*reads whole comment thread* *responds as she goes along*
Victoria @130: you are evil... (she says, two hours after she just looked over at TV Tropes for that *one* article... and the other six dozen that got spawned from chronic clicky while I was there).
Honestly, that site needs a warning label or something: CAUTION - May consume large slices of your free time. Not for use by folks at work.
JamesK @212 - If we assume that summoning The Warrior archetype is real, and belief creating reality is real, then Ray is either very stupid, or he is very evil.
Or he could be both - "stupid" and "evil" measure two different things, after all.
Epacris @267 - I have to admit, I tend to find my patience getting exhausted when particular theists blame disasters on whichever demon they profess not to believe in, but give their God all the credit for the good stuff.
No. The good year with the excellent rainfall which preceded the bushfires? Yeah, that was a gift from God[1]. So were the five years of drought beforehand. The bushfires themselves? Yup, another gift. Of course, they might not have all been the gift of the same god (and if they were, it was likely one of the Trickster types, given the dubious taste in gifts). But if the good stuff is the gift of the gods, so is the bad - can't get one without the other (it's worth noting that a year earlier, at the tail end of five years of poor rainfall, there wasn't enough tinder to sustain a bushfire for long enough for it to get out of control - there were still bushfires, but not disastrous ones).
Dan Layman-Kennedy @297 - I'm another who thanks the universe for the notion of multiculturalism (or Western cultural appropriation of native practices, depending on where you stand) since without it I would be condemned to a lifetime of boiled whatever with mint sauce (or in other words, stereotypical British lower-class cookery). Instead, as an Aussie, I get to lay claim to a "national" cuisine which mixes together southern European and south-eastern Asian influences with the traditional British meat and three veg, and gets quite a few interesting results, most of which taste a darn sight better than various members of the cabbage family boiled into submission.
I'll also point to my religious beliefs, which started out from a Protestant Christian base, and broadened from there. I acknowledge many different deities in the nature of my belief system, although mostly I'll tend to keep my addresses to the divine phrased in a "to whom it may concern" form[2]. But represented in my personal theology are various deities from Egypt, the Middle East, Greece, Rome, the various Celtic tribes, some of the Norse pantheon, a few Hindu representatives, some animist deities out of various animist societies, and various bits and pieces picked up here and there from the general pool of European mythology over the course of thirty-mumble years.
What I *don't* do is try to sell this to anyone else. (Heck, I can barely describe it to myself). I certainly don't pretend it's "authentic" whatever. I'm quite clear on the reality that this is something I've cobbled together myself out of bits of whatever happened to be lying around in my brain at the time, and while it makes sense to me, I certainly don't expect anyone else to believe it. If someone else wanted to subscribe to it, that's their choice, but I'm not going to prescribe any rituals (I only have one, anyway - I try to stay awake for 24 hours on the days of the solstice, purely as a way of connecting to the wider cycles surrounding me).
B. Durbin @311 - "It won't get better if you pick at it".
[1] I should clarify: in my theological view, the English language three-letter term "God" is shorthand for "the sum totality of all that was, is and will be". I tend to define my belief system as a paganish pantheism - all gods are equally likely to exist (and contrariwise, either they all exist, or none of 'em do).
[2] This is due to another theological quirk of mine - I hold to the strong theory that if this universe was created by divine beings, it was done by a committee, probably of the Trickster gods, and it wasn't an authorised action. Prayer, therefore, is not recommended, since it might draw the attention of their bosses, and we can't be certain that attention would be positive.
Part the fourth: The Prodigal Son and the Squeaky Wheel
I have to admit, I've always interpreted the tale of the Prodigal Son as being part of the standard biblical preference on the part of God for annoying younger brothers over older siblings (as demonstrated from Abel on down). But then, I've always wondered how the bible was used as an authority to promote the notion of primogeniture (ie oldest son inherits the most). This may well have been influenced by being an elder sibling with an annoying younger brother, of course.
Part the third: Dealing with bullying inside schools
Pericat @184 said: They're not mature enough to be felons. They're children.
I'll agree with that, right up until the end of primary school (approx age 12 in Australia). Where I take issue is in high school situations. The people you have there (in the Australian context, between the ages of 12 - 18 years) are no longer children. They're young people growing into adulthood.
One of the detrimental consequences, in my opinion, of legal adulthood being acknowledged at age 18 is the presumption of some sort of "magic switch" which gets thrown at midnight on the day of the person's 18th birthday. The "magic switch" argument means someone who is 17 years and 364 days old tends to perceive themselves as able to get away with crimes they'd be prosecuted for the next day, because one day they're a legal child, and the next they're a legal adult.
My own experience with the "magic switch" was in the shift from high school to university study - a shift which caused me a major degree of culture shock and a breakdown. Why? Well, I'd gone from an environment where being good at learning wasn't socially rewarding, and where being seen to be good at learning was an invitation to be victimised into an environment where being good at learning was a social good and something to be encouraged. I knew I hadn't changed that much in the three months between the end of high school and the beginning of university, and I really don't think any of my peers had, either. It's just that it wasn't as socially acceptable to bully the geeks any more, so the pretty people didn't do it. Once I realised the difference was one of whether or not the behaviours were tolerated, I realised I needn't have suffered at least the final two years of school bullying, and possibly a lot more, and that made me extremely angry.
My ideal solution would be to have a legal and social acknowledgement of the reality of young adulthood - such that high school bullying would be treated as a legal offence, and the persons involved would be cautioned and charged with the offences they have committed, if necessary. Assault, battery, stalking, rape, libel, slander, sexual assault, sexual harassment, etc - there should be a clear acknowledgement that such behaviours aren't considered acceptable within our society, and they aren't considered acceptable for a reason.
I'd also argue that, as formulated by both Rikkibeth and Leah Miller, the occasional application of physical force on the part of the bullied is necessary to assist in such explanations of why these behaviours aren't acceptable. There are people who genuinely cannot understand appeals to the collective, but can understand such things when phrased as an appeal to the individual. "Don't try because it will hurt" can act as a deterrent where "don't do it because it isn't nice" doesn't.
Part the second: Dealing with bullying in the long term
I think the question isn't so much "what do we do about bullies?" as "what sort of space/community/society do we want to promote here?"
A lot of the time, this particular question isn't asked, and so people aren't asked to reflect on their behaviour and whether or not it should be acceptable. But where that question is asked, there's a certain amount of reflection going on, and people who are willing to become part of such a community are willing to turn around and look at what constitutes appropriate and inappropriate behaviour. So in a community which is, for example, seeking to establish a safe space for people who are members of disempowered groups (women, LGBTIQ, non-white, non-Christian, differently abled, etc), there is generally more of a willingness to reflect on which "normal" behaviours are acceptable, and which ones are part of the entire social framework of privilege and disempowerment which is designed to keep the disempowered "in their place". Contrariwise, a community which prides itself on being "edgy" and "avant-garde" may examine the same set of behaviours, and decide some are more expressive of conformism, while others are more acceptably "out there".
It's probably worth noting that in each case, some persons will be privileged by the choices of the community while others will be disadvantaged - although it's likely different people would be affected in each case.
In the community of Making Light, my experience is that the space which is created here is one where civil discussion is valued - where listening to another's opinion is valued far more than having the correct opinion. So part of the examination of our own behaviour we've each made in contributing here is whether we're capable of viewing the opinion of someone else as something other than a personal attack on our own thoughts and values. In the majority of cases, the answer is "yes". We've also examined ourselves, and generally come to the conclusion that we don't need to respond immediately to every perceived attack on our thoughts and values - instead, we're willing to compare our positions, ask questions to clarify matters we don't understand, and agree to disagree where necessary.
However, the important question we've asked is "which behaviours are appropriate in this space?".
This is why I'd like to see the introduction of social skills classes as a standard part of schooling - even if it's just things like "this is the socially accepted definition of good manners". I feel such a group of classes might help people to start thinking about the "why" of their behaviours, as well as the "what" and "when". Every so often, society as a whole needs a bit of a shake up, I feel - and one of the things we as a culture need to be doing now is pruning the behavioural tree a little. Get rid of the dead wood, find the stuff which is just clutter, and figure out which bits we want to encourage, which bits we don't, and which behaviours we'd like to bear fruit.
This is going to be a multi-part comment, like Caroline's.
Part the first: Defining bullying
It's worth noting that schoolyard bullying doesn't just have to be about physical power ("Can I make you acknowledge my existence even if you don't want to?"). It can also be about social standing, and social power - "can I make your reaction into social capital for myself?". Given I spent twelve years of school being bullied in one form or another, I can testify that this second form of power play is often more popular among young women than among young men, and often played by them to devastating effect.
It's this second form which is starting to metamorphose from the schoolyard into a more widespread format with the assistance of communication tools such as the internet. There was a case in Australia last year which involved a couple of schoolgirls posting schoolyard rumours about a couple of mutual acquaintances on Facebook, and then being surprised when they were expelled from the rather exclusive private school they'd been attending. (My own less-than-charitable opinion was they'd committed at least one crime - libel and/or slander - and they should have faced the full criminal consequences of same, but my viewpoint is, understandably, skewed).
Like Mycroft, I find one of the scars I'm left with is a slightly less tolerant sense of humour than others. I don't find most US-produced "comedies" to be funny, since they tend to be based strongly on the culture of bullying, where the physical and social discomfort of others is regarded as being humorous. I tend to empathise with the target too much for it to be comfortable.
Caroline @148 - I'd argue all bullying behaviour is manipulative at heart. The aim is to get the victim (and often the bystanders) to acknowledge the existence of the bullying person, even if (or especially if) they don't want to. It's why "fixes" for bullying such as "ignore them; they'll get bored and go away" don't work. By forcing this acknowledgement, the bullying person obtains power in the personal sense. If they're able to get bystanders to either participate in the bullying, or to avoid interfering for fear of being bullied themselves, they've obtained power in the social sense. Their victim loses power, and since persons who bully tend to see power (and attention) as a zero-sum game, they'll keep taking power from an individual victim as often as they can.
From the victim's perspective, the best way to deal with bullies is hard and fast, in the first instance - hit back, and hit back hard. This will establish you as a harder target than the bullying person thought you were, and they won't try again in a hurry (or without a lot of reinforcement).
[coming in late]
David Dyer-Bennet @43 - Oddly enough, I have the opposite sort of visceral response. I feel I'd be able to get a better deal out of my (eventual) employer if I were able to stand as part of a group with my colleagues and say "we need these conditions to be improved" or "we want this minimum wage" or "we'd like this style of recognition for expertise" or similar. Then again, that may be because firstly, I'm female, and secondly, I'm working class, which both mean I haven't learned the sort of aggressive bargaining techniques which are taught to middle-class males. Both of these also mean I suffer significant social discrimination against learning them too - if a middle-class white male is an aggressive bargainer, he's a good asset for the business, but a working-class female who strikes a hard bargain is an uppity bitch who shouldn't be trusted and will be downgraded on her next performance assessment. This kind of social discrimination would also tell against any other person who doesn't fit the "preferred employee" model of "white, middle or upper-middle class, Christian, heterosexual male".
Of course, I'm also a little skewed on this question because the work I'd prefer to be doing is helpdesk work, which tends (in my opinion, anyway) to be undervalued by most of the technical and programming sorts in the IT industry. So it would be good to be able to have a professional or industry body which is able to back me up with regards to things like "what might be useful qualifications for the job" or "what would be an acceptable hourly wage" or even "what would be reasonable working conditions" or similar such questions.
One thing I can say, as a former member of a union: at least when I was in the union, I knew my then-employers weren't ripping me off. As a private contractor hired out by various temp firms, I'm never certain when the temp firm says "oh, the client can only afford to pay you $X" whether that's actually true, or whether it's a nice little "negotiating tactic" they've come up with to see how little they can get away with paying me. I'll admit to having been scarred by a contracting company who quoted me an hourly rate for helpdesk work which was lower than the rate I was paid ten years earlier for operating a cash register; I later discovered this same firm was billing their client at least twice that amount for my services. Fortunately that one backfired - the temp firm had been so eager to get me into the job that I hadn't signed any paperwork with them before I started there and the client (a large government agency) employed me on one of their standard contracts out from under their noses.
On a different subject: my possible solution to the problems of corporate misbehaviour tends to strike at the core purpose of the corporation - namely, to make money. They're machines to make money, and as one famous person said, they have neither bodies to be hung nor souls to be damned. What they have is a revenue stream. So in order for any penalty to be successfully applied, you need to strike at that revenue stream.
So, here's my suggestion: for each *instance* of corporate malfeasance, the corporation is penalised 1% of its gross profit. This is calculated from the figures they calculate the dividends from (thus preventing the firm from trading at a loss in order to avoid paying) and has to be paid any year they pay a dividend. If there would be a jail term for a human who committed the offence, this is the term which is used to calculate how long the 1% penalty is imposed. Oh, and an instance is defined as a single incident of damage or a single person harmed - so if five people are killed by corporate negligence (for example, a building collapse) that's five instances of murder there. By having a percentage of gross profit as a fine (rather than a fixed sum) it prevents economies of scale along the lines of "well, we already make half a squillion dollars a minute, but if we just disregard these laws, we could bump that up to a squillion and a half every thirty seconds... and compared to that, the fine is just small biscuits"; also by going on gross profit, it hopefully prevents the sort of mumbo-jumbo accounting which a lot of corporations already do in order to dodge paying any "unnecessary" taxes.
Okay, here's a snapshot of where I'm sitting in Australia. I've grown up with the Australian Medicare system, and I'm used to it as a baseline of what to expect by way of good medical care. So here's my experience.
Context: I'm female, 38, and "overweight" according to most measures. I also have an underactive thyroid gland, as well as chronic depression. I'm currently taking 2 different strengths of both a thyroid medication and an SSRI-type anti-depressant, as well as a second antidepressant which has recently been added to the mix. I'm currently unemployed and receiving Newstart allowance from the Australian social security system.
When I phone up my primary care physician, or general practicioner, I can usually get an appointment within the next day or so - sometimes on the same day. I can speak to this doctor about getting repeat prescriptions for my medications, which means I tend to see her approximately once every six months or so (a standard prescription for the anti-depressants is 1 month's supply and 5 repeats). Approximately once or twice every year I'll have a blood test to monitor how my thyroid levels are doing, which is taken at the pathology collection lab in the same building as the surgery. My pap smears are done by the same doctor, rather than me needing to speak with a specialist gynaecologist in order to have one done. For a standard consultation (about 15 minutes to 30 minutes) I pay approximately $49, of which I receive $33.55 back from Medicare (the scheduled fee amount).
Last year, I needed help with the depression, so I was referred to a psychologist. I was entitled to twelve sessions of psychological counselling on Medicare (cost of sessions $165 each, getting approximately $115 back from Medicare) provided I had a psychological health maintenance plan created by my GP (which she did). This year, I've been referred to a psychiatrist, because the balance of my medications needs to be altered a bit. I've been to two sessions, one long, one short, and in each case I've been refunded the difference between the scheduled fee and the amount I paid.
Currently I have private health insurance (a habit I picked up from my parents) because while the Medicare fees cover the cost of the lenses in a pair of spectacles, they don't cover the cost of the frames (and the frames are the costly bit). Medicare also doesn't cover a very wide range of dental services, nor does it cover ambulance transport. I'll probably drop this fairly soon, since it's using money I don't really have to cover the costs (unemployment benefit is enough to hold body and soul together... just) but for me this won't be a tragedy. Instead, it'll mean I'll have an extra $50 per fortnight to spend on things like food and rent. Of course, before I do so, I'm going to be using up the $1000 "Package Bonus" I've accrued over the past eight years of not needing the silly thing (probably new glasses, and maybe a hearing test).
I read about comparable situations to my own in the US, and the thing which keeps springing to mind is "I am so damn lucky to be living here."
I'd love to be able to drive to another country. Sadly, though, the nearest I can get is driving north to the Hutt River Principality (which maintains it isn't part of Australia). It's about two days journey to the nearest state border for me. Then again, I'm living in a state which has a land mass which could comfortably swallow Texas twice and still have enough room over for the British Isles. I'm also living in a state capital which is the most isolated capital city in the world - I'm not sure, but the next nearest capital to us is either Johannesburg (capital of South Africa) or Adelaide (capital of South Australia).
Quick summary of longer reply:
Phone-phobic: Yes, outgoing calls only. Incoming calls okay.
Machine/Voicemail phobic: Yes.
Mobile phone: Yes, but calls tend to go to voicemail because I ignore the silly thing.
Able to ignore ringing phone: No
Age: 38
Telemarketer strategy: If they ask for Mrs Himself, explain she lives elsewhere. When they start their spiel, explain politely that we don't buy things sold over the phone and hang up.
I think at least one thing which really needs to be pointed out here is the way geography influences national personality. In the case of the Dutch, the Canadians and the Aussies, we have groups of people who are making a living in a landscape which is actively trying to kill them at all times (the Dutch are fighting off drowning, the Canucks are trying not to freeze, and the Aussies are working to avoid starvation). A certain amount of co-operation is required at the most basic level, because otherwise you will die. In the case of the US and the UK (to a large degree) the land isn't being so actively aggressive - there's lots of places where you can make a living without needing to depend on anyone else to any great degree. Where you need to co-operate to survive, you need to learn to get along with people even if you don't agree with them, so it generates a more mannered society, one in which there's the movement toward ways of agreeing to disagree.
In the case of the Dutch and the folks in the UK, one of the things which they also needed to deal with was the lack of metaphorical and literal elbow room. There's a limit to how much rugged individualism can be handled within the context of constant close social contact (it's a bit easier to be a rugged individual if you don't have to hang around all the other annoying idjits while you do so). So this leads to the development of a more mannered society as well (and the same is the case for the Japanese). NB: In all cases, I'm simplifying something chronic. The UK and Japan are also good examples of how the various different types of feudalism go to shape a culture.
However, in the US, the terrain is less overtly aggressive, so there's less need to cooperate; there's also a lot more space to stretch out in, so it's possible to be successfully antisocial. This leads in to one of my more constant "I don't believe it" things about the US (speaking as an Australian) namely the level of what I construe to be just plain impolite behaviour which is apparently accepted as socially normal over there. Over here, doing some of it even occasionally would get you regarded as a right yob, and it certainly wouldn't be socially acceptable in wider practice.
(Oh, and if anyone's looking for heroic individual stories in Australian mythology, just look at the bushranger mythos. Then take a look at the areas where bushrangers were most regarded and note they're all fairly good farming country, for Australia. Bushrangers didn't really crop up where the living was more marginal; Western Australia had only one notorious bushranger and he was pretty much restricted to the best agricultural terrain in the state, too. The rugged individual only survives where they don't need the goodwill of the collective to sustain them).
I'd be with a lot of other people in categorising this one as a SNAFU (situation normal - all f***ed up) rather than a conspiracy, an exercise of censorship, an exercise in discrimination or similar. Then again, I'm a former public servant (as well as a former helldesk minion) which means I've had plenty of opportunities to see this kind of thing in the making, as well as deal with the process of cleaning things up.
I strongly suspect this started out as someone's "good idea" involving a lot of person-time to try and ensure only the most egregious examples were removed from the search in one particular section (I'm betting computer games or music, those being areas where there's a *lot* of cross-over between adult and juvenile shoppers), and then it being broadened out through the existence of a few irritated letters from concerned members of the public about legitimate concerns (for example, a few months back on Shakesville, there was a certain amount of concern voiced about being able to find "rape" content through Amazon's search capabilities; teaspoons were waved and letters were written). Unfortunately, as the scope got broader and broader, it got harder and harder to apply the human filtering required, and eventually some software wonk was told to "write something which will do this for us" rather than have someone go through the whole HR rigmarole involved in hiring more people to do the job. So the software wonk did, and it was tested (again, probably in the original departments where the human oversight version had started, because they were most experienced in dealing with the issue... thus starting from a pre-filtered list which wasn't as liable to have issues in the first place) then rolled out over the holiday weekend (and possibly not even intentionally so - it may have been added to a start-up list for the various servers, then triggered by an unscheduled reboot or something similar) to every other section.
Then someone went looking for something which just happened to fit the missing criteria and couldn't find it, even though it had been there yesterday... and the manure hit the windmill.
PS: CharlesP - you're thinking of Hanlon's Razor, which states "never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity".
I've read through most of the articles (I haven't started "The Quiet Coup" yet, but I've just finished the Matt Taibbi one) and the thing which is leaping out at me is "maybe you folks should start a grassroots movement to create a new currency or something" - a way of creating a functioning economy which works outside the one your government is intent on handing over to the rich bastards. Certainly I'd be doing it now, before the US dollar is worth less than the paper it's printed on (or has that already happened?).
What scares me, though, is seeing all of this happening, because I know my country's going to get hurt. Kevin Rudd is out and about in London at the moment, trying to talk to the G20 about things like bailing out this, that and the other industry, trying to figure out some way of getting everything back to what used to pass for normal six months ago, and generally trying to pretend things are fixable if we all just do our best and pull together and whatever. But the US financial giants aren't interested in doing their best, or pulling together, or helping others. They don't give a damn about anyone who isn't them, and they certainly don't care about people in distant places with names they can't even spell, much less pronounce correctly (Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Wagga Wagga, Dumbleyung etc). So they won't co-operate and they won't assist, and they won't give a damn until the mob reaches their front doorstep with guns in hand (gods above, surely someone could start talking fast to the militia types and get them to see Wall Street financiers and big bankers as bigger threats to national security than people from Mexico attempting to go from a struggling economy to a collapsing one?) at which point they'll start screaming blue bloody murder.
In the meantime, everywhere else in the world is in for a shitty time of it. It happened during the Great Depression (remember that? Yeah, it affected places outside the USA, too) and it'll happen again during this one. If the gods are just, maybe we'll all learn the correct lesson, which is the US financial sector needs to be locked down tighter than a high-security prison at all times, or else ignored completely by everyone outside the US, to limit the blast radius from its inevitable self-destruction. Again.
[Context: Australian. Unemployed. Unlikely to be employed again in the near future. Looking at losing the house soon and having to either move in with my parents, his parents, or find a rental place which is affordable for two people on the dole.]
Having read "The Quiet Coup" I have just one small question: how is it all these economic mega-brains on Wall Street and similar places couldn't see having a licence to print money is akin to having a licence to generate runaway inflation? I mean, I can see the link, and my economic education stopped in high school.
I grew up in a family with a history on both sides of nursing. Both of my grandmothers were nurses, as was my mother, and two of my aunts (my mother's sister, and her sister-in-law). I can remember watching "I Can Jump Puddles" as a child (the story of Alan Marshall, who contracted polio at age six, shortly after starting school) and asking my mother about polio. She'd started her nursing career early enough (late 1950s) to remember the polio wards, and the way she described it made me very glad the disease had been pretty much eradicated by the time I was alive.
Other fun diseases my mother described for me were tetanus (did you know that the reason there used to be all those "quiet, hospital zone" signs on the roads was because one of the things which set off tetanic spasms was loud noise?); tuberculosis (they stopped testing for and immunising against that one while I was in primary school; this worried Mum because of her entire nursing class of about twenty mostly middle class young women, she was one of two people who came up negative for prior exposure to the tuberculosis bug. She thought I should get tested for it just in case); and various varieties of hepatitis (she had Hepatitis A as a teenager; the blood bank had a big black mark on her donor card for years as a result). From her midwifery textbooks (which were all written in about the 1940s) I learned about the effects of a lot of infectious diseases on both pregnant women and unborn children (essentially, if you have a high fever during the first 12 - 16 weeks of pregnancy, you can expect foetal abnormalities as par for the course) as well as the consequences of incompatible Rh factors, and various other bits and pieces.
One thing I've never ever had any problems with is the notion of vaccinations as a Good Thing overall.
Oh, and on the shingles thing - I've had chickenpox as a kid, and shingles as a teenager (would you believe it targeted the nerve just underneath the breast area? At that time I was a D-cup, and there is nothing quite like not being able to wear a bra when you're that size). About the only side effect it had was that the blood bank thought my blood was wonderful - I'd just turned 16, thus becoming eligible to donate, and they leapt at the chance to grab as much of my blood plasma as they could. So, if you have shingles or chicken pox, once you're over them, go see your local blood bank - they will literally think your blood is worth bottling.
In reply to Matthew Daly at #8:
I think that the Australian government should find a middle road.
It's not their job.
No, really. The Australian government (ie the Commonwealth, or Federal government) has certain duties which are laid out in the Australian constitution. Everything else is the job of the various State Governments. In this case, the Victorian state government has certain rules about who can and can't collect money (and how much they can collect before they're going to have to register) and Consumer Affairs Victoria is one of the agencies responsible for dealing with that process.
So the system is working just fine, even if it is awkward at the moment in the State of Victoria. I've no doubt the SitePoint people are probably mentioning the matter to their various members of parliament, or working up a press release about it, and this bug in the legal system will be added to the list of things to be legislated upon (or altered) in future years. Hopefully before the next tragedy on such a scale in Victoria...
It's probably worth noting that most businesses in Australia have some form of charity collection system happening somewhere, and often they'll be offering something in exchange - usually lollies or a badge, or something similar. Occasionally it's as straightforward as a collecting can for the Salvation Army on the counter near the till, but usually it's something like the Camp Quality stuff (put in 25c, choose three lollies from the tray). Giving by buying is something we're culturally used to.
I took a job offer from the Department of Social Security over a job offer from the Australian Department of Defence, at the age of twenty-six.
It was the worst job I've had in my life, but the people I met through it were the life-changing factor. I sometimes wonder which way things would have gone had I chosen the job with the army.
There are a number of Australian morris sides, too. If you're ever in Canberra over Easter, head on over to the National Folk Festival (actually, if I'm honest, that's probably the only reason you'd be in Canberra over Easter) and watch all the Morris sides performing. There's all men, all women, all mixed, tatterdemalion, trad bells and hankies, and even a few who do things like sword dancing. The last time I was there, they had a "belly-off" against the women who were demonstrating Arabic traditional dance (raqs sharqi, or as it's more popularly known, bellydance). But there's certainly Morris sides in Victoria, New South Wales, and around the ACT area.
Must see if there's a Morris side here in Western Australia.
I watched Sin City (bought it on DVD actually) because I liked the other co-director - Robert Rodriguez. I'd become a fan of Rodriguez through watching his "Mexico" trilogy (El Mariachi, Desperado, Once Upon a Time in Mexico) and I enjoyed the way he'd managed to create three very watchable films (in my opinion, anyway) on what Hollywood thought of as an incredibly low budget each time. But then, Rodriguez is very much a DIY filmmaker (OUATIM has the credit line "Shot, Chopped and Scored by Robert Rodriguez" in there - and yes, he is his own cinematographer, editor and, for this film anyway, composer).
Unfortunately, while Rodriguez may be able to do great things with a low budget, and wonderful things for next to nothing, there's no real way of being able to distinguish directors once you get the greenscreen thing going. Sin City is all about the magic of computer enhanced graphics, and the ability of a few good artists in the makeup and production departments to make a whole heap of real people in three dimensions emulate a whole heap of two-dimensional comic book characters. But really, if you just want to make a moving version of a comic book, surely that's what animation is for?
To really see Rodriguez as a co-director with someone else, I'd point to From Dusk Til Dawn, which he co-wrote and co-directed with Quentin Tarantino. I love this particular film because you can tell when the two directors "changed shifts", so to speak - the film suddenly switches from being a gritty, nasty Tarantino flick with the "Tarantino preferred cast" (Juliette Lewis, Harvey Keitel, Quentin Tarantino) to being a Rodriguez flick with the "Rodriguez preferred cast" (Selma Hayek, Danny Trejo, Cheech Marin - I was honestly surprised to see Antonio Banderas wasn't included. Perhaps Antonio was busy that weekend?). And heck, it has a guest spot from Sam Raimi, so what's not to like for a b-movie horror geek?
(Oh, and the movie which ruined a book I love has already been made: Starship Troopers - which should have come with a disclaimer stating the only things borrowed from the book were the title and the character names).
This year we appear to be having a rather quiet summer here in Perth, Western Australia. So far, for the whole 22 days of December (summer), we've had one day where the temperature hit the old 100F mark (well, 38.4C, which is close enough). There have been a grand total of four days so far which have been over 30C (which is about the point where I start thinking "hmm, nice weather").
Of course, compared to this time last year, it's been positively tropical (last year had only one day over 30C prior to 23 December). Then again, last year the gods didn't appear to have got the memo about it being summer until the 23rd, and didn't action said memo until the 25th (40.7C on Christmas Day. 44.2C on Boxing Day). Roll on Summer! (please?)
A.R.Yngve said in #44: I will say this ONE THING in praise of Bush: He dodges thrown objects quite well. Instead of becoming a politician, what occupation should he have chosen to suit that talent?
I think I suggested this a couple of years back (although I'm not sure where) but: Carnival Aunt Sally. It addresses all his obvious talents - for the most part he just has to stand there and do nothing; if he wants to he can dodge the projectiles; there's no intellectual effort required whatsoever; he can act as his own carnie barker; and if his corporate friends feel so inclined, he can be sponsored and wear their logos - or agree not to dodge certain types of projectile manufactured by their companies. It also gives the people of the USA an ideal opportunity to express their feelings regarding his presidency; it even provides a good alternative use for carnival food!
Of course, in between times he might have to do a bit of actual physical labour during the setting up and breaking down stages of the carnival process, but every job has its down side.
'merkin at #93 said: It against the law to attack a head of state, regardless of how you feel about him.
Actually, I'd like to put that one to various scholars and legal experts, because I can see a *lot* of legal wriggle room in that statement (and not only am I not a lawyer, I also don't play one on television).
Firstly, there's the whole matter of "against the law" - first prove every single nation in the world has a law prohibiting attacks on visiting heads of state *and* heads of government.
Secondly, define "attack" - does throwing a pair of shoes count as an attack under the legal system of every country in the world? Is it still an attack if you miss?
Putting things as broadly as 'merkin did leaves a lot of open space where problems can occur. For example, would a friendly slap on the shoulder count as an "attack" under the law? How about a mock-punch from a friend? What about play wrestling and similar? Pillowfighting? All of those could be counted as "attacks", and the "regardless of how you feel about him" statement means legally you'd be forced to decontextualise each and every single one of them.
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2009 | 17 |
| 2008 | 28 |
| 2007 | 90 |
| 2006 | 52 |
| 2005 | 2 |
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