I’m getting a lot of pleasure from growing some veges this summer. The beautiful subtle colours in these red cos lettuces are amazing. The camera only captures some of them.
Some welcome optimism
A friend who is a public servant was telling me how, in her department, it feels as if a great weight has been lifted since the change of government. I certaintly feel a great relief to have done with the awful Howard era. So far the signs are promising:
Rudd ratifies Kyoto Protocol in the first official act of his new Government: We now have a high profile portfolio for Climate and Water, as well as one for Environment, and the promise of the issue addressed as all-important.
Jeffrey Sachs, speaking on the 7.30 report: ‘Australia has given me a huge boost of optimism with this wonderful election result and the leadership that the new government is showing. How could anybody be a pessimist when we see what Australia’s doing now on taking on the challenge of climate change’.
Prime Minister’s Literary Award : a thumping big new award for writers. The Arts portfolio is now being handled by a senior cabinet minister, while Sports moves to the outer ministry and a junior minister.
Exciting, defining times for women :
But if I had to nominate a flashpoint when I felt my body jolt upright with exultant anticipation and gushing love of country, it actually came courtesy of the first lady-elect, Therese Rein.
When Kevin Rudd walked on stage to claim his place as Australia’s 26th prime minister, the woman he calls his life partner stood with her hand in his beside him, and shimmied. She leant forward and, with a cheeky glint in her eye, shook her shoulders from side to side and shimmied. And it was glorious.
If ever there was an image to differentiate the old from the new on election night, it was Therese Rein’s shimmy. As surprising as the revelation that I’ve placed a shimmy above Australia electing its first female deputy prime minister and Maxine McKew’s “in heaven no one’s blind” moment might be, the shimmy said it all.
Yeah! It was at that point that I sat up and said ”Oh! I think I am going to like her!”.
Funny
Laura tells how six million were deprived at the Jane Austen and Comedy Conference in Melbourne! Germiane Greer gave the introductory lecture.
Pushing the envelope
Amy writes about how Coke is at least making the right noises about respecting users wishes in relation to Facebook Beacon. Dave thinks Facebook was deliberately testing the waters. Of course leaking to test or dilute reaction has been a political tool for eons.
I’ve heard Roger Law, one of the creators of the famed satirical 1980’s TV puppet show Spitting Image talk about pushing the envelope of what is acceptable socially. He said that at that time in the UK, it was much more difficult to publish questionable material in the print media, whereas censorship was less strict and it was easier to get away with more on TV. He wondered if a reason might be that TV was taken less seriously. He added that if your show was successful, you could then be more audacious next time, even from week to week. I thought that was really interesting, and I’ve watched it happen since. The Chaser is an example; you couldn’t imagine them getting away with things like the APEC security breach or the Eulogy Song if they were new kids on the block. Think, too, how the excuser of the disastrous Lindsay fake political flyer, tried to palm it off as a ‘Chaser-style prank’ without understanding that tradition.
I guess the web is also somewhat differentiated from the older media with regard to pushing the boundaries of conventional feelings about privacy and social mores, and advertising within it is pushing the envelope in every which way it can, seeking new niches. I don’t want anything to do with Facebook’s advertising, and it is one of a number of reasons I remain somewhat aloof from FB. But I expect that what seems audacious today, the type of targeted advertising within social networks that Facebook (even if it has backtracked to an opt-in basis) has introduced, will become just like the furniture tomorrow, for better or worse. Chris Matyszczyk challengingly points out that this sits with a tradition, too.
Whoo-hoo!
It sure was a happy night last night – after all the nail biting of the last few days and the start of the count last night, the John Howard era has come to an end!
Shan sent me his last election puppetry video, Howard’s Way, yesterday, but I must admit it felt too much like tempting fate to post it then!
Shan might have the first Rudd puppet out there:
Of course, now I have to decide what to do with my own two Howard puppets. They are too toxic to burn (just like the real thing, really!). I’m going to close my Vigil blog, but the puppet, which started out as an anti-war one, remains, as does the scarecrow one I made as a protest against the Howard government’s refugee policies. Any suggestions?
Previously:
Branding Grattan
I’m kind of amused at The Age’s attempts to promote their op-ed writers, in particular their political editor and bureau chief, Michelle Grattan. For one thing, she is such a good journalist, and already so highly regarded, that it seems silly. For another, it looks like they can’t quite get it right. The front page pointers for each new article, now with profile pics, are fine; every paper is doing it. But then ten days ago they announced the blog Grattan. I was pleased with the idea of being able subscribe and follow in my feed reader, but so far it turns out it isn’t being used, and most of her articles, understandably, (especially during the election campaign) are leader stories on the front page, and not copied to the blog. The thing that tickled me most, though, was the foray into video commentary, where Grattan gave her usual great analysis, talking directly to the anchor, but without looking at the camera. It looks to me as if The Age is desperate to make her into a brand that can be monetised, and she – and probably we – are really much more interested in what she is actually saying, because its not fluff, it’s worth hearing.
There was a confirmation of this in a more general sense in the ABC Media Report’s radio discussion on blogging the other day. The General Manager of Media at Fairfax Digital, Pippa Leary, said that commercial considerations meant that the blogs that you see coming onto the Sydney Morning Herald and the Age websites are usually those deemed likely to either going to bring in a lot of traffic or a lot of sponsors. They have discovered that blogs not only bring in interaction between journalists and their audience, but also new niche audiences which attract new sponsors:
So think about something like ‘Sam and the City’ — now it’s called ‘Ask Sam’ — it’s the second most popular blog on our site. If you think about what we have in The Sydney Morning Herald print edition, we don’t attract 15- to 18-year-old girls like we attract through ‘Sam and the City’, and for a lot of people that’s a lot of angst, but for us as the commercial division, we now can put Lancome, L’Oreal, a whole lot of different FMCG advertisers we would never have been able to attract before, so we look at blogs as a really great opportunity.
Out of curiosity, I subscribed to Grattan and Ask Sam in Bloglines, and they have 1 and 10 subscribers respectively. The other one I have been subscribed to for a while is Chew on This, which has 8. I interpret that to mean that the general reader doesn’t distinguish between much between blogs and articles, except for being able to comment.
Walk against warming
The Walk against Warming on Sunday drew about 9000 people in Canberra. It felt substantially bigger than last year. As yet neither of the major parties are addressing the issue with the seriousness it deserves, which has surprised me in a way. I thought it might be the clincher issue for a Labor victory. The tubeman above was at the side of the crowd, encouraging us to keep industrial relations rights in mind when we vote. This puppet was perhaps, but not conclusively, a John Howard?
I had some fun looking at Flickr for other WaW puppets. By far the most interesting to me were four big puppets at the Adelaide walk: Al Gore, Albert Einstein, Vandana Shiva, and Mikhail Gorbachev. I’d like to know who made them. Here is a selection of others:
Mick Jagger of Australian politics
Shan Jayaweera’s John Howard has been pressing the flesh in Melbourne. I love this, especially where he describes himself as the Mick Jagger of Australian politics! Jemila McEwan made the puppet.
Previously:
Animalia becomes animated
Graham Base’s 1986 alphabet book Animalia has been turned into an CG-animated TV series which is premiering today at midday on the Ten network in Australia, and simultaneously on BBC1 and CBBC in the UK, PBS Kids in the US and CBC in Canada. There are 40 half-hour epidodes, and you can see a trailer here. It’s made in Australia, mostly at Photon VFX.
Remember how we scoured each drawing for the small boy hidden in the page? He has been developed into a main character, Alex, who along with a friend, Zoe, get conjured into the magical world of Animalia. It sounds promising – I just hope I remember to watch it!
Here are some links that interested me:
- animalia.tv : Website and trailer
- Digital Media World: Jami Levesque, CG Supervisor, Animalia Productions, will present a behind-the-scenes look at the Making of Animalia on Thursday 15 November at 11.15am at the Australian Effects & Animation Festival 2007 in Sydney.
- Animation Magazine: precise
- Animalia Animated and The Series that (almost) never was: longer articles in The Age
- At youtube: Graham Base talking about the series in two sections: 1, 2; and a glimpse of the character maquettes .
