Fighting, I sit

I sit.

Thin slivers of light enter my room from the faint diffuse street lamps outside. Row upon row of twinkling bars they form, an outline of the world outside. A war rages inside.

It's quiet. The breeze cools the crystal tears upon my cheeks, tracing a faint outline of the grief that dwells within. Its cadences and waveforms break upon the rock of my mind, and tears, unbidden, begin anew.

The grief that dwells within runs rampant, a morose darkness that sweeps across the expanse of my virgin happiness, desecrating, destroying.

I sit.

My hands clasp around my knees, wrapped tightly around my body, as if to shield that which is within from that which is without. The darkness, my friend, my lover, my only consolation from the opposition that exists in the light.

It's dark. An empty roar, the sound not of wind but of the air itself. Dragged objects. The crickets hum outside, a hum repeated as if to a great, spiraling infinity, I listen.

The grief is one I can defeat. But it is fed from without, from and unending torrent of passion, emotion and fiery violence.

I sit.

Motionless, where I must. Chilled to the bone from the reverberating footsteps that signal a return to my grief, and a feeding of the inner daemon. The sacrifice of my inner resistance upon an altar built from tears and blood.

I shudder. Sounds that walk by. I shudder at the tremors in the ground, at the light touch of the breeze against my skin.

Taut, coiled elastic as a tremulous snake, I hold my ground and clasp my knees. The war rages inside.

Fighting.

Fighting.

Fighting, I sit.

O Captain! My Captain!

For Abraham Lincoln, after his assassination.

O Captain, My Captain
=================
O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,
The ship has weather'd every rack, the prize we sought is won,
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up--for you the flag is flung--for you the bugle trills,
For you bouquets and ribbon'd wreaths--for you the shores a-crowding,
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
Here Captain! dear father!
This arm beneath your head!
It is some dream that on the deck,
You've fallen cold and dead.

My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still,
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will,
The ship is anchor'd safe and sound, its voyage closed and done,
From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won;
Exult O shores, and ring O bells!
But I with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

Perspective: A Tale of Brownlow and Burma

Today's Headlines, ripped from the Age:

Page One:

"Bartel's Brownlow - Cats' Eyes now on the big prize"
i.e. James Bartel of Geelong wins the Brownlow Medal

Far right side column, continued page 11:

"Masses pressure Burma's regime"
i.e. At least 15,000 monks and 30,000 people take to the streets in Burma's capital Rangoon, chanting prayers and slogans, in the largest protest against the illegally ruling military junta since a 1988 democracy uprising by students led to a brutal retaliation by the army.

Page 1 vs. page 11? I'm dissapointed at our collective nearsightedness. The media has a role to play in forming people's opinions (though of course their bottom line in our capitalist society is selling papers), and ranking an annual jock-award-cum-frockfest in our provincial little game above democracy-in-action is keeping a short-sighted nation continually short-sighted.

Aussie Rules is a great sport, but it's hopelessly provincial. Sports media and event promoters love to bill a given event as "the third largest sports event in the world", this title is pitched around at the Rugby World Cup, the Cricket World Cup, the various Grand Slams of Tennis - clearly, it is obvious that the AFL Grand Final won't ever deserve this obfuscation - it's just not that important. Perspective is a bitch.

On the other hand, the people's revolution in Burma is a protest that inspire. The military has held the nation in a stranglehold of militaristic rule against the result of the 1990 elections that should have brought the National League for Democracy (NLD) and Daw Aung San Suu Kyi into power as Prime Minister.

During these protests, about 2000 monks and civilians were allowed by the military to pray in outside her home, where she has been under house arrest for 10 years.

Her continuing incarceration is an affront to democracy.

As a result, she has as of last Sunday (23/9/07) been imprisoned in the notorious Insein prison, perhaps in part to deny the protesters a focusing symbol of leadership. Is there really nothing they won't do to maintain their hold on power?

It is not power that corrupts but fear. Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it and fear of the scourge of power corrupts those who are subject to it.

- Aung San Suu Kyi

As always, use Wikipedia or Google for continued reading, or some fellow bloggers with far greater journalistic literacy then myself.

Oh yea, and buy a CD, please.

Means to an End

On the way home from our 5 our drive from Falls Creek, I had an interesting conversation with Paul Tran about the semi-political global warming documentary An Inconvenient Truth.

Indeed, global warming is a truth that has been ignored for far too long. (If anyone disagrees with me that global warming is a real phenomenon, I would really like to hear from you) Disclaimer: I spent my four years at Melbourne High School as the President of the Environmental Action Group. To everyone that doubted me in those years, I hope you are enjoying Melbourne's water shortages. I told you so.

Anyway, Paul contended that this documentary was good viewing for all, as it brings that facts to the people and makes everyone aware of the issue.

A deeply repressed gut feeling made me cry - "Ho! That documentary is sensationalised. Yes, the issue is an important one, but really - don't it seem a tad odd that this now-sidelined American politician has taken up an issue, made it high profile with classic media manipulation, and is now 'dining out' on it in front of the international community?"

The documentary seems highly exaggerated, and at times it fabricates facts without fully stating the context of research.

Trawl wikipedia for its sources (particularly 61 and 7), if you're interested in supporting and refuting evidence to see what I'm talking about.

I do understand that Gore is trying to put forward "the most important and salient points" in order to "communicate the essence of it in the lay language that I understand." That's all well and good if that's what you intend. However, the problem with non-scientists (and scientists who communicate badly) is that in trying to publicise a scientific issue, they tend to skim over the nuances, the context and the caution with which the scientific method guides us to do.

That's a highly dangerous form of miscommunication.

To tell you a story that illustrates my point: I was told as a child the story of how scientific endeavour under Galileo advanced human knowledge from the simplistic idea of a "geocentric universe" to the "correct story". "The Earth goes around the Sun, not the other way around", said my 3rd grade teacher.

"So... what does the Sun go around?" I asked myself. That simplistic "children's version" replaces a geocentric universe with a heliocentric universe - which of course, is still incorrect!

The Sun, my friends, goes around the galactic core, and the galaxy moves around the common gravitational field of the Local Group of galaxies; the Local Group itself moves around (mostly toward the Virgo Cluster of supergalaxies) amidst a totally gravitationally isotropic universe! That is, in all directions, everything moves relative to everything else - there is no "center" of the universe, and there is no fixed measure of distance.

If you told children that, they would understand the beauty, scale and vast immensity of the universe more accurately, and perhaps (like I did, after later research) automatically realise a basic principle of relativity - that there are no preferred frames of reference.

I digress, but the point is hopefully illustrated: half a truth is not truth - simplified concepts are the resort of those with weak teaching skills; good teachers will explain the truth clearly, correctly, succinctly and understandably.

So Gore should not defend any twisting, embellishment or exaggeration of facts in the documentary as a product of simplification - if you're going to present the issue, present it correctly. This is of tantamount importance to any debate, and for anyone really on the side of educating the global populace about global warming, it should be high priority that all facts remain straight. Only in this way can we expect to be taken seriously, and only in this way can our opinions be respected.

I was very worried, because Paul insisted, insisted, insisted (yes, you did Paul) that since global warming was a worthy end, necessary evils such as oversimplification of the issues and sensationalism was okay.

If you want to win the debate and hold the moral high ground, the ends do not justify the means.

No, it's not okay.

P.S. Please comment if I've misrepresented you, Paul!

Fighting Weltschmertz and Chasing Eidolons

Weltschmertz \Welt"schmertz`\, n.
Sorrow or sadness over the present or future evils or woes of the world in general; sentimental pessimism.

Eidolon \Ei*do"lon\, n. [NL., fr. Gr. ? image. See Idol.]

1.	a phantom; apparition.

2.

an ideal.

It's hard to live in a world that seems so bad. Nietzsche believed that creative forces were healthly, so much so that in fact, in a world without God, they were the only things that made life worth living.

I tend to agree, though of course my engineering and scientific background would add that pursuit of knowledge and creation of the new and the useful as well as a beautiful are the pursuits and endeavors that we should strive for in order to give our lives meaning.

Thus, the way in which we shall fight the draining, empty decay of the weltschmertz that secretly eats us all up inside is by chasing an eidolon, one which may not be unachievable, but we should strive for nonetheless.

Chasing Eidolons:

===================
1. The pursuit of great arts; finding meaning in every book and every film.

2. The pursuit of knowledge, the satisfaction of the unending why in the tradition of Odin All-father

3. The pursuit of creation of that which is useful, for functionality in the marriage of knowledge and skill via the works of man is beautiful.

4. The destruction of the weltschmertz that dwells within!

**********

Give me a lifetime to try it out, I'll tell you if I'm successful.

Connex is the worst example of the abuses of monopoly I have seen in my life.

For those of you who may not know, the current fractious and gloriously inefficient Melbournian transport system is the result of Premier Jeff Kennett's privatisation of what was formerly a unified, state owned and operated industry.

The grand old days of the Met featured elderly, genial tram inspectors, who helped mothers with prams get into the quaint green vehicles, who would sit down for a chat with little children like myself, and manually staple a hole your weekly, monthly or yearly ticket to track your patronage. Trains ran on time, and were rarely canceled. When they were, the reason was announced, and it was generally a good one, not this "signaling error" bollocks of the current day. Buses were not the best, but at least they came on time and the drivers were nice enough people who just tried to do their job.

Flash forward to the woeful, government subsidised crap of today. This system, running late and often with chronically canceled trains, could not even survive on it's own without Sate government subsidies. Ticket inspectors and real staff have been replaced with humming machines that only take change.

Dozens of stations formerly manned by government employees were turned into dead stations, filthy and dark places lit by insufficient lighting and "monitored" by a single camera who usefulness is questionable. There are big red buttons at these stations, manned by grumpy, unseen bureaucrats who explain with as few words (and as little actual explanation) as possible why all trains on the Upfield line have been canceled for the night.

These places are places that I would never like to see my younger sister or grandfather at, yet both of my family members regularly travel through these places.

I'm going to put up pictures of Jacana, Moonee Ponds and Merlynston Station at night to give you an idea of what I'm talking about.

On top of that, today (16/09/07) I witnessed a travesty. I alighted upon the 9:25pm Broadmeadows Train to Flinders Street. As I walked down the empty carriage, I attempted to find a seat that was not covered in grime. Newspapers, discarded drink bottles, sticky remnants of chewing gum, mysterious patches of dark matter that I can only describe as "rank" filled the carriage. I walked down the entire length of three carriages of the empty train, and could not find one seat that was not dirty, settling for a little bit of rank beside a discarded Mc Donalds drink.

The train left 2 minutes late, as per usual, making up its driver's lazy time by offering the narrowest possible window for which the doors remain open at any given stop. An of course, there were the prerequisite ticket "inspectors", who came and checked my ticket. I showed them the ticket, and of course, came the additional: "Where is your concession card?"

Concession card?

Oh yeah. The card that we paid up to $20.00 for, the little piece of paper form a corner or some bureaucratic form to prove I'm a student. Despite the school uniform that I was wearing for four years of Melbourne High. Despite both my high school and university student cards. I still could be "faking" my student status to save a measly $10 on a ticket - so you charge me $20.00 to prove it. Nice little money maker you got there, considering the tens of thousands of students who use public transport.

Instead of the genial elderly gentlemen of my youth, we have big, unshaven Gestapo in trenchcoats, trudging eagerly toward commuters who have dealt with sub-par service and non-functional ticket machines to "check their tickets". Not once, but twice did this occur to me, both on the first train and on the 10:50pm Flinders St train to Alamein. I mentioned to the first bunch of Gestapo: "This train is bloody filthy, mate.", to which he glibly replied "Yeah, I know. They're all like that."

They're all like that. And you know it.

Let's see. In most developed (and by developed, I mean civilised and reasonable) cities, inspectors sell you a ticket if you don't have one. In Japan, one can "buy the cheapest ticket indicated on the vending machine and pay the difference due at the fare adjustment office at your destination station before you go through the exit wicket."

Wow.

I got on the train to Mary's house, and some poor sop runs to make the rapidly closing doors. I move to help him, but he helps himself with a heroic lunge, forcing open the door for just a second and getting into the train.

The Gestapo don't like that. Three of them, prowling like some pack of wolves, they corner the poor fellow and talk down to him, Law & Order interrogation style, telling him that getting on a train by forcing open doors is an offence.

Connex. We apologise for any inconvenience caused.