The House of Good & Evil

Politics is about a conflict between ideas. We get used to only two such ideas in the Westminster system so popular in the English-speaking world, because that's what is encouraged. Us & them. Left & right. Progressive & conservative. We tend to simplify this to good & evil. One side will do me good, & the other will not, therefore it's evil. This is simplistic & works for sound bites & broadcast advertising. With the rise of targeted advertising & unregulated information sources claiming to be informed when merely opinionated, & the general echo chamber of your corner of the internet, the game has changed a little. Some political entities have used this for good - focusing on an issue - while others have used this new media for evil - focusing on people. I was just reminded of that quote usually attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt: small minds discuss people, larger minds discuss events, great minds discuss ideas.

We often talk about the lowest common denominator, & it's a sad fact that compulsory voting in Australia means that those who don't want to vote will happily be swayed by a message that resonates with their own attitude towards elected politicians ... by believing one elected politician over another. Sometimes the purpose is to create an elected politician from a humble millionaire.

The environment has, however, created an atmosphere of true good & evil. In the past, election campaigns have been run on promises, & they've been relatively positive ones, with the hope of capturing the 'middle ground' of the electorate from whatever side of the spectrum a party has started. Each party has had a core 'location' on that spectrum, but has tried to broaden its appeal. This is a situation that the older voters, in particular, are used to, & sometimes it frustrates the younger ones.

Times have changed, though, as I said. Rather than seeking the middle ground, new forces are trying to polarise the electorate beyond mere differentiation. Instead of making different promises on how much will be spent where - which generally has a positive outcome for someone - new parties stand on a platform of punishing voters. This is beyond mere carrot-&-stick tactics, & it's not limited to a single party. It's never met with success so far, but you never know.

For years, the Greens have been demonised as a party that was 'anti-progress' (usually claimed by conservatives) for standing in the way of development, by curbing pollution & greenhouse emissions, & wanting to 'punish' the businesses that rape & pillage the landscape at no cost to themselves. Businesses, however, don't vote, & this sounded like a soft target, except that business investors can afford to throw cash into advertising & then rally their employees, who'd rather have a job than a blade of grass to admire all day. Punishment isn't an effective political campaign.

For almost as long, an anti-immigration party in various forms has raised its ugly head to claim it would punish the migrants from a number of undisclosed countries that arrived after some undisclosed time from reuniting with their families. The soft target here is a steady stream of non-voting visa-holders that are generally grouped under 'backpackers & students', but also includes (genuine) refugees, overseas seasonal workers & some skilled workers. None of these vote unless they get permanence. However, the institutions that benefit from the income from students, & the farmers that employ the workers do vote, but have less individual power than, say, a mine owner.

Now, I'm not suggesting that broken promises & outlandish claims of how much better off we'll be under one government or another is a situation I want to return to in a political groundhog day from which I can't escape & don't even learn anything from, but I much prefer to be told how much better things could be if I vote one way over another, than be told how much worse it will be if I don't. I've never been swayed by such political wrangling & I'm unlikely to be swayed by the new jingoism, because, fundamentally, I believe too much in absolute democracy, which allows for - indeed encourages! - idiots to be represented by idiots. You can see the concentration of idiocy reflected in who they elect, & this is not necessarily a comment on American politics.

Full disclosure: I have belonged to two political parties in the past. In my youth, I was a member of the left of Labor who voted consistently with the right, & many years later I was a member of the Greens who had no real interest in environmentalism. I have voted for local independents in most elections, in safe electorates where my vote 'won't matter', because I still believe in democracy, &, in general, so do those who run as independents.

As much as I can dream of a government made of a coalition of issue-based parties that collapses only to reform at the next election, as seems common enough across Europe, I suspect it will never happen here, & as a result we are unlikely to get 'interesting' politicians beyond the occasional former sportsperson, which seems appropriate given how many former politicians end up heading sporting bodies.

The only real way to solve the issue of politics is to take the power away from the Parliament & give it to some professionals who merely need oversight from independent - elected - officials who themselves have no agenda & think of their role as fulfilling a civic duty for a fixed term. The only problem with that is the complete lack of 'leadership', because we all need someone to look up to or else blame. 

This is why I have always preferred the concept of benevolent dictatorship, effectively what the Greeks called a tyrant. Look it up.

DNA tests are bunkum

I'd like to believe that DNA testing, in the sense of determining the mix of your ancestry, is based on something scientific. It's not. It just isn't. It's more related to a statistical analysis of the similarities of test results, factoring in the likelihood of more intermediate generations connecting any two results by guessing at the possible variations, then logging the geographic locations of the participants. Thus, if the only people on a particular Greek island who have done a DNA test are people from England who've moved there for tax reasons, you could find yourself with Greek ancestry even they didn't know they had.

I have tried to defend the process. A work colleague from Brazil (with a Portuguese mother) wondered about her Irish ancestry, & I flubbed on about how Northern Spain & Portugal have old cultural links to the Celtic nations, so it's possible.

My cousin's daughter had a test done & was told she's 60% Scottish. That would only make sense if her father (who I don't know) was 100% Scottish (which I know he isn't), because she's got less than 10% from her mother's side.

It could be suggested that the above is based on personal opinion, & that's all well & good.

DNA tests are still bunkum.

To prove a point, I read somewhere that a particularly well known conservative red-haired Australian politician had taken a DNA test & been told she was 59% Northern European, 39% Eastern Mediterranean, & 9% Middle Eastern. That's a big number. One of her Great-grandparents must have been an Arab. No-one mentioned that in the article. My own Arab ancestry is so diluted that people laugh at me when I mention it, so I won't.

I'll also leave aside that politician's bland acceptance that one of her Great-grandparents had inexplicably been an Arab - & another 3 were Greek (or Turkish). She trusted 'the science' in the same way she'd been trusting her advisers for decades, I suppose.

Bunkum.

It just so happens that the lady in question has a well-known enough ancestry that it's on the web, & I've just trawled through 7 generations of her forebears, & I've discovered that she's about 25% Irish, 20% Cornish, & most of the rest is from Southern England. It's one of the least-travelled genealogies I've seen in a while. 

Admittedly, one of her Great-grandparents is a bit of a mystery to me, having been born in London, where his father is listed at his wedding (in Brisbane), but not his mother. Maybe she was an Arab. More likely she was a common Londoner with a name like Mary. Her Irish ancestry becomes a little patchy prior to 1800, but that's what happens when records get destroyed.

Her ancestry includes no grand ambassadors to foreign lands, soldiers who brought back native wives, or adventurers who rambled the colonies seeking fame & fortune. 

Not one.

Her paper trail of ancestry explains why she has red hair. No question. I'm unsure if the DNA test mentioned that.

By all means, spend your shekels on the test, just for fun, but don't expect science. It's a commercial contract you're entering into, & it probably means you've sold your own DNA by buying into the idea of 'finding something out' about yourself. Don't expect to be told you're the last Plantagenet (which is the Earl of Loudon, from memory) , or descended from Cleopatra's hand-maid. Expect nothing, & you'll be happy. Anything else might upset you.

One of your great-grandparents may have been an Arab, & now you have to work out which one.

Tax reform (sorry)

The Australian Federal election has just happened. I know it happened, because the advertising is being pulled down. Nothing else will happen. It's not just because the government was returned, it's because, quite frankly, it's better if they do nothing, & people tend to close their eyes & ignore things if they do something.

No matter how many promises are made, delivered, or broken, these will come down to spending more on one thing over another, or else spending less on many things. There are no other options. As an economic genius once told me: there's only so much pie. Yes, you can increase the size of the pie by raising taxes, but there's still only so much you can do before the peasants revolt, so nobody wants to bake too much in.

I digress.

Tax reform.

The last time this country had any - real tax reform - the government's income was radically shifted by the introduction of GST. Any value-add tax changes the shape of both how we pay tax & how it is provided to the government. The first is seen in, say, lower taxes & higher prices, & the latter is seen in public servants chasing recalcitrant corporations for an extended grace period, followed by referrals to paying fines, & a convoluted redistribution mechanism because the consumers congregate in cities.

Before GST, we had two basic types of tax: income (direct & capital gains) & indirect (import, sales, excise). After GST, we got consumption, which is effectively direct, because, not only could we see it, as the consumer, but we could reclaim it under certain circumstances (especially tourists!).

At the time, I loved GST.

It's a matter of perspective. I was married. We both had high-paying jobs. We had no kids. We lived a quite frugal life. Thus, we invested in real estate & also benefited from low capital gains. An ideal world.

Now, I am married. We have a single income & one child still at home, & frugality seems to not be a watchword because one of us has time to do online shopping at home. We struggle - with a similar income.

Someone's going to say "that's your choice - having a family, not working, etc". No, that's a political view. Oddly, it seems to be the same party that wants to encourage family values - mum at home for the kids - & 100% employment with more places in childcare. I won't dwell on it.

The economics doesn't work. GST will always favour childless working couples, & no amount of family benefits & tax-time dependents will compensate for that. In addition, you have the full range of single-parent scenarios from the classic welfare cheat (someone who relies entirely on social services, so they must be a bludger) to the struggling working parent (who relies on childcare).

So, what does 'fair' tax look like? That depends on which side of the great political divide you sit on. One side would suggest that, in the best possible case, the family that shares one income should be taxed less (overall) because of the basic spreading of that income across more consumers (citizens, potentially voters). The other side suggests that every voter already has (or should have) an equal opportunity to make the life they wish to lead; thus, the only fair system taxes equally based on the (individual) income, & consumption (in terms of value) is commensurate with income.

Obviously, neither side is right. In fact, those two extremes would introduce such chaos into a social system that democracy would be at risk. Either the upper echelons would refuse to contribute, seeing it as supporting the ne'er-do-wells, or else the peasants would revolt in starvation. Historically, we have used a few levers to compensate larger families - & even encourage them - & encourage people who can afford to to spend on luxuries (with very limited success).

So, what does tax reform look like? It depends on who you are.

Those who are on welfare - the unemployed, pensioned, & those with a health status precluding them from working - don't pay taxes. They should essentially be allowed to live in dignity. How much dignity depends on your politics, but they should be excluded from any tax system. GST doesn't do this. Welfare already takes into account some levels of co-habitation (pensioners) & dependence (family benefits, carers' income).

Those who are living on annuities or investments & are entirely dependent on market vagaries should only be taxed by what they consume, because this is all that they control. Their consumption is set by them - the rate at which they would like to use their invested funds.

Those who are mega-wealthy (a very small percentage) simply don't pay taxes, on the basis that they can afford to hire people to make it impossible to prove that they should, so the taxing is done on those employees. Some have called this trickle-down. Consumption is fine for them, too.

That leaves everyone else, where income is based on goods & services provided. A fairer relationship between household income, dependents & household tax-rate needs to be calculated such that the nuclear family isn't even mentioned. If there's one income across two people or ten people, it doesn't matter what those relationships are.

However, it gets muddy when you have multi-generational co-habitants that mix pensions & income, because you just don't know whether all money goes into the household pot, or else is allocated in some other manner. This kind of trickiness is exactly why we never get tax reform.

Even the smallest of reforms seems unpopular. 

For example, a working parent - either single or second - needs childcare. This should be considered equivalent to a fringe benefit of working, & have a tax assessment commensurate with the household income. If the cost of childcare exceeds, say, 20% of the pre-tax (household) income, then that benefit (the price of the childcare) should be excluded from the household income (tax-free threshold) - not a fixed dollar value. This is unlikely to encourage people to pay more for childcare.

There, I finally found something tangible that could be done.

We are what we write

 Given the title, come up with five different sentences using those same five words.

Although rearrangement might be your first recourse for solving this conundrum, you don't need to go to such extremes, because the sentence itself allows for emphasis on each of the words, giving sentences that really have different contexts or meanings, proving the point. I know this sounds like another 'he made her duck' scenario, but this is different, because it is reflective.

Each of the five nuanced statements leads to the one conclusion - the written word defines us, & yet we limit ourselves thereto, as if by choice.

Is there a way to escape what we write, or differentiate who we are from the resultant text? That is not an existential problem so much as a technical one. The language that we use is almost always that which comes from within us. To channel another - such as writing in first person - is hard work & rarely successful in creating a distinct personality, due to your own upbringing, etc. You can estimate reactions, gather up opinions, formulate thoughts, but the puppet-master can only give so much life to their puppet. The rest would require an injection of Disney.

The technology exists - & is used! - to determine authorship in reality over tradition. Thus, we now know a lot more about Shakespeare as a writer who co-authored plays than we do about the glove-maker himself. To misquote: the fault, dear reader, is not in our words, but in ourselves.

No mere pseudonym can hide the true author. No amount of linguistic jiggery-pokery will give the illusion of not-self-ness, unless we make the language so bland that it masks intelligence as much as it does upbringing. We can be empathetic, blustery, obtuse, outlandish, simplistic, or take on any other approach character formation or representation, but, when it comes down to it, it's us taking on that role, & then being the author from that aspect of us, not through creating a new 'ideal' writer with such attributes.

.tuo teg t'nac I & edisni deppart m'I pleH

I remember even defining a reverse font so that that looked better. The writer is trapped inside the writer. The brain that powers the pen, the inspiration that drives the content, are all trapped within the history that made the writer themselves. There is no escape. That which makes someone a writer, or makes them write, is what also defines what they write. The closest thing to an exception is fifty monkeys on typewriters for a millennium, or else a classroom full of naive students told to write about a war. The former might get Shakespeare, & the latter might get nowhere.

It would be unusual for me to whine about problems without offering pat solutions, so I'll start with this: we need to change how we represent ourselves. This has multiple aspects. The first is the written word, which, as a concept, needs a refresh, because we've hardly done much since the introduction of spaces (with the possible exception of punctuation). Written language does not reflect spoken language, still, because it was once a rare thing to attempt, whereas we now have fiction (& gossip). 

To jump out of text, vlogs & podcasts allow for the opportunity to express ourselves, as long as we're not following a written script! Poetry slams, being the equivalent of beatniks & modernism in the art world, allow for expression to manifest.

It is not until we understand how our internal language is reflected in the result, that we can do something about it. We can already generate soulless text using AI (& probably trace the output back to its training). We can use this approach to learn how to not be us in what we write. You can't necessarily be someone else, specifically, but you can be a construct. That's what AI is all about. Deep-fake text happens, I'm sure. I'm just waiting for Shakespeare's lost work to resurface.

The only danger is that we will at some point go so far down this road that we will have forgotten where we started from, as a writer, & that negates the need itself.

We write 'what are we?'

Culturally Misappropriated

I have often had problems with the simple question "Where are you from?", because I sound funny, not local. The follow-up of "OK, where were your parents from?" doesn't add any information. Similarly, when I fill in a survey question that asks me to identify my ethnic origins, or worse, indicate which single origin I most identify with, then it causes a mild state of panic that, in the first instance, I don't forget any, & in the last, that I can show my preference appropriately.

You see, cultural identification is just not simple for me. Seven of my eight great-grandparents were born here in Australia, yet I would never say that I was 'culturally Australian', because that has no meaning to me, even if my upbringing was in the vicinity of a hills hoist. The eighth great-grandparent was born in England of predominantly Irish ancestry, & obviously at a time when Ireland itself was under British rule (note how I switched terminology). The Irish are distinct people from the English in so many respects, but there was also a lot of migration both ways. I have Irish ancestors of English heritage, too.

I identify more with my Scottish ancestors, though, & prefer to note my ancestry as 'Anglo-Celtic', rather than British, because the former is cultural, ethnic, & shows a mix, whereas the latter is somewhat geographical & also implies the Empire. There is an idea that my (Scottish) family name, however, had its origins in an English trader of Norman origins nearly a millennia ago.

Don't even get me started on my German heritage.

I am surely not alone in this confusing ancestry. I may have grown up in Sydney suburbia surrounded by people who looked like me (a long time ago, trust me), but scratching the surface quickly revealed the Catholics of predominantly Irish background, those other Celts called Mac or Mc, the rangas, & other little differentiators that showed how the majority of my classmates were, like me, ethnically from the British Isles rather than Europe, with the occasional noteworthy exception. Of course, it's possible that German ancestry, in particular, might have been still considered unfavourable.

I was thinking all this when I stumbled across historical controversies over Gwen Stefani's catalogue of pop songs. I don't mind her music, but she jumps around quite a bit, so I never noticed just how broad a range of topics & styles she covers within pop music. She is often 'inspired' by a culture or sub-culture. To me, that's the definition of pop music - reflecting popular culture.

However, as an Italian-American (not  my designation), she's been lambasted for using the style of ... well, so many different groups it would be hard to list, but this would include native American, African American, Latin American, & Japanese. Even those labels show a kind of cultural imperialism that befuddles me. We're back to Celts in the British Isles (nomenclature which dates back to Roman times) being called 'British', regardless of their current location or language, for example.

To me, Gwen is doing what the music industry has always done - adapt something for popularism. Pop, born of rock, born of blues, has taken something once close to the hearts of a sub-culture - ordinary Afro-Americans (I won't define that), & made it shiny & exciting & acceptable to Euro-Americans (see what I did there?). However, the 'owners' of the cultures she is representing in her music - probably not anyone in the music culture of that designation - project on her the crime of cultural appropriation. Let's face it, she's got Italian heritage. How dare she advertise a perfume with a Japanese name!

WTF?

Surely, as a perfume, the company that created it has an intended market & a branding, & only it (& its advertising campaign managers) knows whether Gwen best represents their concept of the product. The product itself is not cultural. There is nothing intrinsically Japanese about the concept of perfume. Most perfumes are designed with a primary market in mind, & a company can decide whether to take that global or not, because it's their product. To see a perfume & think that it's Japanese because it has a Japanese name is also a form of cultural appropriation. You're making an assumption on behalf of the perfume manufacturer.

It reminds me of (Euro-) people who would get tattoos in Sanskrit or Kanji or something as abstruse, claiming to know what it meant. The equivalent was seeing Tshirts in China or Japan with a few words in English that didn't make sense (because they're too clever to be tattooed). Is this cultural appropriation? You could think of it as a counter-culture or else tagging the morons to make them easier to round up when the revolution starts. It doesn't matter. There's nothing wrong with it.

What am I saying? Chillax. 

By all means, embrace some cultural heritage - yours or someone else's - & keep some tradition alive if it makes sense, but don't judge others for doing likewise. Genetically, there are almost no Afro-Americans who aren't marginally Euro-Americans (similarly Latin-Americans), so the whole seething mass on those two continents, with the exception of a few pockets of first nations people, are effectively related & share a culture - both in the past, & in the future in terms of world-culture (exemplified in pop music).

We are one, but we are many. I am Australian.

Everyone's a Critic

I used to love watching Margaret & David tear into new movies like a comedy duo. That's entertainment in itself. I was young & foolish, though, & didn't understand the nuanced message, merely accepting that their role on media was to critique ... or criticise.

As I wrote more, I started looking into what was in my writing, how to improve it, how to make it more ... something. I worked on different aspects like relevance, factual content or believability, insight, & also flow, from episodic chapters to longer stories, arcs, multi-book development, etc. It's easy to read your own work & do cursory criticism to define an improvement & refine the content. In my case, it was somewhat iterative, but I believe that's usually referred to as 'drafting'.

That makes me a better writer. However, the consequence of being a better writer is expecting more of others, the published. In believing that my own work was publishable, I started making comparisons, not just to fiction, but also to the scripting of movies & series, on the basis that some of my stories 'could' be viable movie subjects.  It wasn't just book adaptations, though, because they're sometimes 'difficult' by definition, where you have to cut corners to tell a story within a time limit. I'm OK with that.

The holes I had seen in my own work - missing sequences, illogical consequences, unbelievable events - stood out more glaringly in the work of others. Those deficiencies must have always been there. I know I would once burst out laughing at the worst such, but simply accept that's how things went & move on, drinking in the entertainment value. Now, my attitude towards watching was slowly changing. I don't think my tastes had, though, because I sought comfort in what used to sate that need for light entertainment. I wasn't looking for intellectual stimulation, although I still appreciate it.

Maybe it came of bingeing on Flixnet & the like, watching whole series over a weekend, getting frustrated with bad acting ruining a story. Mysteries are worst, because you can't tell if someone is acting badly or else acting really well to give you a clue that they are performing a bad act. You know you're in trouble when you watch Nicholas Cage play Nicholas Cage & realise that he's quite good at it - but he's still acting!

It comes down to quality. Being more introspective makes you see quality as a thing, without going all Zen Motorcycles. It doesn't make you expect better quality, as such, but it allows you to see beyond the superficial, the gloss, the expensive sets & clothes, to recognise quality, sometimes in attention to detail or depth in representation. I remember watching a sumptuous Turkish series set in WWI that let itself down with a character who was supposed to be a British General, but he wore the rank of a Captain, because someone had confused British & American insignia. That's minor. However, it makes you pause & look at the rest of the setting. Was that music appropriate? Anachronisms are easiest to pick. When it comes down to it, if getting the rank insignia wrong was the worst I was to see, then they did a pretty good job of a period piece. The story wasn't too bad, either.

I'm a critic! I should have just enjoyed the original story, the cultural references that somehow came through with the dubbing (I don't speak Turkish), & the historical context I knew so little about ... causing me to read a book on the birth of Turkey in the modern sense. That's surely a good outcome - it made me want more.

The question remains, however: do we, in general, get more laser-focused on detail with age or exposure, or else is it a consequence of self-criticism?

Choose your words carefully

I have been accused of shooting from the lip & not thinking too deeply about what I say. I've also been accused of hiding salient information in a tightly-packed sentence that covers the full intention if you pore over it word for word. You can't win. Don't try.

However, that's a matter of personality or style.

When it comes to word choice, I like to think I have a reasonable vocabulary & I'm not afraid to use it. If I use a word out of place, without being intentionally ironic, I can often get away with it - & bank on it! - simply because common usage isn't.

There are some words, though, that I simply don't use.

My wife looked down on the dog the other night, who she'd managed to disturb from sleep just by breathing heavily or whatever, & she asked "Why do you look at me like I'm your enemy?"

There's a word I don't use: enemy.

I don't have one. I can't remember having one since I was, say, five, on the basis that I don't live in a cold war drama. As an adult, I don't make enemies. I wouldn't know what to do with one. As a result, no-one can easily become my enemy. I think that's a good thing. You can upset me terribly by forgetting my birthday or suggesting I should seriously consider not playing bagpipes, but that doesn't make you my enemy. That's a temporary state of not as much a friend as I'd hoped.

A word that popped up from social media popularity is 'frenemy', meaning someone you superficially treat as a friend, yet act towards as an enemy (usually behind their backs). As cute as that sounds, it's dumb. It's definitely not clever. The dumbness doesn't come from the juxtaposition, but the idea that you, as a person, need to label someone in your network of acquaintances as someone you'd prefer you didn't know. You even have the modern option to 'unfriend' that person, which doesn't make them your enemy, simply not your friend.

Once you label someone as an enemy - or a frenemy - there is an implication that you should do something about that state of the relationship. No-one ignores the existence of enemies. Some people obsess over their enemies, fearing attack or else plotting to attack such people. You don't 'let sleeping dogs lie' in that case.

Having an enemy takes effort. Admittedly, many people think I'm essentially lazy, but I'm sure that's not the reason I don't have - or make! - enemies. It's because the word is simply not in my active vocabulary that I prefer to not put in the effort to see someone in such an adversarial light. 

As usual, language gets in the way of describing language. An adversary is simply someone who, at some point in time, has goals which oppose yours - like a football team. They are not the enemy. The two of you share a passion for being present on the field, share a respect for the rules & system of adjudication & enforcement. There is simply an unfortunate alignment of those goals such that actions to your relative advantages oppose. Your gain is their loss.

If you don't see any action as leading towards labelling someone as your enemy - even in jest - then I believe you will have a happier life. You don't have to focus on making only friends, but you can focus on things that bring you joy, as opposed to focusing on bringing despair to someone else. 

There's another word I can do without: despair. I don't like feeling it. I would prefer to never feel it. When I do feel it, I would like very much to stop doing so as quickly as possible. That's probably just me. Is that laziness again? Despair is usually about wallowing, which doesn't sound like it requires much effort. There's a counter-argument. Despair must be a lazy activity, then, which you foist upon your enemy with some effort on your part. 

It certainly sounds like an easier life to skip all of that & let everyone else work out their own level of laziness.

I am now going to be politically incorrect

I have decided that I am allowed to b politically incorrect, but only because of a logic flaw that makes you be politically correct first. Let me explain.

My daughter is in primary school, & amongst the testing she gets subjected to, reminiscent of a bygone age, are spelling, grammar, comprehension, & writing skills. Good, I hear you say, because kids today can't write. Well, here's the thing - they can, but they don't. They've made this decision simply because of the evidence that writing properly gets you nowhere but into trouble. If you write too well, then you will be misinterpreted immediately by those who can't, & no amount of dumbing down will get you to the level of incompetence displayed by the vast majority of the English-speaking world, because there is no entry exam to gain membership.

Kids today deal with a world full of varied English skills - & even different (locally valid) spelling. There are dialects & vocabulary beyond the range of one school's teaching. What happens when you get beyond that school, though? Beyond the formal teaching structure?

How do I explain to my daughter that in the real world, I work with people whose language skills range from bad to abysmal? These are just the ones in my office. I also deal with offices around the globe & customers, none of whom are required to prove they can correspond in English, but are determined to attempt it, because English is the international language of miscommunication, so everyone does it.

I was recently told by my boss that she has to use a dictionary when receiving a message from me. This is someone who, on meeting, you could be forgiven for thinking speaks English quite well, but in reality has atrocious comprehension skills & written skills devoid of any correlation between intention & effect. Her own accent stops her ability to spell, leading to incorrect word use & a high degree of difficulty in my extracting the nugget of information from the dross of 'easy' phrases employed.

This is the real world. This is not the world that children are being prepared for.

Now, in the business world, with anti-discrimination laws associated with hiring, someone without language skills yet still qualified to 'do the work' must be employed. If, however, 'doing the work' includes, in any way, communicating with someone else - colleague or customer - then language skills are the most important qualification of them all. You cannot discriminate based on ethnicity, country of origin, etc, but you can - & indeed, you should - discriminate on the basis of presentation & effectiveness in a role. Someone more 'qualified' technically is useless if they can't use those qualifications simply because they can't communicate.

You can't discriminate based on gender or orientation or age. Here, there is no effect on communication skills - with the possible distinction of a youth dialect, for example. This is the key to my own success, though. As I get older, & it becomes harder for me to multi-task & deal with memory-based or complex problems, my qualifications & experience merely increase (albeit more slowly). My ability to deal with people who can't communicate decreases - call it tolerance if you like. I am allowed to be intolerant, because it's a proven result of aging, & we've said that you can't discriminate based on age, so my intolerance has to be tolerated. Not yours - mine.

Therefore, for you to be politically correct, you have to allow me to be politically incorrect simply because I am getting old & doing otherwise is just too hard for me.

Drafted

Writing is a process. We go through a series of drafts, & then publish.

Well, that's the way that the industry works - has worked for centuries - so we must do the same thing when we write a blog post, right? Who are you kidding? Draft? An old version? An historical copy of the full state of the document, which is then marked up with changes to be made in the next round of writing? No. Not happening. If I've made a spelling error, I really don't need that on the record, I'm going to just fix it & move on (assuming it isn't done for me automatically). I don't need interim copies, just in case I lose something. In fact, I don't mind losing some parts - whole sentences or paragraphs - because I can very quickly write it all again, without worrying about running out of ink or typewriter ribbon - or in fact needing to cut a new quill.

The process of writing has changed, but we use the same terms to describe the process, in the same way that airline schedules still look like railway schedules, even though we've added several dimensions to the technology & there's no potential for a slower plane to be run into because it makes more stops along the same route. Yes, even that made no sense.

Drafting, though, is a process that is increasingly misunderstood. Once upon a time - not all that long ago, really - writing something long hand (first draft) & then correcting with a different coloured pen would lead to a second draft, simply because the combination of the original & corrected versions (lines or words) wasn't at all clear. Often, it was easier to rip out a paragraph & rewrite it to get a better sense of what was meant all together. You might target a chapter at a time, because collections of loose pages are just unwieldy. You don't do that now. You simply fix what you need to anywhere at any time. You don't go through the laborious process of creating a 'fair copy' (typing from handwritten notes) so that the publisher has half a chance to correct your spelling. You do that in situ. Your first draft should already be effectively a fair copy ... which is unnecessary.

Now you have the opposite problem - you've corrected things as you went, so do you even need to think of another draft? Of course you do, but the best way to get one is to effectively look at what you have & decide how to rewrite it better. The old way forced you to rewrite it. The new way says that you have the words right there in front of you, so you only need to change the bits that don't work. It makes you think that the fair copy of the first draft is so very close to a final version that it just needs a few tweaks - not in terms of grammar, because that's already done, but in terms of ... creativity or inspiration or word choice (grab a thesaurus), or some such that doesn't need another set of eyes to make suggestions, because there's all this automated stuff that can do it for you.

You are, in fact, an idiot.

Draft. This blog post will go from 'draft' (singular) to 'published' (past tense) at the click of a button. It's so easy, so tempting, & it's a struggle to resist that step that makes this real. It's a struggle to not assume that all of the automated things have helped me get to that point, such that I have reached perfection without any enlightenment, & everything, as it stands, will just be

Contemporanus

Don't ever let me be contemporary.

Even the word should have given it away 'con-temporary'. Your words will be temporary & any other option you come up with is just you trying to con yourself. It doesn't seem that long ago I was writing about a classic novel that was slightly out of time when it was published, but was perfect for the time of publication, even if it didn't intend to be - To Kill a Mocking Bird. It became a contemporary classic in a great sunburst of energy that imprinted on everyone's consciousness. It should have been temporary. Times change. Tempo. Now, reading that book without any reference to its time or place of setting, as it was intended, & also no connection to its time of publication, I easily labelled it irrelevant. 

I'm now reading The Grapes of Wrath, & I've quickly gotten the same impression - the post-depression migration of Americans does nothing for me. I have no sense of why it's important even for them, let alone for me. Yes, it's another book that had a big impact when published, & was picked up quickly to turn into a very successful - again, iconic - movie that I've never seen, but that doesn't make it good literature. In fact, I'd almost call it ... bad. There. I did. The language - the attempt to codify the way that ordinary people speak - is also forced in writing, because it's based on sounds & accents that you can't convey. We often have conventions for this that come about over time, but accents aren't fixed for a long period, so you can't rely on the impression lasting, & it's all relative to the author's own experience. The tone of the book, too, doesn't work for me. It makes sense that the author took a workmanlike approach to writing, because that shows & it fits. That simply makes the book, the process, the result, all a direct consequence of the times. Contemporary.

I know the problem from personal experience, though. I wrote some (unpublished) books in my misspent youth, & then went to re-write them, in the hope that my style had matured (heaven help me). The biggest problem is that such a youth was so long ago that computers were a revelation back then. I was sitting there at one of my laptops, writing my book directly into a cloud service while I was visiting my parents, & the subject of the chapter was the enhancement of computer services from three desktops in a cramped room to a converted pair of tutorial rooms where four desktops were networked to a printer. Heady stuff. How do you convey the excitement of such a transformation that would have empowered a whole range of students to do word processing & ... other stuff (who remembers)? My first thought was to 'dumb it down' or shy away from the reality that what I was writing - what I had written - was quite some time ago. Could I try to make it more 'now' - you know, contemporary? Not likely. In fact, the best course of action - which took a lot more writing - was to make it historical instead. That made sense. "I remember when we didn't have computers!" I do. I was a child. Computers were things that filled a whole room in Sci Fi movies in the 1960s - preferably a closed room, if it was a low budget movie.

All of the magic is happening there - inside that room. Don't open the door, because that's where the past is. Stay here, where we don't have to talk about computers or racism or socialism or any of those things that will just just disappear if we wait long enough. Let's be in the now, without necessarily claiming to be contemporary.

Total Misrepresentation

 I love Netflix. It allows me to binge trash night after night, rather than think for myself.

I do try to pepper my viewing with 'alternative' shows & 'unknown' productions to widen my perspective or laugh at a different level, but I often watch a series right through, for example, committing to four seasons of something I would have stopped watching after the pilot back in the old days of free-to-air TV.

I also have a habit of sitting in front of the TV with 'alternative entertainment', just in case. This will be my trusty tablet (& my reading glasses), so that I can play mindless games to alleviate the mindlessness of the TV. When I start watching something (even a movie), I like to look into the production of the thing & play 'spot the Aussie' (there is almost always one in the cast), or else find the real locations used. This usually leaves me with some disappointment that there's a man in his 60s in desperate need of a stunt double to do any action scenes - like running a few metres or taking a flight of stairs. This would make some sense if the actor in question is a 'name' extending their career beyond their physical capability, but it's often a 'nobody' getting their big break by being a 'face' whose portfolio has floated around LA for 30 years. Of course, the man in his 60s is playing a character in his 40s, but he got the role because he could act better than anyone younger.

Watching all of these shows, & then knowing that someone is much older than the person they're portraying, or does not have the cultural background because they arrived in LA - in the US! - only the year before, gives you an entirely different slant on the 'quality' of the experience. It's as if the production didn't care enough to think it through, or else is treating the audience like morons. I don't like being treated like a moron. Listen to me - I binge-watch Netflix. I have cultured tastes. I did, once. I doubt that I have any taste left at all, now. I have eaten too much blancmange to appreciate an added twist of lemon rind or raspberry puree.

I can't blame Netflix. It was all happening a long time ago, when LA became just too expensive for a show to be based, so a lot of shows & movies came out of Vancouver, purporting to be based in the North-West of the USA. As long as the extras were careful with their dialect, everything was fine - the lead actors had all worked in the US for years, so they had the accent down pat. To me, so far away, Canadians are just Americans with a conscience. What would I know?

What used to get up my nose was the use of 'diversity' to populate shows. This is all well & good for representing 'now', because I am very used to every corner of the globe being represented in my local shopping centre. My community is that real, so my TV shows should be. However, anything historical becomes quite jarring. Why is Queen Charlotte so brown? She was German. Who is that sub-continental man supposed to represent? Indians hadn't even been invented in King Arthur's time. 

Ah, but it gets worse again! I was watching the dramatisation of a book where the main character apologised for looking a particular way, ethnically, as if explaining the deviation to the fourth wall. I decided to read the book. It made no mention of the character's ethnicity relative to other characters. In fact, further books in the series almost imply that the chosen actress was perfect for the role, from the point of view of how she looked ethnically. Please withdraw your apology. You have every right to that role, even if you are a year or two older than the book says.

For me, if I have some awareness of a book being 'from a period or in a place', then I have in my head certain expectations of uniform ethnicity, unless the opposite is a strong theme in the book itself. If we're talking about Regency London, then I expect all aristocrats to be Caucasian. Anything else is to be remarked upon as out of the norm & also treated as a curiosity by the close-minded English of the time. Even if the author has never been to England, if they convey that expectation of normalcy, then surely it should be followed up with the visuals. If an author represents one continent of their fantasy novels as being dominated almost exclusively by one ethnic group, then it makes sense that the dramatisation would also be exactly that. If you don't like that, then you won't like the book. If the whole point of the dramatisation was to attract the fans of the book, then surely you would be expected to follow it as closely as possible. You wouldn't use a normal-statured person to 'represent' a dwarf any more than you would employ an African to represent someone of pale skin & naturally silver hair.

Long ago, there was a movement of reactionists who would chant that things were 'too PC' sometimes, when certain phrases should be avoided on TV. Now, we simply avoid them out of habit, because it's just polite & inoffensive to avoid such words & no-one has the 'right' to call someone ... anything, really. In the same way, representation is probably something we still need to be made aware of, be conscious of, in the day to day, because society still just doesn't get it. Society still struggles to elect enough women to parliament, let alone non-Caucasian representatives. We think of these 'aspects' of society as 'minorities' (diminishing to single lesbian rural Vietnamese women in wheelchairs with dependents), which is laughable, because that would mean that the Caucasian male population of Australia, which has to be less than a third, & of which I am a fully-paid-up member, has successfully introduced gerrymandering.

I am not advocating diversity. I am only advocating representation of the truth. Once we accept the truth, then all of this nonsense just becomes normal & not worth commenting on.

To Kill a Cultural Icon

 I didn't like To Kill a Mockingbird.

I read it only recently, usually avoiding 'that kind of book' because I thought it was both 'too modern' & 'not of my culture', without having the vaguest notion of what it was about. I've never seen the movie. I'm vaguely aware that Gregory Peck has a powerful scene in it. I had no idea how that famous scene related to the book, so it was definitely time to find out for myself, not knowing anyone who'd read it, & being vaguely aware that the author's only other book was published posthumously.

Very quickly, I formed a dislike for the book in the way it portrays a young child (of about five) with big ideas explaining their philosophy & incidental schooling in a US backwater around the time of the Depression. It tried to be Tom Sawyer, but failed miserably for being too highbrow & hokey at the same time, without the subtlety or innocence of Clements. I kept wondering where it was going, as a book, & what the fuss was about, as a legacy.

I mentioned that I was reading it & disliked it to a colleague, who said that she'd loved it. Because I hadn't finished, maybe it did have a powerful ending ... but it had a lot to make up for. Then it twigged - in what language did she read it? I was reading an untranslated version. Sure enough, she'd read it in Farsi. She'd looked into the process, & had been assured that the book she read was considered the best translation. The problem is, the dialect of the original would have to be translated into English first. I could understand it as it was, but I'm not sure that 'yessum' conveys the right tone when translated into Farsi. 

I've had this problem before. I told another friend I was reading A Hundred Years of Solitude, & she was in raptures over the imagery of one particular passage that I had quite missed. I had read it in English. She had read it in Farsi (coincidence), & the original was in Spanish. Now, we could both be getting it wrong. In this case, it was a noble-prize-winning author that could well have been butchered in multiple languages.

But let's get back to the book at hand. Mockingbird was a bestseller, & the movie was a box-office hit. Americans (if only them) have been reading the book compulsorily since the 1950s. That's the key. It was a book of its time. It was a book that spoke to a movement to recognise (finally) African Americans as no different to any other Americans. That is not the point of the book, but it's an observation within it, mostly shown through the naiveté of the heroine, who is often told that she doesn't understand how the world works, or that she's too young to have her opinion matter.

That's the author, because the book is in first person. The author considered her message - if that truly was germane to the book - as no more than an alternative view to what her upbringing provided. It wasn't just about black Americans being treated as second class - below white trash - or children being ignored, but also state-controlled education, vigilante justice, poverty within a small community, the treatment of fringe dwellers, religious intolerance, & a whole raft of social issues put into the mouth of a child who would not normally see any of this (or recognise it), but is more likely to accept prejudice as the norm than to question it. Repeatedly, the heroine reminds us that she was allowed to question her father, even if other kids couldn't.

The book itself does not come under criticism - is rarely critiqued - simply because no-one wants to touch that subject matter: inequality ... no, specifically the treatment of African Americans. It was then & is now a taboo subject - criticising books that justifiably criticise an historical society. White Americans never treated black Americans with such contempt. How could they possibly have done? But they did, & only a denialist can shout 'fake news' at that without crossing their fingers. The book is a representation of history, for being strictly fiction, & it is ugly rather than being inspiring, because no-one gets a happy ending. This is rather reminiscent of the work of Harper Lee's chief supporter, Truman Capote. I wonder if, if it wasn't for him, the book would ever have been published, or at least published in time. It was timely, but if it had missed its moment in history, it would not have been missed by the passage of time.

 It doesn't matter what language you translate it into, the book's moment has now passed. It is not timeless in itself. It reflects a period in that country's history that was shameful (a long period from the freeing of slaves to the recognition of equality) & should now be considered almost laughable (how could they think that back then?). If you are moved by such a book, then you are yourself living in the Southern states of the USA in the 1950s, because there is no modern revelation to be had from it.

As an afterthought, any counter-argument that suggests that the book is still relevant because there is still prejudice, not just in the Southern states of the USA, but across the world, should take into consideration that the 70 years since its publication should be considered sufficient time for it to 'work its magic'. The world is full of prejudice, but nothing so insular can change that, because the work can be happily pigeonholed in a time & place that no longer exist.

An 'Aha' moment

English is a terrible language to express in writing (he says, doing just that). Perhaps it's the choice of alphabet, which was never meant for English (which isn't even a Romance language, & we've dropped all of the Anglo-Saxon letters), or the fact that English just isn't anywhere near its roots, being about a third foreign by definition, or simply that, over time, we've tried to use writing (as a concept) for things it was never intended for.

Once, writing was done by professionals. The intended audience were the elite - those who could read. Now, everyone over the age of about three in the developed world (at least) could have a fair crack at writing their own name. 200 years ago, a fair percentage of the population couldn't do that. Not only are we using writing to do more things (like writing our own name & putting that down in a permanent state of spelling), but more people are doing it. Almost all adults in the developed world (I don't know how better to express the idea of places where there is a regulated education system) reads & writes daily. Social media has made it worse, because we're all obsessed with reading & writing opinions. That doesn't make us better at reading or writing, but it does make us all think we can do it, & attitude is everything.

We're far more likely now to write what we say. By that, I don't just mean speech bubbles as thought bubbles, but I mean, quite literally, inserting pauses & mumbling & contractions & incorrect word choices & bad grammar. That's making it real. Again, it doesn't make us better at writing, but it does give the writing attitude.

When I was in school (yes, don't ask how long ago), it was drilled into us to avoid contractions unless we were representing actual speech (or giving birth, which was also to be avoided as a teenager). Heaven forbid that you should actually write in Strine! For the uninitiated, Strine is the Australian dialect, where we proudly have a plural for 'you', being 'youse', which is pronounced like a herd of sheep. Sorry, no, it's pronounced in the same way that you pronounce 'ewes', which is a herd of sheep. This is not a load of bull.

It's about now that I get to my point - well, I'm getting closer. If you're writing all of these speech-oriented interjections & such, then you're going to have to somehow indicate ... well, attitude. There's no other way to describe it. Sure, you could write 'he said with a small voice' or 'she shouted', but you're kind of ruining the flow of the conversation if you're trying to represent two people freestyling & they're using their voices like musical instruments, producing a whole range of emotions & feelings in their choice of word, their volume, their pace, their ... yes, attitude.

English is so limited in giving you the capability to do this within the quotes!

A Norwegian friend of mine was telling a joke, in German, & then complained that you can't explain it in English because the joke's punchline was all about the pronunciation & tone, & English is atonal, to which I responded "Oh really?" & he didn't get it.

Neither can you! Did I use a rising or falling inflexion? A rising inflexion would have been a polite query, & a falling one would have been sarcasm or skepticism. How do you differentiate those without tone? How do you differentiate those in print? I'm sure that someone has come up with a system. I should have looked it up before I started writing this post, but I had all of the stuff I wanted to say in my head & I just had to voice my opinion without thinking too hard about my purpose or my audience, & just writing exactly as I would argue it if I spoke to you in person.

The real 'Aha' moment - by which, I actually mean 'Eureka!' without the bathtub - came when I tried to write each of 

• 'Aha' = I understand you
• 'Aha' = I'm still listening (I'm not asleep)
• 'Aha' = I agree
• 'Aha' = I disagree
• 'Aha!' = Eureka (not the stockade)

All of these come down to where you accent the word, rising or falling end, & vowel length, with possibly more context like how long a pause before you say it. Don't get me started on pauses in print. You can pause by ellipsis, or you can pause by cutting things into sentence segments, or you can pause by expressly saying "then she paused".

But  I guess that's where I should.

The 'Do Something' Effect

I am trapped at home. We all are. They call it self-isolation because it's good for us, & for some bizarre reason, we believe them for once. We're all being socially responsible by being socially disconnected - except through social networking. We're connecting more without touching. We're doing more to be connected because we've been told not to connect.

We're all 'doing something' by not doing stuff - not going out, not congregating, not travelling, trying to minimise the shopping. Sometimes, we're 'not doing stuff' in the extreme - like hoarding toilet paper so that we don't have to buy it tomorrow, but if you miss out, then you have to keep coming back until you beat the other people trying to hoard it & make them turn up the next day to try & hoard. But, on the whole, we're pretty good at adjusting to 'not doing stuff'.

However, there are still people who tell us that we don't have to 'not do stuff'. It's all a hoax - not doing stuff won't help anything & it's not going to save you.
This is not your average crackpot, but someone with a wide audience of believers & a history of saying things counter to common sense. This is a person of great authority & influence who says that, this time, not doing stuff is a bad thing.

This is indeed the same person who says that climate change is a hoax & we shouldn't do anything about it. In that case, not doing stuff is what he is advocating, now, he's saying that we shouldn't not do stuff.
I'm confused. Perhaps he's confused.

Let's break it down. When it comes to climate change, doing stuff is bad, because it's not our fault - blame the leprechauns or ignore the data, it doesn't matter, it just isn't our fault (by us, I mean his audience, which isn't me).
When it comes to diseases, not doing stuff is bad, because it isn't our fault - blame the leprechauns (who don't look like us) or ignore the medical advice ... it just isn't our fault.

There's a consistency in denialism (no, there isn't!) that anything is obviously someone else's problem, & they should fix it, because we don't have to. Occasionally, we won't fix it, because they should, which is not any better.
It comes down to accepting no responsibility for anything, ever.
I am reminded, strangely, of the broken window policy (which is zero tolerance for aberrations) - if a window is broken, fix the window, & that will make it unlikely there will be a second or third window broken, & the policy will eventually lead to no windows broken in the first place.
This is (almost) a proven policy. Looking for someone to blame for the first broken window almost always leads to a second. It's a matter of resourcing - wasting your time looking for the culprit stops you from solving the problem.

This would appear to be the main thrust of denialism - if you 'do something' positive, if you follow the expert advice, then you are taking responsibility to fix a window you didn't break. You are taking responsibility for making the world a better place without actually finding out who's responsible for making it worse.
Heavens to Murgatroyd! What are you thinking? What are you doing?

Never ever do something - unless you've been specifically told not to, in which case you should ... or not.

They Fiddle While We Burn

Each night, I watch the news in the hope that something ... is new. Each night, I see the RFS Commissioner describe horrific events or explain the level of destruction to a bevy of politicians & our so-called leaders. Why? Because he knows these things. He knows his stuff. He has built a career in crisis management & he knows how to lead swathes of 'amateurs' to bring some sanity back to this state.
Said politicians nod & make promises. That's it. Definitely nothing new. These are the politicians we elect time & again. They don't understand, they do nothing, they have no leadership skills, no firefighting skills, & they hope that we, the voters, those burning & choking, have short memories by the time the next election comes up.
I believe them. We do.
All of the denialists who said that there is no such thing as climate change because it's always hot in summer - or worse, point to a cold winter! All of the reactionaries who immediately denounce anyone with a scientific explanation for the changes to our environment that every farmer in the fields & person in the street can see (through the haze). All of the apologists who say it isn't their fault, so they can't do anything about it.
That's who we pick our representatives from. That's who makes our laws. That's who lines up to listen to Uncle Shane tell stories about the big bad & ever-blackening real world.
Must we? Must we put up with this, year after year, election after election?
Do we have to sit on our hands & hope that people like Shane can pull us out of the fire again? Do we have to hope that he's done all the preparation he can - not preparation to minimise the risk, or preparation so that we all understand what's going on, but the preparation to make his people ready to get out there & clean up this mess, to minimise the damage, to deal with the consequences of our decisions.
We decide to drive rather than walk or take public transport. We decide to throw out packaging that doesn't get recycled, or simply can't be recycled. We decide to waste water, throw out food, toss rubbish, & close our eyes.
We decide to recycle politicians so that, with a little bleach, they come out looking exactly the same.

Shane deserves a medal. He'll get one - but there'll be a smiling politician standing beside him, basking in the glow.

Where's the Beef?

Those three words have become famous. If you're not an American or are just too young, you won't know why - or indeed, what it means.

It all started in 1984 with a viral hamburger commercial - Wendy's claiming that their hamburgers had more substance than their oppositions'.
At the time, pre-selection for the Democratic party's presidential candidate was underway, & the eventual candidate (Mondale) destroyed a losing candidate's (Hart) nomination by continually using that phrase.
The entertainment industry has dined on it ever since.

In the former case, one might think that 'beef' refers to the explicit animal product, which would be an optimistic association.
In the latter, 'beef' refers to 'substance' - a policy you can sink your teeth into.

Americans generally only eat one red meat - beef.
They don't eat much lamb, moose, deer, goat, etc.
There is an almost one-to-one correlation between red meat & beef in the minds of most Americans.
In most western countries these days, the term (in English) 'meat' generally means some animal product.
In recent years, there has been some debate over this usage with alternative non-animal products trying to call themselves meat, & producers being up in arms as a result.
This could see the general usage narrowing of the term becoming more formal - possibly government regulated. That's an odd thing, when you realise that English has no regulations in general.
There was once an advertising campaign claiming that mushrooms are "meat for vegetarians".
It made perfect sense to me, but it was short-lived.

Once upon a time, 'meat' was ... some solid food (as opposed, say, gruel) - a food of substance, something to sustain you.
You could think of it as a proper meal, not something you pull out of your pocket while out working, for example.
Like in so many things - such as the use of 'mutton' (from Norman French) to mean the cooked meat product, while 'sheep' (Anglo-Saxon) refers to the animal in the field - the usage in upper society becomes dominant over time.
The manor would have been far more likely to have animal products in the main meal, & therefore the association stuck: if you sit down to eat, then your meat includes animal products.
If you want to be considered like the best of society, then you have animal products in the meal.
Scientifically, biologically, chemically, this is unnecessary & leads to flatulent grass-eaters filling the atmosphere with toxins, but don't get me started..

Over time, we got to the narrower use of 'meat' in general.
Then, in another step, Americans, with a limited range of meats, managed to narrow the term once used for the contents of a meal down to one animal product.

Just to make it interesting, "beef" as a term for conflict allows the question "Where's the beef?" to be answered quite reasonably with "Where's your beef?", as in, "Why do you have a problem with the substance of my policies?"
This is, however, somewhat cross-cultural, because it is likely that this use comes from Cockney rhyming slang in the eighteenth century. They wouldn't have had much of the animal product, either.

That's What She Said

On a corporate training day, I challenged two teams to climb a mountain.
They didn't necessarily have previous experience, but they all had basic training in the tools & equipment, safety, scaling techniques, etc, & the climb itself was generally considered "do-able". On completion, the team leads were to report to me with their experiences.
The first team lead came to me rather disheveled. She had her hair, which had obviously been tightly bound in the morning, blowing freely around her face if it wasn't plastered down with sweat. She was covered in scratches & scrapes, her clothes loose with patches of grime. She probably would have preferred to sit down at this point, but she was determined to do this last part of the exercise.
"How did it go?"
"That was exhausting! But it was so amazing, too! I've never done anything like that, & the team really pulled together. I think we've taken our trust in each other to the next level. Even from the beginning, where they said not to rush it just because it looks easy, there were times when we could see that a wrong move - a slip - could have brought us all undone. We plodded through, though - we moved as quickly as was safe. We made sure that everyone understood the next challenging bit that was coming up. We'd pause to work out a few scenarios that would get us up steep bits - you know, the sheer wall? - or over the large cracks. We had a few near misses, & my heart was in my mouth more than once - not just for me, but for some of the less able in the team. But we did it. We got to the summit & looked out over ... everything. It was worth it! The repel coming down was a cake-walk by comparison - even if two of the guys got silly & had to be untangled. We all had a laugh over that, & they were a bit sheepish coming down the rest of the way."

I found the second team lead bent double still trying to catch his breath. He looked up with a wicked grin.
"How did it go?"
"I stuck a flag in that sucker!"

From the audience point of view (me), what did I expect of the two team leads? Did I want the detail, so that I could empathise, or did I want the result so that I could simply mark off the success?
Know your audience.


Language is gender-biased. We all know that. It's also gender-identifying. By that, I mean that you can tell from the way someone speaks what gender they are. Sure, you're thinking, the high-pitched ones are more likely female. I mean speaking on paper, too - not writing reports or business correspondence, which is more formally structured (& usually male-oriented), but speaking on paper - telling a story on the page.
One of the keys is pronouns - it's well known in analysing text that a female writer will use more pronouns than a male. Also, there is the detail - the level of detail that a woman will go into to convey more depth, more context. If you like, it's about the nouns, the things that are there, rather than the verbs, the action that happens. The only exception is fight scenes, where men will write endlessly about the 'action' where a woman might touch lightly on the 'violence'.

This was never more obvious to me than when I recently read two series of first-person fantasy novels from one (male) author, then moved directly to two series of first-person fantasy novels from a female author (don't judge my tastes). Obviously, one doesn't do this often, so the revelation - the comparison - of how the (male) main character was portrayed was blindingly obvious in hindsight. Neither author lived the fantasy, of course. Only one of the authors had been a male.
The male author portrayed a series of challenges that his main characters went through, where grim determination, fear, bloody-mindedness or resigned-ness to fate drove the character forward against & through his opposition - often taking a devil-may-care attitude to the next death-defying scenario.
The female author's challenges were thrust at the reluctant hero who always seemed put-upon by events "Oh no - not another damsel in distress!" he might have opined. The hero was the continuing victim of circumstance, with no control over his fate, even though we were told he had a very good survival instinct.

I have a male colleague who love's the male author's works, & a female colleague who has never felt more connected than she does with that female author's works.

Although it would be a generalisation to say that this differentiates authors by gender, I believe that this epitomises authors' gender-oriented viewpoints from life impinging on their writing. Having read a lot of female fantasy authors before (yes, I know), none of them had been written in such a way that the female perspective was applied to a male hero. I can even correlate how this particular male hero acts in a similar way to a female hero in a different (female) author's work I read recently.

It's not a good thing; it's not a bad thing; but, it is very interesting how authors (those who gender-identify) can imbue their characters (regardless of gender) with the author's gender's world-view.

All Rise

I recently read an article about a woman who was fined for contempt of court for wearing inappropriate clothing - in this case, shorts short enough to reveal her ethnicity - I leave that expression up to your imagination. Suffice to say, a defendant appearing before a magistrate "sets a tone" for how they expect to be treated - or how they feel about the courtroom - in how they dress. For a man, that would be to traditionally don the suit-&-tie combo. For a woman, it's something demure, at least.
It's a good thing that the magistrate was female, because otherwise the article would have gone on about the sexism or misogyny of the magistrate, or courtrooms, or the court process in general. Perhaps it would have picked on the elitism of the bench, anachronism of the ideals represented by those who sit in judgement ... it really doesn't matter, because the article was only about getting a reaction out of the reader - not even sympathy for an opinion (or the defendant), but a reaction against ... something, anything.
In juxtaposition, there was probably an article about what a Kardashian or a Princess was wearing - & how you should look like them if you want to be noticed - & you don't, so why would we bother noticing you? Somewhere between irony & hypocrisy, such articles only fill me with disgust.
The intention of newspapers should not be to make money through exposing advertising to its readers, expanding its readership to charge more for its advertising, or expanding its advertising to bombard & confuse those who don't read all that well. They should be there to inform. It's a simple idea - the media are a channel (by definition) to information that most people don't have direct access to - preferably truth. Opinion comes into it, but that should be considered, from knowledgeable, experienced, communicative individuals with some level of altruism. Anything else is noise - the space between the adverts.
In this case, the opinion - because it was no more than that - attacked a member of the judiciary for doing their job - & doing it well.
The judgement end of the legal system is full of trained, experienced professionals who try very hard to get at the truth, generally make decisions for the good of society, & priding themselves on both their impartiality & their independence from, say, the media & politicians. Historically (for an English system), they represent the Monarch's justice - an impartiality born of having no agenda & no possibility of gain from any decision. Sure, that's just an ideal, but it's one we all hope for & sort of believe in. It's the kind of ideal that brings calamitous repercussions down on the head of anyone who subverts the course of justice, as it should.
Magistrates have an expectation - not through being out of touch, but through being in the system - that the courts are a meaningful process that should be treated with the utmost respect across society. Courts are not just the place where the criminal class meets its just desserts, they are the place of austerity & independent judgement where society is held up to the mirror to find its own faults - whether it's homicide, burglary, or speeding offences. Those who sit in judgement are the "Picture of Dorian Gray" - they show up the ugliness that we, daily, tend to ignore.
In this case, a magistrate has said quite clearly that society does not appreciate its courtrooms being treated like a back alley where smokers congregate. A newspaper - one that equally treats society with a modicum of respect - should applaud that magistrate's dealing with the individual, & in fact point out how we, sheep-like, are more likely to follow the vain, the stupid, the anti-social, & those who think that bearing their backside in a courtroom is normal.
That magistrate has shown us an expectation that we, as members of society, must step up to.

Driving with a Nanny

Mark Webber, the formula one driver, once described Australia as a "nanny state" because Lewis Hamilton's car was impounded under Victorian "hoon laws".
He had certainly been out of the country too long if he'd forgotten that the larrikin who owns a hotted up Holden is basically an accident waiting to happen - & I, for one, would rather it simply didn't happen.
You can call that impinging on an individual's rights to be an idiot, or call it improving the likelihood of little old ladies crossing the street without being killed - it's a fine line. It's also a big distance if you move slowly.

Of course, sometimes these nanny state laws work too well. It's a sure thing that helmets save lives - bicycle & motorbike - but anyone stupid enough to ride without one should take up their complaint with Darwin. Children don't necessarily understand "survival of the fittest", but adults should be required to prove that they have a head as hard as the road before they are allowed to discard protection.
Seat-belts are the same - except that they don't even make your head sweat.

This is how we minimise risks to individuals - expert recommendations become mandated by law. It's a simple process supported by a large majority of the population, & railed against by anarchists whose contributions to society will be forgotten before even they are.

Of course, these are a relatively easy sell. There are no car manufacturers saying that we need cars so powerful that they break the sound barrier, so no-one advocates "relaxing" the hoon laws. We have manufacturers supporting safety initiatives, because keeping drivers alive is a good thing for their business - it keeps sales going & their target market returning.

What if we, as a society, started seeing the number of cars (or trucks) on the road as the ultimate danger that needs to be dealt with? I suspect that dealers wouldn't be so supportive.
In fact, they might concentrate advertising even more on the safety features of the vehicle - how you're safer being on the inside than the outside of a car, & could basically live inside one, parking outside your office or the school overnight.
How about if you remove the human factor, the risk, & have cars that almost drive themselves?

But right now, cars don't kill people - they can't because they're not autonomous.
We can't live without cars because they are seen as a tool that does our bidding.
It's our right to own & drive those cars.
Nobody wants to go back to the stone age when people were riding horses around & filling the streets with a stink that made it nearly impossible to breathe.
No-one wants that.

At some point, the nanny state - egged on by those who don't see driving as a right or even a privilege - will turn its attention to the statistics of road fatalities & find that "something" could be done.
A shifting focus within society - triggered by a few simple ethical dilemmas brought on by autonomous vehicles, for example, & backed by a new push by car manufacturers that separated out property damage from medical impact (where any accident is a good one where no-one gets hurt) - could make the nanny state move against something that could have been society-wise beneficial if developed over time & in the right way (for once).

Utopia would have autonomous vehicles on "rails" & out of sight (like magic). Society would give people the freedom to travel anywhere & see it all pass by (like an emperor in their carriage).
It's very hard to conceive of some compromise that will deliver both with equal usefulness.
"Market forces" won't. Government must. It won't be a popular decision either, so government won't.

Sometimes the "rights" of the individual - of the voter! - needs adjusting first.
Before changing the government as a knee-jerk reaction to their making a decision we don't like, we should learn how to change the government so that they make the decisions we don't like, regardless.

Everyone wants to breathe clean air. Nobody wants to drive an electric car.
Everyone wants to survive their next trip on the road. Nobody wants to obey all of the traffic rules.
Sometimes, a nanny state has to step in & say "No more lead in petrol! Slow down!"
Sometimes we have to accept that they're only doing it because we won't do it ourselves.

Not-So-Super Saturday

I've been found speechless with regards the drama & political fall-out surrounding the parliamentary dual-citizenship debacle that might finally be coming to a close after months of stuffing about.
I think it's all over now, so I am less likely to stick my foot in my mouth as I pass comment on the shambolic sham that we occasionally refer to as the bicameral system of government.
I am politically biased - I dislike most politicians.

The problem is not just the politicking as each side has denounced the other's members, pursued their opposition whilst sheltering their own, making excuses or accommodations whilst exposing their own hypocrisy.
It's that we allow it.
I realise that an ability to attack someone with a differently-coloured tie (or dress) is  not the key attribute I look for in my local representative, but the major parties only offer those skills, so we've become quite used to the circus that happens in the Canberra Big-Top.

However, it now appears that the Federal Court has been secretly wishing for its moment in the spotlight all these years.

Let's ignore the way in which government members' by-elections were rushed in, whilst opposition members' representatives were left dangling without the support of their constituents.
That's just the kind of thing one expects from party politics.
I want to get to the heart of the matter - the blanket ruling that anyone who may conceivably have been or become a dual citizen should have known & therefore should have known better than to go into politics in the first place.

Yes, there were quite a few who simply didn't know the law (& whose party had forgotten to remind them), but there were several who were genuinely surprised (& not delighted) to discover that they had acquired dual citizenship during their lives without having even gotten a hand-shake from the mayor.
In the worst of cases, some people had become citizens of countries that they had had no affiliation with, hadn't needed to visit, & were honestly mystified at how it was possible that such things could occur.

The most bizarre case, in my mind, was that of John Alexander.
Someone born here, whose father just happened to have been born in England & was therefore a British Subject resident in Australia before the concept of an Australian citizen even existed, found himself to have inherited British Citizenship, even having been born after the concept of Australian citizenship became possible.
In fact, his father could have sat in parliament without an eyebrow ever rising (as was fashionable before botox).
It could have been worse - John could have been born two years earlier as a British Subject at birth (not inheritance) - & still had no idea that he "gained" Australian citizenship.

My own father, born before the act, automatically became an Australian Citizen (only), & his English mother (& her father) unwittingly became a dual citizen ... but let's not get into gender politics here as well.
Oh let's ... my father therefore has cousins who have no idea that they are the only living dual-citizens in the family because their father (born here) inherited the dual-citizenship right & passed it on to his children.
I think I'm right here - it gets confusing - a man born in Australia to an English father can have British children, but his sister, born in England, has Australian children.

I am not concerned that people were taken by surprise at their new-found citizenship, it's more that the Fed Court has decided to interpret the law by the letter rather than the intent.
At the time of writing, the constitution was intended to preclude those whose allegiance was not to the British Empire (or the King/Queen) from sitting in parliament.
Foreign was a much broader concept in those days - & was never truly tested.
When the act of Australian Citizenship finally came about, some fifty years later, nobody was in the mood to shake the tree & see which members fell out of parliament - as I'm sure quite a few (if not most) would have.
It's a matter of history that most of our PMs had recent British ancestry.

If we start to "question" members who sat illegally & without their knowledge today, & the decisions of ministers who have since been designated illegally holding office, then we should go back in time to dismiss all of the decisions of all of the parliaments where the majority was held only with the help of those who were technically dual citizens, & any minister's actions where their allegiance could be brought into question.

Crazy talk.

To take this to the absurd, an act of parliament that effectively makes the passing of that act itself impossible through the ineligibility of the members in the majority to actually be present, never existed.
This means that the act of Australian Citizenship itself (1949), having just disappeared, could not have caused the chaos that this Super Saturday has become - with no appreciable change to the parliament - & we'll all accept that the whole thing is just politics.