It's breeding obvious, mate

These excerpts from Mark Steyn's recent C. D. Kemp lecture to the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA) grabbed my attention. The lecture was published in The Australian (18/8/06) as "It's breeding obvious, mate: Australia and the US can avoid the bleak future awaiting dying old Europe".^*

None of these pillars of what we used to regard as conventional society [businessmen, bank managers, kindergarten teachers, even Anglican clerics] is quite as sturdy as it was, and most of them have collapsed. Many mainstream Protestant churches are, to one degree or another, post-Christian. If they no longer seem disposed to converting the unbelieving to Christ, they can at least convert them to the boggiest of soft-left political cliches. In this world, if Jesus were alive today he’'d most likely be a gay Anglican vicar in a committed relationship driving around in an environmentally- friendly car with an “Arms Are For Hugging” sticker on the way to an interfaith dialogue with a Wiccan and a couple of Wahhabi imams...

The next quote is a change of tack, but worth repeating.

In those 17 Europeans countries which have fallen into “lowest-low fertility” [i.e. 1.3 births per woman, the point at which you’re so far down the death spiral you can’t pull out], where are the children?

In a way, you’re looking at them: the guy sipping espresso at a sidewalk café listening to his iPod. Free citizens of advanced western democracies are increasingly the world’s wrinkliest teenagers: the state makes the grown-up decisions and we spend our pocket money on our record collection. Hilaire Belloc, incidentally, foresaw this very clearly in his book The Servile State in 1912, – before teenagers or record collections had been invented. He understood that the long-term cost of a softened state is the infantilization of the population. The populations of wealthy democratic societies expect to be able to choose from dozens of breakfast cereals at the supermarket, thousands of movies at the video store, and millions of porn sites on the Internet, yet think it perfectly to demand that the state take care of their elderly parents and their young children while they’re working – to, in effect, surrender what most previous societies would have regarded as all the responsibilities of adulthood.

What do you think of Steyn's comments? Too harsh? Or on the money?

^* (1) Thanks to Cameron for sending this article to me. I can't find a web version of it, but would be happy to email you a copy. (2) When I was studying undergraduate economics, I spent a summer 'working' at the IPA in Perth, which isn't, I'm sure, a conflict of interest.

More Scrabble

For those interested in the outcome of the Scrabble game (see 158 ), it was 380 vs. 292. I won. And yes, I am gloating.

Part of the reason for the gloat is our combined score, which is rarely this high. According to the "Rules of Play" brochure, this is a very good score. I quote:

Many players have asked: "What is a good score?" [they have indeed!]. A total combined score (the sum of the individual scores) of 500 - 600 is good, 600 - 700 is very good, 700 and over, excellent.

What I want to know is who the heck are the excellent players out there? Please, please warn me if you are ever at our house and you see my wife or me reaching for the Scrabble board.

Impressed

I usually find topical political issues too noisy to worry much about. However, the recent stand taken by Liberal MPs, Judi Moylan, Petro Georgiou, and Russell Broadbent on the Government's migration bill impressed me. Naturally, I was also relieved when Fielding et al. opposed the bill in the Senate, leading to its very public death.

Without knowing many of the details of the bill or its possible effects, I am generally sympathetic to the position of the above three MPs. More than this, however, I support their right to vote according to conscience and not be bullied by party heavies. This, at least, is one thing I remember from undergraduate-level politics: that members of the Labour party must vote according to the caucus' line, whereas Liberal Party members may vote according to conscience. That Howard et al. were so willing to disregard this principle is alarming -- yet hardly surprising.

Mike Steketee wrote an excellent column, "Party History Goes Overboard" in last Thursday's (10th Aug.) Australian. And I thought the first letter in The Age today was on the mark.

Paddy McGuinness's, "Nauru is not a hellhole", also in last Thursday's Oz, was baffling and definitely not to the point (I think it was in the paper's web version only). Though I'm sure that's not the first time these things have been said about one of PPM's articles.

By the way, if anyone can help me find links to Steketee or McGuinness's articles, I'd be grateful.

158

On Saturday morning I recorded my highest score for a single turn in Scrabble -- a whopping 158! Let me share the glorious details. People who don't play or care about scrabble: stop reading now.

My 158-point word was muscling. The m and the g were on triple word scores, which, I found out after reading the rules, means that the point value of the tiles is multiplied by 3 and then by 3 again -- i.e. by 9. (So a word falling on two double word scores would be multiplied by 4). 9 times 12 equals 108.

Then, of course, there was the 50 bonus points for using all of my tiles in one turn. The final fillip was realising that the word is a nerb. 158-point nerb. It doesn't get much better :-)

There was one minor concession: I used two blanks. But, hey, 158 is 158. And, for that precious minority who care about such things, the game is still going and the score is 312 versus 226. Yes, I'm 312.

2:37

On Tuesday night at 2:37 I lost consciousness. At 2:37 the movie, that is, not the time.

The movie is gut-wrenching and reaches its gruelling (almost ten minutes) and chilling crescendo as a teenage girl slits her wrists with a pair of scissors. It was during this scene that I blacked out, then woke up gasping for air, with fists clenched, legs I could scarcely feel, a temperature that was soaring, and surrounded by a worried-looking wife and strangers telling me to breath. A very scary experience.

I’m not sure why I blacked out.

The movie’s treatment of its subject was one likely contributor. 2:37 looks at the wickedly cruel, unforgiving and lonely worlds of six teenagers – worlds from which stable parents, sympathetic friends or role model teachers are absent. By the suicide scene, the tension is, well was, too much to handle.

Are these worlds unrealistic? Too fraught? Perhaps. But one thing that’s depicted well is the fragility and smallness of the inner worlds – the emotional and psychological lives – of teenagers.

Another likely contributor to my ‘out’ was a jam-packed theatre, which was hot and probably lacking oxygen.*

To revive, I laid on my back on the floor beneath our seats; my wife padded my face with wet Chux cloths. I remember looking down my body and seeing my boots sticking out into the aisle. As I looked at them, another pair of feet strode past toward the front of the cinema. These were the feet of Murali K. Thalluri, the film’s twenty-two-year-old director, who was about to commence a Q&A session with the audience.

Under the moonlight

About half-an-hour later I found myself lying on my back again in the cinema’s outdoor courtyard, hoping that the fresh air would help me recover. This time Thalluri was sitting beside me. After the audience had left, at my prodding, my wife had approached Thalluri and asked if he would come outside and say ‘hello’. He was more than willing, claiming that he had seen my boots as he was walking to the stage, and had felt terrible about me laying there.

He sat on the cold pavers beside my wife and me for about 15 minutes, and we talked about books, depression, the responses of parents when their kids are depressed, Adelaide (where he lives), India (where he’s from), writing screenplays, and the movie, 2:37.

I suggested he read Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Brother’s Karamazov, and he raved about the book in his hand, The Time Traveller’s Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger, upon which another film may be based. Thalluri seemed sincere and friendly, and though I was, and remain, shaken by the movie and my response to it, swapping stories with the director under the moonlight salvaged at least some of the night.

*My doctor’s officiously-delivered verdict this morning was that I had hyperventilated, causing my blood pressure to drop and an undersupply of CO_2.

More Nerbs

In response to my last post on nerbs, my soon-to-be brother-in-law emailed me the following charming poem. It is written by William Gillespie, whose very clever and quirky website is spinelessbooks.com

Talked at by a dad when it came time to parent you, i had to be a parent. as your father, it was my duty to father you as only a mother could mother you, and you grew some into the gruesome teenager you are today. when it is time to chart the line your course travels in life, your lifeline will course through your chart of travels. line your pocket with money, pocket pocket money. you must plant your plant and water it with water, and smell every smell it has to offer. taste every taste, touch every touch, smile a smile. account for every account. to raise you we gave you a raise in your allowance. the high school graduate does not ditch his studies. teachers school him where he studies in school, not in some ditch. after you graduate.
William Gillespie © 1996-2004

Isn't it brilliant?

In an email Mr Gillespie commented: "Your article seems to concern more trendy nerbs--llegitimate/new/abrasive/
buzzwordy uses of nouns as verbs. Corporatese." He is correct, and I have a strong suspicion Mr Gillespie knows plenty more about nerbs.