To publish or not to publish

An interesting article appeared in today's Green Guide and, more interestingly, the picture of The Falling Man (no, not G Dubuya...) made the almost full-page front cover. He is of course the man who AP photographer Richard Drew captured free-falling on September 11, 2001.

The article didn't talk about that picture alone, but spoke more of the fact that newsrooms around the world often have to consider the moral side of publishing such pictures; they normally don't want to out a victim's family through more pain and sorrow.

I am against this: humans display this unusual characteristic of ignoring and dismissing worrysome facts such as violence, horror and terrorism if they don't experience it first-hand. Yes, we can sympathise and donate money to buy blankets and food for tsunami-striken or AIDS-infested communities around the world. But are we moved? Mainstream Australian news programmes tend to focus on internal affairs and often glance over world news (with the exception of SBS). In my travels around Europe I was fascinated by the fact that a. world news are half of the bulletin and not just closing shots and b. events were described very vividly, backed with video or photographic evedence.

It is only then, when you confront people with the plain and obvious truth that an impact is likely to be made: The piles of hair and bones from the massacre Jewish people, rather than pictures of the empty furnaces. Families lying dead in gutters in Sarajevo, that stills pictures of bombed villages.

The same applies to our environment crisis. As I continue to explore Al Gore's book "An Inconvenient Truth", I can't help thinking: we all heard about the floods in Europe last summer and got to see the helicopter views for 30 seconds of water gushing around. We see graphs of bad things increasing and good things reducing - but so what? 35,000 people died in Europe and I doubt that this side of the world actually comprehends what that means (except for the ones who lost loved ones).

I think it's time that our media begins to vividly show us the real news and not just the narrative. So that we don't conveniently overlook the truth...

A Gory Truth

It arrived yesterday, after almost three weeks and after having tracked (on and off, systems permitting) the shipment of Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" from the US to Australia through Amazon. By the way, Dymocks in Australia might start selling the book Mid-September this year but I just could not wait and it worked out a few dollars cheaper.

Well, I've only gone through the first 62 pages on the train this morning and let me tell you - this book must be taken seriously. It is not your ordinary 300-page book full of scientific jargon with graphs, quotes and summarisations of studies. It is "How to Stop Screwing our Environment" for Dummies - that is, for everyone.
The book builds up page after page; it states the problem by presenting the facts (the melting glaciers, the rising temperatures, the CO2 rising levels ) in both pictorial and scientific formats. Some of the photos are truly disturbing: as a kid, I remember this huge old volcano covered in ice all-year round; today, it is mathematically proven that Kilimanjaro will be snow-less in the next 2 decades or so. The same goes for glaciers in the European Alps.

The book's format truly surprised me: it is full of pictures. As you read the introduction, you understand why. Over the years, Gore developed and has kept on enhancing a presentation about climate issues, global warming and its danger. The book is effectively that presentation coupled with more context and narrative. It works very well because I found myself sucked in and almost missed my station (which is not really a problem in Melbourne...).

The format and layout of the book is also cleverly aimed at young people, with clever fold-out pages and very plain English.

I'll continue my reading tonight and come back with another mini-review and some interesting facts about the issue - in the meantime we should all start thinking again. It's not the kind of problem that will go away if ignored. It's the equivalent of cancer for the planet. By the time you realise, it's already late. And it takes years to find a solution and to monitor its effectiveness.

As Gore quotes Martin Luther King Jr, "We are now faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today".

TGI Friday

A colleague of mine recently returned from a 5-week Contiki Tour of some European Countries. To my astonishment he spent 10 minutes telling us by the different varieties of MacDonalds burgers across the different countries. I found that quite funny as this particular topic would have been (very happily) well off my list of things to experience while overseas. Another colleague and I agreed that, when overseas, MacDonalds is a good toilet-stop because every restaurant has a W.C. and they tend to be quite clean merely because of the turnover of clients.

I found myself asking so many questions about London and the truth is I miss London terribly. It's the whole area from Hyde Park Corner to Russel Square, to Covent Garden, to Embankment and to St James Park. The smell of fires from the street performers at Covent Garden, of food in Chinatown, roast chestnuts at Leicester Square, ink from the Evening Standard...

I spoke about some of the popular food establishments (which he missed) like Perfect Pizza and TGI Friday. The latter of course stands for Thank God It's Friday (whatever God means to all the different ethnic origins in England!).

And because it's Friday, I have attached one of 5 pictures sent to me this morning by Moshe titled "Maths Genius". They made my day! It's one of the funniest things I 've received for a long time and I wish I get more like those.

Enjoy the weekend everyone!...

Census 2006 and the Interweb

This one is close to my heart, as my dear better half is spending quite a bit of time and leg power to distribute forms (and later collect them) for around 450 houses in our area (the fact that she's ultimately employed by John Howard I choose to ignore, for my own sanity's sake).

We received our forms two days ago and we had already agreed that we would submit our answers/data electronically at www.abs.gov.au/census. So late last night, while waiting for one of my very few current favourite TV programs to start on SBS, I logged in with the intention to complete it in less that 15 minutes.

Surprisingly, the experience was very satisfactory! The website is no-frills and definitely no-thrills, which is great for the purpose. Australia, as a population in general, is still a very web-illiterate nation so the last thing one wants to do is put them off completely by presenting them with government 'stuff' to do over a complex web tool.

Once logged in, you start by listing all persons in your house on August 8th 2006. Yes, we can fill the information ahead of time, as long as it is accurate AND true. Once that's done, the system creates one set of questions for each person registered. In the case of couples, some smarts exist to create a 'relationship' between non-married, divorced people (our case). Once the adults are done, it's a matter of churning through effectively identical questions for each child.

We completed the whole thing in under 15 minutes, which is considerably shorter, more accurate and less frustrating than filling in paper forms. But, like with everything else, we picked on a couple of things:

1. We are asked to supply Current Address, Address as of 12 Months Ago and Address as of 5 Years Ago. The first two, can be easily reused later in the questionnaire (eg. in the case of your spouse and children) by selecting a "Same As.." checkbox. However the third address (previous 5 years) has to be typed in by each person registered. We thought that was a bit dumb; there are 4 children in our house and they were all living together with the parents 5 years ago. I would have liked to see another "Same As person 1 or 2" checkbox to facilitate this.
2. One of the questions in the 'Dwelling' section is whether access to the Internet is available. Now, I can't work out how crucial this question is... The Census is normally about population and demographic statistics. I thought this was a very technology-oriented question, with very little point (other than perhaps helping the Bureau of Statistics predicting where to spend more money in the next 5 years). Where do you draw the line? Why not ask if we have Colour or Digital Television? How about mobile phones? Or motorbikes? I suspect that more useful data could be collected from an exercise of that magnitude, like work/lifestyle balance questions like "How many holidays a year does the family take?".

I would recommend that you fill in the questionnaire online. It's quick, a no-brainer and secure. Save yourselves time AND raise the bar for Australia's Internet future! Big Kev would be excited!...