Starry, starry, sleepless night

Values

Sledgebot

Too Lazy to Cross-Post...

...this piece on Voltaire at Larvatus Prodeo.

Mr Burke's Acclaimed Cherry

We are afraid to put men to live and trade each on his own private stock of reason; because we suspect that this stock in each man is small, and that the individuals would do better to avail themselves of the general bank and capital of nations and of ages.

(Edmund Burke, Reflections on the French Revolution)

If you do a quick Google Search for “Edmund-Burke +own-private-stock-of-reason”, you'll find plenty of web pages where that comment on the English attitude to reason is quoted. A few bloggers seem taken with it too. And why not? It's such a fine, juicy looking cherry and always looks ripe for the picking. It has a certain plausibility too, once you get past the distracting metaphor. No wonder that it's considered a good decoration for conservative confections.

What Burke appears to be saying is that no individual is a perfect reasoner – a reasonable enough proposition – and therefore, in making political decisions, we ought to have regard to past practice – tradition – which represents the accumulated wisdom of centuries. That's how Australia's own Owen Harries, presents Burke's remark in a 2003 article published at The American Conservative:

If the complexity of society and the political order was one reason Burke feared radical and rapid change, a second and just as powerful reason was his reservation about the proposed engine of change: the role of reason in human affairs. Burke rejected the Enlightenment view of man as a predominantly rational, calculating, logical being. His rational side exists, but it is a small part of his total make-up. “We are afraid,” said Burke, “to put men to live and trade each on his own private stock of reason, because we suspect that this stock in each man is small” Habit, instinct, custom, faith, reverence, prejudice—the accumulated practical knowledge acquired through experience, all this was more important than abstract reasoning. Collectively, and for better or worse, it constituted man’s nature. (my emphasis)

Kudos to Harries for at least mentioning prejudice in that emphasised sentence, although it does occupy last place in a list of its more respectable relatives. What Harries glosses over here is Burke's very explicit preference for prejudice over reason (others don't gloss over this and even more kudos to them). This isn't an isolated example, but it shouldn't be taken as typical of Harries, or Burkean conservatives in general.

We'll come back to that point later. First, let's take a look at the rest of the bunch that Burke's much prized cherry came from:

You see, Sir, that in this enlightened age I am bold enough to confess, that we are generally men of untaught feelings; that instead of casting away all our old prejudices, we cherish them to a very considerable degree, and, to take more shame to ourselves, we cherish them because they are prejudices; and the longer they have lasted, and the more generally they have prevailed, the more we cherish them. We are afraid to put men to live and trade each on his own private stock of reason; because we suspect that this stock in each man is small, and that the individuals would do better to avail themselves of the general bank and capital of nations and of ages. Many of our men of speculation, instead of exploding general prejudices, employ their sagacity to discover the latent wisdom which prevails in them. If they find what they seek, and they seldom fail, they think it more wise to continue the prejudice, with the reason involved, than to cast away the coat of prejudice, and to leave nothing but the naked reason; because prejudice, with its reason, has a motive to give action to that reason, and an affection which will give it permanence. Prejudice is of ready application in the emergency; it previously engages the mind in a steady course of wisdom and virtue, and does not leave the man hesitating in the moment of decision, sceptical, puzzled, and unresolved. Prejudice renders a man’s virtue his habit; and not a series of unconnected acts. Through just prejudice, his duty becomes a part of his nature.

Your literary men, and your politicians, and so do the whole clan of the enlightened among us, essentially differ in these points. They have no respect for the wisdom of others; but they pay it off by a very full measure of confidence in their own... (my emphases)

I'm particularly taken with this bit of the passage:

Many of our men of speculation, instead of exploding general prejudices, employ their sagacity to discover the latent wisdom which prevails in them. If they find what they seek, and they seldom fail...

At first, I thought that last remark – the declaration that England's men of speculation seldom failed when they went looking for the latent wisdom in general prejudices – might have satiric intent. It does sound a bit sardonic, but Burke is absolutely in earnest. He really does prefer prejudice over reason, to the extent that his “Reflections” are more of a long rant, worthy of any modern day RWDB. In the course of this rant, Burke vents quite a few general prejudices that he cherishes to a considerable degree – such as in this striking passage, where he bemoans the fact that they just don't make revolutionaries like they used to:

Other revolutions have been conducted by persons, who, whilst they attempted or affected changes in the commonwealth, sanctified their ambition by advancing the dignity of the people whose peace they troubled. They had long views. They aimed at the rule, not at the destruction, of their country. They were men of GREAT civil, and GREAT military talents, and if the terror, the ornament of their age. They were NOT like JEW BROKERS, contending with each other who could best remedy with FRAUDULENT circulation and depreciated paper the WRETCHEDNESS and RUIN brought on their country by their DEGENERATE councils.

These disturbers were not so much like men usurping power, as asserting their NATURAL PLACE in society. Their rising was to illuminate and beautify the world. Their conquest over their competitors was by outshining them... I do not say, that the virtues of such men were to be taken as a balance to their crimes; but they were some corrective to their effects... Such were your whole race of Guises, Condes, and Colignis. Such the Richelieus, who in more quiet times acted in the spirit of a civil war... your present confusion, like a palsy, has attacked the FOUNTAIN OF LIFE ITSELF. Every person in your country, in a situation to be actuated by a principle of honour, is disgraced and degraded... But this generation will quickly pass away. The next generation of the “nobility” will resemble the ARTIFICERS and CLOWNS, and MONEY-JOBBERS, USERERS, and JEWS, who will be always their fellows, sometimes their masters. (my shouting and scare quotes)

According to Burke, and his modern disciples, every one of the prejudices he displays here has, at its core, a “latent wisdom” that might be laid bare by a “man of speculation”. Burke's aversion to “money-jobbers, userers, and Jews” must be considered, from a Burkean viewpoint, as the sort of general prejudice that is beneficial to man and society. There are good grounds for supposing that it was, in Burke's time, a general prejudice – either that or Burke seriously misunderstood his readership and he was, by the standard of his own times as well as ours, a stupid bigot. But no-one wants to go there, surely?

Let's put that aside and, on Burke's behalf, state the question we would want a man of speculation to answer:

Why is it a good thing for decent Christian gentlemen to hold and even cherish a deep aversion to money-jobbers, userers, and Jews?

Fallacy twitchers will notice that a couple of prior question has been left begging in phrasing this question:

Is it a good thing for decent Christian gentlemen to hold and even cherish a deep aversion to money-jobbers, userers, and Jews? If so, for whom?

I propose to leave those two questions – important as you might think them – to their own devices and focus on the original question. If it's good enough for the acknowledged progenitor of modern conservatism, it's good enough for me.

A short answer to the Burke worthy question – one that avoids delving into the troublesome history of the Jews' position in English society – is that the commercial activities favoured by Jews – money jobbing and usury – are of a kind, that if unchecked, lead to a disorderly state of society. That's really all we need, but if we cared to press our hypothetical man of speculation, we might obtain a more detailed account of the kinds of disorder that money-jobbing and usury lead to. Personally, I wouldn't care to press that question.

Some might think this answer lacks a little depth but our task, as men of speculation is not to indulge ourselves – particularly not if we are inclined to the sort of dangerous curiosity that might lead to such inquiries as might explode the general prejudice against Jews – but to indulge Mr Burke. The truth (or truths) we might seek – perhaps through a study of the history of relations between Jewish money-jobbers and usurers, on the one hand, and Christian gentlemen on the other – are not what Mr Burke wants. Especially if our inquiries should lead us to conclude that, however conducive it may be to maintaining a particular social order (one, for example where low-born merchants know their place and don't amass fortunes greater than those of their social betters – the landed gentry and the clergy), it might be a little harsh on the Jews. Or, worse yet, that the social order that was served by this prejudice was a pretty rotten one. Would it be wise to impart such findings to Mr Burke and his fellow Christian gentlemen?

I think not – Mr Burke might take us for that most despicable of creatures, a man of enlightenment and respond accordingly. Worse, we place ourselves at risk of succumbing to a belief in democracy, a state of civil society that is not just disorderly, but downright unseemly:

A government of five hundred country attornies and obscure curates is not good for twenty-four millions of men, though it were chosen by eight and forty millions; nor is it the better for being guided by a dozen of persons of quality, who have betrayed their trust in order to obtain that power. At present, you seem in everything to have strayed out of the high road of nature. The property of France does not govern it.

(Cross posted at Larvatus Prodeo)

And One More Makes Ten

John Roskam, executive director of the Institue of Public Affairs, has produced an article about the ABC which appears in today's Age. It begins:

The Federal Government's new media laws came into effect last week - and the sky didn't fall in. Australians haven't been reduced to having only one newspaper to buy, and one television station to watch. In all likelihood, the practical changes produced by the laws will be minimal.

Did I read the rest? Yes I did, though I was strongly disinclined to. Roskam makes his own bias and his opinion of those who disagree with him - those who might answer "Not yet John, but give it time mate, give it time" - blatantly obvious. It's a good predictor of what he has to say about the ABC and the media in general and he doesn't disappoint.

It's not Roskam, or the IPA specifically, I've decided not to be buggered with - it's any writer (blogger or columnist) who opens a post or an article that way. It's boring. You want to convince me you've got something interesting to say? Don't start out by telling me my opinions are idiotic.

Ten, Sorry, Nine Things I Just Can't Be Buggered Posting About Right Now

1. Anything that Mirko "no punishment is enough for the violence perpetrated to the laws of logic by civil libertarians and lawyer groups who campaigned for [David Hicks] release" Bagaric gets published in the fish-wrappers. In matters of moral philosophy, this bloke isn't even a dilettante's bootstrap.


2. The sad fact that all the major dailies in Australia now fall into two categories - the sewer press and the "perched precariously on the edge of the kerb sliding towards the gutter" press. Stuff it.


3. The crap state of free-to-air television these days.


4. Anything published by that Peter Saunders bloke who works for the CIS.


5. Anything written by Keith Windschuttle. Like his latest article in Quadrant, where once again, he gets stuck into the shortcomings of academic historians. It reminds me of Orwell's remarks, in The Road to Wigan Pier on the "mistaken Communist tactic of sabotaging democracy, i.e. sawing off the branch you are sitting on..."
   
   I suppose it's possible that PP McGuiness' editorship of Quadrant is really the last step of "the Left's long march through the institutions" and that PeePee and Keith are part of some secret cabal using Quadrant as a vehicle to recruit "useful idiots". If that's their cunning little plan, I'd have to say they've well and truly screwed the pooch, run through the entire Karma Sutra with the family cat and it's time for the budgie and the kid's hamster to get nervous.


6. Anything else that gets published in Quadrant.


7. Anything Julie Bishop has to say on the subject of teachers.


8. Anything Kevin Donnelly has to say on the subject of education.
   
   When it comes to the "Education Wars" I'm going over the hill and I won't be back until I've caught up on Ivan Illich and that Summerhill bloke.


9. Bloody conservative bloggers and columnists. Zeppo Bakunin keeps telling me off for wasting my time with them - he reckons it's a complete waste of brainpower. When we have these discussions, I usually stump him by asking who, on the conservative side of commentary, he'd consider worthy of my attention.
   
   But he's right, damn it. John Ray (JR at a Western Heart) is so hard up for ideas these days that he's moved on from habitual self-plagiarism to plagiarising the words of other conservatives and using their ideas as a soapbox from which he can proclaim his own superior understanding of the Left. And the one or two conservative bloggers I have kept a casual eye on over the past year are on track to the same kind of self-caricature.

How long I'll feel this way tomorrow is anyone's guess. You could always run a sweepstakes on it, if you're so inclined.

Alternatively, someone might like to sponsor me to refrain from writing about these things at a dollar a day, with proceeds going to my favourite charity Medicins Sans Frontiers.

As an alternative to that, I'm prepared to consider the odd blogging challenge, assuming that we can come to some suitable financial arrangement that involves some, or all, of the readies going to the aforesaid organisation*. Now that's blogwhoring.

By the way, commenting is another matter entirely. Just thought it a good idea to make that quite clear.

* MSF's cut of any commission fee will be a minimum of $AUD 50. My cut will be a minimum of $AUD 0 and a maximum of $AUD 100 (in the unlikely event that the fee gets up around four figures - $100 being 10% of $1,000). I still have a few details to nut out. So hold your horses for a couple of days (that goes for the sponsored non-bloggingthing too).

Easter Wrap-Up, Like

So, 'ow were your Easter? Happily unproductive, I 'ope - gets a bit of a grind otherwise, d'n't it? All them responsibilities to't nation's economy an't state and national Ruperts goin' on at y'r about what y'r s'posed to think all't time.

I 'a'n't 'ad a bad weekend me sen. Got a new toy Thursd'y. 'T were hand-me-down Windows box. Managed to buy cheap, end-o'-line ADSL modem off web too. Wi' luck, that'll be delivered later in't week.

Meanwhile, I've divided me time, in roughly equal measure, between hookin' grunty new Windows box on't floor by' t desk to't grunty owd Linux box on't floor by't desk an' settin' round bein' an owd grumpy drawers. Give or take a couple o' times when I were a bit of a mardy pants about one o't' cock-ups that 'appened while I were workin' on't PCs like. Oh, an' I've wasted a bit o't time on th'Internet an' all, puttin' up blog posts.

Well, that's enough o' th'owd d'motic. I'll bet y'r reet sick of it be now.

There are no ratings over Easter - apparently - which means the free-to-air stations fill their schedules with repeats of old crap, rather than this year's brand new crap. So we had a chance to catch up on spooks and I got a chance - while comrade Bakunin was out of the house - to take a look at one of the two DVDs I was lent recently. If I can find a way to do some frame capture, there's at least one photoblog in the first DVD. If not, I'll have to tackle the subject another way.

As for old grumpy drawers, here - well, besides the crap TV situation, he had no shortage of things to moan about. You should hear him go on about "bloody Phillips head screws" and the crap design of PCs. From the outside they look boring - which is fine, there's nothing wrong with a plain looking, utilitarian machine. It's when you open the buggers up that you see the problem; on the inside, they're a lot like the steam traction engines of the nineteenth century. The latter were the topic of that second DVD. It's narrated by a steam traction engine buff. It was his comments on the way they were developed and improved that suggested the bizarre analogy.

And that's it for the enigmatic moustache twirling. I'll bugger off again now.

Among My Souvenirs

One of the things that Helga and I found while we were going through those boxes of old unwanted papers, was an old Herald banner that caught my eye one winter evening when I was walking to Flinders Street Station to catch the train home from work. The next day, on my morning break, I walked round to the newsagency where I'd seen it displayed, and asked if I could have it. The newsagent thought that was a bit of an odd request, but he was happy to hand it over.

I've just done a hunt around the house, to see if I brought it home with me - no luck, so it probably went into the recycle bin. A pity, that, because it's just occurred to me that it was quite a valuable bit of ephemera and might have brought a few readies in if I sold it on E-Bay. Here's a quick mock-up:

THE HERALD

HOW I ATE
MY FRIENDS!
VIETNAM
REFUGEE
TELLS

Thinking about it today, I got to wondering whether Muslims would be considered halal, or haram - and what about infidels?

Ten Things That Just Ain't Worth Reading About

1. What the typical man tells you the typical woman wants.
2. What the typical man tells you the typical woman should want.
3. What any individual man tells you the typical woman wants.
4. What any individual man tells you the typical woman should want.
5. What the typical woman tells you the typical woman wants.
6. What any individual woman tells you women should want.
7. What really inept sociological research tells you the typical woman wants.
8. What really inept sociological research tells you the typical woman should want.
9. What any credulously uncritical reader of inept sociological research tells you about what the typical woman wants.
10. What any credulously uncritical reader of inept sociological research tells you about what the typical woman should want.

The Great International Children's Cyber-Crusade for Better Ejukashun

On March 19, The Age reported on a campaign of "cyber-bullying" which drove the principal of Essex Heights Primary School in Melbourne's East out of her job. The campaign was conducted by a group of concerned parents on a now defunct web-site.

Expect more of this kind of shit. Thanks to a link at Harry Clarke's blog, I've just learnt of a web-site - operated out of the United States - that specialises in catering to students and parents who might feel the occasional urge to vent on their students. It's called "Rate My Teachers" and I'll be buggered if I'm going to link to it.

Harry notes the predictable opposition "of the dinosaurs in The Australian Education Union, such as Mary Bluett" to such on-line evaluations and an obvious flaw in the evaluation technique used on the site:

The comments ... are entirely unrepresentative - the 'squeaky wheels' are most likely to offer a view and indeed perhaps to repeat views by 'sock puppeting'.

Nonetheless he retains "some sympathy for this flawed evaluation technique":

I know from experience that incompetent teachers do maintain teaching positions for long periods in both schools and universities despite various internal, private evaluation procedures.

Reforms that retrain or replace incompetent teachers are overdue and would do away entirely with parents needing to rely on biased public websites to get information. (original emphasis)

When I try to extract the underlying logic of Harry's position, it looks something like this:

Reforms to education are badly needed and anything that pushes progress on such reform is OK by me;

This site will push progress on reforms to education ergo

This site is OK by me.

Here's where Harry and I part company - the site's not OK by me. Actually we parted company on this point back in my first paragraph; I'm just making a mealy-mouthed attempt to butter him up so that he might be persuaded by what I have to say in the rest of the post.

Reading the anonymous site operator's mission statement (on the site's About page) made it obvious that the problem of teacher incompetence is not exactly a new one - at least in Kern County, California, where any claims against the site must be filed. It's clear that whoever taught the author of the page English failed to impart a few essential writing skills, such as the basic art of paragraphing. The page opens with this disclaimer:

As the owners/operators of a website that allows the anonymous rating of teachers, we are frequently asked, "Why do you do this? Aren't you doing a disservice to teachers?" Our answer is a resounding NO...

Now that's where the first paragraph ought to end, according to what I learnt in high school English but it rambles on:

In the public discourse on improving education, we believe the most important voices are often ignored. For the first time in the history of public schools, the student is being heard, and parents can share their experiences in an open forum...

And on. You'll notice that the author isn't exactly a master of the art of making clear, succinct statements either - especially in the section of the page dealing with the site's purposes (the paragraph breaks in the next excerpt are mine):

RateMyTeachers started much like other new websites - by ordinary people with a vision for a better way of doing something. Thousands of student volunteers help keep the site going on a day by day basis.

The purpose of the site is threefold. First, it is to help facilitate a positive change in the way parents, students, and teachers alike look at the education system and therefore to encourage structural changes with regards to school and teacher choice.

Secondly, it is a place for students and parents to have their opinions validated. We all like to be heard, especially when it comes to life issues such as education... (my emphasis)

The first stated objective is just the sort of waffle you'd hear in a bullshit bingo session. That second is a doozy - the site is a place for students and parents to get their opinions validated? You can't see anything wrong with that - well neither did those parents with kids at Essex Heights Primary see anything wrong with setting up a web-site where they could all get together and validate their various low opinions of the new principal.

And the site's third purpose? It's to help the teachers, of course:

Lastly, RateMyTeachers is a useful resource to the teachers who are open and self-assured enough to face the opinions of their customers, i.e. students and parents.

And here's another failure in this wingnut's education: no-one ever told him what a mealy-mouthed little git he was. And so he remains today. The last paragraph of the "About" page has this helpful information for any teacher offended by what the site tells them about themselves:

Any disputes or claims must be filed in the State of California, County of Kern.

Rate My Teachers Australia - like Rate My Teachers Canada, Rate My Teachers Great Britain, Rate My Teachers New Zealand and Rate My Teachers India - is a subsidiary domain of Rate My Teachers US, where you'll also find an interesting "Legal" page and an FAQ page. The "Legal" page begins:

IF YOU ARE CONSIDERING A LAW SUIT, YOU REALLY SHOULD READ THIS PAGE!
Our users are anonymous. The Supreme Court of the United States has held that anonymity of speech is protected under the First Amendment to the Constitution (see McIntyre v. Ohio, 514 U.S. at 337; Talley v. State of California, 362 U.S. 60). United States courts also recognize the right to speak anonymously - AND have held that the right extends to speech on the Internet. When courts have ordered disclosure of the name of an anonymous user, a litigant must show that its need for identifying information outweighs the user's constitutional right. RateMyTeachers.com recognizes this right to anonymity.

That is, don't even bother filing any claims in the State of California, County of Kern - you won't win.

So, what's the site really about? Here's one clue - each page is chocka with advertising. Here's another - the domain has a named advertisement server. And here's another from the FAQ:

I know a business that I think would like to advertise on the site. Are you interested?
Of course!!! Contact us and we will discuss our rates for banner ads and sponsorship opportunities.

And here's a FAQ that tells you just how serious the site operators are about those three lofty purposes they listed on the "About" page:

Who can rate? Is it limited to students?
We prefer you only rate teachers of whom you have first-hand knowledge. It is not possible to verify that a rater had a particular teacher, so use caution in making decisions based on isolated ratings. Anyone can rate - students, the teacher, other teachers, parents, dogs, cats, etc.

In plain simple English, Rate My Teachers is a scam - and a very sleazy one.

Any disputes or claims arising out of this post must be filed in the Supreme Court of Victoria, in The Land Down Under.

Old Book Corner

Twilight Women Around the World; International Picture of the Other Love ILLUSTRATED, R Leighton Hasselrodt MA, Luxor Press London (12s/6d) 1965

I recovered this little beauty while Helga and I were sorting through all our old books, getting them ready for sale. My best guess at its provenance is that it came from the deceased estate of a former teacher who had acquired it through the widespread practice, in secondary schools of the 1960s, of confiscating books that were deemed unfit reading for their young charges.

The book deals with the love that dared not speak its name, lest it be whispered about behind the shelter sheds, or written about on toilet walls. As the title suggests it's an anthropological and historical survey of lesbianism around the world, starting with the US. Here's a chapter listing:

1. The four F's of Homosexuality: Fable, Fiction, Fancy - and Fact


2. The Neglected Lesbians


3. The Loneliest People


4. You Can't Keep Them Down on the Farm


5. Split-level Sapphists


6. The Village Deviate


7. The In-Between In-Betweens: Girls Attending Boarding Schools, Women in the Armed Forces, Call Girls and Prostitutes, Women in Correctional Institutions


8. Canadian Capers


9. Down Mexico Way


10. The Torrid Tropics


11. Carnality in the Carribean


12. Down South America Way


13. East Side Story


14. The British Lesbian


15. Liberte, Egalite - et Homosexualite


16. Bi-Sex in Benelux


17. Sapphist Smorgasbord


18. Deutschland Uber Sexualis


19. Inversion alla Italiana


20. Behind the Ironical Curtain


21. Sapphism in the Satellites


22. The Home of Homosexuality


23. The Aberrant Arabs


24. The Dark Continent


25. Primitive Paraphiliacs


26. Sapphism 'Neath the Southern Cross


27. The Sexual Mysteries of India


28. The Lesbians of Chung-Hua Jen-Min Kung-Ho Kuo


29. Lsebos of the Orient


30. The Globe Girdled

I'll bet that "Sapphism 'Neath the Southern Cross" title caught your eye - it did mine. We'll get to that in due course. First let's lift the "Ironical Curtain" and take a peek at sapphism, Soviet style at the height of the Cold War.

R Leighton Hasselrodt MA begins this chapter by debunking a common misconception:

Anyone having seen photographs of rough-hewn, muscular Russian women toiling as bricklayers or steelworkers might be reasonably expected to suspect that there was an underlying streak of homosexuality beneath the surface manifestations of "mannishness".

Actually, the percentage of female homosexuals in the Soviet Union is very high, though not necessarily among the women who perform such heavy "man's work." These are often merely rugged women of peasant stock, long accustomed to hard physical labour and, despite their appearance, entirely heterosexual with strong, even voracious, heterosexual appetites...

Evidence on Lesbianism in Russia was a bit thin on the ground, because:

As in all matters which might conceivably make the Soviet Union look like anything short of a Utopia, information about the problems of sexual deviation inside the Iron Curtain is seldom released by the authorities...

Nonetheless, with the help of such limited information as was available, R Leighton Hasselrodt MA manages to provide a historical and cultural analysis of Lesbianism in Soviet Russia, before moming in on the salacious details, such as:

Dildoes and other penis-simulating devices are to be found only in Moscow, Leningrad, Kiev and Novosibirsk. They are virtually unknown outside these cities.

...Lesbians in Kiev seem to derive particular pleasure from homosexual activity with pregnant women or recently delivered mothers ...

Sadly:

Despite the much-publicized achievements of Soviet medical science, the Soviet Union lags far behind the West in psychiatric knowledge and techniques. There is little psychotherapy available for homosexual women who desire such help in changing their behaviour patterns to heterosexual ones...

When I turned to "Sapphism 'Neath the Southern Cross" to see what R Leighton Hasselrodt MA had to say about Aussie Lezzoes, what did I find? In a word - nothing. There was plenty of salacious stuff about various South Pacific cultures, but Australia didn't score a mention - the closest R Leighton Hasselrodt MA's global survey got to Godzone country was Papua with its "famous" Orakaiva cult:

... also known as the "Taro Cult". Members hold frequent ritual orgies. These begin with the chewing of betel nut and the eating or drinking of aphrodisaical and hallucination-inducing drugs. Wild and unrestrained dancing - called "kassamba" by the natives - follows. The members of the cult work themselves into an insane sexual frenzy which culminates in a feverish orgy of homosexual, bisexual and pluralistic sexual activity. The homosexual activity among the women generally manifests itself in mutual cunnilingus and frenzied tribadism.

Well, you can see why a school teacher might confiscate such a book, can't you? Reading passages like this might lead to some embarrassing scenes in the classroom:

"Sir, please sir?"

"Yes, what is it Trotsky?"

"Sir, what's tribadism, sir?"

"Trotsky, what have you been reading this time?"

"Just a book sir."

"Look it up in your dictionary boy."

"Have sir - it's not there."

"Then ask Miss Prunesquallor - she's your English teacher, isn't she? She ought to know. Now open your desk, so I can see this book."

Cross-posted at Larvatus Prodeo.

The Highlights and Other Psychological Horrors

Today hasn't start too well - thanks to an accidental viewing of the synchronised swimming on Saturday night I woke up with an attack of the highlights. Bloody Russians!

OK, so it's partly my fault - I didn't have to stick around and actually watch the Russian team swancing - or is it dwimming - around to the strains of Rimsky-Korsakov's Psychosis Scheherezade - I could have moved to another room and found something else to do. And at least the musical interludes in my head weren't accompanied by visions of legs scissoring above the blue surface of a swimming pool, or a team of eight swimmers making a star figure with their bums up at the center and their splayed legs forming the outline. Well, not until I started writing, anyway.

Right now, all the orchestral bombast of that over-orchestrated little air with variations is blasting out of the stereo speakers - it's into the second part, where you get all those totally unnecessary grace notes from the harp at the beginning. All I have to do is get through the next twenty minutes without thinking too much about Tchaikovsky's Cappriccio Italien, or worse yet, the 1812 overture. They're both on the CD with the Rimsky-Korsakov - as filler essentially. Bloody Deutsche Grammophon!

Postscript: now that I've listened to the whole cloying piece I have to admit that, like Ketelbey and the Mighty Wurlitzer, Rimsky-Korsakov and synchronised swimming were made for each other.

Lit-Crit Gems

(All from the latest Saturday Age)

... the book doesn't only chart the emergence of a department, but of a discipline. Clark, Blainey, Serle & Co didn't just teach Australian history - in many respects they invented it.

Her novel is exceptionally readable, stylish and well-paced. It's not without its moments of wry humour and the plot unravels with rare confidence.

Ramsey and Lawrence do not prove sexually fungible (interchageable). Shriver has perhaps stacked the odds here by making the snooker player an intense and experimental lover, and giving him love scenes that will make the book clubs swoon. They may even develop an interest in snooker, although a glance at the real-life characters on the circuit should douse those dreams.

There has been the usual hype about Davis being a writer we should all be watching. But I'm afraid that deep down her work is shallow.

Suffice it to say that [this book] rekindled the fires that burned all those years ago when a just-pubescent youngster discovered that not only was cricket the greatest game of all, it was - in the right hands - written about in a way far superior to any other sport.

Leftist Subversive Mah-Jongg Circle

In all that book-sorting I've been doing over the past week or two, one very valuable little volume finally turned up - the little plain English "how to play Mah-Jongg" book.

So, given a week or so to get the house cleaned up and the dining room table cleared, it should be possible - at last - to get a social game or two happening here. It's a fairly convenient cover for our real agenda of plotting the overthrow of bourgeois democracy. Expressions of interest are cordially invited.

And if it happens to turn out from time to time that we have a few players over the four, there's a Boules set sitting around - weather permitting, surplus players can put in an end or two of Crazy Boules. That's the Aussie suburban version, where there's a bloody big clothes hoist between scratch and the jack.

The Slow Swell of Coming Recrimination

The only thing I've read about yesterday's Burnley Tunnel pile-up is this post at The Dog's Bollocks. The Age has a two page spread about it, but I haven't yet managed to get past the second paragraph of Karen Kissane's article. Some subjects should be addressed simply and directly, with a minimum of literary flourish.

There's also one letter to the editor, describing the pile-up as "a disaster waiting to happen". Some people are quick off the mark, aren't they?

And that's all I wish to say on the subject for today.

Look Back in Retrospect

Thanks to the Ozpolitics blog-feed I've become very familiar with the fact that the Reverend Gordon Moyes' life has fallen into a number of phases and even what a couple of those phases are. I can't be bothered cataloguing the phases of my own life for ready reference - well not right now anyway - but yesterday afternoon I had one of those moments when you realise that one phase of your life is coming to a close, and on the whole, it's no big deal.

Over the past week, the ex and I have worked through all the boxes of books in the back shed at her place, sorting out the books for sale. Yesterday, we were finally down to the last box of personal papers. The big one. So we spent the afternoon sorting through those, while we waited for the cool change to arrive. We had the radio on too, so we could keep up with the progress reports on the pile-up in the Burnley tunnel. But I don't propose to write about that now - 't'ain't fittin'.

I wasn't up to much cognitively, so I confined my work to the heavy lifting and the paper shredding, while Helga did the sorting. As I sat beside the shredder, feeding in the old bank statements, tax returns before the year 2000 and other accumulated personal records, I realised that what I was shredding was the entire official record of my life with Helga. And it didn't bother me one bit.

Statements from our long closed joint bank account? Into the shredder - zip. Mortgage statements from the time we were paying off the matrimonial home - zip. Old pay-slips from my time in the public service - zip. All those adverse performance reports - zip. Timesheets and invoices from my IT contracting days - zip. Useless, bureaucratic detritus, the lot of it.

All that survived were the personal papers - old aborted diaries, old aborted short stories and notebooks which I'll now have to go through. Because there's some good stuff in there, and with all the notepaper that's been turned up, and that fountain pen I've recovered (and a new bottle of Quink), I reckon it's worth taking another crack at the creative stuff. Certainly, this opening paragraph deserves another workout:

Mum once told Dad that she was going to kill him. It was in the middle of one of their arguments. I didn't hear it at first, because she said it real quiet, but then Dad said "What did you say?" It was loud and threatening, and I could imagine him leaning into her face as he said it, like you do when the little kids tell you you're a bastard, but really quiet, because they don't really want you to hear. So you ask them what they f**king said, and they yell it at you, and you have to hit them again, to put them in their place...

There's more, but it gets pretty ugly. Later today, I might just sit down and start the whole thing again in longhand, to see if I can feel my way back into the mood of the piece, and all that writerin' stuff. Something good might be happening today, because there's another little idea nudging at the back of my brain saying "write me, come on, write me".

At the end of the afternoon, we sat back with a cup of coffee each and I had a quick look through one of the aborted diaries and read a couple of excerpts to Helga, over the radio reports. They were fairly typical diary crap:

Saturday, 25/8/90
I've just seen an advertisement on the TV for a recording of Vivaldi's Four Seasons performed by I Musici: "Available for the first time from Polygram." What do they mean by this?
Helga (after watching an advertisement for "Huggies" disposable nappies): What's wrong with flannel? We're going to have flannel aren't we ...
Me: Yes.
Helga: ... when we're old and incontinent.

In one of his Seymour stories, Salinger quotes Seymour as saying "Life is a journey from one sacred place to another." It's incomplete - I'd add then another, and another and so on. Right now, I'm between sacred places.

That's just typical blogging crap.

Livres

- a fun game of biblioclasm for two or more players.

Playing equipment
One political pamphlet, government form or similar document. Two books per player. The books of all players should be of approximately equal size and weight.

To start play
One player screws up the pamphlet (or other document) in a tight ball and throws it across the room or other playing space. This is the jack.

The Play
Each player in turn reads a particularly egregious passage from one of his/her books, then hurls it at the jack using the hurling action described below. The game ends when all players have hurled both their books at the jack.

The hurling action
The book is held in either hand, open at the central page (or thereabouts), with the thumb resting between the pages and the index and middle fingers touching the front and back cover. Either hand may be used.

The hand is raised to the shoulder, then the book is hurled with a backhand motion, releasing the grip at the end of the arc.

Other methods of throwing the book are not permitted. A player who throws the book with any other action than the proper hurling action is disqualified from the game.

Scoring
The winner is the player whose books land closest to the jack. Scoring is as in boules or lawn bowls.

Erly Works

I was round at the ex’s this afternoon, helping her sort through some boxes of books and other stuff. Some of the boxes dated back to the time we took out a mortgage together and quit the rental market. So I’ve taken back a few books that I knew I had somewhere – to wit, packed up in a cardboard box in the garden shed that used to be half mine. Sterne’s Tristram Shandy for one, the complete ghost stories of M R James for another.

I came away with a few other bits and pieces too – the fountain pen that I thought I’d lost at Johnny’s Green Room during a hotly contested evening of Nine Ball, and a couple of really old school exercise books. With some of my very earliest writing. Here are three selected pieces.

Untiteld, August 1960

once there were three chilldren a girl two boys and a dog there names were Johnny Tommy Polly the dog was called rex , and a sea-gull dived and caut a fish then Johnny throuh some bread. to it it eaten it then the fish and it was lovely there was some flowers Polly was Picking flowers and when she a big bunch they went and cerleckted shells one found some golden ones. ode found a winkle it was a white one one found 62 shells on the way home. they went round the rocks and they were home. and they had there tea and went to bed and went to sleep.

The Grate full Duck

The Ducklings were learning to swim. All exept one who was afraid of water and the clumsy Duckling was more clumsy at flying than swimming and one day the ducks were going to their winter quarters but the clumsy duckling fell in an hole a it was so small that it could not quack and the mother duck stare-d and then she remembered a man and he was a St called St Batholomew and he was saying his prayer so she drage dragged him to the small hole where the ducklings were waiting and the saint saw the young duckling in the hole and called him Benjamin and when he was out of the hole he col could fly steadily and could fly stedier than his mummy.

Obsurvashuns on Animal Husbundry

Last night my daddy went for some chickens and he could not get any he said poultry and some of our hens are greedy and they eat there eggs and I think they eat the shells of them we have a broody hen and it turns the eggs over and when the chickens hatch the mother hen keeps them warm and they grow up into adult frogs and they should not remain chickens still and if they did we would not get plenty hens and enough eggs for we sell a dozen eggs each day

How to Blackmail the Queen

The first thing you will need, if you plan to blackmail the Queen, is some footage or photographs of Her Majesty or HRH, Phil the Greek in an embarrassing moment. Once you have obtained your salacious material you will need to inform Her Maj that you have it, and of the terms on which you are prepared to suppress publication in the tabloids.

Unless you are a personal friend of the Queen’s, you must not write to the Queen direct. Your blackmail note should be addressed to “The Private Secretary to Her Majesty the Queen”. Personal friends of the Queen would also be well advised to follow this procedure if they wish to protect their identities from later disclosure.

Wherever the word “she” or “her” would appear in ordinary correspondence, the phrase “Her Majesty” should be substituted. For example:

To: The Private Secretary to Her Majesty the Queen

Dear Sir,

Could you please direct Her Majesty’s attention to the enclosed photographs. They comprise a selection of stills from a video recording of Her Majesty in a situation that could cause Her Majesty great public embarassment if published in The Sun or The Daily Mirror.

I have already received expressions of interest from the editors of both publications, however as a loyal subject of Her Majesty, I feel that it is only proper that I give Her Majesty first refusal on this material.

Also enclosed in this envelope you will find a key for a public locker at Euston Station. If Her Majesty arranges for one of Her Majesty’s staff to place a plain black canvas carryall, containing 200,000 euros in used, non-sequential notes, the original videotape will be forwarded to Her Majesty by following mail.

Please inform Her Majesty that Her Majesty has one week from the posting of this letter before I accept the best offer I can get from Fleet Street.

I remain her Majesty’s most Obedient Servant,
Mr X

Similarly, when blackmailing other members of the Royal Family, one does not write to the Prince, Princess or Duke direct – one writes to the Equerry, Private Secretary or Lady in Waiting of the particular member of the Royal Family. If you are not sure which of these alternatives is applicable, a letter addressed, for example, to “The Private Secretary to His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales” is most appropriate.

If your demands for money are not met, you will have little choice but to sell on the embarrassing material to the tabloid press for whatever you can get. However, all is not lost – an opportunity to make a little more on top of that still exists. We’ll cover that in “How to Blackmail the Private Secretary to Her Majesty the Queen”.

One Friday Night …

… that is last night, I got up and went to the lounge, where I picked up the TV guide, looking for something that would while away a couple of hours of insomnia. There wasn’t much on offer, as usual, so I went back to bed and a couple more chapters of Titus Groan. Before I did, I noticed that I’d missed this program on the ABC at 11:30:

The Band Aid Story. Music documentary. The untold story of how a bunch of musicians forced u-turns in government policy, propelled Ethiopia into the nation’s psyche and made the whole of Britain, and the world, put its hand in its pocket.

It was a repeat.

Put a Bloody Sock In It for Gawd's Sake!

I’m with Tony the Teacher: Straya Day gets on my tits.

For one thing it’s turned into bloody Straya Week, if not Straya Fortnight. Sometime around mid-January, it seems that someone at The Age at least, woke up from the national stupor known as the “silly season” – the time of the year when every paper in the country prints nothing but fluff because all the journoes want their Christmas break and if they’re not interested in writing real news stories over the annual holidays then obviously no-one’s going to be interested in reading real news stories either. Hey, Australia Day’s coming up, this hack thought, why don’t we run a series on Aussie values.

So we got a whole bloody week of navel-gazing on the Strayan tradition of the Fair Go, what it is to be Strayan, what Strayan values are and how are we going to get the lint out of the national belly-button? With the national digit would be the obvious answer, if this government hadn’t shoved the national digit firmly into the national anus with a clear intention to keep it there.

I was looking forward to getting up this morning with the whole thing over and out of the bloody way. Obviously I’m not getting enough lamb in my diet. But no – instead the paper was filled with pages of bloody Straya Day post-mortems on who did and said what, where, to celebrate the fact that Straya has a really gorgeous innie, thanks to the deft scissor work of the Founding Obstetricians.

One celebration of Australia Day that was notable by its absence – a welcome non-event - was the Great Australian Bikini-March, originally scheduled for early November last year. This was the absurd protest organised by Christine Hawkins, a “Melbourne grandmother” against the sexist remarks of Sheikh al-Hilali. Ms Hawkins brilliant idea was that Melbourne women would send al-Hilali a message by parading their exposed innies and outies outside a mosque in Brunswick.

Well, when you’re a middle-of-the-road Australian who wants to send a message to the Muslim fundamentalists in our midst, I suppose one mosque will do as well as another – and it’s certainly easier for a “Melbourne grandmother” who lives somewhere in the outer south-eastern suburbs of Melbourne to get to Brunswick than Lakemba – it’s just a couple of hours on the train at a cost of a few dollars for the round-trip, much cheaper than an air-fare to Sydney and a taxi to Lakemba, with the added complications of check-in times and getting through airport security. As for the residents of Brunswick who might take exception to the idea of their streets being used for a provocative protest with an obvious potential to get nasty, who gives a shit? Those latte-swilling elitists should have got rid of the enemy in their midst years ago.

John Howard’s Straya – don’t you love it? Maybe next year, I’ll make more of an effort and slip down to the nearest halal butcher to get some halal sausages to toss on the barbie on Straya day. Apparently, halal sausages are quite delicious.

(Cross-posted at Larvatus Prodeo)

Form 1, Function 0

Good design is supposed to be about making utilitarian objects that also manage to look good – at least that’s what I read in an article on good design in The Saturday Age so long ago that I’ve forgotten when it was. Or perhaps it was in one of their pieces on architecture. Whatever.

Yesterday, in the print edition, Suzy Freeman-Greene took a look at design in Melbourne with the help of The Melbourne Design Guide* and finds that good design is flourishing in Melbourne. The Age even has the photos to prove it, including a picture of a footbridge over the Craigieburn Bypass on the Hume Highway.

The bypass is the product of a collaboration between artist Robert Owen and a firm of landscape architects – Taylor Cullity Lethlean. It’s a big piece of iconic impressive architecture, like the Denton Corker Marshall “Gateway to Melbourne” (aka the Cheesestick) on the road formerly known as the Tullamarine Freeway.

The Cheesestick has no known function whatever – it just provides a bit of visual spectacle for taxi drivers and their passengers on the way to the CBD from Tullamarine Airport. In contrast, the big horseshoe thing on the Craigieburn Bypass also serves as a footbridge. So you get a big, iconic landmark for the interstate truckies, and a bit of community infrastructure in the same package. Only a complete philistine would bag it as a piece of totally crap design.

So I’m a philistine. Over the past few hours, I’ve tried to see this Objet d’Artitecture as an aesthetically pleasing combination of form and function, somehow magnificent in the way that the sweeping curve of the bridge over the roadway manages to combine the utilitarian function of lifting the pedestrians over the tops of the B-doubles with visual excitement. All I’ve managed to see is a plug-ugly attempt to tart up an underlying failure of urban planning – the existence of the freeway in the first place.

I guess that’s why I’m not cut out to be a designer – my thinking is far too pedestrian.

* - to view the Melbourne Design Guide on-line, you will need a Flash player. This is not good web-site design.

"Clear Thinking"

The subject of the subject of “Clear Thinking” came up in a few comments on this thread at Larvatus Prodeo. Evidently, anyone who remembers studying “Clear Thinking” at school during the 50s, 60s or 70s went to Victorian high school, because one commenter[link] had never been taught the art of “Clear Thinking” in his high school years. From my memory of the subject, he didn’t miss much.

My first lessons in “Clear Thinking” came in form 5 at Greenfields High School. Our English teacher was one Mr O’Meara and when we saw his name on the timetable as our English teacher, a few of my classmates groaned. When I asked why, I was told that he was probably the most narrow-minded teacher in the school. At the age of seventeen, you’re very worldly wise in these matters but, though I trusted the judgement of my peers, I tried to keep a bit of an open mind and take Mr O’Meara as I found him.

Which wasn’t too bad, considering. Alright, he made no bones about being a Catholic, but so what? Not much at all, until the week of the Easter break, when Mr O’Meara told us (during a lesson on Richard III) that at this time of the year he liked to reflect on the sufferings of our Saviour, which he went on to describe in gory detail (he would have given Mel Gibson’s The Passion of The Christ a big thumbs up for accuracy, if he’d lived long enough to see it) taking evident pleasure in the girls’ gasps of horror and disgust.

Forget that “not too bad considering” – he was a crap teacher. Out of the standard poetry anthology used by all the English teachers, the poets he chose to focus on were Shakespeare’s sonnets, Blake (songs of innocence and experience), Milton, Wordsworth and Gerard Manly Hopkins with heavy emphasis on the religious symbolism. Marvell’s To His Coy Mistress was in the book, but its obvious sexual innuendo was strictly out of bounds.

Worst of all, he very obviously played favourites. I first saw this in one of our “Clear Thinking” classes, where we were set the task of picking apart an old newspaper article on co-education. When he judged we’d had enough picking apart time, he looked around the class and picked out Squizzy Taylor (not his real name) to read out his answer.

Squizzy hadn’t agreed with the article’s argument that boys and girls should be educated in separate schools. He read out his attempt at a refutation, starting with the fact that some schools – like ours – were co-educational with no apparent adverse consequences. Mr O’Meara glared at him, asked: “So this is the Squizzy Taylor theory of education is it?” then proceeded to humiliate him further.

By the time O’Meara had finished demolishing Squizzy, by pointing out that a school is not the whole of society, but only one of its institutions, and that while the wider society might not be sex-segregated there might be jolly good reasons (never entered into, naturally) to have sex-segregated schools, I was thankful that I hadn’t been called on to read out my refutation of the article, because I thought it every bit as "weak" as Squizzy’s.

And that was the pattern in every “Clear Thinking” class for the whole year – a problem would be set up and discussed, or written about, then Mr O’Meara would deliver the definitive position. By the end of the year, I think he had most of the class convinced that they were too vague and muddle-headed to ever make sense of the world around them. He managed to do much the same with a lot of the literary texts too – don’t ever ask me to write any lit-crit on Catcher in the Rye – it will be hopelessly tainted with the definitive O’Meara reading which I learnt more or less by rote and paraphrased in the exam.

Still, if Mr O’Meara did nothing to build my capacity for independent thinking, he taught me a lot about spotting arseholes.

Bantick of the Overwrought

And a column came directed from a viewpoint unexpected,
(And I think the same was written with a thumb-nail dipped in tar)

Word of the Day: Abominable

On Monday, the SMH reported that Brigadier Lyn McDade, recently appointed as Australia's chief military prosecutor, had described the US government's treatment of David Hicks as "abominable":

Asked about the treatment of Mr Hicks, who has been held at Guantanamo Bay for more than five years and is not currently charged with any offences, she did not hesitate. "Abominable," she said. "Quite frankly, I think it's wrong. I don't care what he's done or alleged to have done. I think he's entitled to a trial and a fair one and he is entitled to be charged and dealt with as quickly as is possible. As is anybody."

Yesterday a few of the News limited dailies reported that Attorney-General Phil Ruddock believes that the brigadiers' views agreed with the government's position:

Mr Ruddock said comments by the director of military prosecutions Brigadier Lyn McDade about the treatment of Hicks echoed the Government's views. "We believe the delay (in the start of the trial) is very unreasonable and inappropriate," he said. (The Oz)

I’m Leaving on a Jet Plane

I’ll be back in Melbourne early in January next year.

Tomorrow afternoon, I’m off to Brisbane, to spend Christmas with some accomodating rellies, so there may well be a hiatus.

Have yourselves a merry little Christmas, saturnalia, Yule or bah-humbug, according to personal preference. And that about covers it, I think.

Oh Bugger, I Missed the Grogblogging!

And I’m doubly buggered, because I’m stuck for an explanation. How about a good excuse then? Nope, don’t have one of those either. OK, how about a quick, after the event rationalisation? Well, at least I didn’t make an arse of myself by getting into a long drunken rant about Irish rebel songs being nothing more than bigotry set to music. Ask FX Holden. He knows I can get quite – well, bigoted – once I get onto the subject of Irish music.

And if I hadn’t started in on the Irish rebel music, or the current colour of the family jewels, I’d have done a lot of skiting about how I’ve been offered a place in that Master of Arts course I want to do next year. Bloody boring prospect for everyone but me, that.

Who’s Your Daddy?

With the exceptions of the current account deficit and poor balance of trade figures, it seems there’s nothing that escapes Federal Treasurer Peter Costello’s desire to claim the credit. In question time on Thursday, Government backbencher Phillip Barresi obligingly pitched this Dorothy Dixer to the Treasurer:

My question is addressed to the Treasurer. Would the Treasurer inform the House of the latest ABS statistics on births and fertility rates? What policies has the government put in place which have helped families in my electorate of Deakin and right across Australia? Why is this important for the future?

The Permanent PM in Waiting was pleased to announce that fertility rates were up – from 1.78 births per female over her reproductive life to 1.83 – the highest rate in 11 years. And of course, it’s all thanks to the Howard government that Aussie couples are rooting more and, more to the point, rooting more productively. That’s more than you can say for what they’re doing in the workplace, where productivity hasn’t grown over two years.

We’re still a bit shy of the Treasurer’s fertility target – 2.1 births per reproductive female, so the Treasurer repeated his call for Australians to have “One for Mum, one for Dad, and one for the country.” Don’t forget, there’s a total of $1800 in baby bonuses for couples who meet their quota.

I’m happy, this inaugural Blue Balls Day to partially endorse the Treasurer’s call – Aussies should be shagging more. So tonight would be a good night to get into the bedroom and have one for yourself, one for your partner and one to video-tape and send off to the Treasurer. Gay couples too – the Treasurer can sort out which tapes he actually wants to watch for himself.


Cross-posted at Larvatus Prodeo.

Word of the Day: Slum

slum, n: 1. a place inhabited by impoverished people who are despised for living there; ~ -dweller, despicable person who lives in a ~. 2. An unsuitable place for a private school.

Time to shoot down the bomber

Perseverance, n. A lowly virtue whereby mediocrity achieves an inglorious success.
(Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary)

If I hadn’t been long convinced that Kim Beazley has to go, if the ALP is to have any chance of winning back government, Jacques Chester’s paean, at Club Troppo, to Kim’s “bottomless reserves of patience and comebackitude” – in plain English his perseverance – would have done it for me. Kim reminds Jacques of Doctor Who and:

… another famous opposition leader, one who eventually made it all the way to the top.

John Howard, of course.

The idea of “Doctor Kimbo” is a bit of a laugh. Confronted by a Cyberleader determined to convert the whole of humanity into robotic drones, his most likely response would be “Don’t forget the Cyberdogs and Cybercats.” Daleks threatening to exterminate humanity? “Not good enough. Here are a few other species who warrant extermination.”

The remainder of Jacques’ post argues, mainly, that it’s time for the ALP to lower its expectations of the leadership, in much the way that members of the Liberal Party have learnt to live with John Howard as Prime Minister.

Here’s one of the principles of governance that the Liberals have learnt to live with:

I think in public life you take a position, and I think particularly of the positions I've taken in the time I've been Prime Minister, I have to live with the consequences . . . and, if I ever develop reservations I hope I would have the grace to keep them to myself,
(John Howard, reported in The Hun, November 22)

That’s what Howard expects of himself – would he expect any less of his colleagues? Phil Ruddock’s rise from Immigration Minister to Attorney General gives a very strong clue to the answer. Petro Georgious conspicuous exclusion from Cabinet, and the attempts to strip him of his pre-selection are a pretty good indication of how Howard’s “broad church” deals with those graceless individuals who won’t keep their reservations to themselves.

The Howard government – not just Howard – has to go. In a better world – not the perfect world of my imagination where all the women are leggy, bi-sexual blondes with identical twin sisters but one close to it – a drover’s dog could lead the Federal ALP to victory in the next election. But we don’t live in that better world. And for that reason, the ALP needs more energetic leadership than this:

The time that really counts as a leader — and it's 50 per cent of your task, the other 50 per cent leading up to that — is in the five weeks of the election campaign.
(Beazley to Michelle Grattan in The Age, November 25)

Cross posted at Larvatus Prodeo.

Silly Saturday Challenge

To the Editor of the Argus:

Sir – Allow me to point out to your correspondent “J Sibbald” that the derivation of the expression “not worth a tinker’s dam” is this.

In Flanders during the middle ages a “dam” was the smallest coin of the existing currency, and as tinkers in those days were itinerant, and little better than vagrants, their services were generally rewarded by a “dam” and as no other tradesman would take such small remuneration it became the custom to say if anything was of very small value it was not worth a tinker’s dam.

I noticed recently in an article in one of the magazines the expression “not worth a tinker’s malediction” the writer evidently not caring to use the word “dam” for fear of a “swear word” offending some of his readers.

- Yours &c, J. W. THOMAS

Readers are cordially invited to provide suitably colourful explanations for the expressions “flash as a rat with a gold tooth” or “cunning as a shithouse rat”. Or any other expression of your own choice.

Male Sexual Deprivation – What Are the Facts?

Fact: sexual deprivation can affect any man, regardless of age, income or marital status. Someone you know personally may well be a male sexual deprivee. If it’s your husband or boyfriend you ought to be ashamed of yourself.

Fact: due to the social stigma attached to male sexual deprivation, many sexual deprivees hide their condition from friends and family and construct wild tales of their sexual exploits. Has someone you know recently “shared” with you his amazing experience as the only man at a lesbian circle orgy? He hasn’t been getting any for years.

Fact: male sexual deprivation is completely unnecessary. It takes a mere thirty seconds of considerate female attention on a daily basis to end the suffering of most male sexual deprivees.

Join the International Circle Bitch Day of Action on Friday, December 8th, 2006. Wear your Blue Balls with as little embarrassment as you can manage!

Coming Soon - Blue Balls Day

Focussing on the sexual deprivation of men, by women, does not mean that other social problems are okay or don’t exist.

But don’t expect us blokes to give a toss about them if we're not getting our oats.

The Blue Balls Campaign focuses on the sexual deprivation of men by women. Because sexual deprivation of men is a social problem that deserves serious attention. One that has been neglected for far too long.

Sexual deprivation is a serious physical and mental health problem for its victims. In Australia, male sexual deprivees cost the taxpayer millions through provision of anti-depressant medications on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme. This needless drain on the economy could easily be avoided if more women were willing to give these sorry buggers a good root.

It’s time to end the silence on the sexual deprivation of men by women. Men - show the world you won’t stand for continuing sexual deprivation by buying a pair of Blue Balls on Blue Balls Day. Wear your Blue Balls with pride with as little embarrassment as you can manage.

You My Good Frien’ Are A Pig

I overheard that remark on the bus home, Thursday evening. It was made – twice – by a young bloke sitting up the back of the bus with his mates. Guessing wildly, I figured that they were on their way home from seeing the new Borat film at the Northland Cinema multiplex.

If my guess was right, I can expect to hear that line a lot when I’m out on the public transport system – and perhaps a few others, depending on how well the film does and how many memorable lines and catch-phrases Sacha Baron-Cohen has managed to cram into it.

That will save me a few bucks on seeing film. Even better, it will save me the sort of earnest critical effort Christopher Scanlon wasted on the film in Thursday’s Age. It’s just another film about ignorant foreigners with no grasp of English idiom. Like Carry On Up the Khyber.

When Genres Collide

Rodney sat at the small table by the parlour window. The small, leather bound book Old Warbeck had lent him lay open on the desk. Spellbound, the boy read eagerly, his eyes straining in the failing evening light. Outside the window, ignored, grey clouds lowered over Murklington, the sun sank lower in the west, casting the shadows of the long rows of terraced manors, across its narrow streets. From the dark eminence of Pit Head Hill, the horn sounded, signalling the change of shift at The Pit – the town’s one enterprise, where Rodney’s dad, and all the other men of Murklington went each day to wrest a living from the unforgiving earth.

Rodney’s mother, Guin, came through from the kitchen, where she was cooking her husband’s tea and boiling the water for his nightly bath. “Come on, Rodney,” she said, “Tha’ Dad’ll be home soon. Gi’ us a hand wi’ ‘is bath love.” She noticed the book on the table.

“What’s that you got, pet?” she asked.

“Just a book, Mam.”

“I can see it’s a book, Rodney, I’ve still got eyes in me ‘ead. What’s it a book about then?”

“Just stuff, Mam.”

With an exasperated sigh, she took the few steps needed to cross the small parlour and grabbed the book from the table. Slamming it shut, she read the front cover. Embossed in the leather there was a goat’s head, in the centre of a pentacle. The title was printed above this device, in faded gold leaf lettering: Gridley’s First Grimoire for Boys.

“Oh bloody hell,” said Rodney’s Mam, in resigned tones, “What you doing fetchin’ a thing like that into t’ manor? Best not let your Dad see it, you know what he’s like about magic. Go on, take it up to your room, then come help us out wi’ this bath.”

She left the room again. Instead of taking the book up to his room, Rodney read on, until their was too little light for even his eager eyes. Then he hid the book under one of the cushions of the settee and went to the kitchen.

“About bloody time,” said Guin, “Look sharp now, your dad’ll be here any minute. Finish fillin’ t’ bath, while I take care o’ tea.”

As Rodney and Guin worked, the street outside filled with the sounds of the day shift coming home – the muttering of tired voices, the weary tramp of tired feet. They heard the front door open in its usual way, slamming hard back against the floral wallpaper of their small vestibule.

“Ah’m ‘ome,” boomed the voice of Rodney’s dad. “Gi’s a hand getting’ out of this kit then, will you.”

“Go help your dad off with his gear, love,” said Rodney’s Mam, “While I finish up in here.”

Rodney rushed from the kitchen back to the parlour. He still wasn’t quick enough to stop his father snapping a peremptory “Get a bloody move on, then” at him.

“Start wi’ boots,” his father ordered. “Bloody things are killing me. Then t’ cuirasse and hauberk.”

Rodney knelt and began to unfasten the buckled straps of his father’s iron boots and greaves. From the kitchen, Guin shouted “You’re not sitting on ‘t good furniture in your mucky armour, I hope, Roland!”

“Course I’m not set on t’ good chair in me mucky armour woman. Bloody hell! I might o’ been daft enow to marry thee, but I’m not a complete bloody idiot.”

This was the way it always was between Rodney’s parents. In the early days of their marriage it had been a joke between them, but over the years the bantering edge had worn down and their good-humoured teasing had turned into something else.

“Still daft enough to tread orc’s blood into carpets!” she retorted from the kitchen.

“Orc’s blood! Get on with you, woman. Haven’t seen an orc down than pit in months. It’s all been soddin’ mummies and zombies since Middlemass. Wouldn’t mind findin’ a decent orc’s lair right now – they might be mucky buggers, but there’s more gold for the takin’ in an orc’s lair than we’ve been collectin’ in all these bloody tombs.”

Rodney finally had his father’s boots off. He stood, and began working on the buckled straps of the cuirass. Guin came into the room from the kitchen.

“Bloody hell, Rodney!” she said, this time with genuine exasperation, “How many times do I have to tell you to put down some newspaper when you’re taking your father’s kit off. Look at my carpet!”

“Leave the lad alone, lass. It’s nobbut a bit of zombie bone and mummy dust. A bit o’ sweepin’ and beatin’ ‘ll soon clean that up.”

“Aye, well it won’t be me doing the sweepin’ a beatin’. Get on wi’ it Rodney, your Dad’s bath’s waitin’. So’s our tea. No, not not yet!” she cried, when she say Roland lifting the unbuckled cuirass over his head, “Wait till I get that newspaper!”

Once Roland’s armour was off and placed with proper tidiness on sheets of old newspaper, he went to the kitchen for his bath. Between them, Rodney and Guin took the armour out to the backyard. By the light of an oil lantern, Rodney examined the armour for bloodstains and rust spots but he found little more than a light coating of mummy dust and a few bone fragments stuck in the rings of the hauberk. It was light work to clean the armour with badger brush and an old rag. Once it was clean, he went inside, laid some newspaper on the floor beside the front door that let in from the street into the vestibule. Then he stacked the armour on the papers, ready for the morning.

By the time he finished, his father had finished his bath. With tin buckets they bailed out the bath – emptying the buckets into the drain outside the kitchen door – until the bath was light enough to be carried outside. Roland carried one end, Rodney and Guin the other. The empty bath was returned to its corner of the kitchen and at last they sit down to tea.

As he sat at the table, Roland laid down his pickings for the day, beside Guin’s plate.

“Sorry lass,” he mumbled, “That’s all there was. Might be a bit o’ a spell on that ring though, and the necklace is a nice bit of craftsmanship.”

“Magic and craftsmanship won’t count for ought wi’ butcher and grocer. Tha knows that.” Guin answered with impatience, “It’s nought but good troy weight wi’ them.”

Roland snapped.

“It’s not my bloody fault all o’ th’orcs lairs is worked out and we’ve found nought below but bloody ancient tombs!” he cried, “Were best bloody Hell Pit in’t Kingdom when me dad moved ‘ere, and weren’t too bad when me and thee were courtin’.”

Rodney began eating faster – a lot faster. Whenever his father mentioned “when me and thee were courtin’” it was best to get away from his parents as quickly as possible. Away to the safety of his own room, where he could dream his dreams of leaving this dreary town where soul-deadened men spent their days fighting downward, ever downward, through the subterranean levels of a worked-out Hell-Pit, ever hoping that the next stairway or shaft downward would lead to mightier hell-spawn and the rich pickings that came with them. “Where there’s brimstone, there’s brass” went the local saying.

That life – the closed, narrow life of the knights, warriors and paladins of Murklington, in their huddled rows of terraced manors – wasn’t for him. With Old Warbeck’s help he’d find his way out into a wider world – a better world…

Ain’t Never Gonna Be Assimilated Blues

Here’s a little item I missed last week thanks to the Melbourne Cup (did my dough) and getting carried away with the US mid-term elections. At least I wasn’t alone on that second one – there wasn’t anyone in the entire Legion of Brain-Sucking Leftist Zombie Sheep who didn’t get carried away with the happy thought that with the Republicans rooted routed in the polls over there, the political climate might start to look a little brighter over here.

But while we were all distracted with that, it was business as usual when it came to this Government’s increasingly weird program of social re-engineering. Sorry, that’s not a program of social re-engineering, it’s a perfectly proper political agenda, all about restoring basic Australian values.

I really will have to reign in this tendency to slip into BrainSuckingLeftistZombieSheepSpeak if I’m ever going to stand any chance of being re-assimilated into the Collective – oops, I mean of course, Mainstream Australian Society.

Last week the High Court of Australia delivered its judgement on whether it’s alright for Amanda Vanstone to deport one Stefan Nystrom, a Swedish born career criminal.

According to The World Today, he’s actually a reformed criminal, but their report relies way too heavily on interviews with his mum and his lawyer – neither of them the sort of objective sources that ABC reporters would be talking to if they were doing their jobs properly.

The Nystrom story – for those who came in late – is that Stefan was born in Sweden, in 1974, while his mother was over there on a family visit. A month after the birth, Ms Nystrom returned to Australia, bringing young Stefan with her. Stefan has lived here ever since, and it’s here, not in Sweden, that he went to the bad and took to a life of crime. All the same, as far as this Government is concerned, he’s forfeited any right to remain in the country:

KATHRYN ROBERTS: Yesterday's High Court decision will affect at least nine other people in similar situations. They were released from immigration detention pending the outcome of Mr Nystrom's case. Now the Immigration Department is likely to review their cases.

The Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone was unavailable for an interview, but in a statement she welcomed the decision and said Mr Nystrom would be removed from Australia.

That’s if they can find him of course – at the time of the World Today report (last Thursday), Nystrom was “fruit picking somewhere in New South Wales and yet to be told about the decision.” It wouldn’t be at all surprising if he’s done a bunk over the weekend, to avoid being "removed" from Australia.

At the end of the World Today report, Kathryn Roberts inadvertently provides a demonstration of how much work remains to be done if the ABC is to be redeemed as a source of objective reporting, and not a government subsidised propaganda channel for BrainSuckingLeftistZombieSheepSpeak, giving the last soundbite to Nystrom’s mother:

BRITT NYSTROM: I would say to her, just think about it. I don't even know if she has got kids or whatever. But, for God's sake, he's been living here all his life, apart from 25 days. He was a bit of a larrikin when he was younger, a teenager, but he's stopped it all and just give us a break. He's proved it now. He's not going to do any more crimes.

I admit, I’m only just getting the hang of this myself, but I think the general idea is that once the proper authorities – in this case Amanda Vanstone – have had their say, debate stops. You don’t give the last word to people who disagree with the government for crying out loud.

Ah, who am I trying to fool anyway? This story disgusts me. The fact that this post is going to attract a lot of comments saying “Nystrom must go” or “For crying out loud, he’s a bloody criminal who’s currently resting between engagements as an itinerant labour – this guy just doesn’t matter” disgusts me. So …

It’s time to take a break from this topic until I’ve read through the High Court judgement. But first, I might dig out some of those candles made from the fat of dead, barely legal, teen virgin mud-wrestlers so I can perform obeisance to Ovis Magnus, Dark High Lord Commander of the Legion of Brain-Sucking Leftist Zombie Sheep.

Muahaahaahaahaahaa! His dark reign cometh!

(Cross-posted at Larvatus Prodeo)

Furphy Watch

Remember how, thanks to the long march of Maoist educators through the institutions, our education system is so debased that here in Victoria, schools have dropped teaching kids real English in favour of pop-culture and SMS messaging?

In case you’d forgotten, Saturday's Hun published a timely reminder from Neil Mitchell, under the headline “Dumb and Dumber”.

Mitchell is the nearest equivalent to Alan Jones we have here in Melbourne. So you might expect Melburnians to regard Mitchell as the thinking man’s Alan Jones. We don't, for two reasons: firstly, the phrase “thinking man’s Alan Jones” is an obvious oxymoron and secondly, on the evidence of today’s article, Mitchell doesn’t put enough thought of his own into his work to qualify as the thinking man’s anything. He begins:

IF it is horror stories you want from Australia's education system, it is horror stories you will get.

Teachers and bureaucrats are creating them faster than you can throw a duster across a classroom.

Such as the course we are running here in Victoria to study text messages.

…

Why waste time learning SMS shorthand when there is a perfectly acceptable language called English.

If the teacher must teach gibberish, is it unreasonable to suggest they teach the real language first?

Perhaps they don't know how. The written advice to teachers from the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority seems to use words that have not been invented.

The one fact that Mitchell’s article – one of only two or three in the whole piece, the rest comprising a lot of supposition and speculation (like the last two quoted paragraphs above) – is that there is indeed, an English unit available for use in schools that want to teach students a short, 4 activity course on SMS messaging.

Most of the other facts about the unit – such as that at most, it would involve 4 to 8 class sessions over one or two weeks of English for students in Years 8 to 10 – Mitchell happily ignores in favour of innuendo about the general stupidity and ignorance of teachers and education bureaucrats. It’s not until halfway through his piece that he gets over the his fit of brain-farting for long enough to try his hand at examining the question in a balanced way. By then the damage is already done.

In that later, balanced section, Mitchell takes up the problem of conflict between schools and parents, caused by their mutually antagonistic perceptions:

Many schools still believe a good parent is an ignorant parent, tolerated rather than encouraged.

Many parents still see teachers as lazy, with long holidays, short hours and the singular ambition of turning their children into clones of Martin Kingham.

I wonder where those parents are getting that idea about teachers – it couldn’t be articles like this one, could it?

Mitchell’s article reminds me of those famous words at the end of John Ford’s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance: “When the facts don’t fit the legend print the legend.”

Even if the legend is just a grubby, politically inspired urban legend.

Slag Off the Green Guide Thursday (a Day Late)

It’s been a while since I slagged off the Age Green Guide. It hasn’t been necessary, over most of the past couple of months, because the free-to-air schedules have been crap anyway. Under the circumstances it would have been a little mean-spirited to pay out on Debi Enker, today’s slaggee, for writing crap reviews. If the programs are crap anyway, who cares about the reviewing?

Paying out on reviewers is best saved for when you read a crap review of one of the few good programs that’s getting commercial prime-time air at the moment. I’m talking about The Closer, on Channel Nine, more or less reliably, at 9.35pm on Tuesdays.

Taking up the theme of a review written by Kenneth Nguyen a couple of weeks ago, Debi begins her piece on next Tuesday’s episode with some bitching about the show’s protagonist:

The supposedly endearing scattiness is getting a bit annoying. From the start, the creators of The Close have tried to soften the image of deputy police chief Brenda Lee Johnson (Kyra Sedgewick). She’s intended to be seen as a peerless investigator, but just to keep her human, even womanly, they’ve given her a honey-coated southern drawl and what’s supposed to be a winsome scattiness.

It’s possible that next week’s episode is every bit as bad as Debi makes out. That, thanks to exceptionally bad scripting, acting and comic timing, all next Tuesday’s episode has on offer is the irritating spectacle of Kyra Sedgewick, as Brenda Lee, bumping into furniture and tossing down the comfort foods. I guess I’ll just have to wait and see.

Be a bugger of a thing if Debi’s right and all the things I like about the show – including the strong ensemble acting and the witty moments of character-based comedy – have already been tossed, in favour of a much more by-the-numbers “scatty Southern belle solves murder by the numbers while bumping into furniture and binge-eating” formula. Because the major alternatives to The Closer on the commercial channels are:

• Taciturn, resolute, scientifically object cool dude (dark sunglasses optional) who knows science leads team of geek investigators who solve crimes with impossible science and CGI animation.
  
  
• Gung-ho military investigators and lawyers poke their noses into any criminal investigation with even the most remote connection to the US Navy or the US Marines, breezily ignoring any real-world problems of jurisdiction.
  
  
• Staff of the worst-managed coroner’s department in the entire continental USA use their work hours to pursue personal crusades arising from traumatic incidents in their past personal lives, then use their personal time to put in a lot of unpaid overtime on the cases they’re actually supposed to work on. This wouldn’t be necessary if they weren’t all completely dysfunctional morons with lousy time-management skills.

So what if every episode of The Closer follows pretty much the same formula? So do all the alternatives on offer. Unlike the producers of the alternatives, the producers, writers and cast of The Closer don’t leave it up to the formula to do all the work.

Next time you’re looking for a Tuesday night television program to pay out on Debi, save it for Dancing with the Stars or 20 to 01. And that goes for your colleague Kenneth Nguyen too.

Henry Ford and the Great American Horseshit Crisis

According to The Age, John Howard told a meeting of government MPs not to be “mesmerised” by the Stern report. The warning wasn't needed in the case of Nationals MP De-Anne Kelly – she’s obviously immune to mesmeric influences.

De-Anne has found it easy to stay on the PM's message – more or less – on the Stern report, telling reporters that Australia should look to technology, not economics, for solutions to the problems of global warming. And she backs up her position with a well known historical precedent:

"It's technology that provides an answer for the future, not an economic answer that taxes, slices, dices and removes opportunities for young people."

At the turn of the century, economists in the United States predicted horse drawn carriages would lead to the country being covered in horse "you-know-what", she said.

"This was a topic of great debate. They were going to tax horses; they were going to remove horses from the city and, of course, along came Henry Ford," Ms Kelly said.

Low Society

Local identities the Supplieds have been busy over the past couple of weeks, writing letters to the Moreland Leader. Name, and partner Address, are very upset at the way they have been abused and defamed in the letters pages of the paper.

In a jointly signed letter, Name writes:

MY objection to the development of Munro Manor is not “ill-informed or judgemental” (Christopher Anderson letter, Moreland Leader, October 23).

It is based on evidence that this sort of accomodation does not have successful outcomes for many tenants, especially at this size.

I refer to a report commissioned by Yarra Community Housing, the group who will be responsible for management of the facility. Its 2002 report, No Place Like Home, is very clear in its concerns about this sort of housing.

…

“Rooming houses, particularly the larger communal style properties, were not felt to represent a viable long-term option in their current format for increasing numbers of people,” it says…

I’ll leave off there, if you don’t mind. The Supplieds have a bit of a reputation for being touchy buggers and sometimes they get a bit writ-happy.