15 minutes of fame

While I really welcome another news source ( ABC24) , esp arts etc, . its very frustrating as a resilience planner to watch sensitive matters of environment risk and impact  being handled quickly in 15 minutes. In order to build a more sound response to the NET and the need for fuller discussions,  I hope ABC (inc radio ) add more URL'S to their reports as a matter of course 

 Many recent short circuit news grabs make serious errors and presumptions -eg  reasons for the bushfire in WA ( some of the reports on Fires , floods ( Bangkok QLD) are misleading and one sided talk. Better in 15 minutes to identify and promote local sources and reports from people ( incl net) . "ABC quarters " and others in abc24 should be counselled to report LOCALS, name URL sources locally  and resilience experts to avoid quick fix journalism and editorializing that is so common elsewhere .
That way they can be ahead of the game and capture  the AUDIENCE desire for both  quickfix with quickfollowup as well. 

Finally ABCTV lets us hear from experts on the Green Economy

Well done Ullman
The experts on the program on ABC3 tonight ( green economy-future forum) quietly reminded thinking Australians why a price on carbon is as popular as it clearly is ( Its just so simple!)  .
Most importantly they said that,generalized innoculation type carbon taxes are wrong because they don't target inefficency and because new energy demand competes directly with agriculture and the poor.
SO  the dummies are targeting the poor and vulnerable .

The greatest evil is often done in the name of the best intention.Time the Fabians read their own heroes (.GB Shaw )more closely.

A great celebration of good taste

Last nights ABCTV tribute to David and Margaret was a celebration of much that is very good about our engagement with good writing and good movies. Thank you all.
The tough stuff was well symbolised by David's choice of LANTANA because indeed, everybody has something to hide. That Aussie icon is a foreign weed ; a plant with good looks , poisonous leaves and hiding of vermin . It is a very apt choice of a name - esp in our dry country places ( like LOVE SERENADE) where you have to seek to find shelter and refreshment, and where what looks bad can hide a purposeful place. As we were reminded this week by Dr Phil -- if you can't see it in yourself ( or in movie? ) you can't really see it at all.

In a great tribute , Cate and Geoffrey celebrated the real people we meet through the Movie Show : like mums and dads of the screen, D&M sit through so much rubbish , so we don't have to.

The best part of the night for me was the concrete artistic assertion that the search for "truth and beauty " is often stalled because the truth is not always beautiful (ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER) .
Some Maturity in our appreciation of life is great to see because everywhere you look there is, as Ronald Conway says, a sense of stupor here in the sunshine states .Thankfully though , there is ALSO often, some truth and beauty in the pile of ........ if we are prepared to look and listen for it .
On that note , I do believe our while our young people have to test ,tear down to build up something worth while , they ALSO desperately need inspiration and respect shown to what is good in all the rubbish. Time the ABC kicked out the worm eating nest birds for whom " noone can do anything right and who know nothing but how to make wars on everything " .It is no coincidence that the role of women and the growth of a more mature mindset is on our minds in modern film because there are a lot of children not growing up in our culture .
The review reminded us that beauty is often anything but  (SWEETIE )and the place for love strange, lonely and rare ( LOVE SERENADE ).
Celebrating their good taste, I thought the best thing was that , in my choice of the best in a long while-GRAND TURISMO, truth and beauty had to be sought for and found with body mind and spirit all engaged in order to prove these things can really work in some dark places !

Charles Darwin wouldn't believe anyone in this Age could be so dumb

Charles Darwin did the initial research on atolls over 150 years ago . His research and conclusions in this area of science was thorough  and those conclusions  still stands today with subsequent verification from plate tectonics , volcanism and weathering  . I have to say it is not at all clear the same can be said about science in practice,  and "Questions without Answers" at ABCTV.
ABC TV on Sunday night , did a report on the Kiribati islands, suggesting the sea level is rising on them .( after 9pm 9th October 2011) The reporters  collected all  the information that suited their theory in a way which reminded me of Margaret Meads mistaken efforts some decades earlier on an island nearby - Conveniently in both cases , these real situation is some distance away from the audience.

The clever reporters  have ignored Darwin's discovery - the atolls are formed by subsidence
The ABC  presumably dug up this report in preparation for this week in parliament( with its grand ambition of changing the world with yet another tax)  ,
The greatest environmental risk on Tuesday morning in Parliament was the risk from Carbon Dioxide.
By  Tuesday evening " the greatest environmental risk ever " has been changed to oil leaks from a ship near New Zealand .
 Does anyone believe the reporters at the ABC? More quickfizzers here 

Tough questions- is the ABC up for it?

Tonight's panel and today's issues( report on our kids) suggest we could be in for a good start, one that maybe will go to the heart ---- but in the end will the program just be one big "blast away" as usual.
Without an " after panel" or  online and no innovative ( cf SBS) any so called ABCTV/774 commitment to be up to date and interactive is hypocritical . The ABC looks more like the public version of 60 minutes every week ----only bunchy , crunchy but  without tears and trauma.
The point is , Parliament have to call this matter to order - instead of constant name changing to save nothing, they need to get on with saving what we do know to be under threat - the traditional tenets of marriage.   Should there be no vehicle for the public discussion ( list eme here)  he is one .

ABC news

Will lose if it puts as news  ( 12.00am) yet another report from UN speaker on sea level change ( rising or lowering., ..
Need to get out and do more reporting before they they find the UN like the Age is not reliable - the island they refer to is probably subsididing .You heard it first from anywhere but the ABC news service

Any progress amongst Journos

Robert Manne's latest attack on the Australian ( and defence of the Age ?) sounds like "takes one to know one"  There is a disease that needs training in the camp  - editorialising and moovingon ( really staying put)
Journs rattling around in a small box they call reason is not worth reading .
Many need to get out and do more reporting.
Readers of this blog will note my laments about the limits of qanda.
Has anything improved of late?  - Yes The Drum is often worth watching -well half the time .in my opinion  . That's a lot better than the Age on the environment , where it is almost none of the time WW( Manne  clearly doesn't know that - his recent article  trying to shore up its unreliable reporting )

GenY is trying to break out

qanda tonight .

Did you notice the young geek who dared to speak heresy in church last night - couldn't close him down even with an angry boy. (" don't look at me" the blessed saint of ABC gen Y said)
In the occasional glimpses of straight talking that can happen when you have an audience that talks back, gen Y showed what they think of the baby boomers whose lack of moral moorings is covered up by empty emotional niceties .Tony treading so lightly!

Adults now move, not the left, like they like to think , but to mere emotion; their children are smart enough  to move to the right because such superficiality is so pathetic.

As usual it was a child who put the adults straight about what science and truth telling is all about,

Qanda falls into another big hole of irrelevance

Whtya expect when the polys dominate on Tony's carefully crafted collection . Go nowhere and stay stuck in popular prejudice and ignorance ( middle ground)
No bigger hole was dug than when Tony Jones tries to use a clip of Tony Abbott to prove his pathetic pedantry and less obvious ignorance in economic and intellectual matters  .
Yes, Tony Abbott did talk about a carbon tax; but he wasn't like Jones,  making a pedanticly pathetic point. Abbott was making a relevant point about relevant taxes like fuel taxes .  Abbott  talked about it as a progressive tax (* targeted ) not like the original sin for which we must pay penance --- the silly ABCchurch view .
Me thinks the greatest evil is being done in the name of the best intention - no new tax could be sold,  unless you had a great big excuse for it .  Guilt brings people together ,  ....but not necessarily for good .Penance and pedantry is always a poor substitute for precision in decision.

A desperate Labor gamble with no help from the ABC

I will start taking the ABC ( and its partners on the left ) seriously on science when they take themselves seriously on the subject - and allow scientists to run proper panels on the subject --esp of what polys think is science (not a gambling man but it might be up there with brilliance in business).
In a week when everyone in Australia is confused by polys playing football promoting their own tax level to solve the biggest crisis on earth , who does 730, Lateline and put on to be convincing , fault prone Flannery and Brandt - another bunch of polys or paid up adherents  .
No wonder Karl Bitar is jumping ship -a good reason to tax us more can only look/win  that way while the proponents sound credible.
Labor is not credible about much and certainly not science. But where,  like the much over venerated CSIRO is the ABC when you need them to call up authors on science /science practice? 

Living in the past and tied to a post

Mark Scott, ABC TV producers and Film Australia do not get it --do they - they have been funding home grown indulgence and tragedy ridden, conflict avoidance and  dumbing down stuff for decades .Go visit some real worlds .
 The children are in charge because the adults haven't grown up and got some guts ( esp in thinking about true toughness) . The 4 corners program and revisit to  arakun ( try revisiting Margaret Meads samoan girls sometime? ) and ABC2 ( the day the immigrants left ) says it all - I am so glad the original Australains are showing us the way. But then will the ABC follow up with some insightful questions  ?

We allow children to do what they feel like at their peril!  Get real you lot.  Angry boys get drunk and beat up and get beat up- Dead head and dead end stuff .  You won't stop bullying by role playing and mummy boys stuff ,  but by teaching children to grow up and respect the roles of those there to train them in the tough decisions of life

Environmentalism is failing

Simply because it is increasingly alienating and opposing sound scientists.

Typically ABC cut the address on BIG IDEAS when it got too hot to handle ( suzuki 's speech )

Any effective political ambition in a democracy must be rooted in a consensus amongst a wide range of practical people who have trained and proved their training on the ground.

Environmenatalism is a faith that has extended itself beyond the boundaries that true scientists would set themselves (david suzuki correctly points to reductionism in practice) becoming so heavenly minded they are of little earthly use.

Desperate selling of a dream of power

Since we posted the note here we note that the PM, while avoiding projection can't help using the fear triggers in her speech on Qanda.

Life's big questions --- a good start Scott

Scott Stephens has started something that is very welcome with Matt and hopefully his next guests (Compass 20th Feb ).Without adding to the rhetoric , Scott presents the points well enabling both guest and audience to fully participate .


So how big are the questions and how good are the answers ? 
Going on the lack of depth in the answers , the questions were really big . Great because this means there is room for more questions . Great that Matt and others are willing to be so honest because so much public discourse seems to avoid these questions ( saying as they have done for decades that such questions are" irrelevant "- certainly aren't irrelevant to very young and the aged - just not politically correct to ask them.

On another level (of  real world question stuff) its interesting that some much public good by governments in our day is about "trying to answer questions that anyone with a bit of common sense would know the answer to ".
Maybe Scott might like to ask his guests whether we have really lost common sense and even a sense of balance over science ( why don't people believe that Co2 production is a disaster  )  and faith and few wounds and running sores.
Can govts really replace a lack of common sense with ads and warnings? Like many I find such advice trite and insulting. Maybe we as a civilization are a civilization that 's only interested in answering questions that any reasonable thinking person can answer because there were very few " answers ".
No person reading this should support the projection problem all around us where we tell others how to solve their problems . When it comes to the critical optimism and pessimism  issues we need more of this world view discusion to actually move away from the morass of " things we have heard before ".