Carpe pm: seize the afternoon

Yes, if I can't sleep in, it ain't my revolution! etc. I don't know about you, but early's never been my scene. Indeed, I was just recalling the other day, when I was younger, in me carefree 20s with fewer responsibilities to other humans, my normal hours of sleep were 4am to 12pm.

Time and circumstance has modified all that, of course; now its 2am to 8.30am. Cutting back on sleep hasn't really led to any productivity gains though - I rarely have a sentient thought before 10am. My brain still gets 8 hours, though the body has learned sleep-dressing and transport management.

I can't really help it, and to be honest, I don't want to change. These hours of solitude and focus have been the most productive of my life. I reckon I wrote most of my PhD between 10pm and 1am. I guess I'd like to know there are others out there still staying up, despite careers and so on. Perhaps well into middle age!

For example, I suspect my men HET here, princes of Dutch 60s freakbeat, still kick it late*. Now that semester two is nearly done I'm hoping to be back here (at Fort Segue) more often. Check it out!


* Hat tip to my bro, aka The World of Yentl, for putting me on to this ace track.

Blog Action Day: 350.org

So, I got an email this morning from 350.org saying its blog action day today. So this is the least I could do. (And never let it be said I didn't do the least I could do).

As you may know, BmL is a big supporter of the idea of direct citizen action on global warming. Leaving it all to governments is a dead-end street.

To that end, we here at BmL are sending a smoke signal to all coastal fortalezas in the greater Solor/ Larantuka region that October 24 is the International Day of Climate Action.

You can check local events in your area through this handy widget, which will hopefully embed below. There's a whole bunch of useful info here on why 350ppm is such an important goal.

Days Left

On October 24, join people all over the world to take a stand for a safe climate future.

Enter your City, Country, or Zip/Postal Code below to find an event near you.

Águas de Março

Yes, rockin' the fortaleza with Sealab's version of Jobim's classic Águas de Março. Hilarious clip! Great song too. In fact, it was once voted the best Brazilian song of all time by, like, Brazilians.
É pau, é pedra, é o fim do caminho...

Municipal Solar?

Ok, now let me run this scheme up the commentary pole and see who cheers (or jeers...)!

I've argued over at LP for a while that councils should look at developing municipal solar energy. That is, use the greater scale of council buildings, vacant property (and rates) to generate larger-scale solar power and feed it in to the grid at local area level. This would offer clear economies of scale in greenhouse abatement - that households can't hope to achieve - and produce larger volumes of power per dollar. Equally (by reducing net consumption of non-renewable energy across the municipal area) it would financially benefit all (both ratepayer-owners and tenants) by reducing household power bills in the mid to long-term. Households would receive the generated power as 'pre-paid' solar, at no further cost.

Households with private solar would get a double benefit, the rest would benefit by the effective socialisation of solar at the council area level. Perhaps they also could cut deals with state governments for the use of vacant Crown land.

Essentially, its a variant on the old school municipal socialism idea: in Britain in the late 19th and early 20th century councils were in the front line of creating public ownership of tramways, gas, waterworks and other utilities, using their greater collective buying power.

Fathers & Daughters

So, I was chatting with my bro (in the normal, non-NZ sense) today, who is recently the father of a baby girl, and has a son a fair bit older. We were watching my daughter play, and I was talking about the relative lack of weight of expectation on father/ daughter relationships. When I'd raised the same theme at other times - prior to his daughters birth - it didn't seem to ring any bells for him - but today it did.

Of the four parent/ child combos, it really is the one least dwelt on by popular culture, psychology, home spun theory and general folk wisdom of the ages. And in my experience, that's been the great thing about it. Makes it a lot easier.

Of course, it's a relationship that can be majorly screwed up, like any other, sometimes in utterly horrific ways - but aside from those awful cases, there aren't a lot of negative stereotypes attached to it. 'Daddy's girl', for example, is fairly neutral where 'Mummy's boy' most certainly isn't. Then there's the inherent role-modelling pressure of of father-son, mother-daughter relationships; so frequently subject to the 'individualise-via-conflict' vibe, sooner or later. And no offence, Mums, but in my experience there's virtually no limit to the matters affecting a boy's life that his mother won't feel absolutely entitled to dip her oar in the water about. Even well into his 30s*. Bless 'em.

Whereas there's just no point even asking Dad about tricky girl-to-woman stuff. He won't have a clue. And most importantly: that's understood - by both parties.

Nothing to offer but love.

I hope no one gets offended by the above. But I write here in defence of father-daughter relationship. Against its broad cultural neglect. It rules.

* There is a some possibility the author generalises unduly from personal experience here.

Can't think of a new post...

...cos I blew all my good material on facebook. But in the most lame-ass of comedic traditions, let us now ask "so....what's with that??".

I guess its a bit like fast-food, or 20-20 cricket. An instant gratification pigout that leaves you belching, bloated, yet ultimately dissatisfied. Not that blogging is exactly the French slow-food movement - but I do find that ideas I might previously have turned into blog posts (and thus subjected to a more sustained reflection in blog comments) now get frittered away on a quick farcebook update.

Which incidentally, I now refer to as 'Slide Night'. My theory is that farcebook is - in effect - a high-tech socially acceptable version of boring your friends senseless with pics of what you did on yer holidays. Except that they don't HAVE to look at them. In that sense, it fits neatly with shallow neo-liberal consumerist notions of 'choice' and 'liberty': it's all complete rubbish, but you get to choose which sandwich de merde is pret-a-porter.

Or am I reading too much into it? I've never Twittered. I can only imagine that's worse.

CO2 Counter

So, I added a CO2 counter to the sidebar, which measure parts per million. Just to depress myself on a daily basis. Apparently 350ppm is considered the upper level of sane by most scientists. Oh look, its already 386. Naturally, we in Ostraya are basing current policy settings on a putative global aim of restricting it to 450ppm, which is totally effing visionary etc, except that it more or less guarantees disastrous climate change.

I need some good news on climate folks. Give me hope!

10 years after the referendum in East Timor

30 August is a good day for Australians to remember that the so-called 'realists' in Canberra got it wrong for 24 years. I'm pretty sure a whole lot of them still think 'well, our strategic priorities just changed pre and post 1999, the cold war was over, and who saw that the New Order regime would collapse?'. I'm pretty sure they also think 'teh Left' were just a bunch of unrealistic and idealist whingers who accidentally got something right for once.

Au contraire. Along with saying the occupation was wrong, and a human rights disaster, the East Timor solidarity movements were also pointing to a critical empirical factor: Indonesia was not likely to succeed. How could a forced integration - with no basis in international law, unrecognised by any other state, with no respect for human rights, and implacably opposed by a nation of people - succeed in the long run? Its like the inevitability of a Palestinian state. Power cannot operate without legitimacy forever. Foreign policy 'realism' does not equate to pragmatism, how ever much the back-slapping defence and security circle-jerkers might fancy it does.

The major parties in this country were frankly out of touch with reality. They appeared to believe that just because it suited our imagined strategic priorities, a military occupation that could not even establish a monopoly of force after 24 years was some stable 'fact on the ground', that we all just had to live with. Let history record that the Australian people saw through it all first, and the 'experts' in Canberra followed.

I hope the lesson is not lost. Justice matters in international affairs. Foreign policy 'realism' does not make you realistic.

Abigail's Party (1977)

Its no surprise to me that Mike Leigh's early film for TV Abigail's Party (1977) was rated 11th in the 100 Greatest British Television Programmes. I saw it recently, and it truly is a magnificent precursor to that excruciating but hilarious genre (self-important-type-makes-constant-arse-of-self-in-public) that later spawned classics like The Office.

I also think its a toss-up as to whether Prunella Scales of Fawlty Towers or Alison Steadman's potrayal of Beverly is the origin of that classic UK aspirational lower middle-class female character that ends every sentence on a patronising "okaayyyy?".

In any case, I can only agree with the Channel 4 reviewer who said that Abigail's Party "still ranks as the most painful hundred minutes in British comedy-drama." Its compelling, peek-through-your-fingers-while-you-cringe viewing. Also interesting are the class dynamics between the five characters, flung together by post-1960s suburbanism and Britain's rising lower middle class.

100th Post Commemorative Yabber

You know, when first my Caravel navigated these bloggy waters, armed with nothing but an Astrolabe, orders from the Leal Senado in Macau, and a rough Portolan of the last known voyage of Eredia (handed me by a marooned Marineiro in Solor), it was impossible to tell what adventures might lay at the end of the cartographer's wind-rose.

So many forts in Asia, so many lattes, and so many forts in Asia later, and... sadly... os meus amigos, its time to hang up ye old blogging mouse, and sail into the unknown waters of Luca Antara.

Hoho, just kidding! What a classic blog cliche, the threatened departure! As if. You and I both know the Portuguese forts in Asia scene has never been hotter. And I didn't come this far to yield the parapets and hoist my lateen sail for Lisbon, just because of some pesky lack of widespread interest in my deliberately obscure blog. You didn't see the Forte São João Baptista administrators abandon their post, just because they controlled less than 100 sq foot of territory, and no one sent them a letter for 200 odd years, did you?

No, and likewise, we're made of sterner stuff here at BmL.

Instead, let's dwell briefly on life as a small blog. Here's some random stats, in lieu on any actual desire on my part to analyse it properly.

Days since first post: 588. That's a post every 6 days. So don't tell me I never get ya nuthin!
Number of visitors: 4279. That's a massive average 7.3 per day! Those stats don't include me either - only genuine vistors. Somebody call google ads, we've got a live one!
Number of comments: 460. Subtracting the 40% that are mine (which is how it tends to go) that's a monster 2.7 punter comments per post. Mother, hire a letter-opener!
Record number of post comments: 24. Twice! Renegotiate the 1856 border, Capitão, this enclave ain't big enough!
Number of CPLP Countries on my counter: 4 full members (Portugal, Brazil, Mozambique, East Timor); 1 associate member (Macau); and 1 associate observer (Senegal).

Aos novos fortalezas! Até a vitória sempre!