human stupidity: nature or nurture Pt 2

On Saturday I toddled down to my local beach. Sometimes the beach is closed, and this Saturday was one of those days. In this neck of the wood, on days with an onshore current there are several yellow signs on poles with a swimmer icon crossed out, saying:

DANGEROUS CURRENT
BEACH CLOSED

There is also a large volunteer lifeguard tent right in the middle of the beach and paid lifeguards in the the tower. People still surf, using the rip to get out back, and swimmers still get in, because it's not like you can build a fence. If people stray into the waves the guards corral them back in making use of whistles or the loud-hailer or the beach PA system, with regular warnings that the conditions are very dangerous. Oh, and there's no flags up.

On days like this there is a nasty little drop off, just a couple of metres from the water's edge. The waves aren't huge, maybe just one metre at most, and if you're not familiar with the conditions it is hard to see what the issue might be. The problem is when they surge you get pulled off the beach, and can end up further from shore than you intended and if you try to swim against the rip you get tired very quickly and can panic and start to drown.

So on Saturday, I have to admit I watched the other swimmers for a bit, checked out where the lifeguards were getting people out, got in for about 30 seconds without going past the depth of my neck and got out again. And even then I nearly got knocked over by a wave in thigh-deep water.

Then I lay on the sand for a while reading my Margaret Atwood short stories. Presently, the Dad-type next to me exclaimed "oh look they're doing a rescue" - and sure enough the volunteer lifeguards were going in with the tow rope to pull out a girl of about 13 or 14. Her and a friend has been playing in the edge for a while, they weren't any further out than the few body surfers, but one of them must have been struggling. The friend got out on her own, and I watched the two of them walk across the beach towards the clan. The friend was asking the rather shaken-looking rescued girl if she was okay, if she wanted to sit down, etc, generally being pretty cool. As they approached Mum, the excitement of the moment overtook her and she was all "hey did you see what happened?! Katy just got rescued! She got towed out by the lifeguards!"

Mum sat up from her towel like she'd been stuck with a pin. Wasn't a big-gosh-fun-adventure for her, oh no. She'd been reading a magazine the whole time and didn't even know anything had happened. Wouldn't the prowling guards and loudspeaker announcements at least make you look up?

So this post is a twin to the stupid posters one. I was astounded that where the signs and announcements were actually immediately useful and could actually prevent you drowning, there was this total disregard for it. This is not an anti-mother rant - just an anti-human one. Too much information where it is useless noise, and a tendency to completely ignore the signal where it is clear, un-ambivalent and critical to your own safety. I think there as a factory flaw in the human genome, basically.

human stupidity: nature or nurture Pt 1

Back in winter, some train station advertising made me wonder if there weren't larger forces at work to push us that bit further into complete loss of cognitive function, coupled with total dissatisfaction with our corporeal selves. The first is a series that seem to be showing the consequences of getting too close to trains. The slogans we simply mind-numbingly obvious tinged with totally patronising. Like this gem:

"getting caught in the door will hurt" - accompanying a photo of a guy in a suit with his arm, holding a briefcase, sticking out of the door.

Other ones were about prams on the platform and about crossing the tracks. I mean puhlease. That there is a hundreds of tonnes of metal hurtling into a station on electrified tracks isn't enough to encourage people to be careful? Is the logic in the comms strategy meeting (and I've been to a few, dear readers) that - if people were just to know the consequences of running to the those closing metal doors - then they wouldn't do it? If you can't work that out after the first time to see them actually shut, then you're an idiot and you deserve the bruise to teach you.

And the second one was part of the federal government's "How do you measure up" campaign, runnning with this beautiful bit of creative:

The full caption is, wait for it, "are you on your way towards chronic disease? I was confronted with this poor guy every day when I hit the bottom of the station escalators. Looks like the campaign is encouraging people to measure their waist as a trigger to lose weight to save themselves from SUDDEN DEATH.

It's been a while since I ranted here, but can I just say.. "what the hell?" I mean really, is this actually a real health issue? Or is this social conditioning out of control? Losing weight is so the new religion, Dicko did it, Madga did it, Mikey Robbins did it, it's highly trendy and a public rite of passage for fat celebs in the Emerald City. But, really, are we just compliant in shifting the global marketing coup of making women hate their earthly form - to our men? Is the health department playing into the hands of those big corporates who can shift more product if the general populace feels a little melancholy about those few extra kilos, the love handles and the muffin tops? It's not just diet programs and home gyms and such.. when consumers constantly feel like shit, everyone wins - from chocolate ice-cream to cars to beer to diamond earrings to flat screen TVs - anything to make you feel like you might satiate that longing for a perfect life.

Now, I'm going to come out of the closet on this one.

I reckon that guy in the poster could be eminently shaggable. He's so far from a hideous fatty it's laughable. I, for one, probably wouldn't turn him down, if he was funny, smart, playful, or perhaps had a love of cinema or could teach me a language, or was into body art or any bloody thing that wasn't about his goddam waistline. I bet the actual model has a happy marriage and a couple of kids who he takes to Nippers swim club every Sunday at crack of dawn and remembers to put the bins out every week. Jesus, he could be a Judo champ with that physique. I hope he got a decent pay packet for that ad is all I'm saying. For the humiliation of having to push another cack-handed attempt of the government to tell us we could get a bit crook if we eat junk and don't exercise.

I want to do a new station advertising campaign.

If you read this poster every day you will turn into a complete moron. THINK FOR YOURSELF.
(Authorised by the NSW government.)

Compensation for pollution

Been a while since I quoted Ross Gittins on these pages, but here he is in today's herald talking about why polluter's shouldn't get compensation under the emissions trading scheme. I couldn't agree more. One thing that constantly irks me about free-market capitalists, is the double standard. How come you can claim the market rules all over some things like electriciy demand, but have your hand out for pay-outs over others, like an attempt to stop the catastrophic effects of your industry.

There's no insurance against loss for capitalists in a capitalist economy. Market-caused change raises or lowers the capital value of businesses every day. No one suggests losers should be compensated by the taxpayer.

Similarly, businesses gain or lose from changes in government policy all the time. No one suggests the losers should be compensated, nor that windfall gains be confiscated. To wish otherwise would be to put elected governments in an intolerable straitjacket, greatly constraining their ability to act in the public interest.

No one compensated the tobacco companies when governments took to discouraging smoking, nor James Hardie when governments acted against asbestos. No one has compensated the smash repair industry for all the things governments have done to reduce road accidents and deaths.

In any case, any investor in power stations who didn't see restrictions on carbon emissions coming was a fool.

If the private owners paid too much for their power stations the capitalist solution is clear: cop the loss and sell to new operators at a more realistic price without the station losing an hour's production.

Underworld

I went to have a massage last week. The style is called a 'dry massage' (no sniggering in the back please) - which means you are wearing cotton pjs and they don't use oils. They do however, twist and turn you every which way until bones in your lower back and hips that crackle like dry logs in the first fire in the grate for winter.

The lady masseuse was Thai. It was a Thai massage place. She was clearly skilled at her job, she hadn't just been shown a chart of human musculature and a few quick instructions, which is what it can seem like if you go in for these things at your regular Caucasian "beauty" parlours. At one point I was face down, she was kneeling, on well, I could be polite and say backs of my legs, but it was pretty much my bum bones, and doing something that seems to force out all the knots and strife out of my lower back.

And at this point, through the stabs of pain, I started to wonder about these ladies. Her English was pretty slight, but she clearly had a marketable skill. I started to wonder, am I actually an un-thinking supporter of one of these dodgy outfits that brings bonded labour over from under-developed countries, to service stupid rich westerners in the hope of making enough money to make a better life at home? Or bring over their parents, one day to Australia?

I mean, how do these girls live their daily lives with English limited to instructing people to lie face down, and to take their time getting up? Are they being kept upstairs by a kind of therapeutic madam, with their passports confiscated and their upkeep eternally deducted from their earnings? It does happen, didn't a high class Indian restaurant in Adelaide get busted with 10 illegal immigrant chefs living in the basement?

I did ask this fantastic angel of gnarled back muscles where she learnt to massage, and she said college in Thailand, but no more than that. Is massage a respected profession over there, or is it a little bit dubious and associated with servicing foreigners? How much do I not know about the Thai side of Sydney? Maybe she just shares a flat in Sydenham with her effeminate but streetwise brother who works in a Thai restaurant on Oxford street? I mean, there is just a squillion Thai food places, all stocked full of young people working, all dirt cheap, and doing a red-hot trade. And now with the massage. How can that be a good living wage? Don't cheap goods for the the rich come at the cost of the suffering of the masses, as Mr. Marx teaches us? Speculating like this while someone stretches your shoulder and your bent knee in two different directions is probably not good for inducing relaxation, but, I'm a speculatin' kind of a gal.

I am most definitely going back to my slightly eastern-exotic local therapy place, costs far less than a shrink, and they at least seem much more visible and legitimate than some of the garishly-lit shop front outfits that seem to be sprouting all over the beaches districts these days. I can only hope she is no different to the families of the kids I went to school with and that they give her a decent wage package for her hard work. How does one get a sense of the ethics of these things? Where's the fair-trade stamp for domestic businesses? I demand an easily recognisable logo dammit!

Hottest 100 notes

Hottest 100 song list just played in Australia. This is a radio tradition set up by triple J , the government-funded youth station. The 'jays started up in Sydney in the 80s then went national state by state in the early 90s. They were brats who made it good, kinda thing. In 1989 they did the first national poll of "best 100 songs of all time". Entries strictly on the back of an envelope. Love will tear us apart" came in at #1. In 1998, "Smells like Teen Spirit" took the top spot. Letter entries were still taken and I'm not even sure if the internet worked well enough to take votes, but it was certainly less prevalent than now. I still had one email account that I could only access at the ANU computers, and I can't remember using the internet for anything useful.

Hottest 100 of all time 1998

Anyhoo - the '98 list was very early '90s - quite guitar rock-heavy, lots of Cure, Smiths, a good smattering of Aussie acts, overwhelmingly masculine, (the only girls I can see out of 100 are
B52's, Tori Amos, Dee-lite).

And now they've done it again, with 500,000 votes and the list is...

Hottest 100 of all time 2009

Guitar heavy, full of songs from the 90s, no solo women at all in the list, less Australian with a couple of notable exceptions (Hilltop hoods). Looks like about half the songs are the *exactly the same ones*. Nirvana Smells like Teen Spirit, still at number one. Other tracks that made *both* top 20s: Joy Division (Love Will Tear us Apart), Queen (Bohemian Rhapsody), Rage Against the Machine (Killing in the Name), Jeff Buckley (Last Goodbye), Led Zeppelin (Stairway to Heaven) Metallica, Radiohead.

I'm currently listening online in Amsterdam, last day here after almost exactly two years. Its nice, good to hear the accents, like decompression before re-entry. And to use the blog as note-book, here's my theories about this particlarly Aussie music poll. In an easy-to-follow bulleted list.

1) It's a product of the time JJJ went national. Early nineties. Those of us where were most excited to finally have our own station were about 14 to 20 then, we are 33 to 40 now. It is squarely a mid-30s hits list. Helllo nostalgia.

2) We are pack animals. Part of the appeal is to see if "your" song "made it in". So, if you want one or more of your songs to have any chance of making it, you're gonna pick the ones you know others will go for. I did - my favourite Nick Cave song is actually either the album tracks "The Witness Song"or "Breathless", but I picked "The Ship Song" b/c it was more of a crowd pleaser. Why pick the concert opener by Carter Unstoppable Sex Machine from the 1993 concert, or perhaps a Patsy Cline track when you know they will never get there, even if they really are you favourite songs?

3) Maybe more blokes do things like on-line polls than chicks do? When I voted I had to give age and gender - I'd LOVE to see the basic demographic breakdown they collected. Did blokes out-number girls really? If it was half half, well I guess I'm wrong, then all Australian 30-somethings love guitar-driven, big-concept boy's stories.

4) People who are only casually into music can better remember the big, heavily played, familiar stuff, easier. Singles, of course, not album tracks.

5) Being dead helps. Suicide even better. Buckley, Cobain, and Ian Curtis. Two suicides and one possible. Really, fuck you, you selfish cocks. Of course, death means exposure, lots of airplay, and sticking in people's memories. See point (4) Hello.. Michael Jackson made it in twice. No way would jjj listeners have voted for him otherwise. See also point (2)

6) "Utlimate Top Songs List" are a very Gen X things to do, and reflect the last gasp of the old breed brought up on albums and charts. I suspect the groovy kids today have big music collections mostly stored as MP3, they sample widely, they all have little niches, rather than following a few acts in one giant horde. (The adage of the internet .. eveyone can be famous for 15 people). I don't know whether they even slavishly follow a radio station, instead getting new music from Limewire, FreshFM, Itunes, from their mates' ipods, etc. Is it possile they don't even know the artists names of lots of tracks on their ipods? All those little niche votes aren't going to match the big bulk of the curve sitting firmly on early ninties grunge-rock and dead superstars. As much as I love the form, the album is dead. Perhaps for the real 'youth' (14 to 24) , the artist is dead too, and there's just the giant miasma of 'stuff on my ipod'.

I mean, come on, some of these songs aren't parent tracks, they are grand-parent tracks. If your Dad was listening to Led Zepplin in 1971 when Stairway to Heaven was released , you were born say in 1973, you were 18 in 1992 - triple J's big expansion year. (I was 16, that year dear listeners). So you've been raiding Dad's vinyl and you're also cementing your own tastes. Year of the Chilli Pepper, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Oasis. If you had a kid at 25, that kid is now 12, just listing to your 'top music'. If you let them online, will they not vote for those big boys power-rock, that "cock forest", as one twitterer descibed it? Unsurprisingly, the list has a bulge in the 70s and another bulge in the 90s.

And that's my analysis of the physcho-graphics of the Australian triple J listeners. Sentimental nostalgic types that they are.

Trending

Clothes swaps get trendy. I'm on the curve, baby.

http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/shopping/swap-till-your-fashion-footprint-drops-20090709-ddx7.html

Philo- lite

A coupl e of breadcrumbs from the internets.

AC Grayling does some nice one-liners in the weekend guardian..

A human lifespan is less than a thousand months long. You need to make some time to think how to live it.

Science is the outcome of being prepared to live without certainty and therefore a mark of maturity. It embraces doubt and loose ends.

Life is all about relationships. By all means sit cross-legged on top of a mountain occasionally. But don't do it for very long.

The Athesiest's Guide to Christmas book will be out in time, for, well...

And a ray of hope

A new Australian book - the Clean Industrial Revolution

John Quiggin says "if you only buy one book on climate change, this should be it" .. I'll take that as high praise indeed and look forward to reading it soon. Good to see someone seeing the opportunity and not just the cost of it.

Australian coasts - rich people are shocked

"The state's view is that the risk to a property from sea-level rise lies with the property owner, public or private - or, whoever owns the land takes the risk. They gain the benefit of proximity to the ocean and they bear the risk of proximity to the ocean."
. . .

The NSW plan is being developed as scientists and councils warn that sea-level rise from climate change will greatly increase the number of beachfront homes at risk of inundation in coming decades, affecting some of the most expensive property in the country.
. . .

The NSW Government released a draft policy statement on sea-level rise in February but councils and coastal property owners are only now realising its implications for beachfront properties.

The policy is based on scientific advice that sea levels are expected to rise up to 0.4 metres by 2050 and up to 0.9 metres by 2100.

Each centimetre of sea-level rise is expected to cause, on average, a metre of erosion along vulnerable coastlines. Sydney coastal councils were warned this week that the frequency of coastal flooding would increase by a factor of 300 if sea levels rose by half a metre.

Full article.

Shouldn't we talk about the weather?

Amsterdam: 9.53 am, nearly Summer (official start: June 21)
Sydney: 5.53 pm, approaching Winter solstice.

Quotes from recent New York trip

"What's going on here? This side is for US citizens only. Are you a US citizen? If not you should be over there in the black lines. Hey! I'm lookin' at you!" - Uniformed security guy at Chicago immigration, you have to imagine the accent.

"Swing it out like your sis-tah" most definitely directed at Miss J, as we emerged from the subway, while we were doing that fake confident I-know-exactly-which-crossing-to-take walk that you do in strange cities.

"For two lovely ladies, of course". When I politely asked if we could pop into a city bar just to use their restrooms at around 1.30 am on a Thursday night.

"Hey! No photos of the shark!" Security guard at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, referring to the Damien Hirst piece in the modern art wing.

"Well I just don't think anyone is truly happy in their relationship" .. overheard at Bryant Park popping out of the general hubbub of chatter on a sunny Friday afternoon.

"Too slow swipe again" - message in LED from the subway gates, perfectly sums up the existential tourist experience. I think being in genteel Netherlands I've lost my big-city finesse with those horrible cattle hearding things.

Things that make more sense now. ..

.. references in pop culture that kind of click once you've actually been to New York. This is in danger of being a really cheesy dumb tourist post, but then I'm a bit of a cheezy dumb tourist, and it was the subject of conversations while walking around the streets of Manhattan...


Billy Joel - Up town girl (she's been livin' in her uptown world, now's she's playing with a downtown guy... ). Oh so every address comes with "uptown" or "downtown" attached... clearly it was a class thing, but it is also a fundamental part of working out where the hell you are.

Marylin Monroe, late night cop dramas, gritty 80s relationship movies, Madonna in "Desperately seeking Susan" ... yes there really is steam coming out of those fucking subway vents. Ew.

"No soup for you" (Seinfeld)- everywhere sells soup! About the cheapest thing you can get at lunch, that isn't a toxic hotdog - I suppose its an ecomonic way to make a lot of servings.

Coming to America (Eddie Murphy)/ Bright Lights Big City (Michael J Fox)/ Big Business (Bette Midler) - those opening scenes where the newcomers stare goggle eyed out of the window of a yellow cab at the skyscrapers - yeah, that was us too.


Sex and the City exteriors - uniformed doormen and those marquee-like shelters over the front entrance. Definitely an uptown thing.


Woody Allen. Oh is, like everyone in this town an artist/filmaker/performing arts manager or what? The ones I met were.

Sesame street. I don't think this needs an explanation - but my, there is a lot of Spanish spoken in the neighbourhood - even to most major subway advertising campaings, being done bi-lingual.

This post is officially open to additions from recent numty travellers like myself...

.. just don't know what to do with yourself.. ?

My mate's husband has just launched a new central directory for community-based activities, from painting to bushwalking, language classes and harmonica.

It looks like its got a powerful search engine, and its missions is to stop people being couch potatoes. Hence... no spuds. Miss J. Miss A, looks like right up your alley(s)!

Zine./ art links

This is for Miss j.

Printed matter. A shop in NY specialising in books by artists, looks like they have an on-line catalogue

Nieves. A swiss artist who exhibits cheaply-made hand drawn zines.

enjoy.

What I've been doing

• Scrabble.
• Watching "Che Part 1" in the original Spanish with only Dutch subtitles. Hard core, huh? Picked up less than 50% of the dialogue but it makes you pay attention to body language and cinematography.
• Growing seedlings on the window sill. Watch those little babies go, now that day time temp has rocketed from 6 degrees to 16 in the space of 3 weeks.
• Taking a new resident to Amsterdam bike riding around town
• Seeing Kirsta and 3-month-old Max.
• Talking to old mates on skype.
• Case study and report writing and other arcane measures to create new work.
• Avoiding red wine because apparently it makes tinnitus worse.
• Worrying about climate change.
• Worrying about the economic down turn and thinking it might be time to get a real job.