I caught the end of a documentary on Walt Whitman just now and this is the end of it actually.
The last stanza of this poem - it had me in tears. The things he's sensitive too are nothing like what people of today are sensitive about.
But more than being able to notice these things, he was able to express them in words.
He bequeathed his anthology (35 years of work) to anyone who would have it apparently.
Unbelievable! It's one very long poem. Dare you to read it through: Here
I caught up with a friend today. It wasn't so much as a catch up though as a debate over "emergent culture".
The debate was in the context of making art.
The debate was fraught with assumptions about the basics of making art.
How to use materials like paint or pencils on paper.
How to use photoshop. Digital v Fine Art - you really don't want to go there.
Isn't it all a means to an end?
Where does the process of making art start?
Leave out the assumptions of whether it's good or bad art.
Everyone can make a smudge on paper and call it art if it pleases them to put it on the wall of their cafe or TV room - one man's meat is another's poison.
Doesn't it all "emerge" from "perception" and "awareness"?
Everything, not just art, depends on the sharpness and sensitivity of these qualities. But then there's consensus. Is it popular? Is popular art worse or better than fine culture?
I'm sorry but I'm pretty much continually amazed by the lack these qualities - as far as I'm concerned this "emergent culture" of perception blunted by self-interest pervades everything: academia, politics, business, arts, sports ... perhaps mental virus is a better description than emergent culture.
A process of deterioration which must - if there's a future - be balanced by an "emergent culture" with the creative ability to see beyond immediate self-interest.
Perhaps this explains the polls out today that show that the Australian Greens are gaining popularity while support for the two mainstream parties falters.
I'm not actually concerned about the level of skills people have since they can pretty much be developed by anyone with the drive to do so.
But I think it's the lack of "perception" and a mindset fraught with self-serving "assumptions" and a disregard rather than attention to details that lead to situations such as the Louisiana oil spill and the Israeli action against the Gaza aid flotilla.
It irks me when "traditionally trained" artists discard the digital arts because these artists have not got years of training in fine arts.
But I'm also annoyed by digital artists who show a complete lack of understanding of traditional fine art methods.
It seems to be that the two need to learn from each other.
Time Traveller's Guide To Social Media in Australia is an eBook by Lisa Yallamas.
Intro:
Heretics. People who throw the proverbial spanner into the works and turn the world upside down.
“The Earth is ROUND” …
How long did it take before someone decided that Galileo was right and it was now necessary to actually change the curriculum? It actually took hundreds of years because the first person to write about the Earth’s girth was an Indian sage named Yajnavalkya
Yajnavalkay wrote that the Earth was spherical in the Shatapatha Brahamana and the Greek mathematician Pythagoras reached the same conclusion in 540BC.
The Catholic Church persecuted Galileo in 1600 for advocating that the Earth is indeed round and is not the centre of the universe. No one would have believed him even if he could’ve tweeted it out!
No matter. Christopher Columbus sailed way before this wrangle and of course discovered the Americas. “I’ve just discovered America” – what a tweet!
Excerpt:
Perhaps your feelings for social media are akin to those of Isaac Nichols – one of the forgotten founding forefathers of Australia’s communications network – when the judge sentenced him to seven years hard labour in the penal colony of Australia back in 1790.
He didn’t know that would be the making of him. He served his term and ended up our first postmaster.
His mission?
Isaac had to deliver the mail and stop unscrupulous colonials from stealing mail off the ships to sell back to rightful owners.
Personal information has always had value and people just give away free on the Internet.
So just how did a petty criminal like Isaac acquire enough status in his community to run Australia’s first post office from his home in The Rocks district of Sydney? Trust.
He gained people’s trust through social networking of course!
As a convict, Isaac happened to have the good fortune to be assigned to work for a chap named George Johnston, one of the leaders of the Rum Rebellion – that’s the famous ousting of Captain Bligh as Governor if you recall your history well enough. Isaac escaped flogging this time.
Our Isaac had the wit and good sense to be on the winning side of the argument.
He played the game to the satisfaction of all – including the new Governor Macquarie.
Hey presto! He’s in control of one of the most beloved “social media channels” of his time – the postal service.
Thief and opportunistic convict he may have been but Isaac was no heretic.
Even a convict back in dim light of the candlelight age did thrive by means of social media.
They gifted him 50 acres. He became a successful businessman and sent his sons to England to be educated so as neither would become heretics.
FP6JP7PDXN8T
Have electricity bills have gone up about 28 percent in the last 18 months?
Well, yes. 15 percent last year and 13 percent from July 1 again!
A hefty hit on the basic cost of living - not luxuries. Not buying French wine and Russian caviar here.
Personally, I don't think I'm to blame for this inflation problem. I'm budgeting.
I'd say my water bill has increased by about 75 percent now we have to pay for the new water bureaucracy Queensland Water Utilities or Unitywater depending on where you live.
Now if you don't have a huge discretionary spending budget (that means there's not much left over when you pay the bills) then an extra couple hundred is a lot of money.
But the Reserve Bank looks at the inflation rate and says: "My, my but these people have money to burn. We'll have to dampen this inflation problem by inflating mortgage rates."
Granted the bargains out there make it impossible for some people to keep their credit cards in their pants.
And never mind that at the same time all governments (state and federal) are subsidising housing and construction which pushes up inflation again.
(The Queensland Government finally came up with a good idea to use the home owner's grants scheme to encourage people to build in regional areas - hopefully to relieve the horrible growth pains in the infrastructurally challenged South East corner of the state.)
I'm all for this eco-cost shift - "we must pay-the-real-cost for water and electricity"- which equates to a culture shift to save the planet.
I'm not for bigger bureaucracies for which we must pay - the Reserve Bank is not going to pay is not going to pay Jim Soorley's "wage" for his cushy new job as chair of Unitywater.
Is it possible to put a "cost of living" representative on the board of the Reserve Bank who's not chanting the chant: "Oh inflation is high! Monetary Policy will fix this problem."
The utilities have their paws on our hip pockets.
The Reserve Bank has no intention of a rate pause - sure they left the rate alone for June .
But read the deliberations about "Monetary Policy" in the minutes of the May meeting when they raised interest rates by a quarter percent you won't find mention of utilities.
No they talk about the threat to global economic recovery posed by the bankruptcy of Greece!
Paws on.
"Members noted that the increases in interest rates to date had been timely. There were some early signs that they were beginning to affect behaviour, with retail sales subdued and housing loan approvals falling noticeably. Nonetheless, the stimulatory effects of the resources boom would be building over the year ahead. Members were conscious of the need for this not to result in a material worsening in the medium-term outlook for inflation. This was weighed against the case that could be made for a pause in the process of normalising interest rates owing to the uncertainty in the euro area. On balance, members judged it to be prudent to undertake some further monetary tightening at this meeting. "
Wait for next month. Pause off! There's no eco-culture shift at the Reserve Bank.
Another half a percent please. POUR Moi! Pour MOI! (That's "For me" in French for the Reserve Bank Board)
Perhaps the music of the full orchestra playing Bach in the board room is too loud and they can't hear people outside screaming: "poor, poor, poor!" JOKE. Just a joke!
Perhaps it's actually another problem entirely. What exactly do they pour at these board meetings? French wine?
Vil ye pour? Just joking!
PAGES and pages and Pages and paGES!
If you can't tell...I'm singing...
The mind boggles again.
Who needs Wordpress now?
I hate coding. Sorry to all coders but it's not my thing.
I don't hate it. I hate that I can't do it.
But now I have pages!
God I LOVE# Posterous!
I don't really care that there's no $ off my site.
Been looking at all the marketing stuff.
That's not me either.
I just want to create.
I'm hoping it has significant ergonomic benefits.
I see that the jury is still out in ergonomics blogs.
I believe that just having an option to alternate between is beneficial.
I love writing on the iPad - but only with the keyboard dock.
The angle of the screen is great for me but you have to work at a desk or table that is the ideal height so that your feet are still flat on the floor.
But surely if the screen is too low for you use the phone book - if you still own one - as a tower.
The only function I'd like to see added to the iPad is a voice recording function - with an edit program/app.
I've only been using the iPad for a week but it feels more comfortable to write on because I can access all the programs with a touch - rather than a click.
And I can edit the text with a touch.
I downloaded Pages - the Apple equivalent of Word Doc - for about $15.
The screen and text is large enough to read.
The second thing I did was load my audio books.
The battery lasts all day.
But then I'm not playing music at the same time as I'm writing.
And I'm sure playing movies will drain the battery much faster.
This technology is an absolute Godsend for journalism in my opinion.
And my opinion comes from the "restless years" of using clunky old laptops to write court stories when juries come back with their verdicts at 9pm; writing remotely from parliamentary sittings and sending news stories via clunky phone hook-ups from country Queensland and from writing police news stories in my head speeding back to the office so that I can type it straight into the computer.
Broadband is still a major hitch for emailing stories remotely.
The only other interesting thing is I keep touching the computer screen to edit the text now.
Oh well. I can't wait for the next gen computers.
Now touch screens are a value to me.
I really couldn't be bothered with iPod or iPhone.
Touch screens - yeah.
Now touch screens - YEAH!
Page 43...
The first buzzard sat on the pony's head. Jody plunged into the circle like a cat.
The black brotherhood arose in a cloud, but the big one on the pony's head was too late.
As it hopped along to take off, Jody caught its wing tip and pulled it down.
It was nearly as big as he was. The free wing crashed into his face with the force of a club, but he hung on.
The claws fastened on his leg and the wing elbows battered his head on either side. Jody groped blindly with his free hand. His fingers found the neck of the struggling bird.
The red eyes looked into his face, clam and fearless and fierce; the naked head turned from side to side. Jody brought up his knee and fell on the great bird. He held the neck to the ground with one hand while his other found a piece of sharp white quartz.
The red fearless eyes still looked at him, impersonal and unafraid and detached. He struck again and again, until the buzzard was dead.
The juxtaposition of ideas often throws up new meaning.
Eras collided in the statements thrown around in two consecutive interviews on the ABC's Inside Business.
The program kicked off with Peter Brecht, CEO of a new company called Valemus that's being floated by German construction giant named Bilfinger Berger.
Mr Brecht was doing a good job talking up the prospectus launch as a good investment in a rotten economic climate etc...blaa..blah.
Seemingly ordinary and uncontroversial, this statement struck me between the eyes:
It's an old mantra which always proved right - it's accepted wisdom that in financial crisis people buy blue chip stock and real estate.
I on the other hand dream of a country that wants to invest in new industries and new technology that may lead us to a bright and prosperous GREEN future.
Anyway, he went on to say that they believe this accepted wisdom (as evidenced by the buying trends) put Valemus "in the sweet spot".
Basically it sounded like caveman talk to me like he was saying: "What risk? Australia has "aging infrastructure" and needs big strong construction and resource companies to stroke economy."
Well - it is Australia's brown paper bag isn't it? This is all "a given" isn't it? Sure we need roads, ports and whatever else I hear Kevin Rudd talking about. One kind of infrastructure he obviously leaves off his list is digital infrastructure because Australians just don't understand it and don't vote for it. Right?
So the Rudd Government wants a big slice of pie from the mining sector cause that's where the money is.
They want to scoop 40 percent off the top of super profits to get it up - the new infrastructure I mean.
The Government says we need to pay to (a) pay off the debt and (b) build infrastructure.
A question arises here: How come our infrastructure is aging?
It's a question that seems pertinent.
The Opposition says we had the money in the bank before Rudd spent it staving off the GFC.
But the infrastructure didn't just age in the past three years - since the Rudd Government was elected - did it?
No I'd say that this problem goes back at least 25 years - that's a few governments coming and going of different persuasions.
If the Howard Government had spent all that money on infrastructure maybe the Coalition would still be in power and maybe we'd have a stronger economy.
Bricks and mortar - resources and growth.
"Sweet spot". That's how it goes right?
Or is it? Is it the entire story? The next interview was about climate change.
Former Blair Government advisor Nick Rowley didn't talk about bricks and mortar.
He thinks climate change isn't even an environmental problem at all.
"We've got an extremely hard problem here, it's not an easy problem, it's not an environmental policy problem, it's a fundamental policy problem about the way in which we run our economy, " Rowley said.
He's questioning accepted wisdoms.
But this is only my opinion. What do you think?
Nothing will change as long as people hold on tight to those "aging" dreams.
Judith Ehrlich, a former teacher turned documentary maker, has worked with Ellsberg over many years on other projects before telling his story.
She talks about the film which was nominated last year for an Academy Award and which has been highly acclaimed by critics - on critical consensus it was number 1 best reviewed film for five weeks in a row - Avatar was rated number 10.
And while most feature films barely last a month in cinematic release these days, this film ran for 10-14 weeks in Californian cinemas.
Daniel Ellsberg was about to meet with WikiLeaks founder, Australian Julian Assange, who's gone underground to avoid arrest for releasing video footage of US soldiers shooting civilians in Iraq - Ellsberg's war was Vientam.
He released The Pentagon Papers while being hunted down by Richard Nixon's "plumbing unit" - a unit designed to stop leaks.
Judith Ehrlich says the lessons of history are important in this day and age when self-interested parties control the flow of information to the public - a threat to democratic values and the way of life that the troops are sent out to defend.
The video WikiLeaks posted earlier this year.
Brisbane's new documentary cinema, Tribal Theatre, (the old George St Dendy) is screening it this week and maybe next week as a result of a special screening last week.
346 George Street, Brisbane.
Ph: 3409 887