Labour vs. Liberal
On my way to work, I’ve begun seeing small examples of political activism: a man dressed in a sack and hood, as in the photos from Abu Ghraib, holding fluorescent anti-Howard posters; chalked graffiti on the sidewalks protesting Howard’s lies. . . . Over the next six weeks, I expect there will be more, but little enough in my neighborhood supporting the present administration, particularly as the area that used to be South Sydney is a traditionally Labour bastion. But what are the differences, you may ask, and the answer may be that, as in the U.S., very little. Gerard Henderson’s political analysis piece in the SMH today says it’s the “little things,” not the big policy issues, that make the difference, pointing to two key areas: foreign policy and industrial relations. Latham would pull Australia out of Iraq and would seek to give more power to the Industrial Relations Commission, which would potentially give unions back an option they’d lost back when Howard was Minister for Business & Consumer Affairs in the 1970’s.

The arguments against pulling out the troops are not limited to the political message sent to the wrong people, but also to Australia’s relationship with the U.S. Kerry would prefer the ADF to stay just as much as Bush, but I have to agree with Latham on this one: Iraq is a foreign adventure Australia probably shouldn’t have supported in the first place. The U.S. throws its weight around a bit much over the ANZUS treaty, and Richard Armitage’s bully-boy tactics put me right off. The U.S. is welcome to cordial relations and even free trade, but Australia isn’t the third world and should be treated with respect. Bush has shown little of that, and Kerry would do well to take notice of Latham gets in.

As for industrial relations, I’m already on record here that I admire the strength of Australia’s organized labor, and it seems to me that there isn’t the problem of corruption that exists in the States. The IRC does a good job, and attempts at gutting workers’ power to effect redress need to be reformed. It’s all well and good to strike a balance between workers and management, but this is better effected by methods such as Latham is proposing, rather than by the legislation Howard implemented.

If these are the only differences between them, then I’m still in favor of a Labour government coming to power, despite dire warnings of fiscal irresponsibility from the past. But I think it’s a simplistic gloss to draw the distinctions only on these two policy matters. Labour and Liberal have a long-standing philosophical divide, one that is quite evident on a daily basis.

Six Weeks
Australia’s going to the polls about a month before the U.S. does. On October 9 the choice will be Howard or Latham, and it’s a toss-up whether Howard’s strategy in calling for a short campaign will work for him, but he’s a clever politician, so we shouldn’t be surprised.

Next, North-by-Northwest, the Remake
It may be a few years yet, but now that the Chief Crazy Horse memorial statue has reached the completion of its initial stage, perhaps it won’t be so very long before George Clooney is chasing spies all over it?

I Love NY (Bush Doesn't)
It seems the height of arrogance for the RNC to be in NYC, but the Republicans are unlikely to get away entirely unscathed. In the city that Bush has failed more than any other in the days since September 11 2001, Protestors are putting up anti-Bush messages from the rooftops, through the streets, and on down to the subways. What a welcome sight that would be. (via Daily Kos.)

I Am an International Media Star
O.k., it's just a letter to the editor in the September edition of the (sydney) magazine, but it's also "letter of the month" and got me an HP digital camera and photo printer. I win! Go me!

Damn Lies & Statistics
The Olympics inevitably become more about national pride than athletic achievement, even if you start out watching because of the events. Really, just try not to feel even a little pride the next time someone from your country wins a medal, especially gold, especially in an event you enjoy (and even if you don't run the 100 meters yourself ever). One of the ways this happens is the relentless harping on the medal count, reported by country. But the Australian Bureau of Statistics has had a little fun with the medal count, reporting the totals according to population size per Gold medal. The Bahamas are currently number 1 and the U.S. is 29th, out of 67 countries with medals. They got theirs in the Women's 400m Track & Field, which Tonique Williams-Darling completed in 49.41 seconds. Congratulations for your achievement, Tonique, and for making your country the best in the world.

Bush League Journalism
I’ve made a practice of reading the newspaper daily for many years now, although for the past few years I’ve been reduced to the on-line versions during the week, capping off my intake of local, national, and world events with a print copy of the SMH on Saturday and the Sun-Herald on Sunday (just to make sure I didn’t miss anything). One thing I’ve learned in all this time is that newspapers lie. O.k., they lean; that is, they slant the news to suit the political persuasion of their editorial policy, which is really just a marketing decision based on the demographics of their target audience. The New York Times may be the “paper of record” for a large number of Americans, regionally supplanted by the Washington Post or the Los Angeles Times (and beyond that we’re getting smaller and smaller in regard to influence, but at least most local newspapers aren’t just advertising rags), but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have an overt political content. The Murdoch papers are the worst examples of the conservative print media, just as the Fox empire has come to exemplify tabloid journalism in television, but that doesn’t let anyone else off the hook. Here in Australia, the Fairfax papers have a good, firm grip on the reading public, but their content isn’t any less geared toward yellow journalism than the Telegraph or the Australian. In fact, I’d say that there often isn’t even the pretence of objectivity in most of the papers I read; I find that infuriating. That, and the accelerating trend towards sensationalism. What’s the result of all this? Well, there’s an article over at the American Prospect that I think is worth looking at, regarding the whole Swift boat veterans attack advertising matter and how it’s been treated in the press (located via Book Notes). The Kerry-Bush battles don’t get much of a look-in here, at least not on a daily basis, but that’s to be expected. I don’t expect, however, any better over stoushes between the Howard and Latham camps as the march to the election drags on.

Bush Economics
What are the chances? Bush legislates a loophole to slash overtime eligibility, and big layoffs start, concurrently with large numbers of job openings in the very same companies laying off their employees. In fact, if Poyner is right, it appears that the Bank of America isn’t just restructuring their workforce, but rather that they are eliminating full-time employees in order to lower labor costs overall, including overtime, health & welfare benefits, payroll taxes, and so forth. This is unethical. If your employees can’t afford not to work, but you won’t pay them a living wage, you are exploiting them in very nearly the worst possible way, the worst way being, of course, slavery. Without a robust labor movement, workers have little recourse, particularly when corrupt governments conspire against them, as Bush and his minions have done. Unfortunately, the labor unions in the U.S. are hugely ineffective, with no small part of the blame for their condition going to their corrupt leadership (including, often enough, mob affiliation), but also historically to government, from the Federal level on down, who have been diligent in making organization difficult, even engaging in strike-breaking (an activity the Howard government here in Australia knows a good deal about). Significant reform is needed, both in government regulation of business and in the unions, but don’t expect it soon, even if Kerry gets in.

So Much for Druids
Via Kottke, British scientists now know for sure how Stonehenge got there: storm waves are tossing giant boulders inland. Well, even if prehistoric sundials aren't what it's about, it's still an interesting story.

Annals of Flight (or Fight)
Sure, it was just incompetence on the part of airline ticket sales staff: Senator Ted Kennedy has been stopped five times under the TSA no-fly rules, because a name "similar to his" is on the watch list. Osama bin Kennedy, no doubt.

New Economic Theories
I'd thought this bill was dead, but George II has kept it alive, and now overtime is at risk for thousands upon thousands of U.S. workers. I've never made a dime in overtime pay in my entire working life, although many's been the times I'd have liked the dough, but that's just me. Working America, a lobbying group formed with the AFL-CIO to combat Bush's legislation, has a little on-line test to see if you might be affected by these new rules - but don't bother actually taking it; it's a gimmick (all the "Yes" responses will trigger the result that your pay is at risk). If I hadn't already been classifiable as a "professional" according to Department of Labor standards, I would now. There are benefits to living in Australia, it seems, at least in that the organized labor movement here has yet to have all its hard-won rights and benefits gutted by the federal government, as the usurper is intent upon doing back home.

All Politics Is Local
What’s the Bennelong take on Troy Rollo? He’s running a nice little discussion board over at Your Voice, which is also where I discovered the news that Howard’s talking about elections maybe next April. How can this be, you ask? Well, the clock starts ticking from the day the newly elected House first sits, which was actually 11 February 2002, not from the date of the last election (10 November 2001). It’s not like the U.S., where election day is election day, regardless of when the President was sworn in. Prognosticators suggest October¬-December. As for the Senate, it doesn’t look like a double-dissolution is likely, which is probably a significant part of why Howard’s been delaying. It could still happen in September-October, but if John’s really serious about waiting until after the U.S. goes to the polls (thanks, Gianna), then it’ll be too late. I’d guess he’s serious, and hoping a half-Senate election will return better numbers there for his party, whichever way the Lower House election turns out.

Seasoning
It’s raining in Sydney, and it has been for 24 hours now, but while the city’s had a record dousing, not enough is falling in the catchment areas, leaving us all to continue to ”go slow on the H2O.” Although we’re getting in to Spring now and what should be the rainy season, the forecast for the rest of the week is dry and getting warmer day by day.

Captain Yossarian
While "Catch-22" may not be an actual part of the terms of military service, I have my doubts about whether this soldier suing Bush over his extended tour of duty can prevail. But then again, George II probably never read Catch-22 anyway.

Book Notes
I’ve just finished reading Lynn Truss’ Eats, Shoots & Leaves, and just in time to catch up on an old New Yorker that included a review of the punctuation guide. I had to go back and see it for myself, but the NYer’s right: she misuses punctuation right from the start. It’s an entertaining book, without question, so long as you can endure her style, which consists of endless repetitions of jokes and punch lines, and her deep and abiding abhorrence of electronic-media abbreviation protocols, i.e., the use of punctuation as an aid to telegraphic text in emails and SMS. While I do endeavor at every opportunity to use full sentences and accurate punctuation (except in SMS, where telegraphy is the normative pattern), I do think she’s gone a bit balmy in just how far she takes her objections. I did learn a couple of nice rules for hyphens, but nothing at all of the seventeen rules for commas or for semicolons and colons that I didn’t already know, which does little for my sense of inadequacy on those points. The best thing about the book, in the end, has to be the frequent examples where various persons have “hanged [themselves] on a comma.”

This morning, I began reading Drylands, a novel by Thea Astley, a celebrated Australian writer who, coincidentally, died last night, just shy of her 79th birthday.

Obey Your Inner Geek, Obey
I know it's wrong, but I've seen the Alien movies and I've seen the Predator movies (yes, cinematically and even from a science fiction perspective, the Aliens rock), so I'm pretty much bound to find time to see Alien vs. Predator. Why, you ask? Well, mostly because any movie that can generate a sufficiently humorous bad review is worth seeing, and the review in Slate made me laugh.

Tessellated Animation
I've always enjoyed M.C. Escher's recursive drawings, and the Barista has pointed to this nice set of animated versions. I particularly like the cat chasing pigeons and the quantum dog. (Well, who wouldn't like a quantum dog?)

What Goes Around
- or: Everything Old Is New Again
Is it possible that all this lost music was never really lost in the first place? First all that Beatles archival material turns up in a suitcase in Glebe, now, Mick Jones finds master tapes supposedly lost by a drunken roadie that were really in his basement all along. So many questions sprint immediately to mind, like whether anybody's apologized to the roadie yet? Sorry, mate, you may have been drunk, but you weren't incompetent. Also, as these were pre-London Calling recordings, are the five unreleased songs the ones that would have made that album the great(er)recording than it was (or am I thinking of Sandinista?).

Bush Turkey
It sounds like the set-up for a joke, I know, but running through Parramatta Park is providing me with various wildlife sightings, now that my new regimen has started. It's only 4K around (approximately), so I've got to work on increasing my circuits or finding additional paths by which to extend my route, but in the meantime, there are the egrets, kookaburras, various duck-related water fowl, and now a bush turkey. Because the park is bordered by the railway, a four-lane highway, and residential blocks, I expect all I'm going to see are birds. The 'roos need more wilderness, and the possums sleep all day. What I really need to focus on is drumming up membership around here for the Sydney chapter of the Keith Richards Athletic Club.

Rock On
It's selfish, I know, but I want the Pixies to come to Australia. I'd even go back to the Gaelic Club to see that.

”I’m Not Buying”
Picking stocks to invest in is a gamble for most people, so we rely on the advice of stock analysts and traders and hope for the best. We research the companies, look at the various formulas to judge whether the stock is worth its price, then shell out and wait. Sometimes, even usually, at least over a long period, and assuming the company doesn’t just fold, you make a little money. We also buy stocks based on buzz. There’s a trend now toward “ethical” investing, i.e., investing in environmentally friendly companies or companies that themselves practice business according to ethical standards we approve of. And then there’s Google. I want to invest in Google, because it is the search engine to end all search engines on the internet. It has a clean interface, doesn’t bombard me with ads, and is free to use. They own Blogger, too, so I feel like I’d be investing in myself. Shares are expected to go for between $108 and $135, however, so I don’t think I’ll be able to afford it. If I had $10,000 sitting around, there would have to be something wrong with me (because why haven’t I spent it already, or to be more mature about the topic, why isn’t it invested someplace already?). But then I hear that people like Steve Wozniak don’t plan to buy in. Is that information I can use in making a decision like this? Should I actually believe him? What if he doesn’t invest and Bill Gates does? (Actually, Microsoft’s trying to develop their own version, so if he does invest, it would be short-term anyway.) Maybe I’ll just buy one.

Make It Stop
I have enjoyed the Harry Potter phenomenon and appreciate all the good it may be doing in the world in encouraging children to read who might otherwise not, and I even had three years of employment that could be said to have been in some part funded by the publishing juggernaut these books represent, but she said 7 and that’s enough. You want 8? Fine, but if the eighth in the series consists of “outtakes,” I’m not buying it for you. Who needs a blooper reel? (In fact, book 5 contained an internal consistency error, which the publishers then tried to correct in the next printing, causing some hue and cry among the devotees, as it would result in requiring them to purchase the revised edition in order not to suffer degradation in the value of their collections, but that’s a different story.) Thanks to KMH for bringing this to my attention.

Passport Control
At moments of national political crisis, the idea that NYC should secede is raised (although usually just from NY State, an eventually barred by the US Constitution, if I remember correctly), this time with considerable humor. The currency sample offered here is an excellent example of why the idea is so delightful, although I think there might be a tendency right now towards a hip-hop anthem.

Danger, Danger
The “Homeland Security” issues that troubled us most prior to relocating here were the constant threat level announcements. Often contradictory – an hysterical announcement from that idiot Ashcroft at Justice being immediately followed by a press conference with that blockhead Tom Ridge to say there wasn’t any new threat – the announcements were always little more than blatant attempts to manipulate public perception. It worked, too; alarming already alarmed citizens or further reinforcing the blasé sang froid of those inclined to ignore the message to begin with. One thing we all knew was that each time a message was issued, it was the learned response of the government following September 11 to actual changes in intelligence gathering results. We were kept uninformed of what was happening, what was being done about it, what was going to be done, once before, and the Bush administration determined not to do that again, because too many people got too upset about it. Now, however, with the elections looming, it turns out they’re recycling old data - three, even four years old, for that matter – and putting troops on the subways and in front of the banks and financial headquarters on the basis of information that is questionably relevant at best. Although al Qaeda has evidently conducted surveillance of these companies, we’ve all known for three years nearly that these could be potential targets. There is nothing new in the data to suggest an increased threat level actually exists, and that’s how most people are treating the original announcement. How manipulated do you feel?

Drought Conditions
In the SMH monthly magazine an article recently discussed the “top 10” environmental problems facing the city, offering a few measures residents could take to alleviate some of the damage, most of which involved the use of household rainwater tanks. All well and good, says I, but there are things my city can do, too, such as requiring all new public buildings to employ rainwater collection and grey water reuse. EnergyAustralia, for example, recently put up a new substation in Surry Hills; want to bet it doesn’t have any built-in conservation measures? Not me. One of the issues discussed in relation to the drought is that in the city itself there are vast paved areas, which only serve to sluice water into storm drains and thence to the sea, so that any rain that does fall in the city doesn’t relieve the water problems faced here. Enter permeable pavement. Although repaving doesn’t take place at anything like the level seen in cities where the climate is a significant factor in the wear and tear on roadways and footpaths, Sydney could undertake to use these materials henceforth whenever such work is required. So could Perth, Melbourne, et al. Write your local parliamentarian today.

Annals of Corruption
The ”Stench of Fremont Street” is not a problem I encountered during my only visit to Las Vegas (with M. in 2002), but a decade-long problem isn’t just something that crawled in a died. Somebody’s doing something somewhere that they’re not supposed to, so more than one kind of corruption is likely involved. Perhaps local investigations can save the $100Gs? Too much to ask of any ‘blogger.

Public Art
I first saw this on Boing Boing (of course), but the Cloud Gate sculpture is one of the best pieces of public art I’ve seen in ages. I’m more than a little jealous of Chicago. It looks like it would take some maintenance, however, to maintain its effect, so in that regard I’m less envious. It’s not like the artist is going to spend weekends polishing the thing, after all; but instead it will be shined up periodically by city workers. How long before scratches or graffiti spoil it?

Gallery Hopping
We had a weekend of entertainment, high and low, just finished, having attended Spiderman 2, which was exactly as entertaining as it’s supposed to be, so long as you like your superheroes angst-ridden (which is, of course, exactly the preference, more and more, since 1961). We also went over to the Tin Sheds Gallery to see Astrid Spielman’s solo exhibition, “Thinking of Venice,” a presentation of digital videos. Astrid, a good friend, is also an accomplished artist, and while video, digital or otherwise, presents certain inherent categorizational problems, her pieces in this show display a remarkable range, in themselves and in Astrid’s abilities with video as a medium and within that her adept manipulation of time, space, sound, and color. I’m a bit disappointed that I hadn’t seen a write-up over at Art Life, but I also don’t suppose they can find their way to everything. Perhaps video isn’t in their critical range. Maybe they just missed it. I’m very pleased that we didn’t.

When I’m 65
The unfunded corporate pension plan was at one time as realistic an accounting trick as such bookkeeping is usually thought to be, but that was before the tremendous wave of present and impending retirements that have been surging across the Western world for the last 30 years, looking to peak in the next 20-30. Whereas many companies early on shed their paternalistic role, a forfeiture of responsibility made easy be obscure tax code changes that soon became the only reliable source of enforced savings the workforce could rely on for their future, such as the 401(k) (which Australians would recognize as the near equivalent “superannuation”). Some industries haven’t been so lucky as to be free of the organized labor pressures as others, however, and the airlines are among those now facing the music, too little, too late. They’re not the only ones at fault. Going back as many years as pension funds have been in play, the government has been doing its level best to ensure this $110 billion dollar default result, playing at deregulation and turning a blind eye to the results. Who of our generation imagined the end of Pam Am, TWA, or even Delta? Who, having seen the future it represented, accurately foresaw the demise of the SST? Well, probably everyone who ever tried to spend accumulated frequent-flyer miles on a seat upgrade, that’s who. There’s really only one solution to such debacles: the end of unfunded pension plans. But they went the way of all flesh long ago, so if you’re going to retire, better start saving. The mattress looks safe.