Trick (McCain) or Treat (Obama?)

Happy Halloween! One of my favorite holidays for sure. In its modern form, it’s cultural catharsis, acknowledgement of death and fears, easement of taboos, performative identities, candy, titillation, it’s got it all. And Halloween’s traditionally about paying heed to the day on which the lingering remnants of the departed are most powerful as the barrier and balance between two worlds, one of death and one of life, is at its most precarious.

Sounds like the elections to me.

While goulies and ghosties may give a start, what scares me most are things in reality: state-sanctioned torture, corruption, willful toxic pollution, greed, war, climate change, and neglect are more horrifying than any fancy. So on this day when we play with our fears, let’s acknowledge the real terrors that would await us in the next four years if John McCain is elected President. The choice is up to you: more tricks, or the treat of a competent leader bringing positive change.

There’s only four days left ‘til the election. Vote for Barack Obama on Nov. 4th, and help others to do the same. (We voted last week!) To find your polling place and to learn more about Obama, see the “seriously for Obama” links on the right.

In the meantime, enjoy the cute song and the special Halloween Obama links below!



Halloween and Silliness for Obama
• Pumpkins for Obama
• Robots Attack!
• Monster McCain
• Hockey Mom and Moose sing about Palin
• Frankenstein for President
• Scary Palin in the Oval Office
• Barack and Babies
• I got a crush on Obama

Seriously for Obama
• where to vote
• election projections
• if the World could vote
• Obama inspires black community
• song: Yes We Can
• speech: "Yes We Can" in NH
• speech: in the Virginia rain
• to Sarah Palin from Young Women
• song: We Are The Ones
• Melbourne Uni Students for Obama

matt in ballarat

A few weeks ago, we took the train out to visit my cousin Matt in his adopted home, Ballarat, for the weekend. The train ride itself was delightful, about 1.5 hours of fields and more fields, culminating in a semi-urban town a bit bigger than Northampton in the middle of it all.

Ballarat sprang up during the Australian gold rush, and its former glory is evident in the Victorian architecture everywhere, and the tourist industry (which we mostly ignored) makes sure you don’t forget it. While the residential sections of the town are ridiculously British with their brick walls and little front gardens, the flora and landscape situate it squarely in the southern hemisphere.

But we weren’t there to see the town: we were there to see Matt. Matt is wonderful, and a wonderful host, feeding us well and making us feel right at home. We walked around, ate, played with his housemate’s dogs, and visited his office. Matt’s a lawyer/barrister, and here in Australia that means he has to wear a silly wig sometimes in court. He was patient enough to show me his wig and put it on, but not quite enough to let me take his picture thusly adorned.

My favorite part of the weekend was driving out to a nearby town to meet his boss, a great guy named Jeremy and relax on his patio in the sun, and then taking a walk up a nearby hill. The ridge provided a great view of the area, including fluorescent canola fields and gum trees galore. And sheep industriously breaking out of their paddocks. And the wattle is in full bloom. Yellows and ashy greens all around. The area outside of Ballarat reminded me a lot of home: a very Australian version of home, an impression amplified by the company of two of my favorite people in the world. I hope to get to spend a lot more time in Ballarat.

CERES

About a month ago Erika and I took ourselves to CERES, the Centre for Education and Research in Environmental Strategies. It was a gorgeous sunny spring day absolutely perfect for biking, and we wanted to go where there were plants. Luckily, I knew just the place.

CERES has expanded significantly since I first visited years ago with my uncle. Built atop a reclaimed landfill about two miles from downtown Melbourne, CERES is an inspiring sustainable model farm/garden store/café. Chickens run amok amidst pockets of gardens, random buildings, and windy dirt paths, all along the banks of the Yarra.

Hand-painted educational signs dot the view around every turn – if you have a question about what you are seeing, the information is right there before you! You have only to look! Kind of like Google but painted imperfectly in eco-friendly pigments on recycled ply-board. What these signs describe are the many examples of innovative sustainable, low-impact technologies that CERES promote: recycled wastewater ponds, solar panel installations, native plants, bike repair workshop of awesome, creatively reused everything. I particularly like their emphasis on technologies and practices appropriate for an Australian environment.

Not quite everything is appropriate, though. There is a hokey vaguely-appropriative feeling to some of the content, a syle reminiscent of North American eco-pagan-hippies (as much as I love you). In the multi-faith adobe-walled chapel Krishna and the Buddha hold court over a Christian-style altar adorned indiscriminately with a potpourri of religious symbols. The “African Teaching Village” that I remember from my last visit has only recently and imperfectly been rechristened “the “multicultural education centre,” with the painfully cartoonish “African” architecture and some of the signs yet to be improved. Their intentions are wonderful, but it’s another reminder of how culturally naive Australia has been until very recently (and in many ways still is). If I wanted to pursue further multicultural consulting here, I would have my work cut out for me.

We rounded out the lovely afternoon with a delicious snack of muffins and tea at their café. My tea featured such ingredients as local lemon myrtle, eucalypus, and powdered heaven, which the waitress patiently poured over ice especially for me. I love fresh food, and I love people working creatively to save the environment.

skaterboys

While bike riding yesterday, I stumbled upon some great skateboarding teenage boys, who were kind enough to let me take their photos for a while. They were all adorably kind to one another, very supportive, very dedicated, very responsible (except for the complete lack of protective gear), and very talented. I had a great time watching them.

These are some of my favorite photos from the afternoon, not because of photographic/artistic merit, but because they capture a bit of their spirit. Almost all the photos here are of the same shirtless boy, my muse for the afternoon, but the whole gang of them were great. And yes, there's some teenage-boy photoshopping on some of the photos, as presents to the boys:



more of the boys on http://picasaweb.google.com.au/photo.erika (my new page for photos for strangers) Lisa, you'll love the figure studies in the complete album -- took a bunch of them for you.

And don't worry, Ma, they were all in one piece at the end of the day. Missing some skin here and there, but no permanent damage done.

spring + spines + stingers

We visited the Dandenongs Primeval again, now that it's spring. Warmer! Flowers everywhere (even on evergreens)! Flirty parrots parading in pairs, etc. And the rain forest is even greener, which I wouldn't have thought possible.

We spotted two interesting members of the local wildlife population. The first was an adorable echidna, who trundled along beside the path for quite a while before it noticed us. The second was less adorable: an evil Bull Ant, more than an inch long, which bit and stung Erika's ankle in an astoundingly painful manner. Even that couldn't detract from the loveliness of the day, though. Check out the photos below!

semester 2

I’m well into my second semester now—done with Week 5. Not as interesting subject matter as last semester, but I’m so busy that I’m just as happy to not have a strong desire to explore the topics more. My three subjects for the semester are Philosophy of Language and Mind, Political Philosophy, and Scientific Realism and Anti-Realism.

Philosophy of Language and Mind is about words, how do words mean anything, are words descriptions or shorthand to refer to something or do they have separate meaning, how do we mutually understand one another, is it all just in our minds, etc. Kindof like linguistics crossed with psychology, a morose hermit, and a bad sci-fi novel. Interesting class discussions, but ultimately it all feels rather pointless.

Political Philosophy this semester is being taught on the philosophy of the market, i.e. economics. I sincerely disagree with most of the assertions that are taken as the neutral starting ground for the discussion, (i.e. that market transactions are necessary for human survival, that capitalism is structurally just, etc.) so feel rather disconnected from the topic. Interesting, though, since I’m learning even more about how I am, as Utah Phillips put it, fundamentally alienated from the institutional structures of my society. Fascinating.

Scientific Realism and Anti-Realism is difficult—finally, a real challenge! It’s in the History and Philosophy of Science (HPS) department, not the philosophy department, and it’s reminding me how so much of my interest and background in philosophy is really in HPS. The ethics of HPS. Which don’t usually go together... more on that later. Anyways, Scientific Realism and Anti-Realism is about the debate between people who think that science tells us things that are essentially true (realists), and those who think that we have good reason to think that science at best can reasonably predict observable results, but that predictive success doesn’t necessarily give any indication that what they’re talking about is TRUE. It’s actually a lot more interesting and complex than it seems at first glance. My jury’s still out as to whether or not this distinction actually matters at all.

Just to make sure I don’t get bored or starve, I’ve also taken on a tutoring job. Tutoring here is not quite what we call tutoring in the US. A professor (Helen Verran, who taught the Ecology and Environmentalism class I so enjoyed last semester) sets the readings and gives weekly lectures. Then I lead two 1-hour classes a week, discussing what was introduced in the lecture and readings, making sure the students have a good grasp of the essential concepts. The subject is the Philosophy of Biology, always of great interest to me (Anatomy! Naturalists! Genomes! Oh my!). I’m learning a ton, not just from the subject matter, but from the experience of teaching. It’s exhausting, and a really strange power dynamic, but a lot of fun to see them learn. And fun to prepare the lesson plans and handouts and web tools. I could get used to being paid to do this! :)

Oh, yeah, and I’m writing my thesis, too. Due at the end of the semester (2+ months). First draft’s due (ack!) next week. It’s coming along fine. On Monday I gave a presentation to all the other honors philosophy students and it was well received. But I’m really bored with the topic at this point: that’s what happens when you fully immerse yourself in the minutia of something narrow for an entire year, whose focus has been shifted away from the neat stuff that got you interested in the first place to simpler, defendable ideas that will fit within the stringent word limit. I’m really looking forward to finishing, so I can move on to figuring out what I want to do next.

That’s what else I’m spending my time on these days. Figuring out what to do next year. Do I continue on here to complete a Masters? a PhD? in straight-up Philosophy, or Ethics, or the History and Philosophy of Science, or can I combine them? Can I get funding? What would my research topic be? Do I even want to be an academic after all?

Yeah. A lot on my plate. So my apologies for not updating this page more often. I’ll get to it whenever I can. Love to you all.

can't-berra

Australia National University is courting me for their PhD program, and though I am 99% sure I want to continue on here at the University of Melbourne, I was willing to give the ANU a second glance. First, they have more applied ethicists on staff than any other university I’ve heard of. Second (and not coincidentally related to the first), they are the home of the internationally-renowned Center for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics (CAPPE). Third and most convincingly, they offered me an all-expenses-paid long weekend in Canberra to see if I liked their faculty and campus. I’m a sucker for free vacations, so off I flew to Melbourne’s nearest neighbor to the north.

Canberra is the Australian equivalent to Washington, D.C. It is the seat of Australian federal government. Like D.C., Canberra is located in a neutral territory not part of any state, and was chosen for its symbolic rather than functional geography. While D.C. is supposed to be at the heart of the original northern and southern American states, Canberra is as close as they could get to halfway between the two major cities Melbourne and Sydney. It would be like putting D.C. between Boston and New York… which would coincidentally make it end up in Hebron, CT, my hometown! Canberra’s location is about as reasonable and interesting as Hebron’s. There are some hills. Some fields. A few ponds, a big man-made lake. Some very small mountains off on the horizon. And in the middle of it all sits… Canberra.

When I mentioned to a few friends that I was going to Canberra for a few days, I invariably received the same response: “Oh god, why would you want to go there?” The overwhelming sentiment was that Canberra was such a dreadfully boring city that it wasn’t even worth visiting, despite the plethora of free museums and the like. “There’s too many bloody trees,” “The whole things’ one big boring park,” “There’s nothing to do”... Honestly, this sounded pretty appealing to me. I like places where most cityfolk think there is nothing to do. I like places with lots of trees. Canberra sounded like my kind of city.

I was wrong. Canberra is awful. [EDIT: my mistake, Hebron. You are much, much more interesting and lovely than Canberra.] It was like the newly-developed sections of Nashville TN without the music culture, or a smaller and less-historical Albany NY without the waterfront, or like the Storrs campus of UConn without the agrarian/pastoral backdrop… Picture the least inspiring modern low-rise urban landscape you can, and make it more boring. It’s like a business park. Add to that the fact that it’s terribly windy, designed entirely for cars (everything is spaced really really far apart with big boring parks in between so it takes forever to walk anywhere), and really actually has very little to do: it isn't rural enough to have outdoors fun, and not urban enough to have city fun. It's described by its inhabitants as a suburb in search of an urb.

And then the creepiest part: I was there during the school term, during both weekdays and weekend-days, and took numerous daytime and nighttime walks, so I assume I was seeing the city at a good cross-section of what should have been its busiest times. And there were no people. Anywhere. It was a ghost town. The streets and sidewalks were empty. The malls were empty. The restaurants were empty. The museums were empty. Where was everyone? They must have gone from being holed up in their homes to being holed up at work, and magically gone from one to the other because there was no rush hour traffic, very little traffic at all actually. I asked around, and learned that this was normal. It was disconcerting, and led to the whole city having the least energy of any populated place I have ever been.

So I followed suit. I holed up in my hostel, then snuck to the university campus for the lectures being presented by the philosophy departments (they have three), and repeated this for the majority of four days. The presentations were admittedly excellent. There were lectures and discussions of everything from the fairness of fair trade to the ethics of selling kidneys to the possible permissibility of political assassination to the representation of ‘the other’ in the WWII firebombing of Japan to the philosophy of statistics. My personal favorite was by a PhD student, Lena Eriksson, who spoke quite convincingly and insightfully on if and how religious reasons can be considered to be reasons on a public debating ground. The philosophy faculty in general seemed like a fun, brilliant group of people who really enjoyed one another and who worked closely together despite holding very different philosophical views. Pretty rare.
What made the endless talks bearable was that ANU had asked one person from each of the major universities in Australia and New Zealand up for the weekend, so I got to meet fellow students from all over. There were about a dozen of us total. I found I had a great deal in common with Roger, the guy up from Melbourne’s other university (Monash), and plan to keep in touch with him: he’s a rare philosopher/ outdoor adventure sports enthusiast/ vegetarian/ goofball like me! I don’t come across one of those every day. Roger and I stuck around in Canberra for an extra few days after the workshops ended, visiting the museums and biking around the lakes and up the hills and walking at night and looking into the cafes and bars and shops, hoping to find some quality that would redeem the city, but to no avail. The longer I spent there, the more I realized that it was a small, soul-less, inefficient, and uninteresting pile of concrete. I have no desire to ever return, even for the excellent PhD program. Sad, really.

Ok, that’s all really depressing. So let me end with the two highlights of the weekend. First: The new National Museum was fascinating. It presents aspects of Australian culture and history in a very unusual way. Rather than having a chronological layout or a subject-themed layout, the museum was organized by visual and material content. I.E., rather than having pre-colonial, Victorian, industrial, and modern sections, or having sections on industry, Aboriginal life, and sports, the museum had sections like: things made of grass; rabbits (stuffed rabbits, a piece of the fence, a rabbit fur blanket, photos of dead rabbits); heavy things made out of metal (post boxes with old postcards, irons and ironing boards, cars); words (prison-era texts, modern Aussie slang quizzes, audio recordings of Aboriginal songs); complicated visual patterns (industrial textiles, Aboriginal paintings, landscape photographs, textured natural artifacts); stuff relating to the bottom of the ocean (fish traps, scuba gear, trash, shells, photos of people diving); etc. My favorite exhibit was the backlit glass case of things that were 3”x1”, from arrowheads to action figures. The exhibits, and really the entire museum, seemed like they were created by graphic designers with a penchant for flea markets and a drastically irreverent and ahistorical conception of the world. My kind of museum. I was intrigued to note that while most of the adults visiting were confused and disturbed, the kids were all totally engaged and fascinated. Whatever the museum was doing was working for the kids. And for me.

The second highlight of the weekend was making chocolate chip cookies in the hostel kitchen, which had no oven. Roger and I tried various techniques (I love practical problem-solving!), including running the cookies through the conveyor-belt toaster, pan-frying the cookies, and microwaving them. Microwaving was the greatest success by far. They didn’t brown up satisfyingly like the others, but they were more thoroughly cooked and cookie-like. More fun than I’ve had in ages.

(the first photos below are a panorama)

cane toads are racing (port douglas extra)

Any of you who have seen the Cane Toad movie will appreciate knowing that we went to a Cane Toad race in the back room of a rather artificially seedy bar in Port Douglas. It was complete with beer, betting, a sleazy commentator, embarrassing racing technique (the racers spurred on the toads with kid’s birthday party noisemakers), and the chaos of lost toads. I have to say, they are even grosser in real life than in the movie—and this from a kid who LOVES toads. But I had a great time, and consider it to be one of the highlights of the trip.

Daintree Rainforest (last Port Douglas day)

(Sorry for the delay: retro-posting this some weeks later)

I woke early this morning to the sound of pouring rain. I pulled the covers back up for a few more moments of dozing, thinking as I did so that there could be no more perfect sound to hear at the start of a day we planned to spend in one of the worlds oldest and most spectacular rainforests.

The Mossman Gorge lies twenty minutes North of Port Douglas. Most visitors to the Daintree Rainforest, the oldest rainforest in the world, build their visit around this gorge. Wide and well-maintained trails wind through the lush, towering, and rather inhospitable trees and vines, following the coursing river. An impressive steel cable suspended bridge that swings over a tumble of rapids provides an excellent vantage point for photographers. Actually taking a picture proved tricky, however, because, being suspended, the bridge is remarkably springy underfoot. Most visitors – regardless of age – took time to enjoy bouncing.

The Gorge and surrounding rainforests are the traditional lands of the Kuku Yalanji people. As they understand and articulate it, their lands are where the rainforests meet the sea. We started our day in Daintree by visiting one of the communities’ organisations, the Dreamtime Centre, which had a gallery and educational materials, and offered a guided walk through some of their more sacred land. Led by a tall dark and handsome Aboriginal man with beautiful ‘locks (I was rather enamoured), we wandered up into the rainforest and learned about traditional housebuilding techniques, the uses of native plants (from trailmarkers to tools and weapons to food), and a bit about the spiritual component of the land. Circumspect as always to keep secret Aboriginal business secret, our guide nevertheless gave us a wonderful glimpse into his people’s history and worldview. The walk concluded with tea and damper (simple bread) at a campfire with our own private and very impressive didgeridoo performance. I loved it all! Erika especially loved learning all the practical stuff. An excellent rainy day.

swimming with the fishes (port douglas day 4 of 5)

The life under the water of the outermost edge of the Great Barrier Reef is one of the most beautiful sights I have ever seen. We went snorkelling thirty + k’s (20ish miles) northeast off the coast of Port Douglas today, a highspeed catamaran ferry our steed and a floating pontoon our home base for the day. I’m a very strong swimmer, but it had been years since I donned a mask and flippers, and I found them rather disconcerting at first—the flippers made it especially hard for me to move around in the water the way I’m used to, and I kept tangling myself up. Luckily, I remembered my mom’s snorkelling tips from her recent Galapagos Islands trip (thanks, Ma!), and got my bearings quickly enough.

When I could focus on the water beneath me instead of not drowning—what a sight! The most over-the-top cheesy phrases of praise would not be enough to describe the emerald water itself, the panoply of fish bizarrely constructed of unimaginably bright colors, modern and deco designs, tamely meandering and darting all around us. I was shocked to realize I could hear them nibbling on the coral, swishing their little fins and tails through the water, blowing bubbles, all a sense I had never realized was missing through the thick glass of aquariums. Seen in immediate proximity, with no thick azure glass mediating the view, they seemed ten times sharper than I’d ever seen before. And the coral! Thousands of varieties, themselves of every conceivable color and shape, from antlers to boulders to brains to flowers to spaghetti, all growing on one another. Whole mountains and canyons and cliffs of coral. I was shocked at how 3-dimensional the submarine seascape was: all the pictures in the world can’t capture its depth and complexity. One of our fellow passengers was on to something when he devoutly said that it could only be the work of the creator.

Exploring this underwater world was like being a kid again, exploring a largely-unknown area at will, going any which way just to wonder at the beauty of it all, diving down into the slightly-scary depths and braving the shadowy places, floating in the warm upper water and watching it all unfold below. One disconcerting moment was when the photographer hired by the snorkelling company emerged up from a crevasse of coral beneath us, in full scuba gear, to snap a photo of us swimming on the surface. That was certainly the last thing we expected, but I love the resulting photo (scanned version forthcoming). We swam until Petra got practically hypothermic (it is the ocean, after all) and had to be warmed with hugs, tea, and towels, at which point we took the nicely heated submarine tour of the deeper areas. While previous tours of the day had spotted sting rays and sea turtles, we had to be content with a little shark and the (ho hum) gorgeous array of deep cliffs of more coral.

We loved it so much that we actually tried to book a second day of snorkelling for tomorrow, but found that it was just too expensive. I desperately want to buy an underwater film camera (digital just doesn’t cut it for these colours and lighting) and maybe learn to scuba dive. But I loved the flexibility of the snorkelling, and with my good French-horn trained lung capacity, I could dive down pretty deep with just one breath. Anyone have experience with scuba diving, and could share your thoughts on it?

(Note on the photos: some of the underwater shots are with my digital camera through the window of the submarine, some are with a disposable waterproof Kodak film camera whose negatives were scanned in at the processing shop. And if you’re trying to tell me and Petra apart in the pictures, my bathing suit has a racer back, hers is halter top.)