Category Archives: Essays

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ASIM And The Australian’s Dilemma

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The Hugo Awards short-list has been announced and the internet has melted down (again). For those who are unfamiliar with the Hugos, they are one of the major literary science fiction and fantasy awards. Whereas the Nebulas are industry voted, the Hugos are fan voted. The Hugos are named after Hugo Gernsback, founder of the science fiction magazine Amazing Stories, and not for example, after Victor Hugo, French dramatist and writer of the romantic movement. This preamble is really just intended to give some background. The Hugos have an American focus and a popular fiction focus. There are sometimes but very occasionally cross-over winners among the Hugos and the short lists of other literary awards. Slaughterhouse-Five by Vonnegut was nominated and The Yiddish Policeman’s Union by Chabon won a Hugo, but that’s unusual.

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Hazel Gambit

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LITTLE ORPHAN MILLIElittleorphanmillie

Kelly, Mick. “Little Orphan Millie.” The Simpsons. Dir. Lance Kramer. Fox Network. November 2007. Television.

Years ago at a wedding reception, after the ramble of speeches, the newlyweds announced a game. Relieved to have escaped at last from the interminable capering of two witless brothers giving the funny speech, we joined in with enthusiasm. We would hurl questions at the bride or groom about their spouse in an attempt to unearth gaps in their knowledge (whose mystery might otherwise have threatened to infect the union with romance).

As questions from the gallery of chortling, larrikin cousins descend into juvenilia, the bride in a lull turns her back on the groom and asks, Continue reading

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Concession card

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PUBLIC TRANSPORTpublictrans

White, Peter R. (Routledge, October 2008, ISBN 9780415445306)

When I started secondary school in the eighties Victorian schoolboys and schoolgirls could apply for a concession card that let them buy cheaper tickets on buses, trams and trains. To apply, you filled out a form with your details and glued a photograph of yourself over a rectangle they provided on the form. The railway clerk separated the section with your photograph along an official perforated line, stamped it, laminated it and gave it back to you as your concession card.

When I applied for mine, I glued the photograph on sideways (leaving a lot of space on either side of my head so it filled the rectangle). The railway clerk would have to decide if he faced a smart aleck schoolboy on a lark or an earnest imbecile who’d glued his picture on sideways through mental incapacity. Continue reading

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Utensils

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SECONDHAND SMOKE EXPOSURE AND CARDIOVASCULAR EFFECTSutensils

Committee on Secondhand Smoke Exposure and Acute Coronary Events (National Academies Press, February 2010, ISBN 9780309138390)

The backroom at La Casetta lived under a haze of smoke. No fan whipped it into turbulence. No window let it escape. Instead, from opening to closing, it hung in unmoving bands like the smog over a miniature city with skyscrapers of stacked pizza boxes. I liked to imagine Remo, the manager, nailing up the ‘no smoking’ sign while smoking a cigarette.

The drivers smoked on one side of the room while they waited for orders to come in. The receptionists smoked on the other next to the telephones. A long stretch without orders had caught me in the crossfire of their combined output. By the time the call came in, I’d wheezed through a nicotine cloud for twenty minutes. I didn’t know it then, but at that moment a receptionist listened to a tenacious customer explaining the importance of delivering disposable cutlery with his meal. Continue reading

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Human Element

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MANAGING THE HUMAN FACTOR IN INFORMATION SECURITYhumanelement

Lacey, David (Wiley, 2009, ISBN 9780470721995)

I buzz into the supermarket’s parking lot at six in the morning.

From there, I can already hear the klaxon. Inside the store, it sounds like a fire drill on the morning of a hangover. Continue reading

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Binary Star

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BINARY STARbinaryjpg

This shows the trails of some specks of color as they emerge from the members of a binary star. The stars attract the specks of color with forces that diminish with the square of the distance: the blue star attracts the specks of red and the red star attracts the specks of blue. No other forces act on the specks of color, but each fades as it moves.

binaryjpg

 

 

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Strange Rage

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We seem to be in an age of internet rage. You see it pass by like ripples of mild life disruption on social media each day. Someone becomes angry about something, and there is much rage and wailing and electronic gashing of electronic teeth and then nothing happens.

Only sometimes it does.

And sometimes the whole affair leaves an uncomfortable feeling. Like, maybe someone just got stoned by a mob and no-one quite had the presence of mind to stop and ask, hey, wait, what are we really doing here?

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Ice Currency

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COIN LAUNDRIES: ROAD TO FINANCIAL INDEPENDENCElaund

Higdon, Emerson G. (Mountain Pub, June 2001, ISBN 9780962317392)

No apartment building in suburbia qualifies as complete until it has its own laundry room. To pay for it, instead of tacking a few extra bucks on to everyone’s rent, we attach coin boxes to the washers and dryers and everyone keeps big jars of change. Each week when you attend to your laundry, rather than the pleasant sense of sharing a resource with your neighbours, you have the sense of an external “management” inconveniencing you for the sake of two dollars in dryer money.

A few years ago, a shrewd friend of mine started to strike back by manufacturing his own dryer change out of ice. He freezes disks of ice in his icebox using the plastic rings from the necks of soda bottles and then shaves them down to the right thickness. The coin slot never knows the difference. Continue reading

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Happy Lunar New Year… Hold On. What Year Is It? Sheep? Goat? Or Maybe Antelope?

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600px-Linné-Systema_Naturae_1735The Lunar New Year has rolled around again and there has been a week of celebration by way of gold and red dragons and sublime explosives rocketing into the sky for everyone’s enjoyment. Only, this time around, there seems to be a problem. It doesn’t quite seem like the English speaking world knows what year it is… sheep? Goat? Ram? Something else?

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