Not Raining, Pouring
A few posts are floating around begging to be written, but I’m in the middle of a nasty alignment of jazz gig frenzy, exam frenzy and cold virus. Going to Mildura for the jazz festival there this weekend, back on Sunday night ready for a 9am law exam on Monday morning. Study? What study? (Cough).
Idolatry
At the risk of treading on my brother’s toes, I thought I’d offer some thoughts on last night’s Australian Idol big band special.
When pop singers do swing, it can make jazz musicians feel a little uncomfortable. Some of them seem to see it as an invasion upon their turf - who is this poxy talentless mass-market hack trying to capitalise on the success of a previous generation who could actually sing? - that kind of thing. I first watched Robbie Williams’ swing video (about which I disagree with Angus: I thought it was a pretty good effort), between evening shows on a cruise ship. When I went back on stage, I found all the other musos competing with each other to hang shit on it. It was all crap, though - none of their criticisms were justified. He had a good voice, sung more strongly and at least as tunefully as Sinatra, and while his swing phrasing lacked a certain finesse, he did it better than a lot of people who pass themselves off as jazz singers.
I’m usually not so concerned about the execution - what’s more likely to bother me is the choice of music. It sometimes seems as if the songs that non-jazz singers think of when they think of jazz are songs that I’d rather never have to think of again. Of course, my perception is biased in that respect - I’ve been subjected to way more than my fair share of Crazys and Moondance - but what I’m talking about is not just horror at the thought of having to suffer through another lacklustre rendition. In many cases, it’s the songs themselves that are lacklustre, at least by comparison with the enormous body of fantastic songs that are out there. There are some overdone songs that I’m still happy to play or listen to (The Girl From Ipanema gets very bad press, in my view). Unfortunately, though, amonst the highest-rotation jazz songs are a handful that are harmonically, rhythmically and lyrically featureless, almost hypnotic in their dullness.
Which is why it was disappointing to hear Shannon open up with I’ve Got You Under My Skin (for “Skin” read “Fingernails”). With all due respect to Cole Porter, that song is a fairly lame four-bar idea repeated fourteen virtually-indistinguishable times in each form. The melody is almost entirely made up of tones and semitones, making it a tempting choice for intervalically-challenged singers (i.e. most of them), but even a major scale is not without its tuning hazards, as Shannon illustrated. His other choice, New York, New York, is also overdone. I’ve always held that it should never be done without a big band (which is, in my experience, a difficult point to make to a demanding drunk towards the end of a long gig). It needs the original arrangement with the original orchestration if it’s not going to sound limp and pathetic. Thankfully, Shannon had both, and it went off. Oh, but you shouldn’t drape a bow tie around your neck to look as if you’ve just casually undone it unless you’re wearing a shirt with a collar that you could wear a bow tie with (i.e., not a pair of aircraft carriers).
Hit the Road, Jack is a bit of a singalong classic, but I found Guy’s performance a bit bewildering, for two reasons. First of all, he decided to ignore the most recognisable strain of the melody for almost all the song. But more importantly, he seemed to ignore the fact that the song is, at very least, a duet. You just can’t sing “Now woman, now woman, don’t you treat me that way/’Cause I’ll be back on my feet some day” and then continue without a break into “Don’t care if you do, ’cause it’s understood/You aint got no money and you aint no good”. It’s normal to have, a la Ray Charles, a chorus of irate women to sing the alternate stanzas. I must admit, I’m a little mystified about the appeal of Guy. Sure, he’s got the strongest sense of rhythm out of the remainder of the cast, but am I alone in finding that voice just a tad … well … annoying? His second song, The Way You Look Tonight, was a bit of a case in point. Moving towards the higher notes in the song (particularly in the A sections (”I will feel a glow just thinking of you”, etc), I found myself sort of shrinking away as if frightened by what I was about to hear. Maybe it’s just me.
I thought that At Last was a fairly natural choice for Paulini, because she could feel free to inflect the bejesus out of it and it would still sound fine. That, and the fact that it’s a great song. Having said that, though, it did sound a little like a cross between Nancy Wilson and Whitney Houston. Not that that’s necessarily a bad thing. Almost Like Being In Love required her to swing somewhat, and offered her the temptation to scat. I don’t think that either quite came off, but Paulini’s voice is such that it’s hard to get hung up on technicalities.
Cosima’s L-O-V-E was kind of sweet. It’s such a simple song, though, that it needs a certain amount of interpretation if it’s not going to sound like a nursery rhyme. You can’t just sing the same rhythm for each phrase, otherwise it gets sort of hypnotically boring. I really like Smile, but I think whoever sings it needs to bear in mind that it’s a sad song. I thought that Cosima sung it as if it was supposed to be inspirational, which is understandable enough in the context, but a tad profane if you’re a lover of the song.
All in all, I was glad that we didn’t get a Summertime or a Fever, and I thought they all did a fine job. When you think about all the bases the kids have had to cover, they’re showing a lot more versatility than your average recording artist ever has to. It’s a shame that it has to take place in the Darwinist shadow of death-by-phone-poll, and it’s a shame that the judges find it necessary to mouth off in the way that they do (in spite of themselves, it sometimes seems to me) but it’s encouraging to see musical talent celebrated in this way. It’s live, it’s real, it’s overwhelmingly positive and affirming. I’m all for it.
Fearsome
Author Sophie Masson’s piece in the Sydney Morning Herald seems to have generated a little blogospheric momentum. She’s down on people who think that post-September-11 Australia is being ruled by fear:
There’s a lot of guff talked about how the fear that supposedly stalks this country means that people have become more isolated, more intolerant and retreated into some white-bread, white-picket fantasy. This is simply not true of the general public, who continue to work, travel and enjoy themselves, just with the new knowledge that certain hidden dangers of an increasingly globalised world are now fully on show. We just factor in the presence of globe-trotting terrorists as well as other dangers and annoyances, for we now know we no longer live in the relaxed and comfortable world of the post-Cold War bubble.
Gareth called it “possibly the best column published in a newspaper this year”. Tim Dunlop, by contrast, called it “the sort of cheap, meaningless political point-scoring rhetoric that tends to tick [him] right off and that inevitably collapses when you get past the surface gloss.” Hmm, clearly some conflict.
Gareth’s response is a bit less comprehensive than Tim’s. He seems to feel that when the anti-Howard contingent talk about “fear”, it’s just a way of asserting their superiority, belittling the opinions of those who disagree with them. I’m sure that there are examples of the anti-Howard contingent doing just that, but I’m not sure that it quite gets to the point. I mean, when there’s political bickering going on, it seems as if intellectual dishonesty can almost be taken for granted. I don’t think that claims about what the Australian people are thinking or feeling should be taken too seriously. “The Australian people” are a huge, complex mass of conflicting views and contradictions, and anyone who reckons he has his finger on the pulse is delusional. Of course, when you’re trying to make an argument, it’s tempting to drag your notion of public feeling along with you, but to do so is basically just lazy. It should be pointed out, though, that the laziness isn’t confined to one side. When Sophie writes:
It is not fear that drives the often unpleasant attitude to asylum seekers. It is more anger and annoyance; rightly or wrongly, people coming illegally to this country are seen as trying to push in, to force events, not to wait their turn. Migrants are often the first to express these feelings forcefully indeed. To ascribe fear as the motivating factor for such attitudes is to be completely out of touch.
she’s claiming, of course, to be in touch. She might be right, for all I know, but in the absence of any comprehensive survey about why Australians believe what they believe, I think it’s an open question. Likewise, when Gareth writes:
We’re not afraid of funny people with brown skin, as the commetariate would so love to believe (it fits their stereotype of racist white Australians, after all). We just have a problem with asylum seekers paying asylum seekers to bring them to this country illegally, then being rewarded with a place ahead of equally (or more) deserving cases left wallowing in refugee camps around the world’s trouble spots.
If it had started out with “I’m not …” instead of “We’re not …”, then it would be undisputable. As it is, he’s claiming some kind of inside knowledge about the Australian people, just as his opponents are.
I think Tim’s response had some good points floating around in it without actually being made. He made a rather odd semantic challenge revolving around the difference between “little” and “a little”, which I thought was a bit unworthy and which unfortunately distracted his comment thread. I think the closest he came to distilling what he was saying was in the second-last paragraph:
Fear, according to Masson, is not what people feel when they confront these things. Fear is not permitted to enter our emotional vocabulary because for her to allow you your fear, she would obviously be “assigning fear to her fellow citizens,” the very thing she says it is wrong to do.
I think the vocabulary is the problem. I think that Sophie is probably right that the term gets thrown around a bit too much, but I think she’s wrong to assert that the people throwing it around never have a point to make. It might be that they could make it better by choosing a different word or using that one more advisedly.
When people talk about this government “stirring up fear”, or suchlike, I don’t think that they’re really trying to say that Australians are cowering behind closed doors, frightened to go out for fear that they they might inadvertently tread on the robes of a terrorist as they get on the tram. If that was what they were trying to say, then they’d be wrong, because clearly not too many Australians are doing those things, as Sophie points out. By and large, they’re going about their business as usual.
When we talk about homophobia, though, or xenophobia, we’re usually talking about fear of a different kind. I don’t think that most homophobes are inclined to dive behind a bush the moment they see a gay person coming. (Well, maybe they are, but for different reasons). Fear in that sense tends to describe ignorance or intolerance rather than actual fright. I don’t think that there has been a wholesale increase in the numbers of people who can’t sleep at night for fear of being anthraxed in their beds, but I do believe that there has been some retreat from tolerance.
I can see why it’s tempting to talk about fear rather than intolerance. It almost has the effect of making the intolerant view into an illness. If you describe someone as a homophobe, then it’s easy to link their intolerant views to some sort of deep-seated anxiety about their own sexuality, or something like that. Likewise, calling Pauline Hanson a xenophobe suggests that she’s frightened of outsiders in the same way that a kid might be frightened of a dog. Once she finds out that the Asian hordes won’t hurt her, she’ll soon get over it. On the one hand, it exhibits a sort of tolerant attitude towards intolerance (”Your intolerance is understandable because there are fears that you’re not aware of”), but on the other hand it’s kind of patronising, because it doesn’t engage the so-called phobic as an equal. It doesn’t allow for the possibility that the intolerant person’s views might just be an alternative way of looking at the world.
It might be a stretch to say that John Howard won the 2001 election because a frightened populace thought that only he could save them from a terrorist holocaust. But is it really that much of a stretch to imagine that the incumbent, seeing his election campaign on the ropes, might have seen the Tampa crisis and September-11 as an opportunity to woo the Hanson vote? Is it really just a coincidence that the public vilifaction of asylum seekers (of which the children overboard affair was only the most egregious example) began at around this time? Can you really take the fridge magnets at face value? You might not call it fear, but it seems to me that the Howard Government have sought to capitalise on something. Tribalism? Insularity? Intolerance? Nationalism? Maybe “fear” isn’t such bad descriptor after all.
Me and Rummy
Does the US need to fashion a broad, integrated plan to stop the next generation of terrorists? The US is putting relatively little effort into a long-range plan, but we are putting a great deal of effort into trying to stop terrorists. The cost-benefit ratio is against us! Our cost is billions against the terrorists’ costs of millions.
Do we need a new organisation?
How do we stop those who are financing the radical madrassa schools?
Is our current situation such that “the harder we work, the behinder we get”?
[…]
Should we create a private foundation to entice radical madrassas to a more moderate course?
What else should we be considering?
Parts of Rumsfeld’s memo echo fairly closely the ideas that I presented here. (And no, I’m not suggesting that Rummy lurks around here for his inspiration … ) The purpose of this post isn’t to marvel at the fact that the Defence Secretary and I might share some common ground. It’s to wonder whether he will find his questions dismissed as readily.
Out, Gadget Doubter!
John Quiggin posts disparagingly about the internet fridge. He can only see two possible uses for one: it could reorder its own contents from the supermarket, or it could act as a remote-control hub for household appliances. 
He rightly points out that both these things can be done fairly easily and cheaply without needing to build a computer into the door of the Kelvinator.
I think he’s a little unimaginative, though. Certainly, while internet fridges remain as expensive as they are, there will be cheaper ways of doing almost anything the fridge could do. But thinking about it, a fridge already has a power supply and a case, and with the costs of the other essential computer components coming down all the time, it’s not unreasonable to imagine that, at some stage, it might be almost as cheap to buy a fridge with a computer in it as it is to buy one without. If you think that sounds stupid, think about digital cameras in mobile phones (I understand that Nokia is soon going to stop making mobiles without a camera built in).
And who couldn’t use another computer, especially in the kitchen? Sticking one on the fridge door means that it doesn’t take up any extra bench space. You could watch the end of the cricket while you were getting dinner ready (handy for those late-finishing Perth tests). You could cook in unison with Jamie Oliver. You could blog while you blend, surf while you sautée. What could be more fun than that?
Issues with Legs
Academic journals are often as dry to look at as they are to read. The cover is usually just the title and the issue number, and maybe a list of the articles that edition contains. They have a sort of austere scholarliness about them, but rarely any flair. That’s why it’s nice to see that the editors of the Journal of Economic Entomology have put in that extra ten percent and really brought the latest issue to life:
Want to discover the economic value of the cockroach? You’ll just have to borrow the magazine and find out …
Good Leaves
I think it’s offensive. Dr Mahathir is retiring shortly. I think by and large I let his comments go through to the keeper. He’s made those sort of comments in the past. Let me make it clear – any indication of rivalry between Jews and Muslims is very unhelpful.
And Kevin Rudd responds:
Well, John Howard says that we should let these things go through to the keeper. Frankly, I think there are some things which can’t be left to go through to the keeper and when it comes to rank anti-Semitism and when it comes to the incitement of religious hatred and violence, these are two cases in point.
So John Howard in my view has an obligation to the Australian people and to the international community to respond to this, because you simply can’t leave these sorts of statements by Mahithir stand.
I think John Howard’s got it about right. He’s made it clear that he thinks the comments were wrong and offensive, so no-one could imagine that he agrees with them. But at the same time, he’s not going to get involved in a big diplomatic incident over it, which would only elevate the profile of anti-Semitic views, and in doing so please the fundamentalist nutcases no end. Mahathir’s views are transparently idiotic, such that they’re never going to have any traction with anyone who doesn’t already share them.
It’s occurred to me (in one of my lateral episodes) that if this dispute had happened in the blogosphere, Howard wouldn’t have had that option. He would have found himself besieged with indignant flamers asserting that it was closed-minded and ignorant for him to have dismissed Mahathir’s opinions without offering any evidence to support the position that the world is, in fact, not controlled by a scheming cadre of manipulative Jews. (Bear in mind that I’m imagining a blogosphere that’s big enough to encompass Mahathir supporters in large numbers - I doubt that the actual blogosphere is). Unless he was prepared to spend long hours and a lot of energy defending his convictions, he would have had to put up with his opponents declaring a moral victory.
You could argue that that’s a good thing. After all, opinions should be justified. When society changes itself for the better, it’s almost always because previously unchallenged assumptions have been successfully challenged. How is writing Mahathir off as a loony any different from writing off a suffragette or a civil rights activist in the same terms? By that reasoning, if Mahathir’s wrong, then he should be shown to be wrong in the clearest possible empirical terms. If you’re not willing and able to do that, then you should keep an open mind.
But who wants to spend hours on end digging around to find evidence to deny a global Jewish conspiracy? I bet that you could spend a month accumulating stuff, and when you’d done that and presented it to Mahathir, he’d either a) write you off as a loony, b) say that your evidence was biased by the ideological slant of its sources, c) deny that he’d said anything anti-Semitic in the first place, or d) all of the above. Any supporter who was either sufficiently indoctrinated or sufficiently nuts to believe Mahathir in the first place would be likely to remain unconvinced. In the end, it would just be a waste of resources.
I can think of a couple of responses to this. The first is that even if you didn’t convince anyone with your arguments, you’d be registering your disapproval, and if sufficiently large numbers of people did the same, the cumulative weight of their collective opinion could become a force for change. Which is fair enough, but if that’s the case, then the arguments themselves are immaterial. Every blog could become a sort of informal plebiscite. You could do away with the comments box and just have a voting button to say whether you agreed or disagreed, and it would be just as effective.
The second is to point out that constructive arguments do, in fact, take place in the blogosphere, and that they can at times be both rewarding and enlightening. The question is, how to sort the intelligent and thoughtful wheat from the abusive and reactionary chaff? Is it possible to tell in advance which comment threads are worth contributing to, as opposed to those where one might find oneself trapped in a downward spiral of futility and frustration? It is possible to test the resilience of a wall before banging one’s head against it?
I’ve made the mistake of being baited a few times recently, and it’s all been a waste of time and energy. When I don’t post to this blog for a week or so, it’s usually because I’ve become pissed off, frustrated and/or disenchanted with the whole business after another one of these encounters. I’m not about to try and preach to the blogosphere about how it should behave, so my only alternative if I want to keep enjoying this as a hobby is to more carefully filter the discussions in which I become involved. Inevitably, that’s going to mean dismissing a certain range of ideas as being too crazy to bother with. That’s dangerous in a way, because it means subscribing in some sense to the mainstream, to some sort of intellectual hegemony. Fringe ideas, which occasionally turn out to be good ones, might not get a look in. The alternative, though, is to spend my blogging life immersed in interminable debates about things that almost everyone takes for granted, which is as boring to read as it is frustrating to participate in. I think if I was the proponent of what I saw as a good fringe idea, I’d realise that I was up against majority opinion, and I’d start by trying to take account of common objections. That would have two effects: it would make it harder for my opponents just to dismiss me, and it would save them the trouble of having to research and restate what those common objections are.
I think it’s that attempt to address counter-arguments that should signal a position that’s worth paying attention to. Let’s say that X is a controversial, minority opinion. If someone says “I think X is right. Some people think X is wrong, but I can show that they’re mistaken because …”, then that’s a good start. If they just say “X is right because”, then that’s somewhat less likely to yield results. Worst of all, if they say “X is right and anyone who doesn’t believe it is [insert pejorative here]”, then it’s probably a good argument to steer clear of.
Hopefully with those sorts of guidelines in mind, I can successfully learn how to let a lot more stuff through to the keeper.
Spring
Latrobe University
Rugby Explained?
Rather than maintain an air of indifference like most other residents of the AFL states, I thought I’d solicit a bit of help with the rules so that I have some chance of understanding at least the basic elements of what’s going on in the RWC.
I think I more or less understand how Rugby League works, so it’s the differences that I’m keen to know about. I understand, for instance (and correct me if I’m wrong), that in Rugby League you get five tackles before you have to kick the ball. What’s the equivalent in Ruby Union? It seems that once someone gets tackled the ball just sort of dribbles around their feet until something happens. Does this count as a tackle as in RL or a down as in gridiron? And what’s with the throw-ins? Does the person throwing from the sideline have any incentive not to just chuck it to his own player? Why isn’t the umpire doing it?
Also, I’ve got no idea what the positions are all about. I’m assuming that the forwards are further forward and the backs are further back and the wingers are on the wings, but that’s about the extent of it.
I’m sure I’ll think of more things that need explaining as time goes by, but that’s a start. With any luck, I’ll soon be able to sit through a Rugby game and barely even think about the study I should be doing …
Nobel Endeavours
The Nobel Peace Prize has gone to Iranian reformer Shirin Ebadi. It seems to represent a kick in the nuts for the fundamentalist hardliners in her country, judging by the reaction of this bloke:
“The prize is a support for secular movements and against the ideals of the 1979 Islamic revolution,” said Hamid Reza Taraqi, a former legislator and member of the hard-line Islamic Coalition Society.
“The Norwegian Nobel Committee, against its original objectives of promoting peace, has turned into a political tool in the hand of foreigners to interfere in the internal affairs of our country,” Taraqi said yesterday.
Supporting domestic resistance movements is, of course, a great way of bringing about change without all the problems associated with direct intervention (particularly when the support comes in the form of peace prizes rather than arms supplies). The Nobel Committee has done a pretty admirable job in this regard - Lech Walesa, Desmond Tutu, The Dalai Lama, Aung San Suu Kyi, Rigoberta Menchu and Nelson Mandela are all recent examples of winners whose own governments would have been less-than-thrilled at the result (although Mandela won in post-apartheid years). I don’t know that the Nobel represented the turning point in any of their struggles, but the international attention and credibility can’t have hurt.