15* Days Which Would Be More Appropriate as Australia Day than January 26

Photo: Phil Whitehouse, Wikimedia Commons, Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic

*I'm adding some additional brilliant brain farts as they come

1 January — Constitution of Australia comes into force (1901)
3 March — Commencement of the Australia Act (1986), which finally instituted Australia's legal independence from the UK
3 March — Graham Kennedy's infamous 'crow call' on The Graham Kennedy Show (1975)
3 March — Tony Abbott's then-record 'eight flag' press conference, featuring the PM flanked by — you guessed it — EIGHT Australian flags (2015)*
15 March — First Cricket Test Match (1877)
16 March — Advisory Council of Science and Industry formed by PM Billy Hughes. It would become CSIRO (1916)
18 March — Neighbours first aired (1985)
29 March — First Federal Election (1901)
30 April — Nikki Webster's birthday (1987)
21 May — Assent of Commonwealth Electoral Act 1962 extending electoral franchise to Indigenous Australians for the first time
27 May — Henry Parkes' birthday (1815)
27 May — Referendum on the Constitution Alteration (Aboriginals) 1967, recognising Indigenous Australians in the Australian population
13 June — Vegemite first goes on sale (1923)
23 June — Tony Abbott's record 'ten flag' press conference, featuring the PM flanked by — you guessed it — TEN Australian flags (2015)
4 September — Steve Irwin is taken too soon by some form of marine monster of nightmares (2006)
5 September — Naomi Robson wears lizard on shoulder while reporting on the death of Steve Irwin (2006)
24 September — Sydney wins hosting rights to the 2000 summer Olympics (1993)
26 September — Australia II wins seventh and final race to claim the America's Cup (1983)
24 November — John Howard's Coaltion government is defeated; John Howard loses his own seat of Bennelong (2007)
26 November — Official launch of the Holden FX (1948)

*temporary record superseded in June 2015

25Mbps is more than enough

Watching last night's Four Corners on the clusterfuck that is our National "Broadband" Network, I got angry. I got angry that the rarest beast in Australian politics — a truly visionary policy — got trashed for the purpose of political point scoring.

I got angry that the people who are vested with responsibility for the future of this country can't (or won't) see a future that many can, where fast, future-proof technology (yes, fibre is as close to a future-proof technology you'll ever find) places us at a substantial competitive advantage.

I've written extensively about the Coalition's clusterfuck of an NBN many times before on this blog, critiquing the Coalition's policy from its announcement in 2013. But even going back only 4 years, to that infamous press conference where Turnbull and Abbott pretended to be friends announcing the Liberal's deficient NBN policy, even I'm surprised how much their assumptions have dated.

At the press conference, both Abbott and Turnbull said 25Mbps was "more than enough" for home users and that the network would be completed by 2016. They said that instead of the "expensive" fibre option connecting 90 per cent of Australians, the Liberal's use of the existing copper network would allow the network to be rolled out faster and cheaper than Labor's policy.

The network is now scheduled to be completed in 2020 — only four years late — and will likely end up costing about $20 billion more than the Liberals originally claimed. All this for a woefully inferior product.

But what's most interesting about the 2013 press conference is just how inadequate 25Mbps is — a fact known to most tech people then as now.

As Four Corners mentioned, data use by Australian internet users has more than doubled over the past two years. Going back even further to the time of Abbott and Turnbull's awkward presser shows how wrong assumptions of data use only a few years ago were. Since June 2013, total data use has skyrocketed by more than 350 per cent, with fixed-line connections accounting for the vast majority of increase.

If that increase occurred in only four years, imagine what will happen over the next four? Or the four years after that? Very quickly, the NBN begins to look like a DIY crystal radio set in a 4K HDTV world. Then what? A future government will likely have to spend billions more upgrading the network, when it could have been done once, done properly and be done with fibre.

Closed Sundays

Shameless cliche of a stock photo from Wikipedia Commons — https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Artaxerxes

You really have to question the PR and business acumen of Australia's most egregious rentseekers. Completely predictably, Fairfax's Mark Kenny spent a few minutes on Sunday afternoon calling some of Australia's peak business lobby groups.

Surprise, surprise, no one picked up. These offices were closed on Sunday. I guess the 24/7 economy is a case of "do what I say, not what I do".

This Sunday silence goes to the heart of the hypocrisy of those loudest voices in favour of cutting the take home pay of our poorest remunerated workers. The weekend is still special to them.

Perhaps just to get a taste of weekend work, the lobby groups' phones can redirect to the mobiles of their respective CEOs. It might interrupt their day in the MCG corporate box hobnobbing with all the other knobs, but it might help them understand why Sunday isn't just another day.

If nobody in their offices has the skills to redirect their phones, then I'd be happy to teach them for a fee on Sundays.

T minus 4 Years

Donald Trump was sworn in as President overnight in an inauguration that was bleak and miserable as the weather in Washington D.C.

Despite the inevitable forthcoming Twitter protestations to the contrary, crowd numbers were down substantially on the past two inaugurations. Anti-Trump protests abounded in the city, with reports of some damage to shops and property.

Those expecting the new President to strike a conciliatory tone in line with the loftiness of the event were sorely disappointed. Trump basically reaffirmed the worst of his campaign sloganeering, telling the world he's going to govern for the anxieties and worst excesses of White America.

Mine — and most of the world's — only hope is that if this is to mark the end of Pax Americana, they do so with a whimper rather than a bang.

Imperial Evidence

Well done, voters of Queensland (ABC)

I'm usually fairly derisive of Q&A. I regularly admonish its fans and audience as being part of #QandAland, a happy land where harsh political realities cease to exist and we all sing kumbaya around a camp fire, holding hands with a leather-jacketed Malcolm Turnbull who has taken his rightful place as the leader of the Liberal Party (polite applause).

Most of the time, it is a pretty terrible exercise in inertia that gives Fairfax its main news stories for the next week. Sure, it's fun seeing Richard Dawkins and "Big" George Pell field incendiary questions about how evolution is just a "theory" or if an atheist can be a good person, but it's less a debate than a sideshow. There will never be a middle ground reached—there can't be—and the producers are perfectly happy to keep it that way.

Occasionally, however, the show can be revelatory. Duncan Storrar's questioning of a hapless Kelly O'Dwyer demonstrated how out of touch the Turnbull government was (and is), and how low the Murdoch papers will stoop with ad hominem attacks on those who disagree with their noxious world view.

Last night's National Science Week-themed Q&A also offered some gems, along with a great lessons in how to deal with the incurious, ignorant, chemtrail-addled obscurantist bore in your life (c'mon, we all have at least one).

Simple rule: don't argue with Professor Brian Cox unless you are discussing something which is impossible for him to have knowledge of, like the number of cracked Ikea coffee mugs in your cupboard (although he could probably give you a global mean) or on the finer points of Australian New Wave cinema.

One Nation lunatic-elect Malcolm Roberts gave a textbook performance as a conspiratorial nutjob. He challenged Professor Cox to present "empirical" evidence of climate change (it's almost like Malcolm knows what those words mean), and when presented with said evidence, claimed it was doctored. It's classic conspiracy believer stuff, with evidence against their tinfoil worldview appropriated as evidence for their conspiracy.

Think moon landing hoaxers: for them, the extensive photographic and data record of the Apollo program is fabricated, therefore this evidence the average person considers supports the moon landing is seen as evidence against the moon landings in the conspiratorial mind. Any evidence presented by authorities in inherently untrustworthy because it comes from Big Pharma, Big Farmer or the Guvment or Big Space (which is how I assume they refer to NASA).

Even though Brian Cox would have known he would be unlikely to alter Roberts's unfalsifiable position by presenting actual evidence, Cox's approach is a good one to keep in the critical thought toolbox when dealing with nutcases.

First off, Cox presented data. Now, presenting data almost never whips your a conspiracy-minded opponent into contrition, but it's worth a try. At least you know you have evidence to support your contention.
Secondly, when Roberts inevitably objected to the data, Cox asked specific questions as to why he objected. When Roberts claimed the data had been "corrupted" and "manipulated", Cox asked "by who?" By NASA, of course.
For many observers, this will be enough to demonstrate your opponent is a loon. Indeed it was enough for the residents of #QandAland to start laughing. Conspiracy theorists are, by and large, great at creating a compelling macro-scale worldview, but are woeful at detail. Once again, this doesn't change the mind of the conspiracy theorist, but it does deny them credibility among reasonable fence-sitting people.

For #QandAland, this is probably just the first appearance of many by this particular One Nation loon-elect. In an effort to concoct a sense of "balance", the ABC has gone out of their way to make sure fringe individuals like Pauline Hanson and Lyle Shelton get oxygen on programs like Q&A and The Drum. It is even less reason to engage in the alleged "debate" the show engenders.

I think Brian Cox said it best last night on the show when trying to communication the Australian Academy of Science's climate change report to Sovereign Idiot-elect Roberts: "...you can never get any sense on programs like this. They're adversarial things..."

I couldn't have said it better myself.

Ultimately, you're unlikely to change the closed mind of a deliberately ignorant individual. As a rational being, you're already at a disadvantage compared to the science denying loon because you require evidence to support your claims—the denier does not adhere to such inconvenient niceties. No amount of peer-reviewed evidence is going lead someone like Roberts along the road to a Damascene conversion.
But not everybody out there is intentionally ignorant. Sometimes, people just receive bad information and carry it with them. So here's advice from UQ PhD student Diana Lucia, as offered on Radio National's Ockham's Razor:

...next time you’re at a dinner party and find yourself sitting next to a science denialist, return the favour, latch onto every illogical inconsistency they throw at you and force them to address it. Find out exactly what they object to and where they have been getting their information from. I doubt you’ll force them to have a sudden epiphany by the time dessert is served, but you can be part of the process that breaks down the barriers to begin to change people’s minds. 

Until next dinner party...

Good resources:
How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic: Responses to the most common skeptical arguments on global warming, Grist.org
Science deniers use false equivalence to create fake debates, Skeptical Raptor
Don’t let denial get in the way of a good science story, The Conversation

Election 2016: So Very Tired

Governor-General Sir Peter Cosgrove regaling Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull about how big the one that got away was (Facebook)

Making predictions about an election and its outcome is a stupid thing to do. So here goes.

Turnbull is toast. There is no other way I can put this, regardless of the outcome of the election, he is gone sooner or later. Why? Well, if the Liberal Party loses, Turnbull loses. Duh. But if the Liberal Party wins, but only does so with a reduced majority (a current likely outcome), whatever authority the PM has left in the party room falls away thanks to the emboldened Abbott delcon (delusional conservative) rump.

These delcons would (delusionally) be able to claim that the switch to Turnbull did nothing to improve the government’s electoral performance. Of course the reality is the switch to Turnbull gave the Liberals a fighting chance when they were heading for almost certain oblivion under Abbott. Everyone else knows this, hence why this rump is termed delusional. These delcons would view a less-than-resounding win for Turnbull as a win for their brand of fringe politics. As they have done for the past eight months, they would continue to make Turnbull’s political life a living hell. On every issue at every opportunity, they’ll be aggressively ensuring Turnbull sticks to the deals he has made with the delcon devils on issues such as marriage equality, sex education and carbon pricing. These compromises, which have perhaps irreparably damaged Turnbull’s public standing (particularly in #QANDAland) have been his price of power. A few months ago, Turnbull could have counted on an increased majority to stifle dissent within the ranks, but barring a major stumble from Labor, such a scenario is difficult to imagine.

For Turnbull, winning is insufficient. He must win and he must do so with a thumping majority. Anything less means a replay of Labor in 2010...and possibly a return to the Mad Monk.

Politics and Intergalactic Relations, 3rd Edition

The Nazis on the Death Star First Order on Starkiller Base

>>Achtung! Here be spoilers<<

Viewers of Star Wars: The Force Awakens will leave the theatre with many questions: what occurs immediately after the credits roll? Is Rey a Skywalker? Will there be redemption for Kylo Ren? What the shit is a Snoke and why is he a 20ft-high hologram? Why does C-3PO have more expression on his face than Carrie Fisher?

These are all valid questions, however I left the theatre most bewildered about the state of political affairs in J.J. Abrams’ new galaxy. When we last saw our heroes at the end of Return of the Jedi, Emperor Palpatine was deposed with extreme prejudice, Darth Vader redeemed and the mighty Empire in disarray.

It was assumed, as had occurred in the now-jettisoned expanded universe, that the Rebel Alliance to Restore the Republic (to give the Alliance its formal name) did in fact become the New Republic. The opening crawl to The Force Awakens says as much. So far so good. The First Order, the new film’s surrogate Galactic Empire, can safely be assumed to be one of the many remnants of the Empire vying for control of the galaxy. Fine.

But why is the now General Leia leading a “Resistance”? Surely she should be leading a New Republic army against the First Order, rather than a rag-tag proxy Rebel Alliance with new X-Wings and helmets? This is confusing. If anyone could be classed as a resistance in this story, it’s the First Order resisting the New Republic.

The politics of the original trilogy (and even the maligned prequels) were pretty straightforward. It was the EVIL GALACTIC EMPIRE against the plucky Rebels; a tough Princess pursued by the “Empire’s sinister agents”. In the prequels, the political arc was the fall of the Republic and the rise of the Empire, comprehensible if clumsily plotted by George Lucas (like how by the end of Revenge of the Sith, the Republic is suddenly the Empire, with TIE-sounding spaceships, Imperial uniforms and their very own Grand Moff Tarkin even though this vital character had not been glimpsed at all in the prequels – lazy plotting and lazier writing attempting to squeeze too much into too short a time....oh and they're building the Death Star...apparently that took 19 years to build. Union disputes, Lucas "jokes" in the DVD commentary. I say "jokes" because Lucas is clearly devoid of anything resembling a sense of humour...but I digress).

This is also the entire plot for Rogue One

But I have no idea where we find ourselves in The Force Awakens’ galaxy and what effect the actions of our protagonists and antagonists have on the intergalactic political status quo. Like when the Death Star III Starkiller Base destroys a planet that looks suspiciously like galactic capital Coruscant (but apparently isn’t), it’s very difficult to tell whether that’s the entire New Republic gone. Conversely when Luke Skywalker Poe Dameron flies down the Death Star Starkiller Base trench and destroys it by firing torpedoes into its One Fatal Weakness™, is that the end of the First Order? Presumably not, although it’s not as if the First Order appeared to have a heap of starships in orbit around Starkiller Base. The fact is that the scope of both the New Republic and First Order is almost completely unknown. Perhaps this is for the best, leaving writers of future installments (and the all-important tie-in books) maximum wriggle room, but it’s also frustrating given the foundation of the Star Wars saga as a “Good vs. Evil” story.

It’s difficult to believe that the destruction of the Coruscant-like planet, capital of the New Republic or not, would spell the end for that government. A space-faring administration would surely find it quite easy to ensure continuity of government by spreading out vital services like the Space Police Force, Space Army, Space Medicare and Space Centrelink over several star systems, but General Hux’s fevered Hitleresque speech, announcing the end of the "illegitimate" Republic, would indicate otherwise.

For me, the destruction of this Republic planet (referred to as the Hosnian System) doesn't carry much weight in the film. Sure, it's apparently an important place, but it's difficult for viewers to relate to what is going on. When Tarkin ordered Alderaan destroyed in Star Wars, it carried emotional weight – it was Leia's home planet and the home of peaceful people who did not deserve a planetary genocide. Viewers know nothing of Hosnian Prime, except that it had something to do with the Republic and was probably its capital. The middling responses from our lead characters to this event don't add much weight to it at all.

My bet is there’s more to this universe than meets the eye. Abrams and fellow screenwriters Lawrence Kasdan and Michael Arndt are steeped in the Star Wars universe. They know what makes it tick and what makes sense in its internal logic. There are no doubt deeper reasons to why the Republic may or may not exist any more. Perhaps they demilitarised after the end of the Galactic Civil War, leaving Leia one of the few former Rebels who recognises the necessary evil of an army. Perhaps like a reluctant superpower, the New Republic provided only basic support to the Resistance, as more earthly superpowers often do in the real world when they don't want to get their hands dirty.

The more committed Star Wars fans among you will no doubt be able to point out that some of these questions are answered in the novelisation/graphic novel/young adult novel/trading card series/colouring book/inflatable beach ball. A preliminary interweb search does indeed indicate much is explained in Alan Dean Foster’s novelisation of the film and in an assortment of tie-in books (like DK’s Visual Dictionary), but it still leaves the vast bulk of casual viewers in the dark who won’t purchase let alone read the 1001 tie-in books, games and cereal boxes.

Regardless of the finer details of this universe, I think it’s kinda refreshing to watch a Hollywood blockbuster where not much is explained at all. Although it doesn’t come close to replicating the disorienting unfamiliarity audiences must have felt thrown headfirst into this world in 1977, it's nice that the action and quieter moments aren't subsumed with blatant exposition beyond what is needed for the plot.

I look forward to finding out more about this new Star Wars universe as more of the story becomes available. I guess that’s one of the reasons I love Star Wars so much: it’s not just three good films, but a rich tapestry of media including some of the best novels and video games in the genre. Although all that is now gone down the memory hole, we can look forward to experiencing a whole new Star Wars universe and great stories it will bring.

Welcome To Australia, Huffington Post! Please Leave That Pseudoscience Nonsense At The Door

View image | gettyimages.com

~Originally published at Junkee.com~

The Huffington Post has finally arrived in Australia — and while our mainstream media will certainly benefit from more diversity, we may have reason to be afraid. Not just because of the brand’s infamous embrace of clickbait (we’re all guilty), or even its questionable practice of sourcing content from unpaid bloggers.

No: in a country where the CSIRO’s funding is free-falling, and science is routinely under attack from elected officials, of greatest concern to me is the Huffington Post’s uncritical promotion of pseudoscience and quackery.

Since its inception in 2005, the Huffington Post has provided a platform for anti-vaccine activists, new age spiritualists and other types of scientific illiteracy dressed up as genuine news. While media outlets sprouting the virtues of miracle diets and cures is nothing new, HuffPo’s massive world-wide reach and agenda-setting aspirations made its scientific illiteracy particularly concerning at the time. And although the publication’s embrace of pseudoscience has moderated in recent years, it’s worth taking a closer look at its recent past to be wary of what its Australian edition might bring.
The (Unvaccinated) Birth Of The Huffington Post

Arianna Huffington was a failed gubernatorial candidate and political divorcee when she founded the Huffington Post in 2005. A vanity exercise in the nascent blogosphere, it became a home for liberal politics and vitriolic pieces attacking key figures in the Bush administration. Huffington, formerly a Republican through personal belief and marriage, alienated many of her friends by her political conversion to the left — she even went so far as to ask her daughter Isabella to choose a new godmother (Isabella’s first godmother was appointed Secretary of Labor by Bush).

Shortly after HuffPo’s launch, some science bloggers noticed a disturbing trend in its coverage of health issues. Anti-vaccination activists such as Janet Grillo, Jay Gordon and David Kirby dominated the outlet’s “health” coverage; between them they published pieces supporting the long-discredited “link” between vaccines and autism, scare-mongering over pesticides (“parks and school ball fields are sprayed with chemicals so toxic they should be illegal”), and promoting the “Pharma-Political Complex” that apparently wants to harm all the children (presumably to sell them drugs to make them better or something).

These bylines were soon joined by the doyen of disinformation Jenny McCarthy, an actor and TV host who’s now infamous for leading the anti-vaccination movement, and her painfully unfunny then-boyfriend Jim Carrey. They both repeated the usual claims that “toxic” ingredients of the “lucrative vaccine program” are “causing autism and other disorders (Aspergers, ADD, ADHD)”. Of course there is no credible evidence to support this or any other of their claims; in fact there is plenty of evidence to the contrary. But in the world of the anti-vaxxer, contrary evidence isn’t valid, because it comes from government health organisations who are ‘in on it’ too.

(A quick debunk of the anti-vaccination movement: the vaccine ingredient anti-vaxxers claim causes autism – mercury – is not present in scheduled childhood vaccines. Thimerosal, a preservative used in some other vaccines, does indeed contain mercury, but in the form of an ethylmercury which is easily filtered out by your body. All this, however, is moot. Even if children are given vaccines that contain thimerosal, there is no known link between mercury and autism. None. The exact cause (or causes) of autism remain unknown, but what we do know is that vaccines are not to blame.)
The Sickness Of “Wellness”

Alas, HuffPo did not confine its anti-science stance to a few ill-advised stories on vaccines. In 2009 they devoted an entire section to “wellness”, edited by homeopath and licenced acupuncturist “Dr” Patricia Fitzgerald. Contrary to her title, “Dr” Fitzgerald was not a licenced medical practitioner, but rather held a doctorate in homeopathy. Unfortunately, this didn’t stop her offering dud medical advice, promoting ineffective “detox” routines while also having nice things to say about Jenny McCarthy.

Then it got worse. “Quantum healer” and self-help millionaire Deepak Chopra became a contributor, as did Kim Evans, who wrote that antibiotics are responsible for cancer, and that all cancers are fungi and can be treated with baking soda. Yep, you won’t believe what THEY don’t want you to know, dear sheeple.

There wasn’t a shred of credible evidence to support these astonishing claims either — only the assumption that Big Government, Big Pharma or Big Pineapple was out to get you. By 2010, the height of HuffPo’s questionable relationship with science, the site garnered around 28 million unique views per month. In 2011, AOL acquired the Huffington Post for $315 million. Since then it has only grown in size and audience to become the most popular blog in the world, claiming to attract some 100 million visitors per month. That’s a big global audience to be selling garbage science to.

But the web fought back. The same internet that helped propagate HuffPo also hosted a new generation of science-literate blogs and websites such as Science-Based Medicine, Phil Plait’s Bad Astronomy and ScienceBlogs, among many others. The condemnation from these bloggers was swift, universal and derisive.

PZ Meyers of ScienceBlogs offered this gem:

image: http://junkee.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/huffpo.jpg



Slowly, contributors with science and evidence on their side began to have a regular presence on HuffPo, with the site even launching a science section in 2012. While today’s HuffPo continues to publish articles on topics of questionable scientific validity including acupuncture, immune system “boosting”, detox diets, and anti-GMO food, there are also a few choice bylines with the all-important post-nominals “M.D.” to counter the hokum and provide real actual medical science.

The problem is that the two types of articles sit side by side, and it is very difficult for the lay reader to determine what is a good, evidence-based article and what is pseudoscientific rubbish. While this is great for the free expression of quacks everywhere, it does little to further science in the popular understanding.

Search HuffPo today for “vaccines+autism” and you’ll find a hodgepodge of pro and anti-vaccine articles with vague, clickbaited headlines and questionable contentions. Presenting vaccination as a “debate” with two equal sides is bad journalism at best, and life-endangering at worst. When it comes to childhood vaccinations, there is no debate; there are not two equal sides. There is evidence-based science and there is opinion. As Neil deGrasse Tyson argued on the Colbert Report, science doesn’t care what your opinion is: “It’s true whether or not you believe in it”. Vaccines are the most effective medical intervention in the history of humankind.

Should we hold out hope that the Australian edition of HuffPo will improve on its parent’s chequered past? Perhaps. Right out of the gate, they have published two decent pieces on mental health, one by noted adolescent psychologist Dr. Michael Carr-Gregg, and the other looking at a new Beyond Blue anxiety program. They have also published a piece promoting the healing properties of crystals (they help “clear and release old toxic emotions”, apparently). If we can continue this ratio of 2-1 good science-based medical articles to hokum, there might be hope yet.

The methods of science are not optional to understanding our world; they are mandatory. They consist of careful observation and rigorous intellectual honesty, and are the best ways to confront the world’s many and varied problems. In a recent interview with the ABC’s Lateline, Huffington stated that she supports the key tenets of “fairness, accuracy and fact checking” in journalism, along with the scientific consensus of anthropogenic global warming. I sorely hope she implores her news sites, with a global audience of tens of millions, to follow the same principles.

ANZAC Day

Bill Shorten and Paul Keating at Australian War Memorial Remembrance Day Ceremonies, 2013 Source: SMH

"...within Australia we were moving through the processes of our federation to new ideas of ourselves. Notions of equality and fairness – suffrage for women, a universal living wage, support in old age, a sense of inclusive patriotism … Australia was never in need of any redemption at Gallipoli, any more than it was in need of one 30 years later at Kokoda. There was nothing missing in our young nation or our idea of it that required the martial baptism of a European cataclysm to legitimise us."

Paul Keating, Remembrance Day 2013

ANZAC Day has become a day irrevocably bound up in uncritical myth and legend. Like a religious holiday, the same stories are told and re-told, changing subtly from year to year, altering in our imagination until all that's left is some vague notion of what we think may have happened.

Take that unimpeachable symbol of Aussie "spirit" and "mateship", Simpson and his Donkey. The average Australian can probably tell you a few things about him: he was serving at Gallipoli and ferried wounded soldiers from danger back to safety; he probably should have been awarded the Victoria Cross, but didn't - probably because of the British in charge at Gallipoli or something. I don't know, I haven't seen the movie in a while.

A commissioned officer in John Howard's Culture Wars, education minister Brendan Nelson told Australian schools to teach the "Australian values" such as those espoused by Simpson and the Donkey or else: "if people don't want to be Australians and they don't want to live by Australian values and understand them, well then they can basically clear off."

This, of course was aimed at schools who dared to teach Islamic tradition or anything else culturally unsavoury to that band of old, privileged white men in government from 1996–2007. Howard had said he was prepared to "get inside" mosques and schools to make sure they weren't creating the next band of extremism.

With a little bit of intellectual curiosity, Nelson would have see the folly of his idea - Simpson deserted the merchant navy before opportunistically signing up as a stretcher bearer as means of getting back home to England. He wanted to get away from Australia, a country he was growing "tired" of. He was also an active trade unionist. While he performed his job admirably in Gallipoli, rescuing soldiers with a donkey got him out of the more dangerous stretcher-bearing routes where many men died ferrying the wounded back to safety. He was fatally wounded on one of these trips.

Propaganda publications like the Glorious Deeds of Australiasians in the Great War painted an image of untold glories that were swallowed whole by an Australian public in need of good news from the front. Like the stories of the Bible, the myths of ANZAC were spoken, re-spoken, collected and published. The myths, set in print, then became fact, rarely to be critically analysed again.

Until today, where there is a small, but growing movement contrary to the reinvigorated Howard-brand ANZAC festival. While it is incredibly important to remember those who have died in the service of our country, it is even more important to place that in a context.

Why? Where? When? How?

The day before ANZAC soldiers landed at Gallipoli, Ottoman authorities rounded up 250 Armenian intellectuals and community leaders and deported them. Most of them would later be killed. Thus began the Armenian Genocide, still denied by Turkey to this day, resulting is some 1-1.5 million deaths. An unabashed and unknown (in Australia anyway) act of inhuman savagery.

At Gallipoli, almost 11,500 Australian and New Zealand troops died. Some 21,000 British troops suffered the same fate. While the impact of the Great War can't be understated in its affect on two fledging antipodean countries, it is time to move beyond symbols and myths to something more nuanced and dignified.

By the Numbers

EA Falcon from the Garden State FTW! - Source: Wikimedia Commons

Remember when number plates were a little piece of civic one-upmanship? Driving the length of the Hume, the Garden State would fight bumper-to-bumper with the First State and the Festival State. Further north, in a fit of unimagined creativity, those wily Queenslanders branded their vehicles part of the Sunshine State. 

They instilled some sort of small, positive civic pride: the knowledge that Victoria valued its gardens meant its people valued its gardens; South Australia their cultural scene; New South Wales their historical primacy; and Queenslanders...their sun - clearly a meteorological feature unique to our friends up north.  

But since those heady days of garden pride, Victoria's number plates have transforphed into a middling quagmire of automotive blandness. From the Kennett-era hubris of the state On the Move to the Bracksian vagueness of being The Place to Be, the Liberal government has turned our automotive identity into a mobile road safety billboard with Vic Stay Alert Stay Alive.

Insert civic slogan and/or punctuation here - Source: VicRoads

Not only has the government expanded the mind-numbing stream of road safety messages to our number plates, but they've managed to circumcise the name of our very state. We are "VIC" to Australia Post, we are ".vic" to our internet browsers, but we are Victoria to the nation and the world. Alas no longer.

Even though Victoria has recorded its lowest road toll since 1924, drivers are still - by and large - treated like naughty children. 1924 saw 224 deaths on the road and given Victoria's population is four times the size it was in 1924, it's easy to see what an achievement this is. Nonetheless, Victorian drivers get a small pat on the head but a stern warning that one death is one too many. Road safety is, of course, very important, but after years of the vast majority of people hearing and heeding the message, it's becoming a bit tiresome on TV, radio, newspapers, billboards and now the ubiquitous number plate. Surely it can be a place for something a little different? Something that gets people talking?  Something that is truly representative of Victoria?

Assuming kids travelling on the Hume still look out the window of their moving cars and not the iPads given to pacify them, they would be unable to glean anything from the home states of the passing cars except that they value road safety - something as unique and far less fun than Queensland's sun.  

Holden Closure Blamed on Dodgy Accounting

General Motors Holden is set to close its Australian car production arm after dramatically underestimating the number of cars it had sold.

It is understood Holden executives used a method that counted vehicle production and sales only once cars were on the road. It is believed trained car counters stood on major freeway overpasses tallying the number of Holden badges they saw. This method is not used anywhere else in the automotive world with Holden accounting officer Marcus Carmaker describing this method as a "uniquely Australian innovation".

This alleged disparity between the number of cars actually produced and sold and the number of cars recorded sold is believed to have occurred when Holden's actuaries did not include Commodores that had had their Holden badges removed and replaced with Chevrolet ones.

"We're very embarrassed that our biggest fans have actually killed Holden in Australia," Mr. Carmaker said. But even with the forecast 2017 plant closure Mr Carmaker remains upbeat, "I plan on buying up every surplus Holden badge in existence so I can rebadge the 2018 Chevrolet Impala as a Holden."

Think Generously This Christmas

A Salvation Army band in full swing - http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/1484865

As you wander around the streets of any city over the next week or so, you are likely to hear the dulcet (or otherwise) tones of the brass band or singular wind instrument pumping out the old Christmas standards. They will often be accompanied by a tin rattler imploring you to give generously this season. But before you drop that gold, silver or paper legal tender in their tins, have a think about what you're doing.

The most prominent of these en-brassened Christmas groups is the Salvation Army. When hiding behind the veneer of solemn traditional carols and even some post-1907 foot-tapping standards, those Salvos can appear positively perky. Besides, they "do good" in the community and stuff. Helping the homeless and addicts and telling people they can't smoke. Where's the harm in that? It's easy to forget that behind the Christmas cheer is a conservative evangelical church that demands absolute obedience from its members and arguably has many of the hallmarks of a cult.

The rigid military hierarchy seeks to control the thoughts and actions of its "soliders", with acceptance of god and buddy Jesus the only solutions to any of life's infinitely complex problems. You won't be surprised to read the Army officially holds an ultra-conservative outlook on the usual issues such as gay marriage, premarital sex, and abortion. As usual with most "pro-family" organisations, their stance on homosexuality is confused and unconvincing.

After a fracas on Melbourne's Joy FM, where Major Andrew Crabe may or may not have agreed with gays being put to death (whether he did or not is immaterial; his lack of a full and explicit condemnation of the mere suggestion says a lot about "good" Christian folk), the Army's not quite sure what to say.

They have been hard at work trying to reconcile their dogged and almost literal belief in the scripture with the existence of gay people. There isn't even a "positional statement" on homosexuality from the Southern Territory branch of the Army, which is telling. They are apparently having a "healthy and vigorous" debate over how they deal with sexuality that doesn't conform to their ancient and irrelevant text. When finally and vigorously released, I gather it won't be a missionary position.

But of course, you'll say, the Salvation Army does so much "good". Well, of course they do. They provide recovery services for alcoholics and drug addicts, where victims are evangelised at, prostheletysed to and bible-bashed until free of their wicked human sins as part of the rather Orwellian sounding "12-steps" programme (the link's from NZ).

The Salvos regularly rally against evidence-based, socially progressive reforms such as safe injecting rooms, infecting the secular world with their all-singing, no-dancing form of Bible-bashing evangelism. They also ran children's homes where hundreds of wards are known to have been abused, with many other undocumented cases likely. To the Salvation Army's credit, they have apologised unreservedly, but why any right-minded person should think an unreserved apology (accompanied by financial compensation) is something we should congratulate these organisations for, I'll never know (still waiting, Pell).

Of course I would be accused of cherry picking the worst behaviours of these organisations if I didn't mention the extensive other "good" work done by the Salvos, from supporting the homeless to the help offered to victims of drug and alcohol abuse. Their work in these areas is mostly good, although one must question how a good "Soldier" balances their requirement to spread their faith with the help they claim they provide to anyone, regardless of religious or sexual orientation. But this is the friendly face of the Salvos, the seemingly non-evangelical, tuba-blowing tin rattlers who we see this time of year. Why not give them a few bucks for this "good" work, you might say. I'd ask you this: why support an organisation with such extensive ideological and prejudicial baggage when you can just donate to the Smith Family, OXFAM, UNICEF or Médecins Sans Frontières who "do good" for the sake of doing good?

You might agree with the conservative evangelical ethos of the Salvos. If you do, you probably aren't reading this. Go forth and do whatever conservative religious types do - scorning others I think is your main thing. But I have a feeling that if you've read this far and stumbled upon my little web log, you probably don't agree with the Salvo's underlying values. So this Christmas, think a little and put your charity dollars somewhere more in-keeping with your own beliefs and values.

Frame #313

Figure 1: The inconsistent shadows from Lunar Rover indicate a forgery of the Zapruder Film, proving once and for all that Buzz Aldrin is a lizard*.

The fiftieth anniversary of the assassination of President Kennedy has brought more than the usual cavalcade of television specials and docudramas, each promising "never before seen" footage and claiming "all new" evidence that will solve crime once and for all. One would be forgiven for thinking investigators have been keeping such evidence hidden, waiting for this milestone anniversary to roll around.

But the vast majority of this "new" evidence is based on variations or re-statements of  theories that have been around since 12:31pm CST on the 22nd November, 1963. It's just that now they feature high-definition frame-by-frame digitally remastered state-of-the-art computer animation to "prove" their particular contentions. Despite the existence of numerable photographic and documentary sources, three major government investigations and the release of most of the classified documents pertaining to Kennedy's assassination, the culture of conspiracy that has grown up around the assassination is one that has held the public imagination for five decades.

Innumerable theories and variations on theories have since been postured, first in grimy civic halls with bootleg copies of the Zapruder film. Later moving onto fax modems across the newsgroups of the burgeoning World Wide Web and today favouring 720p YouTube uploads complete with poorly-recorded narration, captions and arrows indicating what the author wants the viewer to see. 

Not the Mel Gibson film

There is an enduring popular appeal to a good conspiracy theory. Their appeal partly lies in their clear division of the world into good and evil. Conspiracy thinking tends to feature a group or groups acting in secret to some nefarious end. As Michael Barkun puts it in A Culture of Conspiracy (2007), a conspiracist worldview "implies a universe governed by design rather than randomness" (p.3).

To some, this is a comforting idea similar to belief in an omniscient god. Horrible acts of violence, the infirmity of the human condition and indiscriminate natural disasters can all be explained away as part of some "greater plan" or, in the case of conspiracy world-view, treated as parts of a master plan by a global cabal of evil-doers. Conspiracy theorists view themselves as possessors of a truth that only they know and make it their lives' mission to get this truth out.

It's interesting to note how many conspiracy proponents of the Kennedy assassination crop up writing about also about the moon landings and more recently September 11, 2001, virtually in the same breath. To them, such massive events are so vast and so intricate that the only reasonable explanation for them involves coercion, deceit and conspiracy. 

The enormity of the events in Dallas on November 22nd 1963 is fertile ground for conspiracy theories. It is easy to question how one loner named Lee Harvey Oswald could alter the course of history. If the President of the United States isn't safe, who is?

Dallas

The conspiracy theories began to circulate almost as soon as President Kennedy was announced dead at Parkland Memorial Hospital and on face value, it's little wonder. The doctors who attended to Kennedy in what must have been a blood-soaked frenzy of confusion gave contradictory assessments on what were entry and exit wounds; Kennedy's body was rushed out of Dallas aboard Air Force One before an autopsy could be performed as per Texas state law; Oswald claimed he was "just a patsy", before being gunned down on live television, not to mention the enigmatic character of Oswald's assassin, Jack Ruby...and these were only in the first three days...

The "official" story, as put forward by the Warren Commission did little to dispel conspiracy theories and its little wonder why. Many of the Commission's members did not want to be on the panel, most of the hearings were held in closed (but not secret) sessions and there was little unanimity on the Commission's conclusion of a "lone nut" assassinating the President of the United States. Simply put, its final report was a compromise to please its members, but not all agreed on the conclusions.

After the release of the Warren Commission's Final Report, a group of assassination "buffs" combed the official record for discrepancies and incongruities. In the main, these buffs were self-taught researchers from across the professional spectrum who felt aggrieved by the assassination of their president. Their intent and their goal was an admirable one - to get to the bottom of this very public execution in Dealey Plaza where they felt the official commission had failed. Herein lies another conspiratorial appeal: what could be more alluring than fighting conventional wisdom and established facts by offering a truth only you possess? However, criticism of the commission was not confined to "buffs", the issue of belief in a conspiracy divided the mainstream political left in America for many years to come.

The tumultuous events of the "decade of shocks" from 1963 to Watergate seemed to many to prove the existence of a vast conspiracy involving the government, CIA, FBI, the mafia and/or the military-industrial complex. In the wash-up from Watergate, what people had suspected about the intelligence community's involvement in secret activities domestically and overseas became established fact. With a White House cover-up and history of CIA-backed coups d'état revealed, was it really much of a stretch to imagine a conspiracy to kill the President? The paranoid style of the politics of the 1960s and 1970s suggested not.

Oft-alleged conspirator Lyndon B. Johnson takes the oath of office aboard Air Force One

"That's what they want you to think"

While there aren't enough column pixels in the world (or pixel hours) to go into detail about each and every conspiracy theory pertaining to Kennedy, most involve an ambiguous mass of shadowy organisations, be it CIA, FBI, Secret Service, US Military or the Mafia. Motives vary from revenge for the Bay of Pigs fiasco, through to the prevention of Kennedy revealing hidden UFO secrets.

The problem (well, a major one anyway) is that conspiracists regard these implicated organisations as monolithic entities where history has shown them to be anything but. The lack of cooperation between the CIA and FBI has placed US national security at risk on more than one occasion. If there was a conspiracy to be found, I'm more than confident that a Deep Throat-esque character would have come forward to reveal the true Kennedy assassins.

The other major problem with the conspiracy world-view is that it is essential unfasifiable. If anyone were to present uncontrovertible evidence of Lee Harvey Oswald firing three bullets from a Mannlicher-Carcano rifle in 6.3 or 7.1 or 8.3 seconds from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository - some hitherto unknown film or photograph - it would likely be disregarded by conspiracy theorists as a forgery or fake - the work of the government. To a conspiracy theorist, contrary evidence proves their argument!

Similarly, it's interesting to note how the initial eyewitness statements and media reports form the basis of many conspiracy theories, not only in the context of the Kennedy assassination, but from September 11 also. Barkun calls this "superseded knowledge" (p.27): claims made in the heat of the moment to fill air time or to meet deadlines that have since been demonstrated to be false, yet regarded as fact by conspiracy theorists. Later retractions of these initial reports or eyewitness accounts are seen as evidence of witnesses being "gotten to" by authorities, usually the shadowy forces of the FBI, CIA or the nebulous military-industrial complex. By the way, the majority of witnesses in Dealey Plaza heard three shots and no, the mafia didn't get to them.

Even the Rosetta Stone of the assassination, the 8mm Kodakchrome Zapruder film is not without its critics. Some claim frames 314 and 315 show Kennedy's head snapping back and to the left as a result of a shot from the front. People who know more than me about ballistics have put forward their ideas on why Kennedy's motions are consistent with a shot from behind. Others claim alteration or deletion of frames, or even outright forgery of the entire film using complex special effects, travelling mattes and animation (must have been the same methods developed for Kubrick to fake the moon landings).

The problem with much of these incompatible theories is that if the film is altered or forged, isn't it easier to have no film at all? If a giant conspiracy made use of the most advanced photographic effects techniques to produce a fake or altered film, why produce a film that, at first glance, doesn't support official version of events? Why not have Kennedy's head moving forward from a shot from behind as logic (and the official story) dictate? Because the evidence is real and sometimes things do not occur as we expect them to.

Each of the films and photographs available from Dealey Plaza correspond to each other. As the original conspiracy "buff" Josiah Thompson has said, the films and photographs from the day are self-verifying. Alteration or fabrication of one would mean the same for all. Then it becomes a question of who fabricated the photographic evidence? A conspiracy is only as good as its conspirators and it is difficult to imagine a) a conspiracy so vast as to completely fabricate the photographic record of a particular event; and b) that the people employed (who would have been the best in the business) could keep their collective mouths shut for five decades.

This is where some conspiracy believers should employ some form of Occam's Razor, where the hypothesis with the fewest assumptions should be selected until real evidence proves otherwise. There are simply too many assumptions to make with most conspiracy theories pertaining to Kennedy's assassination. While some theories - such as a second shooter - are entirely plausible, others jump the shark as it were. The argument of a complete photographic fabrication is one of those. Unless of course the Men in Black used their neuralisers on the Dealey Plaza crowd, stole all their cameras and edited their own photos...

The Other Z

The issue for conspiracy theorists is from time to time, uncontrovertible evidence supporting the "official" story does appear. In the late 1990s, a retired Kodak engineer Roland Zavada led a team of technical experts on an analysis of the camera original Zapruder film and other photographic records. Uh-oh: experts.

Zavada is the world's foremost expert on 8mm Kodachrome film, having played a key role developing Kodachrome II, Ektachrome Commercial and Kodachrome Super 8 film for Kodak. Zavada and his team spent a long, long time analysing the Zapruder camera original and Zapruder's Bell and Howell 8mm camera. He concluded, in a lengthy report, that the anomalies present in the film are due to camera characteristics. He could find no evidence of alteration to the film.

Evidence, shmevidence. Naturally this exhaustive report by Zavada was deemed rubbish by many in the conspiracy community and herein lies the rub - the unfalsifiable nature of conspiracy theories. There is no level of evidence possible to disprove a conspiracy theory. Any evidence offered will be rejected in kind. Zavada now wishes he never took on the task of analysing the film as his methods and honesty have been endlessly questioned by people like Jack White, whose main qualification is a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism. When White was asked if there was any level of proof that would alter his belief that the moon landing was faked, he replied that since he believed the landings were faked, any evidence in support of a genuine landing must also have been faked. Down, down and further down the rabbit hole we go...

Beyond Zapruder

If there's a fault with Zapruder's shocking 26 second 8mm film, it's that it is the sole means through which many of us understand this brutal public execution of the most powerful man in the world. As detached viewers, the whole thing has become a sort of carnival attraction from the past, mediated and distorted by popular fiction, pseudo non-fiction and feature films.

What is forgotten is the utter panic that must have gripped both the eyewitnesses and Presidential staff on that day of unprecedented mayhem. How the Presidential detail must not known was whether the killing was an isolated incident or the beginning of something bigger, like an act of war. These were unchartered waters for the Secret Service and the American nation - the rush to ensure the security of LBJ as Jacqueline Kennedy, Kenny O'Donnell and a handful of key Kennedy staffers drove the body of the slain president to an unceremonious arrival at Air Force One.  In many ways, the "official" story is far more interesting than any story that can be concocted. The "what-ifs" concerned boggle the mind - if the weather had been inclement, the plexiglass "bubble" might have found its place on top of the limousine; if the FBI had arrest Oswald for threatening to blow up the Dallas office, he might not have been able to pull the trigger; on and on it goes.

Even with the passage of time, it's unlikely the various theories of what occurred on that day will lose their appeal. Neither will we ever likely know definitively exactly what went down in Dallas that day. The lack of a consistent and precise "official" narrative makes it difficult to discount a conspiracy, but little hard evidence has been produced to support any of the other alternate versions of event. As a former acolyte of every conspiracy theory under the sun, I've come to realise most are based on nothing but the same tired - if creative - ideas. As appealing and schmick as Oliver Stone's JFK is, or as ardent as conspiracy believers are, they are mainly based on supposition, misplaced assumption and conjecture.

As a university lecturer of mine always said if you ever have to choose between and conspiracy and a fuck-up, choose the fuck-up every time. In the case of this seismic event, I think the same can be said until Area 51 reveals its secrets...


*Yes, I know this is a composite. Yes, I know that the lunar image is from Apollo 15 and therefore it is not Buzz Aldrin in the image, rather it is Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Leonov who died in mysterious circumstances in a jet fighter crash in 1959, after a failed sub-orbital attempt, and was subsequently sent on a suicide mission to the moon and survived and became American astronaut James Irwin.

Get Rooty-ed

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Canberra – Checks and Balances

I recently found myself in Canberra, with a few hours free at the tail-end of a quick trip. I had not visited the national capital for some years, certainly not since the Telecom Tower became the Telstra Tower (and subsequently the generic "Black Mountain Tower"), and not since I had discovered the camera to be more than a familial annoyance.

And what better time to visit Canberra, during the city's centenary year. As the creative director of the celebrations, Robyn Archer, acknowledged last year, "Canberra" has become a byword for politics and politicians. Our contempt and mistrust of the political class has been sadly and inextricably linked with the city they do much of their work in. But Canberra is much more than a bland, planned city. It is a striking city that houses many of the democratic and civic institutions we hold dear. But more than that, it is an expression of Australian confidence and of independence from the sometimes corrupting establishments of Sydney and Melbourne.

For the duration of my time in Canberra, I stayed almost at the foot of Mt. Ainslie at the former Hotel Ainslie, now a Mercure hotel. The hotel has been a Canberra landmark for decades, the original building dating from 1926–27. It is an architectural example of the Arts and Crafts movement, an anti-industrial movement popularised in Britain. The hotel provides an informative book in each room detailing the history of the hotel, detailing the key role it played in developing a social world on the fringes of the nascent national capital. It also provided accommodation for many of the public servants who found themselves employed by the Commonwealth.

1911 contour survey for the new federal capital, competition submission by entrant No. 29, Walter Burley Griffin. Original held by National Archives of Australia

Canberra Federal Capital of Australia preliminary plan, Walter Burley Griffin (1914) – National Library of Australia

The entire city is full of architectural gems. Although Walter Burley Griffin (ably supported by his wife, Marion, one of world's first licensed female architects) won the design competition for the new Australian capital, an unsupportive bureaucracy undermined Griffin at every turn, resulting in the architect being removed as director of Canberra's construction. Griffin subsequently severed all ties to the authority overseeing the capital's construction. The only fully realised Griffin design in Canberra is the grave of General Sir William Bridges at Duntroon. This would not be the last time in Australian history that architectural visions would be compromised by political meddling.

Although the extant civic buildings and cultural edifices are not what Walter and Marion originally envisioned, their fundamental design is remains in the axes and geometric precision of Canberra's layout. Oh, and there's a giant puddle in the middle of the city bearing the name "Lake Burley Griffin".   How Ceasar-like it was for Prime Minister Menzies to reject the naming of Canberra's lake in his own honour when he oversaw its construction...

Lake Menzies Burley Griffin and Kings Avenue bridge under construction – Wikimedia Commons

For an architectural photographer, Canberra represents a rare opportunity in Australia. Unlike the former colonial capital cities of Melbourne and Sydney, the civic buildings of Canberra are given their own space. Rarely do they jut up one against another. Furthermore, though a greater number of Walter Burley Griffin's finished architectural works in Melbourne, they have been subsumed by surrounding development, the Capitol Theatre on Swanston Street a prime example. 

The Stripped Classicism of the National Library of Australia is able to exist in its own context, without being overshadowed by adjacent skyscrapers or apartment blocks. Contrast this with the Victorian Classicism of Joseph Reed's State Library of Victoria, where the questionable apartment towers on the former Queen Victoria Hospital site has left the SLV an architectural shrinking violet on its own street frontage. Although the SLV remains a striking building internally – its famous dome the centrepiece – the library façade struggles to compete on its own merits. 

The Stripped Classicism of the National Library of Australia © 2013 – Fujifilm X100 & Adobe Lightroom

The National Library of Australia, however, recalls the classical buildings of antiquity ably standing in its own architectural space. It is a vital cultural building, housing, by law, every book published in Australia. 

Canberra's buildings feature a surprisingly wide-variety of architectural styles. From the post-war art deco to brutalist to whatever style you call Parliament House. The late modern Brutalism of the High Court of Australia building is a personal favourite. It rises from the shores of Lake Burley Griffin in its own architectural idiom. Like the institution it contains, the building is not to be dominated by those that surround it. It is impartial and impressive. 

The High Court of Australia (Edwards Madigan Torzillo and Briggs), 1980 © 2013 – iPhone 5 & VSCOcam

After a brief visit to Questacon (a gift from Japan for Australia's bicentenary) and its requisite giftshop, I was somewhat disturbed to find the walk down to the shores of Lake Burley Griffin consisted almost entirely of car park. Interesting use of lake frontage. In the mid-1950s, much of this area was earmarked to be the centre of government in plans drawn up by British urban planner William Holford, instead the national capital got a large thing nestled into the top of Capital Hill. I'll leave discussion of Parliament House for another time.

Reconciliation Place on the shores of Lake Burley Griffin © 2013 – Fujifilm X100 & Adobe Lightroom

The city's generally lo-rise civic and commercial buildings reminded me greatly of another capital city, the Icelandic capital Reykjavík. The two cities share an extensive road network as well as a reliance on buses for public transit. Fairly large distances separate buildings and sights, making the city almost unwalkable. My 5km walk from the city centre, down Commonwealth Avenue to buildings along the lake's shore is not be recommended with a family in tow.

I would like to leave it not as long until my next visit to Canberra. The galleries and museums (and their respective giftshops) await my visitation. I'll drive next time and pack a sturdy tripod and some slow-speed, low-grain black and white film. Until then...

Links:
Entrant No.29 – Walter Burley Griffin (NAA)
Walter Burley Griffin's submission, digitised (Cornell University Library)
Utzon Lecture Series – “100th Anniversary of Walter Burley Griffin: Griffin and Canberra”
Canberra House: Mid-century modernist architecture
Canberra100 – Maps and Markers (PDF)
Canberra100 – The Design Brief (PDF)

National Library of Australia and Flynn Drive © 2013 – Fujifilm X100 & Adobe Lightroom

Commonwealth Avenue Bridge © 2013 – Fujifilm X100 & Adobe Lightroom

Commonwealth Avenue, with Black Mountain and its tower in the background © 2013 – Fujifilm X100 & Adobe Lightroom

The new Canberra Airport terminal is befitting the national capital (with reasonable beer prices, too) © 2013 – iPhone 5 & VSCOcam

Forecourt of the High Court of Australia. An exemplar of late Brutalism © 2013 – iPhone 5 & VSCOcam

National Portrait Gallery © 2013 – iPhone 5 & VSCOcam