peteg's blog 2006-12-19-AusCopyright.autumn

Milan Kundera: The Book of Laughter and Forgetting

More introspection from the Czech master, a dry run for his four-years-in-the-future Unbearable Lightness of Being. I have to say that Teresa and Sabina resolve into foxier women in the latter than poor Tamina does here.

This is fairly standard territory for him, combining sex, politics, literature and authorial interjection in a ramble about the necessity of memory and the power of laughter. He gets the big quote from the book out of the way on the first page:

It is 1971, and Mirek says that the struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.

Kundera is never short of an idea or shy in defending one. What sticks in my memory is his characterisation of "the two types of laughter" in The Angels (the first one, p61 in my English translation):

...

Angels are partisan not of Good, but of divine creation. The Devil, on the other hand, denies all rational meaning to God's world.

...

Things derived suddenly of their putative meaning, the place assigned to them in the ostensible order of things ... make us laugh. Initially, therefore, laughter is the province of the Devil. It has a certain malice to it (things have turned out differently from the way they tried to seem), but a certain beneficient relief as well (things are looser than they seemed, we have greater latitude in living with them, their gravity does not oppress us).

The first time an angel heard the Devil's laughter, he was horrified. ... [U]nable to fabricate anything of his own, he simply turned his enemy's tactics against him. He opened his mouth and let out a wobbly, breathy sound in the upper reaches of his vocal register ... and endowed it with the opposite meaning. Whereas the Devil's laughter pointed up the meaninglessness of things, the angel's shout rejoiced in how rationally organised, well conceived, beautiful, good, and sensible everything was on Earth.

... And seeing the laughing angel, the Devil laughed all the harder, all the louder, all the more openly, because the laughing angel was infinitely laughable.

Laughable laughter is cataclysmic. And even so, the angels have gained something by it. They have tricked us all with their semantic hoax. Their imitation laughter and its original (the Devil's) have the same name. People nowadays do not even realise that one and the same external phenomenon embraces two ompletely contradictory internal attitudes. There are two kinds of laughter, and we lack the words to distinguish them.

His extended meditation on Litost (ask Google) is quite amusing in a Eurocentric way.

The Constant Gardener

Shifting to peteg.org.

Finally got around to buying a domain: for three years from the nondescript Website Domains registrar. So far, so unimaginatively kosher. I availed myself of the freebie DNS provided by EveryDNS; they're somewhat limited in the kind of records they'll serve up, but more importantly are apparently reputable.

At the moment I've got Apache running on Debian on my dear old P120 at home, so it's all terribly slow. I feared the 64kbits uplink would sour the deal but Blosxom blindsided me by taking several tens of seconds to render the index pages. perl, gotta love it.

DNS Report has proven useful for linting all that stuff.

The Black Dahlia

Hillary Swank enjoys herself mightily in this attempt at 40s noir. Everyone else seems to be labouring. (I think Brick was more successful at imitating the genre.)

Root canal work on Blosxom.

I thought I'd try to tidy up a few things in Blosxom, such as the timestamps in comments, get the cookie memory-device going, that sort of thing. While the core and some plugins may be as-tidy-as-perl-can-be, the writeback (comments) one is pretty nasty.

I also tried to fix the formatting of the sidebar. Once again the lack of compositionality of HTML bit me on the arse: some things one can fix by twiddling some CSS in the flavour files, and others require a sift through the perl. To some extent it's a matter of code quality, but also there's the issue of what HTML objects are allowed with what combining forms. For example, the find plugin needs to return a form, so that'll be a div and not a span, thanks.

I guess my next trick will be some kind of functionalisation of my abbreviations plugin, so I can have some default text and also override it as needs be. Next Christmas, for sure.

The Joys of XHTML.

The theme I pinched for Blosxom claimed to use an XHTML DTD, and so idly I thought I'd try to make it conform. Yep, a complete waste of time. I naively imagined that XHTML has twenty-first-century tech but in fact everyone's been ignoring it since 1999.

Both Safari and Mozilla seem to deal with it OK. I have no idea if any of this works in Internet Explorer, sorry.

There's a semi-usable packaging of the W3's validator available here. For dynamic content I use curl to grab the page then feed it through as a file. Not very convenient but the less lazy can script it.

I find it ironic that the motivation for XHTML in the Wikipedia article is to make things more anal, purportedly for an efficiency payoff. To my eye it's just XML buzzword compliance, an opportunity to clean up the semantics of the beast squandered on syntactic busy-work.

My pet peeve is that the layout rules are so damn complex when something as semantically simple as a bunch of markup combinators could fix this mess. This tradition in CS goes back at least as far as Henderson's 1982 paper on functional geometry and continues with Lava and pretty printing and many other works. Then, instead of spending an hour finding out that one should lay out a line right-to-left (perhaps, maybe, this week at least), I could just say "title beside search box" and get exactly that!

Heck, this would even be better than CSS: define a bunch of named objects and some way to lay them out explicitly. Completely separate content and presentation, perhaps even a "declarative" layout! Somehow the fundamental notion of compositionality has been MIA here.

Scandinavian Queuing to Bank a Scandinavian Cheque.

The ANZ branch in Orange has just recently started using the ubiquitous Q-Matic system that lets you sit, rather than stand, while waiting. Ironically I war trying to deposit a skatteverket cheque that was a refund of some long-forgotten ill-gotten earnings. Strangely the cheque came from Citibank and was posted from Singapore.

Helen Garner: Postcards from Surfers

A collection of short stories. I enjoyed Postcards from Surfers and Little Helen's Sunday Afternoon. Her closing The Children's Bach is the best piece of fiction I've yet read by her, but the standard Garner complaints of being a sketchy journal write-up and pedestrian-of-plot apply. Indeed, there are some parallels with Altman's Nashville. She describes Melbourne quite beautifully, though again I wonder how it would strike someone unfamiliar with the city. Her non-fiction has been more to my taste.

A pointer to an object is the object.

What a great piece of reportage from the Smage. I quote:

A court ruling has given the recording industry the green light to go after individuals who link to material from their websites, blogs or MySpace pages that is protected by copyright.

Of course they mean that the recording industry can go after people who link to material for which the recording industry owns the copyright. Repeat after me: there is one homogeneous recording industry, which speaks with one voice. Further down, the EFA says:

Dale Clapperton, vice-chairman of the non-profit organisation Electronic Frontiers Australia (EFA), explained the ruling as follows: "If you give someone permission to do something that infringes copyright, that in itself is infringement as if you'd done it yourself. Even if you don't do the infringing act yourself, if you more or less condone someone else doing it, that's an infringing act."

That's a bit strange; how can I give someone permission to infringe someone else's copyright?

Mr Clapperton added that this ruling could have wider implications for general search engines such as Google.

"What Cooper was doing is basically the exact same thing that Google does, except Google acts as a search engine for every type of file, while this site only acts as a search engine for MP3 files," he said.

But Ms Heindl said MIPI would not be going after Google in the same way it sued mp3s4free.net.

"Mp3s4free was different in the sense that it actually catalogued MP3 files that were infringing copyright material - Google doesn't do that," she said.

Hmm... it's good to know that Google doesn't index torrents... or perhaps pointers-to-pointers are OK. In any case this is precisely what the new copyright laws were predicted to lead to.

Mid-afternoon swim at Gordon's Bay, against a graying sky.

Australian Copyright.

I'm not at all sure things have gone as Laurence Lessig hoped with this eBook gambit; the one I bought seems to be loaded up to the gills with DRM with precious little thought given to usability and future-proofing. I've spent too long listening to RMS, I know.

More interesting is the question of whether I'm violating their copyright (rather than simply bypassing their DRM) by trying to print it. I guess I'd have made a copy, then, even if the digital original just sits there and bitrots until Adobe evolves to the point where it can't read it any more, or I buy a new computer or something equally inevitable.

According to the Australian Copyright Council I'm allowed 10% (in pages) or a chapter of the work, which comes out at roughly 20 pages, but no mention is made of a time period.

Also in that document is the curious:

If a book is no longer published, can I copy the whole book for my research?

Generally, yes. However, if you are aware that it is about to be republished within a reasonable time, it is unlikely you can copy the whole book.

Ah, I almost forgot — anything that limits your rights must certainly be a Technological Protection Measure, implying that futzing with it is probably a crime. I'm getting fonder of dead trees the more I read about this... so perhaps Rudd is right to sacrifice all those beautiful trees in Tasmania afterall.

I'm beginning to think I should have been a lawyer (or married one).

Independence Day

An astonishingly bad movie. The moral clarity and ineffective security (and so on and so forth) seem so familiar in these post-911 times that it's like the TV news. I'm glad that Apple has improved the styling of their PowerBooks since the mid-90s and retained the ability to communicate with alien spacecraft.

Early evening dip at Gordon's Bay. Quite pleasant, some surf.

A Scanner Darkly

At the Verona with Jen. An improvement on his earlier Waking Life, in the same style.

Leisurely early evening swim at Gordon's Bay. Loads of cars down at Coogee.

Nashville

The Commonwealth Chief Scientist speaks at UNSW.

Late afternoon swim at Gordon's Bay.

Early evening swim at Gordon's Bay.

Pan's Labyrinth

At the Verona, with Jen. A freebie from Hopscotch via The Program. A fairy tale for adults, who would have thought. Beautiful, but the violence was a bit too graphic for me.

I tried to make some sense of it through the prism of Franco's Fascists versus the insurgents / freedom fighters / communists / concerned citizens but my history is a bit weak. I think the ending is supposed to imply Spain's reinstatement of the monarchy was broadly welcomed. Doubtlessly there were other allegories that I missed.

Raymond Smullyan: Some Interesting Memories (A Paradoxical Life)

Smullyan's autobiography-of-sorts, or extended ramble through his interests. I quite enjoyed it, probably because I was fully prepared to indulge him, though it could have used a decent edit (quite a few typos). I don't think there are any new puzzles in this book.

Peter Garrett, ALP frontman.

Somewhat amazingly K.Rudd has managed to get Peter Garrett, my local member, onto his front bench as the environment and climate change spokesmodel. I find this slightly perplexing as Garrett is already a polarising figure, and modern politics is purportedly all about appealing to the middle in marginal seats, people who are probably worried that climate change will kill the last tree before they do. As the arts spokesmodel he looked harmless enough, and if they really wanted him for the greenie gig they could have parachuted him in after the election.

I hope I'm just being cynical here.

Take a gander at the political compass questionnaire. It's an oldie but a goodie. I come out as more libertarian than leftie by a small amount, though extreme in both directions. I'm not sure that's justified, given there aren't "I don't have an opinion on this one" options.

The Cook the Thief His Wife & Her Lover

Another Helen Mirren vehicle. If only they'd spent what they saved on the sets on the script.

Helen Garner: Monkey Grip

Somehow I ploughed through this book. Again, Garner is repetitive and so little changes from one angst-inducing event to the next that I lost interest in the questions she fails to answer, such as what she sees in the men she feels compelled to be with. (She says a lot about how she feels and how communication fails, but not much on the non-horizontal shared experience.) The characters that wander in and out of the narrative rarely have independent lives and few have any identifiable impact on the story, beyond being competitors for a man, or a man. Her engagement with junkies and drugs is drab and uninspiring, never failing to point out the obvious failings of each, while the transient benefits, the "why?" of her narrative, goes mostly unshared.

Historically this novel may be of interest insofar as it brings an Australian (if unenlightening and unerotic) bluntness to matters sexual and narcotic in 1977. Anne Summers must have seen a lot more in it that I did, in branding it the nation's best novel of that year.

I wonder if the Anglo fascination with the I Ching made it out of the seventies; Douglas Adams made hilarious use of it in The Long Dark Teat-Time of the Soul in 1988, so I guess it must have. (You can try an internet incarnation of Adams's version here).

Late afternoon paddle at Gordon's Bay. Loads of people there, some even in the water.

John Clarke: The 7.56 Report

These are the scripts for John Clarke and Bryan Dawe's recent 7.30 report shows on the ABC. Some are just plain funny but most serve better as keys to remembering the original interviews.

Puppetry from my childhood.

Finally got around to watching ABC TV's fifty years of palaver, which featured the good old Rubbery Figures from the 80s. Even better, the artist has put up some old episodes. Enjoy!

Late afternoon dip at Gordon's Bay. Some people took one of the row boats out. No bluebottles in sight.

Tried to go for a late-afternoon swim at Gordon's Bay but ran into some things that looked suspiciously like blue bottles. Can't properly tell without my glasses...

Casino Royale

At Fox Studios with Jen. I bet her a coffee there'd be at least five mobiles go off during this distended action poker romance, only to realise that it had been perfectly crafted for these audiences: loud and cheesy. One could, and probably needed to, hold a conversation through most of it without disturbing a soul.

Mid-afternoon swim at Gordon's Bay. Beautiful weather, quite calm.

Belvoir: The Golden Ass

Tuesdays are give-us-ten-bucks-or-more at the Belvoir, downstairs at least. Even after the refurbishment that theatre remains a bit of a dungeon, serving as a home to their outre B Sharp company. The bar and ticketing area is all smiles and soft couches, and presumably it was all sweetness and light at the Keating! production upstairs.

This play is an adaptation of an apparently unique Latin novel. It rambles. Its not entirely coherent. Its ludicrous. Its quite long, at about three hours with three intervals. Well staged, well performed, though the macro narrative made merry with my empty stomach and eluded my grasp. It's terribly unsubtle, but what fun.

Mid-afternoon dip at Gordon's Bay. Beautiful day for it.

Shortbus

At the Academy Twin.

David Malouf: Every Move You Make

Another excellent collection of short stories from David Malouf. I especially liked Valley of the Lagoons, Every Move You Make, Elsewhere and the closing The Domestic Cantata. He's at his best in Australian settings, mining the coming-of-age and kitchen-sink drama.

Age of Consent

Finally got around to watching this film based on an old Norman Lindsay story.

Managed to get in a quick paddle around 1pm at Gordon's Bay, before the thunderstorm. A little rough, a little cooler than earlier in the week.

Helen Garner: The First Stone

mrak remarked, several years ago, apropos the author:

I only know her from the controversy over The First Stone. Feminists hate her like poison, apparently.

and I can see why, after reading it. A quick Google will turn up any number of snarky responses. I don't have a background in feminism and no real interest in the infighting, and as she herself says often here, the danger of overly codifying relationships is that the joy goes out of them. (A class of response seems to be that normal flirtatious interaction between men and women is fine... except when it isn't. Not such a helpful characterisation.)

Garner's prose is heartfelt and open, even as the central narrative is frustrated by a lack of cooperation. Her take on relationships, the university life and the stultifying effect of institutions (amongst other things) struck me as insightful and worthy of further development. I was a bit irritated by the repetition and the waiting-for-something-to-happen anecdotal structure, but I finished it in two sittings so I must be nickpicking.

Quick dip at Gordon's Bay around lunchtime (and then a late lunch).

Borat

Iemma tries to stitch up the Martin Place geek vote by promising free wifi in central Sydney on the never-never (beyond the next election). I wonder how they'll make this fly; my expectation is a Windows-only port 80 effort.

Back in 2004 I went to Stockholm with my Mum, and somehow picked up the idea there was an ABBA museum in that city. It seems I had just got a bit ahead of myself.

Manderlay

A freebie courtesy of the Darlinghurst Theatre, at the Dendy Opera Quays with Jen. In the style of Dogville, sans Nicole Kidman.

Noonday swim at Gordon's Bay. Not as hot as the BOM's forecast led me to expect.

Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man

The songs are great but the performances tend not to be. It's a shame they didn't just make a straight documentary on the big man. There are plenty of thoughtful comments at IMDB.

Swim in the early afternoon at Gordon's Bay.

New Theatre: Laughter on the 23rd Floor

Again it was free-for-the-unwaged evening at New Theatre. Similarly to the previous production I saw here, this one is slick and hilarious.

Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner: Freakonomics

Quite entertaining, but watch out for those "it turns out that..."s. I would have preferred something that made the research accessible rather than this overly-simplified popularisation. At times they get ahead of themselves, using the technical terms "controlling for", "correlated" and "causal" for most of the book before giving a rough explanation.

Levitt's talk at TED is well worth a watch. Indeed, the economics of a Chicago drug gang is the best story in the book. (The effects of baby name choice bored me senseless.)

Swim in the late afternoon at Gordon's Bay.

The Prestige

At The Ritz.

Swim around 6pm at Gordon's Bay.

Napoleon Dynamite

A sort-of halfway house to Todd Solondz's excruciating oeuvre (specifically, Welcome to the Dollhouse).

Early-evening swim at Gordon's Bay. Oh yes, if you want to go snorkelling in Sydney then that's the place to go... and Clovelly, and Little Bay.

Félix Lajkó: YouTube to the rescue.

Ages ago, Jon lent me a copy of The Wire where a sound-test of Warren Ellis from the Dirty Three included some work by this Hungarian violin maestro. I couldn't find much on the net about him at the time, but now strangely enough, there are videos of him on YouTube:

(and, I note, some short samples of his work on his homepage.)

Quick dip at Gordon's Bay late in the afternoon. While it was hot around noon, the wind cooled things off by the time I got there.

New Music

Got my order from Chaos:

An erratic compilation of old Ennio Morricone music scores.
Jarvis Cocker's new album, imaginatively titled Jarvis. It's quite weird, somewhat like an Elvis Costello second-CD where he tries out all the kinds of music that didn't make him famous. Very endearing.
Leonard Cohen: Ten New Songs, with the sublime A Thousand Kisses Deep (thanks to Dave for the pointer). Now I have to scare up I'm Your Man. I note that both he (a big man of words) and Raymond Smullyan (a big man of logic) were drawn to Zen.
Even so, I can't get past the full version of the incomparable Waiting for the Miracle from The Future:

Ah I don't believe you'd like it,
You wouldn't like it here.
There ain't no entertainment
and the judgements are severe.
The Maestro says it's Mozart
but it sounds like bubble gum
...
I haven't been this happy
since the end of World War II.

and so forth.

TAP Gallery: Below

I hadn't been to the TAP Gallery for years, and it is was a review in The Program that brought me to this beaut production in the warmly embracing theatre, beyond an art-strewn corridor running beside the main gallery. Tuesday is their pay-what-you-can night, and I can't help but think a better policy would be a <$10 /> bums-on-seats and a pass-the-hat-around afterwards.

The two blokes (Andrew Bibby and Rodger Corser) are fabulous, and Lotte St Clair is destined to become a Home and Away favourite. The drama is tight, fluid and mostly unaffected, founded in Andrew Bibby's heroic acting in the role of Dougie. Definitely worth seeing. Keep an eye out for their company, Ground Up Theatre.

(Just a small nit about Nick Marland's otherwise spot-on review: Sarah's father did not cark it in a mining accident, and the manner in which he did die plays the major part in the resolution of the fraternal friction.)

Quick late-afternoon swim in a surprisingly cold Lake Coogee. The place is filling up with accents. Incredibly flat surf.

The Zero Effect

On Dave's recommendation.

Who Killed the Electric Car?

With Rob at the Verona.

Big trek over to Centennial Park for a coffee and newspaper perusal, then off to Gordon's Bay for a lazy late-afternoon paddle. A beautiful day in Sydney, supposedly 22 degrees and dry enough not to raise a sweat.

Rupert Murdoch: putting the boot in.

Hosting a faux-News Ltd. general meeting in Adelaide, Murdoch uttered a whole string of things I more-or-less agree with:

The tax system is a shambles. I think there's a greater need for clarity and fairness reform than a general decrease in rates, but still.
The government surplus is somewhat useless, being, to my mind, really a John Howard re-election fund.
Broadband internet in this country is crap. I don't know if the government should pay to improve the situation, but surely he's right to say that the crappiness will bite us on the arse in the long run. Our communications minister is unfortunately clueless on these issues; now it's not so much about availability as cost and quotas. As I say to anyone who listens, I used to pay <$30 /> a month in Göteborg for a 100Mb/s connection connected to a gigabit-ethernet backbone with a traffic quota of 15Gb per day. Yes, you could and did pull eight megabytes a second on that thing. That was in 2004, and things can only have improved in Sweden by now.

We may be the second fastest country in the OECD to take up broadband, but I'm sure every other country really did take up broadband.
On Mrs Clinton, blue sky Madame President:

"I can tell you she's running and I'd bet heavily on her winning the nomination but I wouldn't bet on her winning."

Who would have thought.

Beazley was stoked to have someone of import attacking the government, but as the big man's policy is to only back winners he couldn't expect a pat on the back himself.

(There's some more details at The Australian. Yes, he's trying to feather his own nest. It just so happens to be mine too, in this instance.)

Quick swim at Gordon's Bay in the mid-afternoon, trying to beat the rain. (It didn't show up until nightfall.)

Asimov: The Caves of Steel

Lucky Number Slevin (The Wrong Man)

Late afternoon screening at The Ritz with Jen.

Asimov: The Naked Sun

Ennio Morricone: Crime and Dissonance

I picked this up at the Westfield at Eastgardens. It's a mix of experimental movie noises and his sweeping movie scores.

Flags of our Fathers

I didn't know the story of the iconic American flag-raising photograph, so I found it riveting. Jock Alexander drew an apposite counterpoint back in 2004.

Quick late-afternoon swim at Gordon's Bay, as the front passed through.

Went snorkeling with Rob at Camp Cove, from the beach there, along the rocks, around to (the infamous nudist) Lady Bay Beach on the harbour side of HMAS Watson. Got a bit sea sick after a while, and there were heaps of little white jellyfish in the water. Beautiful day for it.

Asimov: I, Robot

Quick swim at Gordon's Bay after work, at 6:30pm.

A dangerous surf warning sent me scurrying to Gordon's Bay. Full of crap after the recent rain, more bluebottles than I've ever seen strewn on the beach.

Tried swimming at Coogee with Ben (up here for APLAS) but it was too rough. Off to Gordon's Bay for us.

Wallabies v Wales: 29-29 at Millenium Stadium (Cardiff).

What a fiasco, a 29-all draw. The Welsh number 13 is a magician. Playing Giteau at number 9 was a bad move. Larkham came off sometime around the 60 minute mark rubbing his shoulder, so it may yet be holidays for him. Latham was the only back to shine.

Again, too many bluebottles for me at Coogee, circa 5:30pm. A dripping Scotsman promised me there were plenty out there, that the sting lasted for but a wee minute. I figured that Gordon's Bay was worth a try, and so it was, even if there's not much happening without the snorkeling accoutrements.

Martin Amis: London Fields

Purportedly his best book, and yet, at 470 pages, a solid third of that is flab. Things go well for the first half only to slow right down as the mysterious, inevitable, clearly flagged climax is delayed, put off, sent to fetch some cigarettes, have a pint and be disappeared for seven days by the AFP on suspicion of sedition (or perhaps horrorism). At best his facile humour is laugh-out-loud, and that holds for most of it.

Oh, the irritation, the irritation: John Howard on Lateline, putting up climatic strawmen. Paraphrased, symbolic gestures won't help, signing a piece of paper won't help, nothing will help except nuclear f'ing energy. (Does anyone else have a Denis Leary flashback?) I fear we're screwed until the last boomer carks it.

The show was redeemed somewhat by Martin Amis talking about his two-month-old essay The Age of Horrorism. (Could there be another writer more diametrically opposed to Islam's philosophy of modesty?) As always there's no real debate as neither Tony nor (to a lesser extent) the big man has any faith that the audience has a clue. He looked remarkably uncomfortable the entire time, almost as if he was in danger of sobriety. Watch out for the VODcast, email me if you're desparate for a copy.

(Aside: I'm reading Amis's London Fields (1989) presently, where he has a huge preoccupation with crappy and extreme weather.)

Aborted the circa-5:30pm swimming attempt due to bluebottles. Truckloads on the sand, at the edge of the receding tide. I'm way too blind to play that game.

Andy's On-line Self-Help Call-for-Help.

The problem with a public blog is that is has to be interesting, or it languishes, as this one does, reader-less, apart from the odd Google misfire that sends people looking for the best seat in some Ticketek venue this way. At the end of the night it's hard not to verb the noun, not to non-sequitur. Others are voluble so that I may be taciturn. Andy, who apparently runs a plethora (or perhaps a cliché) of blogs, appears to be outsourcing the authorship of his self-help book.

Another late-afternoon swim. More decent waves. It's still a touch cold, difficult to stay in for more than half an hour.

Swim in the late afternoon (isn't daylight saving grand?). Some big waves (purportedly 2m), all classic neck breakers.

Suburban Mayhem.

At the Verona. I also signed up for their movie club: it costs <$12 /> for a student, you get two free tickets per annum and the ticket price drops to an unbelievable <$8 />.50 for oneself and one's friend. I'll make that money back in a month.

Quick swim in the late morning at Coogee. Flat as, a little cold.

Barry Jones: A Thinking Reed

Took me a while to get through this one. Barry's writing style is a bit opaque, and the dry humour is welcome but unfortunately sparse. He has a tendency to explain his experience by referring to others', and then omitting concrete descriptions for those of us unfamiliar with his references. The book overflows with a self-aware immodesty, and the publisher's gamble is that the paying readership will indulge him on the basis of his historical place in the nation's bosom.

The last chapter is quite out of place in an autobiography, being a commentary on the post-reason, post-Enlightenment politics of 2006. Good to see John Quiggin get a guernsey though.

Quick morning swim at Coogee, a big swimming pool. A little cold.

Children of Men

At the Greater Union at Bondi Junction Westfield with Jen.

Soylent Green.

A Prairie Home Companion at the Orpheum.

Ah, dear old Mr Blue wrote a movie. His schtick is timeless. It's a bit trying if you like a strong plot or dislike bumpkin-ism.

Drove up to Queenscliff, just for some variety. If Surfcast can be believed it was about 19 degrees in, with some fairly small "one metre" waves. Beautiful day north of the Harbour.

The Departed

Very well edited but the plot is a bit paint-by-the-numbers.

Jarvis Cocker edits the Observer Music Monthly.

Wow, he's back making noise again. Link courtesy of Jon.

Dan Kelly and the Alpha Males, The Maladies at the Annandale.

Met up with Jon for a few pre-gig beers at the Courthouse and an Indian at Tamana's. I hadn't been to the Annandale before, and after seeing The Maladies give their least laid back performance yet, I got the impression that people expect rock when they go to the Annandale. Dan Kelly and the Alpha Males, nephew of Paul Kelly according to a guy I met at the bar, was also a bit harder-edged than I had been lead to believe. The Tucker B's put on a strange mix of sort-of-punk and soft rock, somewhat similar in my hazy memory to Metallica's ambit.

Ensemble Theatre: Are You There?

I scored some free tickets from The Program. First time at the Ensemble Theatre, a tiny theatre on quite a pretty little stretch of the harbour at Kirribilli. Met up with Jen at Milson's Point train station and had a drink at what seems to be the only pub in the area; it pulls a strange cross-section of punters, that's for sure. We had a quick dinner at Luigi's (Italian, in the hub of restaurants) and hurried down the backstreets to be there just in time.

The play itself was a pretty standard exploration of themes surrounding relationships, e.g. as listed in this review in the Smage. I found it stultifying for extended periods, though the actress provided great relief whenever she was on stage. I just can't imagine too many new things to be said in this format, and a retreat to novelty as happens here is a bit of a cop-out. The social upheaval in Argentina over so many years could surely yield something more than this.

Went for a swim late-morning at Coogee. By about 11:30 the classic shore (read neck) break was in operation, and getting out was (relatively) hard yakka. A little cold but so damn hot out. Fortunately the sand isn't yet scorching my feet. Coogee: a big swimming pool one day...

Dr Gonk popped over for lunch, and we went for a swim at Coogee before that. A bit cold with the standard dumpers. He's off to England come December 1. Lunch at Coffee and Things, a beer at the Royal.

Quick swim at Coogee, late morning. The classic dumpers rolled in the whole time, and were a bit stronger than they have been recently. A bit chilly.

David Malouf: Every Move You Make at Gleebooks

Another book-launch of sorts. Malouf is in fact slight in stature; I always envisaged an amiable six foot string bean. I especially liked the glasses-for-reading and glasses-for-looking-at-people.

Swim at Coogee, late afternoon. Supposedly the max was nineteen degrees, but I'm sure it was warmer at midday. A bit choppy with a persistent off-shore wind, bloody freezing getting out.

Went for a snorkel with Rob at Gordon's Bay around 11:30am. Started out quite flat and warm but descended into some whitewater when a blustery north-easterly sprung up. Didn't see much. Had lunch at Paris Seafood at La Perouse.

Blade Runner

Yep, I feel like some cyberpunk right now. The plot makes little sense. (e.g. How could Deckard not know that replicants have a limited life span? — surely if there was blood spilt on Earth over these things then the resolution would have been broadcast to reassure the citizenry.) Heck, we're not watching it for the plot though, are we? It's all about noir in a dyspeptic future.

Holly Throsby, @newtown.

Review, eventually.

William Gibson: Neuromancer

This was quite a lot better than I remembered. (The copy I have cost me <$3 />.50 back in the early 90s.) I can't believe it hasn't been made into a movie, well, excepting The Matrix of course.

Yet another swim at Coogee circa midday. Some surf, a bit warmer. Quite a crowd for early October, perhaps due to the school holidays.

Barry Jones: A Thinking Reed book launch at Gleebooks.

This is Barry's long-in-coming autobiography. The launch itself was another in-conversation-with Jennifer Byrne, who surprisingly managed to get some words in edgeways without talking over the big man. Bazza's schtick has always been to ramp up the geek in a self-deprecatory and seemingly oblivious fashion, though it is a pretence that he can't keep all the time. His anecdotes (e.g., roughly, "the return of Halley's Comet may well be the single greatest achievement of the Hawke government", uttered to the press gallery in his role as Science Minister, circa 1987.) make him human, but he also likes to use the ramble to avoid answering uncomfortable questions. Still, it's more entertaining than the bald dissembling and visionless blandness of the current mob.

Interesting in the light of Petro Georgiou's recent spray was his claim that Bob Menzies, late in life, gave up voting for the Liberals and went for the DLP instead.

Swim at Coogee around 11am, hardly anyone about. Some waves relative to the past few days, a bit warmer, quite comfortable.

A quick swim at Coogee around midday. Pretty cold, about the same in as out. Some waves, hardly anyone else at the beach.

Dave was up for the long weekend, attending a dance party at the lake out the front of Fox Studios. We went for a swim at Coogee in the mid-afternoon. Incredibly flat, a trifle cold.

New Theatre: The Voysey Inheritance

Again, students and the unwaged gain free entry to New Theatre, it being the first Sunday of the month for these godless socialist types. My last two visits had proven less than exciting, and so it was with a what-the-heck sigh that I put my bum on the seat this time.

The play itself is an update of a century-old tale of inherited avarice, and examines the angles a family may take on ruin: honour, nonchalance, legalism, morality. It works. The cast was large, dynamic, well-used and effective. The narrative was a bit unwieldy at times, and the love sub-plot betwixt Alice and Edward suffered a bit in this abridged version, though what is there is funny enough.

Definitely worth a look.

A quick swim at Coogee, early afternoon. Not as busy as one would expect on a warm Sunday arvo. Flat as, slightly cold in places.

Asimov: The Stars, Like Dust

Urk, a sci-fi romance. Not one of his memorable works.

AFL Grand Final: Swans lose to West Coast, 85 to 84.

Irritatingly the Swans came home very strongly in the second half, readily making up the circa-twenty-point deficit of the first, but not quite enough to win it.

Greg Egan: Teranesia

Another from mrak's shelf. Again he goes in for the flaccid ending. I don't know enough biology or quantum mechanics to be too upset by the fast and loose narrative arc. Post modernism gets a big serve but the portrayal is too ludicrous to serve as a critique or satire.

artery: improv at the Old Darlington School.

Jon told me about this rather obscure little gig in a seemingly obscure building on the Sydney Uni campus, organised under the NOW now aegis. The attraction was Chris Abrahams hammering sundry stringed, percussive instruments. As it turned out the first set from the "special guests" — Dale Gorfinkel and Robbie Avernaim, from Melbourne — pushed my buttons with their heavily augmented vibraphone. Their key innovation (for my money) was the re-introduction of rhythm via the little motors they applied to the vibraphone's bars to keep a steady but not monotone ambience.

After that I slipped into my usual semi-detached disinterest when Jon Rose (violin, strangely expressive saw), Clayton Thomas (double bass) and Chris Abrahams (harpsicord, organ, ??) launched into the usual improv schtick. The last set was an at-most-three-at-a-time ensemble job.

Another swim at Coogee, flat as a flounder. A bus had rammed into the side of a car at Alison / Carrington, cops attending.

Another swim at a Coogee. The waves were bigger but no stronger than usual, and the crowd thin. I reckon it was warmer in today than on Sunday.

Sydney Uni emeritus physics prof endorses the Hilmer approach.

Today in the Smage, Emeritus Professor Harry Messel suggests cutting the uni management staff by 50%, hoping to reduce the buzz word bingo. Whilst I applaud the sentiment I can't but think that the unis are just reacting as well as they can to the Fed's bums-on-seats policies, which Barry Jones so rightly sheets home to Dawkinisation. (That's not to say that the Liberals have done much to help things in more recent times.) Perhaps we can conclude that the AVCC is now just a cheese, wine and Jaguar club after all the good it's done in the last ten years.

Any attempt to reshape education has to address the skills shortages, and that means getting serious about TAFE. A Federal education minister with a half-life of more than a year and an eye for public policy might also help.

There's a great article by the University of Melbourne Vice Chancellor Glynn Davis in a recent Griffith Review on these problems. I must have missed the ensuing "intense debate".

Update: Ross Gittins says something similar about the broader skills shortage.

TED: Technology, Entertainment, Design.

There's a whole bunch of interesting VODcasts over at TED. Daniel Dennett's is a little disappointing as he only reacts to a creationist tract — he's capable of a lot better than that. Steven Levitt's is hilarious.

"Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice."

Greg Egan: Luminous

A bunch of sci-fi shorts lifted from mrak's shelf. Some are kinda cute, pushing my latent geek boy buttons. I liked Luminous itself, modulo the manifest inconsistency of allowing theorems to change their apparent truth assignments after they'd been examined. It is these small noise-making holes that keep me from reading too much more of this. The last stories, Our Lady of Chenobyl and The Planck Dive, were somewhat irritating as they concluded tepidly.

Urk, yet another round of Elvis Costello reissues.

Supposedly Universal is releasing yet another round of reissues of Elvis Costello's early (read good, deserved reputation-building) records. The completists must be tearing their hair out.

I take the attitude that once one has punted on the deluxe double CD Spike (etc.) reissue then future musical upgrades should be free.

So I've been swimming at Coogee for the last four days straight. The water is still cool to cold, but with the land being thirty degrees and more with a blustery northerly it's actually harder to get out than stay in. Today's waves were the biggest yet, large but without power. No necks snapped in the time I was there.

Peter Carey: Bliss

This came as a pleasant surprise after an abortive attempt at Oscar and Lucinda. I found his prose largely prosaic, but he does turn out a decent sentence every so often. The opening one:

Harry Joy was to die three times, but it was his first death which was to have the greatest effect on him, and it is this first death which we shall now witness.

seems to leave one unresolved by book's end.

This review makes the obvious connection to Vonnegut and I echo some of his qualms.

For A Few Dollars More

The Maladies at the Hopetoun Hotel

In my role as fanboy #2 I, with much help from Sean, swelled the crowd for what proved to be one of their tightest gigs yet. Jon was impressed by the cover song they did, which I now so thoughtlessly cannot recall the details of. Dan did record the gig at mrak's behest, so here's hoping something comes out of that.

Their next one is at the Hopetoun Hotel on November 4.

The ALP: Full of "Factional Daleks"

Senator Robert Ray seems to think that the modern post Hawke, post Keating ALP has no need of a DLP to keep them from power — they're perfectly capable of doing that to themselves, keeping everyone inside the tent pissing on each other. I wish I knew what Peter Garrett has been doing since he got into parliament. Perhaps he's been enjoying the surf at Maroubra.

Dirty Three: Horse Stories and Dirty Three

Finally turned up in the post today. No time to listen now, must ... well, yeah.

The Wind That Shakes The Barley

At the Greater Union at Westfield Bondi Junction. Quite enjoyable. The first half or so was a lot less fluidly edited than the latter half.

First swim of the season.

I braved the supposedly 19 degree water (if I'm reading the BOM's sea surface temperature map correctly) and early Irish tourists at Coogee in the early afternoon, sans wetsuit. Quite pleasant, once I got the shoulders in.

Dresden Dolls at the Roundhouse.

I promised mrak that I'd say a few words about this, and as always, the following was written well after the face-paint and bowler hats had been removed.

I'd quite intentionally never heard a Dresden Dolls track before going to this gig, trusting mrak's impeccable taste and plumping for a ticket blindly. (Originally it was supposed to be at the Gaelic Club, and I got in when they shifted it to the much larger Roundhouse.) Andy reckoned they were good, Jon just wrinkled his nose, and Dave mumbled something about it being emo but — when pressed — warned me off expecting a trashing of the Roundhouse ala Fear Factory back in '96.

It was all ages, so one had to drink plastic beer in plastic cups in the specially marked zones. Wow. The first thing I noticed when I found where the smokers lurk were some pearl earings, making me think she had something to live for. The rest of the crowd seemed standard apprentice-zombie and prototype-vampire inner city types, some obviously out after their bedtimes. (Some, as I later found out, were also out of their biochemical tolerances as well.) Curiously there were some older punters, older than me even, and I don't want to ponder that too much.

Some of the value-maximisers had already scored the tour tshirt, branded "Punk Cabaret is Freedom" on the back with the tour dates. Apparently there were two gigs in Melbourne versus the singular here. I don't for a minute doubt that Bleak City, being world class and all, pumps out more enthusiasts for this kind of schtick than we do, but still it hurts.

All this before the music began (I'd missed the support). I scoffed my Tooheys Extra Dry (urk), politely muscled some younguns out of the way on the upstairs balcony, in order to listen to... a man with an accordion, encouraging the underagers to spin about on the spot to simulate drunkenness with a somewhat obtuse Irish knock-off drinking dirge. Unfortunately it lasted quite a long time.

Anyway, the Dresden Dolls themselves, a bloke playing drums and a girl on the piano and singing. I'll get the unabashedly positive stuff out of the way first: I like the format, and the drummer is excellent. The tunes are mostly solid. The drummer's shirt lasted all of two songs, at which point the crowd went crazy, though I just couldn't get as excited as when that happened at The Thaw's gig a month ago. The girl's accent drifted, from Scots to upper-crust English before settling (somewhat) on a Boston sort-of-Irish lilt.

Now to quibble, as my training requires me to: cabaret? Well, maybe, I wouldn't know. Punk? Surely not, except in that 90s thrash faux American style. I found a lot of it to be just a good fusion of recent noise, progressive Brit-Pop melded with elements of neo-punk. It seemed to me that this juxtaposition of soft melodies and hard-edges is but an update on the Guns'n'Roses patina of my youth: to wit, Axel's combination of sandpaper vocals and a face that would earn him megabucks at the Cross.

In comparison to Pulp, one might take the Dresden Dolls' Coin Operated Boy (by god do they love their gratuitous profanity) against Live Bed Show or Underwear or something of that ilk, even his latest solo effort; in short, Jarvis Cocker has more to say and says it. Their piano rock-outs reminded me of Elvis Costello's (or perhaps more fairly Steve Nieve's efforts on) Strict Time. One of their songs sounded like a direct knock-off of The Pixies' I Bleed, specifically the fem vocals.

No, I wasn't trying to hate them. Late in the gig, after some ultra-repetitive thrash had sent me in search of a beer and led to the discovery that the upstairs bar had closed, they launched into a bloke-on-guitar, girl-on-vocals cover of Port of Amsterdam, last heard by me performed by David Bowie. Spooky, a hairs-raising-everywhere experience. (It's an old folk song, right? — "He'll drink to the health / Of the whores of Amsterdam / Who've given their bodies / To a thousand other men".)

Up to then I would've said they were post-irony; not over-serious but at least earnest and unhumorous, except in that way you can be with blindly adoring fans. (mrak's puppy dog eyes are classic on that front.) And yet... around this time the drummer peeled off a country riff, showing some awareness of the transgressive and inherently uncool. That would have been a good time to leave: for their house-lights-are-on-next encore they rolled out Living on a Prayer by Bon Jovi, which was surely older than most of the crowd. I was re-educated as to why people used to cringe about the 80s.

One last weirdness: the funny thing about a sound-triggered light show is that sound ends up travelling faster than light, which makes me wonder about the punters' mental processes.

For the desperate JJJ recorded the concert and took a lot of photos. I'm not in any of them.

Second snorkelling effort for the season.

Rob and I headed down to the south side of Little Bay. Finally all my gear seems to work OK. Not much to see.

A Fistful of Dollars

Will Self: Cock & Bull

I think the New York Times review is spot on; this is dross. Another from mrak-in-Qatar.

Sydney Symphony Orchestra at the Sydney Opera House: Belkin Plays Tchaikovsky.

Vijay was keen to see a concert at the Sydney Opera House, so he suggested this, a matinee. We got cheap seats (circa <$35 /> each) in the Choir section. Thoughtfully they put "Rear View seating behind the Stage" on the tickets and emphasised that we would be facing the conductor, which was quite daunting. Still, I did get a first-hand lesson as to why they put the loud instruments up the back.

The program's main bit was Tchaikovsky, of course, Violin Concerto in D, Op. 35, with the Russian violinist Belkin doing the classical equivalent of lead guitar. They opened with Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro: Overture and closed with Beethoven's Symphony No.3 in E flat, Op.55 Eroica, presumably to keep the punters (largely oldies and student-types) from rioting. All of it was new to me.

Dirty Three: Cinder and Ellis's 3 pieces for violin

I led Vijay on a merry chase through Sydney CBD expecting (at least) Red Eye to have Horse Stories. No joy. I settled for these other two instead, and bought Horse Stories and their self-titled effort from their website. Wow, not only usable but cheap.

On a first listen I think I've hit the point of diminishing returns, to which I attach the caveat that almost all of their other material has similarly failed to excite on a first listen.

A new track from Jarvis Cocker.

Fellow Pulp fan Jon told me that Jarvis Cocker has put out a new track, purportedly the first from a forthcoming solo album. Check out MySpace (urk), or ask The Hype Machine; it follows every fad, no matter how naff.

Ah, it's good to see him articulate the Hobson's choice of intolerance: "If you don't like it then leave". For Australian expats that also means shaddup.

Gilles Kahn, French Computer Scientist of some renown, ends his seminal paper The Semantics of a Simple Language for Parallel Programming (Information Processing 74, Proceedings of IFIP Congress 74) with the following:

Our last conclusion is to recall a principle that has been so often fruitful in Computer Science and that is central to Scott's theory of computation: a good concept is one that is closed

under arbitrary composition

under recursion.

Darlinghurst Theatre: Terrorism

The Darlinghurst Theatre has <$18 /> previews, invariably on the Wednesday before the show opens. That's why I was there tonight.

The play was billed as "The Presnyakov Brothers' black comedy", and this production certainly is black if not so very humorous, apart from some cringe-bringers worthy of the The Office. The (relatively) large cast were uniformly great, and ambient sounds were well-used to create spaces (the automatic door of the airport in particular) on an otherwise static set.

Structurally the ambit was to recount a series of loosely connected stories that show the permeation of terrorism through people's lives, from the impersonal, the public to the intimate, and exhibit the range of responses, of fatalism, neuroticism, revelry and marginalisation. The characters remain nameless throughout. Effective? Perhaps. Worth a look? Yep.

Google knows about plenty of reviews of other productions; here's one from the Smage.

Joseph Heller: Good As Gold

Heller reputedly said:

"When I read something saying I've not done anything as good as Catch-22 I'm tempted to reply, 'Who has?'"

I can't find an attribution for that so I thought I'd verify it by reading this one, stolen from mrak's bookshelf. It is, unfortunately, about as good as one would expect from the quote rather than would hope from Catch-22. There are some cute ideas and turns-of-phrase but these are the window-dressing of a shop where everything has been purloined.

Actually, some of the best comedy comes from the reviews on the back:

"I have little hesitation in hailing it as a masterpiece" — Auberon Waugh.
"Such is the dreadful power of Good as Gold that it requires us to revise our own imaginations." — New York Times.

and I did also like this, from p133, as Gold gets it on with his society girl:

Again, he was at a loss as to how to proceed with a girl like her. He moved his lips about her ears and neck as though in thirsting search of an erogenous zone. A waste of time, he knew from experience. Erogenous zones were either everywhere or nowhere, and he meant to write about that too, when neither Belle nor his daughter would be scandalized by his knowledge. With a guilty start he realized his mind had been wandering...

Rugby: Wallabies v Springboks in Johannesburg

Being the final Tri Nations fixture of the year, the hype outstripped all other aspects of this game. The Springboks did the All Blacks last weekend so I held little hope for the Wallabies. As it was they did their best to lose, once again failing to support each other and to capitalise on some fairly good set-up play. The ref was both blind and imaginative, so I expect there'll be some backroom brawling over him in the weeks to come. 24 to 16, not really worth staying up for.

Kenny

First snorkelling effort for the season.

With Rob I finally managed to buy a wetsuit at the Surf Dive 'n' Ski at Bondi Junction: an O'Neil spring suit (short arms and legs) that seemed to fit well.

After a lot of flaffing about — mostly in suffering delusions about buying such a thing at Bondi Beach — I lasted all of five minutes in Gordon's Bay before one of the lenses in my goggles fell out. I expect that some fish with a -3.5 eye can now see properly. Not happy! The wetsuit and gloves (purchased in Melbourne last weekend) worked fine, though.

The Lady From Shanghai

New Theatre: Family Stories

The first Sunday of these New Theatre productions has free entry for students and the unwaged, that's why I went. The spiel for this show was:

A war is over. Or maybe not?

There are demonstrations on the streets, politicians are publishing self-help books, and children are left unsupervised in concrete playgrounds. From this chaos, parroting the ways of adults as observed by the uncritical and receptive hearts of children, springs a game called Family Stories.

Four adult actors play children who in turn play mums, dads, sons and daughters in a cyclical family saga spanning a decade of civil war. Every scene is a metaphor for the fear that results from living in a society without free media or civil liberties under a government at war with itself.

Family Stories is a game of 'playing house' that becomes a thrilling, hilarious, devastating allegory of a post-war society.

I found the "metaphor" somewhat threadbare; it was as if we were voyeurs in a stereotyped and somewhat violent Serbian household where the entreaty to stop thinking and articulating (to ease survival in a police state) was both predictable and non-unique to the troubled time of the former Yugoslavia. The gibbering dog / broken girl was a curiosity that went under-used and unresolved, perhaps providing a link with New Theatre's previous show, The Man Who.

Tooheys New Cup Final: Randwick v Sydney University.

The big game at Aussie Stadium (née the Sydney Football Stadium). Unfortunately Randwick played like a mix of the Wallabies teams of the past five years — some flashes of brilliance and occasional complete incompetency at basic things, like passing the ball. It is almost as if they thought the competition ended when they comfortably took out the minor premiership. Not to take anything away from Sydney University, it was a game where one team clearly lost.

The final score line was 16 to 10, with Randwick putting in a heroic after-the-siren Wallabies-from-2001 drive to score a winning try. The push came to an end with a colossal knock-on, which aptly summarised the afternoon.

Julian Barnes: The Lemon Table

Well yes, I did read it through to the end. Here he refracts old age through his eternal preoccupations — sex and francophilia — in a series of short pieces. The splashing on the book's cover of an edited favourable sentence from an Esquire ("Man at His Best"?) review says enough.

Kingsley Amis: Lucky Jim.

Here Kingsley is so evidently the coy predecessor of his son in his commission of sex, drugs and proto-rock'n'roll to enliven what is really a Wodehouse-esque tale of some fairly prosaic academicians. Not bad, just dated.

Hilmer goes world class at UNSW.

Continuing in his bid to win the hearts and minds of the working classes, Professor Fred Hilmer has announced a slash and burn policy for the general staff at UNSW. I might suggest — cynically, some may say, after the CSE redundancies — that the academics' union is just too strong for the central admin to try this stunt on them, and that the sackings will cost more than forecast, the reduction targets will be over-reached, and we'll have a new bunch of frown-lined faces working fifty-percent harder... after a bout of corporate amnesia.

The general staff union proposes that the uni normalise the ratio of general to academic staff by employing more academics. I appreciate their humour.

Professor Fred Hilmer has already spent the money on buying school leavers. I guess this is what happens when the feds shape the market with a bums-on-seats policy.

Thank You for Smoking

At the Village Jam Factory in South Yarra. I liked the (cough) moral flexibility, but I think it would have worked better as a mockumentary — the narrative arc got a bit irritating at times, and most of the funny bits had already made it into the shorts.

Team America

Wow, what a masterpiece. A guest-pacifier at Peodair, Tim and Marilyne's place in North Carlton.

Cosi by the Victorian Opera

Bel was part of the chorus, and so furnished me with an excuse to trip down to Melbourne and (finally) go to the opera. Ticketek sold me a "B" reserve ticket that looked fine on the seating plan but was in fact completely missing a view of the surtitles. I think Tim and Rumiko, Peodair and Rachel fared better in that regard.

The opera itself was well-performed, at least as far as I could judge. The plot was terrible and I'm sure that if I could have read the surtitles I would have a thing or two to say about it.