from the morgue

One World Parliament

Over on No Right Turn, idiot/savant posted about a movement to add an elected assembly to the UN. This would, in effect, be a world parliament - a representative democratic body covering the entire world. Idiot likes the idea:

This is an interesting project, and one that deserves our support. It recognises both the need for some form of global government, and the fundamental truth that power derives from the consent of the governed, that there is no authority without democracy. At the same time, it also recognises that democracy has to grow from the bottom up,

I first heard about this idea of a world parliament in George Monbiot's book The Age of Consent, and so I was excited to see what Monbiot would say about this initiative. He was just as encouraging, and in typically pithy style put forward a clear summary of the case for a global parliament:

Those who claim, like the British eurosceptics, that regional or global decision-making is unnecessary are living in a world of make-believe. No political issue now stops at the national border. All the most important forces – climate change, terrorism, state aggression, trade, flows of money, demographic pressures, the depletion of resources – can be addressed only at the global level. The question is not whether global decisions need to be made. The question is how to ensure that they are made democratically. Is there any valid answer other than direct representation?

Myself, I feel that a global representative government is an inevitability and something to be anticipated. The question is, how long will it take to get there and how many faltering early versions will we have to go through to get something functional? I hope that the rise of world-scale issues (like those Monbiot mentions) will serve as a driver to make this process relatively swift. It would be nice to see a functioning world parliament in my lifetime.

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As an aside, idiot has made use of Pledgebank again, this time to pledge "I will write to Justice Minister Mark Burton urging the repeal of New Zealand's sedition laws but only if 20 other New Zealanders will do the same." It already has well over 20 names. You should sign up too - all the cool kids are doing it!

Lynch and Tillman and ANZAC protest

Briefly: a heck of a day for the narratives of war. A congressional hearing in the U.S. heard some serious mythbusting from people who should know - Jessica Lynch, she who was rescued, and Kevin Tillman, army ranger and brother of Pat, he who was killed in action.

The pathological need for the military to create Commando-comic narratives of heroism has never been shown up so bluntly as in this hearing.

Kevin Tillman: "Revealing that Pat's death was a fratricide [shot by a fellow U.S. soldier] would have been yet another political disaster during a month already swollen with disasters. The facts needed to be suppressed. An alternative narrative had to be constructed, crucial evidence destroyed."

Jessica Lynch: "The American people are capable of determining their own ideals for heroes, and they don't need to be told elaborate lies. I had the good fortune to come home and to tell the truth. Many soldiers, like Pat Tillman, did not have that opportunity."

I want to say something more about this, about the role of war in our sense of identity, about why it is so important to us and why we are so vulnerable to mythmaking in service to it. I don't have the time, however. I will say that those who protested at the ANZAC services yesterday do have a point - the rituals and solemnity of ANZAC day may serve to legitimise militarism and so forth.

But, that said, there are ways and means to raise your concerns, and turning up the dawn parade with a bullhorn and a burning flag isn't going to achieve anything but alienating people. As much as I have sympathy with many left-wing readings of society and culture, this kind of tone-deaf behaviour is just stupid, both tactically and strategically, and hinders the entire political left. Thanks a bunch.

ANZAC Day

Felix Rooney, my great-grandfather, served in the first world war. He saw many of the most gruelling battles of that war. ANZAC Day, today, commemorates New Zealand and Australian soldiers, particularly those who served in and never returned from the Great War.

Felix kept detailed war diaries, which I have been privileged to read (and want to read again). Although I don't have copies, I do have with me a monograph on a Cantabrian Victoria Cross winner which quotes Felix's diaries extensively. So, from that source, the part of Felix's war diaries that most bears repeating:

Monday 11th: It was a great civic reception [French President] Poincare got yesterday. It was fine weather and aeroplanes overhead dropped messages into the Square. Today, just before marching out we had the news read out to us that hostilities would cease at 11 A.M. today. We left at 11 A.M. and marched 19 kilos to Quievy with full packs. Everyone is smiling now the war is over.

Who Let The Friends Out

I have wonderful friends.

Today, in the morning, when a certain amount of stressful life stuff was crashing down, the phone rang. On the other end was the Alligator, calling from Seattle to tell me some tales of his night out with the Rat City Roller Girls, sipping Fighting Cock on a homeless man's blanket, and doing the haka. As we traded news and even some advice, he asked if I'd received his package. What package? Well, I clearly hadn't received it then, and the conversation moved on. But as we talked I wandered to the front window and spied a large cardboard envelope in the letterbox... could it be? Yes! So he got to listen to me tear open the package he'd sealed up not so very long ago.

There were three photo prints inside - one spectacular shot of Aoraki/Mt Cook, one shot of the two of us gurning for the camera, and the piece de resistance, a large b+w print of the Alligator in full Jewish cowboy getup. The image showed off his hat to excellent effect, and the hat is pretty much the whole costume. This hat is so good it has a scorpion on it. The scorpion hat was bequeathed to me, and has settled in New Zealand. I am privileged.

Anyway, it was really good to hear him talk. I'm terrible at picking up the phone and calling people, but thankfully some others are not so slack. There's something almost magical about the connection of hearing someone's voice.

All of which led to just now, when I finally got a moment to put into my laptop a CD also enclosed in the envelope. I played the MP3 entitled "Morgan listen to this first", and there was that same voice, wishing me well and then reading me a poem. The poem chosen sent me into hysterics. Awesome.

And then within the "And then you can open this" folder, much bounty, including photos from his recent stay in NZ and also from his visit a few years back to see me and Cal in Edinburgh, most of which I'd never seen before. Also some neat-looking music that I haven't started to listen to yet.

My only regret - never quite managing to get together a crew for the king of the D-sports, Dodgeball. But I have not forgotten that noble goal. It shall be done, sooner or later. Wellingtonians - count yourself warned.

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There are other wonderful friends out there. This isn't even the only nice thing I've received by post from overseas in the last couple weeks. This one compelled me to post, though, because I was so blown away by the poem reading on that MP3. And then I decided not to tell any of you what the poem was. Sorry. You'll just have to beg me to play it for you when you're near my laptop, I guess.

I hope you're all reflecting on this post not with envy for the awesomeness of my friend the Alligator, but with empathy as you think of the great friends in your life. I'm all about sharing the love here. In fact, I'm so into sharing the love, I'm going to follow in hottieperm's footsteps and throw in a selfie:

Scorpion-enabled of course...

Film Reviews: Sunshine

On Friday night, I was able to see two new films that are playing at the moment: First 2/3 of Sunshine, and Last 1/3 of Sunshine. While sharing some superficial similarities, they were two very different beasts.

First 2/3 of Sunshine (directed by Danny Boyle, written by Alex Garland) was an intense, considered science fiction film. It tells the story of a group of scientists travelling to the sun in order to reignite it and thereby rescue life on earth. This premise was used to explore humanity's relationship with technology, our human limitations and our responses to the exposure of these limitations. Of particular interest were the analogies drawn between technology in the physical sense, spaceships and computers and so forth, and technology in the social sense, such as mission parameters and chains of command. A winning multicultural cast delivered excellent performances which embodied the tensions existing between what is human and what is mechanical. The sun itself was used as a multipurpose metaphor, representing enlightenment, purpose, and the integration of our multiplicity into a single new order of being. The tropes of a disaster film added excitement and tension, and the character studies were fulfilling, although the decision to avoid forcing characters to follow through on a key moral dilemma (can you suppress your humanity and become mechanical for the greater human good) was a disappointment. Nevertheless, First 2/3 of Sunshine was a solid film, limited only by a curtailed final chapter which did not show the resolution of the long mission.

Last 1/3 of Sunshine (directed by Danny Boyle, written by Alex Garland) was vastly different. Also set on a spaceship near the sun, it was mostly about a blurry murderer with a skin condition. Last 1/3 of Sunshine was a substandard imitation of Jason X, the "Friday the 13th" movie in which serial killer Jason Voorhees wandered around a spaceship dismembering people. Incoherent, visually frustrating, and completely charmless. Avoid at all possible costs.

It is worth noting that First 2/3 of Sunshine and Last 1/3 of Sunshine are playing as a double feature. Fair warning: any enjoyment you might receive from First 2/3 will be stomped into the ground and then spat on by Last 1/3, and sad as it is to say, First 2/3 just isn't good enough to make the whole trip worthwhile.

Communicating Climate Change

Last week I went to a half-day conference, Making Change – taking the initiative on climate
change communications, which was put together by (to quote from the programme) "Alex Hannant from Mandarin Communications in association with Victoria University of Wellington (Institute of Policy Studies and the School of Geography, Environment and Earth Sciences) and the British Council."

The conference was, again to quote, "for people who are interested in exploring how to engage New Zealanders with climate change more effectively. Representatives from all sectors are welcome and particularly those actively involved in public communications and communications planning with regard to climate change." Now we have won the climate change debate, this is exactly what is needed - communications professionals building links and trying to find more effective ways of communicating.

Part of the context for the conference comes in a background paper prepared by Hannant:

Daniel Abbasi, former Director at the Yale School of Forestry and Environment Studies, states: “The problem of climate change is almost perfectly designed to test the limits of any modern society’s capacity for response – one might even call it the ‘perfect problem’
for its uniquely daunting confluence of forces.” Within this confluence he cites perceived remoteness in both time and place, the complexity inherent in the subject matter, cultural filters that obscure and politicise the problem, ingrained habits, institutional capacity to deal with the problem, incentive structures and motivational obstacles associated with collective action. Certainly it is safe to say that information about climate change does not necessarily lead to changes in attitude or behaviour. [emphasis added]

I like Abbasi's description of climate change as "the perfect problem". The combined hindrances to effective action are daunting. The scale of the problem is more and more troubling the more we engage with it. However, there is plenty of room for hope - I read just yesterday, in the new Listener I think, that it is heartening that "glass half empty environmental scientists are also glass half full people". It isn't too late. We, as a society (and I mean a human society, a global transnational community) have the capacity to arrest climate change before it becomes disastrous. And, in fact, we must do exactly this. The only question is whether we leave it too late.

Attendees filled out one of the law school lecture theatres, and it seemed like a diverse bunch, with representation from academia, public policy, media and interest groups.

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The conference opened with Nick Jones (of Nick Jones and Associates) and Peter Salmon (of Moxie Design Group). They shared some demographic research, which divided NZ society's engagement with sustainability issues as follows: 5% trailblazers, 25% actively engaged, 40% passive and 30% need persuasion. That 40% of passive people are the group they focused on and recommended directing communications to. Don't waste time on the "need persuasion" group - focus on turning passive people into active people. In order to do this, they outlined certain elements of the communications message, principally communicating that there are meaningful actions that can be taken as part of a clear chain of inputs to a desirable future.

Second was a pre-recorded video from UK communications outfit Futerra. Go check out their website, it's a delight, full of nifty resources and founded on a clear commitment to the environment. Chief among these resources are two absolute gems: Rules of the Game and New Rules: New Game (both are .pdf links). These describe key principles of climate change communication, each neatly summarised, some of them familiar, many of them very new indeed. (For example: 9. Beware the impacts of cognitive dissonance - Confronting someone with the difference between their attitude and their actions on climate change will make them more likely to change their attitude than their actions.) If you have any interest in communicating ideas about climate change, which includes just talking about it to your friends or family, then you owe it to yourself to check these out.

Third on the list was Victoria University of Wellington Psychology Associate Professor John McClure, who spoke about his experience relating to earthquake risk perception and risk management behaviours. (Overseas readers: Wellington sits on a major fault line.) He covered, briefly, how optimism about risk was foolhardy; how optimism about agency was essential to avoid resignation and fatalism; and how people always expect bad things will happen to other people and not to them. In the latter case, one way of countering this bias was to give people examples they could relate to: "Jimmy Jones down the street has taken these steps" works better than "Here's what you can do to protect yourself".

Fourth, freelance journo Kim Griggs (website; she writes for, among other venues, the BBC news site) talked about the media perspective and how to do a better job communicating with and through the media. She talked up networking and building relationships with relevant journalists, and recommended that it was important for organisations to support media outlets that cover climate change (for example, by purchasing advertising within them).

Fifth was another video presentation, this time from Dan Abassi, quoted above, a former Yale Professor in Forestry and the Environment. Abassi's video was quite dry, and coming late in the session his detailed account of the preparation of a seminal U.S. climate change conference left much of the audience, including me, unmoved. His book, Americans and Climate Change, looks to be worth a read however. A google has found this extended summary of its content. Check it out.

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Overall, it was a fascinating day. The Futerra stuff alone was a revelation for me; if you do nothing else in response to this post, click on those .pdf links. They are very pink, and each is only a couple of pages. If you're interested in the general area, check out the other links, or comment/email and I'll throw some more details your way.

The Last Great Snail Chase

Tuesday night we went to the cast & crew premiere of Ed Lynden-Bell's movie, The Last Great Snail Chase. Ed is a mate, and used to flat with Cal; at the start when producer David White said "you're all here because you helped somehow" I figured that must include moral support. I certainly promised Ed I'd get stuck in to lend a hand in a more concrete way, but, er, never quite did. Oh well.

The movie was made on an absolute shoestring, relying on goodwill from everyone, conserving what little money was available for inescapable technical requirements like film, cameras and lighting. Actors and crew and musicians all worked for nothing, locations were secured through favours or for a beer or two, and a last-minute drive to get the CGI rendered was achieved by sending out an email asking people to donate their computers for a few days. A lot of love was lavished on this film.

As it turns out, the film deserves it. It's a deeply strange piece of film-making, thoroughly engaging and prone to leap into the most wonderful flights of fancy. It tells a bunch of interwoven tales about the inhabitants of a small Wellington flat, following them through troubles in love and in work and watching them emerge slowly into adulthood. It also features a disembodied shadow, large numbers of flying turtles, a suspended tidal wave, a dreamlike art gallery, bumblebee rescue, a Roman centurion, and the devil's cousin. It's the kind of film that makes you wonder how on earth it got made, so idiosyncratic is its vision; and then makes you grateful that it was.

It's a heck of a lot of fun, and quite wonderful. Not all of it comes off and the acting is a bit ropey in places, but there's so much heart on display here it would be churlish to hold these limitations against it. (Especially if you know how little money was spent to create the film!) I hope the CGI (much of it unfinished at this screening) comes together as well as it promises to, and that the film finds its audience. It does have one. Possibly you?

Release date unknown as of yet.

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More Geeks on Dates from Susan: "...if we wanted stringent and contrived rules in our personal relationships we'd have been popular in our teens.".

And be sure to listen to Thou Shalt Always Kill, music that is the new awesome. Lyrics here; yes, it does include the line "Thou shalt not question Stephen Fry". My new favourite song, taking over from It's All In Your Head (C'Mon C'Mon) by Kupek, a.k.a. Bryan Lee O'Malley (creator of scenester comic of choice Scott Pilgrim).

Deeting Gakes

I've been thinking about this Pay It Forward concept that I discovered recently courtesy T. I look up and down my blogroll and think "but I want to recommend ALL of them! Not to mention the stonesoupers and livejournalists who aren't even singled out!" And I decided it was far too hard to choose, so I haven't. Not yet anyway.

Instead, I draw your attention to the fascinating work of two folk on that blogroll, both of whom have written about Dating For Geeks.

Susan, over on Thinking With My Hands, has posted what I hope is the first part of a series: Geeks on dates. Choosing whether to even start thinking about going for the other person. Sample:

So, do you fancy them? If you don't there's no point. Oh, you don't know how to tell if you fancy them? Well, how are your palms? Hairy? Ah ha ha. No, the more relaxed you are the dryer your skin is and so the higher the skin's electrical resistance, when you're stressed (or excited) your hand sweats and the resistance goes down. Go on, build a Galvanic Skin Response Sensor and work it out.

Whereas self-professed biggeek D3vo has been blogging his adventures in dating for quite some time. His online writings are all in his very distinctive voice, but you don't get the full effect without being face to face - about a year ago we were having coffee every few days and he expounded on several of his dating theories in absolutely compelling fashion. I really think there's a market for 'the engineer's approach to dating' and he should write it. Excerpt:

Speed dating is all talk and no action in my experience, a bit like dealing with business partners in startups. It appears to be an extended and ritualised form of the disposable conversations you have with anonymous travelers when you fly long distance on a plane.

I love this stuff. Go read.

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In other news, Cal and I have found an apartment in Newtown. We move in during May. Hurrah!

Monday Linky

Three linky:

Linky 1: Aliens Papercraft Models. Taking fascination for the movie Aliens to a level even I find worrying, this determined soul has invested many hours in creating exquisite fold-up models of the vehicles and structures seen, however briefly, in Jim Cameron's film. Check out this life-size Pulse Rifle made entirely from paper. Wild.

Linky 2: Captain Typho blog. NZ export (former Play School host, now action hero) Jay Lagai'a has a blog, and it's all Star Wars, all the time. Begins with a four-part description of how he fell in love with Princess Leia. (Start here.) (Also, this was honestly not me.)

Linky 3: WellyKid Sonal Patel is newly transplanted to London, and keeping her writing muscles in shape by writing a script in her blog, publishing a new installment most days. The first Daily Cereal was a heck of a lot of fun, and the second has just launched, so get in on the ground floor for this one - a great jumping-on point for new readers!

It is Monday. These have been your linky.

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Bonus linky for other geeky 80s kids: series bible for Masters of the Universe. Did you know Beast-Man's first name was Biff? Also, the Frank Langella/Dolph Lundgren 80s MOTU movie was a deliberate homage to Jack Kirby's Fourth World.

Friday Frights

For Friday the13th, I give you...

EYES OF THE MONSTER!

Photo retouching for little-girl beauty contestants.

Fighting Trolls

Span has a post linking to some discussion of the proposed code of conduct for bloggers, which was a response to the Kathy Sierra nastiness I mentioned a few weeks ago. My response to the questions at the end of the post spun a little bit out of control. So I'm gonna reproduce it here, because I haven't got anything else to blog about just yet and why the heck not? Span asked:

A few questions for readers:
1. Do you think that unmoderated comments improve the dialogue or lead to degredation?
2. Does trolling tend towards the racist and sexist, and does it make blogging less attractive to those who aren't part of the dominant demographic? Should we even be interested in creating a blogosphere that is more diverse?
3. Is trolling about bullying* people into conformity? Or do people just need to "harden up"?
And finally:
What can we do about trolling if we don't like it? Should we do anything at all?

And I replied...

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Hey Span, this one is a big deal for me. I've been intensely involved in online discussions pretty much non-stop since I arrived at university in February 1994, and I've seen a lot of horrible, horrible behaviour. I sometimes overreact. It's a bit of a weakness.

That said - I can't quite formulate an answer to your question one. ("Do you think that unmoderated comments improve the dialogue or lead to degredation?") I need to reinterpret it slightly to get somewhere meaningful for me, so hope this makes sense...

It isn't the presence or absence of moderation or otherwise that improves or degrades the dialogue - it's the participants in the comments environment.

I think that, if a comments section has attracted participants who start its deterioration, it will inevitably continue along that track unless there is a moderation policy in place and followed (and even if there is it might still go that way).

By and large, I think there's clear merit to comment moderation, and that objections to such moderation are usually made in ignorance. If you have a high enough profile, or if you have a large enough user base, or if you blog about contentious issues, you will find trouble in your comments. You will attract trolls, non-troll commenters will get angry at each other and say terrible things, etc.

There is a cost. Unmoderated comments do give an unrestricted window into a subject of debate. But, in all seriousness, anyone who thinks this cost is anything but trivial is deluded. *Everything* of value to a discussion can be contributed without attracting moderation. Everything.

Common responses to moderation are to deride moderators for cowardice, fragility, or outright intellectual dishonesty via censorship. These objections hit home because they tie into what we value about our ability to engage with ideas. These objections are also completely disingenous and meritless. Disregard them entirely.

That part-answers question 3, too. ('Is trolling about bullying* people into conformity? Or do people just need to "harden up"?') Trolling is a form of bullying, but its goal is rarely conformity; the goal is to emotionally hurt or confuse or degrade the target, and perhaps to silence them.

I honestly believe that many - most? - of the nastiest trolls rationalise their behaviour as part of a massive exercise in online social darwinism, where they are testing people to see if they are strong enough to say what they wish. Of course, they usually don't have any supporting argument as to why anyone should prove their strength to random abusers; and if they do, it is bound to be founded on an assumption that online communication is not "real" communication, that it's all a great game with gladitorial rules.

(There is nothing I hate more than someone being an absolute bastard online then when called on it say "it's just online stuff, it doesn't matter, forget about it". You see less of that in 2007 than you saw in 1997, but it still turns up a lot.)

The social norms of the real world are enforced by powerful drivers - our reputation, our understanding of shared fates and future interactions, the network of acquaintances and friends between us and the responsibility we bear for a complex social network.

Online, we have a social system without these drivers for social norms. There is nothing wrong or weak in imposing them forcibly.

The best frame for this is one of host privilege and host responsibility. The owner of a place is entitled to set rules and enforce the tone and need offer no justification beyond "that is how I wish it to be; if you disagree, go play elsewhere". Netiquette has already instituted this as the primary rationale for moderation of all kinds, and it's a good one for a bunch of reasons, as sociologists/psychologists/communications people will all recognise.

Question two - does trolling work to suppress diversity online - absolutely. Bad behaviour online comes when someone feels their terrain is threatened, their turf is compromised, that someone is speaking untruths or insults about their tribe. The dominant demographic in any society will inevitably react badly to other voices, because those voices will as a matter of course tread on all of these spaces.

Furthermore, abusive online behaviour feeds on itself; the more of it there is, the more of it there will be. As the dominant demographic has an advantage of numbers, that sets up a feedback loop.

A diverse blogosphere is, to me, a self-evident good. I could try and muster an argument about why it is good, but it would be like trying to argue that pineapple tastes nice - it isn't necessary, is it?

So, in summary, if you don't like trolling - yeah, do something about it. Shut it down. Demand that trolls either be silent or express themselves better. Be unapologetic about protecting the tone of your virtual living room.

(Or, as I've seen you do here Span, engage with someone using a trollish and aggressive posting style and see if you can get decent contribution out of them. But that takes a lot of effort and there's no shame in being ruthless.)

Doing nothing is not an option.

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Go check out Span's actual post for more from people who aren't me.

You Also Should Read Achewood

Email conversation, Feb 27:

Me: Do you know I now habitually mouseover images to see Achewood-style extra gags? Even if the images are not even humour strips?

Pearce: I do too! Sometimes to things that aren't on the internet. Like my workmates.

Me: *mouses over Pearce*

Pearce: "Donald Trump"

Achewood is actually one of those things people will still be talking about in twenty-five years.

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It is not too late to share with me your Birthday Wisdom.

[mediawatch] KBRM

New kid on the mediawatching block is the neutrally-titled Kiwis for Balanced Reporting on the Mideast. KBRM's website says it started during the Israel-Lebanon war in response to what it saw as heavily biased reporting. It now exists to monitor New Zealand news media (in particular daily newspapers) and call them to task when necessary, and to promote 'the other side of the story'.

Long-time readers of this blog will know that my sympathies for the state of Israel are limited. Some of you won't share this view. I'm going to try and approach KBRM without relying on assumptions you might not share; you should know where I'm coming from in case I don't succeed.

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Front-Page Rhetoric

There are two things I wish to address. First is a chunk of rhetoric on the front page of the website, talking about the reportage of the Israel-Lebanon war:

While anti-Israel bias may have been in existence earlier, the problem was exacerbated during the war to the point where Israel was portrayed as cruelly causing devastation to innocent neighbors, rather than as a country which wants peace with its neighbors but is forced to fight for its life.

This text points out two ways of portraying Israel: one which is wrong and biased (cruelly causing devastation to innocents) and another that is truthful (wanting peace but forced to fight for its life).

The second view, the "truthful" view in this construction, is clearly mythologising. The language "forced to fight for its life" has no place in discussion of inter-state relations. Furthermore, it simply isn't possible to claim with a straight face that Israel is simply innocent with no case to answer; the amount of international consternation isn't all the result of biased media reporting and anti-semitic conspiracy. They are promoting a mythology.

Of course this might just be bad copywriting, and not reflective of the complexity of their actual activities. Clearly it's a signal for concern, but of itself it is hardly reason to ignore the group. Sometimes organisations can be far more complex and reasonable than their written charter may suggest. (Indeed, buried in correspondence on the site is a more reasonable position: Of course Israel is not beyond criticism, but we believe that criticism should be “balanced and proportionate”.)

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Scoring and Balance

The second, and more important, thing I wish to address is the 'scoring' process for evaluating balance in newspaper reporting. This is discussed here. Note that significant emphasis is placed on the objectivity of the method:

Articles and cartoons that deal with the Arab-Israeli conflict are rated for balance by a simple objective criterion. If more space is given to description of damage or hardship suffered by Arabs and to statements or quotes that blame Israel, the rating is P. If the reverse, the rating is I. If the space is the same, position and emphasis (including headlines and photos) become the determinant. If there is no imbalance in space or emphasis, the rating is 0. Thus a rating of P or I can indicate anything from small imbalance within an article to a full-page propaganda piece.

This methodology fills me with trepidation. This is not due to the claims for objectivity. It is, for amateur media analysis, a relatively objective approach; counting paragraphs that mention either suffering or blame isn't too bad, although it obviously isn't up to academic standards. Where it runs into trouble is its construct validity. Does this counting-and-comparing technique actually tell us anything about the balance of the articles, as it claims to?

Well, yes and no. Yes, in the sense that it tells us whether an article has more A than B in it, or vice versa. In a certain sense, that could be read as "balance". But take the methodology one step further and it all falls apart. The scoring methodology is founded on the notion that "more A than B" tells us something useful about balanced media coverage, but it doesn't tell us anything of the sort.

Descriptive Information Gets Us Nowhere
The data gives us information on the frequency of A and B. Completely missing from the picture is any indication of the correct frequency for A and B. In other words, we are asked to draw conclusions about balanced coverage without reference to what is actually going on.

The data is, in fact, entirely useless for its stated purpose of telling us about balance.

Consider a situation where A commits 75 horrific acts against B, and B commits 25 horrific acts against A, and each is reported once. If this scoring process was used on the newspaper doing the reporting, it would come up with a dataset in which 75% of articles condemn A and 25% of articles condemn B. Does that mean there is a bias against A?

Reverse it. If there is a dataset in which 75% or articles condemn A, and only 25% condemn B, what conclusion are you meant to draw? That the coverage is accurate and A caused three times as much misery as B? That the coverage is biased against A because the articles should show a 50/50 split? That the coverage is biased against A because B is in fact the source of most of the misery? In fact, there is no conclusion you can draw. All you have is a stack of coded data that doesn't turn into information, because it doesn't tell you anything.

The only way this data is useful is if it is contextualised by external knowledge. If you know that Israel and Palestine are roughly equal in responsibility for the conflict and its attendant suffering, then you can draw useful conclusions about media balance from this data. Or, say, if you know that Palestine bears most of the responsibility while Israel is fighting for its life, then you can draw useful conclusions. You need to know something outside in order to make sense of the data. The only problem is, as soon as you draw in external knowledge, you're back in the realm of the subjective. How do you know who bears the most responsibility?

So this scoring method doesn't in fact measure "balanced reporting"; it is purely descriptive, describing what was reported but not giving any information about whether this was balanced reporting or not. The only way you can get any knowledge about balance is by applying your prior assumptions about what the balance should be to the overall distribution of results.

The scoresheet is worthless on its own terms as an indicator of balanced reporting. The KBRM are, apparently, blind to this. There is nothing on the website to tell us how they expect us to interpret their results. I can only presume they think it is self-evident; they explicitly state the purpose of KBRM is to oppose a prevalent anti-Israel bias in reporting, so presumably they see the results as evidence of anti-Israel bias. In fact, they aren't evidence of anything much at all.

What Is Balance, Anyway?
The "scoresheet" approach presumes that balance can be addressed by tallying how many bad stories are told about each side. We've already seen that these tallies are useless without external knowledge; they don't tell us anything directly about the idea of balance.

However, these tallies fail in another way as well - they ignore other aspects of balance.

I talk here about just one such aspect, of particular relevance to the Israel/Palestine situation. There are other aspects which are also left unconsidered by the scoring data and by the KBRM.

Balance also means that all material necessary to understand the facts is being fairly presented.

The Israel/Palestine conflict is a profoundly unequal one; Israel is very strong, and Palestine is very weak. This is crucial contextual information in order to understand the nature of the conflict. Balanced coverage of the conflict would inform readers of the power differential between the two parties. This is almost never done.

For example, the state of Israel makes a careful point of obscuring the power differential. It always insists that peace can only achieved if both parties make sacrifices, emphasising an implied equality. (And, in fact, it always insists that Palestine must make the first sacrifice in spite of its vastly inferior position in the power balance). The uncritical reporting of this act of spin unbalances media coverage in favour of Israel.

This imbalance is present in the KBRM material. The persistent and crucial failure to convey the power differential between Israel and Palestine is unbalanced reportage, and yet is completely ignored by the scoring system used by KBRM. In fact, the KBRM and its scoring methodology implies that Israel and Palestine are at least equal in power, and that balance in reporting is presented as entirely a matter of "evening out A and B". This implication is misleading.

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Sides of the story

There is a trend in both Palestinian and Israeli camps to criticise media coverage. This discussion indicates part of why - different understandings of what constitutes balanced coverage.

Both sides can feel they are victims of unbalanced coverage; the Israel side, that its bad acts are mentioned much more prominently than the bad acts of the Palestinians; and the Palestinian side, that its true situation is not reported at all. Both concerns can be true at the same time.

The failures of the KBRM are many and serious. The website and scoring methodology reveal a lack of understanding of what constitutes balanced coverage; the clear bias on display further torpoedoes their work. The KBRM's commentary only makes sense within a particular worldview; as a general outlet for mediawatching, the KBRM is simply not a credible source.

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For the interested, more thoughts about Israel/Palestine can be found here, in an account of a trip to Israel and Palestine made by Cal and me three years ago. There are photos.

Psychological Violence

Since I last mentioned it here, the "anti-smacking bill" has... well, stayed in exactly the same place. The public by a large majority is unhappy with the prospect of the bill, the religious right is leading the protests and making much hay, the whole thing is being roundly misrepresented in the the media and it is the Big Subject Of The Day. Still.

I remain a supporter of the bill, while also appreciating arguments that pushing through any legislation in the face of 80% public opposition is writing for yourselves an electoral unpopularity cheque.

(Handy tip: if you are reading a letter to the editor, column, blog post or so on in which it is specified that the Bill was initiated by a Green List MP, then you can safely skip the rest as it will be a rant against the Greenies and the socialist left sourced entirely in our local version of right-wing talking points.)

I'd like, however, to respond to a claim I've seen in a few places by those opposing the bill, most recently over at Span's place but in other places as well. This is a claim that runs, in general form:

* non-physical forms of corrective punishment (such as time out) are bullying
* they are also psychologically risky and potentially damaging to a child's self-esteem
* these dangers are more serious than the temporary impact of a corrective smack

To which I say, nonsense. I'll go further; I think this is a specific, planned kind of nonsense that originates in the U.S. religious right's spin machine.

Whether true or not, it's effective rhetoric, turning the liberal sensibilities of those opposed to physical correction against themselves by insisting that psychological wellbeing also be respected. It is the left that usually worries about mental health and understands humans as vulnerable beings; the right is founded on an ideology that frames psychological damage as a failure of will. Secondly, it plays on concerns over power imbalance, another theme of a liberal worldview.

This piece of rhetoric encourages the left to consider its position as both psychologically costly and heedless of power dynamics. This double-whammy is very effective and when I have seen it come up in arguments it seems to be ignored, or perhaps acknowledged but called a side issue. It is rarely if ever tackled head-on. It is proving very useful for those arguing against repeal of section 59 here, just as it has proved useful in similar arguments over physical punishment in other places.

I find it hard to believe that something this effective arose spontaneously. No, I'd put even money on this being a carefully crafted piece of counterpropaganda, put together by a media team in a U.S. thinktank.

Also, did I say already that it's nonsense?

However, this isn't to say that non-violent parental correction can't be psychologically damaging. It can be. You can mess up your kid for life without ever lifting a finger, if you dominate them or neglect them. But non-violent correction techniques, those that make up the basics of good parenting, don't do these things. "Time out", the naughty step, and so on and so forth, are not psychologically harmful. In fact, that's the whole point of them. Any claim that they are is simple nonsense.

Physical correction isn't necessarily harmful. It can be. A case could be made that it always is, but you'd need to argue that one. Almost everyone agrees that a corrective smack isn't aesthetically pleasing, either. What is indisputable however is this: physical correction normalises physical violence.

In other words, there is no way you can weigh up smacking vs. time-out and say smacking is less harmful. And yet people have made exactly this claim. Such a claim is simple nonsense. There is no grounds for debate here. You can argue that smacking is not significantly more harmful; you can certainly argue that smacking is more effective; you can argue that the greater harm is balanced with a greater good. But the rhetorical ground occupied by the claim discussed above isn't even there to be claimed.

Finally, its worth noting that a lot of people on both sides of the debate have been stacking the deck in their comparisons. For example, the ultra-rational patriach dishing out loving, corrective smacks on the behind of an errant child is being compared with the loopy liberal mother letting her child run wild, or the aggressive and repressed raging dad who won't physically damage his child but will abuse them psychologically. (Or, the sensible parent sending an errant child to the naughty room is being compared with a young parent with anger control issues and a license to smack.) My bias may be showing but I think it's much more common for this unfair comparison to turn up in those opposing the s59 repeal. This imbalance shows up in the 'time out is more damaging' nonsense, where the non-physical parent is a domineering monster and the physical parent is a restrained and sensible soul. Watch out for this stuff - it's all over the place, making it even harder to see through the heat haze and smoke plumes and engage with what is actually being discussed.

On Purity

Is there a creepier word in the lexicon than "purity"?

NZ Christian outfit Focus on the Family is planning a Purity Camp where girls will learn to "stand up for purity". Meaning, of course, sexual purity. The camp was apparently inspired by Purity Balls in the U.S., where Christian fathers pledge to ensure their daughter doesn't lose her virginity before she is married. It looks like the inspiration was general, not specific, and the camp will do its own thing with the idea.

I'm not going to write about the pros and cons of preserving your virginity until marriage, or even of recruiting your father to keep your hymen intact. Today I'm just interested in the word purity. What a horrible, horrible word. Decode it with me for a second.

Purity originally referred only to an aspect of the physical world - the amount to which a mineral or a liquid was mixed with other substances. Purity was heavily associated with value; pure substances are valuable; the less pure they are, the less valuable they are. (According to this dictionary the word was first applied to morality and moral corruption in the 14th century.)

"Purity" in terms of sexuality is a metaphorical construct. This metaphor claims that morality or selfhood or godliness is like a substance that can be diluted by another (bad) substance, namely sexuality. Sexual behaviour makes you impure, like a drop of ink into a glass of water. Sexual behaviour makes you less valuable.

All of this means that the metaphor of "purity", like in the Purely Girls Camp, implies two unpleasant things.

1) As a young girl, your sexuality is not really part of you, but something apart from your pure self that you can and should battle to control and strive to escape. You are less valuable if you don't.

2) As a young girl, your value should be and will be evaluated and judged by an external observer. Purity is not a statement of self-assessment, but an evaluation made from without.

I hate the word "purity". It has little to do with Christian values - a loving and forgiving God could not begin to engage with the condemnatory underpinning of the word. Instead, I think the word is in such common use - particularly in the U.S. - because of its associations with traditional views of women as property. Fathers signing purity pledges aren't so much worried that God will see their daughters as impure; they're worried that other fathers will.

The Purely Girls camp is its own thing. It won't, I hope, be echoing the deeply disturbing aspects of the Purity Balls. Still, the language in use suggests that a troubling ideology will be part of what is conveyed at the camp. Girls won't just learn how to say no; they'll learn that their sexuality is their enemy, and that it is right and proper for them to be judged for their purity.

They'll probably wait a few years longer before having sex, though. That makes it all seem worthwhile.

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(Further reading: from everyone's favourite official White House website, Operation Infinite Purity.)

Birthday Wisdom 2K7

I turn 31 at about midday today, Monday April 2. This means I can no longer deny to myself that I am now in my late 20s. Well, perhaps my mid-20s.

If you are reading this, whether you actually know me personally or not, I request of you the traditional From the Morgue birthday gift - a quotation in the comments. Comment on this post with a quote from anywhere, about anything. It can be funny or wise or silly or sombre or nonsensical. Quote your bus ticket; quote the bible. Give me some words sourced in the world.

The birthday wisdom posts get more google traffic than any other part of this site. So think of future generations of googlers who will come here seeking enlightenment, and give them something to read. And for me too. Because it's my birthday.

Birthday Wisdom 2004
Birthday Wisdom 2005
Birthday Wisdom 2006