Grrr

I was at lunch the other day. The conversation was on the nature of contradiction. My interlocutor found his way onto the topic of whether the world's wealthiest are in fact a race of reptilian-human crossbreeds, or perhaps it was about people thought that that was the genetic makeup of the wealthy.

It is difficult to engineer a conversational segue from there but I did my best; I thought I'd done rather well. But my companion looked at me quizzically and said "What's that got to do with contradiction?"

Oh yes. Absolutely. Why don't we bring in relevance as a requirement at this stage?

Synthesia

There is an inevitability to the fact that my best friend at school was the only 16-year-old in the world with a detailed knowledge of Synthesia, even though he isn't a synthete. He diagnosed me; it fascinated him. I've never really been terribly interested because I don't really believe that other people don't have it. Of course, if the existence of non-synthetes is a fiction then it requires a conspiracy of pointless proportions to support, so I am obliged to believe in it. Even still, it just doesn't seem very plausible to me.

I've just been looking through the Synthesia Battery and I don't know what the inside of other synthetes' heads is like, but it does strike me as being very much a non-synthete's conception. The Battery seems to assume that we use a colour-based substitution code. One of the tests boils down to being a test of perfect pitch rather than Synthesia.

So I went looking for descriptions of other people's synthesia. I've always assumed that colour would be important to anyone who had it and that their heads would be full of beautiful, beautiful colours. Even white and black (which aren't colours as Tintaretto, another childhood friend and as you probably guessed son of hippies, told me when we were seven) aren't included in my synthesia (except for zero which is obviously white). What I found is that lots of people's synthesia seems to be focused in a range of dull and drab colours.

I was horrified. It had never occurred to me that I would need to be open-minded about the manifestations of Synthesia but there it is.
Being judgemental about other people's synthesia, that's time to have a good hard look at yourself.

Matt 18:6

The Pope says he 'shares the pain' of child abuse victims and Bishop Fisher is complaining about people who 'crankily' insist on talking about child abuse rather than embracing the intoxicating joy of World Youth Day.

Perhaps they are just genuinely stupid and vacuous, perhaps they genuinely don't understand, but certainly they give a lively impression of immorality and religious hypocrisy.

I Hope There's A God, I Hope He's A Vengeful God

From the Church that brought us unsafe sex in disease-ravaged countries, we now have an exhortation to populate in this ecologically devastated, massively overpopulated world.

Is this possibly even more irresponsible than the Baby Bonus? Yes, it's all about the kids.

Pell says "we've got to keep our numbers up". We humans have our numbers up, so who's 'we'? Catholics? Christians? Whites? And this on the eve of a visit from an ex-member of the Hitler Youth. Straight from protecting paedophiles to eugenics for Pell; if only someone could get him to stop thinking about sex just for a bit.

Girl Talk

On the way to the Ladies last night I walked passed two of the boys from our group talking about their fiancees and their fast-approaching weddings. So this is what boys talk about when girls aren't around.

Back at our table the boys had started the spin-the-bottle-esque 'who would you go home with?' conversation, beloved pickup conversation of boys in pubs everywhere in my experience, though with an Australian twist: the boys very quickly lost all interest in the girls and their answers to this persistently-put question and became instead entirely consumed with razzing each other.

Milling around outside the pub, waiting for the boys to stop fighting with the bouncers and then waiting for them to make up, which despite the patting each other on the back and commiserating at the hard lot of a bouncer's life, is if anything an even more aggressive and belligerent interaction, always threatening to develop into a full-scale pitched battle melee, I heard one of the girls say disapprovingly 'Fuck's sake! Never met a girl who couldn't get along with a bouncer!'

It was a fairly gossip-generating night and our group hadn't seen each other in ten years but as the four girls waved their final goodbyes and turned away one of them said to me 'Did you see the game?' That's what we talked about, all the way home. That's what Australian girls talk about when boys aren't around.

The Adventures of Bingley

Bingley has taken to crying or princkling things in the middle of a the night in an attempt to get me to wake up and let him out, which I am not allowed to do because of the curfew and which he can't do himself because he still can't work the cat door.

There do seem to be some conceptual problems. Yesterday, I woke (at 5am) to find him behind the curtains, so I got up and opened the window to let him out. As the window went up he looked at me, double took, then turned, sprang, sped across the room loosing traction on the cornering due to the fluffiness of his paws, up the stairs and so to the back door.

In other words, although there are some times of day at which he can conceptually accept exiting via the window, apparently an opened window in the morning only indicates to him my willingness to enter into negotiations the outcome of which would of course ultimately be achieved via the back door.

Whatever the conceptual issues, there is no question that round went to Bingley, but last night's round went to me.

Last night he was showing all the signs of embarking on a sleep deprivation campaign against me, so I took the precaution of leaving one of those spray bottles for watering plants beside the bed. In the dead of night came the princkling, and I, like a gun-fighter of the old west, quick on the draw, grabbed the bottle and shot, my eyes still half closed. Next time I shall sleep with one eye open.

But for now, Bingley has conceded that I am the better man and has adopted a conciliatory stance.

Garnaut Review

A gentleman from the Herald Sun's corner of the Fourth Estate asked Prof. Garnaut whether signing the report would be signing a suicide note for Rudd. Prof. Garnaut answered in such a way that the gentleman regretted the question, but the fact remains that saving the planet and so ourselves, is not going to be popular.

Even self-interest seems to be too difficult for us these days.

As Garnaut pointed out, the time to implement these changes was when he put a submission to the Howard Government six years ago. I hope that is not lost in this debate, that Howard mortgaged our future by artificially inflating the Australian economy and so his popularity by allowing Australian industries to continue running in old fashioned, high polluting ways for very, very short term profits.

When environmentalists say 'non-sustainable', they don't just mean the environment, they mean non-sustainable profits too.

Eastlink

I am a little shocked at how shamelessly the news on the commercial networks has been spruiking for this tollway, but not as shocked as I am that it worked. Obviously, even in a world running out of petrol to the extent that in the not-too-distant future it will be unaffordable, you could bank on commuters being excited about saving time. What I didn't expect was that the ploy of opening the road as a fun day out for the kids would work.
It's exactly as ugly as every other big road and yet there they were in their droves from 2am on when the road opened with balloons, clowns and sausage sizzles. There is nothing about this that isn't bizarre.

My incredulous scorn fixed itself upon one man who, when interviewed for the news, said 'Oh, it's great; worth the hype'. But as Dad pointed out...

...Dad: That's what they all said, isn't it?
H: Some of them talked about how much time it would save them.
Dad: Ah, yes, the practical, utilitarian angle; doesn't explain why they were out there sightseeing at 2am though, does it? No, they just drew a veil over that with this 'practical' facade.

It's a very good point. What a rich vein for psychological inquiry.

Some archaeologists think that the people of Rapa Nui knew they were killing themselves through deforestation, but they cut down the last tree anyway. Some scholars argue it was celebrated and turned into a statue to appease the god who brought this complete ecological annihilation upon them.

Someday, some Martian archaeo-psychologist, sifting through whatever remains of our records, is going to write such a fascinating paper.