The content is irrelevant

One of my favourite bloggers, Marbury (Ian Leslie), has had a delightful go at the New York Times (though truth be told it could equally be the Grauniad).

He fisks Nick Bilton's ridiculously pretentious piece on the etiquette of digital communication.

Bilton claims that everybody who is everybody is brusque on their ipad/iphone, never saying hello in email and never checking voice mail, even if it pisses off their father.

Bilton quotes Baratunde Thurston, who is a "politically-active, technology-loving comedian", on how annoyed he is at being asked on Twitter where people can buy his book. 'Google it (you idiot)', says Thurston, 'you're on a computer!'

Bilton just sounds rude and childish, I doubt that Emily Post would approve, but Marbury points out that it is Thurston who just doesn't get human communication. Questions about his book are phatic expression, that is, attempts at communication where the content of what is being said is irrelevant, it's the actuality of communication, of connection, that's more important.

We English do this all the time when we talk about the weather.

Marbury finds a really lovely Ian McEwan quote, talking about his mother, to get across this point about how communication without content ... still has content:

"Look at all them cows." And then later, "Look at them cows and that black one. He looks daft, dud'n he?" "Yes, he does." When I was 18, on one of my infrequent visits home, resolving yet again to be less surly, less distant, repeated conversations of this kind would edge me towards silent despair, or irritation, and eventually to a state of such intense mental suffocation, that I would sometimes make excuses and cut my visit short.

"See them sheep up there. It's funny that they don't just fall off the hill, dud'n it?" Perhaps it's a lack in me, a dwindling of the youthful fire, or perhaps it's a genuine spread of tolerance, but now I understand her to be saying simply that she is very happy for us to be out together seeing the same things. The content is irrelevant. The business is sharing.

First indigenous leader elected in Australia

Australia has its first government leader who is indigenous, and he is right-wing. Could his path to power hold lessons for conservative parties elsewhere?

Adam Giles won in a palace coup in the Northern Territory yesterday, as the ruling Country-Liberal (CLP) party dumped its former leader whilst he was on an overseas trip.

Giles' rise to the top marks the culmination of a transformation of Territory politics empowering indigenous voters. Last year they turned en masse against the Australian Labor party (ALP), who had counted on their block vote for many years.

Neglect of indigenous issues lay behind their mass defection to a CLP which had previously been associated with redneck politics. The party recruited a number of indigenous candidates who won in 2012 on enormous swings away from the ALP.

The new indigenous MPs won with 'conservative' policies seen as repellent by Australian liberals but which indigenous people, particularly Aboriginal women, saw as more closely matching their interests, according to the veteran Aboriginal leader Marcia Langton. She explained last year in Online Opinion:

Aboriginal people were fed up with left-wing causes imposed from down south, be they live cattle–export restrictions, opposition to mining or rolling back the intervention. And so the 11-year-old ALP government was blown to the four winds.

The Territory’s rural conservatives have finally figured out – as Bob Katter and others in Queensland have long known – that they have more in common with Aboriginal people than either have with city folk. Both groups need land-based industries to support their economies and way of life. Both share a deep disdain for greens, animal liberationists and bureaucrats, whether from Darwin or Canberra.

The 'intervention' was the extremely controversial reaction by the previous John Howard conservative government to a report on shocking levels of child sexual abuse in some Aboriginal communities. The package included, amongst other measures, the deployment of soldiers, quarantining of welfare benefits, bans on alcohol sales, and removal of customary law and cultural practice considerations from bail applications.

Langton details how the previous Territory ALP government had been seen by bush Aboriginal communities as misspending the millions of federal government dollars being directed at them in the 'intervention' and the bipartisan national promise to 'close the gap', ending child development and health differences, which accompanied Kevin Rudd's apology to the 'stolen generations' in 2007.

The caravans of high-end, late-model white Toyotas returning from the bush to Darwin and Alice Springs on Friday afternoon, and the young, shiny, well-fed members of the helping class alighting to enter their homes and hotels, are evident for all to see. The gap between this high-income group and the desperately poor Aboriginal people they purportedly serve is played out in all social relations in the Northern Territory. The whites-only revelry along Mitchell Street in Darwin on any Friday night is a jarring sight. Evident too are the regular small plane charters unloading teams of bureaucrats in the communities for endless consultations: it may be just talk, but it sure isn’t cheap.

Aboriginal people voted to end this conspicuous waste.

...

Time and again, native title groups have spent years getting an agreement with a resource company over the line, negotiating income streams that might shift indigenous people from the margins to the centre of regional economic development in return for land access, only for a ragtag team of ‘wilderness’ campaigners to turn up with an entourage of disaffected Aboriginal protesters to stop development at the eleventh hour.

With luck, the NT election represents a tipping point. The time of dismissing Aboriginal aspirations for economic development is over.

Both the the British Labour party and the American Democrats have been accused of taking their ethnic minority voters for granted. Their conservative opposition have, like the CLP in the Territory, similarly been accused of pandering to their redneck vote. The CLP's electoral success and the dramatic 'flipping' of indigenous votes may be particular to the vast Territory but it does demonstrate that 'voting blocks' are not necessarily 'loyal' and should never be taken for granted by politicians.

1950s rules for gay bar customers

Box Turtle Bulletin publishes a daily 'On this day ..' and has been detailing, day-by-day, the infamous crackdown on Miami's gay community which occured in mid 50s Florida.

Saturday's 'On this day ..' contains a hilarious, sardonic community response to Lily Law. 'House rules' which one bar put up, as published by the sole national 'gay' magazine of the time, 'One'.

Rules and Regulations Covering the Behavior of Our Customers

First of all-remember that the customer is never right.

Before drinking each beer customer is to repeat six times “Customer is never right.”

When customer wishes to go to the restroom–please raise hand and barmaid will direct you to proper door.

Mother and daughter customers are not allowed to hold hands, kiss or pat each other on back. On week-ends they are not allowed to even talk to each other.

No after-shave lotion or talcum powder allowed on men customers.

Women must wear make-up-false eyelashes and beauty marks will be provided at the bar for those women customers who have just come from the beach and don’t have their make-up kits with them.

Watch: San Francisco's fab giant light sculpture

San Francisco has gained a new attraction in a vast light sculpture covering two miles of the Bay Bridge.

The work, by artist Leo Villareal, mimics the rhythms of traffic, wind and the bay's waters. Watch video of it in action after the jump.

According to the Bridge authority:

The new East Span will feature a cutting-edge lighting system that was designed and fabricated specifically for the Bay Bridge. High-performance LED lights will spread a bright, uniform glow across the roadway. The fixtures are positioned to project light in the direction of travel, much like headlights on a car, thereby protecting motorists from glare. While the quality and distribution of light on the road will create a safer driving experience for motorists, the longevity of the lighting system will also increase safety of maintenance workers.

The state-of-the-art lights use half the energy of standard lights but will last five to seven times longer. Lights will only need to be replaced every 10 to 15 years, so crews will spend less time working beside traffic during maintenance operations and fewer lane closures will be required to provide the access.

The East Span lighting system includes more than 48,000 individual LEDs. Using a large number of individual LEDs, with individual optic control, allows for greater control over the direction of the light, creating the ability to place more light where it is needed and remove light from where it is not. The design of the light fixtures gives more control over the direction of each bulb and the overall light that is produced, which means that light pollution is reduced almost completely. Lighting on the westbound deck will not spill over to the eastbound deck and vice versa. This creates a much safer driving experience for motorists. Each fixture is adjustable and will be set into a position that faces away from oncoming traffic and focuses light directly onto the roadway. This makes for a better lit road and protects oncoming motorists from glare, which increases safety.

The work brings attention to one of the city's neglected engineering masterpieces, finished just months before the Golden Gate Bridge.

Made me think of similar, similarly overlooked, structures in Britain which would gain from something like this. The Humber Bridge?

Watch New York Times report after the jump:

Music · Janet Jackson · All For You

Got a nice package all right, guess I'm going to have to ride it tonight .. 

Whoah, Janet!

I just saw a doco about Janet's career -- from BBC Wales of all places -- and had forgotten this, her big hit from 2000.

Could have picked maybe ten other Janet tracks I love, and which all have interesting backstories. This one samples the timeless Change track 'Glow of Love', vocals by then unknown Luther Vandross.

Change are one of my favourites ever. 'Paradise', with its killer baseline, would be up there for favourite ever toon ... (Here's a Youtube playlist).

Anyways, watch Janet flirt with a gorgeous guy with a gorgeous package after the jump .. as well as hear Luther sing .. after the jump » »

Russia's first gay friendly children's book

The first children's book in Russian which includes gay parents has been published.

'(Un)usual Families around Me' tells of a little girl living with a single father. Since almost all the other children she knows live in completely different families, the child thinks about how it happened. She learns about all sorts of 'family', including single-parents, adoptive, parents with disabilities, as well as 'non-traditional', that is two moms or two pops. The narrative is accompanied by images and art assignments for the child.

Russia has been adopting so-called "propaganda of homosexuality" laws, starting in St. Petersburg, and now under discussion on the national level. These ban even talking to minors about the social equivalence of 'traditional' and 'non-traditional' families.

The laws are directly confronted in the book, as same-sex parents, transgender parents and gay-friendly heterosexual and single parent families express their concern about the state policy of dividing families into 'usual' and 'unusual', 'traditional' and 'non-traditional'.

Says the book's author, Sasha Semenova:

My friends and I, who are raising children, felt that we lacked something to help explain to kids the ideas of tolerance and respect.

Says Polina Andrianova, director of the Russian organisation 'Coming Out' which helped publish the book:

Same-sex families feel threatened and intimidated by the 'homosexual propaganda' law every day, just because they are raising children. We felt that under these circumstances this book was especially important.

The book was printed with the support of the German Henrich Boell Foundation, which is affiliated with the German Green Party. This foreign funding has especially drawn the attention of St Petersburg MP Vitaly Milon, one of the main advocate of the anti-gay laws and the man who has tried to charge pop star Madonna after she mocked his law on a St Petersburg concert stage.

Foreign support for Russian groups has come under sustained attack in Russia's parliament. Russian law now requires any group receiving non-Russian funding to register as "acting as a foreign agent".

The book, which activists have been distributing for free, has been widely discussed in Russian media and social networks. Showing the depths of anti-gay feeling in the country, according to Coming Out more than 40% of parents in the largest internet forum for families with children in St. Petersburg, the Russian city regarded as the most progressive and Western-looking, considered the book to be 'homosexual propaganda'.

Watch a fabulous video about the book after the jump:

It's like Iraq all over again

Remember when the news media failed to investigate the reasons given for going to war in Iraq? That waste of blood and treasure which started ten years ago this week?

LibDem activist Stephen Tall has a post up on Liberal Democrat Voice which tells me that nothing has been learned by the news media. That instead of doing their job and investigating Very Important issues they're fixated instead on the Tweedledum and Tweedledee, Humpty Dumpty politics of Westminster.

Tall writes that:

I had an odd experience on Friday. I was doing a round of media interviews – 3 for TV, 3 for radio – previewing the Lib Dem conference. I’d been called by researchers in advance to ‘get my take’ on the key issues. Each time, I said there was a big issue on which the party leadership could expect to be defeated and which would see activists from across the broad spectrum of the Lib Dems united: opposition to secret courts. This received an “Uh-hum” response which I took for baffled boredom. And as expected, each interview in turn dwelt instead on Vicky Pryce and Chris Huhne and the allegations against Lord Rennard.

Which is even worse because Tall also writes that they missed out on the sort of argument they appear to thrive on:

If they’d asked me about secret courts, however, I’d have had no hesitation in letting the party leadership have it with both barrels.

The LibDem leadership is backing the government's bill and saying FU both to party policy and the very basis of classic liberalism. Last week only seven of their MPs 'rebelled'.

Unfortunately Tall then descends onto a 'woe is us' plea for the meeja to not be so focused on LibDem travails, assuming that the problem is a recent one.

Well no, this sort of attitude to political reporting is not recent, and it is not just exclusive to Westminster. It got us into a disastrous war, remember?

• Observer Editorial against the secret courts bill

Gun fetishism hits new low

One of the arguments being advanced by US gun fetishists post Sandy Hook is that if you regulate guns you stop women defending themselves from rape.

This may be a Madison Avenue-sourced, audience-broadening approach, as the gun manufacturers increasingly find their front organisations on the defensive, as the 'their sending the black helicopters for your guns!' war cry finds less and less resonance. But it's out there.

One commentator took to the Fox News bear pit after she'd writen that encouraging women to buy guns is hardly a best-practice rape-prevention strategy.

Zerlina Maxwell made the same point that women, all sorts of women, have been making for a looong time now:

I think that the entire conversation is wrong. I don’t want anybody to be telling women anything. I don’t want men to be telling me what to wear and how to act, not to drink. And I don’t, honestly, want you to tell me that I needed a gun in order to prevent my rape. In my case, don’t tell me if I’d only had a gun, I wouldn’t have been raped. Don’t put it on me to prevent the rape.

She pointed out that there is plenty of evidence that rape prevention is a-real-thing:

Men can stop rape and men can stop violence, they train young men to not rape.

This exasperated the Fox host: "You think you can tell a rapist to stop doing what he’s doing?"

Then all hell broke lose.

The wingnuts thought that she had argued for "forcing all men to go through ‘do not rape’ classes". This was a typical headline: Democratic Strategist’s Shocking Claim: Women Don’t Need Guns for Self-Defense, Just Tell Men ‘Not to Rape Women’ (she never said the former and WTF is the latter idea 'shocking?).

What was especially telling about the reaction is that one of the ideas advanced by gun nuts post Sandy Hook was - don't look there, look over here! - that America has a cultural problem with violence (video games, Hollywood) and fails to deal with mental health problems. Yet when someone who isn't from their camp advances a solution to a gun violence problem they get:

Bombared by conservatives on Facebook and Twitter purposefully misquoting and misunderstanding my point in order to call me dumb, bitch, idiot, and at worst threaten to gang rape common sense into me.

On blog chicksontheright.com the 'ridicule' of Maxwell was defended through believing that:

Her entire argument was about why women SHOULDN'T DEFEND THEMSELVES WITH GUNS.

No, it was:

Men can stop rape and men can stop violence, they train young men to not rape

Like they do through prevention campaigns like one called 'Don’t be that guy' in Canada which led to a ten percent drop in sexual assault rates. Or the efforts of anti-rape campaigners in South Africa. Or these Americans saying that Men Can Stop Rape.

Part of the immediate context for this peculiar, American insanity is that - post Sandy Hook - milquetoast gun control is actually winning in some places. In Colorado for example, and underneath that 'Shocking Claim' headline was a link to one of that conservative news website's related articles: Colorado Dem to Rape Survivor: A Gun Wouldn’t Have Helped You Against Rapist Because ‘Statistics Are Not on Your Side’).

More 'shock' ensues as someone dares repeats the facts that guns get turned on their owners, shoot innocents and result in increased suicides. Another fact: The gun manufacturer lobby really doesn't want those realities known so one of their targets has been scientists surveying the carnage and producing statistics.

When we (that is Brits, Australians and actually many Americans) know that mass ownership of guns produces carnage the senselessness of American gun fetishism - 'founding fathers!' 'liberty!' 'cold, dead hands! - reaches its all-pervasive zenith, a low perhaps only seen for what it is from afar, as Maxwell herself writes:

If a woman chooses to go out and buy a legal gun for self-defense, that’s fine.

Update: BBC investigative programme Panorama has 'America's Gun Addiction' tonight. Here is a clip from the show of them going undercover at a Texas gun show:

Promiscuous? Blame your balls: scientist

Human beings are not descended from apes. We are apes.

So says Christopher Ryan, co-author of the book 'Sex at Dawn', at this funtime TED talk.

Turns out our sexual antics are closely related to those of our closest relatives -- chimps and notorious lust monsters the bonobos (gorillas barely have sex at all). Why? We all have big hanging balls.

Stay with me.

Says Ryan, having testicles hanging out there means we are built for 'frequent and spontaneous ejaculation'. And we do this primarily for social reasons, not reproduction.

Ryan also argues that our human societies were once collectivist, back in the hunter-gatherer days, and this included sexual sharing. Once we settled down to farm and invented the idea of property, and exclusivity, we twisted that nature -- but it is still there.

Watch Ryan's talk after the jump: