ok so i’m a bit late to the Lets-All-Realise-Everett-Bogue-Is-Suffering-From-Naivety-And-Megalomania Party. that’s fashionable, right?

i’ve been reading some minimalist stuff lately & it’s been impossible to avoid seeing Everett Bogue popping up everywhere.  so i read some of him too.  before too long, i couldn’t shake the impression that Everett Bogue is just another insufficiently read/educated GenYer who thinks he’s the first person to discover something, but had the nous to capitalise on it and get a bunch of Fellow Seekers to pay him to live The Good Life – for the time being at least.

congratulations Mr Bogue, you’re a the top of a tiny pyramid scheme.  you’ve successfully discovered the ‘secret’ of countless shonks before you.

my best friend spent a year traveling the world – minimalist style – in 1996, and maintain that low-possession-count lifestyle in two of Australia’s busiest & most capitalist/consumerist cities, until his untimely death a few years ago.  minimalism wasn’t anything new then, and it sure as frak isn’t anything new now, although for sure the lessons can be carried into the digital realm.

but inherent in that low-possession-count ethos was an underlying reliance on other people’s possessions typically via living in a room with other housemates WHO PROVIDED MOST OF THE FURNITURE. and fridge. and ice cube trays.  when we took a holiday in Byron Bay, who do you think brought the beach towels?!!

Everett brags about how little he owns on his site.  i couldn’t help but notice there’s no refrigerator.  or beanbag.  who supplies those?  i’m guessing someone else.  that’s not minimalism, that’s an externality of the likes that any economic rationalist would be very proud.

fuckminimalism.com ? no, fuck you, Mr Bogue.  i understood the core of (and resonated with) minimalism from one brief conversation with my best friend 15 years ago.  i didn’t need to (and thankfully now can’t) spend $17 on your ebook to tell me what can be gleaned – for free – from hundreds of honest, well-meaning people.

and us$47 for your Minimalist Business ebook? yer kidding right?  i haven’t bought an ebook for more than $15 from highly talented writers who had something NEW to say.  no surprise you ignored my tweet politely asking why Minimalist Business cost so much.  so much for Twitter being the best way to communicate with you.

as for this $25/month letter.ly cybernetic yogi shit, omg, that’s where you really lost me. as above, just another GenY kid so far up his own fundamental orifice he can’t see that he’s stumbled on what’s already been discovered long ago.  the abundance of nonsense cyber-infused new-age terminology won’t work on those who’ve seen it all before.  Facebook out – Twitter in?  fuck me, you sound like a vacuous fashion queen of the most objectionable kind.

Everett Bogue IS what i consider convergence; or history repeating itself, depending on how generous you feel today.

p.s. contrary to you bragging about your google rank for ‘cybernetic yogi’ etc, this (leanmeanminimalist.com) site and 4 others ripping you a new one, were the first 5 hits when i googled “cybernetic yogi”. i pray that when i click on Image search i’ll see a cartoon Yogibear who’s been altered by the Borg.

mwah!

Past

In one simple innocent statement, my partner highlighted the outstanding success of applying “pop-up retailing” to calendars, first brought to Australia in the mid-90s by Paul Breen, licensing the USA-based ‘Calendar Club’ brand and seasonal pop-up retailing concept.

Back then, and apparently still in many countries, wall and desk calendars were either low-value things that businesses gave away to their customers, a cunning exchange of vaguely themed utility for under-the-radar advertising; or “high end” products in niche retail outlets.

Nowadays, calendar retailing is worth several tens of $M (in Australia), forged in large part by Paul Breen’s tireless efforts to convince shopping mall managers to allocate open floor space for short term rental where – voila! – overnight in October/November a ‘kiosk’ appears at your local mall lined with every type of calendar you could possibly want.  They made easy gifts, Christmas ‘stocking fillers’ for those whom you just CBF’d buying anything more meaningful.  I’ve received a few over the years!

The trick to getting people to part with up to $25 per calendar, where previously they were free from your local mechanic / dentist / etc – is personalisation and self-expression.  The burgeoning range of wall and desk calendars catered to almost every social niche, from every breed of faithful dog and fluffy cat, to side-splittingly funny Gary Larson cartoons.  A calendar hung in the home or office signalled to others what you were ‘into’, and provoked conversation.  Oh, and you could also record what you had to do next week – if you remembered to look at it.

Present

However I believe that gravy train is slowly running out of steam.  I have no insider knowledge of sales or returns, but my hunch is they’ve been either plateaued or been slightly falling for a few years, a drop that’s either been masked by Calendar Club’s progress toward market saturation (geographically, the number of stores open each Christmas retail season), or unfairly attributed to the 2008 GFC & low consumer confidence statistics.  Or both.  I believe there’s another – perhaps bigger – culprit.

We’re nearly 4 years into the smartphone boom, heralded by the Apple iPhone first available in June 2007.  Until then Palm Pilot, Windows Mobile & Blackberry PDAs & smartphones were the sole preserve of geeks &/or geeky businessmen.  Among countless other things, a smartphone gives you a calendar that typically syncs with your desktop/laptop computer(s) including your corporate email/calendar/contacts system, and actively reminds you of imminent appointments.  Add the outstanding success of the iPad a year ago, followed by viable competition to the iPhone (Google’s Android, Palm/HP’s WebOS, Blackberry, Windows Phone 7) and “suddenly” a whole lot of people have a lot less reason to record their plans on a traditional calendar trapped on a desk or nailed to a wall, especially those intended for the office or home-office.

This ubiquity of high-tech calendars has only just begun, and I believe signals the beginning of the end for physical paper calendars.

Future

Sourcing calendars from publishers all over the world, Calendar Club is justified in having the tagline “The Best Selection Of Calendars In The Known Universe”.  But as the retail end-point for many calendar publishers and image banks, Calendar Club’s ability to capitalise on that imagery needs to move with the times – into the digital space.

Calendar Club needs to tackle the smartphone, pad / tablet / slate, & computer calendar reality head on.

Other than the same disease that’s beset most old-media for the past decade, there’s nothing preventing Calendar Club from creating their own software calendar ‘apps’, featuring the same imagery from their paper counterparts.  As a major multi-national paper calendar retailer, they already have the relationships with the calendar publishers & image banks necessary to garner trust to take this step into the digital domain.  It isn’t just Calendar Club who stands to rise or fall on this issue, it’s the entire ecosystem of paper calendar publishing.

Imagine a smartphone app that features all the crowd-pleasing imagery that modern paper calendars are known for, seamlessly integrating into the phone’s built-in calendar system (that syncs with your desktop/laptop computer or office groupware system).

People want to customise their smartphones for exactly the same reason they were willing to blow $25 on a dozen sheets of paper with cool pictures – especially given the ubiquity of Apple’s one-size-fits-all iPhone & iPad where there’s zero ability to ‘theme’ the built-in calendar app.  Part of the appeal of ‘jailbreaking’ an iPhone/iPad is the ability to customise the UI, and – for better or worse – Android and other smartphones offer that ability to customise.

If Calendar Club doesn’t take the lead and bring great themed imagery into digital calendars, someone else surely will.

The failure of REDgroup is ‘A Perfect Storm’ writ large.  They were saddled with major debt right form the start, have been financially squeezed from every corner, but more than anything else they’ve compounded their problems with a sequence of bad decisions made by “bovver-boy” managers installed at the expense of losing their inherited experienced staff, thinking that the book publishing and retailing industry would yield to corporate thug tactics, or that consumers would be the slightest bit interested in buying barbecues from Borders.  One could argue that PEP made a mistake even buying the beleaguered (Borders) chain in the first place.  Alas, 20-20 hindsight comes easily.

Books are a sacred miracle of human evolution, representing that quantum leap from storing information only in our heads to be re-told to our descendants in stories, song and teachings, to miraculous devices that are easily and cheaply copied with fidelity, allowing an author, perhaps dead millennia ago on another continent, to speak directly into our head.

But where we buy books (and many other things) from is anything but sacred – most of us don’t give a toss, we just want to pay a fair price, and if Amazon et.al. can sell & ship it to me for up to 50% less than Borders or A&R can, where do you think I’m going to go?  And if I can have a book without a single tree being felled… hello?!?

It was this ‘revolution’ in book publishing that was partly responsible for lifting of the veil of the Dark Ages, a fundamental shift in humanity’s course.  Why should a significant refinement in how books are made, delivered and read also not have a significant impact on society again now? It’s not like I have a vendetta against bricks-n-mortar book retailers, but we simply don’t need as many of them as we used to, and will continue to need less of them as more people buy online and switch to eBooks.  Blacksmiths and shoe repairers died out because we didn’t need them any more.  So too will many categories of brick-n-mortar retailers, and hopefully coal miners.  That’s unavoidable progress.

REDgroup isn’t the first retailer to face the 21st Century and fail.  It won’t be the last.  But relative to its book retailing peers, it fell *now* because it made a bunch of bad decisions by people who didn’t understand the subtle, respectable, low-profit-margin art of bookselling.

And I’ve learned a lesson in being dependant, albeit indirectly, on an Old Media business failing to meet the challenges of the 21st Century.  But I’ll talk more about that in a forthcoming post, whose working title is “The Future Of Calendar Club”.

Despite all the posturing to the contrary (by retailers & luddite consumers alike), there’s a heap of stuff you can confidently buy from reputable online retailers, Australian & overseas, many of whom DO offer genuinely good service, without needing to actually see, touch, try on, or spend any time whatsoever in mind-numbingly sterile malls offering the same narrow set of brands everywhere.

Until the early 2000s, Australian Customs *did* levy import duties on some stuff I bought overseas.  I don’t know what the dollar amount threshold was, but when combined with the cost of shipping from overseas, and the exchange rate below $0.60 to the US1$, it usually made it a more expensive proposition than shopping locally, and thus relegated offshore retail to stuff you just couldn’t get locally.

But that world is gone.  For unrelated reasons the US & AU dollar are virtually parity, international shipping can often be quite reasonable, and there’s now no import duty or GST applied to imported goods totalling less than au$1000.  Now I can go on a clothes or sneaker shopping spree – online – and have several hundred dollars worth of stuff (which would cost anything up to double from Australian bricks-n-mortar retailers) and have it all shipped to me for $20-50, still making it a clear financial win.

Is it wrong that overseas retailers don’t have GST applied to their sales?  Absolutely.  I mean c’mon!  In this globalised age where anyone can buy stuff from anywhere else on the planet so easily, why shouldn’t the Government apply GST?  A better question is why don’t they.  My theory is in the ideology of the GST itself.  The GST forced nearly every Australian business to become a tax collector for the Government.  It spread the administrative burden far wider (though about the same thickness for all), whereas the previous Wholesale Sales Tax regime involved at least an order of magnitude fewer Australian businesses and virtually no individuals.  Clearly corralling retailers across the planet into becoming GST collectors for the Australian government would be Mission Impossible (even if legal), so having it levied by Australian Customs at the import waypoint is the only practical option, basically slapping an invoice on every box before local delivery.  With such a cavalier attitude to turning every Tom, Dick and Harriet businessperson into a GST collector for the Government, it’s no surprise that the (Howard) Government wanted to divest itself of the administrative burden of applying and chasing import duties from a strongly growing citizen import tendency.  A decade ago Amazon was just a distant blip on the radar.  Now, with zero import duty/GST and a steadily strengthening AU$, it’s a serious bite out of not just local retailers’ income, but Government’s too.

But lets not make the mistake of thinking the lack of GST applied to consumer importation accounts for the attraction of buying from offshore eretailers.  It doesn’t.  As I said above, the price of much of the stuff I buy offshore can be nearly half that of local retailers.  Even the addition of 10% GST, or more, wouldn’t level that ‘playing field’.

In any nationally competitive industry, prices stabilise at a value that lets all the links in the retail chain make at least a workable profit.  Australia is a small population, spread out over a massive continent.  Out retail prices reflect primarily the ‘economy of scale’ of our comparatively tiny population, and often the cost of shipping product over our vast distances to tiny towns.  So when Europeans and Americans come here and bitch about the price of everything, well, that’s in large part because they come from a country/region with a much higher population, and population density, among other factors.  Get over it.

Maybe you’re more a Readings type of bookworm, one of the few who likes to go to a bookshop who actually reads through several pages of a book, shake hands with the author, AND then buys it from the shop at whatever price they decide to charge.I’m not.  I buy books based on recommendations from my social network, reviews, and occasionally author reputation, in which case I don’t need a physical shop to visit.  Seems I’m in good – or at least voluminous – company.

The reality is that so much of what we buy has become so commoditised, we don’t care where we buy it, “value adding” is often irrelevant, we just want it for a fair price, and we’d especially prefer not to pay the inflated price of faux-discount retailers who use expensive TV advertising.  How can all the existing bricks-n-mortar retailers with expensive mall rents, extensive multi-site IT & POS infrastructures, and a vast staff with structured management spanning a state or country ever compete with a website operated from an ‘invisible’ office-with-warehouse out in a cheap suburb with no public shareholders to please?  Ruslan Kogan is laughing all the way to the bank on this business model!

coincidentally, an entrepreneurial friend in Sydney has described one of his new endeavours, which tweaks my energy-efficiency & sustainability buttons, in this case in business IT, with a view to me being involved at my local implementation level.  it has legs, and in principle at least, it excites me to be able to blend my IT skills with something that “matters” in these global-warming times.

that catch is, the kind of clients they’re going for would likely require me to wear a suit, or at least collar-n-tie etc, and work amongst “corporate IT” types, and in much more complex IT environments, over which i’d have little control.  i flinch severely at that idea.  i’ve always considered standard business attire to be utterly absurd samian reductionism & never wanted anything to do with it.  i worked in & dressed for exactly this situation (thankfully only in those times while on-site with a client) for 4 years in Sydney before moving down here.

i’ve been a 1-man-band in small-business IT consulting for the last 10 years in Melbourne, serving the IT needs of a rarely-changing set of clients.  jeans, tshirt & sneakers are my uniform.  for the most part, so do my clients  (apparently last week a new employee at one of my clients who didn’t know my name referred to me as “that skaterboy”!)  i don’t have a string of MSCE creds to my name – i’ve rarely needed such to meet my client’s needs.  my “office” is a 2nd bedroom, so i don’t have the raft of bricks-n-mortar expenses that bigger fish have.  as such, i don’t charge anything like $180/hour that suit-wearers in this genre typically do.  it works well for us both.

there is a undetermined (& as yet undiscussed) chance i could continue meeting their needs via various remote access technologies from afar, using the services of a low-level hardware jockey for the relatively fewer times when hands-on-site is needed.  or maybe not.

and i’m investigating or considering other options, non-IT-consulting options.  all transportable, work-from-home up-north options.

but there’s also this debt to pay off, which will take at least a few years at status quo, or sooner if i engage other income sources – like this opportunity.  it’d be nice, but not essential, to move up north debt-free.

but the time & headspace to fit this in would likely leave little time to foster the transportable-income alternatives that i need to facilitate life up north!

is this something i should seriously consider, & put aside my disdain for The Suit (and everything that comes along with it), for an option that would further tie me to Melbourne & probably delay a northerly move, but be ‘expedient’?  or is this a diversion from who i am, and where i want to be in 1-3 years time?

as i suspected, Copenhagen was largely a failure, as all those going into it knew before they even arrived.  Naomi Klein had it right when interviewed at the start of Copenhagen – all this “Hopenhagen” bullshit is (almost) useless, childish, and naive.  why “hope” for something that isn’t even up for discussion?  the Copenhagen talks have been little more than a stepping stone to where we needed to to be YEARS AGO, with years more yet to go.  i guess the problem will need to get a lot worse before our elected leaders cut the crap and do what’s necessary.  particularly Australia – thanks Liberal/National Coalition Opposition fuckheads, whose new leader is more concerned that school children learn about the bible… fuck me.  how many more things need to go wrong, how many more dead species, how many more collapsed dying ecosystems, how many more felled forrests, how much more desert, how much higher sea levels, how many more major destructive weather events, how many more people displaced, how much more devastation will be needed before we pull our heads out of our arses?

oh, and on the topic of Australian politics, Rudd’s henchman Conroy is still trying to protect the children, by implementing futile compulsory ISP-level filtering.  fuck me… (again).  we concerned citizens will need to get smart in our collaboration to turn the tide on this shit.

work is mad busy, exacerbated in part by my appalling time management, particularly in the mornings – just can’t seem to get into it.  Dell have fucked me/client over bigtime, 6+ weeks late delivering a new server that should’ve taken about 2 weeks, which has created a crunch over xmas/new-year, and they’ve been belligerent in their non-communication at every step.  i’ll probably blog that one separately once the dust settles.  & i’ve dropped the ball with a (small, minor) client who’s decided/realised that for this specific job at least, someone else will have to fill the gap of my lax attention to their needs. *sigh*  perhaps, in yanking back on the joystick controlling my life that was in freefall only a few months ago, i’ve scraped the undercarriage a bit…  hopefully the landing gear is still intact.

psychologically speaking, i’ve been fairly consistently boyant, overall.  no one-day plummets like i mentioned a few weeks ago, thank $deity!  a couple of my psych sessions have been very thought-provoking.  i’ll probably go into more detail – with my psych, and here – in the new year when our sessions resume, but i’m beginning to think that a significant part of the last 5 years dysthymia has been about my unresolved issues/questions that brought me to Melbourne in the first place: my life’s purpose.  10 years ago i felt itchy, unhappy, unsettled, and made a decision to leave Sydney and move to either Melbourne and start a new life vaguely of the kind i’ve been leading; or to Byron Bay / Northern Rivers and lead probably an entirely different lifestyle.  i was convinced to do the former, and ultimately fell into a new situation, and particularly a new self-employed career, without barely lifting a finger, let alone making any conscious choices about exactly what i wanted to do.  and i think that kinda worked for several years, but essentially only as a distraction; a distraction that became undermined and peeling around the edges as i became unable to ignore broader issues going on in the world, and realise that i wasn’t – and still aren’t – doing much of anything about them.  perhaps it’s time to face up to the fact that i’m coasting, not doing something that i’m passionate about anymore, and find a way to move into something else that is/does.  the two burning questions are: 1) what? and 2) what, that can also support my financial needs to pay off this small mountain of debt i’ve created for myself?  not saying i’m about to retire to Byron Bay & become a hippy, but i think something needs to change.

and perhaps it’s just circumstances & back-drop, but we’ve also been looking back to my childhood, teens & early 20s, realising how a combination of a ‘mildly inhibited family culture’ (at least so far as self-expression is concerned), self-inhibition due to my confused/unresolved sexuality until i ‘woke up’ at 23yo, and $deity knows what else, lead to me being such a late bloomer.  maybe it still has significance, maybe not, time will tell.

speaking of my parents, i’ve decided, with some trepidation, to bring them up to speed to some extent with my depression of the last few years.  i’ve held back from bringing them into that drama, because from 750km away, there’s not much they can really do about it anyway, other than worry, and they find enough to worry about without me adding to it.  at least now i can honestly put a positive forward-looking spin on it.

things are still going well with J.  we’ve spent some good times together over the last few weeks. i continue to feel comfortable with him, always learning more about him, seemingly connecting on several different levels.  but i’ve been plagued with one major concern.  why the fuck is he doing this couples-counseling with his “ex” boyfriend?  i finally forced the issue last week, and he agreed i deserved to have some idea of what was going on, without needing/wanting to know details.  i can’t say the answer made me feel any, or at least much better, other than knowing a bit more of the history between he & his ex.  i still feel just as vulnerable.  my rational head hopes it will help him sort out his issues, which can only be a good thing in the long run, and my ego hopes he’ll come to his senses and realise that i’m prepared to – *gulp* – commit to him and give him the love and attention he deserves.  (i can’t believe i just said that, but there it is – raw expression of thought and feeling; damn scary).  but ultimately things are still pretty touch-n-go, i can see it in his language (verbal & non-verbal) that he’s holding back (as am i) until he comes to some resolution with his ex, and he knows it, and he knows i know it.  it’s torture.  i just hope my philosophy/observations of “windows of opportunity” is wrong this time…

and as if that admission wasn’t enough, how ’bout this parting thought:

i have NO IDEA why, but i’ve been preoccupied with internet/new-media/social-media MARKETING for a while now (moreso than usual), including reading a few of the overwhelmingly-many blogging/tweeting marketers out there.  this is a subset of human i’d previously looked down upon as cockroaches out to get me (or at least my money). WTF???

after watching the first episode of Office Tigers with very mixed feelings, i couldn’t help but laugh and cry at SBS’s sense of irony by following it immediately with Dead Tired.  having wrestled with my own “sleep hygiene” issues over the last several years, it’s obvious to me that the importation of western business (and social) culture into India – including less sleep – is likely to result in the same dramatic impact to health – but on an Indian population scale.

several years ago i read a book called ‘The Promise Of Sleep” (2000, William Demment & Christopher Vaughan).  Demment is a pioneering sleep researcher, investigating not only sleep, but the usually hidden consequences of not getting enough of it, over a period of almost 50 years, especially back when almost no one else was giving it a second thought.  Dead Tired is an insightful TV documentary covering similar ground, based on a broader body of more modern research, and which echos Demment’s concerning findings and warnings about our sleep-deprived culture.

in the offices of Office Tigers in Channai, the American co-CEO inculcates his Indian employees with what I view as the WORST aspects of modern western business culture.  he roams the office chastising employees for not wearing their ties; has his supervisors warn their employees that if they take a day off, it’d better be only for something serious like septisemia rather than the flu; and encourages working absurdly long hours (the office is open 24/7 running shifts – there’s no locks on the doors, just a few security guards).  this is all justified by claiming to be a meritocracy rewarding hard work.  yeah, right…

India’s burgeoning middle classes (which it never really had much of until relatively recent times) are understandably clamouring for the salary and lifestyle that comes from working in these new western companies.  but what are the consequences?  not only are a billion Indians (and more than a billion Chinese) rapidly developing societies with the same energy demands of the west, with all the global warming & finite resource consumption concerns that have been mulled over by east & west alike for many years now, but they’re following our footsteps into sleep-deprived western lifestyles!

what will it be like for such a huge populace to suffer (and fail to tackle) the hidden health problems that come from typical western sleep-deprived lifestyles?  just look around you:  lower productivity, horrible car accidents, sleep apnoea, high blood pressure, obesity, depression, and more.  yay…

and once again, SBS rocks with two fascinating documentary series, whose combination is deliciously ironic.

While reviewing the stack of election brochures from my letterbox before deciding who to vote for today, I came across yours.

Let me first say that I admire any citizen who decides to stick their neck out and run for local council.  Good on you.

But then I read your brochure.

At first things were going well, but then I read your proposals for cyclists and “The Tunnel” and couldn’t believe my eyes.

In my view, any would-be elected official who still doesn’t embrace long-term sustainable solutions, especially to issues that impact more than just “traffic”, but go much further to the fundamental impact of vehicular transport – safety/accidents, financial, energy consumption, environmental – is NOT one I will ever vote for.

Undertaking such a massive infrastructure project to add capacity as ‘The Tunnel’ proposal does, is ultimately only postponing the problem of growing vehicular transport, and all the “externalities” that brings.  Our collective efforts MUST be to reducing car usage, NOT encouraging it, and PROMOTING better alternatives. Spending a billion dollars on a new tunnel/road system is really just saying “not in our back yard” and sweeping the problem under the carpetsuburb.  As a local citizen who thinks about more than just my own back yard, I reject this “build more capacity” mentality.

Which brings me to your proposed policy to implement a license system for ALL bicycle riders who ride within Yarra City, WHETHER THEY LIVE HERE OR NOT.  WTF?  So, if other councils were to eventually follow suit, I’d need a separate licenses – that I presumably would have to pay for too – for EVERY council area I ride my bicycle in?  I think you can glean from my tone where I suggest you put that proposal.

Then you have the hypocrisy to call for a change to the “deep-rooted ‘town hall’ culture that has been allowed to fester over the years which has helped stem the flow of common sense”?  By wanting to implement an utterly unenforcable and irrational bicycle rider license system for all would-be bike riders whether they live here or not, “BECAUSE THEY DON’T DIRECTLY CONTRIBUTE to any infrastructure…”?  Seriously?

My NOT putting another car on the road when I ride, and my NOT contributing to energy consumption and environmental burdens when I ride, and my contribution to the overall health of the citizenry FAR OUTWEIGH the few bucks you’d make from me for a ridiculous bicycle-riding license.

So on one hand there’s your pro-car/tunnel hammer, and in the other an anti-bicycle hammer.  I think you are certifiably NUTS, and my choice is clear.

Why am I not surprised that a man who’s almost singularly been unable or unwilling over so many years to lift The Peel from its musically indecisive, try-to-be-all-things-to-all-people-but-just-fester-as-an-ugly-dive-bar morass should propose such short-sighted, anti-sustainable, and utterly ridiculous policies?

Yours sincerely,

modern society considers many acts of metaphorical bell-ringing to be taboo, the proponent tarred with the brush of the boy who cried wolf too many times – particularly if the prescribed actions threaten to detract from someone’s profit margin. it’s as though the merest possibility of overstatement or marginal error were a sin a hundred times worse than that being warned.

i’ll postpone pondering the roots of such a passive status-quo-maintaining culture, but suffice to say, when it comes to this topic, i have no intention of censoring myself any further.

there are 3 film/tv documentaries that have genuinely literally changed my life, each personally epiphanal, for which i hold the opinion (regardless how unlikely) that every single person on the planet should see. the first was Carl Sagan’s Cosmos 8/13-part tv series (1980). when i saw it in ’88, it gifted me a sense of perspective about the natural world and my (our) place within it that formed a lasting foundation for my worldview.

it was a long time between drinks to the second, The Corporation (2004). unfortunately it was instrumental in triggering 2+ years of dysthymic depression, but ultimately painted for me a very clear picture of what’s wrong with our modern world, and what needs to be done to achieve a capitalist society that’s also genuinely fair, sustainable & democratic, rather than one run mostly by stupid greedy white men.

the third, An Inconvenient Truth (2006) helped bring me back to life, & contextualise what i think is the most pressing challenge our civilisation has ever faced.

In An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore pulls together a wide range of examples of climate change, history, political distortion, & human nature that doesn’t just explain what global warming is in simple & eloquent terms, but also why global warming concerns have been ignored, discounted or marginalised for so long, as well as the need for prompt & substantial action.

if you think there is anything remotely resembling a raging equally-sided dispute amongst scientists that global warming is real & caused by our fossil-fuelled emissions, or might instead be some climatic natural phenomenon whose cause we’re still unaware; if you think global warming probably won’t affect you personally all that much; if you think an extra 2 billion Chinese & Indians rapidly adopting the same consumerist lifestyle as ours using the same greenhouse gas-producing power sources & transport won’t make much difference; if you think you can’t make a positive difference, directly & indirectly; then this DVD is for you. it’s for everyone.

some have suggested that Al Gore is using An Inconvenient Truth as a political tool for the 2008 US presidential elections. no surprise i say ‘bring him on!’ – if it hadn’t been for 11+ years of Little Johnny’s politically expedient amorality, i’d still be wondering why American’s kept the Evil Chimp in power for 8 years too. others accuse Gore of scare-mongering. well, quiet little debates in science labs & school rooms, & government scientists being silenced or censored by their own government just isn’t getting the job done.

the dots have been connected.

the nay-sayer climate change ‘skeptics’ (a shameful miscarriage of the term) have been revealed as the self-interested greedy few, or their pandering politicians, posessing little or no scientific merit to justify further inaction (to say nothing of amoral cynical pseudo-skeptic-fanboys like Tim Blair who sprout vitriole & peddle inane examples of cold climates as supposed counter-proof, a policeman for the anti-bell-ringer mindset it would seem).

for many years Earth has been showing major signs that it is reaching saturation point in its ability to process our fossil-fuel emissions, and beyond which corrective action may take hundreds of years to reverse due to a run-away domino effect. almost every biological system on earth is in decline. how bad must it get before we wake up?

how can we possibly convince the rapidly developing world to adopt low greenhouse gas emitting technologies & techniques if we hypocritically don’t follow our own advice?

i’ll cover this more in a separate post, but addressing climate change in a sensible, global, prompt but staged manner holds enormous potential for commercial success, without horrific economic consequences. but to cut to the chase, it ultimately comes down to ordinary consumers becoming aware of the issues & the solutions, taking what steps they can as individuals, AND pressuring their elected representatives to do something. nothing will happen or change until we do. John Howard is living proof that Political Will is a renewable resource that springs from the Eternal Well Of Opinion Polls – all we need to do is point him in the correct direction.

someone once told me that a reasonable definition of stupidity is always doing the same thing, but expecting a different outcome. someone else once told me “for things to change, first i must change”. and another “think globally, act locally”. they all seem to have currency on this issue. we are all part of the problem, and we all can and need to be part of the solution.

it’s time to walk our talk that we care about the world we live in.

buy, borrow, beg, or download a copy if you must, but please watch this movie. watch it with a friend or two & talk about it afterward. watch the end credits seeded with ideas on how to do something.

like visiting www.climatecrisis.net for heaps of ideas we all can do to reduce our impact on global warming. some are easy, some are cheap, some just require a different way of thinking & aren’t really all that inconvenient. some will even keep you fit. ALL of them will make for a better world, a better home, in our own lifetimes.

and stay tuned here for details of my own efforts to reduce my ‘carbon footprint’ :-)

few things twist my knickers more than Little Johnny (described by Dubya as “a man of principle” – high praise indeed) demonstrating he has no principles (other than a tendency to foist his Christian doctrine views on Australians), and in its place an amoral stance for the sake of political expediency.

while being interviewed by Tony Jones on ABC’s Lateline 5/2/07, these are a few of his latest words on global warming & what he thinks Australia’s ‘response’ should be, now that he’s suddenly donned on his new green coat:

“We have to play our part, but we have massive advantages because of our fossil fuels. We have uranium and, therefore, the potential of nuclear power, and we want to behave in a way that plays to Australia’s strengths and protects Australia’s employment. We don’t want to give all of that away in some kind of knee jerk reaction that damages the Australian economy.”

“…and the whole focus of our policy should be on reducing carbon emissions in a way that doesn’t damage the Australian economy unreasonably or unfairly”

when asked if he thought coal-fired power stations were a major, if not the major contributor to global warming:

“Stationary power is certainly, yes, all round the world, and that’s why getting cleaner coal, it’s why looking at nuclear, which is the cleanest option of all, to run power stations you can’t run power stations, on the Australian experience, on wind and solar. You either run them on the way they’re run now, it’s predominantly coal or gas or sometimes hydro, or you run them, in the future, with nuclear. Nuclear becomes more viable economically as the cost of running coal fired power stations increases with the adoption of cleaner technology.”

more on nuclear being the “cleanest option” in a later post, but which will it be, PM, “clean” coal (a political tool/term for a technology that doesn’t exist yet), or nuclear? if you think “clean” coal will be too expensive & therefore nuclear is the only way to go, then just shut up about “clean” coal, ok?

“We are lucky as a country because we have the vast reserves of coal, and we’re the largest coal exporter in the world and we employ a lot of people in that industry and I’m determined that any response we provide doesn’t unfairly disadvantage or hurt them. The issue is, how can we, maintaining our economic strength, reduce the amount of carbon we’re putting into the atmosphere? Now, that’s the challenge and that’s why we want to keep the nuclear option on the table, and that’s why we want to look at clean coal technology.”

“lucky”, if you ignore the flip-side that our coal exports are a substantial part of the biggest problem in human history.

how can you even start the decade-long process of replacing coal with nuclear & still not unfairly disadvantage or hurt the coal industry? even using carbon sequestration to delay the inevitable will take just as long to develop, commercialise & roll out as nuclear, & also involves huge infrastructure costs, all of which adds up to higher energy costs for consumers. or is all this hot air about carbon sequestration just to make sure the coal industry vote for you later this year?

when pressed further on the question of whether continuing to export coal for use in dirty power stations (as virtually all of them are) is in Australia’s best interest as regards our share of global warming’s impact, i believe he’s correct – if you keep your morals out of the equation – that doing so would kill most of our coal industry and still not achieve much impact on global warming, as our cheap coal export recipients (Japan takes the lion’s share of our exports, & China is likely to become a major component too) would simply buy it elsewhere &/or use their own…

…unless all coal exporters put their balls on the block & stop selling it at the same time they stop using it themselves; a lofty & unlikely-at-this-stage goal to say the least.

on the issue of carbon taxing or trading schemes, and whether – as an alternative – the government should simply legislate that Australia’s coal-fired power stations adopt the carbon sequestration technologies Howard himself disingenuously espouses:

“That doesn’t sound very much to me like a market mechanism, when you compel somebody to apply a particular technology. It is far better, if you want to keep faith with the market approach, to develop a carbon pricing or carbon trading system”

legislating the population toward self-preservation worked for the transition away from leaded petrol, and away from ozone layer depleting CFCs, to name just a couple off the top of my head for which we & our children are already reaping the benefit. oh, that’s right, it was the former government that lead those changes (in Australia) for the public interest, despite the financial pain.

“It’s a question of how you do it and it’s a question of ensuring that Australia doesn’t become the international mug and introduces a system that penalises us, to the disadvantage of this country internationally. That’s why I’ve been very keen to link what we might do here with what is done internationally.”

i’m suddenly reminded of the two dorks interviewed in The Corporation who paid for their college tuition fees by announcing to the mass media “hi, we’re proud to be sponsored by <major coporation name>!”.  It was a totally unsustainable technique for anyone stupid enough to follow their footsteps when the media ceases to give a shit after the first stunt.  One of them (not the blond one!) went on to say “I have alot of faith in the corporate world because it’s always going to be there so you may as well have faith in it, because if you don’t then it’s just not good”.  nice to see those corporate funds creating some insightful future Suits poised with undoubtely more unsustainable tactics with which to take the world by storm.

when not placing their faith in a system that allows a collection of people to behave typically amorally, and sometimes totally imorally (by legislation requiring the bottom line to be put ahead of all other interests, even the public good), economists sometimes talk about the need for “destruction” to make way for “creation” in economic markets. and they would be right. as a society & its needs mature, old industries die out and new ones replace them – it’s been a frequent reality throughout industrial history. you do what you can for the displaced employees, but ultimately their jobs have to go, whether they’re blacksmiths, whalers, photolab film developers, or coal miners, whether it’s because we don’t need, or don’t want, their industry. when baking the cake kills you AND your neighbours, it doesn’t matter whether it’s an Australian or a Chinaman doing the eating.

it seems to me that John Howard:

• doesn’t have much faith in the economic benefit of carbon sequestration for coal-fired plants & merely talks about it because he needs to be seen talking green instead of just Nuke Nuke Nuke.

• will lead us invariably to nuclear power despite its massive infrastructural costs which we the consumer will ultimately pay for, all the while the “not in our backyard” mentality towards locations for both generation &, critically, the storage of nuclear waste permeating every Australian electorate (from hypothetical local consumption, as well as from that we already export) – especially South Australia which already has vast areas cordoned off from WW2 nuclear testing and some of the most geologically stable areas of the continent, good safe water port access, & despite loads of money to be made from providing world-class much-needed storage facilities.

• has no intention of setting the stage for a prompt but graceful move from coal to any other technology (other than decade-hence nuclear, or hypothetical clean-coal) for fear of losing coal votes while he is in office, & obviously leaving that political suicide job to the next guy.

• as usual intends to play Follow-The-USALeader, having no intention of being a leader of Australia, or on the world stage, by seriously & promptly encouraging the commercialisation & roll-out of proven renewable technologies, in deliberate preference to insisting that an alternative to coal has to fit with the existing Big Power generation paradigm & infrastructure (refer to my previous post on the decentralisation & democratisation of renewable technologies).

in other words, John Howard is STILL putting short term Big Business interests way ahead of the long-term sustainability of Big Business & the habitability of the country in which they & we reside.

this issue is too important to be influenced by comparatively insignificant political concerns & partisanship. if we do not address the issue now, there will not be a pleasant blue-green planet on which to play the game of politics. yet political posturing is the best John Howard can come up with – yet again.

next PM please.

dear Thrasher Magazine,

i flip through the monthly skate mags in the shop, & usually buy one from the range, & have sampled most of what’s out there. while flipping through Thrasher, i flipped. who ever came up with a couple of your recent subscription advertisements should have their balls nailed to a popsicle & be pushed back into the Jurassic era for being so dumbly exclusive. the first was a picture of a tragically weed-overgrown abandoned vert ramp and the caption “ADAPT OR GO EXTINCT”. The second was a young kid, surrounded by other skater kids in what appeared to be a contest setting, doing a skateboard flip-trick while wearing roller-blades, & the caption “DON’T BE A DORK… SUBSCRIBE”.

as a 35yo skater who’d literally never picked up a skateboard until a year ago (& lovin it!), i’ve invested a lot of time learning my skate history too. the attitude behind this sub ad is emblematic of mainstream skate media/culture – an overwhelming focus on street skating & its narrow, youth-directed, fashion-focussed, insane-stunt-performing culture. if it’d been yet another ad for a skate shoe company (etc), i would have dismissed it & kept reading. but i didn’t think i’d see it so dumbly pushed in a sub ad from Thrasher. kids will – quite by themselves – often try to boost their own ego’s by criticising anything outside their direct experience. Thrasher is preying on that (normal) juvenile mentality, and as an organisation in a position of power & authority is essentially saying “that’s OK kids, fruit-booters ARE dorks to be ridiculed, street-skating is the only way to go”. WTF???

i don’t mind that the mainstream market is (currently) mainly 9-19 year olds and catered to accordingly. but it’s being promoted almost to the exclusion of everything & everyone else. has it not occurred to the marketers that it’s the oldies who were there skating all those years ago developing what’s now considered niche skating styles, some of whom would love the opportunity to get back on a longboard & carve their local streets, hills or beach boardwalks, with or without their kids in tow? and for those still up for it, get back into a bowl or vert-ramp, or local slalom scene? do the marketers forget that it’s us oldies who have a hell of a lot more disposable income than 9-19yo kids, ready to spend it on quality gear advertised in quality inclusive media? but all they see as they _walk_ around their neighbourhood is magazines for kids, boards for kids, shoes & clothes for kids, & attitude for kids.

yeah, i know skaters have prided themselves on having an almost impenetrable club, and it’s obvious this exclusivity mentality is partly what’s driving the current direction of mainstream skate culture. but can’t you guys see where it’s heading?!? you should, ’cause it’s been happening for over a decade! the definition of what it is to be a skater – from sponsored pros & ams, to even just ordinary suburban kids – is getting narrower every year. if you’re not jumping down 10 or 20 stairs, leaping 10 foot gaps, or sliding down a rail into hospital, no one in the mainstream skate media wants to know you! the pool of talent capable of pulling off these increasingly amazing stunts will continue to dwindle (that’s a simple demographic fact).

an industry that mainly produces products for such an ever-narrowing market is ripe for cheap competition and will continue to disappear up its own butt hole, for example street decks able to be manufactured so cheaply resulting in blanks & shop decks which undermine name brand market share, which undermines their capacity to support their teams, which undermines the sport & competitions. Thrasher’s pages are dominated by advertising to make its cover price kid-friendly. you’re painting yourselves into an ever-decreasing corner. you call this adaptation?!? any economist, not to mention some within our industry, will tell you it’s slow, painful suicide.

why the hell isn’t “any skating is good skating” a guiding principle for a skate mag, most of all for Thrasher who’s literally been there through it all? us ‘oldies’ are out there, there’s lots of tiny niche groups & websites for us, but we exist _despite_ the prevailing attitude, not because of it.

and don’t give me that shit that you’re just “reflecting what’s out there”. the skate media holds the keys to what we see outside our own little worlds, just as much as the skate-fashion marketing departments – you are linked at the hip – for better, or worse. for evidence of that, just download Transworld’s “2007 Media Kit” to see they’re totally hell-bent on the youth market ‘at all cost’ – even their long term sustainability. but Thrasher Magazine & your local & overseas peers, and the sport in all its diversity can (or at least could) be seen not just on paper, but web, DVD, podcasts & even tv. i believe you still have the muscle & capacity to afford to broaden the scope of what’s covered, and thus create a sustainable future that keeps skaters rolling beyond their 19th birthday.

question is, have you got the balls for it? or will you just walk away when the kids say you’re too old?

techydude