Wikipedia for maps

This link is to an online map of the area immediately around my house. It’s not quite as neat and tidy as the equivalent Google Map, but you’ll have to excuse the cartographer and his equipment for that. The cartographer? For most of the map, yours truly. The equipment? A $200 Garmin GPS unit (there are cheaper units that would do the job, too), a notepad, and a bicycle to speed up the process. But if Google Maps costs nothing, what’s the point of OpenStreetMap, a Wikipedia-style project to make an online street map?

Google Maps might be free to view online, but there’s limits to what you can do. Want to make a map featuring just bicycle trails? You can’t. Want to include a copy of a map in a report you’re producing. You’re not allowed, unless you pay. Want to load it into your car navigation system. No can do – and map updates for in-car GPS systems are bloody expensive! OpenStreetMap data, available under one of the Creative Commons licenses, can be used for any and all such purposes.

Lazy (Gaudete) Sunday!

Since we don’t live by politix alone (I sincerely hope), what did people get up to this weekend? Join in, share some tales, regulars and lurkers all!

In case you don’t know, it’s the third Sunday of Advent, also known as Gaudete Sunday… Advent, when we wait for the coming of the Lord, is a penitential season just like Lent. But, since Catholics were never known for wanting to abstain from spiritous liquors, wild dancing, and general shenaniganning, the third Sunday, so named after the opening lines of the Latin Introit for the Mass of the day, is a day of celebration and rejoicing – the translation of the first word in the Introit is “Rejoice!”… so it was a most appropriate day to put up my Christmas tree – which is what I did, with the aid of my best friend and some gin and some chardonnay. I’ve got a bit of a photo essay documenting it over the fold… Gaudete in Domino, iterum dico, gaudete!

[Hi-res version of photo here.]

If you are unwilling to lead, get out of the way!

As scientists suggested that the summer Arctic ice could melt completely as early as 2013 and the waves may be soon rolling in on the Queensland coast as the Great Barrier Reef crumbles (see also Quiggin) tempers flared in Bali.

At one point the chief UN climate negotiator, Yvo de Boer, left the room apparently in tears, but the turning point, the circuit breaker, came from the representative of PNG who looked the US representative Paula Dobriansky in the eye and told her ”If for some reason you are unwilling to lead, leave it to the rest of us. Get out of the way!” She then “reversed herself, allowing the adoption of the so-called ‘Bali Roadmap.’”

Hard on the conclusion of the talks most capitals were putting a positive spin on the outcomes. Not so the US. They issued a communiqué expressing serious concerns about the Bali deal. Considering they got most of what they were looking for at Bali, what’s the beef?

A Melbourne Christmas

Getting Federation Square for Christmas is probably only marginally more disappointing than getting a pair of socks.

Then … Now

Then:

THIS may be my last column. If you don’t see me again, you’ll know the Pinata Left has whacked me, too.

You see, Kevin Rudd’s victory has unleashed a horde of haters with sticks who are trying to sack conservative commentators and close down debate.

Their demands are simple. They won. So shut up. No more of these “culture wars”. No dissent.

Andrew Bolt, yesterday, toeing the “if I do get sacked it will be because Rupert Murdoch is a tool of the left” line first enunciated by Tom Switzer.

Now:

Saturday Salon

An open thread where you can, at your weekend leisure, discuss anything you like.

Guest post by Christine Keeler

Being completely unable to cope with the election of a mild-mannered Queensland Christian to the highest political office in the land, Greg has apparently boarded a rickety craft, fled across the seas, and ended up in a settlement somewhere in Israel.

Having read today’s contribution on the audacity of 16 US national security agencies coming to a consensus that Iran is not a nuclear threat what can one say?

And, might I add, just a single response on his ‘blog’, too? Still, I suppose a token comment is better than nothing.

A few points:

The best $20 you’ll ever spend?

 

On the bookshelf at home a copy of The Rules sits between a book by Donna Tartt and something or rather by Jeanette Winterson.

The guide to getting a bloke was left by a former tenant (perhaps she thought the incoming residents would need it).

For those not in the know, The Rules sold trillions of copies to females wanting to know how to act around potential paramours.

An Embuggerance

Author Terry Pratchett has revealed that he has been diagnosed with a rare form of early onset Alzheimer’s disease.

I can only imagine how distressing it must be for someone who has spent his life as a wordsmith to start feeling gaps in that remarkable language engine.

I’ve seen several elderly relatives progress along the dementia path, some with Alzheimer’s and some with other causes. It’s a terribly distressing disorder in the early stages, when the person is very aware of the gaps in their memory. Sometimes the later stages are easier to deal with, as although the person we knew has been transformed by the disease and we mourn the loss to ourselves, at least they themselves are often no longer distressed by their condition.

This is largely the situation for US Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, whose husband, aged 77, has now found a new partner in his nursing home and no longer appears to remember O’Connor, although she visits him regularly. O’Connor has decided that she would rather see him happy with his new relationship than disrupt the comfort he finds in it amongst the confusion of his dementia, and wishes them both well.

Experts in Alzheimer’s disease say many people are surprised to learn that patients continue to have rich emotional lives.

Aurukun

There’s been considerable discussion of the case of the rape in Aurukun of a 10 year old girl on the Saturday Salon thread. While I agree with those who are arguing that the decision of the judge (and the submissions of the subsequently demoted Crown Prosecutor) is flat out wrong and disgraceful (and see this post at Talk It Out for a summation of why), I also think it’s important to place the case within its wider context and to resist simplistic calls for an extension of the “intervention” to Queensland (which in any case, as those doing the calling may not know, is constitutionally impossible without the co-operation of the Queensland government).

The problems which underlie these most regrettable events in Aurukun are complex, and not amenable to simple solutions such as those advocated by Noel Pearson, whose own “end welfare dependency” experiment in the Cape is in dire trouble. They need to be debated soberly, and with an eye to the facts not to predetermined ideological positions or sloganeering – which is why I was so pleased to see an interview with anthropologist and former resident of Aurukun, David Martin, in today’s Crikey. With permission, I’m reproducing it over the fold. All of it is well worth reading.

Nine: we’re still the one… for sexism

It’s summer and one way to pass the time is to watch the cricket. For gals as well as guys. But that entrenched bastion of blokiness, Channel Nine, it appears, is intent on keeping its cricket coverage a blokes only zone. The SMH reports this morning that Stephanie Brantz has been dumped from Nine’s cricket crew.

CHANNEL NINE’S on-air cricket team will be an all-male bastion once more this summer, with the axing of the sports presenter Stephanie Brantz the latest evidence of a network struggling to shake off the “blokey” culture that has dominated for decades.

When contacted by the Herald yesterday, Brantz claimed she was told by Nine sports bosses that no one on the Australian cricket team wanted to talk to her and this was one of the reasons that she had been frozen out of Nine’s cricket coverage.

But Cricket Australia disagrees:

A spokesman for Cricket Australia, Peter Young, said he was not aware of the cricketers having any problem with Brantz. “Not that I’m aware of and I’d be surprised if they did,” Young said. “They don’t have gender concerns and most of the players I know enjoy female company.”

He said Cricket Australia encouraged broadcasters to include women journalists in their coverage in an effort to lift the number of women watching above its current level of about 35 per cent of viewers.

I can’t see this as anything other than symptomatic of a fast declining old media organisation that’s unable to transcend the aggressive boys’ club culture that mirrored its long term boss Kerry Packer and whose aggression and relentless dysfunctional negativity has seen it dethroned from its perch.

Update: More at Crikey from Glen Dyer, who concentrates on how Brantz was frozen out by her male colleagues and superiors, and thus was denied the chance to do the job she was hired to do. It’s strikingly reminiscent of the treatment of Mary Kostakidis at SBS by another mob of commercial tv cowboys. I wonder if Brantz will take legal action – perhaps some redress from the courts might make these yahoos sit up and take notice.

It merely continues a long line of harassment, abuse and denigration of women reporters, presenters and executives at the Nine Network.

This is the second strike against the returned Nine CEO, David Gyngell. The first was Nine’s News and Current Affairs boss, John Westacott, telling reporter Christine Spiteri that she should look for a job at SBS with a “name like hers”.

Shorter Plan A

There’s a very comprehensive review of Kevin Rudd’s “there is no plan B” speech in Bali by Guy over at Polemica that’s well worth a read.

Why we need more words than sorry

Although there are some around the shop who don’t seem to think that having an election changed anything, including culture warriors who can’t decide whether they’re triumphing or courageously flying the flag of dissent, there’s a fundamental flaw at the heart of the claim that minimising the differences during the campaign implies a continuation of Howardism by some other name. You only need to consider whether the “me too-ism” of John Howard in 1996 led to 11 years of continued Keatingism. Elections matter and elections bring change.

Symbolic acts, despite the false dichotomy between “symbolic” and “practical” reconciliation apparently cast aside by John Howard in his (electoral) deathbed conversion to an acknowledgement of Indigenous people in the Constitution, bring consequences in their train because language shapes how we act. That’s something that’s powerfully argued in an essay by Canadian philosopher James R Mensch at Open Democracy. Mensch, following the French phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty, argues that the rationale for violence is the recognition that mutilation of the body destroys the embodied capacity to act, and sometimes even to speak one’s own truth:

The manner of his leaving

Well, that’s it, then. The poll has been declared in Bennelong, and John Howard showed up to concede defeat and congratulate the new member for Bennelong, Maxine McKew. Some are seeking solace in small mercies:

Mr Howard could draw satisfaction that he drew more primary votes than any challenger.

But after the distribution of preferences, compulsory for a valid vote in the Australian system, his small lead was not enough and Labor Maxine McKew was victorious by 2434 votes.

I don’t know what that’s all about, unless some journos think that a first past the post system might be in order (note to said journos – if you wanted to see a Ruddslide, that would have delivered one…) I’m not going to attempt to write some sort of balanced account of John Howard’s career, and I don’t see the need to acknowledge any positives in his contribution to public life, except to say that he appeared gracious in defeat when conceding to McKew. We’re all too close to the thankfully now ended Howard years to make any sort of objective assessment in my view – though no doubt if I scratched my head I could think of some good the man did, I’m basically so very far from not being sorry that he’s gone. But here’s an open thread should anyone feel the need to reflect on what I think can now be formally declared as… the end of the Howard era!

Bloggers, Beer and Melbourne this Thursday

Not sure what the quorum is to call a grog blog but bloggers will be getting together this Thursday night in Melbourne where alcoholic type imbibing will take place.

The venue will be Lane’s Edge from 6:30pm on Thursday, the 13th December. The code word is “the table booked under the name of Tim.” The response from the waitperson should be “this way please.”

If the response is “Oh them. We kicked them out hours ago” then (a) you are a little late and (b) Nabs turned up.

I’ll be there as I’m currently in Melbourne on business and FXH and others from the Melbourne blogging gliterati will also make an appearance.

Don’t be shy as all are welcome. We’ll be the ones with intermittent stoushes breaking out on the fringes of intelligent conversation.