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Australian flag debate

15 February 2008 / / 1 Comment

Of course there are more important questions than whether Australia should change its flag. But we at Good Reason firmly believe that if you wait until the big issues are solved, you’ll never deal with the little issues. So I want to put forward my pick for the new design, in case Australians ever decide to resolve the whole flag debate.

Here it is.

It’s tasteful and modern, it’s got the Aboriginal dots thing going on, and it combines sky, sea, beach, and bush, which just about covers the Australian Experience.

Seen anything better?

Religion and divorce

14 February 2008 / / 3 Comments

A sad story from the NYT: what happens in custody arrangements when parents get divorced, and then one parent turns into a religious froot-looper?

From the age of 1 month, Mrs. Snider’s daughter had lived with her, and later Mrs. Snider’s new husband, Brian Snider, with occasional visits to her biological father.

But in 2003, when Libby was 6, an Alabama court gave primary custody to her father, William Mashburn, after he and Mrs. Snider’s own family argued that the strict religious upbringing Libby received at her mother’s home, which involved modest dress, teachings about sin and salvation, and limited exposure to popular culture, was damaging her.

…

The Sniders are quietly, unapologetically fundamentalist. They believe that American culture, even conservative denominations like the Southern Baptist Convention, has drifted perilously far from biblical teachings. They attend a large Independent Baptist church in Madison, where the music, the sanctuary and the congregants are unadorned and old-fashioned.

Women wear skirts as a sign of modesty. They do not swim in mixed company. They eschew rock music and nearly all popular culture. They do not drink, smoke or swear.

The Sniders have raised Libby, now 11, in that tradition. But it has put them at odds with Mr. Mashburn and Mrs. Snider’s family. Mr. Mashburn and his lawyer declined to comment .

Mrs. Snider said she understood that Libby might wear pants at her father’s home or go to the movies. But she insisted that Mr. Mashburn not swear or drink in front of Libby or expose her to inappropriate movies and music, which, she said, he has repeatedly done.

I would say that this situation (like most post-divorce situations) can be worked around by not being a jerk, but this advice doesn’t help when one’s religion more or less requires one to be a jerk.

Even when both parents want what’s best for the child, religion throws everything into disarray because the religious froot-loop parent thinks the child will go to hell unless they obey the arcane rules of the religious system.

Just another way in which the non-negotiable absolutism of religious belief harms children. And how’s this for a heart-breaking conclusion:

At the last hearing, Libby, who spends about 40 percent of her time with the Sniders, testified against Mr. Mashburn.

“I’m more of my mom’s religion, and my dad sometimes talks bad about my mom,” she said. “He called it a cult, and it’s definitely not a cult. It kind of makes me mad sometimes. Maybe he thinks her religion may be bad for me, but I think mainly he doesn’t like my mom and is using that as an excuse.”

Will she ever escape fundamentalism and rebuild a good relationship with her father? Sounds like the spilt is only going to grow. But hey, what’s the problem. Didn’t Jesus say:

Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.

For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law.

And a man’s foes shall be they of his own household.

It’s a feature, not a bug.

Why we do what we do

12 February 2008 / / 3 Comments

This is what we’re working toward.


(Does anyone know where this comes from? I lol’d.)

Wanker of the Week: Brendan Nelson

11 February 2008 / / Comments Off on Wanker of the Week: Brendan Nelson

People don’t like the realisation that they’re irrelevant, but it is a rare person who can realise it, and then try to ingratiate themselves and kvetch at the same time. Liberal Brendan Nelson is just such a person.

The Opposition has offered in-principle support to an apology but is waiting to be fully briefed by the Prime Minister about the precise wording of the speech.

You know, I don’t really care whether this batch of Liberal wankers support The Apology or not. They blocked it until it looked like it was going to happen without them, and now they’re jumping on. Where were they before?

Wait, it gets better. Notice how, having contributed nothing to the whole “sorry” mess, Nelson gets pissy about not having been included.

Leader of Government Business in the Lower House, Anthony Albanese, says the wording of the apology will be released for all to see tomorrow.

But Dr Nelson has told Fairfax Radio he has not been told what is going on.

“This is all appearing chaotic. To the great credit [of] a lot of my colleagues we have decided in principle we will support this,” he said.

“But if Mr Rudd wants it to unify Australia, to bring our nation together, the most important person he should be negotiating with is me.“

“It’s very important that we actually sit down, we’re two days away from this for goodness sake.”

Me! It’s all about me! Only Dr Nelson and his precious feelings can heal this nation!

No, it’s about the people who have been wronged by the policy. It’s a bus, Dr Nelson. You missed it.

UPDATE: It never stops for Nelson.

Opposition Leader Brendan Nelson has been forced to defend his response to today’s stolen generations apology, in which he spoke of indigenous Australians “living lives of existential aimlessness”.

The Liberal leader provoked outrage among the thousands who gathered across the nation to watch the televised broadcast when he spoke of ”the seemingly intractable and disgraceful circumstances in which many indigenous Australians find themselves today”.

Across the country, people booed, hissed and shouted during Dr Nelson’s speech – with some going so far as to pull the plug on the televised broadcast.

In Melbourne, the 8000-strong crowd at Federation Square turned its back on the screen during Dr Nelson’s speech, amid chants of “get him off”.

In Perth, noise from the angry crowd that had gathered on the city’s Esplanade drowned out Dr Nelson’s words. A protester then cut the Liberal leader’s speech short by pulling the plug and causing a power failure.

In Canberra, many of those gathered outside Parliament House had either walked away or turned their backs by the end of his speech.

Some grew increasingly angry as Dr Nelson told Parliament: “Our generation does not own these actions, nor should it feel guilt for what was done in many, but certainly not all cases, with the best intentions.“

Members of the crowd jeered and yelled at Dr Nelson to “get off”, “go and learn history” and “get your hand off it Brendan”.

It gets worse if you read the full text. At first, the speech seems appropriate enough, but it eventually turns into partisan rancor…

Alcohol, welfare without responsibilities, isolation from the economic mainstream, corrupt management of resources, nepotism, political buck-passing between governments with divided responsibilities, lack of home ownership, under-policing and tolerance by authorities of neglect and abuse of children that violates all we stand for, all combine to still see too many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people living lives of existential aimlessness.

defence of John Howard…

Sexual abuse of Aboriginal children was found in every one of the 45 Northern Territory communities surveyed for the Little Children are Sacred report. It was the straw breaking the camel’s back, driving the Howard government’s decision to intervene with a suite of dramatically radical welfare, health and policing initiatives.

cultural warfare…

Our generation has, over 35 years, overseen a system of welfare, alcohol delivery, administration of programs, episodic preoccupation with symbolism and excusing the inexcusable in the name of cultural sensitivity, to create what we now see in remote Aboriginal Australia.

… and, incredibly, defence of people that carried out the acts of kidnapping (with undertones of warning against giving the dole to those filthy undeserving poor).

Even when motivated by inherent humanity and decency to reach out to the dispossessed in extreme adversity, our actions can have unintended outcomes. As such, many decent Australians are hurt by accusations of theft in relation to their good intentions.

In future, when people tell us there’s really no difference between the two major political parties, let’s just remember this moment, shall we?

UPDATE 2: Unbelievable.

As Nelson rose to offer his apology to the Stolen Generations on behalf of his Opposition, the signs were already abroad that all was not roses. West Australian Liberal Wilson Tuckey had made great show of reciting louder than anyone the Lord’s Prayer at the beginning of the parliamentary session, and then had marched out of the chamber. He would have nothing to do with any apology. Nor would fellow West Australian Don Randall, who was absent, and Victorian Sophie Mirabella, also missing. Others shuffled paper and read throughout Rudd’s speech, and Peter Costello tapped on a laptop computer.

I

I got nothing.

More for all you swearing fans

11 February 2008 / / Comments Off on More for all you swearing fans

I’m rerunning The Swearing Class in August, and word has gotten around. There’s always a great deal of interest in it. In fact, ABC Radio gave me a call today asking me for an interview.

Unfortunately, they asked me to phone in at just the time I’d be picking Oldest Boy up from school. So if it’s sounds like I’m outside with a mobile, trying to stay out of the wind and sun, that’s why.

Still, the hosts were personable and friendly, and I managed to work in just about everything I planned to say. I hope I didn’t get too much wrong. Somehow they got the impression that I’d grown up in Utah, which I didn’t bother to correct. Just for the record, I am a Washingtonian. But I guess I did do a lot of growing up in Utah. They sure were interested in the ex-Mormon angle, but I didn’t belabour it, and I kept it fairly positive.

I’ll post a link to an mp3 file as soon as I get it. Then we can all have fun pointing out my on-air mistakes.

Scientology protests

8 February 2008 / / 1 Comment

We are fast approaching the day of reckoning — hackers against the Church of Scientology.

Anonymous internet users who have previously crashed Church of Scientology websites have named February 10 as a worldwide day of protest in a bid to “destroy” the controversial religion.

The group – called Anonymous – which includes skilled computer hackers, has posted a message on YouTube declaring war on Scientology, accusing it of trying to censor the internet and conducting “campaigns of misinformation”.

Advocating acts of vigilante vandalism is always fraught. Encourage the mobs, and the next target of their ire may not be to your liking. YouTube? Wikipedia? Blogger?

And yet, it’s hard to imagine an organisation that has done more to earn the enmity of Netizens more richly. Scientology has a long history of using malicious lawsuits (and even raids) to intimidate and harass people who publish the mythology of their money-making religion. Not to mention the really scary stuff, like infiltration and wiretapping of government organisations. So I’m excited to see what will happen on the 10th. It couldn’t happen to a nicer church.

I know it’s late, but does anyone have info on protests in Perth?

Friday Random Five is playing with my heart

8 February 2008 / / 1 Comment
Blue Mood by Swing Out Sister
Album: It’s Better to Travel
I always loved this first album for its jazz sensibility and sophistication. If the members of the post-ZTT Art of Noise had decided to drop the quirkiness and go for musicality, it might have sounded like this, and that would have been good. Not to slight Anne Dudley at all.

There Must Be an Angel (Playing With My Heart) by Eurythmics
Album: Greatest Hits [Europe]
Youngest Boy frequently asks to hear Eurythmics, and who could blame him? No one ever went from arid synthesised cool to beautiful electronic pop with such ease and joy. This song is one of the latter — lashes of gospel choir and soul, complete with Stevie Wonder’s harmonica. How do they make it sound so easy?

This Is a Lie (Palmer Remix) by The Cure
Album: Join the Dots
By a coincidence, this song came up randomly in the car this very morning, and now here it is again. While I don’t have much enthusiasm for the Cure’s later work (anything past Head on the Door actually), I have to applaud this as a solid piece of songwriting. The first half is all orchestral, then joined by Robert Smith on solo guitar.

Here on the blog, you see a lot of the kinds of thoughts I’m dealing in at the time. So you will understand if these lyrics seemed pertinent:

how each of us believes
I’ve never really known
in heaven unseen and hell unknown
how each of us dreams to understand anything at all
why each of us decides
I’ve never been sure
the part we take
the way we are
why each of us denies every other way in the world

It’s not just about religion; the simple act of choosing — a way of life, a life partner, anything — excludes an infinite number of other possibilities. And how do we know we’ve chosen the right one? Or the wrong one? What makes us say ‘This is a lie”?

I haven’t thought about a Cure lyric this much since “How Beautiful You Are”. I feel like an undergrad.

Fields – Fields (Reprise) by The Lilac Time
Album: And Love for All (2006 Remaster)
Stephen Duffy takes us out for a stroll in the country with his guitar. He’s been sleeping in the hedgerow. He knows how you feel, and he knows what you feel is real. The summer wind is making long fingers in the wheat and the undulating fields are cool and inviting. Go with him on this album and you’ll find beautiful bucolic XTC-influenced folk-pop. Other Lilac fans say start with ‘Paradise Circus’, but this is one of my favourite albums ever. Highly highly recommended.

Neon Lights (Ton Up Mix) by Kraftwerk
Album: Toccata Electronica
An interesting remix that overlays “Boing Boom Tchak” lyrics onto “Neon Lights”. Very trancy, and not too annoying.

A bonus sixth.
Alison by Future 3
Album: Blue Skied an’ Clear
There’s an interesting tendency for glitch IDM artists to gravitate toward shoegaze. So this album is a slew of Slowdive covers redone in shimmering electronic tones. Listen to it while you glide silently through smooth rooms. Or when you’re hunched over the laptop working. It won’t jangle you too much.

Maharishi dies

7 February 2008 / / 1 Comment

In contrast with my earlier post, the news of the Maharishi’s death is bringing up no complex feelings at all for me; just glee. It’s terrible, isn’t it? I didn’t even know him, but that’s not my fault — I didn’t have a million dollars to give him for the pleasure of hanging out.

I just hate gurus and frauds, and he was both.

He made some pretty astounding claims:

  • Transcendental Meditation is a scientifically valid way to attain enlightenment.
  • TM was responsible for lowering crime rates in cities.
  • Using TM, you could learn to fly.
  • If someone would give a billion dollars, he could train 40,000 expert meditators to combat terrorism

Sadly, even though people gave him tons of money, no one ever learned to fly or to attain enlightenment, as far as anyone knows. And the claims about crime fall apart if you try to examine them with statistics (but how Western!).

The really sad part is that if a mystical movement manages to survive its founder, it usually goes on forever. These people may be bouncing on their butts for generations to come.

Is it better to be right or happy?

6 February 2008 / / 1 Comment

Oldest Boy’s school diary has some suggestions for a successful year. Some are uncontroversial, like smiling at people and getting to school on time. But one of the suggestions got me thinking.

It is more important to be happy than right.

Is that so?

Most of the time, there’s no conflict. I feel happy when I’m found to be right, don’t you? And believing wrong things tends to lead to unhappiness. Sure, people can be happy with false beliefs for their entire lives. But I’d guess that knowing what’s right would be more conducive to happiness. Your world-view will match reality a bit better, and there’s less cognitive dissonance.

On the other hand, lately I’m equally happy being shown where I’m wrong. Then I don’t have to believe those wrong things anymore! And when you ‘have to be right’, then ego gets into it, you start defending territory instead of conducting honest inquiry, and you’re very unlikely to find out anything new. No thanks. Show me where I’m factually wrong, and I’ll thank you.

Maybe “being right” means two separate things:

1) Being ‘proven right’ in a discussion. This I don’t care much about, though it’s nice. I’d rather be the kind of person who cares what is right, rather than who is right. If this is the definition, maybe Oldest Boy’s book has a point. Let’s leave this aside.

2) Knowing what’s really going on, as close as we can get.

This second sense of ‘being right’ is, I’d say, more important than being happy. Like I say, usually there’s no conflict. But if there were, I’d want to know what’s true and be miserable.

Lots of people in the USA believed wrong things — that Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11, that invading Iraq was a good idea, that Bush was a good president who deserved a second term. They’re pretty happy in their safe houses. They still send emails round to each other about freedom and so on. But they were wrong. And with their false beliefs, they have happily created hell on earth for a lot of people. That kind of happiness looks self-serving and empty to me.

I was pretty happy in my religion of origin. I believed some ideas that are demonstrably false. I could have done so happily (mostly) for the rest of my life, believing that I would live again with my family after I died. But then I would have spent my life in the service of a story, with someone else getting all that tithing money, and no eternity at the end of it. I’ve given up on those stories now, and that was painful. It kind of sucks thinking I’m just going to die someday. But if that’s true, I’d rather know it, and live my life by sound principles.

Is self-deception happiness? Is ignorance bliss? Reality, though tinged with sadness, is all the happiness I need.

Inevitable music gentrification

4 February 2008 / / 1 Comment

There I am in the Pizza Hut with Oldest Boy, when I hear “Kill the Poor” over the stereo. “Hey, you’re listening to the Dead Kennedys!” I say.

The pizza guy blinks. “Yeah, no one else has recognised it yet.”

“That’s cool. I went to see them in Salt Lake in ’85. Jello Biafra stage dived on my head.”

“Wow,” says Pizza Man, who may or may not be stoned.

“Who are the Dead Kennedys?” asked Oldest Boy back in the car.

“Are you kidding? Have I never played you any DK’s at all?” I asked. “What kind of father am I?”

It only took a second to dial the iPod to the appropriate folder, not counting the time it took to ignore the irony. Soon we were jamming down the road to “Religious Vomit”. I was explaining how the Dead Kennedys were able to meld British punk into an genuinely American brand of thrash infused with leftist political sensibilities and extremely tight musicianship.

And I thought: Is this an odd situation? My introduction to the Kennedys was not family friendly. I think it was at Chad Smith’s house. I was listening to this grotty obscure punk stuff that no one was listening to, and I felt cool. My son’s introduction to the DK’s was from his Dad’s car stereo. Not particularly counter-culture or transgressive.

I suppose it’s like high school, when you hoped the normal people wouldn’t find out about your music because that was what made you different. But everyone did anyway, which is why alternative music became the new mainstream in 1991, and everybody became hip, which was not cool.

But these things have a way of traveling in cycles. Oldest Boy will find his own sound with its own forbidden allure. And when he does, he’d better tell me about it, unless it sucks.

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