Unfashionable virtues?

ABC RN's Life Matters recently ran a poll about which unfashionable virtues "should make a comeback".

Results:

Humility (23%)
Magnanimity (21%)
Perseverance(18%)
Modesty (15%)
Prudence (11%)
Stoicism (9%)
Meekness (4%).

I voted for stoicism.

The results were discussed on air and can be downloaded (at least for the time being) from the program website by clicking on the link above.

Another 4 Sept anniversary

Philip Adams' interview of Martin Krygier on ABC RN's Late Night Live last week reminded us that 4 June is another significant anniversary. It is 20 years since the victory of Solidarity in the first round of an election which saw democracy restored to Poland.

Innocent abroad?

The ABC reports

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd says the Government worked hard to help secure the release of Victorian woman Annice Smoel, who spent time in a Thai prison after being accused of stealing a bar mat.At the same time, Victorian Premier John Brumby has accused Thai authorities of overreacting in the case.

Ms Smoel, 36, was greeted with hugs and cheers by her four daughters and other relatives when she arrived at Melbourne Airport this afternoon.She was released late yesterday after pleading guilty to stealing a bar mat almost three weeks ago. A Thai court suspended her six-month jail sentence after the Governor of Phuket paid her $38 fine.

Mr Rudd said the Department of Foreign Affairs did a lot of work behind the scenes to secure her release.

"Helping the family, helping the individual, and negotiating quietly with the Thai authorities to make sure that this can be dealt with," Mr Rudd said. "And they've done a very good job, and I congratulate them.And I would say to the family concerned, that we're pleased that the little ones have that anxiety removed."

Mr Brumby, meanwhile, says the Thai authorities "gravely" infringed Ms Smoel's human rights when they charged and jailed her.

"To be honest, that message did get through to the Thai authorities and they saw common sense and that this was a trivial matter, that there'd been an over reaction and that a woman's rights had been gravely infringed," he said.

However Mr Brumby says he hopes the relationship between the two countries will be repaired.

Despite his propensity to bang the populist drum , I thought that Andrew Bolt had a pretty sensible take on the matter before it was resolved.

"Next time, pack some manners" was the headline of his comment after it was all over . One succinct sentence is IMO a fair comment on our times:

It strikes me that our public manners in fact no longer meet the standard required in most other countries, and improving them might make us a lot safer when we travel.

Perhaps this point could be emphasised more on the DFAT General Travel Advice web page.

Clarification 25 May 11am

The title of this post is not meant to refer to the book by Martin Indyk about peace talks in the Middle East which was the subject of an item on ABC RN Breakfast this morning.

Recent ABC highlights

As well as continuing its comprehensive coverage of the Victorian bushfires and their aftermath the ABC has broadcast some very interesting programs lately.

The first Four Corners of the year "The Perfect Storm" was a succinct survey of the global financial crisis financial with particular reference to Far North Queensland. The program can, at least for the time being, be viewed online while the program transcript and a lot of other material is on the website.

Radio National continues to broadcast many gems. The latest Counterpoint featured a long interview with Dennis Dutton, philosophy professor and editor of the estimable Arts & Letters Daily discussing, among other things, evolutionary aesthetics. The transcript is available and worth reading.

A quirkily interesting Lingua Franca discussed the outcomes of the Collins Dictionary "Save the last word" campaign (transcript also available).

The endangered words are/were:

abstergent: cleansing or scouring
agrestic: rural, rustic, unpolished, uncouth
apodeictic: unquestionably true by virtue of demonstration
caducity: perishableness, senility
caliginosity: dimness, darkness
compossible: possible in coesistence with something else
embrangle: to confuse or entangle
exuviate: to shed (a skin or similar outer covering)
fatidical: prophetic
fubsy: short and stout, squat
griseous: streaked or mixed with grey, somewhat grey
malison: a curse
mansuetude: gentleness or mildness
muliebrity: the condition of being a woman
niddering: cowardly
nitid: bright, glistening
olid: foul-smelling
oppugnant: combative, antagonistic, or contrary
periapt: a charm or amulet
recrement: waste matter, refuse, dross
roborant: tending to fortify or increase strength
skirr: a whirring or grating sound, as of the wings of birds in flight
vaticinate: to foretell, prophesy
vilipend: to treat or regard with contempt

You'll need to look for yourself to find out which ones were reprieved.

Poetica featured John Clarke. Listen if you can, but if you can't read the transcript!

Finally, on a lighter (to some minds), note By Design broadcast a segment about the history of mail order catalogues. There's no transcript of this one so you'll have to listen or download the audio while it's available.

Change in the air for Radio National?

Today Paul Collins on Crikey reports about changes proposed for ABC Radio National. Extract:

Several specialist programs are being taken off-air including the Religion Report, the Media Report and Radio Eye. The Reports are flagship programs that deal with issues central to current culture. Apparently they are being replaced by a movie show and something about the future. Specialist broadcasters will spend more time responding to opinionated bloggers rather than making programs. God help us!

Let's be clear what ABC Radio management is up to: it is a case of the bland leading the bland. Specialisation is out. Nowadays the belief is that any old (or, more likely, young) "interdisciplinary" journalist can deal with any topic. Well, I've been interviewed literally hundreds of times on ABC radio and TV. My experience is that while most journalists make a reasonable go of it, they just don't know the detail and often have to be led to the key questions.

An ABC spokeswoman has replied. Extract:

"A number of line-up changes are planned for ABC Radio National next year, these are currently being finalised and will be announced shortly. They do include a number of programs being moved, changed or ended.

"These changes are in part a response to the move in ABC Radio National's audience growth, particularly online. This necessitates a shift in resources - in some cases from on air to online. There will be no job losses."

I shall wait to see what happens. I listen regularly to The Media Report (which is usually of very high quality) and occasionally to The Religion Report and Radio Eye (which often have items which interest me). I'm not necessarily averse to increasing online content (including transcripts) to supplement the material which goes to air: this is already happening with some programs eg Hindsight .

More on water

• The Adelaide Nowwebsite now features a separate section on our water crisis (not an overstatement). It features links to Advertiser and Sunday Mail stories together with information about weather, reservoir levels, water restrictions etc.

• Yesterday I heard an interesting item on ABC RN's summer repeats of http://www.abc.net.au/rn/counterpoint/stories/2008/2124282.htm">Counterpoint re the increase in bottled water consumption (chiefly in the USA , but largely applicable here I'm sure). For more see http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/117/features-message-in-a-bottle.html">this.

History Week

This week (or more accurately the ten days from 18 -27 May) is SA History Week. There's an extraordinarily varied program of activities and events listed in the free 80 page program which is available in hard copy from many libraries, information centres and the like, and online from The History Trust of SA website.

The program is illustrated with a selection of historical photographs from the South Australian Glass Negative Collection, a quasi-official (my interpretation of a lengthy description on p viii of the program) record of SA history. The 35 images published in the program are available online . For anyone interested in SA History or photography they are well worth a look. Unfortunately no details of the photographers are provided, which is a pity since the program mentions that the renowned photographer Frank Hurley is represented in the collection. Alasdair McGregor's 2004 biography states (at p 348) that in 1935 Hurley was engaged by the SA government "to make two films and provide a collection of stills in celebration of the state's centenary".

I hope that more, if not all, of the 14,000 images in the collection will be published online.

Update PS (later 20 May)

As part of History Week ABC RN's Hindsight has today broadcast a documentary on G W Goyder, the 19th century SA Surveyor General who delineated the line beyond which grain growing in the Province (as it was then known) was not sustainable. The program website has some interesting supplementary material and details of how, at least for the next few weeks, to listen or download the program. I hope that the producers also make a transcript available.

Unforgettable speeches

ABC RN recently conducted a poll of its listeners to ascertain the http://www.abc.net.au/rn/features/speeches/"> most unforgettable speeches ever made.

The Top 20, which show how broadly a "speech" can defined are:

• 1. Dr Martin Luther King Jr. I have a dream, 28 August 1963, Washington DC.
• 2. Jesus. Sermon on the Mount. c27.
• 3. Paul Keating. The Redfern Address, 10 December 1992, Redfern Park.
• 4. Winston Churchill. We Shall Fight on the Beaches, 4 June 1940, House of Commons.
• 5. Abraham Lincoln. Gettysburg Address, 19 November 1863.
• 6. John F. Kennedy. Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country. Inaugural speech 20 January 1961, Washington DC.
• 7. Earl Spencer. Funeral Oration for Diana Princess of Wales, 6 September 1997, Westminster Abbey.
• 8. Henry V Act IV Scene III. Author William Shakespeare c 1599. St Crispin’s Day speech made before the Battle of Agincourt (which occurred on 25 October 1415).
• 9. Gough Whitlam. The Dismissal, 11 November 1975, Parliament House steps.
• 10. Queen Elizabeth I. I have the heart and stomach of a king, 9 August 1588. (Address to the troops at Tilbury as the Spanish Armada approached Britain.)
• 11. Nelson Mandela. An Ideal for Which I am Prepared to Die. Statement at trial, 20 April 1964, Johannesburg.
• 12. Mahatma Gandhi. Non-violence is the first article of my faith, 23 March 1922, Ahmadabad.
• 13. Socrates. Statement at trial condemning him to death, 399BC, Athens.
• 14. Robert Kennedy. Address to National Union of South African Students, 7 June 1966, Cape Town University.
• 15. Elizabeth Cady Stanton. We Now Demand Our Right To Vote, Keynote Address to Women’s Rights Convention, 19 July 1848 New York.
• 16. William Wilberforce. Abolition of Slavery, 12 May 1789, House of Commons.
• 17. Alfred Deakin. These are the times that try men’s souls, 15 March 1898, Bendigo.
• 18. Pericles. Funeral Oration for the fallen of the Peloponnesian War, 431 BC.
• 19. Mark Antony. Friends, Romans, Countrymen Lend Me Your Ears, Julius Caesar Act III Scene II. Author William Shakespeare c1599.
• 20. Ben Chifley. The Light on the Hill, 12 June 1949, ALP Conference.

I'm not familiar with all of these yet I think it would be hard to beat the winner, which can be seen here. It's worth listening to it all.

As a spinoff from the main event, ABC RN's Bush Telegraph is running a poll to find the most inspiring speech of rural Australia. Voting is still in progress, though to vote you have to choose one of nine nominated speeches, which you can see here.

Les Murray

When I hear the name Les Murray I normally think of the Australian poet, not the soccer commentator of the same name. But this post is about the second of the pair, who has been reading his autobiography "By The Balls" on ABC RN.

Despite our differences over the correct way to describe the round ball game (which he for years also called "soccer" before changing to "football" or "the world game") I've been following his story with considerable interest. You can only hear it by listening every day at 10.45 am, though you if you're interested in soccer/football or the experiences of post WW2 migrants to Australia you'd probably find the book worth reading.

Orwelliana

ABC Radio National's book reading today started broadcasting Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-four while, whether by coincidence or design, First Person began a series about reading and writing with his essay "Why I write". Presumably these events show the appeal GO's work still has to a modern audience.

Last year while I was driving down the Stuart Highway I listened to a reading of the unabridged Nineteen Eighty-four, (except, alas, for the appendix about Newspeak, which is a good place to start if you want an idea of what it's about or to refresh your memory). The political parts still pack a punch though the interpersonal stuff about the Winston - Julia relationship is a bit dated and melodramatic. I'll be interested to see where most of the cuts which will be necessary for today's abridgement (twenty 15 minute episodes) will be made. You can still listen to the reading on the web if you click on the link above.

Also on matters Orwellian, Boing Boing reports, complete with map, that Orwell's former residence in London is now well covered by (some might say saturated with) surveillance cameras. I wonder how effective they are in detecting or preventing crime, whether of the criminal or thought varieties.

And Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post has an Op-Ed piece "Orwell at Guantanamo" about torture at that benighted place.

There's also Steven Poole's book and website Unspeak which has a different take on political language: read this extract from the introduction to the book (it's too long to quote here). Terms like "broad justice", recently used by PM Howard to explain how he felt about the David Hicks case outcome, are examples of this.

On a lighter note, AbeBooks.co.uk, the UK arm of the global secondhand book selling organisation (this sounds Orwellian but isn't meant to), has an advertisement for several "Not-Books", one of which is "Nineteen Eighty-five: Things Are Looking Up by G. Orwell", whose cover contains an endorsement '"It's doubleplusgood!" - Ministry of Truth'. You can send friends (or enemies) E- cards featuring this: click on the link above to do so. I think that even Orwell, who was no P G Wodehouse but who did write essays about music hall comedians and risque picture postcards, would have smiled at this.

ABC board member appears as commentator on ABC program

I'm surprised that yesterday's appearance on ABC RN's Breakfast program by Janet Albrechtsen (spelt "Albrechtson" on the program website) hasn't attracted more comment, given that Ms A is an ABC board member.

The program website describes her as "Columnist for The Australian Newspaper, Janet Albrechtson" (sic), but does not mention her ABC directorship. This raises several questions, including whether she was paid, what if any policies the ABC board has in place about its members appearing on the Corporation's programs (especially opinion ones) and why Ms A's board membership was not disclosed. Perhaps there's a job or two here for the ABC's new Director of Editorial Policies.

OARM (On a related matter) I think it's misleading to describe the Breakfast segment on which Ms A appeared as "Brekkie blog-spot". Many of the contributors, including her and Julian Burnside, who featured there today are not what I consider to be bloggers , as they do not maintain their own blogs. They do have platforms for their opinions Ms Albrechtsen has(apart from her seat on the ABC board) a column in The Australian was drawn, while Julian Burnside has a website which reflects many of his diverse range of interests.

A program well worth listening to

I highly recommend ABC Radio National's Prisoners of War: Australians Under Nippon a radio documentary which is being broadcast each weekday morning until 20 January at 11 am. You can also listen to it online or download the audio.

It was first broadcast 20 years or so ago, when there were more survivors of Japanese captivity still alive, including several well known ones such as Russell Braddon (author of The Naked Island, IMO one of the classic accounts of Australian POWs. Each program draws heavily upon recorded interviews, linked by commentary by Tim Bowden.

A program such as this reminds us of what a public broadcaster can do to record important aspects of our history. The suffering of the POWs is not, as far as I'm aware, where there's a lot of 'history wars" style disputation, even though the fact that many of the deaths were caused by "friendly fire" (US submarines sinking ships transporting POWs to Japan) is, while not suppressed, not given as much attention as it might be.

The program also reminds us of the importance of recording the memories of the survivors of WW2 and other important (and less important) events. I'd assumed that there are very few ex Japanese POWs still living so I was pleasantly surprised last week to meet an ex-Royal Marine who lives in an aged care home near me, and who was a survivor of HMS Exeter, which was sunk off Java in 1942. I said that I was interested in hearing more about his experiences and hope to be able to talk further with him about them, provided he is not too disturbed by having his memories trawled.

The Deep End to end

ABC Radio National plans to drop the weekday editions of its arts program The Deep End . I'm very sorry to learn this as over the last year or so I've moved from being an occasional to a regular listener.

Each day the program presents several arts-related items. For example, today it discussed

# an award for new video and media art,

# an open air sculpture exhibition in a small SA coastal town,

# cult film and television classics (the first of a new, and presumably brief, series) and,

# a hand-wound free play radio (part of the regular Monday to Friday "Deep End Five" countdown of the "best of" something, this week's topic being "objects and systems that promote sustainable lifestyles").

The Deep End is well produced and Amanda Smith, the presenter, consistently engages listeners with her friendly manner and detailed knowledge of the arts.

The ABC has issued an an explanation where the RN station/ network manager is reported as saying

I’m not thrilled about it, and a little bit of it is to do with resources, but most of it is to do with, what will serve the arts best...Arts is a difficult area to cover. It’s difficult on radio because so much of what you’re talking about is either visual or local, and for a national radio network it’s a tricky area to bring to life. And it also has within it stuff like arts funding policy, which is incredibly important, but again can be difficult radio.

We were beginning to feel that, on a daily basis, in-depth, analytic conversations about where the arts are heading in Australia and around the world (was too hard) without a really high level of resourcing and specialist staff that we probably had in the 80s and 90s, but are unable to sustain in 2006.

Radio National is a very expensive network to maintain, because of the level of depth we want to bring to everything we touch, and over time priorities about what we want to bring that depth to change.

This is full of weasel words. Can anyone translate "The level of depth we want to bring to everything we touch"(or the entire passage) into plain English?

I don't have enough inside knowledge to crack her code, but wonder what what is really happening.

Listening to books on the ABC

Among the rarely acknowledged (by others) pleasures of ABC Radio National are the book readings: First Person (weekdays at 10.45 am as part of The Book Show) and the Book Reading (weekdays at 2pm, repeated at 11 pm). You can also listen to them via the internet.

Not every book chosen is to my taste, but the current ones have grabbed my attention. First Person is featuring Charmian Clift's Mermaid Singing and Peel Me A Lotus, which describe life with her family on a Greek island in the 1950s and 60s. In yesterday's episode she vividly depicted the life of the islanders, notably the backbone of their economic life: the annual sponge fishing expedition which took the men who sailed off in the boats to the limit of their endurance and, in the case of some of the divers, beyond it.

The Book Reading is presenting Strike, described on the program website as "a previously unpublished novella by the Australian poet, David Campbell (1915-79) who served with distinction during World War Two." It depicts wartime service life at Batchelor airfield in the NT and points north. Adrian Mulraney's reading is first class: like all good readers he varies his tone to distinguish between characters (most of whom are male), while in the more descriptive passages evoking both the routines and boredom of service life and the gut-tightening apprehensions of action.

Campbell is better known as a poet. For more about him and to read some of his poetry, including "Men in Green" which reflects upon another incident in WW2, see here .

I wonder what those, eg Frank Devine, who are continually banging on about its lack of balance etc would make of the ABC doing what it has done to promote Campbell 's literary reputation. After all Campbell was hardly your typical latte leftie: he came from a prominent pastoral family, and for much of his life maintained a close connection with the land.

Well done, whoever at the ABC chooses the books. Enjoy your lattes.