On Dit Magazine: Volume 78, Issue 10

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Editorial At this time of the year, it is virtually impossible to ignore the fact that with being a student comes the brutal necessity of now and then doing some study. If On Dit were a responsible publication, we would play into that. We should have bought you articles of high-achieving students to fill you with motivation. We should have left helpful little study hints littered throughout our borders, and banished all thought of foreign lands and the wider world.

In fact, On Dit is not a responsible publication, and in this, the work-filled middle of semester, we bring you nought but escapism. Through literature and music. Through foreign travels and global issues. Through local intrigue and academic scandal. Ultimately, we promise not to remind you again of the assignments that await you once you tear yourself away from On Dit's pages.

Dearest readers, good luck. We'll see on the other side of the term holidays.

Forever yours, Myriam (& Connor & Mateo)

editors: Connor O'Brien, Myriam Robin, Mateo Szlapek-Sewillo cover image: Danny Brookes layout: Connor O'Brien

On Dit is an Adelaide University Union publication.

The opinions expressed within are not necessarily those of the editors, the University of Adelaide, or the Adelaide University Union.

CINEMAS FEATURE THE LIFE (AND DEATH?) OF THE CHELSEA

2

CAMPUS NEWS SCHOOL OF DESIGN SLIPS UP

8

CRIME & PUNISHMENT JESSE DOYLE GETS SCAMMED!

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IN THE CITY STEPHEN YARWOOD, LORD MAYOR CONTENDER

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CULTURE VIDEO GAMES, THE SARTORIALIST, BAND NAMES

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SICK SAD WORLD MONSANTO, CORRUPTION IN INDIA

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EVEN MORE CULTURE! ELECTRONIC MUSIC ODYSSEY

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COLUMNISTS MAGIC AND TEQUILA!

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oors? d r i e h t losing c s a m e n old ci r u o e r a Why

E H T F O T H G I L I W T DEN AGE GOL

ster nnett-Li e K y r o R Kohn Words, s, Haley h p a r g o Phot

If you’re anything like me, a lacklustre commitment to yard maintenance inevitably condemns your weekly Messenger newspaper to a life of slow decay amidst the innumerable sour sops, rapacious thistles and rusty beer caps. However, if you subscribe to a more regimented approach, on sliding your folded paper from its dewy bag in early 2009, you may have noticed the tremors of discontent at the proposed sale of the Chelsea Cinema.

Regardless of your style of garden upkeep, chances are you’ve heard something about it by now. The sale has acted as a conduit for general discontentment with the Burnside Council, with allegations of bullying, corruption and greed leveled at it. Most recently, the State Ombudsman has called for the sale to be halted pending his independent review into it.

The epicentre of this dissatisfaction has been the Save the Chelsea Action Group (which collapses rather clumsily to the STCAG) a grassroots group of residents concerned for the future of the historic cinema. Riding a wave of public support for their cause, STCAG have made numerous official complaints about the conduct of the Burnside Council’s handling of the issue. And somewhat more dramatically the Group led a storming of a Council meeting, climbing on tables and demanding a right to be heard by the councillors. But why all the fuss?

The Chelsea sits at 275 Kensington Road, in the centre of Eastern suburbs affluence, walking distance from Kensington Park and Pembroke School. It holds the obtuse, but nonetheless noteworthy honour of being the oldest Art Deco cinema in the southern

hemisphere. Built in 1925, the complex has operated continuously until now, which, in a world of fast openings and faster closings, is an achievement in itself. Originally trading as the Princess Theatre, it changed hands in 1928 and was subsequently named the Marryatville Ozone Cinema. In a prescient move the ozone name was dropped sometime in the forties (about when CFCs were really getting their destruction on) and the cinema became the Chelsea.

But it is not just the Cinema’s age that has people up in arms against its demise. If you are unaware of Art Deco as a movement, allow me to provide a vastly inadequate, ad hoc explanation of the style. Arising out of the mélange of modernity in early 20th century France, Art Deco was not propelled by the broader philosophical ideology that typified other modern design movements but was instead concerned with achieving a simpler aesthetic ideal. As demonstrated by wellknown examples like the Chrysler Building in New York and the Hoover Factory in London, buildings in the style subscribed to repetition of geometric shapes, a stripping back of finicky ornamentation in favour of streamlined, flowing detailing and an endeavour to achieve a vision of modernity. Of course, what makes such buildings so charming now is that this very attempt for a conceptualised ideal of the

future keeps them in the past, so recognisable as a relic.

Designed by C.A. Smith, the Chelsea — like much of the Art Deco architecture in Adelaide — with its cream, curved walls, understated reliefs and streamlined detailing, demonstrates the more minimalist end of the scale (for other examples, look above the shop fronts along the western end of Rundle St). The interior stays true to the style, though it is worth noting that the current incarnation of the Cinema is not actually the original design. The Chelsea’s internal structures underwent significant refurbishment in 1941, when, amongst other things, decorative plaster mouldings were added to the ceiling.

A search of the State Heritage Register — a database of all State Heritage Places (SHP) and Local Heritage Places (LHP) — reveals that it is not just concerned residents of Burnside that value the Chelsea. The Cinema is recognised as a SHP, which affords it the highest level of protection offered under the Heritage Places Act 1993 (SA). After briefly summarising the notable features and history of the place, the Register rather charmingly concludes: Hence it is significant both as a rare example of an Art Deco cinema and for being a notable example of an intact cinema

interior representing an era when cinemagoing was a major recreational activity and impressive cinema interiors were part of making a night at the pictures a memorable experience.

(What I love about this is that it implicitly recognises that “impressive cinema interiors” are no longer part of making “a night at the pictures a memorable experience.” Now, gaudy slabs of colour, dorky goggles and popcorn more expensive than the ticket price make a memorable night).

What is interesting about the whole Chelsea Cinema fiasco is that given the Cinema’s protection as a SHP, public sentiment against the sale has been strong. If you can forgive a little legal discussion, the protection of the Cinema under the Heritage Places Act means that by virtue of provisions in the Development Act 1993 (SA) any alteration to the Chelsea that “materially affects” its “heritage character” will require development approval under the latter Act. Without getting into too much mind-numbing detail, any such approval would be dependent on public notification of the proposed development, and the consideration of any representations for or against it. An independent body, the Development Assessment Commission, would grant or deny any development approval.

The existence of such stringent controls begs the question as to why public outcry has been so great. Is it fear that once in private hands it is only a matter of time before it is demolished and a multi-mega-maxi piece of excrement is squeezed out in its place? Or is there some other motivation behind the unrest?

Unfortunately for those fond of certainty, the answer is a complicated ‘sort of’ or, perhaps, ‘maybe’. As STCAG representative Andrew Phillips acknowledges, the Cinema’s architectural merit is a major reason for public support of stasis. But he argues that to view

the public reaction as purely motivated by aesthetics is to miss the point: “More than that…there is a significant and very important cultural heritage dimension…The Chelsea was and continues to be an important social recreational venue. People have many memories of positive experiences at the Chelsea so it’s not surprising that they have developed an emotional attachment to the place.”

Emotional attachment is fertile soil for passionate reactions. It seems that when this fondness for the Chelsea was combined with the perceived shitty behaviour of the Burnside Council, it proved powerful fertiliser for the flowers of discontent. Many in the Burnside community are of the opinion that the Council has failed to act in the open, accountable and honest way that is expected of local government (restrain guffaws here).

Phillips states that in October 2009 the STCAG organised two public meetings at the Chelsea where a resolution was past, requesting overwhelmingly that the sale of the Chelsea be abandoned, at least until the after the next Council election (in September of this year). Phillips says, “This resolution was communicated to the Council by way of a STCAG deputation to the October 2009 Council meeting but derided by the dominant Council faction in favour of the sale.”

Then, as Phillips tells it, the factional group supporting the sale (and presumably against a decision made by the public as a whole) got devious: “An identical motion to the STCAG Chelsea public meeting resolution was nominated in writing by email as a motion on notice by Councillor Jacobsen (one of the few Councillors in favour of putting the sale to public vote) on the October 2009 agenda.

It never made it onto the agenda, having miraculously disappeared from Burnside CEO Neil Jacobs’ material universe.” The motion was eventually ‘found’ and put on the agenda just minutes before the meeting was due to

start.

By the time the November 2009 Council meeting came around, this, combined with the perceived disregard of the majority of the Council for its constituents, resulted in a bevy of belligerent Burnsiders. Phillips states that “the Mayor and dominant faction of Councillors in their actions and behaviour inflamed an already tense and volatile situation.” Thus, those opposed to the sale were provoked into storming the chamber. Police were called, but civility was restored before they arrived.

As Phillips recollects, “the chamber occupation incident was regrettable but not without considerable provocation over a number of months.”

Since then, from the outside, things have simmered down. But STCAG and concerned Burnside residents have continued to make complaints as to the Council’s actions and agitate for independent review of the decision. And in part, they have been successful.

As of August 24, the SA Ombudsman will be conducting an independent review of the Council’s compliance with the various legislative processes and requirements concerned with the sale.

Details are sketchy, but in a letter to Burnside Mayor Wendy Greiner, Ombudsman Richard Bingham outlines that “information provided to me…shows possible breaches of the Local Government Act 1999… In these circumstances, I have formed a provisional view that to continue with the sale process would be contrary to the public interest, and unreasonable and wrong within the meaning of section 25(1)(b) and (g) of the Ombudsman Act 1972.”

So where does that leave the situation? Any decision on the sale has been postponed until after the Ombudsman has conducted his investigation. Given that the Council goes

into caretaker mode on September 7th, in all likelihood, no decision will be made until after the local government elections. This could mean a new Council. Therefore, it would require someone with more foresight than myself to make any bold predictions.

There are still only two bidders, the STCAG (who want to keep the Chelsea in community hands) and the Maras Group in conjunction with Palace Nova Cinemas. Phillips informs me that much of the funding behind the STCAG’s bid came from a “generous, anonymous Burnside resident.” Even with silk-stocking support, it seems unlikely that the STCAG will be able to meet the buying power of the Maras Group, who own property throughout Adelaide, including the Palace Nova sites.

So if the sale goes ahead, the City of Burnside could see a Palace Nova Cinema setting up shop. And is that really such a bad thing? In a press release on 25 August the Palace Nova Group stated, “we have always intended to retain the historic Chelsea building, in one piece, including keeping the auditorium in its current (whole) form.” The Group plan to build more screens, but on property adjacent the original and “in sympathy to the grandeur of the existing building.” While it would be a brave/stupid person to take a developer at their word, this proposal sounds promising, both in its treatment of the historic building and in its potential to bring a broader range of films to the iconic institution. The Group has also proposed “to make the cinema available, free of charge, for a number of charities, schools and other organisations and provide a multitude of valuable discounts and concessions.”

While time will tell whether these promises eventuate, all things considered, I’m praying for the Palace.

DESIGN

FAULT. Is the Adelaide University School of Design failing its students?

Words, Stamatina Hasiotis

At a tender age, we are supposed to make some of the most important decisions of our lives: what do we want to do with our future, and consequently, what will we study at university? We fret over which preference to put first, scanning the copious listings of bachelor degrees, comparing universities’ rankings and prerequisites. Then we then spend months worrying about whether or not we will achieve a high enough TER to be accepted into our degree, or even our preferred university for that matter. But say all goes according to plan and we get accepted into our dream degree, how do we know if it will turn out as we planned?

Many students of the School of Architecture, Landscape Architecture and Urban Design (SALUD) are not getting what they expected.

Now they are banding together to raise awareness of the school’s dropping standards in the hope that it can be restored.

The school’s undergraduate program, the Bachelor of Design Studies, integrates subjects in architecture, landscape architecture, urban design and digital media. In third year, students select a major area of focus (e.g. architecture), before specialising in a single or multiple fields as part of a professional Masters degree. But students in the undergraduate program are becoming increasingly agitated with the school’s facilities, student-staff ratios, range of subjects on offer, as well as the teaching quality, claiming they are under-skilled by the time they graduate and are therefore disadvantaged for the Masters programs.

When it comes to practical experience, one year at Uni SA = 3 years at Adelaide Uni With over 100 students graduating at the end of this year, it appears many of them are not equipped with the necessary skills. The current Design Studies program has little emphasis on design process, and currently runs very few studios – a fundamental aspect of any design program. Currently, final year

undergraduate students experience their second ever studio in their final semester of study. This compares to UniSA’s third year students, who by this stage will be in their sixth. Not surprisingly, many students interested in transferring to UniSA or interstate have been cautioned that they will need to catch up before they should consider entering Masters. “Several figures at UniSA’s School of Architecture have mentioned that graduates from Adelaide’s 3 year program should keep in mind that their skill set is equivalent to those of a second year Uni SA student. And interstate it’s exactly the same story,” says one student.

The elective subjects are also weak on design, students claim. There are only two architecture-related electives on offer in third year, neither of which have a major design emphasis. Not surprisingly, students majoring in architecture are forced to undertake electives in other disciplines – landscape, digital media or others outside of the school – again, few of which have any design emphasis.

But what of the core subjects? Currently, there is minimal contemporary theory, so students know very little about current design practice.

And the major subjects which do have design agendas have so much content to squeeze in that there is no way students are able come

out with a firm grasp on major concepts. For example, the third year Architecture Design Studio combines construction, theory and a studio format into a single 6-unit subject, whereas at any other university those same topics would be taught as standalone subjects.

There is now talk of major restructuring of the undergraduate program, and a reorganisation of the school’s resources, which many students see as a good thing. Recently however, it was quietly announced that the Masters of Digital Design would be dropped at the end of 2010, leaving a number of students in a very difficult situation.

Adelaide is one of the few schools in Australia not to have permanent studio classrooms for all year levels, no major gallery space, no laser cutter printer, nor basic computer software such as InDesign or V-Ray. A studio trip to Penang was cancelled at the last minute due to insufficient funds in the school, which left many students – counting on the program units – in an undesirable position.

“The facilities are abysmal”

In response to this decision, the Dean of the Faculty of Professions, Pascale Quester, has said, “We shall ensure that no student is disadvantaged by the recent decision.” And while individual issues may have been resolved as part of this move, students hoping to enter the program have nonetheless encountered a significant HECS loan and a three year degree that has provided them with very little in the way of digital design skills.

Budget Cuts

The number one issue facing the school is the lack of studio classrooms. Students are unable to spend more than a few hours in any one room before the next class arrives, meaning that many choose not to produce work at university. This has had a big impact on the learning environment, and not surprisingly very few studios can be offered for any longer.

The school has nowhere near enough computers - a critical issue for an increasingly digitalised profession. And those that are offered are often substandard and without the right range of software (although it is understood that this will be addressed by 2011).

It is understood that in 2010 the school received a cut in funding, in spite of record student enrollment numbers and reduction in classroom numbers. This has had a big impact on the way classes operate, and the school cannot afford to purchase vital equipment necessary for contemporary design practice.

“The doubling of first year students should have at least brought with it additional teaching space, extra computers and a larger workshop, but unfortunately none of these changes have happened,” says one student. “First year students had a number of tutorials cancelled this year and they were squeezed into al-

ternative existing tutorial groups pushing staff to student ratios way up.” There are no visual communication courses, and only basic Photoshop is taught. And with the Learning Hub development, the school’s building now largely operates as a campus thoroughfare.

“This wouldn’t be such a problem, except the majority of our presentations take place in the corridor because they don’t have enough rooms to accommodate the large intake of students”, one student comments. “Even though it’s the Architecture department, we don't get priority in using our own facilities,” comments another.

“The list of tuition inadequacies is long.”

Students believe that the underfunding of the school, poor facilities and record enrolment numbers are driving staff away. Two key school staff members have quit in the last three months, with more rumoured to be leaving in the near future.

Evidently, the school’s funding has affected everything about the school and its teaching.

“Previously, model-making courses were run for first year students by professional architects… but this year it is being run by third year students because they are paid at a lower rate than staff members”, one student claims.

Students believe the school’s position is deterring professionals from teaching too.

Hope for the future Students across all year levels want change, and now they are teaming together to let university officials know that the current standard is not good enough.

Danny Brookes is the undergraduate representative for the Faculty of Professions and the Institute of Architects student representative for Adelaide University. He has been coordinating meetings with senior staff and students, and so far the response has been encouraging, he claims. “I have had discussions with many students about a range of issues in the design school. I am confident that the constructive feedback we have provided the Acting Head of School with, as well as other staff members, will be seriously taken on board. I think this is an extremely positive process to be part of.”

The school is currently recruiting a new Head of School, and also has a new Director of the Design Studies degree. Other new recruits, already running third and first year studios, are starting to “bring new life to the school”, one student claims. “There are a lot of good things about Adelaide Uni’s design school, there are some outstanding staff… there’s just been a big lapse in funding and upgrading of facilities and it seems like no one’s said anything about it. It’s time for change”

The Yahoo Boys

Jesse Doyle, on getting scammed.

There are approximately three conceivable ways to get rich in this world without breaking a sweat: striking lucky with a lotto ticket, marrying a merchant banker or inheriting a fortune from that long lost Nigerian cousin you never met.

Scammers understand this better than anyone, and for quite some time have been making a pretty penny off society’s obsession with getting rich quick. Ultimately they know that these types of scams have a fast approaching expiry date on them. The more people that fall victim to their ways, the further the word spreads of their trickery and the less likely people are to fall for it. They are the agents of their own demise. They constantly have to reinvent, reshape and repackage new and more cunning versions of the same scam in order to find victims.

I’ve always been the first to laugh at the ‘easy to fleece’. If you’re willing to send thousands of dollars to someone you’ve never met, as far as I’m concerned you deserved what you had coming for you. That’s why I was left feeling so goddamn dumbstruck when I realised an unknown lady in Salt Lake City, Utah had just fleeced my broke ass for a quarter of a year’s worth of Centrelink payments.

It all started in New York City. I’d packed my bags and headed on exchange to the Big Apple knowing that my fortnightly Centrelink payments weren’t quite going to cut it on the isle of Manhattan. My visa didn’t allow me to work so; I was either to embrace the idea of poverty or try to find myself some under the table work. I decided to opt for the latter. I scoured Craigslist (the American version of Gumtree)

until I stumbled upon a tutoring position. It was perfect - short, simple and well-paid for what it was. The guy who was to employ me was from Iowa. He was sending his elevenyear old son across to New York for the spring and I was to be in charge of his learning. The price? 800 large. Over the coming weeks we worked out every little detail: where, when, what and how I was going to tutor him.

A month later I received a cheque in the mail. It was for $3,400. I figured the father has made a mistake, so I got in contact with him and he explained that he’d be leaving the country in the next day or two and hadn’t had a chance to arrange his son’s flights. He wanted me to deposit the cheque, keep my $800 and send the rest forward to the child’s step-mum in Salt Lake City so that she could organise his trip with the funds. It immediately started to sound a little suss. My rip-off radar was on red alert. Nevertheless, I deposited the cheque and it went through. I waited a couple of days and then sent the $2600 forward to Utah. The following day I got a call from Chase Manhattan Bank informing me that the cheque I had deposited was actually a fake and that my bank balance was well and truly in the negative. To add insult to injury, they expected me to pay it off in the following weeks.

There’s no way to really describe the feeling

of discovering you’ve just been duped. It’s like the whole world momentarily stops, just to point its finger at you and laugh profusely in your face. I felt dim-witted and dejected.

My first port of call was the NYPD. I told them what had happened but, to my dismay it appeared there was some truth in what The Strokes had proclaimed about New York City Cops eight years earlier. They didn’t seem to get the whole idea of being scammed online. It seemed hopeless trying to explain.

I soon after sent a letter to Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase pleading him to show some compassion and cancel out the debt.

I have no doubt he never saw the letter but, what his secretary sent back was nevertheless amusing. It went something along the lines of “I understand your situation in its entirety and feel deeply sorry for you but, due to the Global Financial Crisis we are unable to assist you in this difficult time - all the best in repaying it.”

Why thank you Mr. Dimon, I’m glad to hear you and your multi-million dollar salary feel ‘deeply sorry’ for me. There was one last hope - Frank Abagnale Jr., former cheque forger/ scammer extraordinaire of Catch Me If You Can fame. A friend had told me that he’d set up a consultancy firm to deal with this very type of incident. I got in contact with him and he gave me the best piece of advice I’ve heard from anyone to date: ‘Don’t pay the debt.’ He said it was too small an amount of money for Chase Manhattan Bank to really kick up a fuss over.

So, I spent the next couple of months satisfied in following his advice. But still the fact that someone was lavishly spending all that money somewhere halfway across the country slowly started to eat away at me. I did have an address on the back of the envelope that the cheque

arrived in. It was deep in suburban Des Moines. Summer break was fast approaching and so, I decided to head across the Midwest to Iowa. I hadn’t quite figured out what I was going to do when I found this guy, I just knew I had to find him.

I slowly made my way across the northern states – through the urban ghost town of Detroit, across Indiana, up to Chicago and finally westward and into the heart of rural America – Iowa. I pulled up outside the address, a 6”2 Eastern European man emerged. He was my height but built like a proverbial brick house.

I told him my tale and he started to get quite emotional. It turns out he’d had his identity hijacked by a scamming ring and thousands of false documents sent out under his name.

He’d been receiving death threats to his home almost daily from victims of scams that he’d supposedly duped. The FBI had even thought he was in on the act, and taken him away for interrogation only to discover he too was a victim. But a victim of whom?

This is where The Yahoo Boys come in – young, talented and with little prospect of finding decently paid work, they turn to the world of internet scamming. They do so for many of the same reasons that people fall for their scams - to get rich quick. They now form a global network operating out of many different parts of the world but the hub of their operations remains Festac Town, a derelict neighbourhood hanging to the outskirts of Lagos, Nigeria. Each day they send out thousands of e-mails. Only a few are ever replied to, but this is all they need. Each reply could potentially mean more than the equivalent of a month’s wages in Nigeria. Their scams are far from original. In fact they’re a rehashed version of the Spanish Prisoner scam that

originated during the 19th century, whereby victims were convinced to invest money in helping release a wealthy individual from prison for a generous reward that never eventuated. In Nigeria, the boom in scamming coincided with the 1980s oil glut, which near destroyed the country’s economy. In the wake of this economic crisis and resulting chronic job shortage, many University graduates became immersed in the world of scamming.

Ever since, it appears to have been a growth sector in the economy. The amount they con victims into sending varies. For some it can be hundreds, for others it can be their entire savings. In 2003, a 72-year-old pensioner from the Czech Republic was conned into sending his life savings forward to Nigeria for an ‘oilinvestment project’. Upon learning that the money could not be retrieved from a senior diplomat at the Nigerian embassy in Prague, he withdrew an automatic weapon and shot dead the bearer of bad news. Others resort to taking their own life. Leslie Fountain, a senior technician at Anglia Polytechnic University in England, set himself on fire after falling victim to a scam. The effect it can have upon victims and their families can be devastating.

Unfortunately, for victims there is little the authorities can do in the way of locating and prosecuting The Yahoo Boys. They use dis-

posable e-mail accounts, fake addresses and internet cafes to fuel their clandestine operations. For many victims, the only way of acting upon their frustration has emerged in a form of internet vigilantism known as ‘scam baiting’ – a movement with an underlying altruistic motive. It involves wasting scammer’s time by pretending that you’ve been hooked. In doing so, scam baiters hope they are preventing potential victims from being conned.

There is even a site dedicated to the practice titled 419eater.com. So, if you’re not too sure on what to do this break, put your plans to volunteer overseas on hold and think about taking up scam baiting. You might just even save a gullible uni student from going into bankruptcy.

D O O W R A Y E TH TITY N E ID

od

r wo h on-Smit nder, Stephen Ya d r o G x Ale nte Mayor co d r o L n o

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As I write this the majority of Adelaide University students would have voted in both the State and Federal elections, some students having their first taste of the Australian brand of democracy.

Some might find that their first taste of the electoral system has left bitterness in their mouths as Australia copes with its first hung parliament in some sixty years, others though might feel empowered that we have finally shown our political leaders that there isn’t much choice between them. As I write, there are two more elections this year that are going to affect our lives as students, and one thing is for certain, they are going to be overshadowed by the after effects of what has been Australian political history in the making.

The first time we will be asked back to the polls is for the student elections of both the Adelaide University Union (AUU) and Student Representative Council (SRC) between August 30th and September 3rd.

Following this will be the Local Council elections, the forefront of which is the Adelaide City council elections. Only Adelaide residents, including international students, can vote, provided had they registered to vote before the 13th of August or were already on the State roll.

The Adelaide City Council elections are specifically important is because they play a significant role in the decision making of our city’s business and cultural future.

Local council elections are notorious for being ignored by the general public, with a mere six thousand people voting in the last Adelaide City election. That’s only 30% of all potential voters, and a majority of those who do vote are over forty. To be fair to the public though, the only main-

stream media that really deals with the local elections is The Messenger, which varies in quality from council to council and is to a large extent ignored by younger people. With a lack of media comes a lack of familiarity with firstly the election itself and most importantly the candidates running. Ignorance turns to indifference and ultimately people are unaware of who is elected let alone what powers they have to govern over council citizens. It seemed as though candidates were content with their lack of familiarity to their voting public, until Stephen Yarwood.

During his Lord Mayoral campaign, Yarwood, a former urban planner and current city councillor, has generated a buzz around himself that continues to grow. People, including uni students, are beginning to take notice of the council elections for the first time, invigorated by the refreshing ideas of Yarwood who, if elected will be the youngest ever Lord Mayor of Adelaide at 39. Those ideas include the implementation of Copenhagen style bicycle lanes, the vocal and council budget support of the Renew Adelaide initiative (featured in issue 7 of this year’s On Dit), the increasing of the city’s wi-fi capability, an increase in CBD public transport infrastructure, more support for the arts (including street art) and a push for more multicultural festivals that can be held in the Victoria square redevelopment. Through sites such as Facebook and Twitter as well as an ongoing blog, Yarwood has been able to open himself to the public, encouraging dialogue on any issue people seem fit to broach with him as well as being able to promote his views for Adelaide’s future. “I am highly technologically literate,” he says of his use of

social networking sites as well as his encouragement to double the city’s wi-fi hot spots.

“I think Adelaide is at that point in time when we are either going to be a new city or an old city”, Stephan says of our capital, “We’re about the 350th biggest city Above: Cycling lines in Copenhagen. Yarwood is looking to implein the world, competment a system of 'Copenhagen-style' lanes in Adelaide. ing in a global economy which is going to be based on new dollars a year and road congestion will industries of creative industry, informacost us $30 billion by the year 2025. I’m tion industry and sustainability and we just calling for common sense.” Yarwood are well placed to be a part of that, but sees Adelaide implementing a system we need leadership that understands the of bicycle tracks similar to the ones in contemporary issues that cities face”. As Copenhagen where bikes, cars and pedesthe global economy grows and with it the trians have been integrated into a workpopulation, it is infrastructural innovaing cohesion that sees bikes as a separate tion and cultural vibrancy that will see form of transport with their own lanes and a city thrive, something that Adelaide traffic signals. The Adelaide City Counhas threatened to do but can never quite cil has toyed with this style of bike lane accomplish. Issues such as developin the past and as we speak are spending ment versus heritage versus environaround $100,000 ripping them up to be ment seem to keep the city in a state of replaced with thirty car parking spaces, bureaucratic inertia. Asked what power at the behest of local traders. Yarwood the Lord Mayor actually has to combat all comments that this project was doomed this, Yarwood says “I don’t see the Lord because of its lack of integration with the Mayor as a position of power, I see it as current traffic set up and wasn’t in the a position of influence… It’s the ability true Copenhagen style. It’s a message to drive cultural change within the comthat seems to resonate with some of the munity, a thought leadership role”. Some residents who are trying to petition the of the cultural change Yarwood talks of is council to redevelop the beleaguered bike Australia’s reliance on cars and how some lane rather than get rid of it. of the world’s leading cities in Europe are virtually car free. “I’m not anti-car”, he quickly points out, “But as Australians, physical inactivity will cost us $15 billion

A common thread throughout Stephen Yarwood’s visions for the city is an em-

phasis on sustainability, not only to help the environment but also the economy.

“Sustainability is arguably the biggest growth industry of the 21st century”.

Some sustainability propositions of his include installing solar panels on the Central Market, creating a sustainable power grid for an electric car network and discussion into the potential of storm water collection in the CBD. “We must transition to a sustainable city, and if we do that well we can export that to the world for economic gain… If we resist change, I can see us becoming an irrelevant brand in the modern economy”. Whilst it is very apparent that a change to sustainable living is necessary simply for longevity, it will be very hard for Adelaide to get to a stage where sustainability can become a commodity. The city isn’t alone, and is already decades behind such places as Israel and Singapore in terms of reclaimed water. Cities in Western and Northern Europe are already well ahead in developing sustainable urban infrastructure. Even in Australia, Adelaide doesn’t bode well, being named the country’s 14th most sustainable city, behind all the capital cities except Perth. A common note of interest though, throughout the lists of the world’s most sustainable cities is the vision and the efforts of specific Mayors transforming a city’s outlook toward the future.

Yarwood claims to be the first paper-free Australian politician, using a touch screen notepad in council meetings and receiving all reports electronically. He also states that he is not affiliated with any political party. But the man is a politician. He has become very media savvy, featuring in news reports connected with arts and change, with posed photos upon bikes or

next to street art. His polispeak is also of note with a range of buzz phrases used to sell his ideas. While he contends that he doesn’t have an ego, I don’t think it’s possible to become a successful politician without one. The key is whether the ego comes across as arrogance or charisma.

Yarwood does have his memorised list of personal achievements which he spouts out after every point or so, but it seems a necessary evil in combating an election, one I don’t think anyone in a campaign can deny. One thing that does speak of Yarwood’s sense of co-operation is his willingness to converse with anyone who has a question or an idea about the future of Adelaide and his ideas for it. He commits to this by posting his email and phone number on his blog, website and Facebook.

In the upcoming month or so Yarwood will battle it out with three main candidates: former state Labour deputy Ralph Clarke; former teacher Anne Moran; and businessman Francis Wong, all fellow councillors. In a statement from the Property Council about the upcoming Mayoral election, they said, “Adelaide’s next Lord Mayor will need to act quickly to harness momentum for change in the CBD and to continue to build the critical social infrastructure that will create a vibrant city that appeals to widening demographic.”

Whilst the ideas of the other candidates for the future of Adelaide remain unclear, it would seem that Yarwood is taking the front foot.

“I’m not trying to do anything to appeal to you guys, I’m just doing the best I can at what I love. If people want change, we need to make the difference together”.

Gamer's Thumb Nick Schaedel on the art and science of reviewing videogames.

Illustrations by Chloe McGregor.

I’ve reviewed games for years. I started writing for a little Australian gaming website as a hobby. I think the first article I wrote was back in February 2004, and since then I’ve come to run a website myself instead of writing for someone else. I’d like to think in that time I’ve also sharpened my analytical prowess, and now possess the ability to specifically identify aspects of media that I dislike for the purposes of criticism (it’s a blessing, and a curse). But is there something fundamentally different between reviewing videogames and reviewing films or music? Is there something I’d have to teach a novice videogame critic that is different to film or music criticism?

There are two key differences, I think.

The first relates to the critic’s interaction with the product, while the second relates to the obstacle of time investment.

So, to the former: the inescapable difference between static media like films or music and pliable media like videogames is that as an audience to the former you are passive viewer, while in the latter you are an active participant. As a result, the videogame critic is not merely responsible for assessing the presented product, but ensuring that the product is presented at all. Where the viewing of a film or hearing of a CD requires no learned ability on the reviewer’s part, in order to review a game, the critic must have the physical skills to complete the experience. There is a burden placed on you to perform.

In a CD review you can decide (albeit ideally after multiple listens and reflection) that you dislike a song, and move on. In a game, if you dislike a level or mission, the question is not merely “is this part unenjoyable?”, but “am I not enjoying it because I am not good at it?”. Am I not skilled enough at this type of gameplay?

Have I not spent enough time levelling up to beat this stage? Am I tired, or distract-

ed? For example, a year or two ago I was reviewing F.E.A.R. 2, a game that’s was a bit out of my comfort zone, and as the name warns, I was getting freaked out. I had to finish the game, but was faced with the unusual limitation of only wanting to play in daylight. Sad but true.

Of course, not unlike with static media, personal preferences play a role too.

Some people don’t like horror films, or electronic music. Likewise, others prefer adventure or puzzle games to first-person shooters or massively multiplayer online games. As a critic, you’re forced to be objective about the product you review, and must attempt to put your own proclivities aside. Could a homophobe respect the filmmaking of Brokeback Mountain, or someone over forty enjoy Scott Pilgrim vs. The World without the innate geek knowledge of those born in the 1980s?

You’d like to hope so, and as a critic, it is important to try.

For example, when presented with a title like EA’s Madden 2011, I’m faced with a particular challenge. First, it’s an American Football game – a sport with which I’m entirely unfamiliar. Second, I have no

particular interest in the simulation sport genre – it usually takes some banana peels and green shells for me to take any notice whatsoever. And finally, it’s one of those franchises that are updated yearly, mostly to account for roster changes and to tweak a feature here or there.

In these sorts of situations all you can do is fall back on the technical aspects of the product. You can’t say whether it is an accurate representation of the sport, but you can say if it glitches or is unintuitive to operate. You just have to be honest about your minimal experience of the activity, and discuss whether you were able to enjoy yourself regardless. Bluffing your way through, relying on Wikipedia to fill you in and hoping to sound like you know what you’re talking about just makes you look pathetic to anyone that knows the sport. Not to mention you’re doing your readers a disservice.

Now, to the other major difference between videogames and films: the amount of time you have to sink into a review. A CD is over in forty minutes; a film, two hours. A good game’s single player campaign should take at least twelve hours, and there may be side missions, multiplayer modes and downloadable content to examine too. In a game, you can literally be playing for the equivalent of a season of television. Obviously, the game critic’s time investment must be much higher.

With the pressure to get a review out early to capitalise on Internet buzz and traffic, there’s almost an obligation to push through a title instead of luxuriating in it at a typical pace. While there are games that you’ll want to play to all hours of the night, there’s a risk of losing the fun factor when powering through a smaller title,

and this could unfairly colour a review.

No film or music critic fast-forwards through a product or skips ‘side-quests’, for which there is really no appropriate analogy.

The trouble is that where you can happily sit through an average film made by Michael Bay, or an average album from The Killers, sitting through an average videogame is a tougher task. The industry has developed to a point where you can reasonably expect the big name development studios to deliver a certain quality of product that the smaller houses just can’t match with the resources they have. These games are not intrinsically bad, and you can have some fun with them. But unlike a film, where you can happily sit through ninety minutes of explosions, having to play through ten hours of a game that constantly reminds you that it isn’t as good as the Call of Dutys or Mass Effects of the world can be torturous. And then when analysing it, it’s hard to actually pick apart the few problems it has rather than just point to its bigger (budget) brother.

It’s fair to say that film and music are more similar to each other than they are to games – a positioning that is mirrored by the analytical styles of their respective critics. I’d even inch my neck out a bit as to say that videogame reviewers must put in more time and effort than other critics.

Of course, the elite writers in other media will scoff and derisively explain that we just don’t get it, and perhaps that’s fair.

But at the end of the day, a review is just one person’s opinion – and nothing to get upset over.

And, hey, it’s all just wank anyway.

Illustration by Chloe McGregor.

T I R I P S T E E STR rialist. o t r a S e n on th i k n o T b Se

When On Dit’s editors emailed me about writing a piece on the Sartorialist, they said they wanted a culture writer who wasn’t fashionable. ‘Oh. Thanks,’ I thought.

But I accepted the implication (ultimately I’m still a two-jackets, two-jumpers, two-pairs-of-jeans kinda guy), and it’s in my ‘cultured but unfashionable’ capacity that I approach a certain very-much-fashionable website. (cont.)

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The Sartorialist (thesartorialist.com) is the blogging project of fashion director turned street photographer Scott Schuman. He travels the world, digital camera in hand, and takes photos of people he sees – often his friends and associates, but also ‘regular people’ whose style he admires. One of the first fashion bloggers when the Sartorialist began in 2005, Schuman’s since made many a wave in both the fashion and online media worlds. Every photo he posts gets upwards of one hundred comments, and the banner of his site proudly proclaims his position in ‘Time Magazine’s Top 100 Design Influencers’. So, it’s got cred.

It’s a ‘big deal’. But what does it have to offer us unfashionables?

First up, I think the basic premise of the Sartorialist is a good one. I don’t think I’m alone in sometimes viewing the fashion world as a sort of distant fortress occupied by models and designers and nobody else. Focusing instead on what actual people are wearing out on actual streets isn’t really a new conceit, but it’s still an admirable one. These are people who probably do other things with their lives, and who didn’t necessarily dress up with the expectation of being photographed. On the face of it, it seems inclusive, down-to-earth,

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and current.

The truth isn’t quite that clear-cut. Schuman evidently has a really clearly defined view of what looks good. One of the first Sartorialist posts I read saw Schuman reminiscing about the first Armani shirt he had been given for Christmas in high school. ‘[It] certainly shaped the course of my future,’ he says. No freaking joke, Scott. On many pages of the Sartorialist, you could be forgiven for thinking you’d stumbled onto ‘Greying European Men In Suits Quarterly’ by mistake. For a while you might wonder what the secret to their fashion success is – until you notice the dinner-platesized, solid gold watch half hidden (no mean feat) up their sleeve. They’re all pretty rich.

They all look great, don’t get me wrong. It’s to be expected. But I can’t help but wonder why I should really care about what some mediterranean mining magnate spends his superprofits on.

However, to be fair, that’s not the end of the Sartorialist by any means. Just when I’m ready to throw my hands up at the elitist upper-class materialism of it all, I scroll down a little further and think, ‘nice’. Pretty girls with faded jeans on vintage bicycles. Loathe to admit it, but a lot of the Sartorialist’s posts are more to

my tastes. Many of his subjects wear genuinely interesting clothing. The Sartorialist is at its best when it’s not so much about what someone’s wearing, but how they’re wearing something interesting.

That said, Schuman’s still kinda predictable.

Tick them off as you go. Sweaters. Scarves.

Bicycles. Rolled-up trousers. ‘Pops of colour’.

When it comes to jackets, the Sartorialist has an almost adolescent fixation on double breasts. And though he specifically rejects the use of professional models, Schuman definitely has an unwritten rule that his subjects be ‘model pretty’. In my brief time with the Sartorialist, I could count on one hand the number of people I saw with features anything less than head-turning. Finally, it obviously helps if you live in Milan or New York, and enjoy the company of cobblestones.

I can maybe deal with that, though.

Schuman’s never pretended to be expressing anything but his personal opinion, and over five years, he was always condemned to repeat himself. He also largely avoids offence by refusing to make negative comments about any of his subjects. There are occasional cheap shots on the Sartorialist towards things like

saggy pants and teenagers who idolise Britney and Lindsay, which, coming from someone like Schuman, seem both out-of-touch and kind of classist. Not everyone has the resources and background that he and his subjects do.

It doesn’t help that he comes across as pretty self-important in all the interviews I’ve seen.

But hey, so long as you keep a sense of perspective, the Sartorialist has some nice photos to look at and could serve as inspiration if you’re into that kind of thing. Last night before I went out, I decided to assess my outfit on a tongue-in-cheek ‘How To Get Photographed By The Sartorialist’ flowchart (google it). I didn’t do very well. Most of the links I could get around by bluffing or half-truth. But when I got nearly to the bottom, I read ‘Put on a scarf!’. I froze. I don’t even own a freaking scarf. The Sartorialist had beaten me down with cashmere fists. It stared down from my bookmarks bar, mocking me, like a beautiful gargoyle. But that’s okay. Because the Sartorialist is just a blog. Because Scott Schuman is just one man. Because I know that in the end I’m going to close the Sartorialist, I’m going to put on the same jacket I always do, and I am going to be okay with that.

Photographs courtesy thesartorialist.com.

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E M A N A N I S ' T A WH rew. c y e l t o g your m n i m a n rsh, on a M r e t l Wa

Band names are hard. Only a lucky few can claim to stumble upon truly great names like ‘Barbarian Warriors In Search Of Wisdom’, while the rest of us settle for a variation on ‘The Little Black Crystal Wolf Paper Beach Owls’.

Do you take the route of cliché and name yourself after the street you practice on, or just pick a word from the dictionary at random? Do you risk offending the Burns Unit at Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital and victims of Grizzly Bear attacks? Be sure to steel yourself against derisive online sneers from fellow fanboys before naming yourselves after an obscure yet beloved B-side from your favourite band. Oh boy, it will flow. Furthermore, should the alphabetical position in an iTunes library affect your judgement, or should you defy the unfavourable comparison to the Beach and Beastie Boys and name yourself The Beakz? Perhaps a ridiculous, stupidly nonsensical pun is in order, one that will make folks listen out of sheer laughable intrigue, like ‘Peacockroach’ or ‘Planet of the Grapes’. Sure, it will be embarrassing by the time you reach your fourth album and are officially ‘elder statesmen’, but if Weezer can release an album called Raditude with an average age of 47, you can soldier on!

Even when you’ve found a name, the problems don’t end there. That cool, obscure and benignly pretentious word you found in a Penguin Classic will end up perennially jumbled, misspelt on gig posters and mispronounced by every band you ever play with. Or, in the post-internet ‘global village’ we find ourselves in, every bright idea you stumble upon will be swiftly deflated by a Google search revealing the eight equally awful bands from Wisconsin to Wagga that beat you to it.

I dare propose a bold new theorem, that for every conceivably decent name painstakingly drawn from your mind maps and brainstorming sessions, there will be

always an offensively mediocre UK band with just a few too many MySpace fans for you to get away with it. Surely this was far less of a problem in the offline dark ages, where Ronnie Lane could cut his teeth in The Birds while David Crosby’s The Byrds did the same in America without any of the stress they’d feel today.

Sometimes just a single letter can make all the difference, as local alt-rock band Box Elder discovered when they received some polite (if slightly condescending) emails from a Brooklyn psych band called Box Elders suggesting they ‘make everything easier’ and find a new name. The Adelaideans equally politely refused and so far nothing more has come of it, but there are many more prominent examples where the impasse has proved a hassle (or a legal injunction). We all know the story of Jack White’s The Raconteurs renaming themselves The Saboteurs in Australia to placate a Brisbane acid-jazz band of the same name, let alone Muse’s flat out refusal to let Celine Dion title her new Vegas show ‘Muse’, a stoush where truly no one could lay a claim to being the lesser of two evils. Closer to home, Sydney’s Pivot released a J-award nominated debut album, an internationally acclaimed follow-up on prestigious electronica label Warp Records, but this year bowed to the demands of a truly woeful US metal band who had secured the performing rights, changing their name to PVT despite forming over a decade ago. Who needs vowels anyway?

On that note, if you have any band names to suggest, please email prosepurple@gmail.com, because apparently “The Beatles” is taken, and I’m out of ideas!"

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E P A C S E S ' R E T F I R D stical a t n a f n arker o P a m m Ge

lit.

It was suggested that perhaps I would like to write an article about the seeming lack of literature that glorifies campus life. Sure, I thought, I can do that – I can think of half a dozen books about uni life. The Secret History by Donna Tartt, I am Charlotte Simmons

by Tom Wolfe, A Certain Smile by Francois Sagan, The Rules of Attraction by Bret Easton Ellis...

Before I even sat down to write the article I realised that I couldn’t do it. All the books I know of that are set in or about University are fucked up and depressing. Forget ‘glorifying’ – they’re resoundingly negative. These novels contain the stuff of Greek tragedies – Dionysian ritual that ends in murder, drug-fuelled love-triangles, suicide, betrayal, bribery, decadence, debauchery, misery, ennui, purposelessness, pointlessness, hopelessness, etc. etc.

Now, I’m not against works that meditate on the gloomy nature of life. On the contrary – I love reading about the Russian Revolution, suicidal existentialists, and the Great Depression. So why did this particular assignment pain me? For the simple fact that at this time of year, the last thing I want to do is read

about University life. Especially books about miserable students caught up in webs of their own despair.

It’s around this time of year that I will find myself in a bookstore looking for The Gulf War Did Not Take Place by Jean Baudrillard and end up with an armful of books about Robin Hood.

Or I’ll be researching suicide terrorism online and somehow end up reading dinosaur webcomics (seriously, www.qwantz.com, do it). It becomes clear that words like ‘inculturate’ and sentences such as ‘human beings are fragile corporeal entities in a continuous, intimate and inescapable intercourse with the real world’ are diminishing my will to live. At this time of year, all I want to do is curl up in an armchair and read books about solving mysteries and baking oatmeal cookies. You know, stories about picnics on sailboats with ponies. Such things are a clear indicator that it is, indeed, time to escape from the continuous, intimate intercourse with the real world.

Escapism gets a bad rap, but it is truly an underrated art form. In a beautiful passage in

Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, artist Joe Kavalier reflects on the impact that comic books have had on his life, and the sweet respite they offered him when reality was too difficult to bear.

“Having lost his mother, father, brother, and grandfather, the friends and foes of his youth, his beloved teacher, his city, his history – his home – the usual charge levelled against comic books, that they offered merely an escape from reality, seemed to Joe actually a powerful argument on their behalf... The escape from reality was, he felt – especially right after the war – a worthy challenge... It was a mark of how fucked-up and broken was the world – the reality – that had swallowed his home and his family that such a feat of escape, by no means easy to pull off, should remain so universally despised.”

While I assure you that I am not attempting to compare third term blues to the horror of WWII, this passage still summarises the medicinal qualities of escapism, no matter what your grievance with the real world is.

If you’re the masochistic type and deadlines, essays, hangovers and depression aren’t fulfilling enough, you might want to try one of the above. I assure you that they are all, in their own way, excellent novels. But for the partially sane among you, here are my favourite pieces of escapism to cure study malaise: The Summer Book by Tove Jansson Full of small adventures and great wisdom, this book is about a young girl and her elderly Grandmother over the course of one summer on a small island off the coast of Finland.

Beautiful, simple and very funny, of all the books she wrote for adults, The Summer Book was Jansson’s favourite. Mine, too.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain A marvellous story of escape and freedom, The

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a delightfully long way in time and space from Adelaide Uni. Furthermore, Twain garners a great deal of respect from academics because of his genius turn of phrase and startling insight.

So if you manage to quote him in an essay, I guarantee it will bump up your grade.

Harry Potter 1, 2 & 3 by J. K. Rowling Okay, so she gets enough endorsement, but Rowling is just about my favourite escape.

After the third book, things get a bit dark for Potter and his friends. Stick to the first three where it’s all about quests, candy, giant games of chess and Dumbledore’s crackpot speeches.

Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome.

Published in 1889, Three Men in a Boat is the simple story of three men and a small dog who decide to go on a trip up the Thames. Entirely ridiculous, and just about the funniest thing I have ever read. It got terrible reviews, but sold in huge numbers. His publisher commented to a friend that he had no idea what happened to all the copies he sold, saying that he often thought the public must eat them.

The Hunger Games 1 & 2 by Suzanne Collins I excitedly explained the plot of these novels to my partner on a long road trip to Canberra.

In post-Apocalyptic America, a young girl is chosen to appear in The Hunger Games, the future of reality TV shows. The Hunger Games are a violent battle to the death between young adults from the poor districts for the entertainment of the wealthy elite. He politely told me that it sounded like a mixture of every single science fiction film ever made. I don’t care. The characters are kick-ass, the story is tight and you’ll be as desperate as I am for the third one to be released (25th of August).

Finally, if you don’t have time to read but still need a fix, go see Inception.

SCRAPBOOK - contemporary and/or local culture, high and/or low video games edition!

Starcraft II (PC) Imagine for a moment your On Dit editors were not the unrivalled harbingers of all things cool. Imagine, for a moment, they had a nerdy side. If this was the case, your editors would be unashamedly promoting Starcraft II. After a ten-year wait, the new game builds on the gameplay and storyline of the original and its expansion, but takes away many of the most tedious aspects of the game for the casual player. The cutscenes and storyline are marvellous, the options for customization of your force are considerable, and the gameplay is well-explained. If this is what is on offer for the nerds of the world, we could well get used to it. Even if real-time strategy isn’t your thing, rest assured, casual mode is really really easy, with resources galore and utterly unambitious zerg and protos enemy forces. I didn’t even die once!

Super Mario Galaxy 2 (Wii)

The Incident (iPhone/iPad)

I've never understood the term 'serious gamer'. What comes to mind are the kind of geeks who spend inordinate amounts of time worrying about frames per second and engage in heated, friendship-destroying arguments over whether or not the XBox 360 is metaphysically superior to the Playstation 3. Really? That's how you want to spend your time? You can find me over in the corner with the five-year-olds, waggling my Wiimote, trying on Bee suits, and jumping my plumber over walking mushrooms.

8-bit pixel art? First-gen Gameboy-esque chiptune soundtrack? A plotline involving a barrage of falling Smart cars, penny-farthings, fridges, Coke machines, and oversized teddy bears? Seriously, I've been crapping on about this little gem all week. I'd wager that you'll never play another game in which you receive a 'Game Over' after getting brutally impaled by a Doric Column.

Also on the consoles: • Plants v. Zombies (PC/iPhone/iPad) When the Michael Jackson zombie comes out and performs a moonwalk whilst being shot at by mushrooms, you know you're playing through a classic.

E M O C L .

D WE L OR W E H T TO

santo. n o M n o dams Tristan A

I love Monsanto, because I hate farming.

Three hundred years ago, 19 out of 20 people were farmers. Today it is the complete opposite - only one out of 20 people are farmers. This drastic change has freed billions of people from a terrible life of hard labour shoveling manure, shoving their hands up animals arses, biting off sheep’s testicles, very early mornings, and being exposed to nearly everything from tuberculosis to anthrax.

Three hundred years ago, 19 out of 20 people were farmers. Today it is the complete opposite, only one out of 20 people are farmers. This drastic change has freed billions of people from a terrible life of hard labour shoveling manure, shoving their hands up animals arses, biting off sheep’s testicles, very early mornings, and being exposed to nearly everything from tuberculosis to anthrax.

Instead of shoveling dirt, these freed people are now able to become artists, poets, teachers, policemen, chemists, actors, biologists, doctors, investment bankers, or live a thousand other lives. People are no

longer slaves, forced to devote all energy to the most basic need of fighting starvation.

Society has benefitted massively from farming’s change. For a start we actually have a society, it isn’t just some shining light that belongs only to the ultra rich – the people who owned the land, instead of those forced to work on it. Anybody can now read a book, take in a play, visit an art gallery, or even enjoy the simpler pleasures of life like watching TV, surfing the internet, or going for a walk hand in hand with a loved one.

I’m sure even in the days of yore couples went for walks, but they probably needed nose pegs. Girls, if given the choice would you like to walk hand in hand with a modern man (emo’s don’t count), or some farm boy who’s just spent the day fertilizing his lord’s field with human excrement? Boys, would you rather walk paw to paw with a modern lass, or some milk maid who’s hands are as rough as sand paper from pulling a cow’s tit for 8 hours, 7 days a week, and who’s hair

smells of shit because cows don’t wash their tails and they like to flick ‘em about?

This wonderful change to farming has been wrought by that terrible, despicable, and most damaging monster called modernization. Way back in 1701 some smartass called Jethro Tull decided his life would be made easier if he had a machine to efficiently distribute seeds across his land, and then everybody got in on the act. I mean why would anybody possibly want to have used an iron plow, or take advantage of crop rotation, and what’s with this cotton gin thinga-ma-bob, surely fingers were good enough at deseeding cotton – slaves had to earn their keep somehow didn’t they?

Farming’s situation only got worse in the 20th century when modernization’s big brother, science, got in on the

act and brought with it pesticides, synthetic fertilizers, more effective selective breeding and genetic modifications. Crop yields jumped like never before. Farmers made more money, perhaps even enough to send their children to school, or have some savings to get past the bad years.

And less people went hungry. The postempire, post-war part of the 20th century also brought with it a mass resurgence in globalization: people no longer had to depend solely on their own nations for food, and local crop failure no longer meant starvation, as nations could buy food from all across the world.

Along with the agricultural revolution, science, and globalization came the global agritech companies like Monsanto, the next logical step in the modernization of farming.

Monsanto, with its patents, chemicals and GM products is the next logical step, because we have reached the end of farming’s modernization using other techniques. Selective breeding is too slow, machines can’t get much better, and you can’t physically fit more plants and animals on farms. We barely feed the world now, in the next fifty years our population will grow to 9 billion. If we want to feed those extra 3 billion people, the modernization of farming has to continue. We need to change plants and animals so they use fewer resources, produce more and better foodstuffs, and are more environmentally friendly. To change plants and animals, we need to change their DNA. The multinational biotech company is the only way to ensure this necessary research occurs, because nobody else has the human and physical capital to do it. Research is expensive and hard, it requires serious education and serious bank accounts. Three hundred years ago a single man could invent a piece of farm equipment to change the world. This is no longer the case. Can you imagine the average Australian farmer, let alone one in India, sitting down to do some genetic tinkering after a long day’s work?

People don’t seem to like Monsanto, a company I love. Some people think that patents and marketing are bad, that GM will destroy the world, and lay every farmer’s problems at Monsanto’s feet.

Recently there has been a spate of new media coverage blaming Monsanto for the suicide of Indian farmers when nothing could be further from the truth.

The cause for the Indian farmers suicides is multi-factorial, but it boils down to an inability of some Indian farmers to cope with the rapidly changing Indian

economy, and the Indian government being unable to supply any support to their farmers to help them cope. The suicides hark back, albeit in a much sadder fashion, to the Captain Swing riots of 18th century England, when farmers also couldn’t cope with the changes brought on by the agricultural revolution. Monsanto is good, but they aren’t gods. Their seeds will still fail during a drought. If Indian farmers choose to commit suicide, rather than face the culturally shameful need of borrowing money to get through the hard times, Monsanto is not at fault.

The modern farming Monsanto represents will actually be good for Indians and the rest of the third world. As industrial farms replace subsistence practices, they bring with them salaried employment and stable incomes.

Patents are good. By patenting its products Monsanto ties its survival to its research. Monsanto is a biotech company; it makes its money by selling products that increase food yields. It’s a win-win, farmers produce more, sell more, get paid more, more people get fed and Monsanto gets rich. With those riches Monsanto can go on to research even greater biotechnologies to further improve food yield.

Fears of GM food, like those produced

by Monsanto, are unfounded and socially irresponsible. Genetically modified foods face stringent testing before going on sale, and as yet there have been no reports of adverse effects after eating GM foods that have passed safety standards. Take the USA for example, where nearly 75% of all foods contain some form of GM product and have done so for many years. Apart from electing Bush twice, the Americans still seem okay to me. They haven’t grown two heads, tentacles or suddenly started

dropping dead and are still the nicest people I’ve ever met. Fear mongering over GM foods is socially irresponsible, because it slows their entry into the market and prevents people having access to cheaper, better food.

One example of anti-GM’s social irresponsibility was the European Union’s banning of some food aid to Africa, because it may have contained genetically modified products that could make their way onto European markets. Thankfully this sort of ludicrous bigotry has stopped in recent years and Europe might finally be moving with the times.

Terminator seeds are the other big no for the hate Monsanto parade, luckily Monsanto agrees. In 1999 Monsanto made a pledge never to commercialize sterile seed technology. So far they have stuck to that pledge, and in 2009 Monsanto’s CEO, Robert B. Shapiro, renewed that pledge in an open letter available on Monsanto’s web site.

We need companies like Monsanto because there are no viable alternatives to perform their essential research. Small hold farms can’t do it, universities don’t have the scale, and governments rightfully have different priorities. A government’s first duty is to spend its tax payers’ money on its tax payers, supplying them with schools, roads, and health care. Can you really imagine a populace being happy to see billions of dollars of its taxes going towards research that may or may not pan out, and that may help the world, but will have very little direct and tangible effect on the tax payers themselves?

There is another reason we need companies like Monsanto doing their research: climate change. The only way we are going to successfully fight climate

change is by using new technology. We have to face the realities of the situation. If there is one thing we learnt from Copenhagen last year, it’s that people are not willing (or frequently in the case of food, not able) to change their consumption to tackle the problem. So we need advances in all aspects of technology to beat climate change, and Monsanto is the company that will supply the necessary changes to agriculture.

Come on people, what is happening? Why has organic food made such a resurgence in the last few years, why are pesticides and fertilizer suddenly evil?

Why is Monsanto soon going to be as hated as big pharma and oil companies?

We tried organic farming for over ten thousand years! We gave it up because modern, scientific farming is better for the planet and better for society. Modern farming produces more nutritious food, in greater yields, on less land and with fewer resources. In the USA, in 1945 to produce 100 bushels of corn took two acres of land and 14 man-hours. In 2002 it only took three man-hours and less than one acre.

Companies like Monsanto are the pinnacle of modern, industrial, scientific food production. They will feed the world and I love them for it.

If farming hadn’t modernized, I, along with 95% of you, would be stuck doing a hellish job with no education, no computers, no health care and very little freedom.

If farming doesn’t continue to modernize, the world will starve in 50 years. Thankfully, Monsanto represents the next step in the modernization of farming, and for that, we needn’t be afraid.

The world ain’t what it used to be. It’s better.

F O T S O C H G I H TH E AL

C I T I L .

O N P O I T P U R R O C

in India. n o i t p u on corr e r e e D Sam

It’s possible to traverse India without learning any of the local dialects. The country’s former colonial overlords entrenched English as the language of the bureaucracy. Consequently, it has become India’s lingua franca; unencumbered by regional favouritism, English is (somewhat ironically) a neutral language. While fluency in English is usually restricted to the middle classes, who have studied at private schools, most people that tourists are likely to run into have a smattering.

Conversation begins, awkwardly, with the basics; country of origin, jobs, how long we were staying in India, and, often, salary. Beyond the banalities, however, some common threads emerge. Questions are often asked about the attacks on Indian students living in Australia. And once the subject of politics is broached, the conversation takes a dark turn. Indian people are not happy campers when it came to governance.

While Australian public officials are hardly revered, they can hardly hope to

match the mixture of passive resignation and visceral antipathy that emanates from India’s masses towards their politicians and bureaucrats. Tailor, guide, driver (rickshaw, tuk-tuk or camel), Dalit or Brahmin, Hindu, Muslim, Jain or Christian, the negative sentiment is the same.

Compelled to ask why, and defend my choice of study, I was uniformly rejoined with: “Every politician is corrupt”.

Corruption is, understandably, a sore point for millions of Indian people, who have to deal with it on a daily basis. Corruption takes many forms. Politicians exchange their favour for bribes from industrialists and property developers, using the money to fund bribery of their constituents to shore up votes. Public school teachers turn up to school, take the roll (and their salary), and then leave without teaching a class. Police scapegoat poor people, extracting confessions (often using torture) to save someone wealthier from conviction. Bureaucrats steal food aid intended for people who are desperately poor, and then sell it on the black

market.

The problem is complicated by a culture of tipping. There is a blurry line between tipping and bribery (neatly summed up by the word ‘baksheesh’). Indian civil society seems unsure how to resolve this tension – low-level public servants get paid a pittance, so it’s customary to give a little extra as a charitable act; however, if the tip is not enough then you could be waiting a long time to have your request processed.

Charity becomes necessity. Baksheesh is the grease in the wheels of the Indian bureaucratic machine. For many people, it is simply the price of getting things done.

Of course, if the entity paying the bribe is a business (for example, a construction firm trying to secure a tender), then the cost of the bribe must be recouped,

either by raising prices or lowering their standards. This then creates massive risks to the public; poorly constructed roads wash away in the monsoon and houses collapse, as contractors cut costs to offset their bribes.

Some of these problems are systemic.

An Indian MP’s annual salary is around AUD$15,000, plus expenses – far less than most university graduates could expect to earn. This means that talent siphons into the growth areas of the Indian economy (such as IT outsourcing), and MPs are more likely to take bribes. However, because corruption is so rampant, raising political salaries is an electorally untenable proposition. The prevalence of corruption at both low and high levels of the Indian public service means that the

Above: Social activist and Rashtriya Janmat Party Chief-Dr Mahesh Yadav protests against corrupt Indian politicians involved in a bribery scandal in Indian parliament. Photograph by Rajeev Gupa.

practice has become institutional. It is not enough to root out a few bad apples; corruption on such a wide scale is selfperpetuating.

Preparations for the 2010 Commonwealth Games highlight the tangible, large-scale effects of endemic corruption. Workers have torn up nearly all the footpaths of New Delhi. Mounds of rubble lie on street corners. Concrete cubes, layered and stacked, awkwardly reach skyward, long reinforcing rods sticking out at odd angles, like a cat’s whiskers. The city is undergoing a transformation, reinventing its image in preparation for the huge influx of visitors expected when India hosts the Games in October. However, with only six weeks to go until the games begin, it is unlikely that Delhi’s beautification will be complete. Ticket sales have been slow, and anger is growing. Allegations of corruption have dogged the games for months.

Costs have more than trebled; despite far lower labour overheads, the Indian games are likely to cost over $1.6 billion, significantly more than $1.1 billion outlay for the 2008 games in Melbourne. Tenders for work have been conducted in secret, often amounting to two or three times the market rates. A senior organiser resigned in disgrace after awarding an inflated contract for tennis court installations to his son’s company. Toilet paper was purchased in bulk for nearly $200 per roll.

The Indian taxpayer will stump up most of the money, particularly as two major sponsors have pulled out. The whole exercise was supposed to show India off to the world – instead, its image has been tarnished.

Of course, corruption is hardly limited to

India – in fact, according to the world’s premiere anti-corruption NGO, Transparency International, India is only the 84th most corrupt country in the world, way ahead of Nicaragua (130th), Azerbaijan (143rd), Côte d’Ivoire (154th), and Somalia (last at 184th). Additionally, corruption, particularly towards the higher echelons of the business world, is supported by outside forces, including those close to home. Remember the Australian Wheat Board scandal, where an Australian company was able to secure 90% of the Iraqi wheat market by paying kickbacks to Saddam Hussein? The lack of economic and political stability in many developing nations creates conditions that lead to endemic corruption. As the AWB scandal shows, the developed world is not immune either.

So what can be done? Raising salaries in the public service, especially at the lower end of the pay scale, would significantly reduce the temptation to take bribes. Better accountability is essential, but India’s Central Vigilance Commission is totally overstretched. Partly, it is the responsibility of the Indian electorate to demand more from their politicians, but disillusionment with the political process reigns.

Many Indian NGOs exist specifically to deal with corruption, but without much inter-regional coordination, their effect is localised. Over time, as India becomes more affluent, there will be more money available to fight corruption. However, Indian civil society will have to demand a concerted, coordinated effort from their political and business leaders, otherwise problems of widespread poverty and limited access to healthcare and education will remain entrenched.

Y B R N U O O I T OCIAT S S A Ang

y music od ic n o r t c an ele es us on k a t lm o us Chish

ssey.

Photograph by Angus Chisholm.

It’s a bitterly cold January morning in New York City. It’s not just the sub-zero temperatures which make it difficult to live with but the bitter wind from the Atlantic that whips through Manhattan’s cement and steel canyons. I’m standing outside Le Poisson Rouge, a popular club on downtown Bleecker St known for its diverse but quality bookings. I showed up hoping to get in to see a DJ set by The xx, one of 2009’s biggest breakout musical acts.

To my surprise, the show was sold out.

Maybe I should have known. I knew the band was popular, and with good reason.

In their debut album, ‘xx’, they’d released a work of tremendous poise and quality.

Stark, sparse and minimalistic but hopelessly compelling, it’s one of those great albums where among its many deserved acolytes, it’s nearly impossible for them all to pinpoint and universally agree on their favourite track.

would have been most interested to see but co-lead, Romy Madley Croft, who was mixing off an iPod. That was a bit underwhelming but she selected some good tunes. One moment stood out.

She played a track by a London-based producer by the name of Joy Orbison (brilliant), the unpronounceable Hyph Mngo. Hyph Mngo is one of the biggest tunes released in 2009, an instant dancefloor classic. The song itself builds slowly, sits on two repeated synth tones before exploding into life with broken beats, chopped up female vocals and euphoric synths. If you dropped it anywhere in London in 2009, it would likely send the club into an immediate frenzy.

Some last minute releases on the door allowed me to get inside, seek refuge from the cold and see what their set would be about.

In New York, on the other hand, the Americans didn’t know what to do. While previously they had been dancing normally, their reaction to this track was like they didn’t know how to dance to it, like it was unlike anything they had heard before, and for that particular crowd riding a wave of indie hype, that’s entirely possible.

The band as a whole wear their R&B influences on their sleeve while the band’s producer and apparent creative mastermind, Jamie Smith, has a fairly obvious propensity for broken beat and dubstep.

One of their most interesting songs is a cover of Florence & The Machine’s ‘You’ve Got The Love’ which turns that bit of indie-pop-by-numbers blandness into a propulsive slice of UK garage. This interesting blend of influences meant that I was interested in the form that this DJ set would take. It wasn’t the whole band sharing DJ duties or even Jamie who I

Hyph Mngo fits under the label ‘dubstep’, but that’s a genre label in the convoluted world of electronic music genre labels which is becoming increasingly unsatisfactory. Dubstep as you understand it might involve insufferably aggro, wobbleheavy beats. Chances are if you go to a night billing itself as dubstep in Adelaide, you will hear this sort of dross (although the Crown & Sceptre among others has been known to occasionally throw some parties with a more considered kind of dubstep). One of the more significant musical developments of the 2000s has

blown up, become distorted out of its shape and is now being rejected by the community that once embraced its most significant artists.

1987 Chicago house classic Your Love - a three note arpeggiated synth chord - as the foundation for a sweet yet anthemic song about fatherhood.

Arguably the most significant of which, you may have heard of, goes by the name Burial. He has made two critically acclaimed LPs, Burial and Untrue, which are worth seeking out if you haven’t already, drenched as they are with atmosphere and mood, evocative of contemporary London in a way that no other music is. It’s a world away from what is gradually being recognised by wider audiences as the emblematic sound of dubstep: nuanced, poignant and engaging.

Animal Collective were again using an iPod as the basis for their DJ set, a forgivable transgression given their comprehensive touring setup and the fact that they dropped a track by Zomby called ‘Godzilla’.

Burial is signed to Hyperdub, an important label for the genre founded by Kode9 - real name Steve Goodman - an academic with a PhD in philosophy by day, slightly mental dj and label head the rest of the time. 2009’s two-disc, 5th anniversary label compilation, simply titled 5 is essential listening, a statement of where the label is at and where it is going featuring contributions from its own artists and friends of the label.

About a month before that xx DJ set in New York I was in Melbourne for the after party for Animal Collective’s gig. Animal Collective are, again, one of 2009’s inescapable success stories. With their album Merriweather Post Pavilion, they turned a decade-long career of mostly hit and miss experimentation into an album which, among their work, is uniquely refined and focused. ‘My Girls’ is an unfuckwithable classic which you’re probably familiar with, using a sample of Frankie Knuckles’

The connections between Animal Collective and Zomby run surprisingly deep.

They commissioned him to remix ‘Summertime Clothes’, another one of Merriweather’s successes. In last December’s issue of Fader, a music magazine based out of New York, Animal Collective were on guest editing duties and had the front cover, while Zomby took the back cover with a (deeply entertaining) feature interview, notable for being his first and only as the man is very difficult to track down.

The word is overused but Zomby is a bit of a genius. He has a small clutch of major releases but the most widely known is Where Were U In ’92, an album inspired by the UK rave scene of the early ‘90s and which is mentalist, eclectic fun from start to finish. The rest of his body of work differs markedly in aesthetic and tone. ‘Godzilla’, a track whose title gives away none of its complexities, comes from the ‘One Foot Ahead Of The Other’ EP, a record as kaleidoscopic as its artwork suggests. Sometimes it will be cartoonish and dense but then relatively austere. ‘Godzilla’ certainly fits in the former camp, but in spite of the playfulness apparent on the EP it also feels very sophisticated. Sophis-

ticated is also an apt description for his ‘Digital Flora’ 12” which is utterly unique and beguiling.

Another Zomby collaborator is the inimitable Actress - the softly spoken Darren Cunningham. Based - like Zomby - in London he has two outstanding LPs to his name: Hazyville and contender for one of the best albums of 2010, Splazsh.

Whereas Hazyville was mostly moody introspection - capped by the gorgeous ‘Ivy May Gilpin’ - Splazsh has a wider reach. On Splazsh, Actress uses techno as his launchpad for other genre explorations in house, garage and even minimal wave. The album shifts from unsettling to invigorating, sometimes on the same track, and confirms Actress as one of the most exciting young talents in contemporary music.

It’s no coincidence that so many of these artists are based in London where some of electronic music’s best work is coming from. Even the most prominent international acts are drawn to the sheer gravity created by London’s output, with many performing there often or holding residencies. One landmark club is Shoreditch’s Plastic People which is known as one of London’s finest. Earlier this year it recently came under threat of being closed after claims of trouble arising from violence, which was surprising given how completely unthreatening the club feels. That vibe is probably due to its chief concerns, being: 1. a massive soundsystem and 2. the quality music played on it.

Fortunately a few adjustments were made on the back of a campaign to save the venue and they are back in business but

this latest incident serves as a reminder of the uneasy relationship between the UK’s authorities and legislators and the country’s underground music scenes.

Plastic People itself has been holding FWD>>, a pioneering night of the dubstep sound, for years. It’s hosted a residence from Four Tet, another popular electronic musician with an increasingly wider appeal, this year due to his pleasant album There Is Love In You (featuring a track called ‘Plastic People’, of course).

It’s also hosted the London residency of US house and techno legend Theo Parrish.

These artists all make up a small selection of those who are contributing to a vibrant and thriving electronic music culture, much of which is centred around London.

What’s interesting is that, beyond dubstep, it’s not necessarily about a specific genre associated with the Big Smoke.

Gifted producers across all electronic sub-genres are emerging from the city at a rate that’s increasingly hard to keep up with. It seems inevitable to me that this time period is going to be remembered fondly as one in which London fostered a remarkable music scene, just as significant as any that the city has produced in the past. With the likes of more popular and also more underground acts bringing these sounds to a wider international audience and further into the collective consciousness of popular culture, it seems as though it’s a matter of time before crowds like those that Romy from The xx was entertaining in New York won’t be mystified by what they’re hearing, but will instead be dancing to the same rhythm.

(un)pop

culture With your host, Elizabeth Tien An Flux

Grandfather Oldtimer hands Jimmy a boiled sweet and they share a moment of glowing heredity. Somewhere, a few cathode rays (or plasma blobs) down, a multicultural couple, separated by distance, patriotism and assumedly several oceans, share the first picture of their unborn child; all made possible by the iPhone 4. Off in the distance, a young boy frolics through a field, carefree and innocent, safe in the knowledge that his dad picks the fruit that goes to cottees…

Truly, moments like this are magic. *ethereal choir music* Lies. If you agreed, then adult thinking has clearly taken you over. That, or you and TV need to get a room. It’s cool, people won’t judge, however they may be keen to take any resulting kids in for research. But anyway, magic? It’s when you say “Wingardium Leviosa”, and shit goes down. …namely marauding mountain trolls.

I think that we’ve all lost something in the transition from millipede-collecting tinymites to severely mature students. Maybe it’s just the three hours of ABC kids a day, but possibly it’s also the once seemingly endless supply of innocence and imagination we once had (in depth conversation about Lord of the Flies anyone?).

Now, I am by no means pining away for naivety. Naivety gets you slapped in the nose or asking why gullible has been taken out of the dictionary. It also allows you to entertain the possi-

bility that your sort-of best friend in year 2 really could, turn into a unicorn at will, it’s just that “I’m not allowed to at school, because my family don’t want people to be jealous”. That, and I suppose it would’ve stretched her uniform.

It’s ok. I had her convinced that I had the same powers as Alex Mack. Sure, there was a bated breath moment whilst we waited for confirmation from the omnipotent eraser of knowledge, but when it landed “yes” side up, all avenues for appeal slammed shut.

Imagination however, made everything just that little bit better. Maybe that twig we planted WOULD grow into a tree, if we just watered it enough. Perhaps if we found JUST the right combination of dirt, bark, fruit box and stagnation (eww), we really could create the world’s first invisibility potion.

With imagination, you could almost convince yourself that ample concentration would allow you to move objects with your mind. However, sadly, in reality, it was more likely that concentration would translate as staring, and the only thing you’d succeed in moving, would be yourself into the creepy classmate column.

Just don’t tell them about the eraser you carry “in case of lightning”, and all will be well.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that, magic, it would seem, has an inverse correlation to age.

School robs you of the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, physics teaches you how a photocopier works, and IT…I guess electricity really isn’t caused by gnomes running up and down cables high fiving each other, no matter what Facebook may say. Instead, “magic” morphs into a vague compromise, where instead it is nice, real world moments. Sure, a “hug in the summer sunshine” may be pleasant (read: lame), but it’s not quite enough to get you through the Tri-wizard tournament.

Sadly, there’s no foolproof way to claim it all back, but you could always try cracking out a “lumos” as you turn on a light switch and telling a friend you can turn into a puddle. Anyways, I’m off to the kitchen… …to make the cordial, that I like best.

Columnist illustration

easy, and may save you from such horrible outcomes as vomiting in a carpark on West Terrace (been there).

1. Are you screaming ‘TEQUILAAAAA!’ at the top of your lungs, and encouraging both friends and strang-

me

& my poisonous

relationship

ers to lick salt from your bosom? Are you heckling the DJ with requests for Mmmbop and Thriller? If yes, you have reached Stage 1, the Buzz. This is a good place to be. Simply push José’s hand from your thigh and tell him to leave you alone, and make your next drink a vodka.

From the tequila-addled mind of Emma Marie Jones

2. Have you had more than two shots and are in the queue for another one? Did you swallow your previous shot without having to fight the urge to vomit

I guess it was really just like any other relationship. I fell in love after a brief encounter in a

explosively? If yes, you have reached Stage 2, Addic-

sticky, unremembered bar. I became addicted to the high I got from close proximity to my amour. He was good to me, and our relationship flourished. But soon, things turned sour. I became needy and he became vicious. Ladies, watch out for him. Guys, too—he’s been known to waver in preference. He’s smooth. He’s irresistible. Once he’s got you, he’s really got you. His name is José Cuervo and he’s lurking, reasonablypriced, at a seedy venue near you.

José is responsible for a number of regrettable incidents in my past. These range from the embarrassing (accidental exposure) to the painful (turns out I can’t do the dance moves to Single Ladies), to the downright rebellious (toilet stall graffiti). After a couple of lick-sip-sucks, almost anything is suddenly a fabulous idea. You name it, José encourages it: kissing strangers, yelling obscenities at security, purchasing unidentifiable objects from adult stores, eating a Big Mac in under a minute, performing gymnastics on that silver structure in Light Square… for all of this, I blame José.

Due to the horrifying new trend of bars employing photographers, I’ve been able to access solid evidence of my tequila-induced decline. After in-depth and highly cringeworthy research, I have concluded that there are five definitive stages to every night spent in the company of the suavest Mexican gentleman since Santana. The five stages are easily identifiable, and, if spotted early, progression to the next level is easy to prevent. Simply cut out this short quiz and keep it with you whenever hitting the town. Self-assessment is

a shot, pass it to the nearest random or tip it on the

ns by Chloe Langford

tion. These are dangerous waters. If you are holding floor, and make your next drink a vodka.

3. Is there salt in your bra and lemon in your hair? Have you seen a boy you don’t know wandering around the venue looking frightened with your exact shade of lipstick all over his chin? If yes, you have reached Stage 3, One Too Many. I’m surprised you are able to read this quiz. Go and get yourself a water, pronto.

4. Are you drooling, and possibly horizontal? Have you consumed McDonald’s? Did it come back up? If yes, you have reached Stage 4, Vegetable. If you have control of your limbs, call a taxi (or an ambulance).

If not, assume the foetal position wherever you are lying and hope a kind vagrant will share his blanket and a twitchy rant with you in exchange for your shoes and money.

5. Does your mouth taste like you licked an ashtray and washed it down with a bottle of Torrens water?

Do you feel like you are on a boat, but are, in fact, in bed? If yes, congratulations! You have made it to Stage 5, the Hangover. When you feel up to it, get yourself a yiros (it’s the only way to remove the taste of José), and access Facebook quick sticks. It sounds to me like some serious Damage Control will be in order.

As for moi, I think I’ve got my addiction to the tough lovin’ under control. But if you see me dancing on a tabletop to the Pussycat Dolls, you know who to blame…

: A D N L I R O H C W E H T

?

G E N I G D N A H LEA C E T A M I L C ON Primer : Your Guide to the Modern World

Words, Michael Norris

In a pre-election edition of ABC’s Q & A, Penny Wong cited China’s approach to climate change as progressive.

On the face of it, this looks like political spin gone mad.

China is the world’s largest emitter of carbon dioxide, and its industry’s reliance on coal and oil place it on a high emissive trajectory for years to come. Yet there are exciting developments emerging from the People’s Republic which constitute important steps toward global sustainability.

China’s environmental “report card” The Western, fossil fuel intensive development model has underwritten China’s miraculous economic development.

The consequences of this approach can be boiled down to two broad categories: environmental degradation and energy insecurity. Rapid industrialisation has caused high levels of air pollution, water shortages, increasing water pollution, desertification, and increased incidence of heavy flooding. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), seven of the world’s ten most polluted cities are in China. The social and environmental costs of rampant pollution and environmental degradation have worried the CCP. China’s Achilles’ Heel Further, the reliance on fossil fuels means that Chinese economic growth is dependent on continuous access to plentiful sources of energy, mainly from abroad. The People’s Republic became a net importer of oil in 2003, and a net importer of energy in 2007. This dependency is only getting worse: the growth in Chinese energy demand during the period 2000-2007 was twice that of the previous two decades and is set to grow as more Chinese are pulled from poverty. As such, there are significant security imperatives drawing China toward a more sustainable path.

the failure of the Copenhagen Summit to reach a comprehensive accord, many overlooked the pledge, which is only six per cent less than the target recommended by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The aforementioned “big ticket” developments have been matched by a vast array of environmental regulations, increased pollution controls and investment in renewable energies. Consequently, China has stricter fuel economy standards than the United States and Australia, export levies on energy-intensive industries, and renewable energy investment amounting to US$34.6 billion in 2009.

In terms of investment in renewable energy as a percentage of GDP, China is the world leader.

Winds of change There is thus a salient and increasing response to climate change and environmental pollution in China. After the conclusion of the present Five-Year Plan in 2011, the CCP is expected to ratchet up pressure on both local and provincial governments to implement sustainable policies. Yet easing the dependency on fossil fuel resources – from coal to liquefied natural gas – will prove the most challenging aspect of China’s drive towards sustainability. The CCP has targeted renewable energy resources to compose 15 per cent of its energy mix by 2020, with wind power touted as the country’s ticket out of fossil fuel dependency. The Chinese mainland’s vast geography endows it with abundant areas of wind resources. A 2007 study found that it possessed the potential for 600-1000 gigawatts of wind power. China has doubled its wind capacity every year for the past four years, and became the world’s largest wind market in 2009. Assisting the uptake of renewable energy measures is a proposed tax of 20 yuan (around A$3.50) on every ton of carbon dioxide emitted, increasing the cost-effectiveness of alternate energy.

An environmental laggard no longer

Embracing a greener direction?

The CCP has not sat idle in response to the environmental issues facing the country. The growing recognition of an impending ecological crisis has placed mitigation at the top of agenda for Chinese elites. This is best illustrated by the passage of the ‘Renewable Energy Law’ in 2005, the release of the China’s first white paper on energy policy in December 2007 and its commitment to cut carbon intensity by 40 per cent by 2020, relative to 2005 levels. It is the last measure which is the most intriguing. Amidst

Although China’s current environmental condition is far from perfect, the CCP, spurred by economic, social and national security imperatives, is moving toward a more sustainable future. Although Penny Wong’s Q & A comments overlooked the incredible ecological damage the People’s Republic faces, her proposition that China’s attitude is progressive is correct. If only Australia’s political leaders afforded the environment the same consideration as Europe and now, China does.

State of the Union.

Words, Fletcher O'Leary: AUU President

And the winner is‌ So the Federal Election has come and gone, and our society has collectively shrugged its shoulders at the entire political system. This is fair enough, considering the insubstantial nature of the appeal of the major parties to voters (a citizen's assembly to determine our nation's climate change policy? A BOATPHONE?).

At the time of writing there is distinctly no winner and no government in sight. What is interesting is going to be how higher education policy is going to be affected by the non-Government parliamentarians that are going to hold whoever forms government to ransom.

Tony Windsor, Bob Katter, Adam Bandt and Andrew Wilkie all have large universities in their electorates, which have suffered from the lack of investment in infrastructure and support for higher education, while Rob Oakeshott has said that education is one of his priorities.

Rural students have an especially difficult time accessing higher education - with relocation issues and lack of government support.

Adam Bandt's electorate of Melbourne is also the youngest in the country (about 21% of the electorate are 25 or under). Whether this translates into a concern about

higher education policy remains to be seen, but it provides Australia's universities, and students, with an excellent chance to lobby effectively where the major parties have failed us before.

On campus, the Student Representative Council held a pledging ceremony and invited candidates from all the parties to sign a pledge to vote for students in four main areas of concern: University funding; Student income support; Supporting student representative organisations, and Student housing.

Kate Ellis, the Minister for Youth and Sports, Senator Anne McEwen from Labor, and Penny Wright (Greens Senator-Elect) all made the pledge, along with Senator Dana Wortley, who unfortunately was not re-eected. For the coming parliamentary term it is up to students to hold them to their word and to continue to put pressure on the Federal Government to improve the system.

Campus Elections This is the first edition of On Dit after campus elections, and I note that the last edition of On Dit was student politics themed. While there is a large amount of cynicism around student politics, and student elections, the truth of the matter is, this is probably one of the few times in

your life where you are given a clear choice of representatives and one of the few opportunities for you to discuss policy and issues of concern with candidates. I hope that you took the opportunity, or will next time (if you are still a student). We can do a whole lot more if more students engage with the process. The stronger your student organisation is, the more it can achieve for you.

What else is happening?

World Week is coming up from the 14th - 17th September. This is a great opportunity for you to see the many different cultural flavours that we have on campus, with a bit off campus fun as well. Come on down to Barr Smith Lawns to experience it all.

There will also be the annual AUU Survey coming out soon = please take the opportunity to go through it. At ANU, the Students' Association has had an annual survey for many years, and has successfully used it to change university policy.

It is a valuable tool for us to know what you're experiencing and what you think is important.

So that's all for now, I'll probably be able to give you a better report once all these elections are out of the way. Good luck with all the assignments and essays coming up.

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