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.

Shoes Your Illusion

It was nearly end-of-financial-year sales time, & I had a split in my sneakers. Normally, this would mean a quick trip to my favourite supplier, but they had temporarily disgraced themselves because this pair weren't very old when they came apart at the seams.

Under duress (that is, with Mrs Unwisdom), I was escorted into a well-known high-end sports-oriented, shoe-specialist shop claiming to have 50% off. You can probably tell from that sentence that the likelihood of me entering said shop would approximate zero without such an enticement - & even then, only when accompanied by an adult (Mrs Unwisdom).

I shall set the scene - it's a very ordinary, large, popular, outer suburban shopping centre on a Saturday morning. I'm wearing the fore-mentioned sneakers, plus a jacket that I've just discovered from my fatter days that I used to love (& Mrs Unwisdom hates), with the expectation that I will also purchase its replacement. As a side note, the last time I bought sneakers with the better half in tow (more likely vice versa), she made me change in the shop & asked them politely if they had a bin behind the counter.

Back to "Expensive Shoe Store" (because I don't want to use a brand name).

After picking through the shoes placed thoughtfully outside the shop, like a tramp looking for the least grotty-looking leavings behind a restaurant, I had come up with a likely candidate that did not look as though someone had already thrown up over it. You can guess from that statement that I wasn't looking for anything so lurid that it would scare small animals (even colour blind ones).

They just weren't right - they were priced above what my critical brain tells me a shoe made in a child-labour sweat shop in name-your-favourite-third-world-country should be, & they were certainly no more comfortable than my favourite brand (made in the same factory by the siblings). I was turning somewhat donkey (Mrs Unwisdom may have used a less kind equine reference), when helpful-shop-assistant burst upon the scene in her cleverly contrived sports-reference uniform & probably overly-spongy joggers designed specifically for wearing whilst selling overly-spongy joggers to overly-spongy joggers.

"FIND ANYTHING YOU LIKE?" she politely shouted at us, managing to maintain a rising inflection.
"Not really - have you got anything ... less colourful?"
"THERE ARE SOME MORE SHOES AT THE BACK ON SALE!" she burbled, still managing to emphasise "at the back" in the way that a drunk might try to slyly wink at the barmaid.
When I looked non-plussed, she continued her tirade.
"OR IF YOU TELL ME YOUR BUDGET, I CAN SEE IF WE'VE GOT SOMETHING ELSE!"

Ah. I see.
My intentionally understated dress-sense has finally been noticed by the eyes that seem to slip past me to categorise everyone who enters the joint as potential thief or customer.

I am assured that her IQ exceeded her shoe size, but I suspect that her realm of social acquaintance rarely got beyond the pub about 500 metres distant on a Friday night. My lips parted in anticipation of telling her that I was quite capable of buying footwear if only for my sense of taste.

Mrs Unwisdom hustled me out before I could formulate a sufficiently low-brow retort for the young "lady" to fully comprehend, but I got my way, partially. We did end up buying shoes at my favourite shop: not quite what I was looking for, but different enough that I can still enjoy that slightly shabby sense of coming apart at the seams.