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So long and thanks for all the fish

#auspol's big purple blog has shut up shop again. Enjoy browsing our archives.

Plus Ultra!

By Mark Bahnisch on January 9, 2014

prague-castleI know Brian said that we’d posted our last, but I couldn’t let the very kind words on the thread announcing our closure to go un-remarked. I also thought it somewhat incumbent on me as founder of the blog to say goodbye, and I want to do that too.

LP was a large part of my life for a long time, and will always mean a lot to me, so I wanted to express my gratitude for those words and sentiments. So, thanks!

I don’t want just to dwell on the past. I thought people might be interested to know what I’m planning for my own future digital writing.

When we initially shut up shop, I said:

I am convinced there’s a role for a more curated and conciously counter-cultural focus on policy, shifts in the lived experience of our public culture, and serious examination of flashpoints in the battle between reason and untruth.

I still think that, and that’s something I plan to start. I refined my thinking on how that might be translated into practice when I was doing some work for a client in 2012, and I think now is a good time to start, with a new government and a lack of measured and positive progressive policy conversations and analyses to provide an alternative and a substantive critique.

In particular, I want to build on the efforts a number of made around FAQ Research, shining a light on a contested policy area.

We might, for instance, look not just at the continued contests over land use and the resources industry but also at the feasibility of ‘green jobs’ and how innovation, education and skills policy can shape nascent labour market shifts towards sustainable and high wage employment.

That’s just one example – but I think there’s a host of areas where a new social democratic vision can be both articulated and grounded in ideas that appeal to communities as well as activists and thinkers. At the same time, we need new ways of talking to each other about the way forward.

I’ve started work on The New Social Democrat. There’s nothing to see yet, as I need to build the site. The nitty and gritty digital bit of a digital startup! But I wanted to flag my intentions to folks, and let you know something of what to expect, and how you can follow what I’m up to, should you want to.

The easiest way to find out when there is something to see is to follow me on Twitter and like my Facebook page (and I have some other commissioned writing which will be appearing soon and will be linked to there). If you’re not into social media, feel free to email me at mbahnisch [at] newsocialdemocrat.net

The first step will be building a blog on the site, and I will probably start posting early next month. It may be earlier or it may be later, but I envisage the site launching in March this year.

So I’d also be very much interested in hearing from anyone who might be interested in writing or doing some editing on the new site.

Ideally, I would like to build a stable of editors and contributors in particular thematic areas. So it would be great to know who might be interested.

Down the track, I would also like to be able to pay people for their work. There’s an important point of principle here, as the digital economy destroys monetary value as much as it creates it, and commodifies people’s enthusiasm and talent as raw input for corporate profit. I want to resist that. Unfortunately, I don’t have any money myself (I’m down in Sydney looking for employment), but if anyone wanted to make  a donation, that would be very kind and greatly appreciated. You can do so here.

Or you could give me a job! :)

Anyway, I hope some folks are interested in this new venture, and I want to wish all LP readers over the years all the very best. And a particular thanks to all my co-bloggers and moderators! Live long and prosper!

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Goodbye, again

By Brian on January 1, 2014

As of today Larvatus Prodeo will once again cease publishing.

Long-time readers will know that the blog started out on March 17, 2005 and then ceased publishing from April 10, 2012 after a seven year run. We were conjured into existence again from March 10, 2013 to monitor the run up to the September election, decided to stay on for a bit to see how it all worked out with the new government and then kept going from there.

As I write the blog statistics say that there have been 7,199 posts and over 385,000 approved comments, that’s 53 comments per post. Commenters have always been a large and welcome part of the LP community.

This year there has clearly been some drift: a narrowing in the number of posters and in the number and variety of commenters. From October 9 Mark succumbed to the exigencies of moving out of his long-term digs at New Farm while carrying an above normal academic teaching load. Since then we’ve had one post from him – on his book sale. Other than that from October 9 to Christmas we had the regulars from the Cat Herding Cabal, one post from Robert Merkel, one from Paul Norton and 44 from me. It wasn’t the way the blog was meant to be.

For some time now I’ve wanted to take a three-month break from blogging to attend to some other matters. We looked at the options and finally on December 29 Mark and I came to the conclusion that we should let it go. Mark is in Sydney at the moment doing a spot of house-sitting without full internet access, so we agreed that I would do the last post.

Back in April 2012 in signing off Mark waxed analytical about the changed nature of blogging in the context of the social media and the MSM generally. My expectations of quality blogging were fairly simple. I used to find, quite regularly at LP, that after reading a post and the comments thread I was sufficiently informed and aware of enough diverse points of view to form a settled view of my own on any given matter. This was a great advantage of blogging over the one-hit, one-way pieces you get, in the main, from the MSM, which often are incomplete, contain inaccuracies and raise more questions than they resolve.

Now on the internet the edges are somewhat blurred between what constitutes a blog and what doesn’t. Mark back then made reference to other sources as follows:

If you’re looking for other places for independent Australian political commentary, you can’t go past John Quiggin and Club Troppo (where my own blogging trajectory began) and Crikey and New Matilda. And of course, there’s the excellent Hoyden About Town.

Three of those are blogs, two are not, but none of them MSM. With the MSM and other platforms carrying both advertising and a comments facility, and with the MSM carrying ‘blogs’, classification can be confusing. Nevertheless the continued existence of Quiggin, Troppo and Hoyden amongst others leads me to believe that there is still a place for traditional blogging.

So as to the future, who knows? It’s conceivable that LP will rise again to report on the political chicanery that I fear will be our lot. To be fair, though, I think perhaps our trajectory reached its zenith early in 2011 or perhaps a little earlier. Indeed on January 12, 2011 on a single day, when Mark was live-blogging the Brisbane flood, we had 28,484 “views”. So while a further resurrection is possible I think it unlikely. LP in full flight was one of a kind and is probably better left that way.

Two other historical facts are relevant to round out the picture. Firstly, we spent some time at Larvatus Prodeo in exile when the main blog was borked. I always suspected we were sabotaged by the forces of evil as it seemed to happen just before elections.

Secondly, I think there is still a hole a few months wide in the 2008 archive. I did a series on sea level rise back then that wasn’t available last time I looked. My bookmarks for the Henson posts from May-June 2008 failed.

There is a third, I believe the famous ‘chics and guns’ post is no longer available, more is the pity.

All these things may exist, if you have the patience to search the National Library archives.

As for myself, I do not intend just yet to go gentle into that good night. I’m hoping to return around April with a blog focussed on climate, but also including sundry other stuff. Should you so desire, I reckon if you Google ‘climate plus brian’ you’ll find me if I’m there.

Meanwhile thanks all around for the contributions and the memories.

There’s plenty to reminisce about. Did we ever break the record of comments on Is Missy Higgins lesbian? Just now I’ve been reminded that most of the comments are doubled up on many old posts, which would distort the whole blog stats.

Time to exit stage left!

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Climate clippings 91

By Brian on January 1, 2014

Climate clippings_175These posts are intended to share information and ideas about climate change and hence act as a roundtable for readers to contribute items of interest. Again, I do not want to spend time in comments rehashing whether human activity causes climate change.

This edition links to some summary posts of the year and of several important conferences.

I always write this introduction last, so here I’ll shed a ceremonial tear, as this will be the last Climate clippings, at least for a while.


1. Cool rooves in LA

That’s what I’d say, they say “roofs”. Anyway they’ve voted for cool ones.

earlier this week [ie on December 17], the Los Angeles City Council unanimously voted [pfd] to update the municipal building code to require all new and refurbished homes to have “cool roofs,” or roofs using materials that reflect sunlight rather than absorb it. In making the change, Los Angeles became the first major city to require “cool roofs” on new homes.

The reason behind the change is that, in cities where buildings are clustered together, roofs absorb sunlight, leading to the urban heat island effect and higher temperatures concentrated in urban areas. Researchers expect temperatures in Los Angeles to rise 3.7-5.4 degrees Fahrenheit by midcentury.

Continue reading “Climate clippings 91″

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New Year’s Eve Salon

By Cat Herding Cabal on December 31, 2013

A festive open thread where, at your holiday leisure, you can discuss almost anything* you like.

* Weekly Netiquette Reminders:

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I won’t add my condemn to your condemn LV – Sappy New Year

By Cat Herding Cabal on December 31, 2013

All we want for New Year is a mildly peevish distraction for this last gasp of the enforced jollity period, yes? Feel free to condemn the living daylights out of whatever has got your goat recently – but do remember to keep this Levity thread stoush-free (more serious peeves/rants can always be taken to the latest Overflow thread).

Just for starters, what’s the worst 2013 retrospective whatever you’ve seen so far?

 

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Deep origins: language

By Brian on December 31, 2013

Warning: longer essay-style post.

David B Anthony in his extraordinary book The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How the Bronze-age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World tells us that language normally changes so that speakers 1000 years apart cannot understand each other. As an example here is the beginning of the Lord’s Prayer in a conservative, old-fashioned version of Modern Standard English:

Our Father who is in heaven, blessed be your name

Here it is in Chaucer’s English of 1400:

Oure fadir that art in heuenes, halwid be thy name

Now try Old English of 1000:

Fæader ure thu the eart on heofonum, si thin nama gehalgod

When British jurist Sir William Jones arrived in Calcutta to become a member of the Bengal Supreme Court in 1783 he was already famous as a linguist for his translations of medieval Persian poetry amongst other works. At that time he already knew French, German, Latin, Greek, Welsh, Persian, Arabic, Hebrew and Gothic, the earliest written form of German. In order to do his job he decided to tool up on Sanskrit. In 1786 he announced an amazing discovery. Latin, Greek and Sanskrit stemmed from the same original language. Just had to be. He also found that Celtic, Gothic and Persian probably came from the same source. Indeed he was right.

Very common words tend not to change much. The word for mother, for example is strikingly similar across a range of languages. Hence we have Middle English moder, Dutch moeder, German Mutter, Irish máthair, Tocharian mācar, Lithuanian mótė, Latin māter, Greek meter, Russian mat’, Persian madar and Sanskrit mātṛ.

The original Proto-Indo-European word has been reconstructed as *méh₂tēr.

You can find more related words here.

In fact all European languages belong to what is now recognised as the Indo-European language group (list here) except Basque, Estonian, Finnish and Magyar (Hungarian).

To the east the Indo-Iranian sub-group includes the majority of modern languages of India including Hindi, Urdu and Bengali.

I’ve included here a chart of the Indo-European language taxonomy from David Anthony’s book:

Figure 1: Twelve branches of Indo-Eoropean language family

Figure 1: Twelve branches of Indo-Eoropean language family

Some of the individual languages are barely legible, but the overall picture is clear.

This Dan Short page provides a useful broad family tree divided into the so-called Centum and Satem groups, divided according to the word for hundred. Neither of these taxonomies helps with the timeline. Anthony gives the following as the best branching diagram, based on the Ringe_Warnow_Taylor (2002) cladistic method: Continue reading “Deep origins: language”

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Copping out at COP 19 in Warsaw

By Brian on December 30, 2013

Back in 2002 an Earth Summit (World Summit on Sustainable Development) nick-named “Rio + 10″ was held in Johannesburg. As I recall there was a big push on to transfer the main carriage for environmental matters from the UN to the WTO. There was dancing in the aisles by environment ministers when the move failed. The mind boggles for those who recall our environment minister at the time, one rather stiff and formal Dr David Kemp.

One wonders, though, whether climate change negotiations would now be in better shape. Probably not. Since Cancún in 2003 the WTO has had its own problems. Not surprising then that there has been a report suggesting a radical rethink of the UNFCCC process. Problem is the UNFCCC would have to agree and that would take at least 20 years.

There is always much talk of ‘pathways’ and ‘stepping stones’ at UNFCCC meetings. Graham Readfearn on the way to this year’s Conference of Parties (COP) in Warsaw asked Will Australia cause a slip on the climate change stepping stones in Warsaw? He suggested that Australia may be there using its elbows to push the process off balance. According to his final report How rich countries dodged the climate change blame game in Warsaw he was on the money: Continue reading “Copping out at COP 19 in Warsaw”

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Overflow Thread

By Cat Herding Cabal on December 28, 2013

So it’s time for another Overflow thread, as part of our system for keeping other threads on-topic. There are Rules here  - please follow the guidelines for managing drift into and out of this thread..

DO NOT treat this as an Open Thread (which is where off-topic discursive chitchat belongs) – the #overflow has a very separate purpose. Overflow threads are set apart for more contentious side discussions (especially perennial stoushes) to avoid disruptive thread-clutter that discourages other commentors from continuing on-topic discourse.

When first transferring your side-discussion to a particular Overflow thread it is expected that you provide context for fellow readers, so ensure that you include permalinks to the relevant originating comments on other threads (including previous Overflow threads). Respondents should also reference relevant comments in other threads if a need for further context is perceived.

Be ruthless with self-managing the inevitable thread-drift tendencies which will happen on Overflow. Once a thread drifts back on-topic or away from points of contention towards more general interest, then on-topic drift needs to be taken back to the originating thread, and general interest drift needs to be taken to the weekly Salon open thread. Then the many LP readers who prefer to avoid zombie stoushes on Overflow can appreciate you rejoining the general discourse.

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Whimsy

By Cat Herding Cabal on December 27, 2013

This final Whimsy for 2013 is brought to you via George Takei on FB and Amazon Reviews on “How to Avoid Huge Ships: John W Trimmer.

Good Advice For Most Readers, But Doesn’t Cover All The Bases.
By Jamie on January 18, 2012
Format: Paperback
There is one major oversight in this generally well-written book, and that is that it addresses animate readers exclusively. As a large rock in the Tyrrhenian Sea off the coast of Giglio Island, I have recently been confronted with instances in which avoiding huge ships was of fundamental interest to my personal well-being. However, the methods presented in Capt. Trimmer’s book were none too useful in my efforts to avoid huge ships, as I was recently struck by a very large ship indeed, a cruise vessel called the ‘Costa Concordia’. I think the ship came off slightly worse in the exchange, but the experience was disruptive to my afternoon and rather jarring. In a situation such as this, Capt. Trimmer’s advice would have been immensely beneficial to humans, fish, seabirds, and other animals, but I am none of those things. I’m a big rock. I can’t zig-zag or duck and cover. Rocks don’t do that. I’ve tried. I tried some time ago to scoot over to the left a bit to get some better sunlight, and it took me three thousand years! That’s not fast enough to avoid even the slowest huge ships. It is for precisely this reason that I would advise Capt. Trimmer to augment this edition with a section intended for readers like me–perhaps “How To Avoid Huge Ships If You Are A Rock, Iceberg, Or Coral Reef”. There is a market out there for this, Capt. Trimmer, and I assure you it would be well worth your time and effort.

Please share any bits and pieces that have surprised, delighted, intrigued or otherwise positively engaged you.

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You’ve been warned!

By Brian on December 27, 2013

I did have a restful Christmas, albeit wrapped in the warmth of Brisbane’s humidity, but in the still of the night reality has a way of breaking through. I’ll begin with the ending of this story, as it were, by quoting what Carl Sagan said about the photograph of Earth taken from Voyager 1 as it left the Solar System:

That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you know, everyone you love, everyone you’ve ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives … Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity — in all this vastness — there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

Here’s the pic:

Voyager pic_4wq9db2n-1368400770_500

That’s from a article by Andrew Glikson done back in May as CO2 levels in the atmosphere of 400 parts per million were recorded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Glikson highlights the changes this implies when the full effects become apparent, according to the paleo record when CO2 levels were similar in the Pliocene: Continue reading “You’ve been warned!”

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Lazy Monday

By Cat Herding Cabal on December 23, 2013

Since we don’t live by politics alone (I sincerely hope), what else did people get up to this weekend? Join in, share some tales, regulars and lurkers all!

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