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.