My English teachers 5: Bill Maidment

Saved from oblivion: this week’s archived post — November 2007

I am not a great fan of the right-wing magazine Quadrant, particularly in recent years, but there are good things in it — the poetry, for example, and most things written by Neil McDonald, so it is frustrating to find the Quadrant site seems to have been hacked just as I tried to track down what Neil McDonald said about Bill Maidment in the March 2005 issue.

What’s new post

  Sunday 15 November 2009

This is a sticky post. The content will change day by day, so keep your eye on it. 

Coming up/Notes to readers

** Have a look!

Overall Floating Life blogs visits (Sitemeter) now 400,000+! Stats review for October now on Ninglun’s Specials.

Other blogs

• Photoblog: East Redfern jacarandas.
• Neil’s Sydney on Blogspot: Consulting the iPhone — Cleveland Street.  Comment on Journalspace: “We’ll miss you here. I always look forward to seeing what piece of paradise you have captured with your lens. – Stalker”
• English/ESL: A five-finger exercise.
• *** Ninglun’s Specials: October – stats up but not amazingly….

Yet another Sunday lunch in Surry Hills

We had our main at Chinese Whisper, sadly not to be with us for too much longer. For dessert we went over the road to a new Polish place. That’s Sirdan of course.

They have some interesting mains here, so we resolved to try them in the near future.

Sunday photo 34

Pausing to consult his iPhone. Spring on Cleveland Street.

Mid-month Saturday stats – this blog only

Noticing a spike here yesterday (249 views) I thought I’d review how this blog has been going so far in November. The monthly total so far turns out to be better than last month: 185 compared with 165 per day, but still lower than the first half of 2009. There have been six referrals so far from that National Library listing.

Old favourites dominate the top twenty individually viewed posts in the past 14 days. * = recent posts.

1. How good is your English? Test and Answers 216
2. Australian poem: 2008 series #9 — 138
3. Australian poem: 2008 series #8 – Indig 85
4. Dispatches from another America 74
5. The Great Surry Hills Book Clearance of 2005  71
6. Australian poem 2008 series #17: "A 41
7. Links 41
8. Australian poem 2008 series #10: Peter S 40
9. * Aunty Beryl story – South Sydney Herald 35
10. Maurice O’Riordan’s view on nude children as art 33
11. Postcard from Patagonia 26
12. Kevin Rudd as art critic 21
13. Liberal – Conservapedia: this is not a joke 20
14. * Adrian Phoon in The Age 20
15. Delia Malchert – Migraine Aura – Scintillating Scotoma 16
16. Mendelssohn Bicentenary 15
17. Australian poem 2008 series #12 – Judith Wright 15
18. About 14
19. Friday poem 13: Emily Dickinson 14
20. Conflicting perspectives 14

Pandora (National Library)

Now indexing this blog.

The confirmation email arrived two days ago.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

On climate change sceptics and qualifications

Among those patently unqualified to evaluate the science of climate change I would include myself, Senators Fielding and Minchin and Miranda Devine – but that doesn’t prevent any of us from having a say. I am not sure what tea leaves Senator Fielding consults, but I am sure Senator Minchin and Miranda Devine enter the fray on ideological rather than scientific grounds. As for myself, I leave it to the much more qualified people referred to in the appropriate item in my side bar.

I am prepared to concede that climate change is not entirely anthropogenic, and I do fear that not all the suggested remedies will actually work. You will find some very interesting ideas on the subject if you buy or subscribe to November’s Monthly Magazine.

“On the morning of 19 December, we will likely wake to read the results of the United Nations Climate-Change Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark. The meetings will be … the most important to have occurred since World War II, and whatever their outcome they will have a lasting effect on our planet.”

– Tim Flannery

In “Copenhagen and Beyond”, Tim Flannery, John Gray and Peter Doherty provide a range of insights into the issue of climate change and our political and social responses to it. Flannery discusses the conference itself – what it hopes to achieve and where potential conflicts lie; Gray argues it is vital we recognise the gravity of our predicament and embrace more drastic policy; and Doherty considers the role scepticism has to play in the ongoing debate, highlighting the need for rigorous critical dialogue, but warning of the dangers of unreflective denialism. Despite their differing concerns, each essay emphasises the urgency of a reassessment of our response to an impending crisis.

“No technological fix can fully resolve the world’s climate crisis, which is a result of the excessive demands humankind has made on the planet. Even so, technological fixes will be indispensable in navigating the rapids that lie ahead; the technologies that may prove most useful may well include those that are most commonly demonised.”

– John Gray

Peter Doherty’s essay is particularly good because it remains good-tempered while being most incisive.

As for Miranda today, I take Marcellous’s recent advice.

Miranda is a professional stirrer. Unless directly attacked, I’ve decided it is best to leave her alone. She thrives on attention.

On Senator Minchin, see what emerged from his own mouth when interviewed on Four Corners.

Meanwhile last night Kerry O’Brien was “leading the witness” somewhat when he interviewed Sir David Attenborough:

SIR DAVID ATTENBOROUGH, WILDLIFE FILMMAKER: That one is about the polar regions of the planet, of how the North Pole and the South Pole and the lands around it, the sort of life that exists there now. And what is likely to happen to it. But primarily it’s about the animals that still live there. There are very few things more fascinating than penguins and polar bears up in the north and seals and sea lions, and sea elephants and so on. And albatross. There’s lot of things to see.

KERRY O’BRIEN: Will it have relevance to the global warming debate?

SIR DAVID ATTENBOROUGH: Yes, it will do. And of course if you’re cynically inclined or not optimistically inclined you may think this is our last chance to make such a series.

KERRY O’BRIEN: What did you think?

SIR DAVID ATTENBOROUGH: I think without any doubt at all that the Arctic is going to change quite profoundly. How much it loses and how much it gains, who knows.

It’s too early to predict and too complicated. Down in the south it’s different in as such as the Antarctic ice cap is so huge and so thick – miles of ice thick – it’s going to take a long time before that moves significantly or as great a significance as the north.

KERRY O’BRIEN: You’ve tended not to get caught up in political issues in the past, but over 50 years you’ve probably seen more of the world close up than practically any other human being and you’ve revisited many of those places. Have you witnessed dramatic change in that time?

SIR DAVID ATTENBOROUGH: Environmental change – not.

Change certainly, change that has been brought about by the increasing human population on the earth, the number of people on this planet has tripled. There are three times as many people on the planet now as when I first made television programs…

Not entirely what Kerry may have hoped for, I suspect, and one sentence in particular will no doubt be quoted in certain circles. One should however consider this from 2006:

On being too clever

Let me draw your attention to Recommendation 1 of the recent HREOC report on Christmas Island.

That and the rest of the report strikes just the right note as far as I am concerned. This piece of legalistic chicanery came via the Howard administration and is as shameful and Dickensian now as it was then. Repealing this and much more is what the Rudd government should have attempted from Day One. Instead Rudd was sucked in – no doubt for what he saw as clever political reasons – by the rhetoric of his predecessors – including, let it be said, that of the later Hawke and Keating administrations.

Life would have been a lot simpler all round, and the deepening mire of the Oceanic Viking avoided, if this had been done. The 78 Tamils could easily have been brought here for processing, and should be.

I am not an open borders romantic. We do have the right to determine who stays here, if not even the possibility of determining 100% who comes here. People forget in their obsession with boats that the majority actually fly in.

For more see immigration on this blog.

Resting

Belmore Park, Sydney

I am cloning this from Neil’s Sydney on Blogspot because I am really pleased with these pics and also with the behaviour of my Windows 7-ed computer! See more of this set at Afternoon spring light.

Just a quick note

To say that despite getting Live Writer working again I will be using Flock for some posts, especially quick ones!

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Seven

As mentioned yesterday I am now on Windows Seven, so now have the answer to The 2001st post — to seven or not to seven. The answer obviously is “yes”.

Plus

• The ACER crapware has gone.
• The computer works faster than it ever has, especially at boot-up.
• I’ve worked out how to back up and have created a Repair DVD.
• Live Writer works.
• It looks nice.
• My stored music plays better.

Puzzles

• Because I installed over XP I wondered why my main disk was so full. Answer: Seven stored an “old computer” file that enables roll-back to XP, but suggest it can be cleaned if you are happy with Seven and everything works. A good idea that, but rather than having around 20 gig devoted to it I have decided I am happy.

Minus

• The webcam software didn’t survive the transfer. I suspect I can do something about that, but then I hardly ever use it. **
• My PIM doesn’t work. Solution – install another that does or use the calendar in Live Mail. ***
• There was a lot of reinstalling non-Windows programs and Microsoft Office – but I had most of the relevant disks or set-up files, so that wasn’t too bad.

** Downloaded the software from ACER and fixed it!

*** Installed Rainlendar.

Sunday news…

Sunday lunch, thanks to Sirdan, was rather swish.

It was at Longrain in Commonwealth Street Surry Hills.

Second, Live Writer works again.

Thanks to Sirdan.

Sunday is music day 25: Pachelbel’s Canon…

… played on the Chinese hammered dulcimer, an amazing instrument.

Something to watch

Richard Allen twenty-five years ago — he was only in his early twenties then — worked with me on a literary magazine called Neos. He has since, with his wife Karen Pearlman, gone onto other ventures. See www.physicaltv.com.au.

Tomorrow ABC1 is screening their work Thursday’s Fictions at 23.15. There is a trailer for you to see.

A dance-drama by the Australian group The Physical TV Company (Artistic Directors Richard James Allen and Karen Pearlman). This adult fairytale is a story about the transformative power of beauty, set in a magic realist world where each character is named for a day of the week. The ATOM Award-winning film was recently described as “the Pan’s Labyrinth of dance…no less than a work of genius…Quite simply…the best piece of cinema I’ve seen this year” (Chris Docker, Eyeforfilm).

Blogged with the Flock Browser