Tram "superstops" are a travesty, with awards for bad design.

Whenever I wait at the Collins Street tram stop at Swanston Street, especially in the rain, I look at this plaque and wonder at its stupidity.  The "superstop" provides no cover from the rain or sun.  Why didn't they make the little roof higher, and make it reach over the trams?  As for the aesthetics, it is industrial minimalism that prepares passengers to be like cattle in a truck. 

The legality of Israeli settlements

This is a major issue as so many people keep wrongly claiming these settlements are illegal.



The legality of the settlements | JPost 



Irrespective of this the Palestinians do not want Israel to exist at all, forget two states, and instead of half of Jerusalem, they want to "liberate" all of it.



Hamas in Gaza rally professes hatred of Israel 

Reminded when Emperor Akihito Visits Ise Shrine

Another memory, this time of Ise.  As an Architecture student I was particularly entranced by this pure, Classical Japanese building, rebuilt every twenty years.

Getty Images AU: JPN: Emperor Akihito Visits Ise Shrine

Here is a picture of the shrine, which I found that is not in the Getty images.

And now (27.3) I read that Japanese architect Shigeru Ban wins the Pritzker Prize.  I could be winning.  One more reason to get depressed.

Public Transport costs de-disadvantaged - slightly!

Vindicated!



I argued for years with whomever would listen that we should have only one zone.  The cost of double touching far exceeds the extra revenue, and penalises the less fortunate who have to travel further.  Finally, the Government has woken up. But mass-transport should still be free, walk-on-walk-off.  "Free Bread, Beer and Busses" was my campaign slogan when I stood for parliament a while back.



Commuters in Melbourne’s outer suburbs to see public transport costs slashed under Napthine plan

Galaxy

The universe is fractal, to some degree.  Just as the Mandelbrot Set keeps repeating at ever smaller or larger scales, always redefining the same pattern, so does the world.  But the Mandelbrot Set does not repeat exactly at different scales, but always has a new variation on the same pattern.

In the real world, in a similar way,the same pattern keeps repeating at different scales.  When atoms were first observed people thought they would be like little solar systems, and they are a little bit, with a central power and cirulating wave/particles, but they are not exactly the same but smaller, but have a variation.  Similarly at a greater scale, galaxies have the stars instead of planets or electrons, and a great black hole in the centre instead of the sun or the nucleus.  These three levels appear to be the only ones, as larger than galaxies appears to be more like a foam and smaller than the atoms becomes apparently random, again without distinguishing structure at any greater or lesser scale.

Air Sharers

Are Sharers is my new all-inclusive Environmental group.  We all share our air - with everyone.  This is something that seems to be ignored by everyone.  Particularly in past ages, people of rank probably chose not to think about it, and it is only quite recently that the concept of air has even entered public consciousness.  While anyone studying science at school or watching certain types of entertainment would have no doubt about the existence of air and even some of its more arcane properties, many - even most - people would have little idea of it if they thought about it and they don't.  It is almost a revolutionary thing to say that the Earth only has a limited, thin layer of air, and we all breathe it and share each others.  It is not just a matter of not polluting it, but recognising that it is a fluid in which we are all immerced and with with we all intergrate very personally via constant breathing.  Nothing can bring people together more than the idea that we are all sharing our air with each other, which when you think about it is as personal as a kiss.

Money

Money is one of my favourite topics.  One of my first books that I didn't get round to writing down after thinking it through was on Economics.  It follows from my other books on Physics.  Money is a form of "energy".  Exactly what "energy" is remains a mystery.  It comes in many forms including: electromagnetic radiation, kinetic energy, potential energy and, I suggest money.  Perhaps I shall eventually get round to adding bits here till it is all written down.  How often have I started one of my many books.

No one to talk to, so I'm writing this.

Most of my life I have been alone. I grew up alone, either sick in bed or too feeble to play with other children when I was well, not that I wanted to as I had no social skills. Finally, now in my Autumn years, I have a friend but he hates the sound of my voice and is always telling me I talk too much.

An idea for a novel, the confusion between the sound of Drap d'Or and trapdoor so someone thinks he is headed for the gallows, but instead is to be invested with a golden cloak.  Perhaps a bit obscure even for an episode in one of my sitcoms.  This is the first of hundreds that has been recorded, and perhaps the last to exist.

Today, Tuesday.

Tuesdays used to be one of my swimming days, but I stopped late last year because my right shoulder became painful and feeble, as well as a return of the heart arrhythmia.  Because acupuncture had apparently been successful some years ago when something similar happened to my left shoulder, I started going to a new Acupuncturist on Dandenong Road, just at the other end of the Urban Forest.  After that, I have been catching the same bus I used to catch to the old Acupuncturist in East Belntleigh, but now walk up past the Hospital to see Donovan, except that I'm now going fortnightly and this is not my week.  I might walk to Chaddy afterwards for lunch.

While showering, I was thinking hard about The Letter.  I have written some small, private letters telling people how I was anally raped by RC Nuns at an early age, but I am still drafting my "speaking out" letter.  I think I shall address it to HH the Pope, himself, and then send copies to every level of the RC hierarchy down to my local Parish, St Joseph's.  I may also send copies to other relevant parties, including Government Departments.

Currently the draft first sentence is: "I should have screamed out at the time, but I was too scared, and tried to curl up in a ball and ignore what was being done to me, and tried to withdraw my mind inside myself away from everything"

Time to go now.

Watching my time speed past.

This is my clock at Flinders Street.

My new amusement is to stand in front of the clocks.  About two minutes after each train leaves, its clock is reset, and the hands appear to speed forward to the new time.  I can watch my time speed past.

The Palestinians do not want a two-state solution. Peace is impossible

Palestinians celebrating failure of peace talks | JPost | Israel News


It is repeatedly clear that the Palestinians and the rest of the Arab world do not want a two-state solution because they refuse to recognise Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state.  Jerusalem will not be divided but the rest of the world will not accept this.  Meanwhile, the stalemate of alternating Intifadas and stalled talks will continue, while Israel slowly takes over more of Jerusalem.  The blatant anti-Semitism of European and other countries is sadly understandable as human nature changes slowly and the Holocaust is only a generation ago.


Astonishingly, Australia is one of the few countries that support Israel, though this was fading under the previous Labor government.


As I have written before, the only real, long-term solution will be a Theological one, when Jews finally make peace with Islam by recognising their Prophet (pbuh) as a non-Jewish Prophet to the Gentiles.    

http://www.jpost.com/Diplomacy-and-Politics/Arab-League-states-total-rejection-of-Jewish-state-recognition-346543

Dunkielsitz

Dunkelsitz

Sitting in the dark, at the Ballet, Opera, Circus or Theatre.  A Flaneur in Melbourne's Performing Arts.

The Australian Ballet: Manon

When I shared FaceBook, it showed not just the link but a lovely photograph. 

It is my first post to my new FaceBook page: https://www.facebook.com/dunkelsitz

Being "HERE"

Can I rightfully claim this is my Country?

Often, when I am in a certain ontological mode, I feel like a person in ancient, endless time who might have sat on this very spot and thought my very thoughts.  Surrounded by my suburban "bush garden" and opposite the "Urban Forest", I have added incentive to identify with Country.  Certainly, the ants are friendly, I have seen various types living round the house for the more than three decades I have lived here, but they have almost never come inside my house; that is respect for territory!

Baxter's Grave

Israelis make fun of'bombs

Shall we see "peace" in Jerusalem soon?  Probably not.

Instead of removing the fear of bombs from the Israeli population by a mythic "peace", now the approach is to neutralise the fear through humour.  Jews have always made a joke of misery, and this is the latest approach to the new technology of missiles and bombs.


Too soon? New Israeli game show 'kills off' contestants with 'bombs' | JPost | Israel News


This is the sort of post I used to put on New Whig.  I liked having a lot of followers who liked the unusual but significant news items I found every day and posted with pithy comments drawing out some of their implications.  It still exists, and perhaps always will.

The solution to Israel's problems is Theological.  All Jews need to do is acknowledge that the Prophet of Islam, PBUH is a true Prophet, though not a Jewish Prophet.  Islam is Judaism for Gentiles.   Ideally, Jews should be welcomed back into their ancestral homeland by all the people who have made their home there in the absence of Jews.  The present two-state solution is aimed at mere grudging toleration of Jews by Moslems, but this is unstable and not a long term solution.  "Peace" means not just the suspension of hostility, but the antithesis of hostility, which is perhaps "Love". 

Memory of boiling the kettle dry.

Here is an old memory I had lost:

Just now, while writing the previous Blog Entry, I boiled the kettle dry.  (Eventually the metho is used up and the fire goes out, but the kettle could have been red hot by then.  Sometimes I find plastic things on the table melted.)  This time I remembered how, long, long ago when I lived in Parkville I did the same thing with the electric jug which was metal, but the plastic handle melted off and dripped to the counter and the hot base burnt a round hole in the laminex (tm) benchtop.  I bought new laminex of the exact size, then prised off the old laminex, only to find to my great amusement and apparent everlasting memory, that a previous tenant had done the same thing, because a similar burn was on the laminex below that had not been removed but stuck over. 

Another memory,  29-3-14

Thinking about Auntie Nessa.  She had come from Sydney and met some peopel including my Mother and they were friends and I was supposed to be a friend of her children, two girls of extreme ugliness and stupidity, only exceeded by their older brother.  I hope they don't read this.  The Father was also a Norm, and be became very big in the State Government doing something Medical as I recall.  The Mother's Father had written a book about sharks, so they went back to before recent times.  Now I think about it, I don't recall my and their Fathers being together at all.  I just don't recall them in any memory of being there for dinner, which involved sitting round a big table and I know Norm was at the top and I think I never ever once called him Uncle Norm, but I occasionally said Auntie Nessa, mainly to remind her that I was allergic to tea towels, so I was excused from helping with the washing up, as all the other children were expected to do.  I was named after an Uncle who had suicided when his fiance, Rosa, ditched him.  Not knowing that at the time, decades later, I had first a Rosa whom I ditched and then a Rosie who again ditched me.  My life consists of the same experiences that keep repeating.  Perhaps that Norm was like the missing younger brother for my Father?  Where did thy go before and after dinner?  Why can't I even remember my Father sitting at the table, which he must have done.  Perhaps the Fathers sat together at the end, with the Mothers at the other end.  I know the brat of a brother sat opposite, with his raw peas and carrots.

My vision of a future, Royal Canberra

Here is my vision for the future of Canberra.

On Red Hill, on the axis with both Old and New Parliament House, I imagine a Windsor-like castle.  Presently the area is bushland, an army base and a golf course.  They symbolism of the Crown as a distant and elevated building is what attracted me at first.  The idea of giving us a history as if the Australian Crown had existed since time immemorial.  Of course it would have to be in keeping with Aboriginal traditions for the area, about which I am currently ignorant.  Probably by coincidence, Walter Burly Griffin hit an echo with Aboriginal Cultures when he let the plan for the city grow out of the topology of the Country.  Melbourne Avenue leads directly up the hill, to stop at bushland.  A ceremonial entrance into the mediaeval keep, or between it and on the other side an inter-denominational chapel for national ceremonies that are presently held in the Sydney Opera House.  Besides the usual accommodation it could be a living museum like other castles with exhibition space and be a major tourist attraction in its own right.

We are about to see unprecedented popularity for Their Royal Highnesses, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge.  My dream is for Her Majesty, the Queen of Australia to make Canberra a Duchy, and make TRHs Dukes and Duchess of Canberra while in Australia, and of C&C elsewhere.  The ACT has no "head of state" and legislation receives assent by being published, and this should not change, but there is presently no one to represent Canberra at ceremonial occasions.

Hyperspace in Cyberspace

 Welcome here, to my little chunk of Hyperspace in Cyberspace.

Cyberspace is a whole new realm or domain of reality that humankind has only just started to explore and colonise.  So far, it has tended to be a theoretical place derived out of the mathematics of computing, and while increasingly more people spend increasingly more time there, and a lot of real money is traded there, it is still regarded as a "makebelieve" place.  This is changing.

Mathematically, it is possible to make a poetic analagy between the realm of complex numbers and cyberspace.  They are both "un"-real, or ontologically not of the physical universe.  While the numbers have never threatened to take on a more solid status and remain useful calculating tools as well as entertaining mathematicaly, cyberspace will become ever more like the real world.

We have seen the start of virtual money, Bitcoins.  Perhaps in the future it or many including it will make up the vast majority of the money supply.  Perhaps gold will ever retain its place as something "real" to hook the entire theoretical system onto.  It would need to be self regulating without the equivalent of a central bank, but when it grown large enough, emerging structures will fill that role, but we have no way of predicting what they might be.

"If a spatial extra dimension is of radius R, the invariant mass of such standing waves would be M_n = nh/Rc with n an integer, h being Planck's constant and c the speed of light."

Reading about hyperspace in WikiPedia led me to this astonishing formula in Kaluza-Klein, a wonderful name for a concept in itself.  I am astonished at the constants h/r which is the very tiny Planck's Constant, divided by the enormously large Speed of Light.  That is an exceedingly tiny number.  Also, the formula has the string of integers, so it can only have certain, discrete values, but that is to be expected as everything has "quantum levels" especially at that tiny size, though of course there are very large integers that would cancel out the other constant, so we are talking about phenomena that also exist at our dimensions and also, of course much larger, as is the spectrum of electro-magnetic waves.

I hope to retain my mental faculties as my physical body deteriorates, and end up, like most people eventually, as a withered relic on life support, little more than a brain in a bottle, but with the capacity to communicate in cyberspace, perhaps through electrodes in my brain.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaluza%E2%80%93Klein

The ABC Republican Bias

Philip Benwell has put the arguments for Australia remaining a republic well:


Mail :: Inbox: The ABC Republican Bias

'The “Queen of Australia” has an objective legal meaning. The Queen
personifies the Crown of Australia and represents the country in both
political senses of the word (the State and the people), as well as
lawful executive and legislative authority.

'The Queen of Australia is a separate legal person from the Queen of the
United Kingdom. Australia is a sovereign, independent state. The Crown
is not a foreign institution – it has always formed an integral part of
Australia’s constitution and heritage.'

Washing Socks, deserves reblogging, what ever that means.

I have lived through the sexual revolution.  When I was young (that sounds so sad;-) there were just people, undifferentiated by sexual orientation.  Then the idea was promulgated and generally accepted that some people are biologically born to be homosexual, and they deserve full rights.  Homosexuality used to be a behaviour but now it is an ontological state, and is part of who someone is, not what they do.  However laudable this movement is, it has now largely run its course.  It is generally accepted that for homosexual, "gay" people of both genders to indulge in homosexual behaviour.  It is assumed that other people will not want to, but this is false.  I don't know about women, but I do know that many adolescent males, not only in Australia, indulge in private homosexual behaviour, sometimes going all the way, which is seen by them as just mucking around, and not real sex as there are no women involved.  They do it very secretly and believe themselves to be the only people who are doing that sort of thing.  What ever the present level of actual homosexual activity between heterosexual men, in a few years it will start to be socially acceptable for "straight" men to play round with each other in a sexual way, without actually being "homosexual" or "gay".  This was the situation in some ancient societies including the well documented Classical Greeks, hence the term "greek love".  Possibly, religious, moral or even legal sanctions will come back into play to minimise this social trend, even if it remains acceptable for registered and "out" homosexual people, perhaps after a genetic test, are permitted to openly live a homosexual lifestyle with full social benefits, etc.

Does morality move in waves?  With a trend towards more or less social control over individual behaviour, gradually over time in a particular culture, with gradual influence across national and regional boundaries, so the waves are out of phase.  Personally, I favour greater personal freedom.  I lived in India for about a year, a few decades and a couple of lifetimes ago, and everyone lived a very public life, by our Western standards, Families all slept in one big bed in the attic, and public nudity was generally avoided but tolerated or ignored.  But I do think the elevation of freedom of speech to a sacrosanct level is wrong, especially the proposed removal of 18C that stops anti-Semitism.

[To Xians: we didn't kill your deity, Rome did that.  When Rome became the centre of the Church, blame had to be deflected.  The present Roman Catholic Church is the direct continuation of the old Roman Empire, just changed a lot.  The religious head is still the Pontifex Maximus.  The psychological implications of the guilt they must feel for being the very people who killed their own deity must be enormous.  They have gone to great lengths to cover it up and blame us Jews.  How long can they hold out against the forces of reason and continue to believe their ancient mythologies?  It looks like it will still be a very long time, but with these things everything can suddenly change, like a mathematical catastrophe, so who knows?  I may live to see it.]

This is wickedly ironic when posted on a Blog, on Google's Blogger.

As a FaceBook joke, it is self-referentially, self-deprecating humour, but in a Blog, which is not FaceBook, there is some irony, that not everyone would know.  It is now a comment about FaceBook that is not humorously about itself, but a description of a real truth about FaceBook.  Does that make sense?  As no one is reading this Blog, it hardly makes any difference what I post or whether I comment on it at all.  Of course there is the possibility that in the future someone might read it.  I understand there is some promise of permanency now in what is uploaded to the InterNet.

This was copied from the FaceBook Page:

Prisoner-Cell-Block-H-fan-page

Australian `rite of passage’ to connect with Country.

Eugene Eades at Nowanup, east of Albany, where he runs `rite of passage’ camps

Some years back in the recent past, I studied Aboriginal Cultures with Open University.  It was my first experience at tirtiary study on line, and I found it a challenge even before opening its content.  I was awarded a High Distinction, equivalent to an A+, which improved my University average slightly.

It has always been my belief that eventually Australian Culture will become endemicized, if that is a word.  Had British settlement happened much earlier and more slowly, it would have been absorbed into the traditional Cultures that existed all over Australia amongst the hundreds of different language groups, which all had long, and complex oral cultures.

Country is perhaps the most important concept in Australian Culture.  As more Australians are conceived and born here, so will the endemic population gradually revert to what it might have gradually evolved into, had the change in culture not been so sudden.  When you add another bucket of water to the tub, at first there is a big wave that seems to suck out all the rest of the water, but eventually it subsides and the level is even again, but at a different level from what it was.  Had the water been added gradually, it would have ended up at the same level, but without the destructive wave.

"How could it be?" I used to ask myself, "that eventually all Australians will be part of indigenous, revived if not perpetuated, Aboriginal culture."  Now, I have seen what could be the start, in the article I have linked this too.

All Australian Aboriginal cultures had some form of rite of passage.  Some included male circumcision at puberty.  They all consisted of coming into contact with Country and learning about it.  Instead of a written history with marks on paper, Aboriginal history is written in the landscape.  Songlines are ways of singing the story through the Country itself, but also acknowledging that Country is a living Ecosystem itself with which one participates individually and as a human or totemic group.

That somehow this tradition has been joined with the Australian Criminal Justice System is a miracle.  Nothing could be better for all young, would-be offenders, to have this sort of experience in communicating with Country.  I write this as  Justice of the Peace with some genuine knowledge.  In fact, all Australians could well eventually participate in this sort of "rite".  So my dream looks like it was a valid insight into the future that is coming to pass.  

The real Tony Mokbel

I didn't watch the original Underbelly, though I was caught up in the succession of sequels.  Now watching Fat Tony, and this Herald Sun video of the real man is fascinating.  Robert Mammone does a good job impersonating him, especially considering he had not seen this or any other film of Mokbel.



Rare uncovered footage shows drug lord Tony Mokbel at the height of his powers taking on Melbourne’s two-up king | Herald Sun

Intelligence from the republican camp, via the Sun-Herald

It continues to astonish me that there are still people pushing for a republic.  A couple of weeks ago I went to the Sustainable Living Festival in Birrarung Mar in Melbourne and spoke to one lady promoting something worthwhile, who incidentally mentioned she thought we had too many tiers of government and wanted to abolish state governments all together - a centerist obviously, not a centrist, btw.   I told her that the cause would never be achieved and was like the  Republic, a divisive issue that just split people and made people dissatisfied when they had no reason to be, and she should rethink it and get with the actual reality of what exists and won't change, and make it better not try to eradicate it. 

Here is an amusing article quoting former PM Bob Hawke with a witty and erudite rebuttal from Professor Flint:

No Republic! Australians for Constitutional Monarchy - Intelligence from the republican camp, via the Sun-Herald



The Republican movement is led by the Canberra Bureaucracy.   I would like to see Canberra become a Royal city.  Perhaps HRH the Duke of Cambridge could also be Duke of Canberra, to perhaps be known as the Duke of C & C. The top of Red Hill is the perfect place for a Royal Castle, currently just a military parade ground and golf course. It would add so much to the prestige and value of the city. As a major tourist attraction it itself it would add incentive for tourists to the nation's capital.

A good reason for pessimism.

"Suspicious circumstances," and now it will burn for decades, at least.  The Environmental problems increase exponentially, it appears.    Hazelwood's solution might not be to try and extinguish of confine the blazing coal, but to enclose the burning coalfaces in heat-exchanges to capture the energy now lost as well as enclose the entire area to collect the fumes and treat them. 



Coal-seam fires common but extremely difficult to manage | The Australian



Shares are plunging, as predicted, but typically not acted on.

Cell Block H of Prisoner fame still stands.

 

reblogged from Prisoner Cell Block H fan page

Facebook

Wikipedia

Link to original with attribution:  Arp 273

This is a very beautiful photograph.  I have my own theory of galaxies.

I look at Wikipedia every day when I log on to see their current hot topic.

Newspapers publish such rubbish about The Queen, if they publish anything at all.

The Queen meets German Chancellor Angela Merkel at Buckingham Palace | Mail Online



It is a lovely little video that is worth watching, especially to see that Ms Merkel looks genuinely delighted to be meeting Her Majesty, there is no reticence.  How close would they expect two women to stand?

Here is the headline from the UK Daily Mail:

A smiling Queen keeps her distance as she meets German Chancellor Angela Merkel at Buckingham Palace

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2569743/A-smiling-Queen-keeps-distance-meets-German-Chancellor-Angela-Merkel-Buckingham-Palace.html#ixzz2uf79j5b5

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