Flying Pig Animated Tattoo

Click on the photo to go to the 'How Stuff Works' site.

Darlin' Won't You Come?

Darlin’ won’t you come run away with me
I’ve rubbed off my palms and I’ve worn out my knees
And I don’t feel this place holds a lot for me
So darlin’ won’t you come run away with me

Darlin’ won’t you come run away with me
It’s hard finding hope when you’re lost at sea
And I want to belong but I’d rather be free
So darlin’ won’t you come run away with me

I was dumb I was foolin’ around
Always searching for something I’d found
Now I know I could die and I’d be happy
So darlin’ won’t you come run away with me

Darlin’ won’t you come run away with me
I’ve burnt every bridge and I’ve walked every street
And I’ve started to question what happiness means
So darlin won’t you come run away with me

I was dumb I was foolin’ around
Always searching for something I’d found
Now I know I could die and I’d be happy
So darlin’ won’t you come run away with me

Darlin’ won’t you come and retire with me
I’m done with this crowd and I’m done with this scene
And you’re the only one who believes in me
So darlin’ won’t you come and retire with me

- Bob Evans

Run Away

Alex James from Blur talking on Q Radio about their reunion.

“There’s a part of you that always always wants to still be the Arctic Monkeys or keep thinking that pop music is cool, but there comes a point when you have to throw away your jeans and your trainers and start admitting to yourself that you’re too old for Lily Allen. But there’s a whole kind of other music out there … you know I’m 40 this year and I’m suddenly discovering Beethoven, Brahms and Bizet... You know pop music is about ‘I love you forever let’s run away together’. I’ve done that bit, I’ve run away forever and I’m on the next thing now which is ‘look, we’ve run away together, here we are surrounded by nappies - where’s the violins?...

... But you know it’s hard to let go".

Fretful stories

"Fear has only two causes: the thought of losing what you have or the thought of not getting what you want. In either case, the worst thing that can ever happen is a story."
- Byron Katie

Simulacres et Simulation

Nice, sussinct breakdown of Jean Baudrillard's central theoretical distinctions from wikipedia:


Simulacra and Simulation identifies three types of simulacra and identifies each with a historical period:

• First order, associated with the pre-modern period, where the image is clearly an artificial placemarker for the real item.
• Second order, associated with the industrial revolution, where distinctions between image and reality breaks down due to the proliferation of mass-produced copies. The items' ability to imitate reality threaten to replace the original version.
• Third order, associated with the postmodern age, where the simulacrum precedes the original and the distinction between reality and representation break down. There is only the simulacrum

Baudrillard theorizes the lack of distinctions between reality and simulacra originates in several phenomenon:

1. Contemporary media including television, film, print and the Internet, which are responsible for blurring the line between goods that are needed and goods for which a need is created by commercial images.
2. Exchange value, in which the value of goods is based on money rather than usefulness.
3. Multinational capitalism, which separates produced goods from the plants, minerals and other original materials and the process used to create them.
4. Urbanization, which separates humans from the natural world.
5. Language and ideology, in which language is used to obscure rather than reveal reality when used by dominant, politically powerful groups.

Nicely...

I Am This

Hyperballad

Cold Desert

I've never ever

cried when I was feeling down

I've always been scared of the sound

Jesus don't love me

No one ever carried my load

I'm to young to feel this old

Is it you?

Is it me?

Nobody knows

Nobody sees

Nobody,
but me.

- Caleb Followill

Through Silence

"Music is the silence between notes".

- Claude Debussy

School of Seven Bells

After a hot tip from Sassy, I've been getting well into the new album Alpinisms by School of Seven Bells. Irie.

But the demon and me were the best of friends from the start...

Born to run, baby run like a stream down a mountainside
with the wind in my back I don't barely even bat an eye.

... another stellar question from Jaques

"Should one save oneself by abstraction or save oneself from abstraction?"

From his book, Religion.

Derrida on The Return of Religion

"Whatever side one takes in this debate about the 'return of the religious'... one must still respond. And without waiting. Without waiting too long".

- Jaques Derrida, Religion.

Bad Signs as the CBD Empties

This is a stellar article from the SMH today. Although it points too heavily at the big-end-of-town bonus bankers, without giving a strong enough tint to the army of $80-130K finance slaves also suffering the downturn, if you read the latter into the argument, a very accurate picture of the cascading private and government interventionist errors is woven into the thread.

I've been bemoaning KRudd's mismanagement of the retail spending stimulus measures, not only because of the redundant logic in giving savers billions to merely bank, but that once again, in times of spending turmoil, the sacrificial (no kids, lacking youth), equally as vulnerable (mortgages and share capital exposure), aspirational (study hard, long-term view) class who've been instrumental in using their sweat and their smarts to build this lengthy period of prosperity, receive no support. Moreover, for fear of losing votes at the ignorant hand of the 'working family' Daily Telegraph politcal narrative, this 20 & 30-something workforce are being forced to fund fellow citizens living closer to their humanity (having children, an adolescence not spent in the books, early adulthood not stuck in high-stress offices) who, when all efforts are balanced out, exist on not radically dissimilar salaries - first, via cash grants, second via the tax redistributed from the single middle-class, and thirdly, via the effective disparity in taxing singles vs families.

It's completely insane - if, after all this fiscal crisis, we're still waving the flag of a capitalist system, and in doing so, our economic management requires us to keep blindly consuming, then surely government intervention should also carry that flavour and target the spending class? But once again, the neo-social democratic faux third-way horseshit that staples unsustainable capitalist partiality to an interventionist government desperate to maintain its voting base (unionised working classes) is raping those who, through the Keating and Howard years, have leaked from the old divides of master and worker into a skilled, 21st century, techno-industrial, postmodern culture that doesn't have the time and space to generate 'working families'. These bastards in Canberra, and in capitalist powerbases worldwide, have spent a couple of decades creating my community - schooling our humanity away from us, stressing us with competecy examinations at all stages in our lives, building workers before building people, beaming endless public images into our private spheres, skilling us to become a 'smart country', using our impossible efforts to generate unprecedented (yet globally unbalanced) prospertiy, supressing our bio-psycho-socio-cultural health for economic favour - and it's now time, after all this service, to be served in turn. There is another brand of working class which isn't toiling with body on a factory floor, but rather, exhausing their minds on an office floor - and, in this age of high-priced hyper-consumerism, the power of latter's salary is no longer apparent enough to preclude public generosity in times of trouble...

... you know, I could really use a grand this Christmas too. It'd go a long way to paying for my computer posture to be realligned, or to get glasses for my box eyes, or a gym membership to get muscles like a beach bumb, or a coastal holiday to get a tan (or at least a few sessions in a solarium during my lunchbreak), or a book on workplace psychopathy, maybe even some time with a therapist... hell I could even afford to put a few bucks in a collection plate and pray for someone to save us ;-)

Bad signs as the CBD empties

There's a joke doing the rounds of finance workers in the CBD, given added poignancy by this week's decision by upmarket shirt maker Herringbone to go into voluntary administration. What's the definition of optimism in the finance sector? Answer: ironing five shirts on a Sunday night.

Global financial turmoil is cutting a swathe through Australia's army of finance workers, most of whom call Sydney home. The list of job casualties is beginning to look a veritable who's who of Sydney's city skyline.

In the heart of the city, in the building formerly known as the millionaires' factory, Macquarie Bank is tipped to have axed upwards of 1000 jobs. A few streets over on Phillip Street, there are 150 fewer investment bankers sipping double-shot espressos in the garishly orange foyer of the ABN Amro building.

A block away at Deutsche Bank Place, topped by the famous Lord Norman Foster-designed "goal posts", there are 30 fewer Deutsche bankers to make the daily trip up in its vertiginous glass elevators. Down at Circular Quay, the historic AMP building is 210 AMP employees lighter, while the Axa Australia building has said goodbye to 90 Axa staff.

Job losses so far this year among Australia's big four retail banks now stand at 1000 for ANZ, 179 at NAB and 450 at Westpac, according to the Finance Sector Union. Other big name casualties include Babcock and Brown (850 people), Insurance Australia Group (600), UBS (50), Merrill Lynch (20) and Goldman Sachs (10).

All up, the FSU estimates there have been almost 5000 jobs lost in the finance industry since the start of the year, most of them in Sydney. Surprisingly, it appears even this may be an understatement. The chief economist at JPMorgan, Stephen Walters, puts the losses at closer to 19,000, based on company briefings to analysts and media reports.

As the CBD vacates, there is a lingering sense of unreality about it all. Job losses are like the elephant in the room that everyone is gossiping about but no one wants to talk about publicly. Those still ironing shirts are keen to avoid the spotlight, while the newly unemployed, instead of protesting on the street, are quietly going about the business of putting the Mosman home on the market, auctioning the Audi and offloading the holiday house at Palm Beach. Tail between legs, they're retreating homewards to start living the simple life, or start writing that novel they always knew they had in them.

It's the silent recession, which, unlike other recent recessions, is coming from the top down, rather than the bottom up. But it in the end it will catch up with everyone.

Just as the sharemarket tends to lead the real economy, with stock prices plunging well before real activity does, job losses in the finance sector are likely to be a precursor to wider job losses in the rest of the economy. It is already happening, with Gerry Harvey announcing the closure of up to 10 loss-making stores next year and Qantas announcing it will axe more than 1000 positions.

The cyclical downturn in the broader economy is about to catch up with the financial downturn and one will probably amplify the other. Interest rates are falling at their fastest pace since the last recession but they spent six months of this year at 12-year highs as the Reserve Bank, after 17 years of continuous growth, attempted to keep the economy from exceeding its speed limits.
Heavily indebted households have been burnt and consumers in general have a new appreciation of the dangers of debt. It will take at least six months for interest rate cuts to begin to work their way through to help boost the economy.

Meanwhile, Australia has lost some of its biggest spenders. Fewer corporate luncheons mean fewer waiters and chefs. Fewer people catching taxis in the CBD means fewer taxi drivers.

Fewer luxury purchases means fewer retail assistants and so on.

These former high-flyers also played an important role in inflating and maintaining property prices in well-located inner-city areas. It is not clear how much longer house prices in these areas can hold up against the tide of new properties coming on to the market. There are 312 properties currently listed for sale in Mosman, complete with their own "French Provincial-inspired terrace" and "breathtaking Middle Harbour views". One three-bedroom villa is advertised ominously as "for definite sale".

Enter the Government's hastily constructed "economic security strategy", consisting mostly of pre-Christmas cash bonuses for families and pensioners. It is a multibillion-dollar attempt to prime the economy's pump. Problem is, it works best if the money is spent.

Pensioners, with their relatively low levels of debt and higher proportionate spending on food, are likely to spend most of it but a large amount of the goodies for families are likely to go straight into paying off credit card or mortgage debt.

A long-standing political tradition for targeting cash handouts at so called "battler" families with large mortgages, and ignoring young singles, may well have backfired. If the Rudd Government was really serious about encouraging spending, it should have given $1000 bonuses to young singles, or couples with no kids, to spend on the latest iPhone, coffee machine or a degustation dinner at Tetsuya's.

The truth is that no one really knows for sure how much will be spent. Official figures on retail sales won't be available until February. It will be March before we know the impact on economic growth.

Meanwhile, January and February are shaping up as crunch months for the Australian economy. This is customarily a quiet time for business so, if the Government's spending package fails to lift consumer spirits, it's likely to be a prime time for retailers and other consumer-dependent employers to announce further job cuts.

So enjoy your Christmas and New Year parties. When the fireworks cease after midnight on December 31, we're in for one hell of a hangover.

McCandless on Jesse Jackson and The Great Black Hope

During his undergrad years at Emory, Christopher McCandless wrote for their newspaper, the Emory Wheel. I was reading a few of his 'dispatches from the wild' today, and found these words, written at the height of his idealism, somewhat prophetic given the recent election of Barack Obama as US Pres-Elect.


April 1, 1988
“No one can say ‘Jackson can’t win’”

“It seems that everywhere I turn I find people congratulating Jesse Jackson on the incredible feats he has accomplished in his drive for the Democratic presidential nomination. Most people are truly amazed, as I am, at the unprecedented success of his campaign, and appear to hold Jackson in high esteem.

However, when the question arises as to his actual chances for being the nominee most everyone gives him none. (...)

Some people might argue that Jackson ‘doesn’t want’ to be President. They maintain that Jackson is merely in the race to try to benefit the cause of black citizens. (...) Is it to become precedent that a black man can never be on the ticket because that ticket could then ‘never win’? Or is there supposed to be some ‘better time’ in the future for a black man to be on the ticket? When would this be, year 2000, year 3000?

The Democratic voters are the backbone of the party, and through their votes they have shown a strong interest in Jackson as the nominee. Let’s leave these ‘can’t’ win’ people to rot in their mire.”

Out of Time

And you’ve been so busy lately
that you haven’t found the time
to open up your mind
and watch the world slipping
gently out of time.

- Damon Albarn

Cape Canaveral

You taught me victory is sweet,
even deep in the cheap seats.

- Connor Oberst

.

Put a Battery In Your Leg

The Scripture of the Golden Eternity

64

I was smelling flowers in the yard, and when I stood up I took a deep breath and the blood all rushed to my brain and I woke up dead on my back in the grass. I had apparently fainted, or died, for about sixty seconds. My neighbor saw me but he thought I had just suddenly thrown myself on the grass to enjoy the sun. During that timeless moment of unconsciousness I saw the golden eternity. I saw heaven. In it nothing had ever happened, the events of a million years ago were just as phantom and ungraspable as the events of now, or the events of the next ten minutes. It was perfect, the golden solitude, the golden emptiness, Something-Or-Other, something surely humble. There was a rapturous ring of silence abiding perfectly. There was no question of being alive or not being alive, of likes and dislikes, of near or far, no question of giving or gratitude, no question of mercy or judgment, or of suffering or its opposite or anything. It was the womb itself, aloneness, alaya vijnana the universal store, the Great Free Treasure, the Great Victory, infinite completion, the joyful mysterious essence of Arrangement. It seemed like one smiling smile, one adorable adoration, one gracious and adorable charity, everlasting safety, refreshing afternoon, roses, infinite brilliant immaterial gold ash, the Golden Age. The "golden" came from the sun in my eyelids, and the "eternity" from my sudden instant realization as I woke up that I had just been where it all came from and where it was all returning, the everlasting So, and so never coming or going; therefore I call it the golden eternity but you can call it anything you want. As I regained consciousness I felt so sorry I had a body and a mind suddenly realizing I didn't even have a body and a mind and nothing had ever happened and everything is alright forever and forever and forever, O thank you thank you thank you.

65

This is the first teaching from the golden eternity.

66

The second teaching from the golden eternity is that there never was a first teaching from the golden eternity. So be sure.

- Jack Kerouac

http://www.prahlad.org/disciples/scripture_of_the_golden_eternity.htm

http://www.citylights.com/book/?GCOI=87286100600240

Pic: http://farm1.static.flickr.com/199/506210433_d48027f852.jpg?v=0

Guaranteed

All my destinations will accept the one that's me
So I can breathe...


I know I posted this song in full the other day, but this line just keeps flooring me.

"A Lava Time Bomb"

This interesting little tidbit came through my press release monitor this morning...

ANU Media Release
WAS ANCIENT EARTH A LAVA TIME BOMB?

Ancient Earth suffered repeated episodes of catastrophic volcanism that buried much of its surface under up to 15 kilometres of lava, according to a researcher from The Australian National University.

The study by Dr Geoff Davies of the ANU Research School of Earth Sciences (RSES) used computer models of the Earth’s deep interior. The modelling showed that the volcanic episodes lasted around a million years, but haven’t happened for about three billion years and are highly unlikely to happen again. The findings were published this week in Earth and Planetary Science Letters.

Dr Davies said the modelling suggested the deep interior of the Earth bottled up its internal heat for long periods until breakthroughs triggered the volcanic outbursts.

“The effect is caused by basaltic oceanic crust that is carried deep into the Earth as tectonic plates sink into the Earth’s mantle,” he said. “The basaltic crust is a little denser than the mantle at most depths, but is lighter within a small depth range about one third of the way down. The foundered crust tends to accumulate at this depth and, if enough of it collects, can form a ‘basalt barrier’ that prevents deeper mantle material from rising to the surface where it can cool.

“The deeper mantle is then slowly heated by radioactivity. Eventually it gets hot enough to break through the barrier and rises in a rush. It melts as it reaches the lower pressures near the top of the mantle and the melted rock erupts as lava flow. The lava flows could pile up to a thickness of ten to fifteen kilometres over much of the Earth".

He added that the episodes would have changed the chemistry of the oceans and atmosphere,
leaving only the hardiest bacteria alive.

“The episodes happened about every hundred million years so the bacteria would have had plenty of time in between to recover. Eventually, as the Earth’s interior slowly cooled, the tectonic plates became thick and heavy enough to break through the basalt barrier and prevent it from reforming, and no further episodes occurred,” said Dr Davies.

The research adds an additional theory to how the Earth’s continents were formed. Geologists know that this occurred in several major bursts two to three billion years ago and different reasons have been proposed as to why it occurred. “We can now add the basalt barrier mechanism to the debate as another possible cause,” said Dr Davies.

A copy of the paper is available here: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.epsl.2008.08.036

Long Nights

I'll take this soul that's inside me now
Like a brand new friend
I'll forever know

I've got this light
I'll be around to grow
Who I was beforeI cannot recall

I've got this light
And the will to show
I will always be better than before

Long nights allow me
to feel I'm falling
I am falling

The lights go out
Let me
feel I'm falling

I am falling
safely to the ground

- Eddie Vedder

Wiiiilllll-bbberrr, I have a question...

Was Mr Ed the first Centauric Vision-Logician?

Truth

"Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth"

Henry David Thoreau


(this is an interesting set of perspectives on the inconclusiveness in Thoreau's Conclusion chapter of Walden)

Family Happiness

"I have lived through much, and now I think I have found what is needed for happiness. A quiet secluded life in the country, with the possibility of being useful to people to whom it is easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them; then work which one hopes may be of some use; then rest, nature, books, music, love for one’s neighbor — such is my idea of happiness. And then, on the top of all that, you for a mate, and children perhaps — what more can the heart of man desire?"

Leo Tolstoy
Family Happiness
Quoted in the film, Into The Wild.

Society

It's a mystery to me
we have a greed
with which we have agreed

You think you have to want
more than you need
until you have it all you won't be free

society, you're a crazy breed
I hope you're not lonely without me

When you want more than you have
you think you need
and when you think more than you want
your thoughts begin to bleed

I think I need to find a bigger place
'cos when you have more than you think
you need more space

society, you're a crazy breed
I hope you're not lonely without me
society, crazy and deep
I hope you're not lonely without me

there's those thinking more or less less is more
but if less is more how you're keeping score?
Means for every point you make
your level drops
kinda like its starting from the top
you can't do that...

society, you're a crazy breed
I hope you're not lonely without me
society, crazy and deep
I hope you're not lonely without me

society, have mercy on me
I hope you're not angry if I disagree
society, crazy and deep
I hope you're not lonely without me

I

"In most books, the I, or first person, is omitted; in this it will be retained; that, in respect to egotism, is the main difference. We commonly do not remember that it is, after all, always the first person that is speaking

I should not talk so much about myself if it were any body else whom I knew as well. Unfortunately, I am confined to this theme by the narrowness of my experience. Moreover, I, on my side, require of every writer, first or last, a simple and sincere account of his own life, and not merely what he has heard of other men's lives; some such account as he would send to his kindred from a distant land; for if he has lived sincerely, it must have been a distand land to me".

Henry David Thoreau
Walden

Guaranteed - for Christopher McCandless

On bended knee is no way to be free
Lifting up an empty cup, I ask silently
All my destinations will accept the one that's me
So I can breathe...

Circles they grow and they swallow people whole
Half their lives they say goodnight to wives they'll never know
A mind full of questions, and a teacher in my soul
And so it goes...

Don't come closer or I'll have to go
Holding me like gravity are places that pull
If ever there was someone to keep me at home
It would be you...

Everyone I come across, in cages they bought
They think of me and my wandering, but I'm never what they thought
I've got my indignation, but I'm pure in all my thoughts
I'm alive...

Wind in my hair, I feel part of everywhere
Underneath my being is a road that disappeared
Late at night I hear the trees, they're singing with the dead
Overhead...

Leave it to me as I find a way to be
Consider me a satellite, forever orbiting
I knew all the rules, but the rules did not know me
Guaranteed

Presidential Dance-Off

Time Spiral

Older Guys

Spend my whole time listening to old guys
To figure which way to go
Whether to hang my guitar high
Or how you drag a smoke
Cos they look justified when drinking like
They've earned each swig and shot
Whether the day's best worth remembering
Or the one's best left forgot

I just don't take advice that hasn't been battered around
Like a gladstone bag in the rain all forgotten about
So I'm taking all my cues from the older guys

Old Ted used to do a good Stan Laurel and bowl a good leg cut
Sometimes I wish he was still around to clip me when I'm fucking up
He'd sit out on the back porch, all cardigan and frown
Drinking long necks of DA, while the Kalgoorlie sun was coming down

I'm taking all my cues from the older guys

Standing outside my local on a cold old Anzac Day
And I just don't seem to care if I drown out in the rain
Because they look through me like a sheet of glass, like the first window in a house
And I wonder if they've been lived in or if they've been torn down

Just cos I steal the suits
And walk like I'm fifty-five sometimes
I just don't have the nuts to sit with the older guys

So, I'm taking all my cues from all those older guys

- Tim Rogers

Landlocked Blues

If you walk away I walk away
first tell me which road you will take
I don't want to risk our paths crossing someday
so you walk that way I'll walk this way

and the future hangs over our heads
and it moves with each current event
until it falls all around like a cold steady rain
just stay in when it's lookin' this way

and the moon's laying low in the sky
forcing everything metal to shine
and the sidewalk holds diamonds like a jewelry store case
they argue "walk this way," "no walk this way"

and laura's asleep in my bed
as I'm leaving she wakes up and says
"I dreamed you were carried away on the crest of a wave
baby don't go away, come here"

and there's kids playing guns in the street
and one's pointing his tree branch at me
So I put my hands up I say:"Enough is enough,
If you walk away I walk away."(and he shot me dead)

I found a liquid cure
for my landlocked blues
it will pass away
like a slow parade
it's leaving but I don't know how soon

and the world's got me dizzy again
you'd think after 22 years I'd be used to the spin
and it only feels worse when I stay in one place
so I'm always pacing around or walking away

I keep drinking the ink from my pen
and I'm balancing history books up on my head
but it all boils down to one quotable phrase
"If you love something give it away"

A good woman will pick you apart
a box full of suggestions for your possible heart
But you may be offended, and you may be afraid
but don't walk away, don't walk away

We made love on the living room floor
with the noise in the background from a televised war
And in the deafening pleasure I thought I heard someone say
"If we walk away,they’ll walk away"

But greed is a bottomless pit
And our freedom's a joke we're just taking a piss
And the whole world must watch the sad comic display
If you're still free start runnin' away'cause we're comin' for ya!

I've grown tired of holding this pose
I feel more like a stranger each time I come home
So I'm making a deal with the devils of fame
Sayin' let me walk away, please

You'll be free child once you have died
from the shackles of language and measurable time
And then we can trade places, play musical graves
till then walk away walk away walk away walk away

So I'm up at dawn,
putting on my shoes
I just want to make a clean escape
I'm leaving but I don't know where to

I know I'm leaving
but I don't know where to

- Bright Eyes

Ascent and Descent

Click on this picture to read a stunningly lucid blogpost by my friend Trish Nowland.

Who Am I? Koan

I’ve been working this week with the simple “Who Am I?” koan. Lots and lots of thinking, concepts, ideas, strategies, illusions, lies, aspirations, projections, fears, introjections, stresses, acts, masks, stories, narratives, connections, social expectations, hopes, shadows, disgraces, disgusts, denial, disrespect, inflation, pains, wishes, unmet fantasies, poor decisions, circumstantial karmas……

… and then, just a moment ago, a fearless opening where the act of inquiry itself became the most compelling of answers. A shift where presence-in-act replaced concept, and was intimately plausible. It felt like a radical rewiring in logic. Nothing owned the shift. The movement was the answer, and the self. The question and the answer weren’t ever opposed.

The most striking part of this episode has been the plausibility. This isn’t some interesting mind trick or some ‘clever’ ‘skill'. It's a space with a different dimensional approach to active reasoning. It was the intimate disclosure of my location as myself. An uncommon yet perfect merging of time and space, perception and perceiver, well beyond fusion. And all so simple. So plausibly, truthfully, crystalline in simplicity.

Beyond just this. Simply. This.

You Can't Get Economies of Scale In Labour

Genius comments from the Business section of the SMH today about the collapse of ABC Learning Group (this generation's Bond Corporation). Such a stark case of misinterpreting the nature of the 'units' being 'shifted': people.

"A corporation will only be more efficient than a family business if it can amalgamate small disparate holdings, achieve economies of scale in purchasing power or marketing power, and lower the cost of production.

It works in retailing, and that is the reason large retailers can offer lower prices than corner shops.

That model was never adopted by ABC Learning because it could never be implemented. Child care is labour intensive. It requires skilled labour by individuals devoted to the task, not just paid employees".

From http://business.smh.com.au/business/learning-an-old-lesson-a-sucker-is-born-every-minute-20081114-677q.html

Blood-Boiling Rage

Pauri, boiling with rage the demon-king summoned his demons.

Free Fallin'

She's a good girl, loves her mama
Loves Jesus and America too
She's a good girl, crazy 'bout Elvis
Loves horses and her boyfriend too

It's a long day living in Reseda
There's a freeway runnin' through the yard
And I'm a bad boy cause I dont even miss her
I'm a bad boy for breakin' her heart

And Im free, free fallin
Yeah Im free, free fallin

All the vampires walkin' through the Valley
Move west down Ventura Boulevard
And all the bad boys are standing in the shadows
All the good girls are home with broken hearts

I wanna glide down over Mulholland
I wanna write her name in the sky
Gonna free fall out into nothin'
Gonna leave this world for a while

And Im free, free fallin
Yeah Im free, free fallin

- Tom Petty

The Edge of MySelf

Brilliant boy's sad death not in vain

Joel Gibson, November 10, 2008
From: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2008/11/09/1226165386588.html

As a fearless 18-year-old, Nathan Trepezanov arrived on the same Footbridge Theatre stage that produced the Chaser team and promptly brought the house down. His famous kebab skit, written and performed with friends Leon and Mohammad, injected some raucous wog humour into that year's usually white-bread Sydney University Law Faculty Revue.

The Sickest And Most Hectic Kebab In The World: Tribute was a parody of a song by the US comic Jack Black. It told the tongue-in-cheek tale of some Bulldogs fans who make the perfect doner kebab for a Subaru-driving "glamour" at an Auburn shop.

"It was easily the best thing in the show," Tom Glasson, solicitor and former revue director, recalls. Like Fat Pizza and Nick Giannopoulos's comedy, it "found the funny" in stereotypes and turned them on their head.

Even as a brassy 10-year-old, Nathan had "smarts", his cousin, the Silverchair bass guitarist Chris Joannou, recalls. The dux of Newington College, he asked for a copy of the Koran as his prize. As a university student, he sometimes went to the races to test his own algorithm for calculating each horse's chances.

After a study exchange to Paris in 2004, he travelled to the land of his forebears, Macedonia, and the former war zones of Kosovo and Albania.

"The Albanians have welcomed me like a brother," he wrote to friends. "When I arrived in Paris, I had a lot of trouble finding accommodation and was extremely stressed out. A Muslim guy from Tajikistan met me and offered me his kindness - we lived together for four months like brothers. When I asked how I could thank him, he told me to help another Muslim.

"In Sarajevo, a young guy walked up to me saying that Allah had directed him to ask me for help. He needed a bus ride back to his village. I helped him out and was told that, as well as being assured a place in paradise by his mujahideen father, a Muslim on Earth would help me. This has happened in Albania. Co-incidence? Probably. But enough to get any atheist thinking."

"I remember thinking what a grounded guy he was," Glasson says. "He seemed so in touch with everything."

In January 2006, Joannou received a call from his sister, who told him his 21-year-old cousin had stepped off the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

No one saw it coming. Nathan's usually brilliant mind had been going "around and around". A GP diagnosed mild depression but stopped short of prescribing medication. "You can only wonder whether he thought, 'If this is only mild, what will it be like if it gets worse?' " Joannou says.

But there was no note and no answers. Almost three years later, his friends and family are still searching.

Whether creative people are at higher risk is a matter of debate, Professor Ian Hickie from the Brain and Mind Research Institute says, but their loss hits us particularly hard.

"There is no typical person. We are just as likely to get depression if we are high-achieving, if we've got success, personality and other skills as anybody else," he says.

He says 75 per cent of illnesses arise before the age of 25, "when people are at the peak of their physical fitness, when they're starting to succeed in the world, and when everyone expects everything to be fine".

Studies show young people know mental illness is common but don't know what it is or what can be done about it.

Like Tristan Jepson, another revuer and young lawyer whose death forced the legal profession to re-examine its responsibility to young professionals, Nathan's death has not been in vain.

With the Sydney CBD Rotary Club, his family has established Nathan's Bequest to fund research and awareness of mental health and to stop others taking that awful final step.

It is funding research by a West Australian PhD candidate, Kristine Northey, who hopes one day to develop indices to identify the most vulnerable children before suicidal behaviours manifest in adolescence.

A fund-raising dinner on November 17 aims to raise $150,000 to pay an extra researcher on Professor Hickie's team.

"The hurdle we want to get over is for people, if they think they have symptoms, to go and start a conversation with someone," Joannou says.

"It could be a matter of life and death."

For information about Nathan's Bequest, phone Ali Wanchap on 0412 726 882.

Also see Lifeline (phone 131 114) and www.livingisforeveryone.com.au.

We Will Name Him, Sparkles...

Battered Men Get Their Own Refuge - theguardian.co.uk

Jamie Doward, Social Affairs Editor
theguardian.co.uk
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2003/dec/21/socialcare.uknews

Britain's first safe house for battered men is to open in secret over the New Year. The refuge, in south-west England, will shelter men and their children who have been physically or emotionally abused by a female partner.
A second centre will open early next year in north-west England, and organisers plan to create a national network eventually.
The revelation of the refuges is likely to reignite the debate over the true picture of domestic abuse, which men's support groups say is far more complex than is often portrayed in the media.
According to the most recent British Crime Survey, for 1996, 4.2 per cent of men and an equal proportion of women said they had been assaulted by a current or former partner in the previous year. In those incidents involving injury just under 50 per cent of women were hurt, and 31 per cent of men.
The survey found that 23 per cent of women and 15 per cent of men aged between 16 and 59 said they had been physically assaulted by a partner at some time.
Men's rights groups argue, however, that the male figure could be even higher because men are reluctant to admit being victims. They say at least one in every six incidents of domestic violence - around 18 per cent - are committed by women on men.
'At the last count there were 426 shelters for women in Britain. That means there should be at least 70 refuges for men. Yet up until now there was none,' said David Hughes, editor of Male View magazine, which represents the views of the charity Mankind Initiative.
Hughes hoped the shelter idea would take off. 'Once the first centre has opened and it's proved useful others are bound to follow. We're trying to get financing to have a refuge in each region,' Hughes said.
Ian Hancock, the NHS director of psychological services in Dumfries and Galloway and an expert on domestic abuse, said: 'It's difficult for anybody if they're being battered but with men their problem is compounded by the fact that they feel they shouldn't allow themselves to be battered by a woman.
'The idea that it makes you some kind of weakling means it's a double whammy for men. It affects their self-esteem,' Hancock said.
Many myths attached to the issue needed to be dismantled, Hancock said. 'People have this image of muscular women and weedy men but size has got nothing to do with it. A man can be twice the size of his female partner and still be battered by her.'
The crime survey acknowledged that a significant number of men believe the Government is failing to take the issue of domestic abuse against them seriously. 'Male victims of domestic violence are particularly unhappy about the level of support offered by agencies, especially by the police,' it noted.
'It may be that support agencies have a particular problem in recognising that male victims can be just as in need of support and advice as female victims.'
Steve Fitzgerald, who helped set up the new shelter in the south-west, said: 'This is a major breakthrough. Women are just as likely to commit violence in the home as men. For too long there has been this gender apartheid which has meant this important issue has been ignored.'
The new refuge, which is already sheltering two battered men, has a family bedroom, a living room, access to a bathroom and kitchen and is staffed by volunteers.
It was welcomed by David Smith, 46, who has three small children. 'I've been emotionally abused by my wife since I married her over six years ago. People see her in public and think she's wonderful, but they don't see the private side to her,' he said.
'I didn't see her angry temper until we were married. It's awful. She loses her temper a lot and uses foul language in front of the children. You can't stop her once she's started. I've asked her to go for counselling but she won't.
'I have to leave the house and take the children with me. Sometimes she hits me but I'm a lot stronger than her. I'm trained in martial arts so it's not a problem physically. We're still living together but I'm losing hope.'
While the shelter's focus is on helping men, its founders stress the help it can give to child victims of domestic abuse. 'Sixty-four per cent of child abuse is committed by mothers,' Hughes said.

Daze

Jeez last night was the business. Holidaying in the adolescent vibe of beers and Bondi bikini bods at the Beach Burrito Bar - swept away into something simpler. Cheaper yes, but so agreeably simpler. Baking in the last violet throws of the dusk sun, I decided to flick though the pages of the magazine sitting next to me: Vice. I hadn't met that mag before… and what a perfect indulgence! Stellar wordsmiths sculpting in-crowd, self-referential, pop-cult nonsense - the pomo indifferent shit that fucks me right off when I’m breathing smog in Surry Hills chained to the pain of a hard day's work, so suddenly a splendidly boundless cavern of literary tomfoolery. Willingly dissolved into my bubblegum wonderland, I guffawed at paragraphs like this one…

“How long into his life can a man keep fucking? Here in Japan, there is one brave grandpa who is using his own body to answer that question. His name is Shigeo Tokuda and he is a 74-year-old porn performer. He often stars in movies staged in old-age homes—like, as in “gramps fucks his hot little nurse”—which frankly we have no clue who would want to watch, save for the morbid chuckles factor. Regardless, we headed over to meet this geriatric pussy master and ask him questions about his ancient cock”.

… but I was left wiping guacamole from my nostrils when I read:

“You probably think of Monty Python as a symbol of the sad, forced eccentricity your uptight gay British dad used to display when he was in a cheery mood or when he was drunk on schnapps. In fact, maybe the very words “Monty Python” act as a Pavlovian trigger for traumatic memories of the shame of seeing your mum silently cry while Dad went on about the Spanish Inquisition and the Ministry of Funny Walks. But go a little deeper into your id and you’ll realize that your dad was a thwarted artist who secretly wanted to have you aborted so he could pursue an experimental theatrical comedy career. And it’s all Monty Python’s fault. The influence runs that deep”.

Ah… youth and young manhood. I’m not over the hill yet.

The Times They Are A-Changin'

From the Gospel according to St. Thomas

Jesus said: I tell my mysteries to those who are worthy of my mysteries. He said: There was a rich man who had much money, and who said: I will use my money that I may sow and reap and plant and fill my storehouses with fruit so that I lack nothing. This was what he thought in his heart. And that night he died. Whoever has ears, let him hear.

The Next President

This is one of those moments in history when it is worth pausing to reflect on the basic facts:

An American with the name Barack Hussein Obama, the son of a white woman and a black man he barely knew, raised by his grandparents far outside the stream of American power and wealth, has been elected the 44th president of the United States.

Showing extraordinary focus and quiet certainty, Mr. Obama swept away one political presumption after another to defeat first Hillary Clinton, who wanted to be president so badly that she lost her bearings, and then John McCain, who forsook his principles for a campaign built on anger and fear.

His triumph was decisive and sweeping, because he saw what is wrong with this country: the utter failure of government to protect its citizens. He offered a government that does not try to solve every problem but will do those things beyond the power of individual citizens: to regulate the economy fairly, keep the air clean and the food safe, ensure that the sick have access to health care, and educate children to compete in a globalized world.

Mr. Obama spoke candidly of the failure of Republican economic policies that promised to lift all Americans but left so many millions far behind. He committed himself to ending a bloody and pointless war. He promised to restore Americans’ civil liberties and their tattered reputation around the world.

With a message of hope and competence, he drew in legions of voters who had been disengaged and voiceless. The scenes Tuesday night of young men and women, black and white, weeping and cheering in Chicago and New York and in Atlanta’s storied Ebenezer Baptist Church were powerful and deeply moving.

Mr. Obama inherits a terrible legacy. The nation is embroiled in two wars — one of necessity in Afghanistan and one of folly in Iraq. Mr. Obama’s challenge will be to manage an orderly withdrawal from Iraq without igniting new conflicts so the Pentagon can focus its resources on the real front in the war on terror, Afghanistan.

The campaign began with the war as its central focus. By Election Day, Americans were deeply anguished about their futures and the government’s failure to prevent an economic collapse fed by greed and an orgy of deregulation. Mr. Obama will have to move quickly to impose control, coherence, transparency and fairness on the Bush administration’s jumbled bailout plan.

His administration will also have to identify all of the ways that Americans’ basic rights and fundamental values have been violated and rein that dark work back in. Climate change is a global threat, and after years of denial and inaction, this country must take the lead on addressing it. The nation must develop new, cleaner energy technologies, to reduce greenhouse gases and its dependence on foreign oil.

Mr. Obama also will have to rally sensible people to come up with immigration reform consistent with the values of a nation built by immigrants and refugees.

There are many other urgent problems that must be addressed. Tens of millions of Americans lack health insurance, including some of the country’s most vulnerable citizens — children of the working poor. Other Americans can barely pay for their insurance or are in danger of losing it along with their jobs. They must be protected.

Mr. Obama will now need the support of all Americans. Mr. McCain made an elegant concession speech Tuesday night in which he called on his followers not just to honor the vote, but to stand behind Mr. Obama. After a nasty, dispiriting campaign, he seemed on that stage to be the senator we long respected for his service to this country and his willingness to compromise.

That is a start. The nation’s many challenges are beyond the reach of any one man, or any one political party.

New York Times Election Night Editorial
(from http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/05/opinion/05wed1.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin)
A version of this article appeared in print on November 5, 2008, on page A34 of the New York edition

Hope

Ashes to Ashes

Enfrightened

Voter registration at highest level since women got the vote

From http://blogs.usatoday.com/onpolitics/2008/11/voter-registrat.html

The Center for the Study of the American Electorate today released its voter registration figures for this election. The increase was moderate -- 2.5% -- but the result is a record.
The center, part of American University, projects that 153.1 million of the country's eligible citizens are now registered to vote. That's 73.5% -- better than the previous high of 72.1% in 1964 and the highest since at least 1920, when women were given the right to vote.
Center director Curtis Gans says this is the second straight election with a significant registration increase, coming after a 3% boost in 2004. He says as many as 135 million people -- nearly 65% of those eligible -- could turn out to vote. That would be the highest turnout since 1960.
Gans projects Democratic registration will be up 1.4% or 2.9 million this year, while GOP registration will be down 1.5 million. The center said that's a small drop but that it declined at all "in this year of intense citizen interest in the election is significant."
Twenty-eight states and the District of Columbia have partisan registration. Based on information so far, the center said, Democratic registration went up significantly in Nevada, Pennsylvania, Colorado, Arizona, New Jersey and Maryland. GOP registration declined in Colorado, Florida and Pennsylvania, but rose in Nevada.

photofunia.com

I've been having a cheap laugh with this website over the last day or so: photofunia.com

Zak Stein in Integral Leadership Review

I didn't know this cool tidbit from the social commentariat.

"In the early 1970's the sociologist and cultural critic Daniel Bell wrote a book titled, The Coming of Post-industrial Society. Across the Atlantic at the same time Habermas offered a slim volume titled, Legitimation Crisis. Both books prophetically outlined emerging trends in post-industrial economic and state bureaucracies and in post-modern cultural forms and norms. Bell and Habermas both suggested that part and parcel of the major socio-cultural shift underway are drastic increases in the task-demands of work and life, which require the emergence of a new group of knowledge workers specifically concerned with the psychological complexities of the new socio-cultural milieu. Bell in particular foretold of a shift in the value of different types of knowledge. As techno-economic innovations accelerate we will come to devalue specific types of technical knowledge regarding production processes because this knowledge is destined for obsolescence. Instead, we will begin to value psychological knowledge about the motivational and cognitive processes of the people who face the ever-shifting demands of post-industrial society. Habermas saw a comparable trend affecting political systems. The problems facing state bureaucracies are quickly becoming so incomprehensibly complex that leaders may feel forced to manufacture consent, e.g. via the strategic deployment of psychologically sophisticated advertising regimes. Fueled by this insight Habermas would write prolifically on the psychological demands of a post-modern democratic public-sphere and on the need for sociologists and psychologists to arrange ameliorative interventions. The bottom line in both accounts is that there are world-historical structural transformations underway that demand the creation and dissemination of psychological technologies. Psychological technologies are becoming a valuable resource".

- Zak Stein, from 'Myth Busting and Metric Making:Refashioning the Discourse about Development Excursus' Integral Leadership Review Volume VIII, No. 5 - October 2008
http://www.integralleadershipreview.com/archives/2008-10/2008-10-article-stein.php

Bizarre insult redux

 

"He believes in redistributing wealth, not in policies that grow our economy and create jobs".

• John McCain
  

 

From SMH - Ah, McCain, you've done it again - now he's after the middle class

Mira Oberman in Durango, Colorado

JOHN McCAIN has cast himself as the defender of the middle class and the American value of rewarding hard work while warning voters of his rival's plans to "tax and spend".

With frontrunner Barack Obama off the campaign trail - on a mercy dash to his dying grandmother, who raised him - Senator McCain continued to try to tar the Democratic presidential hopeful as a secret socialist in a bid to sway voters 11 days before the November 4 election.

"He believes in redistributing wealth, not in policies that grow our economy and create jobs," he told a rally in Colorado Springs, Colorado. "Senator Obama may say he's trying to soak the rich, but it's the middle class who are going to get put through the wringer, because a lot of his promised tax increase misses the target."

But the gap has narrowed this week as Senator McCain hammered away at Senator Obama for telling an Ohio plumber - wary of the Democrats' tax plans - that everyone is better off when you "spread the wealth around".

The Rise of the Idiots

(and don't forget ya roots: www.tvgohome.com)

Cute Spiral Dymanics Picture

State of the Union - Edmund Berrigan

I want you to understand

that I don’t know why I’m here.

I was born in another country

with which I now have no association.

I was raised in a New York City

that has been wiped away by economics.

Much of my immediate family has

been removed from this life,

& much of my sense of experience

of this life has been removed with them,

making all of us new people.

I have let much of my sense of self

be informed by an art that is little used

& undervalued. I have sacrificed many

social relationships to these experiences,

which are inextricably linked, because

I come from a family of poets. The life

& values of a poet are antithetical to the

political landscape of the country

I live in, & no political machination

that I may inhabit remotely serves

the causes for which I live, though

I am bound to this land by knowledge of it.

I continue in poetry & song

because the experiences of my senses

are wholly held in these continuous

& inexplicable drives, their reason

& mine never idle or held to law or language.

The Paranormal is Terrific

The paranormal make furnace fetishes,

beyond the will of a shoveller

I'm dumb enough to know coal

is a poor whore so I sleep not

where I work but where I dream.

• Edmund Berrigan

On Singing

I've attempted this post a couple of times this morning, each time left despondent in the face of a remorseless laptop nemesis.

So - the bare facts instead of the story.

I have fucked shoulders and neck pain after impacted wisdom teeth broke my jaw, a stupid bout of tomfoolery in my youth broke my shoulder and years of study and work at a computer when I should have been out sewing my wild oats broke my heart.

The worst of it is the way my throat locks up and makes it impossible for me to find my real voice. I haven't known how to catch it for almost four years, and trust me, not sounding like yourself really plays terrible tricks on the identity.

Coming out of it, I've learned that extended periods of singing works better than almost anything else.

I find it stretches my throat muscles, heats up my larynx, energises my bloodflow, and today the whammy... reminds me that I don't speak from my mouth. I speak through my mouth, but before that comes the voicebox.

This is a big realisation. I'm simply more embodied. I've been stuck in my head for a long time, but also feel very large in my heart - which makes the process of dragging the crown back down to the root is really difficult when my throat is so closed up. The bridge is busy.

Singing not from my mouth, but from my throat seems to give me access to a deeper expression of true intention... which, most happily, leaves me more transparent for others therefore making connections more authentic. The face of God which arises in the I-Thou relationship between people is my most cherished, and sadly, least frequent. It's lovely to have more access to this part of myself again.

The energetic crowd would say that I'm not speaking my truth thereby closing down the Vishudda centre - and they'd certainly be right. I haven't robustly known my truth for a long time through this existential crisis and dark night - and so authentically speaking anything other than that has been impossible (especially when I have competing needs for social communion and nobody's truly interested in hearing the depths of my process - not to mention of course, the clusterfuck of lies that make up my working life). Again, this process of singing has allowed me to capture a powerful location of manifestation in that region, and a sense that my crown is allowed to stretch up again, giving the postural channels for flow between chakra points more room to discuss their perspectives.

I'm endlessly touched by these powerful gifts we're handed, and the complexity of their unfoldment. Who do I thank for the gift of singing? It's always brought me such joy, and now also physical, emotional and spiritual therapy. And, like all that is truly nourishing, it don't cost a dime.

Is NZ the first hint of a Children of Men-esque crisis?

In uncanny timing, this article was published in the SMH today after Sass and I last night finally sat down to watch Alfonso Cuarón's superb apocalyptic flick Children of Men.

The quality of New Zealand men's sperm has halved in two decades - the most dramatic drop of any western country.

New research presented to a gathering of international fertility researchers in Brisbane today was told that the sperm volume carried by the average New Zealand man decreased from about 110 million to 50 million per millilitre between 1987 and 2007.

"It's rather dramatic indeed, and one of the largest seen in studies in other parts of the world," said lead researcher Dr John Peek, of Fertility Associates in Auckland.

He said the fall represented a drop from very good to good sperm quality.

But if the downward trend continued towards the 20 million "danger mark, we would definitely be running into trouble".

The findings, to be published in the New Zealand Medical Journal, are based on sperm quality data from men volunteering as mystery sperm donors.

The biggest drop was seen in the first decade with a slower decline in recent years.

This contrasts with Australia and the United States, where no decline has been seen. Studies from Scotland and France show marginal declines.

Dr Peek said there were two broad theories on sperm quality decline, one being that semen was affected by environmental toxins, diet and modern changes in lifestyle.

"The other is that it is a consequence of what happened when the guy was a baby in the womb, and what his mother was exposed to, but it's still unclear," he said.

Sydney specialist Professor Michael Chapman, from IVF Australia, said the trend was "worrying" for our Antipodean neighbours, saying it was to such a degree that it was unlikely to be random chance.

"Maybe they have something else going on over the Tasman," Prof Chapman said.

But Professor Rob McLachlan, director of Andrology Australia in Melbourne, said any trend was likely to be global, and the jury was still out as several studies were contradictory.

"Global trends are differing so we don't have a clear picture on this yet," Prof McLachlan said.

"New Zealand is unlikely to have a different situation unless," he joked, "you consider all the fertile New Zealand men may be heading over here".

Powell emphatically endorses Obama

Mind Games

Elephant In The Room - Banksy

A Most Bizarre Insult

"The whole premise behind Senator Obama's plans are class warfare plus spread the wealth around."

- John McCain revealing his core faith in systemic social stratification when shamelessly seeking to frame Barack Obama as a socialist in the 3rd and final Presidential Debate.

"Could this crisis get any stranger?"

Step right up for the $20b red-spot special
Annabel Crabb October 14, 2008

COULD this crisis get any stranger? We're now in a state of confirmed international fiscal panic, but there's money everywhere.
Six months ago, Kevin Rudd and Wayne Swan were heavily involved with two mysterious women - one called Budgetary Prudence, and another one called Inflation Jeannie, whom they were keen on stuffing back into some kind of bottle.
Everyone was most insistent that Australia should be saving all its pennies for tougher times. Yesterday, all that went out the window.
"Those tough times have come, and we are well positioned to act in anticipation of them," declared Mr Rudd, with the slightly alarming blend of conviction and nonsensicality on which we have come to depend in his historic public statements.
That's right, working families: if I may translate from the original Ruddese, it's time to spend the surplus.
Prudence be damned. If you can think of a good way to spend $20 billion, then step right up.
If you have a plan to irrigate the Red Centre by means of snowballs propelled by a series of giant pea-shooters ranged around the Antarctic, don't be shy - just ask Kevin for the seed funding.
Looking for funding for your chip-fat-fuelled personal jet pack?
Get yourself to Canberra.
Got a madcap scheme to put bags on the bottoms of cows to catch their gaseous emissions?
Actually, whoops - scratch that. We're already funding the bovine bottom-bags.
Even as the Prime Minister spoke, a faint drumming sound became audible, reminiscent
of wildebeest stampeding across the Serengeti.
No prizes for guessing what it was; hordes of lobbyists, descending upon the capital to share their ideas about how to blow a gazillion bucks, pronto.
Nation-building is the new national security.
It used to be that to prove your patriotic love for this great country, all you had to do was uncomplainingly surrender your right to habeas corpus.
Nowadays, you have to be cool about personally underwriting the Government's guarantee that by the end of this decade, no Australian bank will live in poverty.
Also, you have to be really, really enthusiastic about nation-building.
Yesterday, the Opposition suggested that the surplus should be spent on tax cuts for Australians.
Mr Rudd was utterly withering in his response.
It was as though the Libs had turned up to an Ashes decider wearing Barmy Army outfits.
The humble taxpayer, watching question time yesterday, could be forgiven for feeling a bit disjointed from all of this. We know there's a crisis, because we've seen it on television.
But apart from some nervous near-superannuants and those with speculative share-holdings, there aren't too many Aussies who have felt any actual pain yet, and for plenty of home-owners, the global financial crisis so far looks like kind of a nifty way of getting an interest rate cut.
Their greatest risk of injury at this stage is getting hit on the head by a falling wad of Government hundred-dollar bills, or hearing damage from Anthony Albanese noisily digging a Paris-style metro under the nature strip.
This story was found at: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2008/10/13/1223749937096.html

Beneath the financial crisis waits a nastier beast

Waleed Aly October 13, 2008

The most lasting fallout of the global financial crisis is unlikely to be economic. This is the nature of true financial disaster: in the long run it brings down ideas, recasts societies and redistributes power in a way that resonates far beyond its lifespan. One day, the markets will stabilise and even recover, but the political terrain will likely be altered irrevocably.
Some ideological consequences are relatively obvious. Many commentators have already written obituaries for the creed of zealous deregulation that has prevailed throughout the Western world and especially in America. Indeed, that the Australian Government faces pressure to guarantee bank deposits establishes emphatically that people still want their governments to protect them, and are simply not soothed by promises of "market correction".
In short, regulation and state intervention are likely to become more fashionable than at any time since the end of the Cold War. In political science terms, it seems we're about to veer left. Witness a Republican president's $US700 billion example.
But few are yet asking what this might mean for social politics. Perhaps this is because it seems a separate matter to questions of economic policy. Yet it is foolish to assume that each can be quarantined from the other.
Economics is important precisely because it has the power to topple social dominoes. And it is in the realm of social politics that some of the most frightening possibilities of the financial crisis suggest themselves.
Consider the Great Depression, to which some are ominously likening this crisis. Latin America, which was hit particularly savagely because of its significant trade links with the US, retreated into a shrill form of nationalism. The result was the rise of fascism across the continent.
The Netherlands witnessed a series of riots, increased xenophobia, and the emergence of the National Socialist Party. And most infamously of course, there was Germany. With the national economy overwhelmingly financed by American loans, the collapse of the New York sharemarket had a devastating impact. A desperate working-class sought solace in communism, while an emasculated middle class leapt sharply to ultra-nationalism. The familiar consequence was the ascension of the Nazis, whose support base suddenly broadened.
This is what happens in times of great insecurity. As the foundations of our lives erode, we search for an anchor, and social politics very often provides it. When all else fails, we may still rally around old certainties: nation, culture, religion, race. We crave strong authority figures that can imbue us with certainty and articulate for us a sense of self. That often involves fabricating a scapegoat who becomes a mortal enemy.

In Germany, of course, Jews principally fulfilled that function, becoming the victims of an entire mythology that blamed them for the economic difficulties of "real" Germans. Such virulent prejudice soothes the insecure.
The bad news for us is that malignant social politics have been slowly returning for a while in Russia, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium, Italy, Britain, Denmark and Norway. And it is an affliction that spreads well beyond Europe in the form of radicalism in the Muslim world and Hindu and Buddhist nationalisms in Asia.
Ours is an age of hostile identity politics. These are not all directly referable to economic crises (even if they clearly have a relationship with the anxieties of globalisation), but they suggest something deeply troubling: that the world is rich in the kinds of xenophobic resources so easily amplified by economic turmoil.
Should the financial crisis become a global recession, there is no telling precisely what forms of extreme social politics might be unleashed. An explosion of anti-Americanism across Asia and Europe? Possibly. But what about America itself? Here, the seeds of xenophobic resentment are being sown.
Writing in The National Review, Michelle Malkin blames the crisis on illegal immigrants and Hispanics who were "greedy" enough to seek subprime loans. Blogging for the same publication, Mark Krikorian wonders if Washington Mutual's demise was caused by its propensity for employing Latinos and gays. On Fox News, Neil Cavuto blames congressmen who were "pushing for more minority lending" without disclosing that "loaning to minorities and risky folks is a disaster".
The audacity is extraordinary. Suddenly, this crisis is something poor blacks and Hispanics have inflicted on rich white people. That is beginning to sound, well, Germanic.
A reaction is inevitable: one that sees in the crisis the exploitation of poor black people who will lose their homes, by white fat cats who skip away from the rubble with millions. The potential cycle of conflictual identity politics is terrifying. And that is to say nothing of developments we cannot predict.
We can hope none of this comes to pass. Obviously much is contingent on precisely how deep this financial hole is, and how much suffering awaits. But however many reasons we have to hope this crisis will not match the depths of the Depression, after contemplating the possible social consequences, we may add several more.
Waleed Aly is a lecturer in politics at Monash University.
This story was found at: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2008/10/12/1223749846530.html

Archetypes

Two-System Integration Chart
Focus/Motivation Core Desire Leadership Style (Element) Stability/ Structure Desire to feel safe and in control Administrator (Earth) People/ Belonging Desire to belong and feel valued Facilitator (Water) Results/ Mastery Desire to have a special impact on the world Manager (Fire) Learning/ Identity Desire to be yourself and find out about the world Mentor (Air) Stage One: Preparation Socialization Archetypes (Locates power in the group and social systems) Caregiver Orphan (Regular Guy/Gal) Warrior (Hero) Innocent Stage Two: Journey Change Archetypes (Takes back personal power and freedom) Creator Lover Destroyer (Outlaw) Seeker (Explorer) Stage Three: Return Restabilization Archetypes (Exerts personal power in the world) Ruler Jester Magician Sage From http://www.herowithin.com/arch101.html