http://www.frogworth.com/blog a sporadic weblog Thu, 29 May 2008 05:22:37 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en via Crikey. I love First Dog On The Moon! http://www.frogworth.com/blog/archives/2008/05/29/this-is-jack/ Nothing to see here... just moved to a new server, testing things out. Good evening. http://www.frogworth.com/blog/archives/2008/05/23/testing-testing/ Dagmar Krause's version of the very best Brecht/Weill songs. I like the recorded version better (from her hard-to-find album Supply and Demand but also on the Brecht/Weill compilation Lost in the Stars) but this is still wonderful. Instant Edit: According to this old page, the Lost in the Stars version is different, and superior. Well, there you go! I still need to find her two albums of Brecht songs, plus old Art Bears, Slapp Happy, Henry Cow... :) http://www.frogworth.com/blog/archives/2008/03/19/watch-dagmar-krause-singing-surabaya-johnny/ Go on, do it! http://www.frogworth.com/blog/archives/2008/03/13/do-the-test/ I remember that way back when the whole sorry mess began, when our oh-so-very-ex-Prime Minister John Howard refused to say "Sorry" for the unimaginable injustices and humiliation suffered by tens of thousands of Indigenous Australians as revealed once and for all in the Bringing them Home report, FourPlay played at the big inaugral Sorry Day event at the Sydney Opera House Forecourt. It was a matter of pride, and very moving, to take part in that, however briefly, but that's nothing like the pride we can feel today after our new Prime Minister's remarkable speech at the opening of Parliament. I was at work, and watched what I could on YouTube, but thanks to Peter Martin, I've now been able to read the whole speech. It's quite long, and as Martin describes it, both gripping and well-judged. If you didn't get to see it, or indeed if you did, I commend you to read the whole transcript. It's a beauty. We can only hope that there will be real, honest and productive action taken, in co-operation with Indigenous communities around Australia, to turn things round — to bring some hope for future generations. Rudd mentions the really big problems, and it's worth quoting: Our challenge for the future is to cross that bridge and, in so doing, to embrace a new partnership between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians—to embrace, as part of that partnership, expanded Link-up and other critical services to help the stolen generations to trace their families if at all possible and to provide dignity to their lives. But the core of this partnership for the future is to close the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians on life expectancy, educational achievement and employment opportunities. This new partnership on closing the gap will set concrete targets for the future: within a decade to halve the widening gap in literacy, numeracy and employment outcomes and opportunities for Indigenous Australians, within a decade to halve the appalling gap in infant mortality rates between Indigenous and non-Indigenous children and, within a generation, to close the equally appalling 17-year life gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous in overall life expectancy. http://www.frogworth.com/blog/archives/2008/02/13/sorry-2/ Unfortunately YouTube are LAMERZ and pulled all of StSanders' videos, but below you can see it via Wired. This post here has ALL the StSanders "________ shreds" videos! The Jake E. Lee/Ozzy Osborne one is the one I posted here: But the Santana one is hilarious too (as are most of them...) Note to the puzzled: I can't get these to load in Firefox. It may be some plugin thing, but Internet Exploder will play them. Don't know about non-Windows computers though (will see when I reboot into Ubuntu!) originally via the incomparable Graham Linehan http://www.frogworth.com/blog/archives/2008/01/04/probably-the-greatest-thing-in-the-history-of-youtube-so-far/ Have a read of this: Can atheists be parents? via the estimable Graham Linehan, who couples the link with a wonderful image you need to see... ETA: OK, it seems this is from 1970! The date stamp on the article is: "Monday, Dec. 07, 1970". So why is it up on the TIME website with nothing else commenting on the date? Weird! http://www.frogworth.com/blog/archives/2008/01/04/in-case-you-think-dawkins-maybe-isnt-absolutely-right/ A few days ago I finally posted my ridiculously comprehensive 2007 list at the Utility Fog blog. Over at the Mess+Noise boards today there's a thread on "Official...ish Top 10 of 1997", of which I thought, "Hm, 1997, the year the Clouds broke up, and surely that dire period where indie music was pathetic and nothing much of interest was happening." Could be, but then again... could be not! Upon searching my mp3 player for 1997, here's what I came up with (and I haven't done the fancy UFog-like linkage, sorry): µ-Ziq - Lunatic Harness Amon Tobin - Bricolage Aphex Twin - Come To Daddy Autechre - Envane (lucky it doesn't say ''top 10 albums'', although Chiastic Slide is awesome) Björk - Homogenic Farmers Manual - fsck Fennesz - Hotel Paral.lel Mouse on Mars - Autoditacker / Instrumentals (really can't choose) Plaid - Not For Threes Squarepusher - Big Loada EP (Hard Normal Daddy came out this year, but Big Loada is packed with classics) So, a fucken awesome year for idm, which shouldn't have been surprising - and also two absolutely seminal releases for Mego-style glitch. Also this year: Arcon 2 - Arcon 2 Beth Orton - Trailer Park Bill Laswell - Oscillations remixed Boymerang - Balance of the Force Can - Sacrilege (I liked it... I still like it!) Clouds - Never Say Forever (their last release) John Fahey & Cul de Sac - The Epiphany of Glenn Jones Michael Fakesch - Demon 1 EP (his first solo release, with a Boards of Canada remix that's up there with the best BoC tracks ever) Godspeed, You Black Emperor! - F# A# infinity Heligoland - Creosote & Tar EP (not the Adelaide band, this is Tim Friese-Greene of Talk Talk etc) Nine Inch Nails - The Perfect Drug versions (Plug's remix here is one of the best drum'n'bass tracks evar) The Orb - Orblivion Paradise Motel - (Please Keep Me Safe) Plug - EPs 1, 2 & 3 (compiled by Nothing, obviously through Trent Reznor's interest) Radiohead - OK Computer Regurgitator - Unit Robert Wyatt - Shleep Soma - Stygian Vistas (legendary Aussie electronic release, for me at least) Third Eye Foundation - Ghost Various Artists - Altered States of America Various Artists - Buena Vista Social Club Various Artists - Random (a tribute to Gary Numan) Various Artists - Spunk Jazz (in some ways, this spelled the end of drill'n'bass, but it's pretty good still) Peccadillo - Little Sins (first album release from a band I was in, year before FourPlay's debut album. I can't argue that the album really stands up, but hey, it doesn't suck, and the songwriting's great...) http://www.frogworth.com/blog/archives/2007/12/18/10-years-ago/ You can unsubscribe, but what action can be enough to counter our complicity in this? The link takes you to the horrifying account of a man kidnapped and tortured in a CIA black site. There are people who are, shall we say, more complicit in these atrocities, however, and they must not get away with it. (They will, I know). And in our little corner of the world, our brave new Rudd government is happily allowing the Federal police to place a control order on David Hicks when he's shortly, finally, released. He'll be reporting to police three times a week. I guess we can all feel a little bit safer that this misguided, broken, harmless man is still being vigilantly watched. http://www.frogworth.com/blog/archives/2007/12/17/the-world-we-live-in/ There's some really interesting discussion going on over at GreensBlog about the Greens' chances in the senate, which are stronger than you might think. At Larvatus Prodeo late last year, Paul Norton explained that the media regularly underestimates the Greens' electoral success because they tend to do considerably better out of pre-poll and absentee votes than the Coalition. You can follow the links to see some theories as to why this is - but this post of Tim's gives us some figures: For those who like detail, check out the AEC’s data from the last election by vote type. The numbers show the total Greens vote at just under 7%, but almost 11% of absent, almost 10% of provisional and almost 8% of pre-poll. Given that these three account for just under 12% of all votes cast, and they are all counted after election night, you can see why it stands to reason that the Greens vote might seem lower than expected at first, but climbs steadily as the count moves on. This is fascinating, and the good news is that as those pre-polls and absentee votes come in, the Greens are doing very well in ACT — potentially enough for Kerrie Tucker to overtake the Liberal candidate! In Victoria, Richard di Natale has a good chance too, especially considering there were three very Greens-friendly events on that weekend: Queenscliff Music Festival, Earthcore and the Great Victorian Bike Ride. If they can pick up at least one of these seats, they would represent one fewer Liberal senator, meaning that Labor wouldn't have to negotiate with Family First (they'd still need all the Greens and Nick Xenophon, or a National or Liberal to vote with them); if they pick up both of these, the Greens would hold the balance of power on their own, meaning that they would be the only group (other than the Liberals) who would have the power on their own to negotiate with Labor over policy details. As it stands, Labor would either need the Libs to vote with them, or would need all the Greens plus Xenophon plus Family First in order to get anything through the senate... In the comments to Tim's senate post (which also accounces the awesome fact that the Greens are projected to end up with something like 1,080,000 first preference votes in the Senate — yes, well over a million!), there's a discussion initiated by Rob Mailler (who apparently has a bit of a bee in his bonnet about this) suggesting that the Greens should moderate some of their "lower priority messages" in order to gain a small proportion more of the vote (and presumably thus get an extra senator through). The discussion has revolved around whether the pragmatic choice of toning down other policies in order to best serve the climate change agenda is desirable. I'm interested in this question of "principle vs pragmatism". I think there's an issue that all "framers" face, which is one of identifying what one's ultimate aim is. Framing is all very well if you're attempting to convince a group of people of one or two simple points. You find a way of coming at it from a point of common ground, using terminology that simply and effectively makes your point of view attractive. It's like that with all rhetoric; it's not meant for conveying nuanced, complicated matters, nor for convincing people of a multitude of policy matters all at once. In the science blogosphere lately there's been lots of heated argument about framing vis-à-vis "The New Atheists". Some feel that the strident promotion of atheism by various recent writers damages the chances of promoting science to more moderate/open religious believers, tainting it by association by implying that science equals atheism. To best represent science to the masses, we should downplay our atheist beliefs. There are two things to point out here to the so-called "appeasers" (a horrible term, by the way). First is that with works like Dawkins's The God Delusion and others recently, the aim is to help atheists "come out" - quite literally to "promote" atheism; if this conflicts with science-framers' perceived maximisation of science's attractiveness, then so be it, the atheism-popularisers might say. But of course the other issue the atheists will bring up is whether the science-popularisers are right about atheism's unpalatability - i.e. does strident atheism really taint science? Both of these points have meant that the atheists and the science-framers have been arguing at cross-purposes, but there is a very real problem in working out how to keep on-message about a number of issues at once. In any case, this might be a bit of a furphy when it comes to "New Atheism vs framing of science"; there should be — and is — room for many different voices, and the occasional clashes that occur when one voice says "taking science seriously must mean abandoning belief in God" and another says "Look here, your belief in God doesn't preclude taking evolution seriously!" are acceptable. Most people have minds of their own, and can choose to say "Well I don't like that Dawkins chap, but the nice Mr Wilson is saying some interesting things. Maybe I should give evolution another look!" (This would be sad, since Dawkins is one of the most misrepresented thinkers in the world, but that's another blog post...) A political party, however, needs to present a coherent and united front. Indeed, some Greens candidates & party members' failure to stay on-point has been mentioned as a drawback for them, and it's true that the Greens should make sure their representatives don't muddy the waters. In the case of this discussion, what's being suggested is that they take a pragmatic approach whereby they become more populist in some of their policies in order to give themselves more of an opportunity to effect real change with regards to what might be considered their "core" policy of combating climate change. But of course the fact is that the Greens don't want to be a single-issue party. In fact, being just the "climate change" party is damaging to the Greens — having detailed, well-thought-out policies across the board is a real plus. Certainly if it turned out that some minor policy point was turning away a significant number of votes that they might otherwise capture (such as an Inheritance Tax), it might be worth dropping. But I would've thought that there are worse barriers to mainstream acceptance: their eminently sensible and undroppable drugs policy, focusing on harm-minimisation is one, as the murdochs never hesitate to bring up the spectre of "injecting rooms on every corner". Here's a case where if they dropped this policy they could very well grab a bunch more votes, but that's the last thing they'd want to do! How the Greens can combat the frankly ridiculous idea that they're "extreme Left", that they're just a bunch of drug-loving, tree-hugging hippies, or a socialist front, I'm not sure. But the best way is simply to get more and more air-time to publicise their views on a whole range of matters, which will come with balance of power (hopefully!) and the gradual increase in votes. Finding ways whenever they're given air-time to convey simple facts like the inaccuracy of early media reports on the Greens' success, finding ways to frame harm-minimisation that can strongly combat the "War on Drugs"/"Tough on Drugs" imagery that's been so effectively framed by the right; these are important. I've been mostly very impressed with Bob Brown when I've seen him or heard him in the media of late, but I think there's still plenty of room for improvement... Plus of course an excellent initiative like GreensBlog can only help :) Here's to the future! (and methinks I really should become a member of the Greens so I can stop talking about them in the 3rd person...) http://www.frogworth.com/blog/archives/2007/11/29/greens-senate-chances-and-pragmatism/