, an act of contrition and indeed an act of reparation are worthless without an awareness of the fault that led to a sin, and a genuine intention to “go and sin no more”, as Someone or other put it rather pithily. All this raises the question of whether the conditions of possibility of sexual abuse are genuinely being addressed.

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But how is Australia prepared for such disasters? Not very well, according to a just-published report by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. For instance, while everybody expects the ABC to handle emergency services broadcasting, ABC Local Radio doesn’t have redundant communications links to all its stations. We may have invested money in tsunami sensors, but there’s no centralized telephone warning system (something that could be done very cheaply, according to the report). Our hospitals aren’t really set up for a surge capacity in the case of even rather modest incidents.

This kind of stuff is often cheap, mostly relatively easy, and could potentially spare a lot of heartache when the unthinkable happens, be it through accident or malevolence. But why don’t we do it? Because it has the unique combination of being both scary and boring, earns governments no credit until the crap hits the fan, and we don’t have a historical precedent of a mass-casualty incident. And, over the past few years, we’ve had the distraction of the horribly overblown War on Terrah - something, incidentally, the ASPI has helped in its own small way to fan here.

Maybe it’s just me, but it seems that the Rudd government has a bit more of a focus on the boring bits of government than its predecessor. This is one boring bit that I hope gets more attention.

Helen Dale aka skepticlawyer and Legal Eagle have teamed up to start a new blog - skepticlawyer by name.

Helen explains her rationale at Catallaxy. She doesn’t reflect on her old digs, and the following represents my opinion not hers. But having witnessed the degeneration of Catallaxian comments threads over recent years - yes, folks, once upon a time you could go over there and have an intelligent argument with the libertarians without being told you were a LIAR and a taxeater, being threatened with horsewhipping, having to endure reading your way around hundreds of piffle filled comments of hyperbolic idiocy, etc. - it’s a move I’m pleased she made! Although Helen’s politics aren’t to everyone’s taste, I don’t think there’s much disagreement that she’s got a fine analytical mind and can turn a neat phrase, so I am looking forward to watching this baby blog grow.

“Be proud of what we’ve achieved - don’t take any cheek from the other side.”

Andrew Elder wrote an interesting post the other day critiquing Gerard Henderson’s critique, and pointing to a fundamental problem the Liberals have:

The Liberals and Nationals do not take the intellectual debate seriously, which is why it is left to pinheads like Miranda Devine, Tony Abbott, Janet Albrechtsen or Gerard Henderson to carry the (empty) can of rightwing intellectualism. If you really want people to take on the challenge of right-of-centre intellectual development, create an environment conducive to it.

The point’s been made here a number of times that too much political commentary relies on stale analogies with the past, and a complete inability to grasp the challenges of the present. Perhaps that’s because no intellectual work goes into it. The Nelson/Turnbull mob have been talked into the view that they can’t “disown the legacy of the Howard government” lest they lose their advantage on “economic management”. Never mind the fact that ALP polling found last year that when the question was posed as “whom do you trust to manage the economy best for your family?”, Rudd was streets ahead. It’s the distinction between a “beautiful set of numbers” and paying attention to people’s actual financial struggles. In other words, you could simultaneously think the government was keeping the shine on the numbers, but managing the economy for the benefit of big biz and the top end of town. Howard understood that back in about 1996.

But the Libs are now stuck in some Shanahan of a universe where whatever wording Newspoll uses is gospel. (more…)

It will probably come as no great surprise to anyone that I didn’t watch Richard Dawkins’ new show Enemies of Reason: Slaves to Superstition on the ABC on Sunday night. It’s fairly well known I’m not a fan. But whatever your view of Dawkins’ work, it seems to me that tarot card readers are the least of the worries of anyone committed to the Enlightenment project. Perhaps someone who did see it could enlighten me, but if this is one of the practices Dawkins regards as pernicious, then I suspect his understanding of what constitutes reason is very ethnocentric and rather limited:

What about sticking pins into your body to free the flow of Chi energy and cure your illness?

It’s called Chinese medicine, I believe. Acupuncture by any other name.

I’d also want to put a big question mark about the too easy equation of “reason” with “progress” - for a whole range of reasons, including but not limited to whether history can actually be understood in this way and the Frankfurt School style critique of instrumental reason and the Holocaust. But all that’s by the by. I’d been hoping that I’d be able to recommend sitting down with a good book instead of watching Dawkins get his future told. One book in particular - James Morrow’s The Philosopher’s Apprentice. On the strength of a number of reviews, I’d been eagerly awaiting its appearance on the shelves of my favourite independent sf bookstore, Pulp Fiction, and I was pleased to see it arrive just when I was off work with the flu and needing some novelistic goodness. Alas, I was to be disappointed.

Faren Miller’s review in Locus Online gives a good sense of what it’s all about, and why I thought Richard Dawkins should probably read it. (more…)

But for a kid from the country who, in those pre-Internet days, was blown away when the diet of Hits and Memories radio was turned on its head by the introduction of JJJ to Albury in 1994, TISM are special. This is Serious Mum and their p*sstake dance-pop will remain a touchstone. So I was saddened to read that Jock Paull, aka Token Blackman of TISM, got a tumour that may not have started in his brain, but crept into his lungs, and ended his life prematurely at 50.

So, in honour of a man whose name I didn’t know until now, but whose music made me laugh every time I heard it, let’s all demand a vodka rider from our nearest student union, and dance like a d******d to one of TISM’s finest moments, He’ll Never Be an Old Man River. Guitarists may pass, riffs live forever…

I probably can’t stretch the Big Brother analogy too far, but one of the big concerns I had about the election of the Rudd government was that the momentum for campaigning around a whole range of vital issues would stall. That’s partly I think because elections provide a convenient end point - if you were horrified by what Howard was doing on refugees (for instance), the most immediate and pressing issue was to vote him out of the House. But it would be a fatal error to assume that’s the ball game.

Margaret Simons has a story in Crikey today reporting on the deep concerns the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre has about the exercise of Senator Chris Evans’ ministerial discretion on asylum seeker claims since the election. 42 claims have been processed, and 41 rejected, a 97.6% rejection rate which is the highest it’s been since 2001 (the year of the Tampa.) According to Pamela Curr of the ASRC, one of the claims rejected has been that of a woman who escaped captivity while her “owners” were in Australia on holiday - she was being held against her will as a sex slave. She was originally from Africa, and had been trafficked to the Middle East.

This may not be the intent of the Government. (more…)

The Democratic Party primaries may appear to continue the status quo in the campaign, with Hillary Clinton winning Indiana as expected, and Barack Obama winning North Carolina as expected. But the magnitude of Obama’s win in North Carolina (58-42%) and the narrowness of Hillary Clinton’s win in Indiana (52-48%) indicate that the long Democrat contest is all but over for Hilary Clinton.

As one Republican strategist unkindly put it on CNN as the early figures came in, “This is the last trip to send the family pet to the vet.”

However you slice and dice the figures, it is now apparent that Barack Obama will be the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate, and that the super delegates will now be close to declaring for Obama, killing off the Clinton’s hope of a palace coup at the Denver Convention.

On the popular vote through the primaries overall, and including the disputed Florida primary (although not Michigan, where Obama’s name did not appear on the ballot paper), Obama has a 49% to 47% margin over Hillary Clinton.

What it means for the Democrats’ chances in November depends on how you read three factors. (more…)

Image of the Prague skyline courtesy of Pavelm - licenced under Creative Commons.

I didn’t comment, but I read the thread on Kim’s post on the crimes of Joseph Fritzl and discourses in the media (Austrian and otherwise) about cultural and national responsibility. I found the thread a fascinating read, and I’m not certain that anyone could finally arbitrate the question of whether a certain Nazism or its social legacy was actually at stake here or whether to think that is to misunderstand the nature of causation and social pathologies as they manifest themselves in individual lives and choices. That’s forcing the two positions argued somewhat, and occluding a lot of nuance, but I suspect that the debate’s conditions of possibility include different levels of explanation and different methods of thought and intellectual work - I thought some of the borders of the social scientific and humanistic worldviews were both marked out and blurred in that discussion. It ought to be possible to integrate the two, but saying that is harder than doing it because there is a certain split - that’s not just manifested in disciplinary training and territory in the academy - between a more hermeneutic and a more positivist style of thought. That’s actually a dividing line that’s inscribed in our everyday culture as well as in our intellectual traditions in the West, and it’s possibly a most unfortunate divide. But then national borders, and cultures, are contingent constructions of Western modernity too.

Anyway, that’s something of a prelude to some thoughts the thread stimulated for me. I remembered I’d written a post back in December 2004 on W.G. Sebald’s work. At the time, I wrote, apropos of his A Natural History of Destruction:

Literature has often been seen as a mirror of meaning, a way of sense-making, what the literary scholar Erich Auerbach called, following Aristotle, Mimesis. To take the example of the hitherto unparalleled destruction wrought by the Thirty Years War from 1618 to 1648, German literature produced such classics as Johann Jakob Von Grimmelshausen’s Simplicissimus (first published in 1669) and much more recently, Günter Grass ’ The Meeting at Telgte.

There is a massive, and often fine, literature of the Holocaust. But going in search of a similar literature of the suffering of German citizens during the Second World War, Sebald was surprised to find it scant, and largely unsatisfactory.

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The gross revenue we earned during April was $3,434.81. Commission is 50%, with 40% going to the advertising broker, and 10% to the network. So the net is $1717.40. We’re paid on the basis of $18 gross per 1000 ad impressions for each page impression. There are 2.5 ads on each page. Nielsen, which does the measuring, only counts Australian visitors, so while posts such as this one with Chelsea Clinton in the title attract a lot of search engine hits, most of that traffic would be from outside Australia. (Though our server stats suggest the great majority of traffic comes from Australia.) We also only get an ad impression (obviously) where people don’t have an ad-blocker plugin installed, or have disabled the plugin for LP.

I’m going to do a comparison between our server stats and the Nielsen numbers to estimate what proportion of views produce an ad impression, but I’m yet to do so. In the meantime, our server stats show we had 80514 unique visitors in April, 176894 visits, 1175376 page views and 3384784 hits. 46.34 gigabytes of bandwidth was served.

The site upgrade cost us a total of $4118.99. We received generous donations totalling $860, which I’ll be paying to The National Forum now that I have the invoice, and the rest will come out of the advertising revenue - which means in effect that it will take us another month before any of that revenue actually accrues to us. Thanks so much for your help! But I’m going to ask for some more - you might recall that the LP collective had agreed that the revenue would initially be shared between promotion of the blog and some recompense to me, to assist me while I’ve been sacrificing paid work in order to finish my PhD this year. The problem is that I’m still sacrificing the income, but because there’s also a time lag of about 3 months between when we earn the ad revenue and when we get paid, we won’t actually see a cent of it until September! So so far, it’s not really fulfilling that purpose, so if you’d like to contribute to the Mark scholarship fund, me, my landlord and my credit cards will all be really grateful!

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The 2020 Summit was just the beginning. The more substantial and critical task is to advance the process by building consensus, by continually developing engagement and cooperation between traditionally divided streams, factions and ideologies. Join us for a free seminar featuring twenty Summit delegates who will report on their impressions from the Summit proceedings and consider pragmatic steps forward to identify and achieve Australia’s goals. Come early to enjoy lunch - your own or from Tognini’s Cafe - outside the State Library’s beautiful new building. Panellists include Julianne Schultz, Michael Wesley, Michael Good, George Williams, Matt Foley and many more.

RSVP here.

Incidentally, my copy of the May edition just arrived in the post. It’s on Cities, and I’m looking forward to a stimulating read as always. We’re hopeful we’ll be able to announce a discount bulk subscription offer for LPers in the not too distant future.

There’s lots to chew on in this report - for one thing, it makes the excellent point that while rice may be a water hog, it’s one of the only things grown in the basin that can be planted after it’s clear how much water is available. And the stupidity of holding water in Queensland and northern NSW, much of it to just evaporate, while the Coorong dies is fairly dramatically illustrated.
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Bloomington, Indiana is where I am at the moment, at the University of Indiana. It is best known as the home of Albert Kinsey, John Cougar Mellencamp, and the ‘Hoosiers’, a basketball team about whom a film was made in 1986 starring Gene Hackman as a coach and Dennis Hopper as a drunk.

Indiana is one of the two states voting tomorrow (Tuesday May 5) in the protracted and increasingly acrimonious Democratic Party primaries. Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have worked these two states hard, even though they both typically vote Republican, as the long march to the Democrat nomination continues.

The striking feature at present is just how far to the right Hilary Clinton has turned in the course of this campaign. Having struggled against Obama for most core Democrat constituencies, she has over the last month increasingly pitched her campaign at what are known here as the ‘Reagan Democrats’ - white voters, often older or less educated, anxious about change, deeply patriotic, and suspicious of liberal reformers.

Given that the Clinton years in the White house were viewed by most outside of the U.S. as at least notionally progressive, and that Hillary Clinton was for so long the bete noire of American conservatives, this has come as a bit of a surprise, at least to me. She appeared on the FOX News Channel’s O’Reilly Factor last week, her defence of religion and guns, and her threats to get tough on China and to ‘obliterate’ Iran if Israel is attacked seem to be straight out of the Republican campaign book. And the favour seems to have been returned. She is getting endorsements from FOX News, The Weekly Standard and Rush Limbaugh.

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