a few brief notes...

Murray Bramwell in The Adelaide Review writes that Albee subtitled his goat play ‘notes towards a definition of tragedy’, or something like, and concludes from this, rightly I think, that he didn’t mean the bestiality to be taken literally, that he was primarily exploring the unspeakable notion of betrayal, especially the kind of betrayal that’s utterly unexpected and under-cutting.

Rightly, and yet… He certainly meant to play on the idea of real bestiality, to throw us as witnesses into a ‘how could you possibly do that, and to your wife?’ sort of quandary, so that we wonder what the ultimate crime is, the bestiality or the betrayal, and we feel uneasy about our responses and sympathies.

It’s sheeting down, the moths whirl and beat above my head, and I’m still not permitted to post a comment to Barista’s blog – having just read his monster post about the monstrous Joe Korp

pandas marsupials and monotremes

One of the most fun activities of the week, apart from gardening with Courtney, was teaching English to, or facilitating the English usage of, a trio of elderly Chinese. In fact there were five students in all, the other two being thirty-something Japanese women, and I had a problem trying to maintain the same level of engagement for all of them. Both the Japanese women could come out with whole sentences and engage with me at quite a high level, while the Chinese could rarely string two words together. There were infectiously enthusiastic though, and when taught a new word would repeat it endlessly like a bunch of Courtneys, nodding sagely all the while.
Our conversation began with naming the things around us, and distinguishing types of containers – cups, mugs, jars, jugs, bottles, packets and boxes. This was all very exciting, but somehow we got onto animals. Remarkable how much interesting info can be pumped through the semi-permeable language barrier. Pandas are China’s main claim to fame wildlife-wise, and the wisest of the Chinese fraternity told me their numbers are increasing at last, and that the only pandas outside China are a pair in America, a goodwill gift, and recently, a child was born to this pair, the first panda born in captivity, or perhaps it was born in China, and perhaps it wasn’t the first born in captivity, anyway one was born, recently…
Then another of the Chinese mentioned Taiwan, and oh yes that was right, the Chinese government had recently sent a panda pair to Taiwan, or perhaps they hadn’t sent it yet…
Later, I asked one of the Japanese women about the native wildlife in her country, whether there were any bears for example, and she said they only had a couple of pandas, but they were from China…
We talked about the bamboo eaten by pandas, and the gum leaves eaten by koalas, but later that day, or the next, one of my fellow volunteer staffers assured me that pandas are really carnivores, that it’s all guff about the bamboo, oh yes maybe they eat bamboo but they prefer fresh red meat, it’s all propaganda to make the pandas seem cuddly and sweet but she isn’t taken in, she thinks they’re hideous beasts, she loathes them…
We talked about koalas and their lives of ennui, and kangaroos, and stout wobbly wombats, and crocodiles and emus. The wise Chinese man told us haltingly and with gestures that Africa’s ostriches were bigger than our emus, and differently plumed, and that emu eggs were quite blue, unlike those of ostriches. He was clearly delighted at this blueness.
I spoke about the platypus, of whose existence they were all aware. The wise Chinese man told us they had webbed feet as well as a duck’s bill, and that they dug out nesting areas in river-banks where they lay eggs, for they were one of the few mammals on earth who lay eggs. Yes, I said, marsupials are egg-laying mammals found only in Australia. I was trying to re-assert myself as teacher and all-round expert, but then it occurred to me that kangaroos didn’t lay eggs, or maybe they did, and I became confused. I tried to cloak it by talking about the pouch, marsupials had pouches in which they reared their young, protected while they suckled the breast, because when born they were very small at least I knew the baby kangaroo was. Later the fellow volunteer staffer told me she wasn’t too sure about the marsupial thing, but there were certain monotremes who laid eggs and they were a sub-class of marsupial but don’t quote her.
So because I like to be factual, and to learn while writing, let me be clear that there are only three species of monotreme, namely the platypus, and two types of echidna. Monotreme means one-holed and is a reference to the cloaca. They also happen to be the only egg-laying mammal, so that’s probably an easier way to remember them. They’re the most primitive of mammals.
Monotremes and marsupials are described as non-eutherian. They’re phylogenetically isolated from other mammals. Eutherian mammals have a placenta, though I’ve read that marsupials do have a simple placenta, but their young are extremely artricial (as opposed to precocial), that’s to say they’re undeveloped, tiny, and in need of lots of TLC.    
For next week, I’ll have to come up with another engaging subject, or maybe the wise Chinese man will.    

overcoming crap

One CRAP acronym, Alan Saunders has just informed me on the radio, is Computer Rage, Anxiety and Phobia, and I certainly suffer from that. So I should be happy that blogger (RTM) has combined with Microsoft to create a blogger for Word package, since I always write everything on Word beforehand. But of course nothing goes to plan, and I suffered the usual computer rage anxiety and phobia when my last post, sent straight from Word via the new blogger toolbar, came out in a CRAP font, too small to be comfortably readable. Let’s see how this one goes, but first I’ll increase the font size in Word…

terror trail

In the shadow of swords: on the trail of terrorism from Afghanistan to Australia. Sally Neighbour, 2004, HarperCollins.
This book agitates as well as educating. We’re left with some awkward questions – how could JI have gone undetected for so long? How do we get the Indonesians to take the threat seriously? Why does the extreme interpretation of jihad appeal to such a diversity of Moslems (even if they’re few in number)? Is there something integral to Islam that we should worry about? What about the effect of our foreign policy, and more importantly that of our big beefy ally, on the rhetoric and actions of our enemies? Can we find a way to be placatory without being weak? We could certainly do a helluva lot better than we’re doing now.
Neighbour here tells a tale of individuals, all with different interpretations of and varying commitments to jihad. She humanises them far more than they’re prepared to humanise us, it seems. Even the three notorious brothers, Muklas, Amrozi and Ali Imron, emerge as distinctive personae, conforming to well-known patterns of sibling development, with Muklas, the eldest, as the responsible leader-figure, hardline all the way, followed by Amrozi, irresponsible and unsettled, before finally ‘growing up’ into a full-blown terrorist, with all the zeal of the recent convert, and Ali Imron, the baby of the family, struggling for the recognition and respect of his brothers, always with a me-too air, and stricken by conscience way too late. Then we have the softly spoken and outwardly gentle Abu Bakar Bashir, as ignorant of Western ways and values as the old Ayatollah Khomeini, and as thoughtlessly destructive. And for me probably the most intriguing/disturbing individual described here is the still-at-large Azahari Husin, a roguish former Norwood High School and Adelaide Uni student, who went on to become a high-flying academic in maths and statistics. He’s likely responsible for designing the Bali bomb, as well as the Marriott Hotel bomb.
A vastly diverse bunch, they all have in common a contempt for what they conceive to be Western values, and a macho delight in making big bangs. Coming soon to a cinema (or stadium or terminal, etc etc) near you.

on sharing one's fantasies

As the secretary of the Urbane Society for Skeptical Romantics I need to remind myself from time to time of my romantic delusions - that's to say I don't have any trouble maintaining the delusions but I rarely give them any space here.

So, after a reasonably rare spot of TV viewing, I hereby declare the new love of my life, one Keeley Hawes, of Spooks (though I found the show, or this episode at least, a little less than convincing). I hereby admit to gasping with (romantic) disbelief at her magnificent intellect. She replaces Sarah Blasko (discovered circuitously via Larvatus Prodeo of all sites) for this week only.

strolling and lolling

Spending much of the day blog-browsing, reading Online Opinion articles, discovering New Matilda and generally strolling and lolling about in cyberland.
Made one fairly pedestrian comment on another of Peter Sellick's tedious but no doubt heartfelt pro-Christian articles, shook my head (mostly) at pieces by John Stone and Patrick Goodenough, and nodded at Tim Dunlop's defence of free speech. Always amazes me how vicious things get so quickly when Israeli issues are raised. Wouldn't you think people would agree that this is a vexed historical matter with a myriad of perspectives? Or maybe they do, and acknowledge the fact before launching into each other. Anyway, this guy Loewenstein seems to raise a lot of hackles.

doing community service

I sit down at my computer after a couple of days of genuine bona fide community activity. Yesterday – well I can barely recall what I did yesterday. Hopefully it’ll come back to me as I write. The evening was spent devoted to housing co-op treasury work, costing our situation under the new funding agreement. Tedious stuff to describe, but there really is something engrossing in figures – there must be, considering the hours I spend poring over them. Of course there must also be some self-satisfaction in knowing I’m doing useful work for the co-op, cementing myself in as an indispensable office-bearer, a credit to the team. At the same time, I’m perhaps not the team player I should be, I like doing my work in isolation, I like knowing I’m about the only one in the co-op with the willingness to perform accounting tasks I myself would once have baulked at, perhaps for fear of turning into a blinking bespectacled drone.

And now I recall what else I did yesterday. In the morning I drove off to the Adelaide South West Community Centre for my first stint at assisting in English conversation classes. The inaugural class was held the week before, unbeknownst to me. Lita, the organiser of the classes, had expected me to turn up, though she hadn’t directly informed me. The others at the centre assured me this wasn’t a concern, for Lita tended to get into a flap about most things. Besides, there was only the one student, and, according to the others, Lita had become so possessive of her that I mightn’t even have been welcome once the class had gotten underway.

I was getting the impression that Lita might be a difficult woman to work with. I’d met her, and found her affable enough, and almost embarrassingly deferential to my supposed expertise as an ESL teacher, but there was a kind of doggedness and preciosity about everything that made her company a little draining after a while.
I arrived at the community centre about half an hour before the class was due to begin, and I was soon treated to a diverting altercation between Yvonne, one of the centre’s more impressive operators - and an acquaintance of Sarah’s and mine through the co-op sector - and Lita. It seems that Lita had, the previous week, become so absorbed with the language difficulties of her only student, a fairly newly-arrived Korean woman called Clara (surely not her real name), that she’d brusquely turned away another woman, a Filipina who’d approached them following Yvonne’s suggestion, for she was in attendance for the purpose of minding any children of students who might need it, and was at a loose end.

Not surprisingly, Lita had no adequate response to Yvonne’s criticism of her behaviour. She emphasised Clara’s need for intensive assistance, and tried to explain the nature of her problems. ‘You’re missing the point, Lita,’ Yvonne interrupted impatiently. ‘Is it a conversation class or isn’t it? That’s what it’s advertised as. The poor woman was so embarrassed, and I was embarrassed at having put her in that position. What’s more, I then had to entertain the blessed woman myself, when I had a load of work of my own to do.’

Lita seemed contrite enough at this, but I sensed, like Yvonne, that this would be an ongoing problem. We started the class, with only the one woman, Clara, and I think my presence helped to make the interactions more conversational and less intensive. At times Clara seemed to forget the language technicalities, being too engrossed in the content of the communications. Is this a good thing? Well, it’s meant to be a conversation class after all. I think the best thing is to mix it up, because these people do want to improve their English language kills, so you need to bring their attention back to language structures from time to time. The problem with immersion methods often is that it’s more about effective enough communication than absolutely correct language. The main difficulty is fossilisation in the interlanguage. Always loved that term, but it’s not just pretentious claptrap, it’s a reasonably accurate description of what happens.

To illustrate, it’s perhaps best to go on with my recounting of the class. At 11.30am, only half an hour before the 90 minute class was due to wind up, another student arrived, a Japanese woman named Kyoai, together with two kids. Unfortunately the crèche volunteer, this time a man and a native English speaker, had by this time gone away, so she had to struggle between minding a six-month baby and a three-year-old and participating in our class. She was late because it had been raining and she was travelling by foot, only living a couple of blocks away. She explained that she needed English practice because her husband, an Australian, never corrected her, because he always understood what she was trying to say. Their conversation was in any case minimal, he came home, turned on the TV, that was it. No sense of tragedy in her voice about this, she just laughed it off, but with embarrassment.

So it was with some mortification that I heard Lita say to her, after focusing most of her attention on Clara, that really, her English was quite good, that in fact she had no real need of these classes and should instead go to the lunchtime learning sessions or something like that. Lunchtime learning was not targeted at NESB people at all. No doubt Kyoai would benefit from such sessions, but it was just not true that she had no need of this type of class. She knew that she needed correcting, that she was in danger of fossilisation, and to be given such a non-welcome from Lita must have been demoralising. I protested mildly, and made more of an effort to include her, but considering Lita’s comments, I wouldn’t be surprised if she didn’t come back. And so I’m going to have to bite the bullet and take Lita aside about this. If we’re to have informal conversation classes, she has to accept that abilities will be mixed, from the newly arrived elderly to youngish adults who’ve been here for a dozen years but know they are still making mistakes. And she must be welcoming to any NESB person who wants to join the group.

Kyoia’s concern, I’m sure, is that, with her minimal opportunities for English communication, she feels increasingly trapped by her lack of confidence with the language, increasingly reduced to minimal conversations involving an inflexible English language use, cut off from the possibility of richness and diversity of communication that a greater command of English might give her.

Fossilisation in the interlanguage occurs when the rewards for improving your target language structuring and pronunciation are insufficient to make the effort required worthwhile. Listen to any NESB person who hasn’t been exposed to English before adulthood and you’re likely to find some fossilisation, that’s to say, some stubborn remnants of native language usage transferred to the target language. With people of Chinese background it’s often found in the inappropriate application of plurals, for example. The term ‘interlanguage’ refers to this mixing of native language structures with target language vocabulary.

Actually this matter of rewards and effort is a major factor in all learning, not just language learning. How many of us really understand the deceptively simple equation e=mc2 ? I could devote the next several years to understanding the maths and physics behind it, its implications, etc, but the effort required, at my age, to master whole areas of mathematics hitherto unknown to me, to put myself as far as possible into the mind of an Einstein and so forth, would bear little fruit whether in terms of kudos from my friends or contributions to the field of scientific theory. There might, on the other hand, be some reward in going into the matter just a little bit more than the average lay person, since most people are easily dazzled by science and you might get to impress some Sarah Blasko fantasy figure at parties.

In Kyoia’s case, she might feel that making the extra effort to avoid fossilisation isn’t being appreciated by her husband, or by the shopkeepers and other professionals she might have dealings with from time to time, and she’s still young and wants extra stimulation. The last thing she wants to hear is that her English is ‘excellent’ and has no need of improvement, or even that it’s adequate for her purposes.

The Hicks debacle

The other day I woke up to the drone of Gerard Henderson on Radio National. I disagree with him on most things, but that morning he was being excessively disagreeable. At least Fran Kelly wasn’t prepared to let him get away with it, but even so I couldn’t bear to listen after a while, and I switched off. It was about the David Hicks case. Henderson was trying to argue that, regardless of the issues around the legality or fairness of his trial, and regardless of the fact that he has been incarcerated without charge for three and a half years or more, nobody, on either side of Australian politics, was denying that he was guilty, and guilty of serious offences. He then went on to state that Hicks had had training in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Pakistan, and that this training was ‘extensive’, a term he made much of. Now considering that it is Hicks’ accusers that claim his training to be ‘extensive’ (and it is solely on their evaluation that Henderson is relying), and that those accusers have an enormous vested interest in finding guilty at least someone out of the hundreds they’ve had incarcerated without charge for years, it comes as no surprise that they make this claim. What this term signals to us is not anything factual about Hicks, I’d contend, but the determination of the military tribunal to make Hicks one of those few (and there are only four left, including Hicks) whose ‘guilt’ will somehow make the long incarceration of the other hundreds justifiable.

The central issue in the Hicks situation, as we all know, or should know, is whether or not Hicks will receive a fair trial. Henderson is more than fudging the issue, he’s proclaiming Hicks’ guilt (of what I’m not sure – presumably of having worked with or trained with organisations or groups which were subsequently dubbed terrorist), on the basis of evidence obtained from the very source the impartiality of which is so heavily under question. It’s another unacceptable example of trial by media.

When pressured about the fairness of the trial process, Henderson seemed to consider the fact that the Americans are ‘at war’ to be sufficient reason for any irregularities in Hicks’ treatment thus far, but this is patently absurd. Many serious doubts about the fairness of these military commissions have been raised by persons far more qualified to judge of the matter than Henderson, including former prosecutors John Carr and Robert Preston (two of the three prosecutors who have resigned due to serious reservations about the commissions’ fairness), Australia’s former war crimes prosecutor Greg James, and the head of Australia's military bar, Captain Paul Willee QC. The Weekend Australian here gives a sobering account of their misgivings, though I think the article’s a bit rough on Hicks himself. Not that I have too much sympathy with Hicks’ jihadist sympathies, but the authors seem also to have fallen for the American line about his ‘extensive’ training. Who really knows what training, if any, Hicks has had? Certainly Gerard Henderson doesn’t, and neither do the Weekend Oz writers. Everyone's relying on the same dubious sources.

battle weary

A good day yesterday in that my Centrelink fears were largely assuaged. A rollercoaster of emotions before my 3pm Centrelink appointment. Trying to fill out the horrendous Job Diary, I decided the task – it appeared that I had to fill out details for twelve jobs a fortnight, over six fortnights, as well as several weeks of mutual obligation stuff – was beyond me. I would go to my appointment, tell them I preferred to give up benefits rather than be harassed and humiliated in this way, and walk out with dignity intact and wallet empty. I would accept JS’ one-day-a-week job offer, for a measly $72, (which would probably mean not going ahead with assisting in English conversation classes, which would’ve been fun but unremunerative) and try to hustle other work, tutoring in ESL, gardening, cleaning, anything…

I was in two minds about even turning up for the 3pm interview, but I’d filled out my previous fortnight’s dole form, and I should hand it in for one last payment at least. I tried passing the form through at the front counter, but then it was suggested I should hold onto it and hand it over to the interviewer. So there was no easy escape. So I stood waiting to be called, too agitated in fact to sit down, rehearsing the words I would say, the precise nature and direction of my righteous indignation. I would insist that my ire was directed at the heartlessness of government, not at Centrelink staff. I imagined a staffer trying half-heartedly to defend the government’s line, to insist that there was a certain obligation, considering that I was paid… I would cut them off, saying that I was to be paid no longer, that the mutual obligation, such as it was, had come to an end, so any lecturing would be inappropriate…

I was called and the staffer kindly showed me to her desk at the very back of the private offices area. I recognised her as the person who had dealt with my case a few months previously. That interview had been difficult because I was in poor health, and I remembered her sympathy. I told her I hoped this interview would be short and sweet, and launched into my objections to and frustrations with this mutual obligation palaver. She immediately assured me that I’d got the stuff about the job diary all wrong, I had merely to copy into it the same info that I put on my form, and since I had already, at the previous interview, proved my credentials in terms of community work, that, too wouldn’t be a problem. She rang someone in policy for confirmation of various processes, told me I could ditch the old job diary and start again. Unfortunately something of the sort had to be filled out, though she made it as easy as possible, agreeing that it was overly humiliating ‘especially for someone of your age’. She made this point of my age a couple of times, and I wasn’t too sure about that. I felt I was perhaps being treated as a well-meaning old soak who shouldn’t be put to too much stress, rather than being recognised as a doughty veteran of many a Centrelink and DSS campaign. I should get a medal, I reckon. Anyway, I was very grateful for her assurances, and I left the place feeling much lightened.

on acknowledging terrorism

Walking down King William Street yesterday, I noticed a bus stop poster proclaiming the merits of dobbing in a suspected terrorist. This is something new in my experience, though we've not suffered anything yet on the Oz mainland. It really is a vexed question, whether we play up or play down the terrorist threat. Halfway through reading Sally Neighbour's book In the shadow of swords, I'm still not certain of the line to take. Do these guys feed on testosterone-driven heroics? Of course it's not that simple, but clearly too it's about a simplistic outlook. It's about having found the answer, which is what makes these 'revolutionaries' similar to Western 'Marxists' of yore (and not always of yore) in many respects. It takes us back even to the anabaptists and beyond. There are similarities, too, to various cults that have cropped up since time immemorial. Absolutism, which will always be with us, always have its adherents. Reading about the gradual conversion of bright sparks like Azahari, you realise how unpredictably attractive these all-or-nothing modes of thought, religiously cultured, seem to be. I'm not sure if they're more attractive, or more prevalent, than they've ever been, but with the greater availability of bomb materials, guns and other murderous stuff, they're able to make more of an impact. And surely the coverage they're getting is helping to swell the ranks. I'm still trying to ignore it all, to reflect on more mundane and innocent stuff.