Sticking hands with Twitter

Sticking hands is an esoteric concept from Wing Chun kung fu, often performed blindfolded, where two partners play an intuitive game and seek through soft pressure to find their way through their partner's defences.

In this way I have slapped my way into Twitter, reappraised, and redrawn my profile there.

The reason I made my twitter profile, freely linked from (and to) this site, purely a dad streak, was to see if it had value as a local networker. By having my general region and parenthood explicitly in the title I thought this might lead rapidly to bonding with other parentals in my area, on top of a more general theme of soppy haiku-like mementos of parenthood. But I've observed a few things.

Twitter's great value is in the moment, the instant, and the ubiquity. In context, you can make a comment quicker than you can on a blog and have that instantly publish, not just to people with you on their feedreader, but to the entire rapidly expanding Twitter world. It gets lost in moments in a busy topic, such as earthquakes or fires, however people then read down into the variety of comments on a given topic. They can also feed off one idea and keep this going.

It also nicely complements the blog in its sheer ease, allowing time-poor plebians like moiself to make passing comment when we don't have the time to analyse and properly parse the issues.

I've now glued the dovetail fit and two are one. Or to take my original metaphor, my hand reached Twitter's chest, for a moment, and I've retaken its measure.

Life goes on dear reader, unaffected as you are. Just wanted to explain...

How the hell did Brian Pape get standing?

Taxpayer prerogative to challenge all spending?

The full bench of the High Court set aside two days — yesterday and today — to consider the challenge brought by law lecturer Bryan Pape. The barrister and University of New England academic argues that the payments — worth billions — exceed the Federal Government's taxation powers.

Did something change since I studied intro to public law? What on earth is this fool's particular personal interest in blocking a payment? Per Gibbs J:

...an interest, for present purposes, does not mean a mere intellectual or emotional concern. A person is not interested within the meaning of the rule, unless he is likely to gain some advantage, other than the satisfaction of righting a wrong, upholding a principle or winning a contest, if his action succeeds or to suffer some disadvantage, other than a sense of grievance or a debt for costs if his action fails..

If merely being a concerned taxpayer who doesn't want their money spent improperly gives standing, I'd like to question about 400,000 different pieces of expenditure, thanks.

Have I missed some specific law change to facilitate overfed Barrister/Academics have a pot shot at their will, or is this just another case of the so-called black letter lawyer's High Court dropping the bar for something close to their hearts?

UPDATE: High Court has knocked the fool back. That would have cost the taxpayer at least 3 schoolteachers worth of legal costs, wonder if they'll recover all...?

Asians and what won't Malcolm say to find a spike?

Can you picture Labor handing China a blank piece of paper, let them write a wish list that included rewriting our intellectual property laws, then claiming victory with a 'free trade agreement'?

What about China getting into a bit of a spat, self-evidently a stupid one, flicking it's fingers and finding our panting leader by their side, directing the ADF onto the battlefield? Far fetched?

I think so too, which is why you can rest assured that no matter how close our government get to Beijing, there will be none of the complete abdication of policy responsibility that took place under Malcolm's party. More than that, the fact that the Liberals not only had much closer ties with a range of elements in the US, but labled anyone who questioned that closeness as 'anti-American' and 'weak on security' (baffling to anyone who knows what security means in international relations discourse), shows that they have no problem with completely attaching to a foreign power that self-evidently has different national interests.

So, is it so absurd to ask whether race, or at best completely discredited notions of yellow peril, underpin their tub thumping about Labor and China?

The only explanation I can find for Turnbull's playing to the lowest denominator, the utter dumbing down of the man many of us thought would be a fascinating and more likeable leader of the Liberals, is that he has lost his bottle. He is flailing for the 'Howard touch', and it won't come to him, he is not that person, to his credit, and this course will surely lead him into cognitive dissonance and further collapse.

Once were shopping warrior

In just over 2 years my ability to shop confidently has unravelled and I am either middle-aged dad or 14 year old geek redux.

It is difficult to believe a blogger might not so long ago have been reasonably in control of the zeitgeist, able to walk into a shop full of colourful trainers and walk out with some fantastic vintage Golas just before the style took hold, or a pair of bright red Ferrari one-offs mere months before red was everywhere. But, dear reader, I bordered on such control. I shopped with confidence. Even Beloved acknowledged I had an eye for style and cut; indeed she's spoken many times of the instant impression I made when we hooked up in London back at the tale end of 2002. So long ago.

For a guy, and I accept the proscription, I dressed pretty well.

So *ahem* as you know I've had 2 kids and largely been in hibernation where things cultural are concerned. Even my blogging suffered! And now I'm starting to walk around, blinking, trying to dress myself again and finding it hard to avoid ending up in Katmandu tops, generic-looking running shoes, and other 'comfortable' wear befitting a man of a certain disposition. That is, the dad who has given up on aesthetics for good.

I'm not there, but it's unnerving. I'm insecure in shops, in a way I haven't been since perhaps my late teens when I first started to get a sense of personal style. Worse, I see things such as '80s style basketball trainers and I want to give people a lecture on how we had those back when I was a boy.

Damn! How does that sneak up on you?

Anyway this is not entirely a narrative of horror and fatalism, I think I persevered and found a pair of trainers that both suit me and do not mark me out as someone who inhabits Bunnings and Football BBQs. They are retro- back to the '60s, which beats the '80s any day for me.

But in the process I basically got 2 different shoestore dudes to "explain to me how it all works at the moment with shoes and stuff", which is probably like going up to a lifeguard and asking how to do the dog paddle.

Now... shirts, jackets, jeans....

Bear Laid a Cable

What can I say, I'm proud as!

Of course she's been crapping since she was born, but this is the first in the real toilet, and she didn't even go through a phase of using the potty.

She does have her very own custom seat. Now as someone who enjoys his morning moments of quiet contemplation on the throne, this got me thinking. Could I too have a personalised seat, soft and well fitted, to carry in with me when I feel called to business? I already carry in a strong stovetop coffee (clears the air!).

The cats would also like a spot of their own. Both try to 'hang out' with me by climbing onto the edge of the bath and leaning forward in expectation of pats. Should they not have their own soft, embellished stand on which to perch?

But I'm digressing- it's Bear's moment and she's entitled to be the focus of the post. I cheered when, on Beloved's prompting, she told me what she'd done. Clever girl. She looked so proud. The challenges you can overcome now you know how to take a dump.

Tag this under "what do you mean life as a parent is less sophisticated??"

Bringing Up Baby Redux- Angela Shanahan's Just Bung 'Em Out Approach

In case you hadn't had your fill of inconsistent, offensive and hypocritical parenting lectures after watching Bringing up Baby, here's Angela Shanahan demonstrating that complete inability to watch and comprehend is no barrier to giving poofs, single parents and us modernz generally a good old fashioned lecture:

Of course so much of the problem with modern parenting is modern families....

...How odd that we make a fuss about infant management techniques but are willing to subject our children to bizarre social experiments such as same-sex parenting ... much more harmful than any infant management technique could be...

Of course, why didn't I see that? There's more problems though- people are interested in parenting:

My research has uncovered 926 book titles available in Australia under the heading of parenting and child care, and that does not include the magazines and associated DVDs. The size of the market is astonishing when one compares it with the popular self-help categories of diet and weight loss.

WHERE'S THE PRIORITIES FOR TODAY'S YOOF?

Naturally she's got a good grasp of her subject matter, first lampooning Spock then going on to rave about the virtues of parents trusting their instincts. Waasn't that, um, what Spock was about? And this:

...by the more selfish members of generations X and Y, his child-centred methods didn't always work.

By contrast with the previous generation? Or the ones before that, they did pretty well didn't they?

But here's the really grating bit for me:

I hope my regular readers will not be disappointed to know that although I have managed to have nine children, and am now the hands-on grandmother of three, I have never read a baby book.

That would be to avoid the discussion questioning the motives of people who choose to pop out large numbers of children? Of course, she's a brilliant mum to each and every one of them, remembers their names and all. Just ask her.

Is it possible a pair of gays who love and pay close attention to their 1 or 2 children and willingly read and absorb a range of views on how to parent are likely to do just as good a job as an arrogant reactionary who thinks popping out enough kids to staff their own McDonald's franchise is proof enough good parenting.

She lauds the brilliant work of the

Royal New Zealand Plunket Society

Presumably the oddball name means Plunk It Out and Start on the Next One?

Having a large sprawl doesn't prove you aren't a good parent, I hasten to add, but I think you'd have to take some pretty decent steps to ensure you could pay them all a decent about of attention, and it certainly doesn't work in converse as some sort of proof, in itself, that you are a brilliant parent who can stand aloof and lecture the world. Or get away with mindless homophobic and reactionary gittery.

How DO these idiots get published in the MSM?

Night Terrors - a father's breakthrough

Night terrors 2 nights in a row. We've had them a number of times, probably over the past 8 or 9 months. A girl cries out, we go to her but she can't be consoled, and thrashes around while letting out an unnerving cry that borders on a scream.

I have often got there first, Beloved being asleep on the couch, but that's made it worse. She looks at me - eyes sometimes open but incomprehending - and cries louder, calling for Beloved. Soon she gets what she wants but even Beloved can't calm her for a while. Official advice is that this is fine, and you simply need to keep them company, and safe, until the terrors pass. But when your daughter is violently upset in the middle of the night this is no consolation and I'm still reluctant to accept that it does no harm.

It feels as though she needs protecting, from something, and I'm limping out of the room having failed my duty as a dad.

Last night they started again and I went straight up. I stayed out of her way, and rested my hand on her torso while saying quiet words of reassurance. She started to wind up and I let her move around, just keeping the same level of contact and talk. I stayed with the one response rather than giving in and trying to hug her or tuck her back in. She was getting more upset, but didn't move into the usual daddy-rejection phase.

Then she took a break, and started the fusting; a Bear's soft pinching that she uses to bond, usually on the back of the hands. She fusted, let out a sigh, and I started to feel hope. I waited. There were a couple of further minor false starts when she let out a few cries and moved a little, but we were on the closing stretch.

She drifted back off to sleep. No full-scale crying, no 20 minutes of parental despair, and perhaps most of all for me no rejection and sense of helplessness.

The rest of the night? Like a bomb.

On a lighter note, in relation to crying infants, love that Blue Milk tags her column on Bringing up Baby under child hatred bigotry. Guess she's not switching to the Truby King method either...

21st Century Dystopia awaits

Utterly without moral compass:

The Fertility Institutes' clinic service gives the chance to select physical traits through "cosmetic medicine". Prospective parents can request a son with brown eyes, black hair and a dark complexion, or a pale, blonde, green-eyed daughter.

Jeff Steinberg, who was in the team involved in the birth in Britain in 1978 of Louise Brown, the world's first test tube baby, is undeterred. "I live in LA and everyone here wants to have a straight nose and high cheekbones and are perfectly happy to pay for cosmetic surgery," he said.

"I understand the trepidation and concerns, but we cannot escape the fact that science is moving forward. If I have to get smacked around by people who think it is inappropriate, then I'm willing to live with that."

Shorter: I don't care. I am omnipotent and can do what I want. I am above the human race.

I despair for the world that awaits my children. I despair for our absurd postethical society and the sociopathic players who stroll through it waving their technological determinism around as they gleefully tear apart everything that makes us human.

I despair for us and the pointlessness of political activism when the most overt shifts in our egalitarian base slip through with barely a murmer.

I guess Obama's too busy brushing up on his rhetoric and polishing his bloody certificates from Harvard to take some leadership on an issue less obvious.

(Note: extreme ranting trimmed on edit, I'm doing my best to contain the verbage, sometimes it's hard!)

Sue Morphett: Cancel her citizenship

Deeply unpleasant. I'm wary of just having a knee-jerk reaction to high executive salaries but if you wanted to capture the eyeball-popping arrogance and contempt displayed by the corporate world at its worst and most unethical then this unapologetic nightmare is your poster girl:

Chief Executive Sue Morphet saw her pay almost triple to $1.68 million after being promoted from general manager of underwear and hosiery to the company's top job. The executives' combined pay jump - from $7 million to $15 million - also included the salary of former chief executive Paul Moore, as well as a $3 million retirement bonus he was given upon departure.

Then the quislings, without apparent necessity (No Mr Carr, thanks all the same but it's not about the money, I just don't like your personality), move thousands of jobs to China. And the arrogant way she scoffed at a question about whether she'd continue to misleadingly use great Aussie icons and trade off so much jingoism and loyalty that has made the brand what it is? Beggars belief.

Don't like conditions in Australia? Move to your great utopia, China, and don't come back.

On being old and isolated

My mother is in town, staying in a flat in St Kilda which Melbournites will know is just around the corner from the Darebin area where we live. She'll be here 5 days. It's hard, juggling our needs which involve focusing on staying sane and looking after the kids with a grandma's need to see her reward for parenthood, as it's sometimes called.

Today went well. She didn't criticise beloved, in her implicit but undermining way that finds expression through questions such as "Oh, so you don't feed her X then?"

It's a good start.

I want things to be smooth, not the least for a grandma who lives as she has for most of her adult life, since meeting my father: remote from her family and long-term friends, following the follies of a complicated and, although sometimes well-meaning, ultimately very selfish man.

This move, which I've summarised elsewhere and which paid zero regard to their ability to be involved with their grandchildren's lives, was probably the fourth in their marriage that involved picking up and leaving a place where my mother was becoming happy and setting down roots.

I'm sure there are worse places in the world than medium-sized Queensland towns, but she knows next to no-one, is nearly 5 hours drive from the nearest good friend, and proper airport (kinda necessary for visiting family in Melbourne) and will now have to rebuild again.

She would have liked to have moved a lot closer to us, she did say so when he once asked, before ruling it out, and for all her faults mentioned earlier this would have been fine, same street aside.

At 70 this move has a finality about it. She knows she will be 8 hours each way away from her grandkids, the only ones she'll have, for the rest of her life. If she allows her imagination to wander, and being a big fan of Mills&Boon I know she resorts to imagination for some respite, then on occasion she will see an alternate reality, where, being no more than 2 or 3 hours away, she sees Bear and Mr Man on a regular basis, feels part of their lives, and enjoys the continuum of family that will be completely missing in the self-imposed isolation they've now signed on to.

I think it would make her sad, it certainly disappoints me a little. So I will do my best to make the quality time they have the best it can be. If she comes to the party- resisting the temptation to regress into her critical worst- then we might just manage some sort of decent relationship.

She brought books, Thomas books (yes, a hint, Bear can't get enough!), and Bear brought them to her, saying "Dan-Ma, read it Dan-ma", and they sat on the couch together and I left them with a smile.

Is it the yellow peril, or the other one?

I wanted to adapt a comment I dropped, slightly off topic, on an LP Post on Submarines, into a short post to see if anyone has any thoughts on the issue.

The vague bit in Australian Defence Policy is not the how but the why. I’m not saying we don’t face security threats, potentially, just that it would be nice to see these better articulated prior to grandiose statements about the coming century and the need to keep up with people. In reference to India and China, such statements suggest we’re still suffering delusions of grandeur. In relation to Indonesia, how much is it the other way around- we are a prime source of theoretical threat to Indonesians, resulting in them needing to arm up, and so on.

I think the likelihood of us getting embroiled in total war, the kind that poses existential threat, in the next 2-3 decades, will come far more from the WWI problem (entangled alliances) than the WWII problem (a single, unplacatable, totalitarian behemoth on the rampage).

Any security wonks reading this site? I don't consider predictive security analysis to be an easy field, and my comment is more aimed at prompting discussion than putting a final, confident viewpoint.

However I am uneasy about the government's present positioning on regional issues, as much in relation to competence as ideology.

Toxic Tony: May you live in interesting times

As per the Chinese curse.

Oh, heavens, we already do.

Did you not notice, before attacking the PM for being boring? Do you really think interesting, as in a PM obsessed with his own flair and charisma, is what people want to see right now?

This interesting?

Even Anna Wintour gets it. Sort of:

Before she headed to the New York runway shows, fashion kingmaker Anna Wintour--dressed in taupe Manolo Blahnik boots, a Carolina Herrera sheath dress, and a tweed coat with a large fur collar draped over her shoulders--sat down in her office, with a perfect fresh bouquet on the desk, at Condé Nast's midtown Manhattan headquarters and discussed why "value" is in and "too Dubai" is out.

A-anyway, Kevin doesn't need to be interesting. That's why he has Peter Garrett...

...and the Liberal Party!

All's well that ends the week

Now I'm using twitter to say the sappy stuff, my little column of nanopoetics, this seems almost too trite an observation for the blog. But I talked about being down before, about arguing over what I'd written about parenting, and left that in the air a little.

Beloved and I, and my psyche, are all fine. I was just in a little trench. I might have to be sensitive about the topics I touch on when writing for an outside audience though. It's a little smoother, and we all need a bit of smooth to get through week after week of 5 hour sleeps and constant focus on the crucial minutae of infant life.

I'm about to fetch some chocolate mints and ice cream, you've got to take these challenges seriously! G'night...

Shameless Climate Change Deniers blame Greenies

Says it all doesn't it? What need even for a post. Picture this: you sit there for a decade or so treating climate change campaigners as fruitbats, claiming they are 'extreme ideologues', and blocking at every turn a process that might have had the potential to gain a lot more headway, a number of years back, and bring on board the big recalcitrants.

Then you switch awkwardly; now it's not that there isn't some science suggesting perhaps there might be a little bit of unnatural climate change, just that the realist case points to inaction. You know, now it's derailed anyway there are other big emitters who aren't acting, so why should we?

So, where were we- Oh Yes, the most extreme weather to hit Victoria since records began, a blistering right hook of an indictment of our idiocy and petulance, science at its most brutal, basic and empirically observable, and it's all our.... it's all the fault of Greenies, extreme ones at that, who run those huge high profile campaigns against controlled burning that bring the State to its knees every year.

It's to the credit of climate change lobbyists that they've been fairly subtle about making the very reasonable claim that the evidence on their side is starting to look pretty persuasive...

...I'm not adverse to hearing the realist argument, but clearly as with non-proliferation for another example, big developing world nations are going to detach further from the process if the wealthy West doesn't show more leadership.

UPDATE: Very reasonable claim starts to get an airing at LP...

My daddy day is gone, with segue into critique of Bringing up Baby

Gone voluntarily- sort of. Two things came together; my new project has a load that will clearly be a struggle to meet on 4 days, and I am determined to have another shot at buying a house. This year, while prices are dawdling and adjusting.

So I've handed it over for a while. I might try and get it back towards the end of the year if Beloved goes back a day or two, we'll see. Failing that, I'll try for more leave, or something.

Bear and I have bonded so much during the past 16 months, with that extra day each week of 1-on-1 chittering, minxing, breaking the occasional rule and hurtling around the playground taking no prisoners.

To Beloved, as primary carer, I handed most decision-making when it comes to parenting style, and even on daddy time I take care not to undermine her efforts. Yet part of me needs to be expressed as a parent in order that I form the best bonds with my children. I am less rule-based, more intuitive, and at times feel a little on the sidelines, carried along by the momentum of it all.

I think this would be true of most parents who missed out, because of full time work, on regular time alone with their children. There is a special bonding that takes places as you work through the day together, including - Yes Ms Cast Iron B- the drudgery and housework that in fact nourishes your children and makes the fun stuff possible.

Now I feel I know my daughter as well as Beloved does. We are good mates, and I hope I have done just a tiny bit of extra work on the foundations that will no doubt come under so much pressure when she's older.

Following Mr Man's birth Beloved has been home too, but today they went out for the morning and Bear and I, perhaps for the last time in the foreseeable future, had a few hours together. We sat on the couch, read a story several times, put a puzzle together, then hit the pool and splashed around like a pair of goons.

I had plenty of sad moments but I hid them behind a cheesy grin.

I hope I can do this again before too long. I also hope I have the chance to bond in the same way with Mr Man. I have decades of bashing my head against a computer terminal to look forward to, but I know these precious moments as they learn to smile, walk, dance, and plummet face first down the slide will be gone faster than my last sprigs of hair.

On the Bringing up Baby show last night there was one 'expert' who taught couples the 1950s method (by Dr Truby King, clearly a human icepick). She had no kids, clearly didn't like them, and was dripping with jewellery earned from touting her methods. She ordered the parents not to touch or kiss their children. They sat downstairs drinking wine as their infants screamed their lungs out. Far worse than controlled crying, this was No Love Parenting. The parents cried, because they knew deep down that what they were doing was emotional abuse, but with a fluffed-up expert sitting there insisting they persevere, they lost their agency as individual, emotional, responsive parents.

In just over 2 years I've learned little, there is clearly still so much, and I'm not wedded to any one method as being ideal. I think controlled crying is too far in one direction but generally accept that with a plethora of ideas around, the bulk of parents I know are doing their best. Controlled crying, I should add, has nothing on the Truby King method...

But refusing to touch, kiss or pick them up, must do as much damage to the parents as the children, and I can't even accept that they should be able to make that choice. Still I'll be watching again next episode, with an open mind.

Maybe I'll even pepper a few indignant comments out there with my new toy...

Postscript: just to add to my confusion, apparently something we used could be called controlled crying. Up to 3 or 4 minutes of holding back, when the crying was low key. I didn't realise. I was thinking of the whole 10, 12, 15 minute routine, which I would not be comfortable with.

Post-postscript: Beloved and I have sorted through the semantics of this issue and found, thankfully, we're on the same page when it comes to crying, picking up, and getting the kidlets to sleep. Inferences of major rifts were unintented!