Leaflocker

A Very Special Quiz

2011-12-07T11:11:00.003+10:30

The Leaflocker editorial staff is very sorry to announce that we don't have a quiz prepared for all of our loyal readers this week, although the answers for last week's quiz are now available. Instead, we would like to draw your attention to the annual "Notchers News" Christmas cricket scoring competition, which in the past few years has greatly increased our understanding of fiddly bits of cricket scoring, to the detriment of dinner-table conversation but to the great benefit of underworked cricket synapses.

Notchers News is an excellent scorer's newsletter from the UK (where cricket scoring is a serious business), which brings me great joy on a quarterly basis when it lobs in my email inbox.

An example of the type of questions that we're talking about here, from last years quiz:
"The striker makes a legitimate second strike at the
third ball of the over to protect his wicket; the batsmen run and, after they have crossed, the fielder throws the ball in an attempt to run the non-striker out; the throw misses and the batsmen complete three runs. How many runs should be added to the score?"
This years competition can be found on pages 2 and 3 of the latest issue of Notchers News and is well worth a look if a complete understanding of the Laws and Spirit is one of your life goals.

The Wednesday Quiz II.VI: It Becomes an Emperor

2011-11-30T10:00:00.000+10:30

Well, it turns out that you guys, while distinguished and erudite in many ways, aren't that excellent at naming monkeys, so we've collected a bunch of other primates for you to have another go, in the little game we like to call Name That Emperor. All you have to do is identify the Emperors in the comment thread below to win the genuine admiration of a blogger near you.

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
Vive l'Empereur!

What's Up With: The Reading?

2011-11-29T10:00:00.000+10:30

As some of you may know, I have finally moved houses, and I now live in a cosy little bedsitter. While this is great in many ways (and I'm finally getting some alone time to read!), it does cause one large drawback to the reading project: My unread bookshelf does not fit, so I instead have... the unread Suitcase!

The suitcase contains only the books that filled two of the five boxes packed from the contents of the bookshelf, but it's a start, and if by some fluke I ever manage to finish this lot, rest assured that the rest are waiting happily nearby.

With any luck, the book reviews and pointless statistics that I know you've all been waiting for will be back this time next week. I've finished a few books recently that I cant wait to share with you, by which of course I mean that I can wait, at least until next week (see above). Expect

Chess Variants - Extinction

2011-11-24T22:07:00.013+10:30

A month ago now, in that blogging black hole that we shall not refer to again, I hosted a small chess variant tournament for a few friends, games were randomly selected from a list to which we all contributed suggestions, and on Saturday the four of us, my four chess boards, and a box of tea got together for what I hope was the first of many such competitions. None of the four of us are exactly hot-shot chess players, but we make up for our lack of skill with enthusiasm for the game. Over the next few weeks I'd like to present you some records of the games I played, complete with annotations, because I'm just that hep with it.

The first game drawn out of the hat was Extinction Chess, a popular and widely played variant in which one wins by removing all of an opponents pieces of any type, so if you lose your queen, or both of your bishops, knights or rooks (or even all of your pawns) you lose, as well as by conventional checkmate. Being gentleman, we agreed to call check for any "royal" piece whose loss would cause the end of the game.

In my first game, I drew the black pieces against David, who I would normally beat in a game of orthochess some three times out of five, but as you're about to see (assuming that you have java) I played a pretty poor game of chess.

Click on the applet below to being the game and navigate by pressing the direction buttons or spacebar.

This browser is not Java-enabled.

So my first game of the tournament started off true to form, but I had no time to mope about my loss, because my next opponent was Dan, who'd also come off of a loss in the first round. This one isn't exactly a great win, Dan having made a bad error with his knight very early on, but it is a nice example of the possibilities of extinction mates.

This browser is not Java-enabled.

And so, spurred on by that victory, I decided that if my next opponent was going to plat silly buggers with his knights, I was going to play silly buggers as well. This is a classic example of how overconfidence, rapid play and sheer not-looking-at-the-board can result in a truly abhorrent game of chess. I'm not going to annotate it, because there's nothing to say, except that this is without a doubt the worst game of chess that I have ever, ever played, and it's almost enough to convince me to hang up my board forever.

This browser is not Java-enabled.

On the plus side, I can hardly play such a terrible game ever again, right? Tune in next week to find out! (And if anyone has access to or wants to quickly code up a pagn viewer that can handle a 16x8 board (no need to enforce the rules), drop me a line.)

Tournament Scores (W-L-D) After Round 1
Bell, D. : 3-0-0 (3 Pts)
Nowak, D : 2-1-0 (2 Pts)
Diment, T : 1-2-0 (1 Pt)
Thomas, D : 0-3-0 (0 Pts)

Tie of the Week

2011-09-02T10:00:00.000+09:30

Today just happens to be Footy Colours Day, an arbitrary day of the year when all the good sports are supposed to dress up in their Sportland Sport colours in order to look silly at their places of employment, an idea I totally endorse. For the occasion, I have put on my special "football supporter" face, and of course, my footy colours, I just had a little trouble deciding exactly what those were.

My tie, as well as looking suspiciously like my old school tie, is in the red, blue and yellow colours of the Pride of South Australia, the mighty Adelaide Crows (who play Australian Rules Football). It's probably best not to mention them again after this season, except to suggest that at least they're not Port Adelaide.

My blue jacket and red shirt betray my support for Norwood in the SANFL (or the state Australian rules competition, for Americans and other aliens). The Redlegs have actually had a pretty decent season and might be the only team that can stop Central Districts from winning their fifth flag in a row.

My socks show my support for the American Football team of choice, the Oregon Ducks, whose season kicks off tomorrow against LSU. They're also for the Australian national Soccer team who are expected to steamroll Thailand in a World Cup qualifer tonight.

And you'll just have to trust me that my underclothes show my support for Aston Villa, the Premier League team I started supporting a few years ago, mostly in order to antagonise my brother, who is a fan of Liverpool. If you're wondering how I have maroon and cyan underclothes then you are, firstly, more aware of soccer that I would expect of a reader of this here blag; and secondly, in need of a reminder of an old cricketing tail-ender's adage (if you wear a pair, you might get a pair, but you'll have a pair [yep, that's about as sophisticated as sporting adages get]).

Tie Number:005
Designation: Tie-ota
Provenance: Purchase, 2002
Manufacture: Rembrant, Australia
No. of Comments: 3 (Moderate)
Most Favourable Comment: "School tie?"
Least Favourable Comment: "Is that a St. Michael's Tie?" (asked by a former schoolmate. We did not go to St. Michael's)
Observations: I love school ties. And best of all, I have another one, exactly the same.

Carn da FOOTIE!

The Leaflocker Month in Review

2011-09-01T11:00:00.003+09:30

Well, blAugust is over and Septembemblag will start soon (after a short break), so this seems like a sensible time to do a review of the goals and effectiveness of the propaganda organ that is the Leaflocker.

Mission:
To provide modest entertainment to the population of the internet at large and get some practice writing again:
Don't know about the modest entertainment, but even over the short period of a month I've noticed that it's become easier to write, and I hope you'll all agree that the structure of my writing has become at least a little less slap-dash. I've been very rusty for a very long time (about five years), and it feels good to get a little grease in the works.

Regular Features:
Monday Papal Cartoons:
Cartooning again after a year away has been good, although the quality of my art makes me cry myself to sleep some time. Nevertheless, doing the Pope cartoons and associated explanatory notes has re-ignited my enthusiasm for the long-term project that is Hamemus Papas, my time-travelling pope adventure. We'll have to wait and see what happens with that, but I hope that Monday cartoons (with or without popes) will be a continuing feature.

Tuesday Solo Book Club:
This has been hard to keep up due to the slowness of my reading pace now that I'm spending all my time working and writing blag posts. I am unhappy with the reviews in general, and need to put more time into researching the topic to make them more interesting. Nevertheless, I enjoy the long-term project that is the reading list and aim to continue it, but maybe on a fortnightly basis once I finish the backlog of reviews for stuff read since the start of the year.

Wednesday Quiz:
Has been pretty seat of the pants apart from the first couple, and participation numbers have been low, even compared to last season. I find it hard to reconcile making a quiz that participants will enjoy (which typically means "get most of the stuff right") and a quiz which I will enjoy making (which typically means "a bunch of obscure trivia"), and so far have erred on the side of my personal enjoyment, because the Leaflocker, as much as it purports to be for the people, is fundamentally an exercise in my own ego. I'm going to keep it, at least until the end of the season, and then look at ways of making it more interesting somehow.

Thursday Void:
The absence of a planned feature for Thursday, far from keeping the Leaflocker unpredictable and exciting as intended, has meant a struggle every week to find content, then last minute text-filled posts (like this one). The plan of doing a regular devotion on Thursdays, though it's yielded a grand total of no posts since its inception, is a line of thought worth pursuing, I think, though I still feel a little uneasy about sharing my personal thoughts on such a level with the internet, particularly given that it has such a long memory.

Friday Ties:
Inexplicably, has turned out to be a popular addition that will continue until I run out of ties, unless something unexpected happens. Keeping it interesting could be a challenge, but for now it's fun (and not too time consuming) to make and (apparently) to read. The intended expansion into Tin Tin reviews is yet to eventuate and I'm not sure that this is a bad thing.

Irregular Features
Wreck This Journal:
Going online and seeing some of the amazing things that some people have done to their journals has put a damper on this project for a little while. I'm still enjoying destroying my journal, but I'm not utterly convinced that the world needs to see. I'm trying not to let this attitude infect the rest of the features, as it could be fatal.

Crosswords:
While my crossword participation rate is at an all-time high, my crossword composition is sadly lacking in recent times. If I ever manage to finish a crossword it will be posted here, but I wouldn't be holding your breath. The current crossword education project was abandoned when I realised that the crossword I was using was much too hard. It may be resurrected if I can come up with something better.

The List
In as much as it's ever actually happened, the list is on hiatus until certain visitors to Canada have returned to the sunburnt country.

The editorial staff would like to extend our thanks to you all for stopping by during the month, and we hope that you'll continue to patronise the Leaflocker in the future. If you have any suggestions for content (we're currently short an average of about 1 post a week), or comments to add feel free to drop us a line.

Enjoy your Spring (or Fall, for our North American audience [or Autumn, if they use that term in Canada]).

The Wednesday Quiz II.V: Where in the World is...

2011-08-31T12:00:00.004+09:30

With this post, the Leaflocker editorial team has achieved our goal of posting each and every weekday of blAugust. There will be punch and crackers all around. The chief editor has informed me that the board has determined that Leaflocker service will continue uninterrupted in Septemblag, so stay tuned, same bat time, same bat channel, for more batty fun.

Everyone's favourite quiz format "Pin the Tail on the Country" is back, bigger than ever. Put the world's most superlative places in their correct grid squares without looking them up to have your chance to win the fabulous prize that is my love and respect. I'm a fickle mistress.

1. Highest mountain
2. Smallest country
3. Lowest land area
4. Tallest building
5. Highest population city
6. Densest population city
7. Deepest part of ocean
8. Longest rail tunnel
9. Tallest waterfall
10. Hottest city

Leave your answers in the comments, and the results will be there this time next week.

Read: The Yiddish Policeman's Union (Part II)

2011-08-30T10:00:00.000+09:30

So, I still haven't got around to reading Neuromancer. I meant to, but I fell asleep instead. I can give you all the solution to the chess puzzle from The Yiddish Policeman's Union that I know that you've all been losing sleep over. If you're the kinda guy that doesn't like his novel ruined by knowing the outcome of the central chess puzzle motif, then you should walk away now and go sit down somewhere and read this book.

The chess puzzle is set up on a cheap board in the room of a murdered Jew who went by the name of Emmanuel Lasker (a name you might be a little bit familiar with), who happens to live in the same apartment block as Detective Meyer Landsman, an over-the-hill homicide detective with a broken marriage with his boss, an on-again-off-again relationship with a cheap bottle of vodka and no sense for the middle game. The whole thing takes place in the District of Sitka, a Jewish enclave in Alaska about to revert to the US in this alternative history in which the state of Israel collapsed in 1948.

Back in this reality for a moment, the puzzle was composed by Victor Nabokov of Lolita fame (Lolita is in my shelf partly read at the moment, having given me the heebie-jeebies on the first attempt), and it had deep meaning for him, as it does for "Emmanuel Lasker". The way for white to move and mate in two is to move his bishop to c2, putting black into the inenviable chess position of "zugzwang", in which any possible move works out badly for him, and allowing white to mate next move no matter his decision. It is a very, very attractive puzzle in it's own right, and I think Nabokov would be gratified that someone else found it as useful a motif as he did.

This "zugzwang" is very appropriate, not just for the yid calling himself Emmanuel Lasker in room 208, and for all the displaced Jews of Sitka, but also for an anglo-saxon attempting a review. As you may have gathered by this point, this is the kind of book that in this sensitive age could only have been written by a Jew, as it portrays Jews not only as the good guys, but as the bad guys too, which is just not cricket for a non-Jew in the same way that it would be ill-advised for an anglo-saxon to call an African American a nigger, but appears to be ok if it comes from the horse's mouth. Thus, I'll refrain from too much comment except to say that the subject of race is not treated in the conventional manner.

For all that, though, it's a very attractive book. The dialogue is harsh and crisp and full of bitter resentment and double meanings, all the witty repartee of noir with all the mystery of the best SF, slowly releasing details about a world like, but unlike, our own. Everyone in the book is a smart-talking bad-ass, and all the conversations are full of things not said and things avoided, things the characters understand but the reader is left to wonder about. A quick sample from random from a book full of exciting little conversations, written in a frenetic, jumpy style, just like they would occur, not as if they're just dead words on a page:

"Never again I don't touch that stuff, Detectives, and even if I do, believe me, I don't go near Frank. I am crazy, but I am not lunatic."
Landsman feels the bump and the skid as the tires lock. They have just hit something.
"Why not?" Berko says, kindly and wise. "Why does selling smack to Frank make you not just a criminal but a lunatic, Mr. Shitnovitzer?"
There is a small, decisive click, a bit hollow, like false teeth clapping together. Velvel tips over his king.
"I resign" says Velvel. He takes off his glasses, slips them into his pocket and stands up. He forgot an appointment. He's late for work. His mother is calling him on the ultrasonic frequency reserved by the government for Jewish mothers in the event of lunch.
"Sit down," Berko says without turning around. The kid sits down.

The mystery unfolds, like mystery stories always do, with international plots that go right to the top, old crimes brought to the surface, heavies out to whack the good guys, painted cows and one rather unusual femme-fatale. All in all it's a rollicking good ride, and well worth the $8 I spent for it, and has put a bunch of other books on my reading list, namely the other works of this young up-and-comer Michael Chabon, with the possibility of extending the list to every book that's ever won the Hugo Award (as this one has) if the internet ever decides to pay me to give up my day job and read full-time.

Page 123:

Zimbalist struggled for the next hour to understand that move, and the strength to resist confiding to a ten-year-old whose universe was bounded by the study house, the shul, and the door to his mother's kitchen, the sorrow and dark rapture of Zimbalist's love for the dying widow, how some secret thirst of his own was quenched every time he dribbled cool water through her peelng lips.

Despite what these quotes might indicate, the book is not all about chess, chess is just regularly used as a metaphor because chess naturally lends itself to that sort of thing (probably a post for another time, that), and sometimes whole pages go by without a single mention of the game at all. It's a genuine blend of the different genres that it's trying to be a part of, and for money it's hit that difficult nail on the head. So if that sounds like your sort of thing, I have a nice hardcover copy I'm willing to lend you, as I need to rearrange my read bookshelves so that I can fit some more stuff on them anyway.

Reading List Progress:

Number of Books read: 6
Australian dividend: 1.045
Science Fiction dividend: 2.5
Fantasy dividend: 2
Biography dividend: 1
Mystery dividend: .5
Next Up: William Gibson, Neuromancer (Still), or something else that's partly read at the moment.

It's Getting Heretical in Here

2011-08-29T10:00:00.004+09:30

What follows is my response to this, in keeping with my now long-established tradition of stealing his ideas and reusing them for my own gain. This week's number shows Pope Gregory the Great (who we met last week) slightly earlier in his life before he became pope, laying down the liturgical law for St. Eutychius.

Now Eutychius was, by this point, one of the most prominent members of the Eastern Church; he'd led what would later come to be considered as the Fifth Ecumenical Council, and was Patriarch of Constantinople, an important enough man to mess with the Emperor and escape with his head. However, Eutychius did not subscribe to the doctrine of bodily resurrection, believing instead that the soul after resurrection would become "less than air", which caused him some problems with Gregory, whom as we have already discovered took all this religion stuff pretty seriously.

Now bodily resurrection, unfortunate similarities to zombieism and all, is a central tenet of the church, mentioned regularly in the earliest surviving Christian writings, like those of St. Ignatius of Antioch, writing at the turn of the first century AD (and in whose work we see the first mention of the words 'catholic church', incidentally). The reason that it was mentioned so often in these texts is that it was the bone of contention for so many of the early heresies, and the surviving writings of the period are mostly epistles from the church fathers to leaders, expounding the understanding of the church and written directly in opposition to heresy. Many views on the nature of the resurrection arose, some of which would reappear again and again in the history of the early church, so much so that bodily resurrection became a part of the Apostles Creed, the statement of faith that churches around the world still use today. As such, I've been familiar with the words for a long time, but bodily resurrection for the masses really gets to me, and one of the reasons that I put off my confirmation for so long was that I, like Eutychius, have some problems with it.

The concept of universal bodily resurrection is based primarily on the biblical resurrection of Jesus, who the gospels tell us physically rose, such that his feet could be touched from a venerating prostrate position, he could break bread and eat with the disciples, and even have his physical wounds poked and prodded by my ever-doubtful namesake (with whom I have always felt a strange kinship). Resurrection was taught by the Jews, many of the prophets talked about the dead rising from the Earth, Jesus supports this himself, and early church leaders like Ignatius and Paul held this to mean actual physical bodily resurrection like that demonstrated by Jesus, but that interpretation just doesn't sit nicely for me (I'm a fan of metaphor and Jesus seems to have been as well, what with all the parables). The primary gospel support for the position that there are actual physical bodies in heaven comes from Matthew 22 (and its equivalents in Mark and Luke), when Jesus is arguing with the Sadduccees, in which he states that risen humans will be like the angels. Now as far as my memory serves me, there is no mention in the bible of an angel physically interacting with the material world, they appear to be purely spiritual beings, as fearsome as they may be (correct me if I'm wrong, out there, the comments thread is open).

EDIT: I've never pretended to a good biblical knowledge. A reader has reminded me of the angels that ate with Lot and destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah. Enquiries are ongoing.

Thus, I'm with Eutychius, not Gregory, in thinking that a non-physical resurrection seems more in keeping with the teachings of Jesus that a physical one. Which at least means it'll all be a little less confusing since we won't have to go around sorting out all the bits and pieces which have decayed, or cremated, or scattered, and a non-physical existence is still "life", if Doctor Who has taught me anything. In the sixth century I may have been a heretic, but the advice I was given when I brought this up as a reason for my unconfirmed status could be approximated as "well, if that's all that's stopping you...". To my mind, the nature of resurrection is an unknowable mystery. I'm ok with that, and don't need to worry about whether I'll be buried with my feet to the East or feel bad about donating my organs to science or medicine, because I don't think that having my body in one piece is required for redemption.

Either way, Gregory knew where he stood (or sat, anyway, because of the gout), and he sure was convincing in his argument, as he managed to convince the Emperor to gather together and destroy all the works of Eutychius; who is reputed to have recanted of his heretical beliefs on his deathbed with the quote from the ever-poetic Job "I confess that in this flesh we shall rise again" , which at least allowed his disciples a chance to save face and assured him a place in the echelon of recognised saints.

And leaves me in a bit of a pickle without a Church father to trot out in support of my little heresy. Poop. Then again, being protestant I'm part of a great big heresy anyway, so what's one more?

Tie of the Week

2011-08-26T10:00:00.000+09:30

It's that time of the week again. Funny how that happens, isn't it?

Here's me, cold-sores and all, in this week's tie with the shirt I wore on Thursday (having been too lazy to wash my Thursday shirt, breaking an 8-week run). It reminds most people of bubbles or Christmas baubles, but makes me think of a series of explosions. I like my explanation better anyway.

Tie Number:004
Designation: The One With the Powerpuffs
Provenance: Christmas Present, 2010
Manufacture: Moulin Rouge Paris, China
No. of Comments: 4 (Moderate)
Most Favourable Comment: "Oooh, I love your tie!"
Least Favourable Comment: "That's a terrible tie, far too light."
Observations: Surprisingly, the khaki green, atomic pink and mellow orange work well on this tie with a range of different shirts. I guess those Chinese Frenchmen sure can pick 'em.

Until next time.

Ave Imperator, morituri te salutant mori

2011-08-25T10:00:00.000+09:30

This is Tiberius, who has finally given up the ghost after ten years of faithful service. He has been my constant companion since I received him second hand from my primary school on Christmas 2002, and I will miss him sorely.

Once I have a more permanent solution for replacing him, the miscaellania of the Leaflocker will be backing full force, but until then the service may be somewhat limited. And no, I have no idea how to write Latin, how could you tell?

The Wednesday Quiz II.IV: Name That Monkey!

2011-08-24T10:00:00.000+09:30

In honour of Ace reporter Barb and her fellows at the ABC in this difficult time, this week's quiz will be: Name That Monkey! The quality will be low because this is in a bit of a rush because my computer has finally actually died, and an iPad is not ideal for blog editing. Please put your answers in the comments and refrain from the most henious crime of googling.

1.
2.
3. (on the right)
4.
5. (on the left)
6.
7. (under the hat)
8.
9.
10.

Read: The Yiddish Policeman's Union (Part I)

2011-08-23T10:00:00.001+09:30

24 hours remain to complete last week's quiz.

I'm afraid that my Saturday sickness cut severely into my reading time for this week. One of the books that I have read earlier in the year that I'd hoped to review here was Michael Chambon's The Yiddish Policeman's Union. But my Monday night movie education has left me with little time, so I'll leave you instead with the central motif of the book, a cunning little chess problem set by the victim of the murder (by way of Victor Nabokov), and come back later in the week to do the rest of the review, hopefully giving me enough time to finish up Neuromancer before next week.

White to mate in two. I do think it's a beautiful little thing.

Leaflocker Exclusive: Pope Eats Babies

2011-08-22T10:00:00.005+09:30

So it's not a bible study or a devotion, but I sure did a lot of reading on the Church fathers, so I feel a lot more holy, or at least a lot more confused. That must count for something. Probably do a devotion on Thursday.

In response to Connell's comic on Proairesis, and in keeping with the old adage that everything is funnier with a pope, we continue our series which began last week with the following:

This one depicts (rather terribly, I'll admit, but you can't win every time) Pope Gregory the Great getting surpised (and slightly embarrassed) by a rabbit that has stolen his papal mitre. It was going to be a carrot, but Gregory lived in the 6th century AD and Europeans hadn't yet heard of carrots; and I was going to replace it with the mediaeval vegtable of choice, the turnip, but decided it was going to be easier to draw a papal mitre of the type used in the hagiographic iconography of Gregory I (alongside the dove). When drawing popes, it's often easier to use the associated icons, because there's very little to distinguish one little old Italian man from the next, especially since we have no idea what they really looked like, and more importantly I have no idea how to draw. The mitre and the dove are mediaeval shorthand for saying "Gregory the Great", which is beyond me, but apparently it worked.

The story goes that rabbits were domesticated in the 6th or 7th century when Gregory declared that foetal rabbits (or laurices) were fish, and were thus acceptable for devout Catholics to eat on fasting days, of which there were considerably more than there are today (both the Catholics and the fast days). I like to imagine that a scene like this is why. Poor Gregory can't chase after the rabbit and get his mitre back because after a long life of monastic austerity he has crippling gout, and is rarely able to bestir himself from his bed (what he's doing here out in the snow is a little beyond me, I'll admit), but he can set his armies of monks to lagomorph genocide, ripping unborn rabbits from their mothers wombs and devouring them, which seems like a pretty nice little act of retribution against rabbit-kind. Pity that it ended up spreading them worldwide, the best laid plans of men and rodents...

Unfortunately, the story is probably apochryphal, I've spent my free time in the last week going through the writings of St. Gregory (who left behind quite a few writings, many of which survive to today thanks to Gregory's status as a Doctor of the Church), and can find no record of his granting an indult to eat laurices, which were known to be a great delicacy in Roman times, in fasting periods. In fact, the only surviving reference to the consumption of laurices of the time is in the works of fellow churchman Gregory of Tours (however shaky his theology), and when he describes a nobleman as eating Laurices he seems to be mocking him as a glutton rather than praising him for eating the correct foods in Lent.

Whether Gregory actually proclaimed an idult or not is probably beside the point, as there are plenty of other examples of animals that are considered in various parts of the world to be acceptable for consumption during fasts. Beavers and otters in Canada and Scandinavia, and the capybara in South America are the most prominent examples. It's not that the Church considers them to be fish, per se, but that...heck, let's let Thomas Aquinas show us how it's done:

Wherefore the Church forbade those who fast to partake of those foods which both afford most pleasure to the palate, and besides are a very great incentive to lust. Such are the flesh of animals that take their rest on the earth, and of those that breathe the air and their products, such as milk from those that walk on the earth, and eggs from birds. For, since such like animals are more like man in body, they afford greater pleasure as food, and greater nourishment to the human body, so that from their consumption there results a greater surplus available for seminal matter, which when abundant becomes a great incentive to lust.

In other words, those animals which are considered most like humans are to be avoided in times of fasting, the animals which breathe the air and live on the land. Aquatic creatures, be they 'fish' in the modern sense or not, are kosher because it was understood at the time that they don't 'result... [in] seminal matter'. Catholic law still hold to this today, on the assumption that Aquinas knew what he was talking about.

In the sixth century, the understanding of rabbits was what we would refer to in this educated age as "not understanding". Pliny the Elder, still a respected source at the time, tells us that rabbits have both male and female parts, so they can reproduce all by themselves (have a little sympathy for the guy, this was a long time before Linnaeus, and being a trusting guy in the tradition of philosophers he was just repeating what Anaxagoras told him). Thus, by the common understanding of the time, rabbit were another class of creature from humans altogether, and could have been eaten during fasts with impunity. Not that there's any evidence that I can find that says they were, but it's not out of the realms of possibility.

This brings up the whole purpose of fasting. Today we commonly understand fasting to be a penance or sharing in the suffering of others, be it Jesus in the desert or starving children in Somalia, but the early church understood fasting more as a type of bodily subjugation, essential starving oneself as a cure for lust. I can't help mentioning that perhaps our modern world could do with a little bit more fasting, and not just in Lent... those rabbits won't know what hit 'em.

Tie of the Week

2011-08-21T14:00:00.000+09:30

Oh dear, we almost missed the tie of the week! We couldn't have that now, could we?

Here's this week's tie as worn on Thursday (this is a recreation, I'm afraid), a rather fetching little trellis-and-peacock-feathers number that reminds me of classical gaudy painted sculptuary. If I look a little pasty this is because it was taken on Sunday, the day after the Great Food Poisoning Incident.

And here it is in the French style as aided by my new tie ring. I feel that it is neccesary to point out that a white-gold tie ring is an expediture of ludircous extravagance, and I may need to find some other use for it one of these days.

Tie Number:003
Designation: Fibulae Jugulum
Provenance: Christmas Present, 2010
Manufacture: Gino Rossi, Australia
No. of Comments: 2 (Low)
Most Favourable Comment: "Looking good as always"
Least Favourable Comment: "Ugh. Just Ugh."
Observations: It's hard to make this tie go with shirts that aren't plain. Not that that bothers me. Just sayin'

See you next week.

Two Disturbing Pictures

2011-08-19T10:00:00.001+09:30

There's probably a taboo against posting this sort of thing in a public place but...

There's definitely a taboo against posting this kind of photo in a public place, it's a strange and unusual punishment of the worst kind and liable to cause public panic, but a guy can't help the face he's born with.

Maybe I will...

2011-08-18T10:00:00.002+09:30

While I was racking my brain trying to think of something for my post for today that didn't involve me , I got a little distracted (as I am somewhat wont to do) by a book of Australian verse (I will behave myself and refrain from calling it poetry). An hour or so later, I decided that I'd just write up a little something for today, just as soon as I'd read one more...

THE MEN WHO COME BEHIND, Henry Lawson

There's a class of men (and women) who are always on their guard—
Cunning, treacherous, suspicious—feeling softly—grasping hard—
Brainy, yet without the courage to forsake the beaten track—
Cautiously they feel their way behind a bolder spirit’s back.

If you save a bit of money, and you start a little store—
Say, an oyster-shop, for instance, where there wasn’t one before—
When the shop begins to pay you, and the rent is off your mind,
You will see another started by a chap that comes behind.

So it is, and so it might have been, my friend, with me and you—
When a friend of both and neither interferes between the two;
They will fight like fiends, forgetting in their passion mad and blind,
That the row is mostly started by the folk who come behind.

They will stick to you like sin will, while your money comes and goes,
But they’ll leave you when you haven’t got a shilling in your clothes.
You may get some help above you, but you’ll nearly always find
That you cannot get assistance from the men who come behind.

There are many, far too many, in the world of prose and rhyme,
Always looking for another’s ‘footsteps on the sands of time.’
Journalistic imitators are the meanest of mankind;
And the grandest themes are hackneyed by the pens that come behind.

If you strike a novel subject, write it up, and do not fail,
They will rhyme and prose about it till your very own is stale,
As they raved about the region that the wattle-boughs perfume
Till the reader cursed the bushman and the stink of wattle-bloom.

They will follow in your footsteps while you’re groping for the light ;
But they’ll run to get before you when they see you’re going right;
And they’ll trip you up and baulk you in their blind and greedy heat,
Like a stupid pup that hasn’t learned to trail behind your feet.

Take your loads of sin and sorrow on more energetic backs!
Go and strike across the country where there are not any tracks!
And—we fancy that the subject could be further treated here,
But we’ll leave it to be hackneyed by the fellows in the rear.

I think, maybe, that I'll leave the verse to the professionals for now. Even if Mr. Lawson is unlikely to take offence these days.

The Wednesday Quiz II.III: Autobiographical

2011-08-17T10:00:00.001+09:30

Featured below are the aurobiographies of some prominent persons. Your task this week is simply to give the titles of the works without resorting to looking them up. It's a bit different from the last few weeks because Leaflocker management has received complaints on the lack of variety. That's the way to get things done around here, complain. It works on other blogs too.
Without further ado, let's get on with it.

i.

ii.

iii.

iv.

v.

vi.

vii.

viii.

ix.

x.

Last week's results should be up around abouts now as well.

Read: The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya

2011-08-16T10:00:00.003+09:30

You have until 10AM ACST to post your answers for the current quiz, and a new one will be along tomorrow, if all goes according to plan.

Let's get this off our chests right away. I don't understand Japan at all. This is a bit of a problem for my street cred, and around AVCon circles I'm beginning to be vaguely known as 'the odd one who doesn't like anime'. For a guy who tries to be involved in helping to run an anime convention it's a serious black mark, so I do my best to expand my horizons. The latest opportunity came when Jimmy (of the infrequent updates) lent me the first in what is apparently regarded as quite a good series of Light Novels (a light novel is a novella, as I understand it, but not all pretentious like novellas normally are), Nagaru Tanigawa's The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiha, on a sadistic whim.

I actually enjoyed reading this a lot more than any manga or anime that I've read or watched respectively for quite some time. It's easier to understand something that's put down in words (and in a superior translation, I must add) than it is to try to get a bunch of seemingly unconnected images that would apparently transfer instant understanding to a Japanese or sufficeient advanced otaku audience, and the style is pretty fun, for what I guess would be categorised as a Young Adult novel here.

Kyon, the (ok, one of the) hapless victim(s) of the title character, is the first person narrator with a friendly, rambly tone and a very enjoyable habit of phrasing his narration as if it's part of the current conversation. Every now and then the other characters will respond to what he "thought", which is a clever little technique which adds I nice little element of brain-bending to an already complicated plot, what with the pocket universes, time-travel, and reality-editing killers and all. And I have a more-than-sneaking suspicion that things are likely to get considerably more complicated in the following books (of which I hear there are at least ten).

The story follows the formation of the SOS Brigade, a school club in the mysterious style of Japanese school clubs that I can't begin to understand, whose purpose is to serve the whims of the domineering title character and generally look for crazy people. This process is made easier by most of the crazy people being members of the club. I don't really want to go any further in case I spoil the whole thing, but there is the potential for some crazy, crazy junk later in the series, which I am interested in reading out of a sense of cat-killing curiosity if Jimmy is up for me ragging on his favourite reading matter yet again.

Page 123:

[Is one of a few picture pages of the book. This one features a schoolgirl in the traditional ludicrously short skirt, with a dreamy look on her face, and a knife! Oh no...]

...which brings me along to the reason that I generally don't like the anime/manga genres in general, they're just creepy. This book, for example, features a character whose main purpose is to be sexually harrassed, and though the narrator is a decent enough bloke and keeps pointing out that this is perhaps not all that appropriate, it doesn't stop him from staring at and fantising about such scenes.

Now you might be tempted to say "but isn't the narrator a teenaged boy? Isn't that just good characterisation?", but to me the awkwardness about it just makes it worse. It seems to reinforce the all-too-common idea that somehow guys can't help but be pervents, and that this sort of thing is acceptable, because a human being with feelings just can't help themselves sometimes. I don't know about you guys out there on the internet, but I've never thought that sort of thing was funny, and scenes like this and the gratuitous fanservice that's so common in these forms just detracts from the experience for me.

Maybe the authors know their demographic, maybe I'm just the odd one out here (sales figures and con attendance would seem to support this view, not just for anime and manga but across young adult fiction in general), but it seems to me that it just cheapens the art-form, and cheapens those of us that read it, too. How do we expect people reading this sort of stuff to grow into functioning human beings, or more important, to graduate to reading big boy's books?

Well, that got a bit more serious than I intended. That's two days in a row I've finished writing the post and felt all preachy. Maybe I need a holiday or something.

Since I was supposed to be reviewing a book, and feel like I haven't done it justice, let me just say that the energy and enthusiasm for pure silliness that you find in Japanese media is a wonderful thing that we could do with more of in our Western literature, and this book is a pretty good example of what we're missing, despite some of my gripes.

If you were hoping for a review of the Buru Quartet's This Earth of Mankind, I'm afraid it will have to wait until I get my hands on another copy, because the one that I was reading has gone home to its owner.

Reading List Progress:

Number of Books read: 5
Australian quotient: 1.045
Fantasy quotient: 2
Science Fiction quotient: 2 (this can count as SF, because it mentions aliens)
Biography quotient: 1
Next Up: William Gibson, Neuromancer (By popular demand)

Reinventing Comics

2011-08-15T22:00:00.002+09:30

Bonus post because I am feeling oh-so-generous.

If you're following Ale's blAugust adventure you'll know that she's been getting some outside help to make her art blog more interesting than mine.

Following the old adage that everything is funnier with a Pope, this evening I sat me down and drew this utter plagirism of the most inferior sort.

There was quite a few production problems, like my scanner being out of action and my using a handheld camera, my general lack of artfulness and my completely forgetting to actually label the books, but overall I'm actually pretty pleased with it. It depicts Benedict XV (the pope I currently have it in for), reading some useful encyclicals and still failing at roller-skating, which is even harder in choir dress (if such a thing is even possible). In case you're wondering, the books he's reading are intended to be Ad Beatissimi Apostolorum, Humani Generis Redemptionem and Quod Iam Diu (he's reading his own encyclicals because no-one else was likely to, poor guy).

I've got something lined up for this week's effort, too, but I'll wait to post it in the hope that I can work out what's wrong with my scanner (and maybe touch up the picture a little). I would be impressed if someone managed to guess what it might be.

Get a Job (Nananananananana)

2011-08-15T10:00:00.001+09:30

I promised some Canadian chick that the next time I sat myself down to do a devotion I'd post it for her delectation, if delecatation is a word that can be applied to devotions. To be perfectly honest I'm a little bit uncomfortable about being so openly religious on this here blog, given that I'm not normally much of a bible-basher and in public I tend to enjoy laughing at aspects of my religion rather than defending it, but I'm going to give it a try anyway, since it's at least as much a part of me as wearing silly ties.

If me getting all Christian on your ass is disturbing, feel free to leave now and come back tomorrow, when I'll be talking about Japanese girls in short skirts. If you need something else to read right now, here's something a friend of mine recommended to the other day, which is kind of cute (it's a pity that the cute is ruined by the last two panels a little bit, but at least it's better than much of the rest of the archive, which is distinctly nsfw).

Anyway, my random flipping through the bible (I seem chronically unable to keep to any kind of reading plan or schedule) landed me in the Book of Job, in which Job despairs at the unfairness of his life and the cruelty of God; about the most cheery place a guy can end up when he's feeling down, except perhaps Lamentations or Jeremiah. The good thing about Job is that it's full of beautiful flowing poetic language like this little excerpt from 10:10-12:

Did you not pour me out like milk and curdle me like cheese,
clothe me with skin and flesh and knit me together with bones and sinews?
You gave me life and showed me kindness, and in your providence watched over my spirit.

It's very, very readable, and before long I found myself swept away in the language and the drama and distracted from the purpose of the reading, which is to gain something of an understanding of God as he applies to my life. Too often with bible readings, I have either this problem, or the problem of feeling like I know it all already, like I'm not learning anything new despite other people sharing their experiences and insights. Job has the same problem in 12:2-3, but he's much snarkier and ruder than I am, and responds to his friends thus:

Doubtless you are the people, and wisdom will die with you!
But I have a mind as well as you; I am not inferior to you.
Who does not know all of these things?

The difference between Job and me is that it's right down there in the text that Job is a godly man, and Job does actually understand all the arguments that his friends are making in defence of God, whereas I just think I do. The fact remains, though, that too often I feel like I'm being taught something or am trying to teach myself something that I already know; and my university experience lets me know that nothing is as fun the second time around, be it Mathematics 1A or Theology 101.

However, since I know it's what I'm meant to do and somewhere deep down I really do think that it's good for me (probably more so than finishing up Pokemon Tower), I settled down and gave it a go, and blow me down if I didn't find something worth mentioning to a Canadian chick (and apparently the internet at large). At least, it seems to me where I'm at at quarter past twelve at night like it's worth saying (I'm writing this Sunday night for posting on Monday), I'm not saying anything new, to me or to anyone else, but right now it's encouraging. Hopefully the religious types amongst you might find it kind of interesting, and the irreligious ones might find it interesting from a scientific viewpoint, or something, and all of your will get some kind of idea of where I'm at just at this second, which is a nice little point of fellowship, I suppose. The text in question is Job 5:17-27:

Blessed is the man whom God corrects;
so do not despise the discipline of the Almighty.
For he wounds, but he also binds up;
he injures, but his hands also heal.
From six calamities he will rescue you;
in seven no harm will befall you.
In famine he will ransom you from death,
and in battle from the stroke of the sword.
You will be protected from the lash of the tongue,
and need not fear when destruction comes.
You will laugh at destruction and famine,
and need not fear the beasts of the earth.
For you will have a covenant with the stones of the field,
and the wild animals will be at peace with you.
You will know that your tent is secure;
you will take stock of your property and find nothing missing.
You will know that your children will be many,
and your descendants like the grass of the earth.
You will come to the grave in full vigour,
like sheaves gathered in season.
We have examined this and it is true.
So hear it and apply it to yourself.

That's some good advice there, thanks Eliphaz the Temanite! Contained here is the centre of apology, that God breaks down so that he can build, that the good of his actions in the world is greater than the evil, that he is at work for the ultimate blessing of his people; and we're called to submit to his discipline with joy. Now any concordance or preacher will tell you that Eliphaz and Job's other friends are off base because their advice is all based on the assuption that Job is a sinner when in fact Job is the apple of god's eye. In sermons time after time, I hear that we're supposed to hear the words of Eliphaz, Bildad, Zophar and Elihu, but disregard them because Job has a better understanding of the Almighty.

With the way I've been feeling at the moment, though, my repeated refusal to acknowledge my own errors, the powerlessness to change the weaknesses that I do notice, it seems to me that Eliphaz is on the money (Often when I read Job I feel this way, that the theological statements of the 'wrong' friends are more useful than God's tirade of rhetorical questions come the end of the book). Instead of despairing that I am lost and confused, I should be watching out for my every mistake and actively trying to atone and correct for them, in my relationships, in my working life, and in all the other places too. This isn't anything groundbreaking, but at this moment I feel like it's a reminder that I needed, expressed in a way that I can get behind. Best of all, there is a promise that if I can reconcile myself to God's teaching in these ways that I will be rewarded, I'd like to pretend that I don't need a reward to want to do those things that I know are right, but I'd be a sucker to pass up a chance at things getting better instead of piling up getting worse.

So, it's time for a little more introspection (is that a word?). A little less time playing chess and a little more being helpful around home. A little less time spent sending silly personal emails and a little more getting down to business. Perhaps most of all, a little more time for devotion and prayer and a little less training up my Sandslash (which, I feel compelled to tell you, is kick ass).

Of course, this isn't something new for me, these are problems I constantly notice in myself and constantly fail to fix, mostly because I keep on thinking that I can do it alone. Chances are that if I continue making Monday a devotion post (which seems like a cool idea right now) it'll come up again and again, until you and I are bored to death of it. Anyway, until then, let me leave you with a little something from the Man himself, via Job 38:1-3, that I'll be using as the core of my focus tonight as a call to thoughtful prayer, expectant silence, introspection and acceptance...

Who is this that darkens my counsel with words without knowledge?
Brace yourself like a man;
I will question you, and you shall answer me.

Tie of the Week

2011-08-12T10:00:00.002+09:30

Week two in my tie-wearing project, and this week was going to have to be a less interesting tie than last week's, as how can a humble patterned tie ever hope to measure up to Tintin?

This is me as I was dressed on Wedneday night when I was at the theatre, complementary Ken Clarke eyeglasses and all, and wearing this week's snazzy tie, which is not only attractive with a range of plain shirts of any colour, but is also Teflon coated. That's right, I could fry an egg on this baby on a hot day and it'd wipe right off. You just know that's gonna come in handy some day

Tie Number:002
Designation: Polytetrafluoroethtielene
Provenance: Op-shop, 2009
Manufacture: Unknown
No. of Comments: 1 (Low)
Most Favourable Comment: "Looking Swell!"
Least Favourable Comment: "Looking Swell!"
Observations: I didn't know that Teflon ties were a thing, but I don't have the courage to spill stuff on it just in case it won't come clean, I like this tie.

Tune in next week for yet another tie-related post.

The Leaflocker Theatre Review

2011-08-11T18:00:00.001+09:30

This was going to be another photoblog about destroying my books, but since I haven't actually done any destruction since last week and since I spent this evening out at the theatre, this is now a theatre review piece. Not reviewing the theatre itself, which was pretty standard suburban theatre fare, masks of comedy and tragedy, pretentious latin mottoes and all, but the production, you understand.

The production was Man of Steel and it was being performed by Emmaus College, which a couple of years ago was Tabor College and when I went to school was Bethesda College, a Christian school with a chronic alias problem that just happens to have a number of kids that I know and like in it. Thus I went along, pondering the dual questions of exactly why every school seems to do an annual musical these days instead of actual artistic theatre (thanks, John), and how I (as a twenty-something going to watch a 13 year old girl be in a musical) was going to look a little less suss, always a concern for a young man who tends to go to shows alone. As it turned out, my second problem was solved by a number of friends turning up, which made it all ok, I could tag along with them, make snide little comments in their ears, and feel like I fitted in. The first question is bigger one, which I will deal with at another time.

It seems to me that the cast did an excellent job without having much to work with, altogether. The set, costumes, choreography and the acting were all above average for a school musical, I found out later that this was because the whole school worked on various parts. However, the play itself (apparently the most regularly-produced play in Australia) is just bad. To my mind, there's two reasons why the script might have been just so bad, the first is that it's just bad and people have no taste when it comes to musicals, and the second is that as any conscientious Christian school would do, it's possible that the script was heavily censored to make it suitable for the majority of the audience. I don't think this second one is the case, but I would like to present it as a possibility before I launch into a undeserved diatribe at the writers.

Man of Steel is a musical about a superhero and a non-sensical plot by the evil "Big Boss" (who gets a pretty good villain song, at least)to bring him down and rule the Veldt (the "big boss" has a bad accent that kept making me think of the South African cricket team, then again so many things do). There's a love triangle, a sinister plot, all-singing, all-dancing gangsters, some colourful but ultimately superfluous side-characters, and therefore it should have all the constituent parts of a successful musical, but somehow the parts just don't come together in an entertaining way.

The songs, while well sung by the cast in general and the leading lady in particular, and backed by an excellent band (I'm a sucker for a theatre band), were repetitive and boring, and while that is par for the course for musicals, it felt like someone had deliberately set out to write repetitive and boring songs. There was also a dearth of them in the second act, which seemed mostly dedicated to "plot".

The plot was shallow and uninteresting, which again is par for the course for superhero fiction, but with a love triangle (that was nothing but an excuse for an extra song in the first act, and had no further mention in the plot), hidden identities (no time for the hero/alter-ego love angst thing, I guess), employment concerns, and much more, there was potential for a considerably more interesting story than what ended up occuring. Perhaps I've been spoilt since the last few plays I've been to see were by the state theatre company.

On the plus side, though, the puns were excellently groanworthy, the cast and crew did a great job despite a number of technical hitches, requiring some ad-libbing and improvisation, and the piece had been well regionalised and brought up to date for a modern audience, so that it worked well and got a lot of laughs from the audience. Though for my part, seeing girls in 50's dresses talking about Taylor Swift is a little bit jarring.

The leading man was excellent as the Man of Steel himself (not Superman, though, for copyright reasons, I imagine), pulling off that classic smug Superman image with great aplomb and making me want to jump up on the stage and slap him for being so damn smug (and I might just do so at church this weekend). My other friend in the musical, despite being in the chorus, was pretty good too, and seemed to be enjoying herself immensely. So altogether I was glad that I'd gone instead of sitting at home planning some other boring blog post.

So, Man of Steel is more fun than sitting at home by yourself, and it's on again tonight and tomorrow night at 7 P.M. on Goodwood Road next to Eggless, the dessert cafe that is apparently where all the cool kids hang out these days.

For me, though, the man problem is that I'm not singing any of the songs today, something that has never happened before after seeing a musical. I am disappoint. It makes me want to try and write something better. Maybe I'll have to pull out my old Binary: The Musical script, and see where the mood takes me...

The Wednesday Quiz II.II: Mappage

2011-08-10T13:00:00.001+09:30

That's right, ladies and gentlemen of the internet. It is once again Wednesday, and that means it's time for another quiz, this week based around the world map. This weeks quiz is brought to you by the wonders of the internet, the gentlemanly rules of single quiz combat and the number ten.
Each of the maps below represents some aspect of the modern world, in diplomatic, sporting and demographic spheres of all colours, but it's up to you to work out what. Seriously, only you can save mankind.
Please put you answers to what each of the following maps represents in the comments to this post. Creativity earns points too, in case you're stuck, but not as many points as the correct answers.

i.
ii.
iii.
iv.
v.
vi.
vii.
viii.
ix.
x.
Don't be afraid, logical thinking, process of elimination and educated guessing will get you most of the way.

Last week's quiz answers are now up!

Read: Dune

2011-08-09T10:00:00.005+09:30

If you came here this week looking for a post about The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiha then I'm very sorry, but an emergency reading project has arisen and delayed it for a week, instead you get this thing about one of the books I read during The Big Sleep, as I am now officially referring to the six months of my life more or less completely lost at the beginning of this year.

I don't know how exactly it was that I managed to get this far into life without reading such a staple of science-fiction as Frank Herbert's classic Dune, but however it occured, I have now rectified this grevious, grevious error, and the contents of my unread bookshelf mean that I'll soon be devouring other classics of the genre, too.

I'm more than a little bit daunted at the idea of reviewing Dune, not only because it's condsidered one of the absolute masterworks of SF, and not only because Frank Herbert was one bad-ass dude, but because of both of those combined with the knowledge that the cruel readership of this here blog will rip me apart if I dare to suggest that there's anything wrong with it.

Thus, I think it's very important to mention right off the bat that I really this book, it was a fun little story. But, I don't think that I missed anything by not reading it until now. The fact is that living in the world that I do, and the society of nerds (to put it generously) with whom I normally associate, I've had enough knowledge of Dune to get this joke, be able to enter into superficial conversations as if I'd read it. This is the problem with books that are so much part of society's psyche that you feel like you've already read them, you feel no need to actually read them. And the fans are kinda off-putting sometimes, too.

Page 123:

The Duke glanced down to the left at the broken landscape of the Shield Wall -- chasms of tortured rock, patches of yellow-brown crossed by black lines of fault shattering. It was as though someone had dropped this ground from space and left it where it smashed.
They crossed a shallow basin with the clear outline of gray sand spreading across it from a canyon opening to the south. The sand fingers ran out into the basin -- a dry delta outlined against darker rock.

Well, now I've read Dune, and even enjoyed it, it was everything that it cracked up to be. No longer being twelve years old like I was when I did a lot of my sci-fi reading (ok, let's admit it, it was mostly Star Wars books), I was able to appreciate the book for more than just its adventure story. The world and characters of Dune are as well-realised as any in fiction, the story is tight enough to maintain the tension but slow enough to allow some philosophising, which is a tough path to steer. The whole all-knowing protagonist with convenient blank spots thing seems like a bit of a cop-out, but it was a nice idea presented as well as I could imagine it being done, so A+ for effort.

If you haven't read it, I'd recommend picking it up. If you're in Adelaide (or frankly even if you're not, I've been looking for an excuse to use these snazzy new $2 stamps) I've got a copy you can borrow. Please give it back some time.

You didn't read this looking for an actual review, did you? Because if you did, that's not what we do here. I'm more into reviewing things that hardly anyone has hear of, thereby saving myself from the inevitable storm of abuse.

As for my penance for not getting around to Dune for so long, I'm going to read the rest of the series. All of it. No matter who wrote it. I will do the world and my pocket a favour by not buying those written by others, but borrowing them from the library instead. You'll know when my brain leaks out of my ears when I stop posting.

Reading List Progress:
Number of Books read: 4
Australian quotient: 1.045
Fantasy quotient: 2
Science Fiction quotient: 1
Biography quotient: 1
Next Up: The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya and This Earth of Mankind

The Leaflocker Week in Review

2011-08-08T10:00:00.002+09:30

Well, we are currently a week into the August blagofest, and enthusiasm for the project is high here in the leaflocker editorial offices. The new projects seem to be relatively well-received, and the action of actually posting once a days is proving to be an enjoyable process for the time being. It's time to go over the current projects and make recommendations, and the readership is encouraged to let us know what they like and would like to see more of, or more likely what projects could do with dismemberment and storage in a suitable disused bank vault, in the comments area below.

Blagofest: Current goal of 5 posts a day has been adhered to, although Wednesday did run a few hours late due to technical issues. The other participants also all managed some output, which is an encouraging start to the month, however the amount of output has been greatly hampered by sickness and new employment. We here at the Leaflocker have chosen to remain silent on this point, and will begin the heckling next week if matters do not improve, acknowledging that it is slightly easier to post a few random thoughts or photos than it is to produce a new computer program or masterpiece of literature. Neither rain nor sleet nor gloom of night shall stay mine ridicule next week, however.

Reading Project: Going well, although some space will need to be cleared on the floor of the editorial offices to allow more easy access to the shelves, which are proving difficult to get at. This week's book reading has been interrupted by an emergency reading project which is proving very interesting, but may interfere with Tuesday's intended review. I guess we'll find out tomorrow.

Quizzes: Enjoyable to create, but the lack of response suggests that the quiz last week was either too difficult or just badly timed for the majority of the audience. We will refrain from posting results for a little longer to allow more entrants, and attempt to scale down the diffficulty a little bit for this week.

Wreck This Journal: Was fun to post, although a little unstructured. Need to get a bit more of a plan for the overall structure of the project and then get some more wrecking done by this Thursday Wednesday's dinner is shaping up to be a splattery one...

Ties: The tie project now involves watching episodes of Tintin as well as simply looking dashing and handsome. We'll have to see if we can find the time to pull this off.

Crosswords: There's a nice little number in the works at the moment, but it's currently stalled looking for a few more difficult entries, it could be a while until it's posted, particularly if I have to re-work the bottom left corner. The theme should be a little less absurdly obscure than the last, since it is themeless.

Real life: The premier distraction has departed safely for Canada, and due to what we at the leaflocker are happy to chalk up to devine intervention (the other option would seem to be the compassion of immigration officials, we think we're choosing the more likely of the two) has even managed to gain a working visa for entry into the country.

Blog changes: We've tried to make a few little changes around the blog, with the addition of the blogroll and revision of the projects links, but it was done a little haphazardly and most of it seems to be malfunctioning. I'm sure we'll fix it sometime.

With the readership all up to date, so begins the second week of August. The Leaflocker would like you wish you all joy in your exploits, be they digital or analogue, and looks forward to hearing all about them in your blog. You should get a blog, we hear everyone was doing it ten years ago, so it must be more or less ready to come back in again. You know you want to be cool just like the editorial staff of the leaflocker, don't you? Everyone does.

Tie of the Week

2011-08-05T10:00:00.001+09:30

At my work, Friday is casual day, but the rest of the time I abide by the unofficial but strongly encouraged part of the company dress-code that suggests that a gentleman should wear a necktie at all times. Sadly, me wearing a necktie doesn't make me look any more professional, it just makes me look like I'm a goof wearing a necktie.

Thankfully, though, somewhere along the way I discovered that I liked wearing neckties, and have amassed a somewhat larger-than-required selection. They have thus become a regular gift for birthdays and Christmasses and the like, which only serves to amplify the problem.

This most recent birthday, I received the little gem of a necktie above (pictured here with my purple Thursday shirt on the basis that I get the most comments on my ties when they are paired with my purple Thursday shirt. You can't really see it all that well due to the erratic photography style that I practice, but it portrays Tintin, investigative reporter extraordinaire, expressing his mild suprise at the rather novel experience of being shot at with arrows. He is one bad-ass dude.

It is my new favourite tie, and so I wore it every day this week. I plan to do the same with all the other ties in my collection, good, bad and oh-so-ugly, in the coming year or so, therefore lauching yet another of the vain and pointless exercises that are becoming a staple of the leaflocker. So:

Tie Number:001
Designation: Oh Tintin, my Tintin
Provenance: Birthday present 2011
Manufacture: Citime, Italy
No. of Comments: 12 (New personal best)
Most Favourable Comment: "Ooh, I love Tintin, let me lend you my boxed set!" (I sense another little project coming on)
Least Favourable Comment: "That tie clashes that horrible shirt of yours. Doesn't your mother dress you properly in the morning?"
Observations: Most people don't find this tie as funny as I do. Weird.

Tune in next week for another, less interesting, tie-related post.

Wreck This Journal - Part One

2011-08-04T08:00:00.003+09:30

In news unrelated to this post, myself and some friends are looking for a seventh for a "friendly" little game of diplomacy online. If you're keen, drop me a line in the comments.

Like most bibliophiles, I am fiercely protective of my books. I snap at those who carelessly open them to an angle of more than forty degrees, I keep them vertically as much as possible to reduce the stress on the spines, and I am meticulous about book repairs (at least as much as possible for a lazy guy with little free time).
Thus you might find it suprising that when I first saw a copy of Keri Smith's Wreck This Journal you might think that I would cringe at the very thought, but the reality is quite the opposite. Here was a book that I could destroy, let go of my neanderthal instincts and just run wild with, and have a lot of fun along the way. It wanted me to obliterate it, crush it beneath my heel (literally), devour it piece by piece. Unfortunately, though, the owner of it was reluctant to let me mutilate part of her library, no matter how manic the grin on my face became.

So you can imagine my joy, when for my most recent birthday I received a copy of my very own, to destroy however I saw fit, and I have since taken great joy in various modes of distruction, taking care not to do too much at any one time, so that I can keep the journal for a little while and not end up spending all my money on new versions just so that I could destroy it a little more.

First, I vicously cracked the spine in as many ways as I could think of, stamping, folding, karate chopping. Damage was being done, I was harm that most precious of God's creations, a book, and it should have felt glorious, but instead it but strangely unsatisfying. There wasn't even any good little popping noises like one comes to expect from handling library hardcovers.

Next I tried pure destruction, ripping and tearing, but it was too neat, too sensible.

The washing machine was next, and this at least produced a satisfying result (and a bit of a mess in the machine...), obviously water was a good thing for this poor little journal, which left the next step painfully obvious...

Shower time. Get the journal good and soapy, make sure it gets a nice shampoo and everything too, so that it comes out fresh and clean and smelling of chemicals.

Then, of course, I had a wet journal to deal with, so I left it on the wood heater to dry out over the course of several days, changing the page it was open to regularly. Then various family members found it, and following the instructions they opened to a random page and performed the function for me, hence the red wine stain through some of the central pages.

A curious red mould is growing on some of the pages, I guess I left it damp for too long...unexpected natural destruction, nice!

Time to contribute a little of my own with a few little notes...

I was beginning to feel a little bit like a sheep, just following along doing everything the book tells me, but hey, the world needs a few sheep, anyway.

Go, you brave little spine!

Hrmm, starting to look a little tatty, for some reason.

Well, that's the beginning of what I hope will be an interesting little series. Of course, other people have done this so so much better than me that it seems hardly worth trying, but I'm having fun with it for now. Other people scare me, anyway.

Wanna know what else I got for my birthday? You'll just have to wait until tomorrow.

The Longest Quiz

2011-08-03T23:19:00.005+09:30

Thanks to the wonders of the infinite canvas, here is the complete quiz for your delectation, a mere 14 hours later than intended. Simply let us know in the comments what each string of flags represents, and earn the admiration and respect of some people on the internet. The gentleman's agreement mentioned in this morning's post still stands.

STRING 1:
STRING 2:
STRING 3:
STRING 4:
STRING 5:
STRING 6:
STRING 7:
STRING 8:
STRING 9:

STRING 10:

My advice? Why, I'm flattered that you asked. Think logically, take your time, eliminate the impossible, and then guess wildly if required. I won't judge you, much.

If you're still not satisfied will all this quizzing and need some more, Uncle5000 has a quiz on today, too.

The Latest Quiz

2011-08-03T10:00:00.004+09:30

Yes, it's Wednesday here in beautiful downtown Adelaide, and Wednesday means quizzes. But unfortunately this week's quiz is not quite ready due to me somehow managing to lose all the files. Thus it will be delayed by as much as twelve hours, while I get home from work and start again.
While you're waiting, though, here's an example of the sort of thing that we'll be dealing with. The quiz is a series of strings of flags, like a virtual parade-route, and each string of flags represents a historical progression of events, with the top flag being the oldest in the string, and the bottom flag being the most recent in the string.

Let me remind you at this point that there is a code of honour amongst gentlemen which precludes the use of references and collaboration of any kind when participating in high-stakes competitions such as Leaflocker quizzes. Let us match wits, you and I.

STRING 0: (considerably harder than the quiz itself)
What does this string of flags represent?

If you're still looking for something to do, everyone in Monday's post, as well as James, whose bidding weaknesses I have not been made aware of, has made their first steps in the August Blagofest, so there's plenty of new stuff out here on the internet.

Content With My Failure / Read: A Dance With Dragons

2011-08-02T10:00:00.008+09:30

If you're one of my irregular readers, and I must assume that you are, you may be aware that some months ago I embarked on my reading project, an attempt to curb my rampant expediture in the vicinity of bookstores. The idea, for those of you with short memories, was that I would refrain from buying any new books until I had disposed of all the books on my list, and this noble aim lasted about as long as the next time I passed by my local newsagent.
Well, a little while ago, while rearranging funiture and going through my collection and realising that the problem was more serious than I'd previously realised (to the tune of some fifty volumes), I devised a more realistic system that I have since managed to keep to.

These are my shelves of unread books. All the volumes here are part of my library, but for various reasons are yet to be read. The new system is simple, I may not exceed the free space on the unread shelves with any new purchases. Thus, I must read in order to expand my library. Books that I have begun but not finished are in the top left, and it is my intention to finish these and then begin working left to right. This will allow me some choice, as I can pick from any of the three shelves, but should ensure that no volumes will be left to rot. In the interests of full disclosure I feel compelled to mention the disclaimer that reference books are immune to these conditions, and may be purchased with impunity, and that gift books that overfill the bookshelf are allowed, but must be added to the shelves before new aquisitions can be made (the idea of virtual shelves seemed to me to be a cunning little loophole, for a while). This system has the tentative approval of certain other parties concerned in the expenditure and mass in my reading material, which is a tactical victory, I assure you.

I will seek to continue the reading project (there's quite the backlog of read books to share with you, dear readers), and give you regular updates on the state of the shelves.

One of those books that I have read during my absence from the internet is the ridiculously long-awaited Dance of Dragons. It has a long and chequered history, but is basically the other half of a book published way back in 2005. In 2005 I was still in high school, which makes me feel like it was a very long time ago. I'm tempted to enter into a long whining missive on the unreliability and even downright meanness of the man to keep me waiting this long, but I won't. Firstly because I am aware that George R.R. Martin is not my bitch, and secondly because I have way too much respect for the guy that brought me back to fantasy fiction when I thought for a long time that it had died with Tolkien.

For those of you not familiar with the story, A Song of Ice and Fire is an epic fantasy series that began as a trilogy and has so far spanned five books. It tracks the land of Westeros, where great houses vie for power between themselves in mostly devious and downright nasty ways, and honourable people (and dishounourable ones too, let's admit it) have an unfortunate way of up and dying just as soon as the reader gets attached to them. Over the course of the last four books, two kings and four pretenders to the throne of the Seven Kingdoms have died in various mean and terible ways, a scion of the old royal family has made her absurdly ponderously way home, and many, many, many thousands of people have died. Honourable men turn out to be less than honourable, villains get redeemed, and absolutely nothing, nothing, is what it seems. It's actually rather good.

Page 123:

They found the lord alone in the gloom of his hall, making a supper of bread and beer and sister's stew. Twenty iron sconces were mounted along his thick stone walls, but only four held torches, and none of them was lit. Two fat tallow candles gave a meagre, flickering light.

I'll stop there, because any more could be considered spoilers for those of you who are eagerly awaiting news on this particular POV character... :p But it does give you an example of the style. I actually tried reading some of this book aloud to a captive audience, but had to abandon the attempt when I couldn't stop giggling at the ridiculous pomposity of the dialogue. That's fantasy for you, no wonder the other genres don't take us seriously.

Although I found the book itself to be slow and even comparatively uninteresting (I actually slept between the time I acquired it and I finished reading it, the first time that I can say that for the series), it was good to get some of the rest of the story. It still felt like nothing happened, because almost everything significant had already occured in the last book (it takes an awful lot of nothing to fill about 1000 pages, let me tell you), but it was still good enough that I'll be eagerly waiting in line for the next one when it comes out too, provided I am still capable of standing and moving around by that point.

The best thing about it was that I got an excuse to re-read the rest of the series again just to make sure that I wasn't missing anything. There sure are some badasses in Westeros, and I am partial to a badass. It took up a bunch of my designated reading time, but a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do, unless he's a badass, in which case he can do whatever the hell he wants.

Reading List Progress:
Number of Books read: 3 (ok, there's more, but hopefully we'll get to them this month)
Australian quotient: 1.045
Fantasy quotient: 2
Biography quotient: 1
Next Up: The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya

The Augustinians

2011-08-01T10:00:00.003+09:30

It’s been a long time between drinks here at the Leaflocker, but now that one major distraction is out of the way and the other is about to flee the country after some traumatising experiences, I figure that it’s time for a more regular diet of miscellanea to keep me occupied in the twilight hours.

To such an end, beginning today, the first of August, the Leaflocker will be take up a blag chollenge of producing new content at a rate of at least five posts a week. To aid me in this task, goad me on to new heights, and heckle continuously, allow me to introduce you to my three fellow participants, who just happen to be my regular late-night cards opponents (whether they’re playing on my team or not) and also happen to have blogs almost as irregularly updated as mine.

John , aside from his unfortunate tendency to bid no trumps instead of real suits, keeps a writing blog that puts my meandering prose to shame. If his work for an upcoming Advance Wars hack that makes my fanboy senses tingle isn’t enough for you, he apparently does some other writing that’s pretty good, or something. Anyway, he’s also aiming for five posts a week, but unlike here at the Leaflocker, they’ll be five inventive, intelligent and interesting pieces of quality prose. That won’t prevent me heckling him mercilessly if he fails to reach this ambitious target, however.

Ale , despite suffering from a chronic disease that causes her to bid misère at any and every perceived oppportunity, keeps an art blog that occasionally even has art on it. Suprising, right? Speaking for the artless, it's generally a pretty informative and interesting little number, much like the lady herself. She's going for three posts a week, which is a steep ask if you ask me. Then a again, any updates at all is a steep ask if you look through the archives here at the Leaflocker.

Jimmy, though he couldn't make an indication bid to save his life, is a pretty competent programmer, or at least he's good enough to fool a neophyte. He comes home from coding all day and then makes code for fun, which he shares with the rest of us. Or would, if he could ever be bothered actually posting. I'm pretty sure that most of the jokes go over my head. Jimmy isn't so sure about this blogging thing ,so we'll wait and see whether we can goad him into actually doing anything.

And I, aside from hypocritically complaining about bidding styles, will be restarting on the "jack of all trades, master of none" routine, with ramblings, quizzes, crosswords, pope jokes and assorted miscellania made up of half thought out content and mind-numbing filler like this little number until all seven of you are heartily sick of me. In other words, I might manage about a week if I'm really well behaved.

If you'd care to join us, get writing, or drawing, or coding, or whatever it is that you people do, and drop us a line in the comments so that we can heckle to our hearts content. It promises to be a lot of fun.

Counting Things

2011-07-13T10:19:00.004+09:30

37: Number of minutes spent on commute to work
1 : Number of sharp objects encountered in carpark
13: Number of staples currently holding together trousers

On Returning to the Workforce

2011-06-15T11:12:00.002+09:30

Ten little reminders that I've been off work for six months.

1. I keep typing the date as "2010"
2. Someone else is using my "reserved" mug
3. My shirts are still nicely pressed
4. My data filing system is utterly kaphooft
5. People I already know reintroduce themselves
6. I don't know where they keep the spare teabags
7. My keyboard lacks a familiar layers of grime (and still has most of the letters)
8. People that were at my level are now my superiors
9. The office has a deficit of masticated pens
10. I'm actually enjoying data entry

I'm back.

Crossword Time: More Anagrams

2011-02-01T16:47:00.003+10:30

Enthusiastic and inspired by your successful navigation of that first anagram, you go searching the grid for others, but identifying an anagram indicator, it turns out, is not as easy as you might think. Thankfully, the setter is hovering over your shoulder and points out two more anagram clues, just to stop you having to think too much. This is supposed to be fun, after all. First up, the erstwhile setter points to 15 down...

Flourished to rivet HD tuner (7)

I'll admit it, it's an ugly clue, because the surface meaning if just a bit too much of a stretch. If I wanted to grammatically correct, it would probably be more like "Flourished to rivet a HD tuner" or something (still ugly, but better), so the odd sounding sentence structure is your first clue that something fishy is going on. Combine this with the fact that 'rivet HD' has 7 letters and 'tuner' has some vibes of static and change associated with it, and you can be pretty confident that here you have another 7 letter anagram that means 'flourished', and you can understand why I've let my prized grammatical correctness slip for a little while.

Also on our little list of anagram clues is 6 down:

Philosopher is all about tea hour (7)

Tea time, yes, tea break, even, but tea hour? No-one takes a whole hour to drink a cuppa. Again "all about" is looking an awful lot like an anagram indicator, so we're on the lookout with a philosopher who shares his letters with 'teahour'. This is not to say that anagrams are always able to be found by looking for gramatical weridness, but it certainly gives us a nudge in the right direction.

In this case, the philosopher in question is Mr. THOREAU, whose theories have THRIVED greatly since his death. Not being a philosopher myself, I can't say I've read any of Mr. Thoreau's work, but if the letters fit the letters fit, and I couldn't really resist chucking him in, philosophers are classy and erudite, after all.

Crossword Time: Anagrams

2011-01-30T23:50:00.003+10:30

For the benefit of Mr. 5000, there will be a show tonight on crossword theory. Though the gentleman (and others) insist that they understand how the game works, I like messing about with crosswords and pretending that I know more that people about things, so it's time for a lecture on cryptics.

Returning to our grid from last week, let's start with the basic explanation that I'm sure none of you need. A cryptic crossword clue is a little puzzle, and each little puzzle fits with the others to form the grid. Each puzzle is one of only a few different types of puzzle, the idea behing each is easily learned even by mere humans like you and me, and once we work out what kind of puzzle it is, the answer is just a short jump away. In (almost) all these types of puzzles, the clue has two parts, a 'straight' section that is the word's definition just as in a regular crossword, and a wordplay section where things get a little bit crazy. The best way to understand this is to jump right in, so what are you waiting for?

First up is 20 down, the clue that Alethea says that she's solved (and indeed those of us familiar with her formidable intellect and puzzling bent have no reason to doubt her). Which reads:

"Resets Doom's infamous city... (5)"

Being the computer game fan that you are, you naturally are aware that Doom takes place on the moons of Mars rather than in any particular city, infamous or not, so instantly your spider-demon senses are tingling. This crossword can't possibly be asking for a city that's not named, so what is it asking for? Which part of this clue is the 'straight' part, and which is the wordplay? This clue is looking for a synonym of 'resets', or for a city that may or not be infamous (we know that the 'straight' part of this clue has to be at the beginning or end, because them's the rules, and no self-respecting cruciverbalist would break the rules, right?), though it's hard to say which.

But...the word 'resets' is enough to have any cryptic crossword fan swinging from building to building, as it is an anagram indicator, a word which transmits enough muddling, transforming morphic energy to power a teleport gate to hell itself. After all, at wouldn't be fair of the setter to just throw in a clue like:

Dog deity (3)

...and expect you to realise that you need to shuffle some letters around, so we drop little hints that someone needs to re-deal the letters. A more reasonable clue for the same might be:

Rabid dog deity (3)

...where 'rabid', with its connotations of madness and befuddlement, is the anagram indicator which, when applied to a canine, leads us naturally to a devine conclusion. In the same vein, 'resets' is an anagram indicator, probably re-setting the letters of "Doom's" to give us an infamous city. There are plenty of different words that could be anagram indicators, shaken, stirred, fried... anything that gives a feeling of disorder, but since "Doom's" has 5 letters and so does the infamous city we're looking for, we're beginning to see the light at the end of this particularly mad little tunnel.

A quick dip into the back-end of Genesis (actually it disappears in chapter 18, but why let biblical accuracy ruin a terrible pun?), reveals SODOM, a city that along with her sister Gomorrah, according to Biblical tradition, pretty much set the mould for infamy (and happens to share the same letter as the pluralised form of a popular first-person shooter).

Whoolah! We've done it, cracked the first part of the puzzle and all it took was a little re-arranging of some letters and a bit of general knowledge. Inspired by our early success, we knuckle down again, looking for some more of those tell-tale anagram indicators...but which clue do we tackle next?

Come Back Again

2011-01-20T16:35:00.007+10:30

This is, without a doubt, the best crossword I've ever written, which isn't really saying much, but there you go. It contains some dud entries, but for the most part writing it made me happy, and left me with plenty of ideas for next time, too.

As faithful readers of my uneventful blog you guys can be its first victims/beta testers, before I decide whether or not to submit it to a local magazine or something, just for the fun of collecting rejection slips. If you'd like an across lite version of the puzzle, drop me an email.

The idea came to me last night and before the sun rose it was complete. Have fun, and don't be worried if you can't get anywhere, it's pretty tricksy, if I say so myself.

Wednesday Quiz in Exile XI: Location, Location, Location

2010-11-10T11:00:00.000+10:30

The penultimate week of the first season of the Wednesday-Quiz-in-Exile is a game of photo-identification. Below are 12 sets of three photos, all taken in or of one of Australia's World Heritage Areas. All you have to do is name the location (or the World Heritage Area, where it has a different name (two ways to win!)) to score the points.

Name that place.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.Please leave your answers in 300x200px format in the comments.

Council Elections 2010

2010-11-09T02:25:00.001+10:30

I had intended to make this a big long post about the relative merits of all the candidates in my local council election, another satisfying brick in the wall of my blog of things that nobody actually cares about, but a few things stopped me:

1. They're all so darn similar that it would make for mighty boring reading. They all say they want steady council rates, the garbage collected, etc. etc. (Considering the "trenchant" nature of my Senate posts, when I say boring, you can believe that I really mean it).

2. Finding any even moderately interesting information is incredibly difficult due to the new restrictions in place this council election on online information. Mail-outs are better, but I've got post from only a few candidates, so I can hardly give a fair picture.

3. Turns I that I don't care either.

I find this all terribly depressing given my usual rabid enthusiasm for elections, and especially considering that this is the last one I'll get to be a part of for a few years unless I join my local bowls club or the Federal Labor government collapses, but there you are. I really wanted to get excited about this election too, for a couple of reasons. Firstly, my local council (City of Burnside) has been in the news over the last few years for all the wrong reasons, and the community is crying out for change.

More importantly, though, local Council elections are the only ones in our three-tier government system in which you don't have to vote. I can exercise my faith in the democratic system with enthusiasm and freedom, not just because I have to if I don't want to be fined. It makes me feel lke a real voter, not just one of the sheep.

So I've collected my junk mail, scoped out my candidates, put down all my preferences and sent my little cards in by mail, but I really don't care enough to blog about it. I do care enough to blog about not blogging about it, which I am tempted to call zen but suspect is really just insomnia.

Vignette: Marriage

2010-11-08T09:44:00.003+10:30

A young couple are walking back to their car after dinner in town, pleasantly ignorant of the world moving around them as only young couples can be, when arising out of the dark comes a hulking figure, gaunt and unshaven and smelling never-so-slightly of alcohol.

"Arg, why don't you two just get married?"

The lonely figure disappears into the darkness again, no doubt in search of other people to accost, leaving our two young heroes to their thoughts. After a short moment, the gentleman turns to his partner:

"Laura, hang on a sec...ah..."

The look on her face was just priceless.

Filk Fiction

2010-11-05T17:43:00.004+10:30

As I was reading through the archives of the newly-discovered blog of a dear friend of mine recently, I stumbled across a meme that she'd filled out. Ever keen to learn more about a friend, and partial to a little meme myself, I perused her answers, until I found that she'd refused to put an answer down for "Favourite Fan-Fic".

Now not being much of a fan-fic man myself, I can sympathise, but I wondered if her lack of response was down to not having a good answer, or just being too embarrassed to share it with the rest of the world. Well, just in case the second option happens to be true, but mostly because I'm feeling inordinately punny at the moment, here's a snippet of one of my favourite fan-fics for you all.

I'm not a big fan of fandom in general, the fascination with sex and sexuality is something that I just don't understand or approve of (and this particular peice is no exception, so look away now if you're particularly easily offended), but occasionally you run across a little gem, as I did when I was listening to "Death Sheep Radio" the other night.

So without further ado, here's an excerpt Tom "The World's Fastest Filker" Smith's seminal musical work "Hey, It's Can(n)on":

Ye've read the Harry Potter books, ye think ye know 'em through
But there's something that ye may not know, and here's a little clue:
The female of the Trio has her birthday on
Talk Like A Pirate Day. So heads up, Harry and Ron!

When she found out, her eyes she rolled, she went on knittin' socks,
But Harry said, "I've got the gold, let's head down to the docks,"
They traded lots o' Galleons for a lovely brigantine,
And now they're her young scallions and she's a pirate queen!

...

Now here's the part we talk about: with whom she's lockin' lips,
'Cause after all, a pirate queen has got to have her 'ships.
Some say Harry's her true love, or Ron she will betroth,
She finally cried, "I can't decide, I'll have to have 'em both!"

Who's the sassy bossy witch that all the boys pursue?
Grander than the Golden Snitch and more elusive too.
One may Seek'er, one may Keep'er, both know how to score, with
Hermione Granger, the Pirate Queen, the pride of Gryffindor!

Sorry about that. Sometimes I can't resist.

Distractions...

2010-11-04T18:00:00.002+10:30

I know I should be focusing or reading Limits and Renewals and thoroughly getting my Kipple on, but I slipped last night in a fit of bad judgement brought on by my perpetual insomnia and picked up one of my favourite books, Pretty Girl in Crimson Rose (8). This was a bad idea, because it means that my head is now constantly swimming with cryptic crosswords clues and terrible wordplay, so you can probably expect either a tidal wave of punnage or the production of a cryptic or two in the coming couple of weeks.

Those of you were unfortunate enough to know me during my brief stint at university will remember that my on-again-off-again obsession with cryptic crosswords was the defining feature of my life at the time, and combined with my fondness for card games caused my premature and unceremonious departure from academia after just one year. We can only hope, for the sake of my employment and the sanity of anyone in a 100m radius, that this phase is not as disruptive or enduring as it was last time around.

The main point here, though, is that you should totally read it. If you're an Adelaidean, I have a copy I can lend you, just drop me a line sometime. If you're not, do yourself a favour and get a copy of Sandy Balfour's clever, quirky and someway eccentric little book, it's fun times.

Just don't get too involved.

Wednesday Quiz in Exile X: Once Upon a Time...

2010-11-03T02:00:00.007+10:30

It's that time of the week again, time for the Wednesday Quiz in Exile in it's tenth week of its first, and hopefully last, 12-week season, which this week is focused on the short, bloody and generally tragic history of Australia since European occupation. Below are the names of 12 actual events in Australia's history, all of which changed Australia dramatically in some way, all you have to do is let us know which of these descriptions are true and accurate representations of events as passed down by the history books, and which are fallacies and misdirection designed to fool you into looking woefully and immeasurably ignorant, or worse, American. Looking up answers in any way will be judged harshly by history.

Did these historic events go down like this?

1. The Dismissal, 1975
The Whitlam Labor government was elected in 1972 without a senate majority, and in 1975 the Coalition began blocking appropriations bills until a House of Representatives election could be called. When Whitlam refused to call the election, the Governor-General removed him from office and appointed the leader of the opposition, Malcolm Fraser, as PM. Fraser passed the appropriation bills (taking advantage of the confusion in the Labor ranks) and the parliament was dissolved in a double dissolution. Though little constitutional reform resulted from the incident, the nature of Australian politics was changed forever.

2. Australian Antarctic Expedition, 1911
In November 1911, Robert Scott and his team set out to travel to where no other man had ever been, the South Pole. After a two month trek , the 5 of them reached the Pole, only to discover that Roald Amundsen had beaten them by two weeks. Defeated, they set off back north, but they would never make it home. One died falling down an ice shelf, an the other four were running out of supplies, despite the selfless sacrifice of Oates with the famous words “I am just going outside and may be some time”, the remaining three died in March and would not be recovered for another 8 months. Scott and his men would become national heroes and inspiration.

3. SA-VIC Border Dispute, 1868
Due to an error in calculation, the South Australian and Victorian governments both laid claim to a 3.6km wide stretch of land on their border. Although the land was officially to the west of the agreed border, Victorian squatters had settled the area and refused to move out. Matters came to a head in April 1868, when a party of Victorian soldiers fired on and killed 4 South Australian farmers for trespass near the town of Serviceton. South Australia began mobilising troops, but to avoid conflict the Victorian government paid 215,000 pounds in reparations and the disputed territory has been considered Victorian ever since. The incident is considered Australia's first and only 'civil war', and is one of the major reasons for the deep-seated and bitter SA-VIC rivalry.

4. Gallipoli Campaign, 1915-1916
The Australia and New Zealand Army Corps was formed to serve as part of the attack on the Gallipoli Peninsula by Allied forces in April 1915. On April 25th, a day NOW celebrated as ANZAC day, Allied troops landed on the beaches, and they would remain there for 9 months, ultimately making few gains. When the Allies finally retreated in January 1916, 500,000 of the 9,000,000 men who served there on either side were casualties. This is widely considered to be the true birth of the Australian conscience independent from Britain, and French and British contributions in the theatre are often ignored in Australia, though the Turkish forces are acknowledged.

5. Egon Kisch Visit, 1934
When famed Jewish Communist Egon Kisch reached Sydney to speak at anti-Nazi events in 1934, he was denied entry. Australian law at the time dictated that any visitor to Australia could be turned back if they could not demonstrate fluency in a European language. Kisch was asked to write the Lord's Prayer in Scotch Gaelic, and when he was unsuprisingly unable to do so, he was taken into custody. The language test remained part of Australian Immigration policy until 1958, but the Kisch case was critical in its eventual removal.

6. Ash Wednesday, 1983
On the 16th of February 1983, numerous bushfires caused the deadliest bushfires in Australia (up to that point, we've since recently passed the terrible record), killing 75 people, 340,000 sheep, 18,000 head of cattle and destroying 7000 buildings across South Australia and Victoria, at an estimated cost of 1.7 billion dollars. This became known as Ash Wednesday across the country, except in South Australia, where another fire had claimed that name just 3 years earlier, and resulted in Australia developing one of the world’s most effective and modern regional fire services.

7. America's Cup, 1983
After 132 years of successive victories, the New York Yacht Club was challenged by the Perth Yacht club for the oldest continuous sporting prize in the world, the America's cup. After being 1-3 down after 4 races, the patriotically named Australia II equalled the scorecard, and in a nationally telecast final race won the Cup for Australia. Inspired by the victory, PM Bob Hawke informed the media that morning in his usual larrikin fashion that "Any boss who sacks anyone for not turning up today is a bum". Australian sporting smugness has never again known such lofty heights.

8. WA Referendum, 1933
In 1933, Western Australia, fed up with the focus of the federal government of the Easter states, held a state referendum in which 65% voted to secede from Australia and return to being a governed British colony, they even made a flag up and everything. It was sent to London, where the British government decided after 18 months that it was a federal matter for the Australian government to decide. Needless to say it never came to a vote at a Federal level. Thus, short of declaring war, no state can successfully secede from Australia without the agreement of the other states and the federal government.

9. Batman's Treaty, 1835
On the 6th of June 1835, John Batman signed an agreement with aboriginal elders in the area around modern-day Melbourne, buying 2,000 square kilometres of land for a years supply of red shirts, jackets and scissors. Most probably the elders (if they even were elders) didn’t know what they were signing, but it was the first recognition of Aboriginal ownership of the land by the European settlers, and would be an important part of the native title debate. When the Governor found out about Batman’s treaty and it’s implications for the British claim on the rest of the country he immediately absolved the treaty.

10. Mabo Vs Queensland (II), 1992 (Earlier typo has been removed, thanks John)
On behalf of the Meriam people of the Murray Islands, in 1992 Eddie Mabo (and other, but frankly their names weren’t as cool) contended that the Meriam people were the owners of the Murray Islands. The exact proceedings are somewhat complicated to describe here, but the general vibe is that the High Court ultimately ruled that the idea of Terra Nullius, or unoccupied land, did not apply, and that Australia’s indigenous people had native title rights to Australian territory.

11. Rum Rebellion, 1808
Governor William Bligh was not a happy man. He’d suffered the infamous mutiny of the Bounty, and now the New South Wales Corps were mutinying over a little thing like putting their leader up on trumped-up charges and stopping their alcohol allowance and production of the early currency of the colony, rum. The Corps (the only armed men in the area) simply marched up to Government house and arrested him, and thus ended the tenure of the 4th governor of New South Wales. This led directly to the appointment of Governor Macquarie, who would loom large amongst those building the future of the Australian colonies.

12. Burke and Wills 1860-61
In the most expensive and spectacularly mismanaged exploratory expedition in Australia's history, the Victorian government funded an expedition commanded by Robert Burke, in an attempt to make the first overland passage from the South to the North of the continent. Burke was not an experienced bushman, and though the party eventually travelled 3250 kilometers north they were forced to turn back just 5km from the coast, and came at a terrible cost. When Burke and Wills returned to their base camp in Copper Creek 9 months after they began the expedition, they found that their support team had left for home just that morning having waiting for 5 weeks more than they were directed, and short of supplies, they both died there. The expedition left Burke and Wills as Australia's most famous explorers, much to the chagrign of South Australians.

Leave your answers, with citation where appropriate, in the comments.

Read: Songs of the Dying Earth

2010-11-02T20:03:00.004+10:30

When I was at primary school, in one of the earlier aeons of this earth, I always felt myself intractably drawn to the school library, berth of knowledge and wisdom in an academy which was generally unencumbered with these dual virtues, situated as it was in the more uncivilised quarter of Adelaide's suburban sprawl. Being a young gentleman of not inconsiderable intellect, and not being at all recalcitrant in broadcasting the fact, I was ever attracted to the most massive tomes and took great pleasure in loudly announcing these intellectual tendencies to all and sundry.

As you, dear reader - steeped in wisdom and possessed of a certain presence of mind as you undoubtedly are - can probably see, due to these and other egotisital tendencies unrecognised by my juvenile self at the time, I was a somewhat unpopular and lonely child. Thus I took an unsurpassed comfort in the fantastic world summoned to mind by the most weighty of the tomes of that establishment, J.R.R. Tolkien's Fellowship of the Ring and its sequels*. From this beginning was born my enduring love of fantasy, a love far in excess of my love of the mundane world for many years, much to the dismay of my parents and anyone who had the misfortune to attempt to engage me in conversation.

Even after I came once again, under the dual influence of the regular companionship of like-minded individuals and my 'getting religion', to appreciate the delights of this present Earth - around about the time I began my secondary education -, my love of fiction's fantastic worlds continued unabated. I discovered the works of G.R.R. Martin in a book of short stories entitled Legends, which I checked out of my local library to read the Terry Pratchett story contained within, and within a few months I'd collected - through various back-room deals and association with a number of shady characters possessed of a dubious aroma - the first three volumes of his A Song of Ice and Fire, undoubtedly the most engrossing fantasy epic I've had the privilege to partake of since Tolkien.

So I began to frequent the mainstream bookstores, waiting impatiently for more Martin to become available, and consumed it whole as soon as in became avaiable here in Australia, sadly still Terra Incognita where fiction is concerned. I became the proud owner of the next in the series in 2005 and his Rretrospective in 2006, and since then I have haunted my local bookstores, searching unceasingly and impatiently for the next book, a book I know does not yet exist. So I wear holes in the carpets of the fantasy/science fiction sections of my local Angus & Robertson, prowling the Martin shelves in vain hope.

We come, finally, to the entrance into our tale of Songs of the Dying Earth, which sent my heart soaring when I noticed it on the shelf, then plummeting when I realised it wasn't pure Martin, but a dreaded anthology. Visit after visit I was stopped by its dark, forbidding countenance, but I passed it over in favour of other volumes. Finally, though, on the visit that inspired my current new book drought, I succumbed to its unfailing desire and purchased it, fooled by warm memories of Legends into persuading myself for a moment that anthologies have done more good for me than harm.

I had purchased a volume of short stories in homage to and set in the world of Jack Vance's The Dying Earth series. A ridiculous thing to do, having not read The Dying Earth, but the promise of G.R.R. Martin - with an the added Neil Gaiman carrot in this case, too - drives one to ridiculous extremes on a seemingly daily basis. I own and have read Vance's Lyonesse series, which I enjoyed, but not enough to look into finding more of his work. Thus it was with great trepidation that I opened the massive tome, began to peruse...

...and fell in love. With an unceasing parade of paramours, each lovlier and more beautful than the last, none of them what they seem. With countless magicians, warlocks, mages, enchanters and wizards, distant, proud, jealous, cruel and unservingly petty, shaping the earth and its inhabitants to their every whim. With cunning heroes and terrifying beasts, all doomed to die, either by the hand of another or by the inevitable death of the world when the red sun ceases its burning. I fell in love with the imitation of Jack Vance, the homages of 22 authors who fell just as sorely for him many years before my birth.

I fell in love with the uncompromisingly lavicious style of prose, ever expansive and generous, suddenly brutal and always leaving as much to the the reader's imagination as anything I've read yet -I hope you noticed my unsubtle and inferior attempt to replicate it here-, soaring, intimately detailed, but somehow leaving so much unsaid. I fell in love with this Dying Earth, its sweet sorrow and cruel justice, without even reading the original. The 22 selected authors built around Vance's core, further colouring and impressing their own personalities on the Dying Earth, yet very few times did anything feel forced or out of place. Somehow this broad, emcompassing world, an Earth in its inevitable decline from enlightenment even as its solar system collapses around it, seems to have room for all these authors, al these dreams, and so much more. Quite the acheivement for four books written almost 50 years ago, when fantasy was a much younger genre than it is today.

In conclusion, I've put the omnibus edition of Tales of the Dying Earth, which includes all four Dying Earth books, onto my list of books to acquire by foul means or fair for my library, and I have a number of science fiction and fantasy authors with whom I have previously been unaquainted whose original work I will have to investigate if I ever manage to fight my way through this ridiculous backlog.

Oh, and G.R.R. Martin and Neil Gaiman's contributions were my least favourite of the lot.
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Favourite Quote:
I didn't have any one section really jump out at me, as the whole was so overpowering, but this gives an idea of the tone, methinks:

Once a mighty city rose beside the head of a deep gulf in the Sea of Sighs, its ships plied their trade, and the magnificence of its buildings proved its wealth...but in these latter days, only a dusty town remained, buldings shabby, patched with stones from its earlier grandeur. A minor port, a stop on the caravan route across the land, Uskvosk had shrunk and faded in the bleak millenia of the sun's decay.

Page 456 (123 is an introduction):

"The Crimson Messuage is gravely suspicious of me, as you well know, but that's never stopped them from wanting me to join their retinue as Court Incendiary. In addition, I have a toruous history with this particular Paeolina. He made disagreeable suggestions to me many years ago, and, when rebuffed, gre surly and resentful. I am certain that his invitation will lead me into a trap."

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Reading Project Status

Read: 2/74
Australian Ratio: 1.045:0.955 (1 out of 22 counts, alright?)
Next Up: Limits and Renewals, Rudyard Kipling.

*actually in these particular volumes, The Two Towers was slightly more massive, but what are such schemantics amongst friends and in the face of poetic license?

Double Date™

2010-11-01T21:09:00.006+10:30

When I was committing the horrible crime of book-buying, as described in the last post, I also picked up a 2011 pocket diary, in the vain hope of becoming the kind of organised and dependable person I've always secretly wanted to be.

Unfortunately, I left it in my shirt pocket, where it was discovered and from where it was subsequently 'liberated' by a 'friend'. The long and short of the story is that my nice crisp clean sensible pocket diary now includes the useful entries 'AN ENGLISHMAN, AN IRISHMAN AND A SCOTSMAN WALK INTO A BAR' on November the 12th and 'DON'T FORGET THIS DAY!' on May the 21st.

Thus, we get to your bit. You, as my favourite readers of my blog, may enter something in my 2011 diary, and provided this thing is not illegal or morally questionable I will endeavour to carry out this action on the date proscribed. The catch, to prevent me having to do the absurdest things your diseased minds can come up with, is that you must do it with me. For those of you in Adelaide, this means getting together, and for those of you in other places, this means performing a similar or equivalent diary entry for yourself and informing me about it in a manner that will amuse me.

Do you have a special holiday that you celebrate and wish you could propagate? A zany act of bravado you've never wanted to do alone? A dish you need a fellow culinary master to aid you with*? A wedding you actually want me to attend? This is the place to let me know, whereupon it will be entered in...the Diary**.

I'm not exactly expecting to fill up the book in this manner, but the more things in there the more likely I am to actually continue to use it. Thus, if you are an enemy of entropy or simply a fan of people turning up to things they said they would, it's your duty to open up the comments and take me on a Double Date™.

*Actual culinary mastery is not guaranteed.
**No, that was not a deliberate Pratchett reference, but good work for picking up on it anyway.

Mission: Failed

2010-10-28T09:04:00.002+10:30

That's right, just one book into my attempt to read all the books in my library, I've fallen and I can't get up. Walking past the newsagent yesterday I saw a book, a beautiful book, with a good weight to it and the promise of more beauty inside, and made an impulse buy. I was out the door before I realised that I wasn't supposed to be buying books any more.
The book in question was called "A Historical Atlas of the World", and features many thousands of maps of various places at various times. I'm not utterly convinced that it's well executed, but it's an idea that's always fascinated me. I won't add it to the reading list (it's a reference book, reading it throuhg would take a while), but I will probably post on it some time, because I just can't resist a good map.

Wednesday Quiz in Exile IX: Pin the Tail on the Country

2010-10-27T01:00:00.004+10:30

While Michael5000, is still pretending that he's not writing quizzes, but is instead concentrating on dorkfest, this antipodean blog is providing an antipodean alternative.

Sorry for the interruption to our regular service, the internet is not always our friend. This weeks quiz is not a happy camper, thus we bring you what was to be next week’s quiz. This quiz will test your geographical knowledge and also how much you’ve been paying attention for the last few months. All you have to do is accurately position each of these Australian locations according to the grid. Each point correctly placed will earn you 5 points up to a maximum of 120, and odd numbers of correct answers will be rounded up the nearest 10 points, thus you need only 23 out of 25 to score full points in this admittedly difficult challenge.

In which location on the grid are these national landmarks?

1. Sydney: Capital of New South Wales, largest city in Australia, holder of the 2000 Olympics, and perennial winner of the most famous city award. First landing place of James Cook in 1770.
2. Melbourne: Capital of Victoria, second largest city in Australia, holder of the 1956 Olympics, and perennial coveter of the most famous city award.
3. Canberra: National capital city, a planned city made the capital because Sydney and Melbourne couldn’t decide who was more important.
4. Brisbane: Capital of Queensland. I need to go back there and have a look sometime.
5. Hobart: Capital of Tasmania, Australia’s Apple Isle.
6. Adelaide: An oasis of class and sophistication in the midst of a world gone mad.
7. Perth: Capital of Western Australia. Like Adelaide, but prettier and further away.
8. Mt. Kosciusko: The tallest mountain in Australia, it’s generally pretty cold.
9. Uluru: Monolith and perennial winner of the most recognisable landmark award, to the chagrin of the Sydney Harbour Bridge.
10. Lake Eyre: Australia’s largest lake, generally dry, home of the exceedingly optimistic Lake Eyre Sailing Club.
11. Alice Springs: Central city most famous for its Todd River Race, the boat race that was cancelled in 1993 because for the first time in 50 years there was water in the river.
12. Hutt River Principality: Famous micro-nation in regional WA, ruled since 1970 by Prince Leopold, yet unrecognised by the Australian government.
13. Broken Hill: Mining town that should be familiar to returning quiz participants.
14. Ballarat: Victorian mining town that was the centre of Australia’s first gold.
15. Poeppel Corner: Point in the Simpson Desert that marks the boundaries of 3 different states/ territories.
16. Cairns: Tropical tourist city and gateway to Cape York.
17. Town of 1770: Location of Cook’s second mainland landing. Now a tourist town operating cruises on amphibious vehicles.
18. Pt. Hedland: Australia’s largest port, servicing the booming WA iron mining industry.
19. Great Victoria Desert: A great big patch of emptiness. It’s not in Victoria.
20. Big Desert: A small desert, by Australian standards, just north of Little Desert.
21. Hamilton Island: Biggest of the Whitsunday islands in the Great Barrier Reef.
22. Rum Jungle: Australia’s first uranium mine, appropriately named after an alcoholic beverage.
23. Eucla: Little town in the middle of the Great Australian Bight. Famous for being in the middle of the Great Australian Bight
24. Cape Grim: Site of the massacre of as many as 60 aborigines by 4 shepherds after the tribe drove a flock of sheep off a cliff. Locals used to call the area Victory Hill, but the name was changed for some reason.
25. Kakadu National Park: World Heritage site and home of some the most famous rainforest and waterfalls in Australia.

Spin around three times and leave your answers in the comments.

Read: Worth the Wait

2010-10-25T10:57:00.001+10:30

WARNING: THIS POST CONTAINS HORRIBLE PROSE.
I haven't done any writing on a large scale (more than a couple of paragraphs or a bunch of dot points) since high school, and boy-o can you tell. Since the idea of this blog was to get back into the habit, I'm releasing this anyway, after weeks of trying and failing miserably to improve it to some kind of readability. You have been warned. Rest assured that I am suitably embarrassed and am taking any steps I can to return my writing quality to its former glory.

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Inspired by a terrifying list of books to read and the South Australian Redbacks participation in the Champions League Twenty20 last month, I sat down to read Worth the Wait, an autobiography by much-loved former redbacks captain and all-round nice guy, Darren Lehmann.

Before we get started, it's worth mentioning that Darren Lehmann was a childhood hero of mine, the implacable rock in a South Australian team that, more often than not, much more often than not, turned out to be full of nothing else but sand. I'm also a big fan of autobiographies, having had my thirst for the first-person narrative inspired by the wonderful Harpo Speaks, so I knew what I was getting myself in for.

Like the Redbacks Champions League campaign, though it looked a bit rough around the edges, it was off to a promising start. The depiction of a young Lehmann and his sudden rise from local, to grade, to state cricket had just as much promise as the Redbacks downing of the local favourite Highveld Lions by 11 runs. The writing certainly let a few go through to the keeper, and there were a few false starts, but it was a good solid victory and something to build on for the rest of the competition.

Anecdotes from his early life in the South Australian team, his double life as a hot-shot middle-order batsmen by weekend and a factory worker in Adelaide's disreputable Northern suburbs during the week were all top notch and blended together to give the book a flying start, like the Redback's excellent opening partnership in their second game against the high-profile Mumbai Indians. But I had the sinking feeling that the enthusiasm being put into this part of the competition meant that it couldn't possibly last.

Then came the crescendo, the fight with the Bangalore Challengers for the top spot in the group, the 1994/95 South Australian Sheffield Shield and Lehmann's One Day International career. Sure, we won, but it could have definitely been portrayed...better. The way it was all glossed felt like it was just a prologue to something more, something just around the corner where all the actual meat in the book was going to come, where we could really let our batsmen off the leash to play all the big shots and score a massive victory.

Only, it never came. For Lehmann, the focus of the book was his playing for Australia in Tests and the tragic death of David Hookes, his mentor and the undisputed King of South Australian cricket, in a bar-room brawl. Like South Australia's game against Guyana in the Twenty20, there was a lot of build up and a lot of excitement, but unlike the earlier sections it didn't get the audience involved, and generally involved some pretty sad cricket. There were some fun little anecdotes about the other members of the Australian team at the time, but nothing worth reading the whole book for.

The aftermath, of course, is tragic. For South Australia, they were knocked out of the competition in the semi-final by the Warriors, who went on to lose to Chennai in the final. For Lehmann, this book was written during the tour of Sri Lanka in 2005-06and ends with a little note of hope for his career in the future and prospects as a leader in the Australian team he'd fought for so long to get into. Little did he know, but he had just 6 tests left in his career before he was unceremoniously dropped, never again to wear the Baggy Green.

So, Worth the Wait wasn't, but it was probably worth the $8 I paid for it in a buy two, get one free deal. I'm glad it wasn't ghost-written, since it was at least genuine and heart-felt, but when you wade through a book like this you can see why ghost-writing is such an important part of the industry.

If anyone is interested in owning it, perhaps in the vain hope of finding out a little about one of your favourite cricketers through the eyes of one of mine, I'd be happy to post it to you, as I don't feel any particular need to keep it in my collection.

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Favourite Quote:

Glenn McGrath is a pest...You will be sitting there minding your own business and suddenly a sugar sachet will be emptied in your hair or a feather will be tickling you behind the ear and you think it's a fly. He basically gets bored very quickly and takes it out on everyone else. It must be a fast bowler thing because Merv hughes used to do exactly the same thing.

Page 123:

Gone are the times when you would start enjoying the first beer five minutes after the last ball was bowled. Now there are ice baths, warm-down sessions, all stuff I have to say I don't enjoy because the ice baths are too bloody cold!

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Reading Project Status
Read: 1/74
Australian Ratio: 1:0
Next Up: Songs of the Dying Earth, G.R.R. Martin et al.

Wednesday Quiz VIII: Ministers Prime

2010-10-20T01:35:00.001+10:30

Michael5000, internationally renowned for his famous Monday, Wednesday and Thursday quizzes, is taking a well-earned break from quizmastery, so I’ve taken up the reigns to provide a season of one-eyed quizzes from a flawed Australian perspective.

You have been provided with the portraits and brief biographies of twelve famous men. All you have to do is identify which of the twelve have been Prime Ministers of Australia and which have not. The bios are all accurate, except that titles have been changed in some of those that have not been Prime Minister to make it look like they have. Identify the furphies to score points towards winning the grand prize, and please avoid collaborating with others or researching the topic, as parliamentary censure and penalties for high treason will apply.

Was this man an Australian Prime Minister?

1. No list of Australian politicans would be complete without Harold Holt, the Liberal most famous for his disappearance while swimming in 1967 after just 22 months in the top job after more than twenty years of experience as a government minister. Whether abducted by Chinese submariners or simply swept into the Pacific, Holt's (alleged) death left an impact on the minds of all Australians, which is more than can be said for his government, which increased Australia's involvement in Vietnam, following the infamous "All the way with LBJ" policy.

2. Despite his republican leanings, an unpopular position during and immediately following the first world war, Warren Harding, former teacher and newspaper baron began his ill-fated Prime Ministership in 1920 with 61% of the vote, which was at the time the largest ever margin in a national election, on the back of policies of isolationism and nationalism (and helped by an insider’s knowledge of the press). His government reduced post-war unemployment by 10% and established good relationships with many countries (with a distinct pro-American stance), but Harding died suddenly in 1923, and in the wake of his death came allegations of corruption and bribery amongst his cabinet that shook the establishment and resulted in his lasting unpopularity even into the present day.

3. Universally loved in the North and universally infamous in the rest of the country, Joh Bjelke-Petersen was Premier of Queensland from 1968 to 1987 before his incredible “Joh for Canberra” campaign in 1987. His government promoted huge industrial growth, particularly in Bjelke-Petersen’s home state, and was later found to have accepted large bribes in return for government contracts for a number of projects. When Bjelke-Petersen was prosecuted for perjury in 1993, the jury was deadlocked, though allegations of jury tampering were rife. When Joh was knighted, his wife (a sitting federal Senator famous for her pumpkin scone recipe) became the Senator Lady Bjelke-Petersen, which I find inherently funny. (What do you think, Aviatrix? Would “Senatrix” be appropriate in that situation just to prevent the horrible dual title “Senator Lady”?)

4. In a life straight out of a Broadway musical, John Gorton was born the illegitimate son of 'Alice Sinn' in 1911, travelled to England an graduated from Oxford in 1932, was shot down over Singapore at had his face crushed when he crash-landed upside-down in 1942, became a Liberal Minister in 1958, resigned in 1968 to contest Harold Holt's newly vacant seat, and became Prime Minister 20 days later. He was PM for less than a year before losing an election, being sacked by his own party and replaced by Malcolm Fraser. He remained an MP until 1975, and reportedly detesting being in the same room as Fraser until he died in 2002.

5. The first Prime Minister to be born in Australia, Isaac Isaacs sat in the first parliament in 1901 as a minister in the Barton government, but his perceived aloofness and unpopularity amongst his fellow politicians meant it would be a long time before he took over as Prime Minister thanks to the support of Labor heavyweight James Scullin in 1930, when Isaacs was already 75 years old. After leaving office in 1936 after a wave of support for Joseph Lyons’ United Australia party, he continued public life as a prominent constitutional law expert and a leader of the Jewish community in Australia. Isaacs was an outspoken opponent of Zionism until he died in 1949, and never saw Israel become a sovereign nation.

6. After studying at Cambridge and practicing law in London, Stanley Bruce joined the British Army and won the Military Cross and Crois de Guerre for his actions in France during WWI. After being injured in 1917 he travelled to Australia and was elected to parliament in 1918 and appointed Treasurer in 1921. He became Prime Minister of a coalition government with the Country Party in 1923, the first PM not to have been a member of the first parliament in 1901. A strong advocate of the White Australia policy and monarchist, he led the Nationalist Party until his defeat and loss of his parliamentary seat in 1929, a feat not to be repeated until John Howard also lost his seat of Bennelong in 2007. He helped found the United Australia party in 1931 (rumour has it that it would have been the ‘Bruce Party’ but Joseph Lyons switched the name at the last minute).

7. Born in England in 1865, George Windsor served in the Royal Navy before travelling to Australia in 1901, and rose quickly to preside over the first majority government in 1910. Despite his high popularity his leadership was marked by his declining health and Joseph Cook rose to PM after just over two years, but his tenure included many reforms of parliamentary process, international relations and vast restrictions of the power of the European aristocracy. A strong and outspoken monarchist, he played an essential role in the establishment of the Statute of Westminster (he would later be played by David Troughton in the award-winning Australian TV series, All the Kings Men) and he retained a strong political influence behind the scenes during WWI and right up until his death in 1936.

8. Joe Clark, who also began his professional life as a journalist, was prime minister for only 9 months in 1979-1980. Sandwiched between two extended Liberal party terms, his government was defeated in a no-confidence motion in early 1980, ending the leadership of Clark, still the youngest-ever PM in any Commonwealth country. A repeat-offending politician, Clark returned to politics running for and winning the seat of Kings-Hants as a “Progressive Conservative” candidate in 1998 and holding it until as recently as 2003. He currently lives in Canada since being assaulted in the street after admitting to being a former prime-minister.

9. A keen debater with a vicious sense of humour, George Reid was a Scottish immigrant who became the first opposition leader and eventually prime minister as head of the ill-fated "Free Trade" party, and practiced privately as a lawyer the whole time to supplement his income. In between, he resigned his seat in Sydney, then won in back in the subsequent by-election as a kind of private referendum on his system of equal voting electorates. After the free-trade party lost power (they instituted trade tarriffs, which gave them little support from their voting base) in 1905 he re-named it the "Anti-socialist party", and remained at its head until the formation of the Commonwealth Liberals. He resigned again in 1909, and his seat was left empty until the 1910 election (possibly to prevent him standing and winning at a by-election yet again).

10. A consummate politician, Andrew Peacock became president of the young liberals in 1962 and president of the Liberal Party of Victoria in 1965 before inheriting the seat of Kooyong from Sir Robert Menzies in 1966. As Minister for Territories in 1972 he played a crucial role in the establishment of Papua New Guinea as an independent nation, but he became infamous for his affairs (particularly his relationship with Shirley MacLaine) as Minister of Foreign Affairs (hurr hurr) under Malcolm Fraser, which may well have contributed to his surprisingly high vote in the 1984 election against Bob Hawke. His government was unable to pass much legislation due to an opposition Senate. It couldn’t last, and after a long series of in-fights leading up to and following Hawke’s 1987 landslide the Liberal leadership would change from Peacock, to John Howard, back to Peacock, to John Hewson, to Alexander Downer and finally back to John Howard in 1995. Peacock retired from politics in 1994 and became Ambassador to the US in 1996.

11. One of only two state Premiers to become PM, Joseph Lyons left state politics to enter the federal arena, then quit the sitting Labor government in 1931 and joined with the nationalist party to form the United Australia party and become leader of the opposition. He became PM in 1932 (the 3rd ex-Labor MP to become PM in another party). His government supported the League of Nations and was extremely pro-British interest, and Lyons was a successful leader, leading the UAP to three election victories. However, as the situation in Europe worsened in the late 20's, Lyons, a pacifist, died of a heart attack (the two may not have been related, who knows?). His widow, Dame Enid Lyons, became Australia's first woman MP in 1943 and served in the Menzies ministry, and both his sons would go on to serve as ministers in Tasmanian parliaments.

12. Last but certainly not least, when Gough Whitlam became leader of the Labor party in 1967, Labor hadn't been in power since Ben Chifley's popular wartime government was voted out in 1949. Labor finally returned to power in 1972, in an election campaign in which Whitlam was told to stop humiliating his opponents, as the population was feeling sorry for them, but they, fatefully, failed to secure a majority in the Senate. In the first few weeks of his government, Whitlam used the power of the Defence Minister to exempt people from conscription to exempt all Australians, opened diplomatic relations with China (and close them with Taiwan), removed tax on contraceptives, placed sanctions on South Africa and Rhodesia and recalled all troops from Vietnam. He was famously removed from office in 1975 by the Governor-General and replaced by Malcolm Fraser when the Senate failed to support his supply bills, causing a constitutional crisis unparalleled in Commonwealth history.

Please leave your answers and domestic policy recommendations in the comments.

Wednesday Quiz in Exile VII: Information is Beautiful

2010-10-13T01:00:00.001+10:30

It should come as no suprise to you that this week's Wednesday quiz is about Australia. This week we're looking at a range of different Aussie information through a medium very dear to my dorky little heart. Graphs. All you have to do is identify what the graphs represent to score points for your team and the admiration of the nation. Whoa! Whoa! (sorry, Football joke) If you could refrain from skewing the data collected by introducing factors outside of my control such as google, friends and family or other people's answers that would be better for all involved and for the scientific method in general.

Indentify the graph.

1. What's this map stolen from our friends at wikipedia show?
2. What does this graph represent?
3. What does this graph represent?
4. What does this graph represent?
5. What does this graph represent?
6. If Australia is the blue one, what does this graph represent?
7. If Australia is the blue one, what does this graph represent?
8. What does this graph represent? (And for bonus points, what specifically does the blue bar represent?)
9. What does this graph represent? (And for bonus points, where does Adelaide fit on this graphic?)
10.What does this graph represent?

Leave your answers in the comments. Remember to label appropriately and include margins of error.

Matchmaker, Matchmaker

2010-10-06T10:41:00.002+10:30

In my usual fashion of taking credit for things I had very little or nothing to do with, I think it's probably worth mentioning that two of my friends announced their engagement last night. This would not normally be remarkable, after all it seems that half the people I know are suddenly getting married at the moment, except that it turns out that I introduced these two back in the deep dark depths of time when we were all back in university. Truly, I had no idea that introducing pancake girl and the blob would lead to marriage, but I can't help feeling more than a little bit proud.
So here's to you, blob, and to you, pancake girl, and to an exciting future.
My ego stirs me to point out that my record is pretty good so far, and that I have my little bottle of sulphur and some woodchips ready, and that all you single friends of mine are more than welcome to turn up to my place for my weekly dinners. You never can tell, and at least you'll be fed.

Wednesday Quiz in Exile VI: Wealth for Toil

2010-10-06T01:00:00.013+10:30

Some good things come out of the ground, and Australia has more than its fair share. This week's quiz celebrates the mineral wealth of Australia, all you have to do is use your problem solving skills and geographical knowledge to identify the mineral described in each question without looking them up or talking to others, offences punishable by being left in one of my many local abandoned mine shafts overnight.

What mineral is that?

1. Fittingly, considering that Australia produces 97% of the world's supply, this gemstone is the national stone, found primarily in Andamooka and Coober Pedy in South Australia, and Lightning Ridge in New South Wales. Deposits have been discovered on Mars, but the large transport costs for Martian varieties should ensure that Australia continues to be the major source for the discernable future.

2. This map (courtesy of the Department of Mining's snazzy Australian Mine Atlas, which is good for a look after you've finished the quiz) depicts historic mines of this mineral in green and current mines in red.

3. Australia has the third biggest deposits of this valuable gemstone in the world, after Russia and Botswana, and just before the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

4. Australia is the biggest exporter of this resource (clocking in at a massive 25%, or 278 million tons in 2009), which is mostly sent to China, the biggest producer, to fuel their energy needs.

5. Again from our friends at the department, this one represents mineral deposits of which metal?

6. One of the earliest resources discovered in Australia, this element was mined extensively in the mid 1800's in the South Australian towns of Burra and Kapunda, but is now found mostly at the Olympic Dam mine and in the Western Queensland city of Mt. Isa.

7. This is NOT a picture of myself and my brother (but it would have been if I could find it in time) that was taken a number of years ago in Ruby Gap, Nothern Territory, where the rivers flow literally red with gemstones. When news of this miraculous occurence got out, it caused the Australian "Ruby Rush" in the latter part of the 19th century, and thousands of people left their homes and travelled north. Too late, it was soon discovered that these were not rubies but are actually which comparitively worthless stone?

8. Australia is the biggest producer of this ore of aluminium, producing more than twice the amount of any other country. Australia's deposits are found mostly in the extreme South-West of Western Australia and in the extreme North of Queensland and the Northern Territory.

9. This is a panorama (courtesty of our friends at wikipedia) of Broken Hill in New South Wales(the Hill itself was mined out of existance almost completely decades ago), the world's largest single desosit of galena. Once home of BHP, the world's biggest mining company, the mine was once open-cut but is now entirely subterranean. Which three minerals are predominately found here?

10. This timeline depicts Australian production of what?

Please leave your answers in a carbon-neutral fashion in the comments.

Wednesday Quiz in Exile V: Sports Teams

2010-09-29T01:00:00.006+09:30

It's an Australian tradition to give everthing silly names, and it's an Australian tradition to play, watch, cheer and talk about sports. Thus is should come as no suprise to anyone that it's a great Australian tradition to give our sports teams silly nicknames. All you have to do to be in the running for the prize is tell me what games these various Australian national teams represent the country in internationally. Please don't look up, consult with others or attempt to divine the answers, or you may well find yourself followed by a crowd of sledging Australians forever after.

What sport do these teams play? (Women's teams playing male-dominated sports score double)

1. Wallabies

2. Kookaburras

3. Baggy Greens

4. Steelers/Wheelabies

5. Diamonds

6. Sharks

7. Matildas

8. Jackaroos

9. Outbacks

10. Opals

Place your answers and a lungbusting team chant in the comments. All chants must be able to be approximated after numerous hours of drinking Australian beer.

A little bit of cricket trivia...

2010-09-24T08:15:00.004+09:30

Are you sick of cricket yet? If so, I'm afraid it's going to be a LONG summer. My inane ramblings about cricket and other sports fill me with joy.

An interesting thing happened in the game between Chennai and the Port Elizabeth on Wednesday, which does happen occasionally but is still pretty amazing when it does. On the way to losing the game by little enough to knock Victoria out of the finals spot, Warriors captain Davey Jacobs played a defensive shot to a ball which then spun back and hit his stumps at speed. Luckily for him, though the bail was dislodged it fell back into place. According to the MCC Laws of Cricket:

The wicket is put down if a bail is completely removed from the top of the stumps, or a stump is struck out of the ground

Thus Jacobs survived and went on to score an impressive 32 to add to his swag of other tournament runs. More impressive than that freak occurence was the action of Indian captain and wicket-keeper MS Dhoni, who playfully removed the offending bail with his glove and appealed jokingly to the square-leg umpire, if was one of those moments that makes crickt people laugh, and everyone else wonder what the hell is going on, and how they were conned into watching a game of cricket in the first place.

Reading on in the laws of cricket, because I do that sort of thing, I came across this little gem:
The disturbance of a bail, whether temporary or not, shall not constitute its complete removal from the top of the stumps, but if a bail in falling lodges between two of the stumps this shall be regarded as complete removal.
One wonders how many times this incredibly unlikely event had to happen in a game for the rule to be codified in the laws.

South Australia will be playing the Warriors on Saturday night Adelaide time, and with that, the other semi tonight, the final of Sunday night, the SANFL preliminary final on Sunday arfternoon, the endless speculation about the coming commonwealth games and a little thing called the AFL grand final on Saturday afternoon it's going to be a big weekend of sport for South Australians.

Wednesday Quiz in Exile IV: Birds and Beasts

2010-09-22T01:00:00.004+09:30

Michael5000 still hasn't caved in, so the Australian cousin of the Wednesday quiz is back for yet another week. I've got plenty more where this one came from, Michael, but I don't want to have to use them.

This week's quiz is on the exotic, glamourous and frequently lethal fauna of Terra Australis, possibly the most recognisable and known thing about the country both at home and abroad, utilising photos cribbed as always from that great hub of creative commons licensing, wikipedia. Avoid the tempation to look up the answers, or there's a chance of winding up stabbed through the heart by vicious sealife next time you go swimming. Not a big chance, but it's been known to happen.

Name that/those creature/s.

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.

Post your answers in the comments, but watch out for drop bears and make sure to check your shoes for spiders first.

Monday Sports Wrap-Up

2010-09-20T18:03:00.000+09:30

Cricket is naturally the main event this week, but first it's worth mentioning that:
-The Villains drew with Bolton 1-1 in the Premier League, the new manager starts next week.
-The Workington Reds were lucky to beat Worcester City 2-1.
-Lleyton Hewitt is injured after his doubles vistory on the weekend leaving Peter Luczak and Carsten Ball to play the reverse singles against Belgium in the Davis Cup rubbers. If one of the two of them can win, Australia is back in the world group after being knocked out way back in 2007.

A full annual report on the seasons of all the Leaflocker favoured teams will be along in a few weeks once the cricket is over.

Now on to the main event:

The Southern Redbacks have gone 3-0 in their first three games of the ICC Champions League, and are facing up against the unimpressive Guyana on Tuesday night, so can be expected the sweep the board. Unfortunately, I have been instilled with the old spectators superstition that my team won't win unless I watch, so I've got a few more late nights to go until the end of the tournament. Rest assured that we're right behind you all the way, boys.

The Redbacks have got themselves into this position mainly on the back of some incredible opening partnerships from Daniel Harris and Michael Klinger, who've had successive 100+ run partnerships, an almost unheard-of event in Twenty20 (there's only been a total of 16 opening 100+ run partnerships in Internationals, but I don't have data for domestic level), and excellent fielding and catching by the whole team. Our bowling has been solid, but we've bowled too many wides for an international competition, maybe our boths are suffering from nerves a little, nevertheless we've managed to bowl out the opposition in two of our three games, so we must be doing something right. Let's have a quick run through the team, because I'm sure you're as interested in all this as I am.

Michael Klinger had never played a Twenty20 game for South Australia at the beginning of this tournament, but his strong performances in the other forms of the game led to him being appointed captain for this campaign, and he hasn't disappointed the SA selectors. His bowling changes have been inspired and often led directly to wickets, the attacking fields he's set have almost brought a tear to my eye, and most of all he's led the team with the bat. In three innings he's scored three half-centuries, he batted right through the recent innings against Bangalore, and he remains the tournament's highest run scorer by playing careful dependable cricket but not being afraid to hit the bad ball. This is a guy who couldn't get a regular spot in the Victorian team three years ago, and now he's leading SA in what has been an excellent tournament so far.

Daniel Harris was slow and unimpressive in the first game, but has redeemed himself with two fast half-centuries in the last two games, showing why he was SA's top run-scorer in the domestic season. Though getting very lucky with dropped catches, he's made the bowlers pay, and comes up as number 8 high-scorer for the competition. He also functions as SA's option bowler, but has been pretty unimpressive, with 0/31 from his four overs. He's also taken four catches in the three games, and looks like a pretty solid all rounder who has really matured well in the last couple of years.

Graham Manou is the team wicket-keeper, and is generally a handy batsman, doing pretty well but not outstanding with the bat during the domestic season. He's recently lost the captaincy of the team but seems to be taking it well, and apart from the occasional lapse his glovework has been up to scratch. It's no easy job keeping to the erratic SA attack, that's for sure.

Callum Ferguson forged a strong partnership with Klinger in the first game to get the Redbacks home, and has amassed a respectable 74 from 47 balls for the tournament. It's this fast scoring that made him a regular fixture in the national side before his injury last season, and he'll have to keep it up against quality bowling sides if we're going to do well in the finals.

Cameron Borgas scored a quick 14 not out of of just in the final overs of the last match against Bangalore's international-class bowling attack, but we've barely seen him bat in this competition. In fact, from this point down the match practice becomes negligible since the top-order has hogged so much of the match time.

Dan Christian is the top wicket-taker in the competition thanks mostly to his 4/23 against Bangalore. He's been the most solid of the bowlers in the SA line-up, without the raw pace of Tait but with excellent line and length. Batting at number six, he's been called on to score quick runs and has done so well, but it'll be interesting to see how he fares in a longer innings.

Tom Cooper struggled when batting at number 3 in the domestic season, but his experience batting for the Netherlands shows that he has it in him to make some big scores. He's only faced 7 balls all competition, but sent three of them for sixes (including the first ball of each of his innings) and one for a four, giving him the highest strike rate of the competition. An exciting batsman who could change a match if he gets to bat for a while.

Aaron O'Brien has taken advantage of captain Klinger's faith in his bowlers and delivered the goods. He's taken four wickets including that of Sachin Tendulkar, but he's gone for a lot of runs along the way. That said, he's taken on some of the difficult overs, bowling early on during field restrictions and later on when the batsmen are going after everything, so his figures of 4/109 runs from 12 overs probably don't show how well he's bowled.

Gary Putland has varied all over the place. Potentially a very dangerous bowler, his tendency to bowl too full and too wide have caused him to have some very bad overs. Good captaincy has taken him off when he's needed it and to Putland's credit he's always come back and bowled well later in the innings. His 3/94 from twelve is nothing to be sneezed at, either.

Cullen Bailey would seem to be the weak link in a five man bowling side without an effective 6th option. Leg spin is always a high risk for any team, and a leg spinner has to be absolutely on the ball to avoid being carted all around the park. Unfortunately for Bailey, once cosidered one of Australia's best spinners, his bowling so far this tournament has been inconsistent and the South African pitches haven't been forgiving, so he's been punished for it.

Shaun Tait hasn't been at his fastest this tournament, but even now he's more than a little bit scary. His 6/86 shows what a force he is in this form of the game, and his fielding has been impressive too. With the way he's bowling, he could legitimately expect a recall to the Australian team soon, and probably an IPL contract as well, especially if he manages to stay injury free, always a concern with bowlers of his pace.

----------

So that's the team. After Guyana, the Redbacks will most likely be playing the second-place in group A of the tournament, which will be the Warriors from South Africa, Super Kings from India or even fellow Australian's Victorian Bushrangers (if they can beat Wayamba by a lot and Chennai beat the Warriors by just as much). Stay tuned to this station (or better yet to your television set), for more cricket news as the tournament unfolds.

Wednesday Quiz in Exile III: Food, Glorious Food

2010-09-15T01:00:00.003+09:30

Michael5000 continues to keep up the masquerade that he's not writing quizzes, so the unceasing Australiana continues this week. The question is which of us can keep up this facade the longest, and my money is on me, but I may be influenced by the promise of half a potential lap-quilt.

The last two weeks of quizzes that have been maybe a teeny-weeny bit difficult, so here's one on a topic that everyone knows something about. Food. These twelve little bundles of deliciousness are all Australian icons (please note a number of these items may or may not have actually been invented in New Zealand, but it's an Australian tradition to claim everything from our island neighbour as our own, so I've done so with glee). Please don't look up the answers or consult with others, those that do are running the risk of being baked in a pie.

Name that foodstuff.

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.

Leave your answers and a recipe for baked goods in the comments.

Monday Sports Wrap-Up

2010-09-13T10:10:00.005+09:30

The South Australian Redbacks won out last night in magnificent style, posting a slow-starting but quick-finishing 180 on a good batting wicket and miniature oval in South Africa last night after being sent in against the in-form Lions, who were suprise (but not unwelcome) winners against the big-name Mumbai Indians on Friday night, and then destroying the South African team with the panache we've come to expect from them in Twenty20 cricket.

It was largely down to South Australia's best-ever 3rd wicket partnership between captain Klinger and vice-captain Ferguson, who scored a very respectable 97 runs off of 63 balls, making Klinger the highest-scorer in the competition to date (which isn't saying much as almost every team has only played the once). Although the others didn't do much, the batting promised a high standard for the rest of the tournament, even if we missed our big-name internationals from the domestic season. It was well and truly worth staying up late into the night to watch, as I was on the edge of my seat the whole time (and that's not a great idea when it's a recliner).

The bowling was led by the pacy Shaun Tait, the thinking Dan Christian and the tricksy Aaron O'Brien, who were supported by good fielding which resulted in some excellent runouts (including a double play, which doesn't net you two wickets, but isn't something you see every day) and ultimately leading to a solid victory (I don't think we fielded as well as the Lions, who were amazing, but we did ok) against an impressive opposition. I wasn't convinced by wicketkeeper Manou, whose glovework was well below that we've come to expect from him, but he still managed a good stumping and a run-out throw, not an easy thing to go when wearing wicketkeeping gloves.

Next game is on Tuesday night my time against the Indians, who'll be smarting after their loss to the Lions, so we'll just have to see if we can keep up the pressure. If we can beat them, we'll be looking very good for a finals berth. The other Australian team, the Victorian Bushrangers, are playing tonight. As an Aussie cricket fan, I'll be hoping they do well, but as a South Australian of good conscience, I'll be barracking for the other team.

Carn ya 'Backs

2010-09-09T09:00:00.002+09:30

Tomorrow marks the start of the 2010 Champions League 20Twenty competition, in which my beloved South Australian Redbacks are one of the two teams representing Australia in what I've always thought of as our national game, cricket. Sure, it's not real cricket, it's a cut-down version designed for the modern sports fan, dancing girls and rock music and all, but it's still a big deal for South Australian cricket, as the Redbacks haven't won anything since I was in primary school. Not that they're likely to win this or anything, but there's always an outside chance, so I'll probably be having a few late nights watching the action in South Africa in the coming couple of weeks.

In case you're one of those crazy people that don't follow cricket, the Champions League is like the Champions League of Association Football (soccer), where the winning teams from the domestic competitions around the world in the previous year face off for glory, honour and national pride, and a nice paycheck to boot. Unlike soccer, though, cricket is not played at a high level in all that many countries, and not all of them are competing this year, so this year the league is made up of three Indian teams, two Australian and South African teams, and one team apiece from New Zealand, Sri Lanka and the West Indies, leading some to suggest that it's not a very big deal, but if SA has a chance of winning then I can't help but be supportive. How very biased I am.

Since the chances are that you're not a supporter of any of the other teams in the competition, you should tune in on TV (if it's available in your country) and support the SA Redbacks. Why? Well, aside from them having the most dashing and gallant fans around and having pretty swishy bright red uniforms, they really deserve a break. If you're a cricket fan, you're sure to be impressed by the quality of this tournament, which features lots of big-name players from around the world as well as a bunch of exciting rising stars, and if you're not you might just be by the end of the tournament, as your new favourite sporty types in the fancy red shirts play some of the most exciting and interesting cricket you're ever likely to see.

For those that aren't swayed by such emotional appeals, here's some pros and cons on SA's chances:

A rose-tinted view of why the Redbacks can win:- Some of Australia's best and most experienced domestic batsmen, consistently high-scoring and exciting but underrated players like Mike Klinger, Graham Manou, Tom Cooper and Callum Ferguson.
- Brutal terrorist of a pace bowler Shaun Tait is probably the scariest thing a batsman can ever face.
- Brilliant fielding side including the simply incredibly glovework of Manou behind the stumps.
- Australian teams tend to stack up extremely favourably against foreign teams, our domestic competition probably has the best home-grown quality in the world.

Why we probably won't:
- Lack of an actual budget has prevented SA from hiring any big-name international talent, while almost every other side is rolling in it. The best we can claim is Tait and Ferguson, who have played for Australia in and amongst injury, and Cooper, who is a staple of the Netherlands team by virtue of his mothers country of origin.
- Loss of the imports that got us into the competition in the first place, Shaid Afridi, who is currently busy retiring again, and Kieran Pollard, who'll be playing AGAINST for the Indian team with the big bucks.
- Not enough bowling depth. Tait and Bailey are top-class, but the rest of our bowlers are relitive unknowns and pretty unpredictable. Not to rule them out, but we're going to miss Afridi's excellent run-supressing bowling from last season.

Hrmm...maybe not so promising after all, huh?

You should get behind them anyway, because the Aussie underdog is always a good bet, and because I asked so nicely. Their first game is this Sunday night. I'll be watching and you should to.

Wednesday Quiz In Exile II: Ned Kelly

2010-09-08T01:00:00.004+09:30

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, so while the Wednesday Quiz pretends to be dead and buried, certain quiz tragics are attempting to keep the mid-week trivia binge alive, even if it means actually doing some 'work' for once.

This weeks quiz is on the life, death and cultural impact of Australia's most famous and iconic folk hero, bushranger Ned Kelly (1854-1880), and his associates. England has kings, Italy has popes, the US has great war heroes and Canada has champion lumberjacks, but Australia has always idolised its criminals. Answer the questions correctly to score points towards becoming the quiz champion and winning the admiration of a grateful nation. As Kelly is such a well-known figure in Australia and not elsewhere, the difficulty of the quiz will be a bit variable, so apologies in advance. Cheaters will find themselves with an 8000 pound bounty on their heads, their legs shot out from underneath them, their misdeeds celebrated in song and story, and not even 30,000 signatures on a petition will save them from their inevitable doom.

Answer (if you dare).

1. What crimes did Ned Kelly commit or be accused of committing? (Name any two)

2. How did Kelly die?

3. Which Australian state did Kelly operate in?

4. Which artist painted his famous Ned Kelly series of paintings of which this is a part?

5. How other members of the Kelly Gang had a set of Kelly's iconic home-made armour?

6. Which British rocker played Ned in the 1970 (giant failure of a) film Ned Kelly?

7. Kelly has appeared on official postage stamps of Australia and which other country?

8. Which of Captain Moonlight, Captain Starlight, Captain Boomerang and Captain Thunderbolt was not a prominent Australian bushranger?

9. Of what was The Story Of The Kelly Gang (1909) the world's first example?

10. What is considered the major cause of the collapse of the Australian film industry in 1912?

11. Ned Kelly (1971) was written by which American Country singer-songwriter?

12. How is a Ned Kelly Pie different from a regular meat pie?

Leave your answers and a threatening letter to local law enforcement in the comments.

Half an hour

2010-09-07T14:01:00.007+09:30

Then we will know...

...And now we know. Australia has re-elected Labor in a minority government, supported by the Greens and 3 independents. I, for one, welcome our new Labor overlords, and would like to remind them that as a constituent in a marginal seat I could play a key part in defeating them for re-election in three years, or howsoever as long as they manage to hold on to their tenuous hold on power, should they choose to displease me.

Switch to movie announcer voice:

This spring, one woman is given three years to change the world. Can she bring together the most ragtag bunch of misfits ever seen in Australian politics to deliver stable and effective government?
The stakes are high. The budget is higher.
ALP pictures presents an all-star cast of Julia Gillard...Wayne Swan...Tony Windsor...Kevin Rudd....Rob Oakeshott...and introducing Adam Bandt, in...MINORITY GOVERNMENT. Coming soon to a country near YOU!

The First Step

2010-09-07T08:00:00.007+09:30

...is admitting that you have a problem:

Hi, my name is Ted and I'm a biblioholic. I'm utterly addicted to the increase of my library, by any means necessary. It's been 2 days since my last bookshop splurge, when the friendly but concerned clerk, recognising me and the considerable amount I seem to spend on a regular basis at the Angus & Robertson in James Place, asked "How many of the books you own have you actually read?". He has a point. Maybe I just buy books to impress my local bookstoe clerk, for the smell of fresh paper and the softness of an uncreased trade paperback, or to look intelligent but not actually to read.

When I went home and looked at my collection, and what I saw disgusted me. I don't have a problem, I have seventy-four problems. Some of them partially solved, some of them new and exciting, right across the spectrum from historical fiction pulp to classic SF, biographies and non-fiction, and it's about time that I did something about it. These seventy-four are a not inconsiderable percentage of my entire library, and while I didn't buy them all I've let them get a little out of hand. So...

No more buying books until I've finished the ones I have now.
(This doesn't exclude me picking up free books or books or really, really good sale, but I won't go looking for them).

Some of you are aware that I've tried this before, but it failed the next time I went into a bookstore with money in my pocket (I managed a few times by making myself poor before entry), but this time it's in writing, and as I am a man of my word, I'm just going to have to knuckle down and deal with my problems, all 74 of them. Then maybe I can start on the other bad habits, like picking things up off of the street and putting them in my mouth.

Just on the off chance that you're interested, the list is:
Aitken, Johnathan. John Newton: From Disgrace to Amazing Grace (birthday present 2010)
Asimov, Isaac. Robot Stories. (bought this weekend)
Austen, Jane. Emma (deceased estate 2008, deceased smoked a lot)
Blainey, Geoffrey. A Shorter History of Australia (free box at work)
Bryson, Bill. A Short History of Nearly Everything (bought early 2010)
Bunyan, John. The Pilgrim’s Progress (inherited)
Burgess, Anthony. A Clockwork Orange (bought 2009)
Chaucer, Geoffrey. Canterbury Tales (2009)
Christie, Agatha. 4.50 From Paddington (inherited)
Christie, Agatha. Mrs. McGinty’s Dead (inherited)
Christie, Agatha. The Mousetrap (free box)
Christie, Agatha. They Came to Baghdad (inherited)
Christie, Agatha. They Do It with Mirrors (inherited)
Clarke, Susanna. Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell (bought this weekend)
Cornwell, Bernard. Sharpe’s Revenge (op-shop 2010)
Courtenay, Bryce. The Persimmon Tree (early 2010)
Cupp, Bob. The Edict (early 2010)
Currie, Ron. God is Dead (A&R crazy sale 2010)
Dahl, Roald. Going Solo (2009)
Dickens, Charles. A Tale of Two Cities (birthday present 2010)
Dickens, Charles. Hard Times (deceased estate 2008)
Dickens, Charles. Nicholas Nickleby (deceased estate 2008)
Donaldson, Stephen. The One Tree (free box)
Donaldson, Stephen. The Wounded Land (inherited)
Donaldson, Stephen. White Gold Wielder (inherited)
Durrell, Gerald. My Family and Other Animals (2009)
Eliot, George. Middlemarch (deceased estate 2008)
Flanagan, Richard. Wanting (A&R crazy sale 2010)
Gaiman, Neil. The Graveyard Book (early 2010)
Gibson, William. Burning Chrome (free box)
Gibson, William. Mona Lisa Overdrive (free box)
Gibson, William. Neuromancer (free box)
Hoban, Russell. Riddley Walker (inherited)
Homer. The Iliad (op-shop 2010)
Homer. The Odyssey (gift)
Joachimsthaler, Anton. The Last Days of Hitler (mid 2010)
Keneally, Tom. Australians – Origins to Eureka (last weekend)
Kennedy, GA Studdert. The Unutterable Beauty (op shop 2010)
Kipling, Rudyard. Limits and Renewals (inherited)
Lehmann, Darren. Worth the Wait (2009) - Read September 2010
Lewis, CS. Out of the Silent Planet (deceased estate 2008)
Lewis, CS. Perelandra (deceased estate 2008)
Lewis, CS. That Hideous Strength (deceased estate 2008)
Martin, GRR et al. Songs of a Dying Earth (last weekend) - Read October 2010
Milton, John. Dramatic Poems (op shop 2010)
Mitford, Nancy. Love in a Cold Climate (inherited)
Nabokov, Vladimir. Lolita (2008)
Orwell, George. Animal Farm (deceased estate 2008)
Owen, Wilfred. Poems (op shop 2010)
Peake, Mervyn. Gormenghast (free box)
Peake, Mervyn. Titus Groan (stolen from co-worker 2009)
Robertson, Geoffrey. Crimes Against Humanity (early 2010)
Salinger, JD. The Catcher in the Rye (inherited)
Selby-Montefiore, Hugh. Enigma (early 2010)
Shatner, William. Tek Lab (free box)
Shatner, William. Tek Vengeance (free box)
Shaw, George Bernard. Three Plays For Puritans (free box)
Stow, Randolph. The Merry-Go-Round in the Sea (early 2010)
Sutherland, John. Curiosities of Literature (birthday present 2009)
Swift, Jonathan. Gullivers Travels and Other Writings (free box)
Thackeray, William Makepeace. Vanity Fair (deceased estate 2008)
Tolstoy, Leo. War and Peace (2009)
Twain, Mark. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (2009)
Waugh, Evelyn. A Handful of Dust (2009)
Wilde, Oscar. A Picture of Dorian Grey (2008)
Wilde, Oscar. Complete Short Fiction (2009)
Winton, Tim. Breath (2009)
Wodehouse, PG. A Pelican at Blandings (free box)
Wodehouse, PG. Jeeves in the Offing (free box)
Wodehouse, PG. Much Obliged, Jeeves (free box)
Wodehouse, PG. P. Smith in the City (free box)
Wodehouse, PG. Ring for Jeeves (free box)
Wyss, Johann. Swiss Family Robinson (deceased esate)

Now I've got to read the suckers.

The next step is coming to believe that a higher power can restore me to sanity. I have a feeling that that one might take a while.

Elections - The Never Ending Story

2010-09-06T09:07:00.004+09:30

More than two weeks have passed since the 2010 Federal election, and Australia is still without a government, with three of those independents we talked about last week (Bob Katter, Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott) still deliberating, while Bandt and Wilkie have thrown their votes behind a Labor Government, making the scoreline 74-73 against the Coalition.

Yes, that's right, after two weeks, anyone could win. Or no-one could. If these 3 guys can't come to an agreement in the next few days, Australia is in for political turmoil and all-round crazy time. Here's how it works.

If the big three come down on the side of the government, Labor will have a 77-73 majority (Tony Crook of the nationals is still insisting he's a party in his own right, but no-one is really listening). Who knows what Labor would have to offer Bob Katter and Tony Windsor to make this happen, but if they could it would make the most stable possible option.

If the 3 go to the Coalition, they could form government, but it's possible that Crook could come into play and block the election of a Speaker. Without a Speaker there's no House, and no government, so that's a pretty drastic move on his behalf. If he doesn't cross the floor, then the Coalition will come into power with a friendly Senate (until July), but only need to lose one vote in the House to block their legislation.

If the 3 split, with Oakeshott to Labor and the other two to the Liberals, we'd be in a bit of a pickle. With 75 apiece it's possible that either side could still form government, but it would rely on a lot of wheeling and dealing in each and every vote for the government to get anything done. It could be a weird time to be in federal politics.

Anyway, if you care at all you know all this, so I'll get to the point. The main reason for this post is that with 80% of the vote counted, it looks like Bob Day might make the Senate in South Australia. It's no sure thing yet, but if he gets in (with only 4% primary vote) I will feel justified for my wild predictions of three weeks ago, and you will have to bow down and pay homage to me as the Election King.

I hope to be able to write tomorrow sometime that we have a government.

Wednesday Quiz In Exile I: Cover Versions

2010-09-01T01:00:00.013+09:30

It's not the famous Wednesday Quiz, which has been viciously killed off before its time, but it is almost the next best thing, the Wednesday Quiz's Australian Cousin. Like all good Australian things, it's just a home-grown version of things stolen from other places with a touch of rabid nationalism and an undercurrent of xenophobia, but at least it beats looking at boring postcards (unless you like that sort of thing, I guess).

This week's quiz is on famous books by Australian authors. Identify the missing titles on the Australian covers of these dozen Australian "classics" to win yourself respect and reknown amongst the huge audience of this here little portion of the internet and to score points towards receiving a choice of prizes as yet to be determined. Those who look up, consult with others or otherwise cause their answers to come from somewhere other than the depths of their long-term memory banks will be scathingly lampooned by generations of Australian fictioneers.

Name these books
Warning: This quiz is obviously harder than I thought it was, even for Aussies. Don't get discouraged.

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.

Please leave your answers in fine literary style in the comments. The best way to do this without looking at anyone else's answers if to type them out in a word document or scribble paper first.

Introducing - The Celestines

2010-08-27T23:00:00.007+09:30

Sunday marks the last day of the Celestine year, celebrating 800 years since the birth of Pope St. Celestine V and your last chance to pick up a plenary indulgence by visiting his relics in Italy, so if that's your kind of thing, you'd better be hopping on your private plane around about now and jetsetting on over to Roma.

I happened to be reading about Celestine V the other day (I do that sort of thing) , and it struck me that he must have been a pretty hard man. He founded his own monastic order imitating famed desert-dwelling, hair-shirt-wearing preacher-man John the Baptist because he didn't think the Benedictines were ascetic enough, he lived in caves, migrating from cave to cave when he got too comfortable, and generally preached it up, pretty damn cool in its own right. Then, out of the blue he gets elected Pope because he wrote the cardinals an agony aunt letter, and he tries to avoid the job, but he's dragged off to Rome. It only takes him 5 months to pass a law saying that the pope can resign, then he goes right ahead and resigns and goes home. The new pope wasn't too happy with the idea, though, so he chases Celestine around the country, inprisons him in Rome in poor conditions, and our man ups and dies (with a suspicious hole in his skull, but no-ones ever proven anything).

Anyway, the point is that the poor guy tried the best he could, was nice to everyone and just tried to serve his God as well as he knew how, which mostly involved praying all the time, and he pretty much ended up living a life that can't have been very much fun. So I drew this for him, as I think he really needed to take the load off for a while and relax with some barbershop harmonisings. The history books don't show it, but I wouldn't be at all suprised if ol' Celestine V was a hell of a baritone.

Celestine V (or "Pietro", as I like to think of him) is in the back row on the far right, and is accompanied by his namesakes St. Celestine "the Deacon" I (bass, back left), Celestine "Guido" II (lead, back centre), Celestine "Giacinto" III (tenor, front left), and Celestine "Godffredo" IV (counter-tenor, front right), all of whom could have done with a bit of a laugh, and who I like to think of collectively as the Celestines, the first time-travelling papal barbershop quartet. I am aware that quartets generally have only the four members, but given that CII, CIV and CV managed less than a year of papal duties between them I figure they decided to play it safe and bring along a spare part for emergencies.

The Celestines are part of a very sketchy idea that's been floating around in my head and in late-night conversations, which includes popes, time travel, my terrible drawing and general mayhem. I really don't know why but I can't get it out of my head, and it keeps me up a night sometimes, so there you are. I think it's called "Habemus Papas" (extremely original, I know), and I have no idea what's going on with it except that there's apparently papal barbershop quartets and more popes that you can poke 200 sticks at. Anyway, I think the Celestines probably sing all the regular polecats, with modified lyrics as befits their position as moral leaders (Popes called Celestine were a pretty good mob, compared to some of the other guys around, anyway). At the moment they're singing a version of When It Comes To Loving The Girls.

I see lovers, lovesick lovers dance.
That's not for me, for I oppose romance...

When it comes to loving the girls I say that it's out of line.
If you'd be so kind, I'd rather be confined,
Prayin' all the night and day with nothin' on my mind.

An' when it comes to retiring and shy, I've got Rainman beat' a mile.
As I was washing stoles down by the river bed,
A girl went walking by and I turned kinda red.
'Cause it comes to looking at girls I know that it's out of line.

And when it comes to keeping a vow, I've got continence to spare
I've got a Lord in Jesus who's my hearts desire,
I don't need contraception just a cleansing fire...

When it comes to loving the girls I say that it's out of line.
Yes I'm rather blessed,
now that I've confessed,
praying without rest,
in my Sunday best,
put me to the test, I know I'm going to shine.
Toe the party line...All the time.

Yep, I'm terribly sorry for exposing you to that, not one of my best efforts. But I hope the remainder of the Celestine year goes well for you anyway, and that you're not exposed to any worse rhyme than that.

Federal Election - Let's Make a Deal

2010-08-24T16:02:00.007+09:30

Well, 5 days later and Australia still doesn't have a government. I feel a little bit like I'm living in a little Central American country like Coregos, except of course that I have fresh water to put in my tea, a public health system and electricity except during thunderstorms. The national stock exchange continues to plummet with uncertainty - you'd think that economists would be used to not knowing what was coming next - and in Canberra the major parties continue to wine and dine the newly elected Independents and Green MP in the hope of convincing them that they're the lesser of two evils.

Apologies, gentle reader, for involving you in the mess that is the Australian federal election, but this could be a real watershed moment in Australian politics, sparking parlimentary reform and a mix-up of the Australian party system thats been is virtual stasis since the formation of the Coalition in 1920's. Or it could be the pre-season before more of the same, but we can always hope. Thus, it's time for a refresher course in the Westminster Parlimentary system as practiced in Australia at a national level.

First, the situation. To form government, a prospective prime-minister must be able to count 76 of the 150 Members of the House of Representatives - MP's (I am aware that many consider the apostrophe there incorrect, but I think it looks nicer, so it's staying) - as support, or we go back to polls and try again. At the moment, the conservative Coalition of the Liberal, National, Liberal-National and Country Liberal parties - original names, huh? - led by Tony Abbott looks like it will end up with 73 seats and the current small-l-liberal Labor government led by Prime Minister Julia Gillard looks like getting 72, with 3 of those seats still in doubt, and the remainder of the parliament filled out by 3 conservative Independents from Queensland and New South Wales, one liberal Independent from Tasmania, and one Green from Victoria. With all the elected MPs trying to avoid another election immediately - they want to keep their jobs, after all - it would seem to be up to these 5 players as to who gets the top job in the country and who has to settle for leadership of the opposition - and probably try to fend off a leadership challenge, for good measure - .

However, all is not well in the Coalition camp, with the new National party member from Western Australia entering the fray and annoucing that he would not automatically vote with the Coalition, but would sit on the cross-benches and support whichever party would give WA a better deal. He can do this because the WA Nationals are actually a seperate party to the national Nationals, but also because the Coalition has a long-standing tradition - admittedly little seen in recent years - of allowing its members to cross the floor and vote against them if they desire. The Labor party is more likely to throw you out if you try it on them.

So at the end of an election thats been more of a media circus than a referedum about the issues, it fits that we have 6 relative unknowns who will vie against each other for power to determine who runs the country for the next up-to-3 years. I'm your host for this evening, and it's time to Make a Deal. First, let's meet our contestants.

Bob Katter - Independent for Kennedy (QLD)
The man who famously once said he would "walk backwards from Bourke" if there were any homosexuals in Charters Towers, Mr. Katter is a former Nationals MP - when asked why he left the Nats he recently replied "You got about two hours?" - who likes
ethanol fuel, Joh Bjelke-Petersen and the Australian way of life and dislikes privitisation, foreign imports, computers, and all the major parties. He's been in state and then federal seats since the mid-70's, so he knows how it's done. He wants broadband internet in the bush but doesn't want it privatised - which supports Labor policy -, and can be expected to oppose any Emissions trading scheme - Colation policy -.

Tony Windsor - Independent for New England (NSW)
Dumped from the National Party for a driving offence just before pre-selection for the state election in 1991 - he referred to that and his concurrent giving up of smoking as "rid[ding himself] of two cancers" - , Tony has been a state and then Federal member ever since, and was part of the balance of power in the hung NSW parliaments in the 90's, so he's no stranger to this sort of situation. Dedicated to climate change and improving internet speeds in the bush, he could swing either way, and some commentators have suggested that he will... in exchange for the coveted position as Speaker of the House.

Rob Oakeshott - Independent for Lyne (NSW)
Yet another former Nationals state MP, Mr. Oakeshott has held Lyne as an independent since 2008, when he won in each and every voting booth in the electorate. He says establishing an emissions trading scheme is his big issue, and has made waves with his suggestions that, instead of -or as well as - focusing on the independent MP's, Coalition or Labor MP's like former leaders Kevin Rudd and Malcolm Turnbull should cross the floor and support the other side to form government instead of leaving a government with only a thin majority of 76 seats. This sort of thing has happened in state parliaments before, but if such a situation could occur nationally, it could change the political landscape in Australia for the short-term, if not for longer, causing party loyalties to be challenged and encouraging more members to cross the floor and vote against their own party, an extremely rare occurence in modern federal parliaments. He's not the only person suggesting some unusual stuff, but he may have started a trend.

Andrew Wilkie - Independent for Denison (TAS) Coming from the Labor stronghold of Denison - held by Labor since 1987 - Mr. Wilkie is an ex-intelligence operative who first shot to fame as a whistleblower speaking out against the Iraq war. He ran for the Greens in the home Electorate of then-PM John Howard in 2004, but was once a young Liberal, and says he has no strong ties to either party but is rather "a new breed of political activist". That said, his policies would seem much more at home in a Labor government.

Adam Bandt - Green for Melbourne (VIC)
Representing the other of the two safe, safe Labor seats - Melbourne has been held by Labor since 1904 - that have been poached by the left in this election, Mr. Bandt likes the Green party and presumably all their policies and can be expected to side with a Labor government - or at least be sure of not siding with the Coalition - but his support in every vote is by no means a sure thing.

So, these six contestants hold the fate of the nation in their hands, the greatest power any individual MPs have held in parliament in half a century, let's show them what they've won...

Senate Elections 2010 - Bump Out

2010-08-23T10:02:00.023+09:30

As I write this, the federal election is still up in the air and likely to stay that way for a while, with neither of the major parties being able to form a majority government, and Australia looks certain to be ruled by its first minority government since Menzies' disasterous WWII United Australia Party colation with two independents that then abandoned the government and put the Labor party in power. While we wait to see which of the major parties can successfully negotiate with the three (possibly four) independents and single green in the lower house to form government, let's go look at the provisional results in the Senate, and see just how off-the-mark last weeks predictions actually were...

In my home state of South Australia, the Greens fell just short of being elected in their own right with 13% of the primary vote, but got over the line on Sex Party preferences (the Sex Party, in a sad reflection of Australians current opinion on mainstream politicians, got a massive 1.7% of the primary vote and came 5th overall). Family First got within half a percentage point of stealing last Senate seat from the liberals after preferences, but failed to get as much primary vote as I anticipated (though they got more than I hoped), and so fell just short. Thus, SA has returned 2 Labor Senators (goodbye to current Senator Wortley), 3 Liberals and 1 Green. Am I the only one who thinks it would be fun to return to conventional latin language roots and call female Senators Senatrices?

Nationally, the Greens did well at the expense of the major parties (the Coalition lost three seats and the ALP lost one), taking a Senate seat in every state, and the Liberals managed to just scrape through on the primary vote in the ACT to keep them out there. The other party to win out was the DLP, who overcame a highly-publicised potential split, almost nonexistant finances and finally my scathing commentary of their chances compared to Family First to oust the sitting Family First member Stephen Fielding and elect the DLP's first Senator since 1974.

Generally, it was an election for records. Not only did we see 20-year-old Wyatt Roy elected as our youngest ever parlimentarian for the Liberals in Longman in Queensland, we saw our first ever Muslim MP in Ed Husic for Labor in Chifley in NSW, our first ever Indigenous MP in Ken Wyatt for the Liberals in Hasluck in WA, the Greens took their first ever seat in the electorate of Melbourne, it's our second-ever hung parliament, possibly our closest-ever election, and the aforementioned re-election of the DLP to the senate after a 30-year absence.

Labor=Red, Greens=Green, Xenophon=Grey, DLP=Vomit, Blue=Coalition in the worlds uglist graphic (if you know how to make it less small without it pixellating up the whoopsie, please let me know)

This result means that, as expected, the Greens hold the balance of power in the Senate, and the major parties will need either the support of each other or of the Greens to pass any legislation, whichever party ends up forming government is undoubtedly going to have quite a fight on their hands. We'll have to wait and see if the Australian people are the winner or the loser in this arrangement.

In conclusion, I am a pretty good predictor, I just wish that I was female so that I could be a predictrix.

Senate Elections 2010

2010-08-09T11:10:00.023+09:30

It's that time again, when my mailbox overflows with advertising from political parties eager to win my vote on the issues they think matter to me. Because I have a reputation to upload as a tremedous bore, in this post I'm going to try and sort out where my votes will be going on August 21st using an awful lot of words and no pretty pictures at all. I'm going to do a bit of a dive into the much neglected Senate, focusing entirely on my home state of SA, which is the only place I have to vote, thankfully. If you disagree with any of my summaries of the parties in this post (I have a tendency to be flippant), feel free to let me know.

If you're reading this, I'm going to assume that you're from the US, since everyone on the internet is from the US. Why you'd be reading this is another question, but I don't really mind, I'm pretty good at talking to myself anyway. This means I'm going to spend some time explaining the political system as a whole before I get into the nitty-gritty of individual candidates. Feel free to skip to the good stuff if you're already familiar with this (or to correct me when I'm horribly wrong, sometimes I'm just wrong, and sometimes I'm over-simplifying for the masses).

So the US Senate has 2 senators from each state, so that each state is represented equally. This is designed to protect the smaller states from legislation that would disadvantage them being forced through by more numerous states who have more seats in the Congress. When Australia federated at the turn of last century we thought that that was a pretty good idea, so we copied it (these days we'd probably get sued for copyright theft or something, but it was a simpler age). We upped the number per state to six, as we decided that 12 guys in a room having that much power was a little bit silly, and bam, parlimentary checks and balances and state equality was ensured. Unfortunately, this didn't work quite as well as it does in the US, as members vote on party lines, without the freedoms (and many of the problems) of the US system, but that's a conversation for another day.

These days, there's 12 Senators for each state, and two for each for the Northern Territory (who also represent the overseas territories) and the ACT (Australia's District of Columbia) (who also represent the other mainland territory). Each election, each state votes in 6 of those senators for a 6 year term (equivalent to two three-year federal election periods), so like the US system there's continuity, and the Senate lags behind popular opinion by a considerable margin. The territories do it differently, and although the ACT elections are interesting in their own right, that's not up for discussion today either.

Senators are voted in using a preferential single transferable vote system. A constituent (voting is compulsory in Australia, and every registered voter may be fined for not at least turning up on polling day) votes either for a party, and accepts their preference choices (this is called above-the-line voting), or allocates an order of preference that includes each and every candidate (below-the-line voting). Any candidate that receives 14.3% of the first-preference vote is instantly elected, and over quota votes are distributed to the second-preference candidate (often another member of the same party). Then parties with the lowest numbers of votes are eliminated and their votes allocated to the next preferred candidate, etc. until all 6 seats have been filled. This means the preferences of each party as to who receives their votes
is of vital importance as to who eventually wins the available seats.

Anyway, that means the people of South Australia have to elect 6 people to the Senate on the 21st of August, and those people will be our voice in Canberra for the next 6 years. When we elected the currently retiring group of Senators, the major third party in Australian politics, the Democrats, who'd held at least one SA seat in the Senate at every election since the late seventies (and whose campaign slogan was "Keep the Bastards Honest", an interesting look into the Australian psyche) had recently ripped itself apart, and at the time none of the other parties were a viable option to South Australians. As a result, the major parties, the centre-left Labor party and the centre-right Liberal party, were able to snare the seats left behind in the third-party vacuum, electing three members each and forming a Senate that was extremely light on in terms of opposition to the major parties (who're increasingly seen, in a perfect real-life example of the ice-cream vendor problem, as two sides to the same coin).

The political scene is very different now. Aside from the Labor party regaining power after 13 years of Coalition government led by "Honest" John Howard, we've seen the rise of the leftist Green party as the preferred third party, and the rise of the religious right in the form of the Family First party, who currently hold 5 and 1 senate seat respectively. Also, of the 6 Senators elected 6 years ago, 4 are retiring or have already retired, including 3 high-profile Howard government ministers, so South Australians are faced with a swathe of relative unknowns representing the major parties. The last senate election in 2007 saw both the Greens and hugely popular former-state independent Nick Xenophon take votes (and seats) from the major parties, as South Australians become increasingly unimpressed with both Labor and the Liberals. Xenophon polled 15% of the primary vote, so where those who voted for Xenophon last time around will be voting this time (with Nick very quiet about his preferred candidate) is anyone's guess (both the Greens and Family First are trying hard to ensure a good percentage flows to them).

If the Greens and/or Family First do manage to pick up a good percentage of the voters who supported Xenophon, then they've got a good chance of picking up the last 2 seats. The major parties always poll above 2 quotas each, so the first four seats are shoe-ins, what matters is if the Greens and Family First can gather more after-preference votes the the third candidate from the Labor and Liberal parties respectively. If they can, then the preferences from the Labor candidates will almost certainly elect a Green Senator, and the preferences from the Liberals will almost certainly elect Family First. The way the preferences are set-up, there's almost no chance of either the left (Labor and Greens) or the right (Liberal and Family First) picking up more than 3 seats each without a huge swing that seems unlikely with 2 weeks to go, it's just a matter of which Party will take the seats.

With the stage set, lets meet the candidates:

These are in the order that they will appear on the ballot papers, as well as info about the candidates and party policies I've added a little about their chances and past results, as well as where their above-the-line preferences will flow assuming that only the big four parties are left at the crunch (which seems very likely unless the Democrats get a crazy lucky revival).

Group A: The Climate Skeptics.
After preference vote: Family First.

First out of the gate is father and son team Leon and Nathan Ashby, running for the Climate Skeptics, who're also running a number of candidates in House of Representatives electorates across the state. Most notable for their opposition to any kind of (carbon) Emission Trading Scheme, they have a range of other policies detailed in this powerpoint presentation, which is a great idea I'd like to see more parties take up, but not excellently executed. Nathan ran for the State Legislative Council earlier in the year and managed a very respectable 0.63% of the primary vote.

Being climate skeptics, they want an immediate end to any government legislation based on CO2 emissions or climate change until more than 5 independent scientists (that bit's a bit vague), instead, they want environment funding to focus on establishing a national water infrastructure, capturing more water in dams, pumping and storing it in the far north of the country, building desalination plants and water treatment and recycling (mere mention of which is voter poison in SA for now, despite some council areas already utilising it).Interestingly, they're also behind alternative energy, due to the shortage of fossil fuels, not the perceived climate issues, which makes them different to many pro-oil-company positions we've seen in the past. They're not just a single-issue party, either, they've also got a range of other policies including greater individual property rights, lesser government powers, incentives for self-funded retirees, limits on campaign advertising, more support for the unemployed, and more funding for better broadband internet
A couple of big issues they're also behind include cloud seeding, leasing of national parks to corporations, the building of more cities and the infrastructure to support them.

Bonus points for: Not actually sounding rabid, like most climate change skeptics I'd met.
Marked down for: Wanting more checks and balances, but less red tape. They both sound great, but you should probably pick just one.

Group B: Independent.
After preference vote: Family First.

Mark Aldridge and Christopher Cochrane are running on a joint independent ticket. I can't find any information about Christopher Cochrane, so I'm going go right ahead and tar him with the same brush as Mark Aldridge (if you know different, please let me know and I'll update this info). Aldridge ran for the SA Legislative Council earlier in the year (he got 0.13% of first preferences) with the byline "Change Is Necessary", and boy does he want to change a lot of stuff, a short but impressive list of his policies is available on his homepage, and is well worth a look, but one is struck by huge amount of changes he'd like to make with a lesser government income.

Bonus Points For: Having an accessible and attractive website.
Marked down for: Sounding rabid enough for everyone.

Group C: Labor.
After preference vote: Themselves, then the Greens.

The Labor party (it was named back in the dark ages of last century when modernised spelling was all the rage) is in a pretty good state going into this election, with a relatively popular state Labor government and two currently sitting Senators applying for re-election. They may have banked on this somewhat by putting union boss Alex Gallacher as their number one preference above sitting senators Anne McEwen and Dana Wortley, or perhaps the Hon. Ms. Wortley has annoyed the party in some way, as she'll be the one who might not get re-elected if the Greens somehow manage to beat her over the line for one of the two seats up for grabs once Labor and the Liberals have scarfed two each.

It seems that every day that this election period goes on people become less and less impressed with the policies of the major parties, who seem to be focusing more on slurring their opponents and accusing them of the crime of 'playing politics' than actually making any promises that might win them the election. Both parties have a range of policies which generally differ from their opponents by only a small margin, but with policy mostly off the table as an issue, and no-name candidates in the Senate, the voters are going to be deciding based mainly on the perceived trustworthiness of the respective party leaders, new Prime Minister Julia Gillard, who unseated the previous PM earlier in the year, and Tony Abbott, apparent victor of three years of intra-party bickering in the Liberal camp.

If you are interested in policy and have been living in a box or another country for the last...50 years. Labor is for higher taxes and a greater range of government-delivered service, while the Liberals favour relying on corporations and private groups to deliver services and lower taxes. These differences are most noticable with Labor's announcement of a Super-profits tax, a high-percentage tax of profits above a certain level for big mining corporations, in order to pay for a range of environmental and social issues, and the parties competing internet policies, the Liberals want 6 billion to improve the current broadband network in regional areas usign wireless means and Labor wants 42 billion to provide cable broadband to the home, dramatically increasing Australia's internet capability. Labor is for federalising the health and education systems (in fact they've already started) and cutting state revenue, and the Liberals are for individual state education and health programs. These sort of differences will be familiar to any US readers, not that I've fooled myself into thinking this "trenchant" post has any readers at all.

Bonus Points For: Having been pretty productive in government after 13 years in opposition.
Marked down for: Having stuffed up a lot of their productivity.

Group D: Liberal
After preference vote: Themselves, then Family First.

The Liberal party (since they're generally right wing we use the exceptionally ugly terms small-l-iberal and big-L-iberal to tell the difference) are running completely different candidates to those that they ran six years ago, with Amanda Vanstone currently our Ambassador to Italy and Alan Ferguson and Nick Minchin retiring when their terms come to an end. In their place, we have Sen. Mary Jo Fisher, who took Ms. Vanstone's seat when she resigned mid-term, state Liberal party president Sean Edwards, former lower house member David Fawcett, and in an ambitious bid for a fourth seat for the liberals, Peter Salu, who also ran unsuccessfully for the state Legislative Council earlier in the year.

The Liberals find themselves in a similar boat to Labor, hoping to hold onto their three seats against assaults from what has traditionally been their safe right flank in the form of the Family First Party. Facing a big turnover of leadership since the last election, opposing the first female PM in Australian history and still struggling under their fourth leader in as many years, the Liberals should still claw back some ground from the landslide that was their 2007 defeat.

On the policy front: see the Labor post for the big differences.

Bonus Points For: Tony Abbott is a very attractive, witty man.
Marked down for: Ridiculous amounts of negative ads during the campaign.

Group E: One Nation
After preference vote: Family First.

One Nation, a nationalist party that campaign "to protect and nurture our sovereignty and national pride", have been pretty quiet this election after getting on (0.6%) last time around. Robert Edmonds and Peter Fitzpatrick are running in SA, on removal of international trade agreements and tightening of border security.

Bonus Points For: Still trying even though the party is a spent force and national laughing stock. (Sorry, up until then I managed to stay reasonably fair and unbiased, I thought)
Marked down for: Sounding a little bit like the borg with a policy of 'Scrap "Multiculturalism" and require all immigrants to assimilate as Australians'.

Group F: Democratic Labor Party
After preference vote: Family First.

The Democratic Labor Party have been around in Australian politics for a long time, being the descendant of the original DLP which split from the ALP proper in the 1950's and has been drifting slowly to the right ever since. They've traditionally had a good percentage in rural areas and polled almost 1% in 2007, so Paul Russell and David McCabe are onto a pretty good thing. The only reason the DLP doesn't do as well as it used to running on a platform of pro-life, anti-euthanasia, anti-same-sex-marriage social justice platform are the presence of two higher profile parties in One Nation and Family First muscling in on their turf. In fact, the DLP outpolled Family First in Victoria at the last election when Family First Senator Stephen Fielding was elected, but the DLP failed to get enough preferences to get over the line.

The Democratic Labor Party shares most of its policies with the Family First party, but is lower profile. They've obvoiusly put a lot of thought into their policies and have gone to a bit of detail, which is more than I can say for family first, who seem to have tried to avoid making policy statements on as many areas as possible. A vote for either party is going to go to family first anyway, as the DLP just doesn't have a high enough profile to get the votes, and Family First has again outmanouvered them with preference deals with the other minor parties.

Bonus Points For: Having defined policies and sticking by them
Marked down for: Not having merged with Family First yet

Group G: Christian Democratic Party
After preference vote: Family First.

Joseph Stephen and Frank Revink are running for the super-conservative Christian Democratic Party, who line up with the other right-wing parties on issues like abortion, euthanasia, childrens rights and the like, but are more militantly Christian. Their main distinguishing feature is their policy on Islam, they'd like Islamic immigration banned and like Australian muslims to speak out against Sharia law, terrorism and closed communities. The CDP is a force in regional areas in New South Wales and in Western Sydney, but failed to even reach .2 percent of the vote in SA at the last election.

Bonus Points For: Being vocal in what they believe, and keeping their issues alive in the political arena. That's the whole point of minor parties.
Marked down for: Attempting to stop Muslim immigration, which is borderline unconstitutional and just plain rude.

Group H: Carers Alliance
After preference vote: Liberal or Labor.

The Carers Alliance are contesting their first SA senate seat, possibly inspired by Dignity for Disabled's come from behind win in the state Legislative Council earlier in the year. Campaigning for more support for the disabled and their carers in health and education and more rights for the disabled, Garry Connor and Angela Groves could conceivably pick up a good percentage, although they've had a lot less media than Dignity for Disabled did in the state election (they're both alive, for starters). An issue party, they've split their preferences half-half between the two major parties so they should balance each other out rather than giving an advantage to either side of politics, neither of which the Carers Alliance is doing for carers and the diabled, and are campaigning more for awareness.

Bonus Points For: Not picking a side in the federal election.
Marked down for: Not picking a side in the federal election.

Group I: Senator On-Line
After preference vote: Family First.

Simon Lang and Jamie Dawson don't have any policies, they have ideals. Senator On-Line pledge to put each and every Senate vote up on their website, to vote whichever way the majority of voters (or voters who log on to their website, anyway) want, and to abstain from every vote that doesn't get a 70% majority. I don't know how many things a senator has to vote on, but I imagine the website would get a lot of traffic if there was polls for every single vote.

There's not really anything more to say on the party, except that I saw a guy get elected to the Adelaide University SRC using this method last year, and the idea was a spectacular failure, but it can only work better in forum where people might conceivably actually care about the issues, like the federal Senate. They plan to check 'voters' agaisnt the electoral roll, which seems like a tricky thing to do in practice, but if it could work I do think they need to revise their policy so that only people in the state the senator represents can vote, as a senator represents their state or territory, not the nation as a whole.

Bonus Points For: Actually having no policies, rather than just having a lot of fluff that amounts to the same thing.
Marked down for: Dragging the democratic process through the mud.

Group J: The Greens
After preference vote: Themselves, then Labor.

The Greens have tried hard this election campaign to portray themselves as the viable 3rd party, banking hard on their holding the balance of power in the Senate to force the major parties to sit sit and be held accountable for their actions. It's a sign of their changed fortunes that leader Bob Brown participated in the national leaders debate, and if Senate hopefuls Penny Wright, Sandy Montgomery and Jeremy Miller make it past to post, it will be because of the Greens standing as the new third party in Australian politics, not its environmental policies. As if to demonstrate this, Penny Wright, the only Green candidate with any chance of being elected in SA, is not a noted environmentalist, but has been a campaigner for a variety of social issues in SA for a while.

The Greens major policies include more compassionate attitude towards asylum seekers and illegal immigrants, more foreign aid in the Asia-Pacific, improving public transport and increased investment in the arts, as well as a swathe of ambitious environmental projects, such as moving toward 100% renewable energy for Australia, dramatically reducing flood-irrigation, developing a carbon-trading scheme and developing alternative energies. The greens are now far from a single-issue party, and their greatest opposition comes from the more conservative christian voters and political parties, who've been dumping a lot of negative advertising their way for their support of high-profile issues like same-sex marriage, euthanasia, and their pro-choice stance.

If you think that you can tell a lot about a party by seeing whose preferences flow to it, the Greens are picking up preferences only from the left-fringe parties Socialist Alliance, Australian Sex Party and Secular Party of Australia, another fact that's bound to endear them to the vocal Christian groups in the state.

Bonus points for: Running a comparatively positive, issues-based campaign, with only a little bit of fear-mongering.
Marked down for: Abandoning their traditional re-useable generic posters in favour of candidate-specific advertising material, even if it is recyclable.

Group K: Building Australia
After preference vote: Family First.

Bill Adams and Neil Jackson are the candidates for the brand-new Building Australia party, who are made up of representatives of the building industry and are campaigning mostly on a platform of lower house prices via a range of government and building industry reforms and deregulation. I hadn't even heard of them until I started researching for this election, and given their current limited policy scope, I'm not suprised.

Bonus points for: A simple, functional, straightforward website of the no-nonsense kind you'd expect from an architect.
Marked down for: Limited vision, appealing to other small business owners would seem to be the next step.

Group L: Shooters and Fishers
After preference vote: Family First.

The Shooters and Fishers party are anti-green and pro-gun. I can obtain only a little information about their policies, but they seem to be mostly about hunting and fishing rights, opposing increases to conservation areas and encouraging less stringent gun and surveillance laws. Steve Larsson and Robert Borsak can expect support from agricultural and maritime areas but little urban support.

Bonus points for: Opposing gun-control, probably South Australia's biggest no-no, it takes balls to fly in the face of public opinion like that.
Marked down for: Not having anything but a news feed and forum on their website.

Group M: Australian Democrats
After preference vote: Labor

Jeanie Walker (who ran for the State Legislative Council earlier in the year with little success) and Andrew Castrique are the Democrat's hopes in this election. As we went into in the introduction (it seems like weeks ago, I know) the Democrats were a major force in federal politics a few years ago, but have now fallen back down to earth. The Democrats are still backing themselves as a viable alternative to the minor parties as well as to the Greens, emphasising their centrist credentials and willingness to compromise, even though policy-wise they're very similar social lberals. The main difference between the two is the democrats just as comitted but more practical environmental policy, showing a willingness to find the middle ground and move more gradually than the extremist Greens who have earned themselves so many enemies in their rise to prominence.

At the last federal election, the Dems snared just 0.9% of the SA primary vote, and gained about the same amount in the Legislative Assembly earlier in the year, following their last state MLC abandoning the party to run as an independent. Their failure to secure good preference deals again this year, as well as revelations that their candidate for my local seat is a convicted sex offender, will almost certainly rule them out of contention, but if the Greens were to have hugely unprecedented success (which I doubt, but it could potentially happen) they could do pretty well on Green and Labor second/third-candidate preferences.

Bonus points for: Continuing to develop comparatively thoughtful and balanced policies.
Marked down for: Not getting a shred of positive pulicity in the campaign, try harder, people.

Group N: Socialist Alliance
After preference vote: Greens.

The Socialist Alliance are one of the left wing parties that got a bad draw in their ballot location, and will be appearing a long way to the right, which could be expected to decrease what was already a pretty meagre 0.8% vote at the last federal election. Renfrey Clarke and Ruth Ratcliffe are campaigning on the ambitious party policies of 100% renewable power by 2020 (the Greens plan to develop financial plans to do this by 2030,'40 and '50), increased and free public transport, free university education and a lowering of the voting age to 16. I have no evidence to support it, but I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that the Socialist Alliance will support this platform by taxing the bejeebers out of the rich for the good of the proletariat.

Bonus points for: Ambitious domestic and international policy.
Marked down for: Failure to describe at all where they'll get the money.

Group O: Secular Party of Australia
After preference vote: Greens.

Scott Sharrad and Moira Clarke represent the Secular Party, their servers seem to be struggling with the influx of visitors to their website, so be gentle. The secular party are another new party contesting this election, running on exactly the platform you'd expect, opposing government funding of religious schools, religious education, and religious veiws having an impact of scientific advancement, as well as the regular leftist positions on LGBT marriage, abortion, euthanasia (it seems wherever you go, people have strong views either on the positive or the negative or all of these, and I'm getting sick of mentioning them in policy lists). The secular party seem very reasoned and respectful of religious views, as much as they don't want them influencing government policy, which is more than I can say for a few of the parties on the far right.

Bonus points for: Being the most sensible-sounding of the small-l-iberal parties.
Marked down for: Undoubtedly the worst logo in the campaign.

Group P: Liberal Democrats Party
After preference vote: Family First.

Contesting their first election as the Liberal Democratic Party after starting life as the Liberty and Democracy Party, represented by Nick Kerry and Megan Clark (that 3 Clark/Clarke's in 3 consecutive groups), the LDP stands for a wide range of domestic reforms. Large taxcuts would be followed by deregulation and privatisation of transport, postal, broadcasting, insurance and power services, removal of unemployment benefits in favour of a "negative income tax" and international free trade. Also freedom for Tibet and Taiwan, not that it's really an Australian issue at all.

Bonus points for: Using the Eureka flag, Australia's most attractive historical flag.
Marked down for: Being very pro-choice and yet giving preferences to Family First. Makes me wonder if they really believe in their platform.

Group Q: Australian Sex Party
After preference vote: Greens.

Militant internet filters prevent me from learning any more about this party or linking to their website, I'd allege that it was an anti-ASP political maneuver, but it's probably saved me some valuable minutes of my life that I'd never get back. Ari Reid and Jason Virgo shot into the spotlight when the media revealed that they'd been approached for a preference deal by Family First. These guys sure know how to manage the media and the spotlight, it's just a pity that they've used it to release strings of doube-entendres with no actual policy backing instead of turning their powers to advantage one of the minor parties with actual issues. The sad thing is that simply having the word 'Sex' in their title, compulsory voting in Australia probably means they'll get more votes than many of said minor parties.

Actually, the Sex Party might have policies, but I have no way of checking. If they do, I imagine that they're to do with the legalisation of prostitution nationally, provision of healthcare and union rights for sex workers, and greater legal protection for sex industry workers, all legitimate issues in their own right.

Bonus points for: Admitting that they're joke candidates.
Marked down for: Starting a political party instead of a late-night comedy show.

Group R: Family First
After preference vote: Themselves, then the Liberals.

By a freak chance, Family First occupy their rightful place on far right of the 18-group Senate ballot paper. Family First is the high profile "Family Values" party (in case you hadn't gathered, that really means "religious" without saying it out loud), campaigning for smaller government to leave more money for families. They are capable of saying this is many different ways, it's pretty impressive, actually. Family First currently have a federal senator, and have their best chance yet of getting one here in South Australia, whose conservative base is growing with every election.

Bob Day, Andrew Cole and Thea Hennesey make up the candidates for the prominent heterosexual, pro-life party, who can be expected to pick up a greater percentage of the vote this time around in their own right and also as an anti-Green choice, but not enough to get elected without the help of a large number of preferences. Family First must have a great negotiator, as they've secured the major preferences of almost all the conservative and centrist parties, missing only those on the left (for obvious reasons), which combined with Liberal flow-on preferences could just be enough to get them over the line.

That said, the biggest thing in their favour in South Australia is undoubtedly their lead candidate, Bob Day, who is a respected community member who lacks the bigoted bearing of a number of other right-wing candidates, and is widely respected in SA as a down-to-earth thinker, ideas man and all-round nice guy. As much as voters might dislike a number of Family First policies (which they're very vague about on their website), I suspect SA would be well represented by a man of integrity if Bob Day were elected. We could certainly do worse.

Bonus points for: Ok, I'm a Bob Day fan, obviously.
Marked down for: Not disagreeing with the Liberals position on enough things, making them less of an political alternative than they might otherwise be.

Group UG: Michelle Drummond

Running only under the line, meaning to vote for her you'll have to vote under the line, in returning independent candidate Michelle Drummond. Because few people can be bothered voting below the line, and many of those that do stuff up and render their ballot informal, Michelle will likely come in last on primary vote, and will lose out on preferences as well. She's running on a platform of mostly environmental policies, but also on a non-partisan true-independent, I-don't-want-your-dirty-preferences line which one can't help but admire a little bit, even if it does make you wonder if she's really cut out for public office.

Bonus points for: A damn attractive website, seriously, check it out.
Marked down for: I'm not going to mark her down at all, she's got enough against her as it is. Best of luck to you, Michelle.

And there you go, a mere week-and-a-half after it was first posted, I've finally completed my mammoth task, which has certainly helped me decide who I'll be voting for. I'm not going to tell you who the lucky candidate or party is, but I can tell you that I'll be voting under the line, so apologies in advance (well, not that much in advance, since polling day is tomorrow) to whoever has to count my ballot. Hoorah for the democratic process, huh?

I promise that I'll try to put some pictures or something in the next post.

The List

2010-02-15T11:11:00.002+10:30

One day a little while ago, Laura (my moderately significant other) and myself sat down in a fit of boredom and made ourselves a list of silly things we wanted to do in our lifetimes. I'll post it here so I can keep track of our progress:

1. Build a tree house
2. Carve a branch into a chain
3. Paint a car
4. Backpack nowhere in particular
5. Make a condensed milk & potato pie
6. Go rabbit hunting
7. Make a calendar
8. Paint a giant painting
9. Drive to Alice Springs for pizza
10. Sleep in a tree
11. Make a movie
12. Do everything the pirates don’t do
13. Write a book
14. Get a Mohawk
15. Climb the biggest something somewhere
16. Wear hot pink nail polish
17. Set a record
18. Get shut in a fridge
19. Jump out of a cake
20. Chain someone’s ears together
21. Collect pictures wearing 100 different hats
22. Wear 100 hats at once
23. Eat nothing but pizza for a week
24. Camp in the snow
25. Learn to play guitar
26. Learn to play blues harmonica
27. Eat a whole jar of nutella using only a pencil
28. Make something electric from scratch
29. Build a sailing boat
30. Get some one-piece pajamas
31. Do a first-aid course
32. Do a Rogaine in Victorian costume (with monocle)
33. Finish a giant crossword
34. Spelunk
35. Hear someone you don’t know use a word you made up
36. Make a self-portrait
37. Build some sort of bike
38. Walk the Heysen Trail
39. Own a cuttlefish
40. Knit a three-piece suit
41. Have a whole wall of filled bookshelves
42. Build a giant calculator
43. Live in a remote village
44. Invent a sport
45. Invert something
46. Come up with a name for the list
47. Make a website
48. Write a New York Times crossword
49. Have a 3 course meal entirely in the shape of socks
50. Cross the English Channel
51. Finish a long-term project
52. Learn how to tie 12 knots you know the names of
53. Grow some “cool” facial hair
54. Design and sell a t-shirt
55. Whitewater raft on the Nile
56. Go to a geohash on the day of your wedding
57. Arrive or depart from your wedding on a piece of old farm equipment
58. Eat vending machine pizza
59. Ask for a non-existent item in a shop
60. Go into a hardware store and ask for something specific, using all the 'professional' terms
61. Take a photo of a moose from a plane
62. Walk on the Great Wall of China
63. Cross the Simpson desert
64. Make a floating island
65. Make a boat in a bottle
66. Write a letter and send it out to sea
67. Learn to juggle
68. Milk a cow
69. Live on a boat
70. Eat spaghetti with Royalty
71. Do a flip
72. Make a USB
73. Drive down Baldwin Street, Dunedin
74. Learn the Wango
75. Do something creative every day for a week/month/year/lifetime
76. Do a stand-up comedy routine.
77. Build a life sized statue
78. Learn a dead language
79. Learn a live language
80. Fill a CD rack with music (that’s not burnt)
81. Have a collection of recipes using vegemite
82. Find some way to combine apple sauce and milk coffee biscuits
83. Count the sugar crystals in a packet
84. Fix up that stupid green thing
85. Go to something that requires formal attire together
86. See the desert stars at midnight (count them?)
87. Devise a fabric you can use like a whiteboard but still wear comfortably
88. Design and use a font
89. Read everything on a top 100 books list
90. Watch everything on a bottom 100 films list
91. Make a piece of public art somewhere
92. Go on a multi-day trip in a kayak
93. Trans-Siberian Railway
94. Walk around the suburbs singing Christmas carols
95. Googlewhack
96. Dig a hole to China
97. Plant a tree
98. Make something visible from space
99. Serve a banquet
100. Live in a share house

The list has grown since then, I'll update this post when I find the rest of it.
If you have a challenge to set us, feel free to suggest it, and if we find it even moderately interesting we'll add it to the list (not that what's already there isn't going to take us long enough).

Large Video Game Tournaments – Bracket Theory

2010-02-10T15:27:00.006+10:30

In the preparation for AVCon, which I have mistakenly put my hand up to be on staff for, I can’t stop thinking about the best models for running large tournaments. In an attempt to straighten out various thoughts running through my head, here’s a quick run down of various tournament systems, culminating in my proposed structure for AVCon’s large (128 and 256 person) tournaments in Street Fighter and Smash Bros. Brawl. Anyone not intimately interested in the nuances of running efficient tournaments, look away now, I have the feeling that it’s going to be pretty dry.

For the purposes of this demonstration we’re using a 32 person single elimination tournament, but the principles involved can be easily scaled up to larger tournaments or to double elimination, I’m just not showing them because the picture files would be huge.

Basic Tournament
The diagrams we’ll be using show a series of matches, each horizontal line represents a player, and each vertical line represents a match, the numbers in circles represent the order of games, so game 1 is first, then 2, etc. This is a regular single elimination tournament, it’s what they use at Grand Slam Tennis events and pub darts tournaments, and it’s great for season-long regular weekly or daily games, but it’s not so useful in a video game (or any other short game) situation simply because the participants are waiting around forever for their next turn.

Pooled Tournament
To deal with the long wait times, someone clever invented the idea of pools, in which groups of people play off against each other, and then the next pool plays, resulting in a much smaller number of people having to wait around for their turn. This shows a 32-person tourney with 4 pools, in which only the winner of each group of 8 people has to wait around until the finals. Pools are great for improving efficiency, as people needn’t turn up for the bits of the competition that they’re not involved in. Unfortunately, doing all this on only one station (a court for tennis, a console for video games) is still taking far too long, given the time constraints, so let’s add in some more stations.

Multi-Station Tournament
Here’s the same pooled 32 player tournament shared out between 8 different stations, each represented on the diagram by their own colour. Not surprisingly, the tournament is now running heaps faster. This is the epitome of efficiency and class when running a 32 player tournament, and is widely used even for bigger tournaments. Unfortunately, we’re running a 128 person one on a tight schedule here, effectively the pictured players are the first pool out of four, so the stations with nothing happening on them after the second round are causing us to run much longer than if we were using them all at once.

Consolidated Pools Tournament
This system still uses pools, but not all of the pool is played out before we move on to the next pool. Instead of whittling the participants down to one who plays in the finals, we let eight through to the preliminary rounds by playing out only the first two rounds of the tournament. This way, the participants that are waiting are fewer in number, and the overall time that they have to wait is drastically reduced. Assuming 5 minutes for a round (which is too short a time to expect for many games, but that’s a topic for another post), this system saves 25 minutes over the last one, a dramatic saving, and I haven't done the maths, but I think savings would be around 3 times that in a double elimination tournament. Unfortunately, it requires players to be absolutely on the ball, as they need to be able to win a match and move immediately to another station for their next match, which is a difficult enough task even if you don’t have a head full of memorized combos and strategies. This system is workable if you’re insanely organised, but it causes a hell of a lot of confusion.

Concurrent Pools Tournament
This system departs from the idea of pools all playing at the same time, and instead assigns everyone in the same pool to play at the same station, effectively turning our 128 person tournament into 8 16 person tournaments running at the same time. This system runs as quickly as the consolidated pools, but it means each game (at least up until the finals (which at AVCon are played on a big stage, not the tournament TVs)) is at the same station, which allows players to identify and watch all their competitors, saves losing them by moving around, and makes administration of the tournament a load easier.

Using this type of system, players can easily keep track of their competitors and the tournament as a whole, and everybody is happy. The best thing is we can still give a group times to appear so that they don’t have to wait forever, it’s just that these groups are independent of the playing pools, rather than being parallel with the pools as they are in traditional tournament formats. We can also easily expand or reduce this system for larger groups, less stations or double-elimination tournaments with ease.

If you can see a problem with the new system (I tend to miss major factors when brainstorming), can think of a better name for it (Concurrent sounds kinda…geeky) or just want to ask questions, let me know, that’s what the comment button is for, after all.

Rediscovering the Internet

2010-02-08T15:17:00.004+10:30

I'm planning to use this little portion of the blogosphere to share my increasing eclectic thoughts and projects, partly so I can share them with those that are interested, but mostly to prevent me from forgetting all about them.

The subjects covered will vary widely, from little observations on daily life in the office to my latest creative works, be they crosswords or woodworks or things that can't really be classified as works at all, interesting things I've found in my regular internet trawls, and everything in between. One post might be about planning youth group events, the next a recent comic, the next about computer games, the next on what I ate for dinner last night, the next on papal history. Who knows, some of it might be interesting, some of it might be entertaining, we'll just wait and see.

Since I don't ever set goals, but I like trying new things, here's some goals for the blog.
1. Post at least a couple of times a week on different topics.
2. Have something interesting to say in at least one of those posts.
3. Post lots of pictures.
4. Try new stuff, show it off even if it sucks.

Let's start with that and see how it goes.