Monthly Archives: February 2005

Of Cabbages and Kings

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I watched Denton tonight and needed a shower on conclusion. He interviewed Frederick and Mary Glucksburg. A couple who might have been a mid-ranked corporate duo anywhere in the western world really – perhaps a double -diamond Amway family or goodlooking Scientologists maybe. But they’re currently gigging as Crown Prince and Princess of Denmark.

Denmark last sprang to world prominence in the time of Otto Von Bismarck and the Schleswig-Holstein Question. Since then, it’s been pretty quiet – a silence broken only by the glurp associated with necking rollmop herrings, followed by interminable choruses of ‘Wonderful,Wonderful Copenhagen, Salty Old Queen of the Sea. ‘ Then Mary Donaldson, Sydney real estate agent, met a smiley little chinless bloke at some bar during the 2000 Olympics. He turned out to be Fred Glucksburg. They got married, they’re back in town and we haven’t been this far up to our ears in royalist sycophancy since the Queen’s post-coronation visit.
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A philosophical casserole

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In a typically sarcastic comment to my earlier post about John Howard and Straussian neoconservatism, my partner jen sardonically questioned why I hadn’t included a reference to Derrida in a post that fearlessly embraced rambling irrelevance in just about every other way.

Well, I’ve got news for her. I can’t quite stretch to Strauss and Derrida in the same post, but I can do almost as well. I was reading an article recently by Peter Levine that asserted Leo Strauss was a closet Nietzschean\Heideggerian. I was even going to write a post about it at the time but got bored before I could put fingers to keyboard. But jen’s comment provides a perfect opportunity to recycle the relevant passage with a minimum of effort or thought:
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Contra Mundum

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Or, The Art of the Academic Jobsearch

I spent part of my morning finalising my application for a Research Fellowship in Griffith Uni’s Socio-legal Research Centre. All the advice that’s been around for years in HR is that cvs and selection criteria responses should be succinct, experiential and to the point. Everywhere but in academia, that is. Just as Dr Nelson’s micromanagement means that course proposals need to be approved in Canberra by DEST, and reporting and record keeping drives out teaching and research, so too do academic jobs regularly stipulate 7 or 8 selection criteria. The most egregious example of this in my experience was 18 selection criteria, many of which were nearly identical. My esteemed employer of eight years’ standing, Queensland University of Technology, until recently required 8 signatures on a leave application and a refund of $100 for cab fares at a conference required the Dean’s signature when I was in the Faculty of Business. This, in the University for the Real World. All the angst about po/mo and incipient commie-ism in tertiary education might be better directed at their seeming propensity to restore a museum like simulacrum of Kafka-esque bureaucracy.

It took me a few hours to respond to the selection criteria, and I lacked the energy to incorporate all this in my cv as requested (I hope it doesn’t matter):

Current curriculum vitae/resume which should include; full name, address, telephone number, email address and facsimile number if available; names, addresses, facsimile and email contact of at least three referees to whom the University may write; country of permanent residence (optional but required at time of appointment); employment history, including present position and notice required; details of education, professional training and qualifications; summary of undergraduate academic record; details of relevant professional, consulting or industry experience; research interests and list of publications; research grants awarded; any other relevant information, such as offices held in professional bodies, community services etc;

Not very vitae! It’s hard enough to ensure there’s an accurate list of publications. When you apply for a teaching job, you generally also need to include course outlines, teaching materials, sample powerpoints, copies of papers and book chapters, student evaluations, etc etc. It can take a day to compile and usually fills two B4 sized envelopes at least. I just emailed the thing off, and faced with the prospect of doing some study now, I’ve decided to take some advice a friend gave me via text – enjoy the rain, and read something fantastic and wonderful by Isabelle Allende.

Cv’s over the fold (as concise as I could make it – left out non-academic work and subjects taught) – apparently some bloggers get jobs this way… it would certainly save a fair bit of time!
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We Have Al Gore to Thank…

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I’ve been a regular net user since 1997, and first discovered the thing in 92, when we were delighted to find we could access the Village Voice sitting in the Semper Floreat offices at UQ. A feature in the Fin magazine on Friday made the point that many of the utopian claims made for the internet’s impact on society, culture and the economy have receded in the new millennium. Interviewed by the Fin, researcher from UQ’s Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies, Dr Gerard Goggin, argued that rather than driving social change, the net was in fact accentuating phenomena that had always been around, or were just reflections of late modernity generally. After all, though cyberdating is new, personals and establishing a relationship by correspondence isn’t, zines might be the old blogs, porn was popular in Ancient Rome, and junkmail predates spam… So, if for instance, we can learn about Delta’s shocking dumping by Mark Phillipoussis online with our morning coffee, couldn’t we always have done so with our morning paper, and if MsFits can post piccies of her boobs on her blog, might the same revelation not have been made in certain Melbourne nightspots once upon a time? Does the Internet fundamentally change how we receive and process information, and interact? I’m agnostic on the question, but would be interested to hear from Troppo readers as to their views…

A Straussian detective story

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I don’t know quite what to make of John Howard’s decision to almost double Australia’s commitment of troops to Iraq by sending 450 Darwin-based soldiers to protect Japanese engineers around Basra. Is it, as Tim Dunlop seems to imply, just another example of Howardian deceit and duplicity? Or is it, as Tim Blair aggressively asserts, a generous humanitarian gesture to assist the plucky Iraqis to build a new democratic nation in the face of murderous Islamo-fascist thuggery?

I don’t see any signs that Howard or Downer were lying when they protested repeatedly over the last two years that Australia had no intention of boosting military numbers in Iraq, and didn’t see a significant role for Australian troops in peacekeeping or nation-building. I think Howard fairly clearly changed his mind. But why? Michael Costello in The Australian speculates that Howard “may be starting to listen to the siren song of those who see a global military role for Australia“. But that doesn’t fit with Howard’s longstanding relentless pragmatism. I also don’t see any signs that Howard has suddenly developed a late-career Gareth Evans-ish desire to strut the world stage.
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No More Power to Canberra II

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First good news on the election front since Premier Pete won 63 of the 89 Legislative Assembly seats in Qld a year ago – Labor continues its clean sweep of the states and is re-elected in WA.

Discussion Question: Given that the Howardians are so dominant federally, why are the Liberals at state level so absolutely, consistently and awfully hopeless?

And why do they have to resort to meaningless slogans about decisions when same apparently involves massive unfunded and ludicrous commitments to weirdo water canals? The federal government might just like to sign up to the Kyoto treaty. Sorry, too hard. Let’s spray around money on broken and aimless dreams of bringing water to a dry continent instead. I guess the fact that we’re here in the Southern Ocean by ourselves under the southern stars means that world climatic trends don’t affect us… Hang on, there’s no problem because the Greenhouse effect is a myth. People actually dealing with water restrictions? No problem – buy the unfunded Liberal/National populist crud instant economy wrecking fix (TM) today. Going, going, gone… Or we can find some pseudo-science to say there’s no problem – hey, neo-con faith based reality, yay! Drink deep from the well, but not too deep – water doesn’t just fall from the sky, you know, it’s a commodity and we’re selling it to Private Enterprise. Tarriffs for electricity for homeowners higher in every state where electricity’s been privatised, but cheaper for business? Well, don’t you worry about that. It’s a free market and we’ve banned oligopoly, monopsony and monopoly from Economics 101. Someone told Dr Nelson they might be sneaky signifiers with a postmodern signified. So you’re free. Happy now? The water isn’t? Hey, it’s a commodity? What’s public interest when you’ve got a property right?

Looks like Gallop got up even with a massively conservative daily against him, and the local business community seeing the Libs as dangerously economically incompetent and given to silly populist stunts to try and buy office… Hmmm…

NOTE: Please excuse the occasional lapse into LWDB-dom. The RWDBs so didn’t crow over Bush and Howard’s elections. Normal Troppo centrist service will resume presently…