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Thursday, September 30, 2004

Is Australia on the brink of change?

Two perceptive friends sniff a change in electoral mood. Glenn hears reporters use more positive adjectives and verbs when describing the ALP. Digby watches marginal seats prepare to tumble. Elsewhere the bookies increase ALP numbers by six percentage points. Please let them be a sign of better days ahead.
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Wednesday, September 29, 2004

Check ...

1. e4, e5
2. Nf3, d6
3. Bb5+, Bd7
4. a4, Bxb5
5. axb5, b6
6. d4, exd4
7. Bg5, f6
8. Bh4, c5
9. Na3, g5
10. Bg3, h6
11. Nc4, a6
12. e5, fxe5
13. O-O, Nf6
14. bxa6, Nxa6
15. Qd3, Nb4
16. Qg6+, Kd7
17. Ra-d1, Ne4
18. Qf7+, Kc6
19. Nfxe5+, 

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Tuesday, September 28, 2004

Learning by numbers (part 3): When the saints go marching in

234 345 -345 456
234 345 -345 456
234 345 -345 456 345 234 345 -234
345 345 -234 234 234 345 456 456 456 -45
345 -345 456 345 234 -234 234
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Monday, September 27, 2004

Business is booming at the Baghdad morgue.

Before the war, before the fall of Saddam Hussein's government, seven or eight bodies arrived each day at this nondescript building in northeastern Baghdad for autopsies. Most deaths resulted from car crashes or other accidents. Killings were rare, and gun violence rarer still, a testament to the monopoly that Mr. Hussein held on the use of force.

Now the paper-and-cardboard ledgers where the autopsies are logged are torn from overuse. On an average day, the morgue receives 20 to 25 bodies, the human cost of the post-war wave of crime and insurgency engulfing the city.

"The unexpected change is an increase in bullet injuries," said Dr. Abdul Razzaq al-Obeidi, one of the morgue's chief doctors. "Mostly vengeance." In the first eight months of this year nearly 3,000 people in municipal Baghdad, which has about five million residents, have died from gunshot wounds - nearly all homicides, Dr. Obeidi said. A surge of killings in September has only increased the pressure.

By Alex Berenson The New York Times
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Saturday, September 25, 2004

Mutant poppy

Scientists have discovered a poppy that does not produce addictive drugs - and are using it to make safer painkillers.

Friday, September 24, 2004

The Terminal

I thought it was rather sweet (in a pleasant way) and fun for the most part. It fell apart for me as soon as Victor stepped outside the hermetically sealed world with which he's forced to negotiate: the terminal. CZJ is as gorgeous as ever but her part seemed regrettably slight for the good actor that she is. Victor is nothing like that ghastly Gump creation, which was just plain, old-fashioned insulting to intelligence. I thought TH gave us a finely nuanced comic turn. With a stronger script it could have been up there with his best comedy work but it didn't quite hit the spot. I’m afraid I wasn’t at all persuaded by Stanley Tucci’s Dixon. He can phone-in such characters, he’s so good at them, but his reasons for being the bastard of the piece are far from convincing. I did like the three stooges: Gupta's juggling drew spontaneous applause from the crowd in which we sat, all of whom seemed to go home with smiles on their faces. Looking for anything more profound than that effect seems to me to be asking too much of a vehicle like this.
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Thursday, September 23, 2004

Two wrongs make nothing right

The war in Iraq is unjust, unlawful and indefensible. But nothing in that sentence justifies a decision to cut off the head of a fellow human being. Neither approach results in the liberation of Iraq. We're all damaged by both.
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Wednesday, September 22, 2004

What do you mean, junk?

Hidden, perhaps,
in a small, brown paper bag,
half-heartedly sealed
with the crumpled expectation
that renewed interest
in its contents would emerge
at some unspecified time
and place in a future
that no one can guess
with any possibility of accuracy,
or even an approximation
that comes close
to being correct:
a memento of another
time and place, from a past
that none of us can re-create,
gnaws at the current contentment
of this ordinary life.

And when we move house again
the chances are that I will not know
the answer to the same old questions,
asked each time we pack our lives
inside some borrowed boxes: what is it
that you keep this old junk for? Does it
really have to come with us this time?

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Tuesday, September 21, 2004

Happy Birthday, Leonard Cohen

Like a bird on a wire
Like a drunk in a midnight choir
I have tried, in my way, to be free
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Monday, September 20, 2004

Sacrificed to the doctrine of 'pre-emption'

Flowers decorate a pair of combat boots in Federal Plaza (Chicago, USA) representing the death of Army Pfc. Shawn C. Edwards of Bensenville, Ill. The boots are among 1022 pairs representing all of the U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq since the war began. The American Friends Service Committee has displayed the exhibit in over 30 cities around the country since its debut in Chicago last January. (Photo: M. Spencer Green / AP Photo)
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Sunday, September 19, 2004

I Robot

I, BORED ... U, BORED ... EVERYONE, BORED ... The 3 Laws of crap movie making.
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Friday, September 17, 2004

And today's word is ... tenuous

According to the BBC:
"US officials have acknowledged the existence of a secret intelligence report on Iraq offering gloomy predictions for the country's future. The report - a compilation of assessments by intelligence agencies - puts forward three possible scenarios in Iraq by the end of 2005. They range from what the report calls tenuous stability to political fragmentation and civil war. It was prepared for President Bush before a recent escalation of violence. "
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Thursday, September 16, 2004

Bit of a worry

It is not in the louse's nature to be gloomy. It is difficult, however, not to believe, or perhaps I mean fear, that voters in Australia and the United States of America are about to return incumbents who have traded on fear, speculating that their futures are best served by making others worry about their futures. It's a ghastly prospect. I hope that I am wrong. 

Anyone but Bush? Anyone but Howard? Those are insufficient ideas upon which to build a better future for everyone. But answering yes to both would be a good outcome to begin renewal.

Oh, yes, lest we forget, the UN Secretary General reminded us again today: the war in Iraq was unlawful.
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Wednesday, September 15, 2004

Condolences

What can anyone say
to make sense of it?
“God takes his own”
and “the good die young”
in idiot recompense for loss
we do not understand,
dare not accept
and cannot reconcile
in an ordinary world
that keeps on spinning,
though we are hurled
in an abyss of duties
fraught with danger
for our fragile hearts,
which bleed
as innocence departs,
taking with it all
our certainty and youth
and everything we took
from you as truth.

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Tuesday, September 14, 2004

Learning by numbers (part 2): Bridge over troubled water

5 -5 5-4 4 -5 6 5
-6 -6 -6 6 7 -6
-6 -6 6 5-4 4
5 -4 4 -4 6-8
6 5-4 4 5
6 8 -8 7 -8 -8

8 -8 7 -7-6 -6 6 5 6
-6 7 -8 8 -8
-8 8 7 -7-6 -6 6 5 6
-6 7 -8 8 7
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Monday, September 13, 2004

Vale Kevin Byrne

Dear PDCN Member, colleague and friends,

Many of you may not have heard the profoundly sad news of the untimely and sudden death of Kevin Byrne on Saturday, 11th September.

At a time like this, and in these circumstances, words seem wholly inadequate.

We mourn the loss of a leader in disability advocacy, a shining example of compassionate humanity and a truly remarkable man. Among his many contributions, Kevin was the first President of PDCN and remained on our Management Committee until his death. Indeed we expected Kevin to be making his usual wise, witty and perceptive contributions to our Management Committee when we gather for our scheduled meeting this evening. It will be impossible for members present not to reflect on the loss made painfully evident by Kevin's absence from our lively discussions. For our part, we will do our best tonight to honour Kevin's life and legacy by re-committing ourselves to advocacy in action in favour of people with disability.

Finally, for the moment, on behalf of everyone involved with PDCN I express our deepest condolences to Pat, Kevin's wife, whose loss and pain must be almost unbearable. There could have been no finer man than Kevin with whom to share one's life and love.

Dougie Herd
Executive Officer
Physical Disability Council of New South Wales
St Helen's Community Centre
3/184 Glebe Point Road
Glebe NSW 2037
Australia

Tel: + 61 (0) 2 9552 1606
Fax: + 61 (0) 2 9552 4644
PDCNSW Inc is funded by the NSW Government's Department of Ageing, Disability and Home Care. Views expressed by PDC NSW Inc are not necessarily endorsed by the NSW Government.
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Sunday, September 12, 2004

Some may call this folly

(for Jeff Heath and now, it's sad to say, Kevin Byrne)

In the last week I’ve rejected offers to pick up riches beyond the dreams of avarice. Not once, I might add, not twice, but three times. In one week.

Firstly there was 15% from Mr Odongo, son of a multi-millionaire who died in a plane crash in some quiet corner of Nigeria. On Wednesday, according to Mrs Jackie Paeta (no return address) I won US$1,000,000 in El Gordo Sweepstakes. That came as a surprise because I never bought a ticket. But hey, you know what they say: stranger things happen at sea.

Today I received a tragic tale from Samuel Nguessan. His dad was assassinated recently, in Sierra Leone apparently. Sammy wants my help to claim US$5,500,000 stuck in a bank vault somewhere. And because I’m helping Sam, he tells me, I get 20%.

So it seems that in return for giving those people my bank details and date of birth I will receive about US$5,000,000. I have already ordered the Ferrari. There’s a four-cabin yacht I’ve had my eye on for a while. And do you know that absolute waterfront palace that’s been advertised in the property pages? You guessed it … sold to the man who cornered the market in easy money.

But wait a minute. There are a couple of things wrong here.

Firstly: the Ferrari. I use a wheelchair. Have you any idea how hard it is to transfer out of a Ferrari? They’re four inches off the ground. And where would I store the ‘chair? Better think again about the prancing pony.

No, I’m joking. The Ferrari aint the problem. (I’ll just get a trophy blonde to help me transfer … sorry, I’ll be serious!)

The problem is this. What do I do about my own cynicism?

Oscar Wilde wrote, “a cynic is a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing”. He was correct.

Despite the behaviour of George W Bush, I try hard not to be cynical. But even I have limits, which makes me say to Mr Odongo, Mrs Paeta and Sammy Nguessan - I don’t think so somehow. Many may suggest that’s hardly cynicism. Rejecting those offers to get rich quick hardly requires a brain the size of a planet. They are scams - stupid, obvious, shallow scams inviting vulnerable, naïve, silly people to connect with their baser instincts and greedy impulses.

Gimme, gimme, gimme – me, me, me.

My more fundamental questions go beyond the Nigerian e.mail scam. In a land where every pub, it seems, has more pokies than paying customers, where ten squillion lottery games are drawn every evening on television and public services that are underwritten by taxes derived, in no small part, from roulette tables, one-armed bandits and scratch cards, who am I to castigate those who dream of getting rich as quickly as possible. As the man is reputed to have said, once upon a time, “let he who hath not sinned cast the first stone.”

We all dream, don’t we? Or maybe it’s more accurate to write, we fantasise. We speculate on the idea of being a winner. We price the rewards: X thousand on a car, Y thousand on a house, Z thousand on a world cruise. A, B and C thousands in trust funds for the grandchildren. No big sin there.
But what does that tell us about what we value in life?

Do the roads of Australia, urban speed limit 50 kph, truly need another Ferrari? Do I actually want to cross the ocean on the QE2 or the new Queen Mary? And, you know, if material wealth is all its cracked up to be, how come after 500 years of Capitalism and 220 years of European domination, large numbers of affluent people in our communities feel stressed, alienated and dissatisfied?

But do you know what annoys me even more than all this price of everything / value of nothing rhetoric? It’s this. We manage to have constructed a pattern of self-absorption in our public and private lives that means we say little about what we truly value. Then one day, usually too late, someone offers up a platitude: we never knew how good she, he or it was until she, he or it was gone. What a tragic glorification of inattentiveness.

So I try. I try to value everything about us that money can’t buy. I don’t think Mr Odongo wants to hear that from me. But, as Rhett Butler once said: frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.

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Saturday, September 11, 2004

The Stepford Wives (the remake)

Objectionable crap. Woeful script, tedious direction, pitiful (over) acting, no humour, no tension. Nothing: nada, not a single redeeming feature.
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Friday, September 10, 2004

Get the truth out

There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq 18 months ago. And 'regime change' is against international law. Check out what's truly going on at Truthout.org
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Thursday, September 09, 2004

Route 32



slightly less than half the kicks? 900kms from home.
(~ photo by Susi)
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Wednesday, September 08, 2004

The Bourne Supremacy

The Anti-James-Bond. It's so enjoyable to find a cold-blooded, remorseless, amoral killer you can root for. Matt Damon and the crew from the first one were very good again. Joan Allen was brilliant. Like lots of others I'm kind of over the wobbly camera stuff of pseudo-documentary style. Good use of music, though. Excellent car chase in Moscow (shows Matrix 2 how to do it, without building your own motorway). Pure hokum but very superior hokum. Worth the ticket price and enough loose ends for a third outing some time.
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Tuesday, September 07, 2004

Weekend shower





Photo by Scott Turner in the Sydney Morning Herald

Monday, September 06, 2004

bookies' favourites

automaton hares
fixed forever
to the inside rail
now electrified

dashing neck to neck
over four-forty
or five-twenty
to elude the hounds

bolting from traps
timed exactly
for a pointless pursuit
of the unattainable

and mug punters
down on the night
but running again
at the bookie’s call



(A small group of us went to the dog-racing at Wentworth Park earlier tonight. There was me, Halimah Simpson, Sharon Smith, Holly Stewart and Ed Sutton. We took $50 to bet with, taken from the office 'corporate bet' fund … a collection of coins we've thrown in a jar. We left with $97. I came home then wrote bookies' favourites to remember our triumph by. I don't think we'll be going back, somehow. It's a bit of a sad place, past its sell-by date, and very sparsely populated by anxious, usually disappointed men who drink too much and throw too much away.)
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Sunday, September 05, 2004

Learning by numbers (part 1): Blowin' in the wind

6 6 6 -6 6 -5 6 5 -4 4
5 6 6 -6 6 -5 6
5 -5 6 6 6 -6
6 -5 6 5 -4 4
5 6 5 -5 -5 5 -4
5 -5 6 6 6 -6
6 -5 6 6 5 -4 4
5 6 6 -6 6 -5 6
5 -5 -5 5 -4
-4 5 5 5 -4 4
5 -5 -5 5 -4 -4 4 -4 4


~ Bob Dylan
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Saturday, September 04, 2004

Poetry


I, too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond all
this fiddle.
Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one
discovers in
it after all, a place for the genuine.



~ Marianne Moore
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Friday, September 03, 2004

Hellboy

I saw it in the back of economy class at 35,000 feet so some of the scale might have been lost. But what a fun romp it is. Oh, if only Hulk had been half as credible. There's a truly fine piece of acting by the big red fella. And unlike other offerings this year, such as Van Helsing, Hellboy shows what can be done when the director 'borrows' ideas but tweaks each borrowing just enough to make them new. So, Raiders is here and Blade and Escape from New York and Superman and even Dr Zhivago but it's all done from a slightly different, not quite parallel, universe. The plot is silly to the point of daftness but the movie's delightful with its cornball, lovable cynicism and genuine escapist nonsense. Loved it. Go see. Good value.
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Thursday, September 02, 2004

Bread


Some people, perhaps a multitude,
will swear blindly that a man
called Jesus, fed five thousand of us
with just a few loaves and some fishes.
Or they’ll tell us that their brother’s
sister in law has an auntie who knows
someone at work who has a friend
who is married to an older man,
who ate a salmon sandwich once
that came from a picnic hamper
that a friend was given by a mate’s uncle
who might have been in the area at the time.
If you ask me, that would be a fucking miracle
if it wasn’t one of those urban myths.

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Wednesday, September 01, 2004

History teaches us

John Howard, Prime Minister of Australia, says the Federal Election is about trust. History is not on his side:

In 1768 Lieutenant James Cook set sail from England for the South Pacific with instructions to find the Great South Land. There he was to make friends with the Indigenous people and investigate the potential for trade in goods and resources. He was explicitly ordered not to take possession of any territory without the consent of the inhabitants.

In 1770, Cook claimed to take possession of the whole east coast of Australia by raising the British flag at Possession Island off the northern tip of the Cape York Peninsula - claiming the land as "terra nullius" (empty land). After an encounter with local people in Botany Bay, Cook wrote: "all they seemed to want was us to be gone".
~ NSWALC
La Perouse