Film about Sydney by Nathan Kaso

This is a film taken in Sydney using a technique called tilt-shift:
Toy Boats - A Sydney Tilt-shift Time-lapse from Nathan Kaso on Vimeo.

http://vimeo.com/nathankaso/toyboats

Rememberance of Things Future

I have been reading about a book called "The Lucky Culture" by Nick Cater, which will be available next month. There is an extract from this book in the paper today.

This extract mainly talks about the ABC, the Australian public broadcasting organisation, and particularly mentions the current affairs show TDT (This Day Tonight) which started in 1967 and was influential in the 70's.(some of the presenters of this show are in the photo above).

I was at school and university at this time and I remember it well. They were times when everything was thought to be "a'changin". The roles of women, the churches, the military, businesses, government, entertainment, personal relations were all being questioned. I remember the feeling that we were in a special, enlightened time, and the world would never be the same again.

I will certainly read this book when it comes out, and from what I have read, its thesis is broader than just TV programmes, it describes a change to Australian society where a new elite has arisen.

Maybe so.

But I am always struck by how little has changed since those days. We thought huge changes were just around the corner. Certainly there have been some in these 40 years, but not nearly as much as people would have thought. Has the role of women changed so much? What happened to the free love? Who would have thought religion would still be so influential? The people in those days would have been astonished to witness the Anzac ceremonies of today.

A lot of the journalists of those days are still around. I wonder if Bill Peach, Gerald Stone, Caroline Jones, Mike Carlton, Michael Willesee, Philip Adams or George Negus are a little surprised by how things turned out and the things they are doing now.

living the war

I heard a story of some young Australians who visited the Tyne Cot memorial, near the Belgian towns for Ieper and Passendale.
Apparently, the museum there offers visitors the opportunity to try to take on the personality of one of the soldiers by putting on some of the load they would have carried, and march a few kilometres in the countryside near the battlefield of Passchendaele. This is the battle where many of the soldiers died not from bullets or mustard gas, but by drowning in the bomb craters, which were flooded by torrential rain that started at the time of the battle.

It is probably a good antidote to the romanticising of the war to experience a little of what happened. One of the features of WWI was that the so-called "élan" of war was replaced by sordid, impersonal death, watching clouds of gas or being killed by bombs fired from miles away or torpedoes fired from an unseen submarine.

For Australians, the war is something that happened on the other side of the world. For Belgians, they are surrounded by old bunkers and the remains of trenches and forts. The war was fought on Belgian soil, but most were foreign soldiers destroying the countryside. The remains of the war are all around them, and the direct memory lives in their family stories.

Respect the sacrifice, but never think the reality was anything more than sordid.

Raspberry Pi

It's good to see that some things stay the same. Many years ago there was something called the BBC microcomputer, which was a very basic computer used as a teaching device by a series of BBC TV programmes. I had a work colleague (who sadly passed away last year) who was a real nuts and bolts engineer. He designed his house as a "passive solar" house and used the BBC for his calculations. There were other, similar "toy" computers, which were of course more of an intellectual challenge than professional computers. One of the most famous was the Apple 1, made (literally) by the Steves - Wozniak and Jobs at their "Homebrew Computer Club".

It is pleasing to see that this sort of tinkering has not died out in this age of twitter and flashing windows. I recently heard of the Raspberry Pi computer project started by some people at Cambridge University.

I don't know where you can buy these things, but they would make good presents for the child (of any age) who like to make things work.

Rose Bay

Problems, Problems, Problems

It is striking how much of our private and public discussions are complaints about problems we have. As they say, "good news doesn't sell" presumably because we don't like to hear it.

It seems to me that there are some shared characteristics about these complaints:

• my problem is very important. It may not be the worst in the world, but it seriously affects my well-being
• I know what I would like to happen so my problem disappears, even though I may not know how to achieve this
• there is someone else who could solve my problem, if only they wanted to

A popular problem being discussed lately is the coal mining communities which disappeared under Prime Minister Thatcher. There were of course also other problems at the time, such as sky-high inflation, high unemployment, violence in the streets and unprofitable coal mines. The solution we hear from some people is that Mrs Thatcher should have refrained from closing the mines. However economics is ruled by arithmetic and mines closed in other countries around that time (eg Belgium where I was living). There is a limit to the power of governments to defy arithmetic, for example the Soviet Union. The collapse there happened later, but it might have been worse because of the delay. I visited Russia after the Wall came down, and I remember seeing elderly women standing in rows on the  street selling breadrolls and empty plastic bottles to get a few more pennies. They had problems.

Lately I have been reading some books about The Great War, the centenary of which starts next year. A striking image is the infantry soldier moving up to the front,  passing the screaming, broken bodies of the wounded being carried back from the front and knowing he would soon be walking into machine gun fire himself. The alternative would be to turn around and refuse to go to the front and be shot by his own side. He had a problem.

Yesterday I heard of a person who had learned "touch sign language" so she could communicate with a friend who was born blind and deaf. He had a problem.

Then, a couple of days ago there was a noisy, aggressive meeting of residents of Devonshire St in an inner suburb of Sydney. They are complaining about the plan to put a tram line down their tree-lined street. They have a problem, they will soon have too much access to public transport.

I think that most of the problems we see for ourselves are the ones that stop us living the lives we want or see others living. In "first world countries" we sometimes have to look really hard to find our problems, but we always succeed. Maybe we can't travel much, can't have children, can only have a civil union and not a gay marriage etc. If these were solved in the way we want them to be, no doubt we would then find other problems.

The traditional Christian view, which is viewed less often these days, is  "For here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come."

As I understand it, this means that in the long run (ie eternity!!!) what happens here matters not one jot. What matters is holding fast to the hope offered by Christ.

In the absence of that, there are people who are very brave in adversity, but of course they can't help worrying. The best we can hope for is a little perspective in looking at our problems and a bit more recognition of our blessings.

100 years ago

We are approaching the centenary of World War I (as we now call it). This was a war of firsts,
the first global war, the first time civilians at home were targeted by bombing from the air, or dying in merchant ships from neutral countries, the first industrial war that used weapons of terror like chlorine and mustard gas, tanks, flame throwers and the first extensive use of submarines and machine guns. It was the first time the United States of America became involved in a war in Europe.
The war was of course a horror, but we should learn by trying to understand what caused it and kept it going. I have been reading some books about it,
"The Proud Tower" and "The Guns of August", both by Barbara W. Tuchman, well written, taking viewpoints from all sides yet still focused,
and
"To End All Wars" by Adam Hochschild, mainly from the English point of view and many details from the home front.

Perhaps another approach would be to read the authors of the time, like
John Buchan
Rudyard Kipling
John Galsworthy
Charlotte Despard, the eldest sister of Sir John French
Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughter Sylvia
Virginia and Leonard Woolf
Vera Brittain
Beatrice Webb
Thomas Hardy
Arthur Conan Doyle
Siegfried Sassoon

Wilfred Owen
H.G. Wells
Winston Churchill

Swimmers

Annette Funicello

One of my earliest memories: Annette Funicello of the Mouseketeers.
I heard today that she has just passed away.

Margaret Thatcher

Margaret Thatcher died last night. Once upon a time the practice was to respect the recently deceased even if we didn't like them, reflecting the idea the God, not ourselves is the judge.

However, in these barbarous days, everyone is giving free character assessments and venting their obsessions, completely disregarding the feelings of her family. We live in ugly times.

Obituaries will come, but I just read a piece by Peter Hitchens, using his style of making a point by painting a picture. He regards Mrs Thatcher as neither a saint nor a devil and manages to occupy the middle ground that the breathless news reporters tell us is empty. He does seem to have a high regard for her, as did his brother Christopher. It must be one of the few things they agreed about.

Anyway, I think the article by Peter Hitchens which is linked above is worth reading.

Tranen over Mortsel

Tears over Mortsel.
I used to live in Mortsel, a suburb of Antwerp in Belgium. On 5th April 1943, 70 years ago, American bombers attacked a plane factory nearby and killed 1000 Belgian civilians, including 200 children. Such is "total war".

Steps and Stairs

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Location:Cobbittee Street,Hmas Penguin,Australia

Tell and Show

I just read an interesting article about education by Frank Furedi. I think it is well worth going to this link and reading the article.

My personal experience about such matters comes from an uncompleted Graduate Diploma of Education degree and forays into schools to do Scripture classes.

During the Grad Dip Ed, I was shocked by repeated examples of university students saying they don't believe what they were being taught, but they were prepared to jump the hurdles and do the essays in order to finish their degree. Some examples are:

• there is no such thing as absolute truth, therefore it is impossible for the teacher to transfer their ideas and experiences to the students by explaining them. All that can be done is to facilitate learning experiences that allow the students to each create their own view of reality.
• any student is capable of achieving the outcomes of any subject. If a student fails to do this, it is because they lack material support because of their low socioeconomic background, and/or they lack "social capital", in other words, the experiences and support given by their upbringing and guardians. There is no such thing as innate ability that limits performance.
• any gender linked behaviour or characteristics is a result of upbringing and environment, it is not an inevitable consequence of gender.
• Marxism is one of the most reliable way of explaining why societies are organised the way they are.
• the children must be "engaged" in whatever way possible, using interesting sounds and images. They should not be led to believe that engagement and concentration can be hard work and can occasionally be boring.

From my observation of classes, some practices and assumptions have crept in that defy reality. Despite the great efforts of dedicated teachers, it is very hard for them to resist the dogma forced on them by the education industry. For example:

• rote learning is bad. While walking around schools, I never hear classes reciting the multiplication tables, as they would have "in my day".  I have, however, seen children who can pretend they know the times tables by becoming very fast at repeated addition. This pretence falls apart when they have to do division. I suppose the successful students have to rely on the "social capital" of their parents.
• the typical primary classroom is covered in artworks, all of them identical except for minor modifications of colour and size. Obviously they have been given a model and the aim is to make a successful copy. Is the intention to encourage imagination, or neat draftsmanship?
• the primary syllabus is full to overflowing with commemoration of events such as Anzac Day, time consuming trips to museums, attempts at enforced creativity (see above), exhortations to live a healthy lifestyle (no smoking, no bullying, eat well, and in the near future, financial management for year 6...), simultaneous Mandarin and French lessons, etc etc. After spending hours and hours of each week on these tasks and on the elaborate projects and deliverables that wallpaper the classroom and impress the Principal and visiting parents and senior friends, along come the NAPLAN tests that assess the 3 "R"s and nothing else. Pity the poor teachers who have to manage all this.

It may be self-serving of me to say this, but it appears to me that the humble Scripture lesson is one of the few times in the working day of a primary school student when abstract thought is asked of them. After a day of splashing paint around the class wet room, collecting recipes from the local Chinese restaurant, growing plants in a pot in the classroom and measuring the school playground again, they walk unprepared into the Scripture class. 

There they are asked:

• the difference between a virtue and good works
• did Martha or Mary follow the better path?
• what does "trespass" mean?
• are people who do bad things bad people?
• should I hate anyone?
• if God didn't make God, who did?
• what is the difference between Anglicans and Catholics?
• did King David live before or after Saint Francis?
• did either of them live before or after Captain Philip?

It would be much easier to be splashing paint.