Committee and people choose different Words of the Year

Macquarie Dictionary's Word of the Year 2009 (chosen by a Committee) is shovel-ready, It means, according to the report on the website " adjective: (of a building or infrastructure project) capable of being initiated immediately as soon as funding is assured."

I can't see why tweet didn't win: in fact it (at least the verb) did win the People's Choice Award . (The Committee did at least give it an "honourable mention").

Neither term is peculiarly Australian but surely tweet is much more widely used. It was (as both noun and verb) chosen (by a committee) as the American Dialect Society's 2009 Word of theYear .

Perhaps the Macquarie Committee, a member of which is Les Murray (much of whose poetry has a distinctly Australian voice) felt it needed to distance itself from the Yanks and any perception of linguistic cringe.

Shovel-ready (which IMO is two words: a Google search will show some support for this view) sounds as like a term chosen by a committee. Despite being first used (or popularised) by President Obama it doesn't seem to have caught on to the same degree as tweet.

Anyone like to put money on which of the two terms we'll be using most in a year (or 6 months)?

Court rules in favour of David over Goliath re copyright

"Film industry loses iiNet download case" reports ABC News.

The case against iiNet was filed in the Federal Court by a number of applicants including Village Roadshow, Universal Pictures, Warner Bros, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures Entertainment, 20th Century Fox, Disney and the Seven Network.

The legal action followed a five-month investigation by the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft. The companies claimed iiNet infringed copyright by failing to stop users engaging in illegal file sharing.But today the Federal Court in Sydney ruled in the internet service provider's favour.Justice Dennis Cowdroy said it was "impossible" to find against iiNet for what its users did.

The case, which appears to be one of, if not the first, of its kind has already attracted a lot of international attention, not least from Boing Boing "Awesomely awesome Australian copyright news: scrappy ISP beats Hollywood fatcats".

There is of course the possibility of an appeal, as Fairfax , News.com.au and a < href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/02/04/2810520.htm">later ABC reportallude/

Disclosure: I am an iiNet customer/ subscriber

A-G backs down ... but not out

Attorney General Atkinson has backed down but won't resign report the ABC and Adelaide Now

For me and probably many South Australians the question now is how can we have confidence in Mr Atkinson as chief law officer of the state when he appears to be thumbing his nose at the basic principles of Westminster democracy and even Premier Rann. That he could falsely claim that that one of his online critics doesn't exist beggars belief.

Update 4/2/2010

At least we now know that at next month's election a vote for the ALP is a vote for Michael Atkinson as Attorney-General (probably) for the next four years, even though as The Advertiser/ Adelaide Now said in an editorial yesterday "Lawyers and Left faction luminaries Patrick Conlon and Jay Weatherill could walk seamlessly into the job tomorrow."

And today "Singapore on the Torrens", an editorial in The Australian , makes some good points

A little more civility on the internet would be no bad thing, but that's no reason for the nanny state approach adopted by the South Australian government. The decision by Attorney-General Michael Atkinson to introduce laws to censor free speech in the blogosphere was ill-conceived at every level. That Mr Atkinson was forced to back down and promise to repeal the laws says much about the value users put on an open web: outraged consumers had flooded sites to complain.

.....

South Australian politicians are increasingly taking Singapore rather than Westminster as their model by resorting to legal action where political redress would be more appropriate. ..Surely the ballot box, not the courts, is where an opposition should be brought to account.

......

The internet is a robust and immediate forum - a modern-day version of the town square meeting at its best. It relies on the freedom of ordinary people to join a public conversation without fear their details will be collected by a central bureaucracy. Australian users are well equipped to filter the web: they do not need the state to do it for them.

Attorney-General's hamfisted attempt to censor internet make SA look foolish

At the behest of Attorney-General Mr Michael Atkinson the South Australian Parliament has amended s116 of the Electoral Act to require that all comments made on the internet during state elections are accompanied by the maker's name and address(not post office box). Even though both major (and perhaps most minor parties) supported the move it has many of the trademarks of Mr Atkinson's hamfistedness.

The Advertiser's website Adelaide Now has led the chorus of protest , quite properly highlighting the appalling insensitivity of Mr Atkinson's comment that the Adelaide Now website was "not just a sewer of criminal defamation" but also "a sewer of identity theft and fraud". For video of his media conference see here .

Of other media comment Hendrik Gout on the InDaily website makes the point that while the Attorney has the power to pursue those who fall foul of his amendments the Labor Party is still able to accept anonymous donations.

The comparisons with China have already been made and no doubt will continue to be. How embarrassing to be a South Australian.

Update 3 February

AG Atkinson has backed down.

South Australia's Attorney-General Michael Atkinson admits he misjudged public opinion on the state's attempt to curb political comment on the internet.

Mr Atkinson says he will repeal a law which would have meant that anyone posting comment or blogs during an election period would have had to give their real name and postcode.

Opponents had branded the law an attack on freedom of speech, and Mr Atkinson says he listened to community concerns in his decision to overturn it.

Better late - and where freedom of expression is at issue a day is too late - than never.
.

Haiti

Another natural disaster in a place which is already burdened with much more than its share of troubles.

What can one say or do? Express sympathy, donate money and hope that the scale of the suffering and loss is less than the initial media reports, which talk of more than 100,000 deaths, suggest. I wish I could do more.

"Private matter" all above board?

From The Sunday Mail/Adelaide Now

Former Liberal Premier Dean Brown has been paid more than $800,000 for advice to the State Government on how to tackle the state's crippling drought.

The figure is more than double the amount that Deputy Premier and Treasurer Kevin Foley publicly stated last year.

The Sunday Mail has learned Mr Brown has received more than $800,000 over the past three years, working as chief strategist co-ordinating statewide responses to the drought and lobbying on behalf of communities along the River Murray.

Acting Premier Paul Holloway did not deny the $800,000 figure this week, but Mr Brown said he didn't think it was accurate.

A spokesman for Mr Foley said Mr Brown - who was appointed Special Adviser on Drought to Premier Mike Rann in October 2007 - had been paid by three government departments, but he refused to name them. In December, in his role as Acting Premier, Mr Foley approved a new $130 million copper-gold mine at Kanmantoo, in the Adelaide Hills, to be operated by Hillgrove Resources Ltd - a company chaired by Mr Brown.

The mining project was opposed by the operators of fertiliser company Neutrog, who feared their Kanmantoo plant would have to close because of the mine's impact.

Mr Holloway defended employing Mr Brown, saying this week that the Government's remuneration package with the former premier was a "private matter" and would not be released without Mr Brown's consent.

On tonight's Channel Nine TV news I heard Mr Brown describe himself as a "public servant". If that is correct shouldn't his remuneration package, like those of other public servants, be disclosed?

Mr Holloway (apart from having a name redolent of a minor Dickens character) looks and sounds out of his depth on TV, though in this matter he's more the messenger/monkey than the organ grinder. Definitely not Premier material though.

Wreck of Centaur found by same team that found HMAS Sydney

The wreck of the AHS (Australian Hospital Ship) Centaur has been found by the same team, led by David Mearns, that located the wrecks of HMAS Sydney and HSK Kormoran

In today's Australian Andrew Fraser discusses the find and dusts off some interesting questions eg why did the Japanese submarine attack a well lit up hospital ship? Unlike the HMAS Sydney situation where several conspiracy theories had a good run before the wreck was found and filmed, the existence of survivors means that the facts (other than the position of the wreck) have never been disputed.

Whatever happens here (and I suspect the inconvenient questions will be swept under the carpet) the actual discovery is yet another feather in the cap for David mearns and his team.

Catastrophe averted....

Thank goodness yesterday, which the authorities here deemed to be, at least for some of the state, a day of "catastrophic" fire danger, passed without fatalities caused by fires. (There were alas several road deaths)

There has been some confusion about the additional fire damage rating of catastrophic which has been superimposed on the existing ones (supplanting extreme) . Though there's a Cape Catastrophe on Eyre Peninsula near the proclaimed area I'm not convinced that everyone understands this multisyllabic term and what it means when it is invoked. Is it really necessary, I wonder? Whatever words are used and no matter how effectively warnings are communicated in a high fire risk situation each person usually has to make their own decision about whether to stay or leave.

The last couple of days have once again shown the value of a free to air public broadcaster for keeping people informed in emergency situations. The ABC staff were generally well informed about SA place names and their pronunciation, while Sky News persisted in mispronouncing "Wirrabara". one of the YHA's 20 Frequently Mispronounced Australian Destinations even though a local fire official appearing on its news programs pronounced it correctly.

I also wasn't too impressed with the inability of the SA Police media liaison person to provide ABC radio yesterday afternoon with the CFS hotline phone number. You'd think they'd have it if not in their mind then in front of them. A small matter perhaps, but possibly indicative of some gaps in interagency cooperation which need to be plugged before the next emergency.

Heat...and more heat

Friday 13th. Black Friday. Yet another 35C+ day. It's now (2.40pm CDST) 38.1deg. The sequence is easily a record for this time of year, when there may be the occasional hot day or two but not this preview of January - February. And I I thought that a few days with temperatures nudging 20C when I was in the UK was uncharacteristically warm!

When will it end? Forecast is for 39 tomorrow and 40 Sunday before 28 Monday. We shall see.

Not quite like de Botton.....

Just back from overseas, visiting family in London with a side trip with them to Istanbul. All very enjoyable notwithstanding the customary hazards of modern international air travel, notably airport chaos/ inefficiency and the brusqueness of (most) UK border protection officials.

Earlier this year Alain de Botton spent a week in the employ of the British Airports Authority as a writer in residence at Heathrow Terminal Five. He's just published his diary, which is a characteristically fluent distillation of his week, which is one a long way removed from my and, I expect, most other airport users' experiences. That said it's worth reading, if only for the very different perspective he brought to his task. He must have been almost the only person with time to reflect about the terminal: everyone else was of necessity focused on a particular task: travelling (departing or arriving), security, selling (a big, big part of modern airport life) or maintenance.

I may have more to say about this topic later....

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.

Beauty's double meaning

The front page of today's Advertiser (prominently) and the Adelaide Now website ( less prominently) print this photo taken by a reader at Gawler earlier this week on a sunny day.

It shows a red-bellied black snake approaching a duck (identified as a "Moscovy " by the paper at p14 and a " Muscovy" by the website) .

Snake-Away snake catcher Ian Renton said it was likely the snake was feasting on ducklings and was chasing the mother duck away.

"The duck is way too big for the snake to eat so it probably would not be entertaining that side of things," he said.

Or was the mother duck attempting to interpose herself between the reptile and her brood? The Advertiser published a couple of other photos which are clearly part of a sequence taken in quick succession. It would be good to see more of them or to hear what happened.

While red-bellied black snakes are venomous their venom is (I believe) not normally strong enough to kill a human. They are also very attractive, as Judith Wright put it so succinctly in her poem "The Cedars":

The snake, the fang of summer, beauty's double meaning,

shifts his slow coils and feels his springtime hunger.

As I recently posted my most recent snake sighting was on 20 July this year in the Adelaide Hills (near Tungkillo) when it was much warmer than it's been for the last couple of days. If, as I hope to, I get out and about when the springlike weather returns, I'll expect to come across other snakes. When I do so I'll keep my distance but also try to take a photo or two.

Catalina

When I heard on the radio that a Catalina was going to fly over Adelaide I ventured on to my roof with camera. This was the best photo I could take with the 42-150 mm zoom on my Olympus E410 DSLR at its max focal length. My photoshopping skills are deficient so I've not been game enough to tinker with the raw material, but if you're interested you can enlarge it by clicking on the image, when you'll be able to see the characteristic (and quite elegant) outline of the plane, even if this one lacks the floats suspended from each (high) wing which I'd assumed was one of the model's defining characteristics.

After warm winter, early taste of summer

Today's estimated max temp is 29deg C, 10 deg above the September average.

The BOM records that it's already reached 27 at 10.27 though it's fallen to about 25 at noon.

Climatologist Blair Trewin in The Punch reflects on the warm August many Australians have just experienced:

August 2009 was Australia’s warmest on record. Temperatures averaged over the country were 2.47C above the long-term average, nearly a degree above the previous August record set in 1998, and 25% of the country had its hottest August day on record at some stage during the month.

Trewin points out

Average temperatures in Australia have warmed by about 0.8C over the last 100 years, most of it in the last 50.

and concludes

...while we can’t blame global warming for any individual extreme warm event it is certainly making these events more common.

The entire piece, which includes several graphs, is worth reading.

Seventy years on

Today is the 70th anniversary of Australia's entry into the conflict which is now known as World War 2.

At the time Prime Minister Menzies explained the reasons in a broadcast.

Here's what he said. I've emphasised the key words:

Fellow Australians,
It is my melancholy duty to inform you officially that in consequence of a persistence by Germany in her invasion of Poland, Great Britain has declared war upon her and that, as a result, Australia is also at war.
No harder task can fall to the lot of a democratic leader than to make such an announcement.

Great Britain and France with the cooperation of the British Dominions have struggled to avoid this tragedy. They have, as I firmly believe, been patient. They have kept the door of negotiation open. They have given no cause for aggression.

But in the result their efforts have failed and we are therefore, as a great family of nations, involved in a struggle which we must at all costs win and which we believe in our hearts we will win.

Spring

Today is the first day of spring. With very little assistance from me (I didn't prune the bush during winter) this rose bloomed right on time for the official opening of the season.

Not everything is rosy in our national garden, though, as today's Australian reports

Australia has just experienced its warmest winter on record.

While the claim won't be official until data for August 31 is collected from the nation's 850 temperature observing stations, yesterday's relatively warm temperatures across the country should see the winter of 2009 rewrite the record books.

The Bureau of Meteorology's National Climate Centre has produced a Special Climate Statement whose title " Exceptional winter heat over large parts of Australia" is self-explanatory.

South Australia appears to have had its warmest winter on record. This doesn't surprise me as I saw a snake in the Adelaide Hills on 20 July when the max temp in the city was a springlike 21.7 deg C (today it was 18.0).

Detailed records for Adelaide and other weather stations can be found here

HMAS Sydney report handed down

The Final Report into the loss of HMAS Sydney II has been handed down and is available online.

The Report consists of two volumes of evidence and conclusions and a third entitled "Frauds, Comspiracies and Speculations". The website also includes links to transcripts of evidence, some animated recreations of the Sydney- Kormoran action, and appendix and ships' plans. I've not yet read it all (I wonder how many people have) but the Summary looks to be a good overview of the major findings.

Media reporting has tended to focus on the degree of culpability of the Sydney's captain. From what I've read so far the Report, while acknowledging that it was not wise for the cruiser to approach so close to a ship whose identity was unconfirmed, stops short of saying that the captain was negligent.

It's a long time after the event, and many people who lost friends and relatives may be seeking closure rather than retribution. Perhaps they'll be able to draw their own conclusions from reading between the lines of what may not be (given the various matters which the Report dismisses as frauds, conspiracies and speculations) the last word on the topic but should be the most authoritative one.

Watch another space

Today the 2009 Ashes series begins and most of my blogging energies will for the next few weeks be devoted unashamedly to Nudges and Deflections. Will try to post here occasionally but no promises (or apologies for the focus on cricket).

PS Wednesday 0945:

As soon as I've posted the above I came across Paul Colgan's 10 reasons to love the Poms in The Punch.

His 10

1. The English language

2. English comedy

3. The least worst brand of colonialism

4. Good manners

5. The Beatles

6. Great journalism

7. The Premiership (EPL)

8. Parliamentary democracy

9. Literature

10. English sport, including cricket .

I'd agree with most of them, especially 1,2,3, 6, 8 and 9. .

I'm not sure that no 10 still applies modern cricket is very much an international rather than a national thing.

Good manners, eg queueing, may no longer be as noticeable as they once were: perhaps the modern iteration is the ability to lose more or less gracefully (after a day or so of tabloid fury).

Another battle lost?

"Its time. Sorry, it's time to save the apostrophe" argues Tracy Spicer in The Punch

It’s tiny but powerful.

Its incorrect insertion could mean the difference between life and death.

And it’s fighting for its very existence.

I’m referring to the apostrophe; specifically, the possessive apostrophe.

Even its proper name – saxon genitive – sounds more like a sexually transmitted disease than the pinnacle of punctuation.

Philistines and purists are waging war on the web, about whether this much-maligned mark should be banned.

Two photos accompany her piece: one captioned "Rabbit's die on a table", the other "Rabbits die on a table". (The first actually shows a pair of dice). .

I'm sympathetic to her general thrust though I think the battle for the possessive " 's" in certain situations, notably place names and the internet, has been lost, often with, as in the example from the UK she cites, official approval.

Here in South Australia the government has directed "In all cases the apostrophe is to be deleted" from place names.The Geographical Names Act 1991 s3 states

"place" means any area, region, locality, city, suburb, town, township, or settlement, or any geographical or topographical feature, and includes any railway station, hospital, school and any other place or building that is, or is likely to be, of public or historical interest;.

This has led to the absurd situation where the official geographical name of a prominent Adelaide school differs from what the school, retaining the apostrophe, calls itself on its website (though even here there's some hedging of bets as the apostropheless "Saints" is occasionally used).

Is, I wonder, the college commiting an offence by not using the "official" name? s13 of the Geographical Names Act 1991 suggests that it could, in certain circumstances, be. Might we expect to see the place names police investigating the matter soon?

"Breath" wins Miles Franklin Prize

Tim Winton's novel Breath has won the Miles Franklin award

I've read it, as I've done many of Winton's other books, and enjoyed it, as I enjoyed them, despite sometimes taking a while to enter into the worlds he creates.

I'm neither a dancer, a surfer nor a paramedic, but do have adult children. I find the last words of the novel resonate with me. Speaking of his adult daughters, the narrator says

They probably don't understand this, but it's important for me to show them that their father is a man who dances - who saves lives and carries the wounded, yes, but who also does something competletely pointless and beautiful, and in this at least he should need no explanation.

At the award presentation ceremony Winton criticised proposed changes to Australian laws which are likely to make it harder for local authors to be published. For further information and to see a video click here .