There’s not much more to be said about the behaviour of The Rabbott Government Attorney General, George Brandis, and his statements on racial discrimination. We reached the bottom when he said “People do have the right to be bigots you know.”
Penny Wong then became a target for his criticism.
Canberra Times Article, by Marie Coleman
With the first female Governor General now having departed the scene, it was indeed timely for a local writer to sum up the messy situation that occurred thanks to our infamous Prime Minister.
That is, The Rabbott took this opportunity of the departure of this well-loved person from this high office, to confuse any celebration by announcing that he was bringing back the out of date honours of Knighthoods and Dames. To rub it in fully, The Rabbott announced that Quentin Bryce was to be the first to be honoured.
The evidence is out there. “A new study sponsored by Nasa’s Goddard Space Flight Center has highlighted the prospect that global industrial civilisation could collapse in coming decades due to unsustainable resource exploitation and increasingly unequal wealth distribution.”
Yet governments continue to play down the message in order for short term political gain. The article is definitely worth a read, not to become alarmed, but to become more informed of the need to rethink the way we do business. click here.
I remain skeptical about all the hype around green roofs and green walls. This is not to say that when delivered comprehensively, that green roofs can be very effective in reducing temperatures of the buildings. It is more that so many of the current crop of green roofs and green walls are token add-ons.
Despite the hype by the building companies and their contractors about how wonderful particular green walls and roofs are, many are superficial and deliver very limited benefit, if any. When done properly, a green roof can be a contributor to the green infrastructure of urban areas.
Julia Baird, New York Times
Julia Baird has published an opinion piece in the New York times using a review of a book to comment on how mothers who work continue to be maligned in the 21st Century.
There’s a Crikey post on Australia’s Operation Sovereign Borders – or more accurately – Operation Silly Buggers. The article is on Crikey and may or may not be available to everyone as it requires a log-in. But hopefully it will work as it says it all about the lunacy of our Rabbott government. click here.
PBS dives headfirst into the myth of clean coal and pretty much tears it apart using something we don’t often see these days when it come US energy issues: facts. And the most complete take-down of “clean coal” in the segment came from the CEO of the second largest coal electricity company in the US.
see the report on the program (not available online to Australia) through the web site – Coal is Dirty – click here.
Happy City, Charles Montgomery, 2013
From the blurb online:
“A brilliant, entertaining and vital book. Montgomery deftly leads us from our misplaced focus on money, cars and stuff to consider what makes us truly happy. Then everything changes – the way we live, work and play in humanity’s major habitat, the city.” – David Suzuki
Why Getty Going Free Is Such a Big Deal
The company has made tens of millions of its photos free for noncommercial use.
To quote from The Atlantic:
Exhibition title: Australian vernacular photography
Once again, the Art Gallery of NSW has brought together an interesting exhibition of Australian photography – click here.
This is a must see for anyone with interests in photography. Judy Annear, the curator, has brought some gems from their vast collection.
Variability in terms is a product of government climate
About a decade ago, when some of us were attempting to get the issues of Climate Change to be the basis for the debates on sustainable settlements, it was curious to see the distractions being manufactured in order to avoid taking these debates as comprehensively as they needed to be.
The most ardent opposition to a simple us of language actually came from particular academics who should have been the ones leading the charge to have clear and precise arguments. I suspect that despite their so called concerned views, the overriding pressure was that they were in fact part of large corporations, called universities, that had yet to step up and tackle the then conservative government’s point of views on climate change.
From the Guardian – and article titled:
Big Food is in wilful denial about the harm sugar does to our children
Somewhere on the back seat, a child asks: are we there yet? Is the world safe for me?
The adults present respond: Not Yet. Must be just around the corner.
Continuing hot on the heels of the ‘Angry Summer’ of 2012/2013, Australians again endured record breaking extreme events this summer.
The Climate Council’s report provides a summary of extreme weather conditions in the 2013/2014 summer, illuminating a continuing trend of hotter summers and more weather extremes in Australia.
click here for more on the 2014 Angry Summer Report.
We should be doing everything we can to ensure leadership positions are available to women. But in the process let’s not forget that some women prefer to plot their world domination quietly.
Click here for a nice article in The Atlantic identifying that we have to do something about linking being bossy and leadership.
a presentation put online by the UK Landscape Institute. Enjoy!
Happy City, Charles Montgomery, 2013
From the blurb online:
“A brilliant, entertaining and vital book. Montgomery deftly leads us from our misplaced focus on money, cars and stuff to consider what makes us truly happy. Then everything changes – the way we live, work and play in humanity’s major habitat, the city.” – David Suzuki
After decades of unchecked sprawl, more people than ever are moving back to the city. Dense urban living has been prescribed as a panacea for the environmental and resource crises of our time. But is it better or worse for our happiness? Are subways, sidewalks and tower dwelling an improvement on the car-dependence of sprawl?
for more on the book – click here – or for a full review – see the article in Metropolis Online – click here
University of Sydney, Macleay Museum
This exhibition is advertised as being of historic photographs from the Pacific spanning a century beginning from the late 1850s. With these words both in advertising and online, the expectations were for an extensive exhibition of photographs of the pacific islands.
Continuing hot on the heels of the ‘Angry Summer’ of 2012/2013, Australians again endured record breaking extreme events this summer. The Climate Council’s report provides a summary of extreme weather conditions in the 2013/2014 summer, illuminating a continuing trend of hotter summers and more weather extremes in Australia. click on the graphic for more.
a presentation put online by the UK Landscape Institute. Enjoy!
The photographs of architecture of the Post-Soviet era.
There’s a review in WIRED online of a book. To quote: Frank Herfort moved to Moscow with no intention to make a book. Like all photographers, the German-born artist always keeps one eye open for potential subjects, but making a book of architectural photos was never the plan. “While scouting the new city for myself, I began to notice these amazing buildings.”
To quote from the article on The Nature of Cities” : The arguments for an urban Sustainable Development Goal are many. Urbanization has the ability to transform the social and economic fabric of nations and cities are responsible for the bulk of production and consumption worldwide, and are the primary engines of economic growth and development. Roughly three-quarters of global economic activity is urban, and as the urban population grows, so will the urban share of global GDP and investments.
The right to development for low-income and middle-income countries can only be realized through sustainable urbanization that addresses the needs of both rural and urban areas. It must also be recognized that cities are home to extreme deprivation and environmental degradation with one billion people living in slums. In many countries the number of slum dwellers has increased significantly in recent years, and urban inequality is deepening. see the full article here
In an article from the Guardian, Christiana Figueres speaks optimistically of the effect of the numerous devastating weather events should have on political decision making on how to deal with climate change. Obviously she has not yet learnt that there are people in this world such as those who presently hold the power in Australia on these matters. I am not here referring to the idiots we have in the government, such as the Rabbott, but those who are the real puppet masters.
Nevertheless, I agree with her thrust that this matter is at last moving to another level of government thinking and that maybe now they may take action. Here is the link to the Guardian story – click here
NGA Garden of the East: photography in Indonesia 1850s–1940s
from the Canberra Times, March 8 2014, comes this review by Sacha Grishin. Click here for the review.
For more on the National Gallery of Australia exhibition – click here. Note that the exhibition is free and runs till 22 June 2014.
The first story was told to me about a proposal being put to someone’s recent board meeting suggesting that the organisation needed to do far more about the status of women in their particular workforce. That is, along with the business councils in Australia, the organisation could devise some manner by which annually they recognise and award the female achievers.
In a world of inequity, the reactions should not have been so surprising.
Evan D. G. Fraser and Andrew Rimas. Random House, 2010
As if there was not enough information available on how the world is not paying attention to all the warning signs, this book was recommended to me to make me aware of the dire situation coming our way in relation to the supply of adequate food for coming generations.
This is all linked in with the issues of climate change, population growth and the way we have allowed our food supplies to be controlled by particular market and political forces. This book is a must read for all.
Empires of Food: Feast, Famine and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations
Evan D. G. Fraser and Andrew Rimas. Random House, 2010
As if there was not enough information available on how the world is not paying attention to all the warning signs, this book was recommended to me to make me aware of the dire situation coming our way in relation to the supply of adequate food for coming generations.
This is all linked in with the issues of climate change, population growth and the way we have allowed our food supplies to be controlled by particular market and political forces. This book is a must read for all.
The tent embassy has had a mixed history since the first one was established in January 1972 in Canberra right in front of the former Parliament House. There is a reasonably full history on wikipedia – click here. It is worth reading.
Presently the number of tents varies as does the level of activity. Over the years I am aware that the government as well as the National Capital Authority have had discussions about its future. Nothing has changed except for the comings and goings of the residents.
Many years ago there used to be lots of protest gatherings in Canberra. I am referring to both local and national protests. The local ones used to be regularly held in the place called Civic Square. The national ones were in front of the original Parliament House – now known as the Old Parliament House.
above – the original Civic Square
Such protests are now a rare event. Times have changed even though the political situation is much worse now than then.
It is unbelievable to think that Australia has a Prime Minister who in 2014 has been quoted as saying that:
“We have quite enough national parks, we have quite enough locked-up forests already. In fact, in an important respect, we have too much locked-up forest.”
This is a link to a review on the online Magazine: Metropolis.
I was attracted to this as I believe in suburbia but get very annoyed (or is that angry) about the way current planning and development agencies have gone about ruining concept of suburbia through their lack of care for developing sustainable settlements.
This new book is a comprehensive history that rescues the garden suburb from the periphery of urban design, and repositions it at the heart of the debate on cities.
There’s an interesting debate on how we convince people to take action on climate change. This action can be that we vote for the political parties that will follow through on actions, or it could that we all need to take some personal responsibility for climate change and take appropriate actions.
A Sydney GP has an interesting take on this and how we need to use particular words to convince all people.
An article appeared in the Fairfax press on March 1st 2014 under the by-line: A long-lost print has rewritten the story behind one of Australia’s most famous photographs.
Alas, the story was not quite a full representation of the facts!
The IMF has been released that dismisses the ideological argument that redistributing incomes is self-defeating.
Following on from yesterday’s post on this topic, I have to say I was taken back to see a report from the IMF on the subject of inequity and growth. The paper has backed economists who argue that inequality is a drag on growth in a discussion paper that has also dismissed ideological theories that efforts to redistribute incomes are self-defeating.
Reports from the IMF are usually about driving down the working conditions in order to achieve growth. This IMF report knocks those theories on the head. I am sure it will be ignored by many, in particular the present Australian government. Click here for the article.
Australia is going through strange times right now. The mainstream media and the government are involved in the full time spin of convincing the population that the ‘age of entitlements’ is over. As we are learning, this is correct except if you are deemed to be worthy by the government. This in particular applies to their friends in business. Amongst the business end of town, at least for those in the pockets of government (or is it the other way around), the age of entitlements is well and truly about to be enhanced.
A post on ARTnews talks about the links being made in contemporary visual arts to the work of Pablo Picasso.
I am sure there are many more examples of artists making direct links — or being in conversation with Picasso’s works.