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The Secret Society Edition

On Dit Undercover The Golden Key

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media to inform and infotain

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travel marketing nations

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sport the beautiful game

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culture alternative radio, scrapbook, freemasons etc.

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photo essay renew adelaide

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campus living below the line

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primer Vietnam & North Korea

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columnists handshakes & bookshelves

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want to contribute?

Email: ondit@adelaide.edu.au Phone: 08 8303 5404 Web: ondit.com.au

Editorial Secret societies. Don’t they just evoke images of power suits, dark corridors, bizarre rituals, and public celebrity conversions? Well, yes, but clearly no one really told the secret societies operating in Adelaide. They range from the banal to the too-scary-to-approach (Scientology or other bona fide cults were deemed a little too crazy, even for On Dit’s… relaxed standards).

But aside from a couple of articles digging up the closeted skeletons of Golden Key and the Freemasons, the other articles all try to speak to our (sometimes hidden) desires to belong. To clubs, teams, societies, cliques. There’s the World Cup, and how the game of soccer/football/who cares what it’s called builds a lot of its appeal on being inclusive. There’s Triple j, and how it fits into the Australian media landscape and whether it’s a station that offers genuine youth representation. Words on China, a nation built on the self-eulogising myth of belonging to one ideology and one party. Hopefully reading this issue of On Dit, our seventh, will itself make you feel like you’re part of a special little club. Not the Nike sneakers kind, no no. More like something to share little jokes about. I mean, the Uni’s kind of a not-so-secret society when you think about it, really. We do the same things for three to five years before dressing in ceremonial robes and throwing funny pointed hats in the air.

Forever yours, Mateo (& Myriam & Connor)

editors: Connor O'Brien, Myriam Robin, Mateo Szlapek-Sewillo cover image: Ian Houghton (www.ankhou.com) contents page illustration: Louise Vodic

featured contributors Gemma Parker reads so much she doesn't have time for more interesting hobbies. She is inordinately fond of trains and being in transit, probably because they allow her to read without interruptions.

(Find 'Judging a Book by its Cover' on page 20).

Ian Houghton is a former international studies student who just moved to Vancouver. His quirky designs, encouragement and creativity will be much missed at On Dit. Best of luck, bro!

(Ian designed our cover image this issue).

On Dit is an Adelaide University Union publication.

The opinions expressed within are not necessarily those of the editors, the University of Adelaide, or the Adelaide University Union.

Pearls of Wisdom (from a prolific correspondent)

everything’s Golden A stupid society for smart people?

The year is 1996. In Canberra, a dumpy new PM is moving his Don Bradman photos into the corner office. In North Queensland, a cherubfaced primary-schooler is on his way home to deliver proudly to his parents the news that he has been selected for an Accelerated Class.

Of course, my parents were thrilled. They had zero qualms and zero questions about this proposal to cast aside approved pedagogy and subject me and four or five other misfits to an experimental curriculum. That ‘curriculum’ turned out to be something evocative of a Fassbinder film – a puzzling farrago of random and unrelated topics. We would spend one day learning about the human skeleton, and the next the history of the Olympics. Still, my parents kept me in the class.

What’s the moral of this story, apart from that I like stories? Well, firstly, I have an excuse for the dreadful state of my times tables. But there’s an obvious point illustrated here – if there’s one sure way to entice people to abandon their critical faculties and sense of their own best interest, it’s to appeal to their ego.

It’s this sort of criticism that has recently been levelled at the Golden Key International Honour Society. If you’ve never heard of Golden Key, it describes itself as ‘the world’s premier collegiate honour society, recognising outstanding academic achievement and connecting high-achieving individuals locally, regionally and globally with lifetime opportunity, reward

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Words, John Eldridge Illustration, Ian Houghton

and success.’ Membership is by invitation – sent by a university on behalf of Golden Key to the top 15% of university students – and the current Australian once-off joining fee is $93.50. If the membership fee and gaseous mission statement are together exercising your skepticism, then you're not the only one – Golden Key feels the need to include a ‘Guidelines to Identifying a Legitimate Honour Society’ section on its website, and many students report feeling surprised that what seems to be a commercial recruitment letter arrives on uni-

versity stationery.

The question is a simple one – is Golden Key an clever and profitable exercise in flattery, or an organisation which provides real benefits and services to its members? An article by Andrew Wade earlier this year in the Australian National University (ANU) student magazine Woroni adopted, most stridently, the former view: I do not argue that the Golden Key Society provides no benefit to members, or that promoting organisations that encourage networking is a bad thing. However, I do question the true value for students at the ANU in joining the society and point out that there are a number of curious unanswered questions about the rights of its members and the way in which resources in this organisation are used. On the face of the evidence provided in the annual report and information from the Golden Key’s own website, it appears that large amounts of money are embezzled in supporting a grotesquely over funded par-

ent organisation with little flowing back to its local franchises.

Wade was particularly concerned with the proportion of the organisation’s funding being devoted to scholarships: It turns out that the scholarships on offer are at most $2000 and typically $500 or less and are available to only a surprisingly small cohort – a few hundred thousand dollars does not go far across eighty two thousand members ($3.83 per person to be precise).

Wade based his scholarship calculations upon numbers from Golden Key’s annual report, but there is an obvious counterpoint to be made – Golden Key’s mission statement encompasses a wider range of potential activities than the granting of scholarships. On Dit contacted Andrew Roe, Golden Key’s Asia-Pacific Director. Roe argued that the Woroni criticisms were unfounded, explaining that member benefits are myriad and significant. Roe specifically cited Golden Key’s online careers and financial literacy databases, as well as the various summits and conferences which the organisation sponsors for the benefit of its members. As to allegations of financial impropriety, Roe explains that "our audited financials for 2009 show that we have a ratio of program expenses to general and administration expenses of 85/15. This outperforms the benchmarks for the not-for-profit sector."

It would seem, then, that criticisms of Golden Key should stop short of implying exploitation.

Golden Key does seem to be attempting in good faith to provide a service to its members – what remains is the question of whether members are actually pleased with the return on their ninety-odd dollars. On Dit asked around, and didn’t hear too much positive sentiment. Ben, a PhD student at Adelaide, joined after receiving "a letter telling me I'd been placed in the top however-many per cent of all university students. My ego

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The ego is a poor decision-maker.

flattered, I decided to part with whatever money was required to join such an elite tribe (and thus furnish my empty CV). I started getting the e-mails. The e-mails are bollocks. I haven't thought about it at all since then." Christopher, a student pursuing honours in politics, said: I found that most of their promotional material is directed towards commerce, finance, law [only sometimes], and engineering [occasionally] students. I’m not saying there's anything wrong with that per se, it's just that as an arts/ politics student I didn't find it terribly useful and didn't get the sense that they were particularly concerned about appealing to me as a humanities student once they'd taken my money.

It's not that they were actively uninterested, I should say, just that most of the things their material advertised wasn't 'for me' or relevant to my areas of interest.

Is this grim picture an accurate reflection of some of the problems with Golden Key? If so, what’s the underlying cause? Christopher hints at it when he explains "it's possible that my assessment is a little harsh, and it certainly is only formed on the basis of my very cursory contact with Golden Key. As I say, I've not been to any of their events post-introductory session and only cast an eye over the newsletters occasionally. So maybe I get as little out of it as I do because I put so little in." On Dit asked a former member of the Adelaide Golden Key Chapter executive, Sharon Traucki, whether she could explain this dissatisfaction students had with Golden Key: My insight has been that the organisation has huge potential, which is clearly being reached in the U.S. chapters, but that in Australia, especially Adelaide, so far it remains untapped.

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Part of the problem is a lack of direction.

Chapters pick a charity and organise events around that, but overall the organisation's purpose beyond networking possibilities is somewhat vague. For Australian students, who often require significant tempting to join, let alone participate in extracurriculars at uni, the result has been an organisation that has not captured the immense talent that it has access to because it has not yet been able to provide members with sufficient motivation to engage in its activities. Golden Key doesn't have trouble signing members - who doesn't like the ego boost you get from a letter saying you're about to join an elite academic society? - but it does have difficulty in getting members to do anything beyond coming to their induction ceremony. Of course it is assumed that members put their studies first, and this is often used to explain the lack of participation, but in my experience with other university societies, you need to offer members something worthwhile to get their teeth stuck into if you ever want to see them again.

It would seem that though this is a problem for Golden Key, it is also a riposte to its critics. The national organisation would surely claim that it can’t be held responsible for a cultural problem, or a lack of student interest. Ultimately, the organisation is meeting its black-letter obligations on all fronts: it discloses financial performance and seems to be complying with best-practice benchmarks; it protects student privacy by ensuring it receives the names only of applicants – Universities deal with the prospective applicant list; and attempts to provide services which entice student participation and increased membership. There must be a point, the organisation would undoubtedly claim, when it can be said to be doing all it can.

All things said, one question remains – is this an organisation you should join? Well, to any precocious first-years out there who might be prospective members, I would simply say that ego is a poor decision-maker.

To Inform & Infotain Sex, scandal, politics, policy, and the quest for quality coverage.

Remember those days that you wished you could watch ABC Kids all day? Well now you can - thanks to digital technology and the ABC’s latest offshoot, ABC3. Now suppose, being older now, you are no longer interested in kids’ television. Suppose, being an adult, you’re into more grown-up things like impressing the opposite sex without resorting to throwing a ball at the back of their head, getting sloshed on the weekend, and reading newspapers. Suppose finally, that when you read a newspaper, you actually read it for the news.

Now, what happens when your conception of news isn’t what you are delivered? Like many people, I felt strangled by the recent state election coverage by most of the South Australian media. Michelle Chantelois is to me, what Voldemort is to wizard-kind. Her story, regardless of its validity, was flogged gratuitously by most of the mainstream media from late November 2009 until the end of the election campaign.

After Labor narrowly escaped with government, she disappeared from the face of the planet. It was saucy stuff, but my greatest concern for myself as a media consumer is what to expect from the press in future elections and, indeed, news delivery in general. Could it be possible that the news is edging ever closer to becoming a fusion of information and entertainment?

Australia is on the cusp of a media revolution. The internet is a valuable tool for news delivery, and coupled with the vast potential of digital television and radio broadcasting, has created many different ways for consumers to get their news fix. However, despite these advancements in media delivery, it remains impor-

Words and image, Matthew Agius

tant to ensure that our reporters and analysts are delivering consistent levels of quality journalism, and that the standard of news delivery is not diluted through the increased competition and scope that digital technology provides.

If we reconsider the March state election – our local press consistently pushed angles of scandal, despite the campaign being battled across a number of policy areas. The way in which the media took to Michelle Chantelois’ sex allegations in late 2009, and continued to publish her claims through the election campaign instead of investigating, in detail, the policy claims of both sides of politics, highlights the shifting attitudes of the local press to content delivery. Infotainment, it seems, is fast becoming a norm in terms of news delivery in a market driven by competition.

Scandal, politics and media frenzy now go hand-in-hand. The Chantelois saga was on the front page of The Advertiser on numerous occasions during the election – and was covered as an issue on a weekly (sometimes daily) basis.

The fact that Chantelois was interviewed on AdelaideNow before the Premier, Treasurer or Opposition Leader highlights the mainstream media’s changing attitudes towards news delivery. Scandal, evidently, sells newspapers and builds website hits.

That is not necessarily a bad thing. Some may feel that the Rann/Chantelois saga was worthy of regular feature in the print and broadcast press. As consumers, we are entitled to be given what we want – after all, we pay for it – and the affair allegations timely for the media to add some spice to what was set to be an otherwise

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The rot at the heart of our media isn’t just about scandal and personality

uneventful campaign. When the allegations arose, Labor was cruising toward an easy election win – but by March 20, they had narrowly escaped with government, despite a huge swing against them and the loss of two key seats held by former mainstays of the ALP benches.

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More recently, we have seen the change in Prime Ministership lead to, not only a detailed critique of the Parliamentary Labor party’s background ops, but also, for at least a week, a nostalgic look at the new girl on the block – from her origins as a pneumonia-inflicted Welsh Migrant, Adelaide schoolgirl and Melbournian lawyer, to her political rise and her challenge for the top job. The life-story of Julia Gillard is yet another example of the personality politics now pushed by our media.

The rot at the heart of our media however isn’t just about scandal and personality. When a political party announces a policy – it is reasonable to expect journalists to make enquiries regarding it. In the leadup to the State election, Mike Rann walked out of a press conference at the Lyell McEwen Hospital when media questioning focussed on the continuing affair allegations, as opposed to Labor health policy.

The sad thing is Mike Rann’s personal life won’t affect the average street punter. Health policy

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As consumers, we are entitled to be given what we want – after all, we pay for it

will. Ultimately, party policies are funded by the taxpayer, and it is in our interests that they be critically evaluated. This can’t always be done best by the opposition, who are, after all, hardly neutral. The role of independent questioner and evaluator often falls to the press.

All too frequently during the state election, news outlets across all mediums simply aired the major parties’ attacks on one another, instead of getting down to the hard-work of actually decoding their election promises, their ‘spin’ and their campaign attacks. Issues such as education, infrastructure, water and industry took a back seat to the major parties trading blows over stadia and hospitals – and the major outlets seemed happy to focus solely on those battles.

Political attacks and flashy promises are news – but electorates have no way of knowing the credibility of such claims unless someone does the work in to find out for them. That’s why we have the media. The major outlets were willing to do a significant fraction of the news delivery we needed – reporting on what was said by Politician X or Issue Group Y - but often fell short of establishing the ‘truth’ behind it all.

New digital technology is poised to deliver Australians a truly diverse world of content. The ABC is set to shortly launch a 24-hour news channel and the main free-to-air broadcasters have committed their new digital frequencies to creating everything from Foxtel-inspired entertainment and sports-only channels, to stations devoted entirely to children’s programming. In

terms of news coverage, the internet remains one of the key ports to gain information from reputable news sources, but also from the ‘blogosphere’ of user-generated content. Wherever the digital revolution takes us, it is important that our public, commercial and community media corporations commit to high quality journalism. Diluting content and resources across many media interests is the worst possible way to embrace new digital possibilities – and will be of significant detriment to the public consciousness, education and information. Infotainment has a place in our media future, but so does traditional, honest, uninspiring information.

Keeping information and entertainment separate will always be important in maintaining a well-informed society. It’s conducive to the democracy of choice by allowing consumers to decide where they want to get their news, how they want to get it, and what they will do with the information once they’ve got it.

It’s worth taking a moment to acknowledge those who bucked the trend. In the State election, the ABC Mornings show of Matthew Abraham and David Bevan was well-regarded as a strong, politically-questioning radio program.

Greg Kelton had a knack of breaking down spin into useful information for readers of the Advertiser, and the Independent Weekly covered the election with a great degree of depth for a lowcirculation paper. The main free-to-air networks too had at least one commentator who was able to provide a decent analysis of the campaign on the nightly news (Mike Smithson and Seven News did this very well).

As yet there appears to be no hope of personal scandal simmering beneath the identities of our two Federal major party leaders. Any media-attacks on the individuals have been primarily directed towards Abbott’s habitual bouts of speaking off-script, and Julia’s knifing the back of her predecessor. Let’s hope it doesn’t get any worse. If Michelle Chantelois does anything for this state, let her make us appreciate the difference between information and entertainment.

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the Fog The heady glitter of imagined cities.

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Words and photographs, Connor O'Brien When the sun sets in Beijing, it can turn a juicy tomato red in the far distance. Light comes scattered through a haze of fine particles, referred to as particulates, which can cause

inexplicable and often beautiful chromatic distortions, but most often act as a translucent barrier between earth and sky. Beijingers call it ‘The Fog’, as though the city perpetually rests on the precipice of a shutter-thwacking storm. The Chinese Government’s official air quality index is notoriously lax, leading the US Embassy in Beijing to publish

an hourly reading on Twitter (@BeijingAir) with a particular emphasis on the tiny particles smaller than 2.5 micrometres that are known to cause respiratory problems. While I am in the city, the PM2.5 measure rarely drops below ‘Very Unhealthy’. Just one level higher is ‘Hazardous.’

Every large Chinese city has The Fog. One after-

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noon, in mid-July, a billowing black cloud eats up the Shanghai skyline, sits there for half an hour, and then dissipates. To exercise outside at this time – to, say, go jogging – becomes a choking hazard. Photographs of Chongqing tend to have the look of bad impressionist works from a distance, the horizon flecked and smudged with the heavy breathing of industry.

I’m in China to attend the Shanghai Expo, likely to become – by a sizeable margin – the largest World’s Fair ever held. Spread over five square kilometres of prime, smack-bang-middleof-the-city waterfront property (18,000 families were relocated in preparation for the event), the Expo drew over 450,000 visitors the day I attended, most hailing from distant Chinese provinces. (As I’m waiting in line, a local points to the huge number of ‘disabled’ Chinese who are being sped through a special entrance, and whispers that they’re mostly faking – if you arrive at the Expo in a wheelchair, you’re entitled to jump the queues). Over six months, organisers tell me they expect 75 million tickets to be sold, maybe as many as a hundred million. As a point of comparison, Disneyland nowadays manages a tenth of those figures over the same period of time.

Shanghai Expo promotional materials brand the event as a ‘grand gathering of the world cultures’. Of course, that’s sugar-coating it. It might be more accurate to understand the Expo as a kind of naff global nightclub, each country tarting up, peacocking, in a thoroughly transparent bid at seducing would-be tourists and foreign investors.

Lyndall, a genial, no-nonsense woman who speaks in broad Strine, directs us through the

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Australia pavilion. ‘Pavilion’, here, is a misnomer: the imposing $83 million structure houses a 1000 seat theatre, banquet hall, food court, and a 160-metre-long walk-through diorama, in which the defining events of Australian history are depicted by way of cartoon figures in the style of Disneyland’s It’s a Small World. The entire experience is the epitome of camp – a deliberate reduction of Australian culture to a variety of colourful, hollow, and non-threatening images: nondescript didgeridoos protrude from the floor, a Bob Hawke doll rushes a grotesquely disfigured sheep, and, in a full-wall photomontage, surfer Layne Beachley is depicted larger-than-life as the country’s greatest contemporary cultural export. At the end of the walkway, visitors are herded into the theatre for a final ten-minute audio-visual extravaganza. Six metre-high convex video screens rise from the floor and begin to whirl around the stage, with speakers blaring the chant “building better life, building better life” to fast-changing images of deserts and beaches, mountains and cities.

As the lights brighten, visitors rush along, jostling, pointing, and snapping photographs. I get asked for my picture twice in five minutes.

Basically, the idea is to race through each pavilion as quickly as possible in order to reach a desk by the exit, at which point a staff member will stamp your official Expo 2010 souvenir passport. With over a hundred national pavilions scattered around the grounds, and with

hour-long queues for entry to some pavilions, a grey market passport completion ‘service’ has emerged, with fully-stamped passports selling for 420 Yuan ($70) on Chinese auction sites.

For lower-income provincial Chinese, the Expo represents a good-enough substitute for international travel. For these attendees, visiting the Australia pavilion will come to be remembered fondly as their ‘Australian holiday’.

The New Zealand pavilion goes a step further, offering the complete 2000-square-metre travel experience: on the sloping roof of their pavilion, a South Island forest has been constructed, replete with hot springs and ‘flowering’ New Zealand flora. (The ‘flowers’ are plastic, because of an incompatible climate, but have been stuck to the branches of actual imported New Zealand natives).

The Expo is an imagined utopia in which every country can exist as it wishes to exist, unburdened by the imperfections of reality or the failures of history. Indonesia projects itself as an environmental Eden (the world’s ‘Cradle of Biodiversity’), with LCD screens planting visitors underwater, in the midst of an ocean teeming with sea life – while, several thousand kilometres away, rapid industrialisation and population pressures push the country to the point of ecological catastrophe. The walls of the South African pavilion are plastered with generic photographs of hard-working scientists and smiling multicultural faces, matched with the symbolically-drained buzzwords ‘discover’, ‘experience’, and ‘explore’ – no mention to be made, of course, of the half-million rapes committed annually in the country, perennial xenophobia, income inequality or mass unemployment. San Marino, a landlocked European mountain nation with a population of only 30,000, can, within the confines of the bizarro world of the Expo, reconstruct itself, albeit haphazardly, as a true world power. Third World nations, meanwhile, seem to be constructing grand pavilions for the sake of proving a point: “We just spent a hundred million here, and you still think we’re poor?”

Cutting right on through these constructed paradises, though, is The Fog. From one end of the grounds, pavilions in the far distance retreat into a cloudy half-existence. By its very nature, The Fog comes to represent everything the Chinese government can’t cover up: a developing nation in denial, blundering and stretched to capacity. You can move the factories and power plants out of sight, erect security fences around the sweatshops, but The Fog will drift.

In the lead-up to the Expo, the Chinese government attempted to ‘clean up’ Shanghai, just as they scrambled to prettify Beijing several years back in the lead-up to the 2008 Olympic Games.

Running under the slogan “Be Civilised for the Expo”, Shanghainese were discouraged from wearing pyjamas in the streets. Street markets were shut down, or relocated. New subway lines were opened, and city night-lights almost uniformly replaced for added ‘bang’. Police presence was boosted, with old cops returning from retirement to once again patrol the streets. With the Expo all about national branding, the Chinese recognise that Shanghai is, in a sense, their own pavilion – a marketing space in which to carefully shape the outsider’s understanding of the possibilities ‘New China’ might represent.

The presence of The Fog, hovering above Shanghai – and, by extension, above every pavilion, smothering attendees – pushes the entire Expo into farce: an exercise in a strange kind of bankable repression. Are Expo visitors really so naïve as to believe that the fullness of any culture can be reduced to a marionette show, several choice catch-phrases, and some outrageous pyrotechnics? Or is there an understanding that Australia, for example, is infinitely more complex that its pavilion might allow? The truth is that every country has its own Fog – an irrepressible, unpalatable truth that just won’t blow away.

And sometimes, as when the setting sun cuts through in blood red, The Fog can be beautiful.

Photographs Pages 10-11: theatre in the Australia pavilion Page 12: The Fog, Shanghai

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Success, Sorrow, Sangria.

The World Cup, from the sofa.

Words, Mateo Szlapek-Sewillo & Alex Gordon-Smith Photographs, Julius Ross

Asamoah Gyan strides to the penalty spot, with the hopes of an entire continent resting uncomfortably on his shoulders. The 24-yearold Ghanaian plays in France, where he earns more than you and I do in a year, in a week. But right now, he looks like a boy lost in the supermarket, parents nowhere to be seen. It is the last possible minute –

added time of extra time. If Gyan scores, then an African team will finally have made a semi-final. In that moment, when the ridiculous seems entirely possible, it feels as though this is perfectly, neatly symbolic of Africa’s struggles. He has a part of the world at his feet, and is briefly, mercifully, the most important man in it. But 12 yards, almost 11 metres,

looks like 12 miles. Gyan, the beneficiary of a Machiavellian handball incident, smacks the Jabulani ball into the crossbar, and it ricochets into the crowd. He slumps to the ground, inconsolable. I don’t know if the tears started then or later. Ghana still has their chance in the penalty shootout, but their race is run. They succumb to the taciturn Uruguayans. It is a sporting tragedy for a continent that has fully invested itself into

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eleven men called the Black Stars. It is one of the four quarter-finals of the World Cup – the world championships of football.

Now let me tell you about a good Margarita, ideally you want to use good quality silver tequila (I suggest José Cuervo Clásico), Cointreau, fresh lime juice, a scoop of lemon sorbet and some salt for the rim of the glass. However, one may opt

for gold tequila for its ‘shotting’ prowess, triple sec for its friendly inexpensiveness, and lemons, easily hunted down in suburban front yards. At the first whistle, shots go down. Lick, sip, suck, jabulani!

32 teams play 64 games over the space of four weeks, participating in a truly astonishing qua-

drennial event rightly called one of the biggest in the world. A cumulative audience of 26 billion people watched the last World Cup, the underwhelming 2006 tournament in Germany. It gets bigger each time, taking on added commercial, political and emotional significance. It is right to call it more than an exhibition of sporting prowess: held up to the light, the game of football shows all its blemishes. Namely the unfiltered cynicism of players willing to do pretty much whatever it takes to win, ugly nationalism of some supporters (see: the English), and snatches of reporting that slips through FIFA’s (the sport’s governing body) greedy hands about just how uncertain the economic benefits to Africa of staging the event are. They are glossed over by delirious fans, and scrutinised by naysayers. The thing about football though, or at least the thing about the way I perceive it, is that everything else more or less ceases to matter, 90 minutes at a time.

A conversation about recent African migrant intakes broke out between two Australian gentlemen. One of the two boorishly repeated stale criticisms of how said migrants did not accept ‘Australian culture’ and how ‘if they don’t like it, I’ll help them pack’. The more passive of the two decided to steer the conversation toward a common ground for the two, the World Cup. The negative of the two began pronouncing his disappointment with the Italian national team and how poorly they had taken to games. ‘Surely you’re following Australia though?’ the other queried. ‘Australia? Why the fuck would I be going for them? Look at me, I’m Italian through and through’. The passive stared blankly at the negative, realising that any more conversation with this man would result in severe brain injury.

Though there are many ways to play football, as with any sport. I tend to derive an aesthetic and, yes, an intellectual gratification from it when it is played well. The angles created by passing and movement, and the occasionally outrageous moments of skill are the nuggets of gold that make panning through silt completely

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worthwhile. Though its frequently dullard practitioners would imply otherwise, football is as cerebral a game as any can be. However, the World Cup adds two perhaps more easily relatable dimensions. Firstly, it is a fascinating proxy for the political manoeuvrings of nations. It inflames and relaxes tensions between countries.

Who is to say that the game between Argentina and England at the 1986 World Cup, perhaps the sport’s most famous, did not take on extra significance because of the war the two nations had fought four years earlier? Look up ‘football war’ and you’ll learn that football was identified as the catalyst for a four-day war fought between Honduras and El Salvador in 1969. Secondly, the game’s stature means it is even within the boundaries of reason to suggest that a nation’s football team represents a composite of its sporting and, yes, even national identity. Results in important club and international games have resulted in stock market stumbles, birth rate spikes, and, infamously, the murder of players (Colombian defender Andrés Escobar’s own goal against the United States in 1994 is widely believed to have resulted in his shooting upon return to the country).

For an Australian, love for the beautiful game is a true commitment. Games begin at 9pm at the earliest and can take a person all the way to six in the morning. And where to watch this oh so beautiful game for us the poor and wretched that are not graced with the imprisonment of Foxtel? The sad answer, my pretties, is either the flashy luxury of the casino with fellow stars of the human race, or the Rosemont, two steps up from the gates of hell. The World Cup, thankfully, does not yet belong to the all-devouring monster that is our friend ‘the workingman’s’ Rupert Murdoch, it is free to roam and graze on the wild plains of SBS, ever watchful for an illadvised bout of Craig Foster’s commentary.

In the end, Spain won the 2010 tournament, making them only the third side to hold both the World Cup and European Championship tro-

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phies at once. Though there was little doubt La Furia Roja (The Red Fury) deserved to end their drought, the circumstances left some feeling cold.

This side, one of the last to play an avowedly expansive, possession-intensive style, ended the tournament with both the least amount of goals scored and conceded of any World Cup winners in history, and won each of their four latter-round games 1-0. It left some favouring the dynamic Germans, mercurial Argentines, or even the newly defensive Dutch. But they all ultimately came up short.

There was a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. Despite their divine right, Uruguay had been knocked out of the World Cup, by comparative minnows Australia. This was the moment that soccer became football in this country, when people who had derided a game they had never really given a chance were captured in a frantic moment of exhilarating disbelief. They saw a man rip off his jersey in absolute delight and sprint the length of a field waving it in triumph above his head, tears threatening to explode from his joy filled eyes.

Aloisi you glorious bastard, Schwartzer you king among men.

Critics argue Spain isn’t as good a team as the one that became European Champions in 2008.

This is perhaps true, but they’re still World Champions. And try telling a Madrileño that you think their achievement rings hollow. Or even a Catalan or, God forbid, a Basque. Spain’s World Cup victory did more than years of staccato peace talks to foster a sense of cultural oneness.

The day after a million-strong march in Barcelona demanding Catalunya’s secession, there was the same number decked out in red and yellow, supporting the King’s Spain. Cars were honking in deepest Andalucía, Vizcaya, the Canary Islands, and, of course, Madrid itself. The goal scorer, Andrés Iniesta, who goes by the nickname Draculino, or little Dracula, took off his shirt to reveal the message “Dani Jarque: siempre

con nosotros” (Dani Jarque: always with us), a tribute to his friend, a fellow professional who died suddenly 12 months ago. It was a beautiful, sobering moment of clarity when all around him was going crazy.

The World Cup Final is an event to be shared.

Friends are invited over, triple buttered popcorn packets are bought and FIFA moves are perfected. This is the essence of the Australian football fan; snacks, mates and inter-game stimulants.

The missing ingredient is a little bit of Dutch, Spanish style. Nothing gets in the way of the final, except perhaps a diabolical bowl of sangria containing four litres of cask wine, one point five litres of sparkling red, a bottle of strawberry schnapps, a bottle of brandy and a two-litre bottle of lemonade poured over some fruit. For kids who aren’t calculators, that equates to 85.4

standard drinks over nine litres. Needless to say, those of us who bore the brunt of this evil did so at our peril.

Spaniards and Dutch alike wake up on Tuesday afternoon with red eyes to match Spanish jerseys. The celebrations, themselves a storied part of World Cup history, go long into the night, even for the losing Netherlands. The moment the teams step off the plane (the Spanish didn’t even wait that long), it’s party time. The players get as hammered as the spectators, as the pressure melts away. The monkey on Spanish sporting backs, which had grown to King Kong-like proportions, has been shaken off. For the rest of us, the next day was filled with staining the earth with our rose-coloured bile and seeking pity. We were all Dutchmen that day; we all felt the pain.

See you in Brazil.

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The Beautiful Game Football as freedom Bill Shankly, the legendary Liverpool manager, once said that ‘football isn’t a matter of life or death, it’s far more important than that.’

While this may seem like an overly hysterical cliché, football fans can understand it. The values, scope and escapism promoted by the sport Pele called 'the beautiful game' transcend any individual player, club, match or tournament. There is no better example of this than the World Cup. It is played every four years with around

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Words, Tomas Macura Photograph, Jake Bellucci

two-hundred nations attempting to qualify and subsequently lift what is the Holy Grail in football.

Football is the ultimate egalitarian sport.

The only necessary requirements are a vaguely round object (a bottle cap, tin can or plastic bags wound together with rubber bands will do in the absence of a proper ball), an area to play on and some friends. Hell, they don't even have to be friends, though it's more fun if they are. It is not

exclusionary through cost or physical attributes – the short, tall, fat and skinny can all play. The game is filled with examples of destitute street urchins honing their skills on dust bowls, growing up to become the game's greatest players.

This egalitarianism is often seen at the World Cup itself. Despite only seven nations having won the tournament, a minnow often shocks the world by getting a result against a contender and having a better than expected tournament.

Perhaps the most famous example is the thenunknown North Korea’s victory over Italy in 1966, then there's upsets like Argentina’s defeat at the hands of Cameroon in 1990 and South Korea’s captivating run to the semi finals as one of the host nations in 2002.

Cynics are quick to point out the ludicrous transfer fees and wages of players in the biggest clubs, the hooliganism endemic in countries such as Turkey, Poland and Argentina, and the corruption at the highest echelons of FIFA (world football’s governing body). However, while the world’s most popular game has its problems, it is hard to see how they detract from the point being made here. Which is that overall, football is a force for good in the world because it bridges cultural divides and creates a common language which all of its followers understand.

These connections are forged at the grass-roots levels rather than the sanitised, corporate forum of the modern professional game. One of the best ways to make friends overseas is to begin an impromptu game – others will soon join in.

Football allows anyone around the world to be part of a community that promotes respect and diversity and rallies against racism. Other sports may advance similar values but do not have the global reach and accessibility of football which gives it its power and uniqueness.

Throughout history, football has been used as a political mechanism to overcome various forms of oppression. The persecuted black population of South Africa, hosts of the 2010 World Cup and the first African nation to stage the tournament, used football as a vessel by which to rebel against apartheid. A grass-roots,

“

…no other sport is as finely woven into the daily lives of so many people around the world...

mixed race national league was created, allowing anti-apartheid activists to promote democratic change at football stadiums. Similarly, fans of Polish club Lechia Gdańsk were at the heart of the Solidarity movement in the 1980s, using the medium of football to spread anti-communist sentiments.

The positive impacts of football can also be seen through various formal initiatives. Football for Hope is a project sponsored by FIFA which is setting up centres around the developing world that provide education, health services and the opportunity to play football in a structured environment for impoverished children. Another initiative is the homeless World Cup, which gives homeless people around the world the opportunity to travel, make friends and represent their country. While the world’s serious security and economic problems will not be solved by football, it provides a valuable source of escapism for those living in trying circumstances. Perhaps football is simply the beneficiary of its global reach and appeal, but misty-eyed romantics like to think it's something more.

Certainly no other sport is as finely woven into the daily lives of so many people around the world. The day before the recent Colombian presidential election, a candidate felt the need to remind citizens about the importance of voting via a televised address due to his concern that voters would be distracted by ‘the pleasurable time of watching the World Cup.’ So whether you, like me, are a football fanatic or are completely uninterested in sports, it is important to understand that football has always been much more than just a game.

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Broadcasting Community How well does the radio really represent us?

Words, Jonathan Brown Illustration, Alexandra Weiland

Radio has always been one of my favourite outlets as both something to consume and as something to create. I grew up listening to SAFM and singing along to music I probably shouldn't admit to.

I then moved into my teens and my tastes shifted toward triple j and the odd bit of FiveAA (nothing like some crazy redneck chatter!). Nowadays, you're most likely to hear me listening to Radio Adelaide or ABC Local Radio. My tastes have changed a lot throughout my youth. As I've gone through different stages in my development I've had many varied priorities, values and beliefs. The radio stations I've listened to over the years serve as metaphors for these different periods. The SAFM years represent a youthful innocence (being unaware that there was anything better out there), the triple j years represent the search for “coolness� (trying to be part of the in crowd) and the Radio

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Adelaide years represent finding my own voice. My fascination with radio led me to volunteer in community radio at seventeen and eventually to my current position as the youth representative for the Community Broadcasting Association of Australia. I've spent a lot of time in this position thinking about how the media plays a role in our development and how all parts of the media industry can better serve young people.

Throughout the decades, Australian governments have stepped in where the commercial media industry has chosen to not serve the public. The two major outlets for this have been public and community broadcasting.

Public broadcasters are governmentfunded organisations that are given a specific charter of services to deliver to the public. Community broadcasters are volunteer-driven and born out of community demand and sup-

port. Governmental support of these two media sectors is significant considering the value of broadcast spectrum. Where commercial media are required to pay millions of dollars for their right to broadcast, public and community broadcasters are given free access to the airwaves on that basis that they fulfil some kind of public need. The service of “youth” is considered one of these key public needs. This space in the airwaves is worth millions (possibly billions) of dollars to government, so its allocation is an important decision, one that Australian governments have preserved for decades.

There are a number of media organisations around Australia that target the youth demographic, but few with a truly national focus.

Back in the 1970s, the Government identified the need for an alternative youth voice in the media and established 2JJ, a Sydney based alternative music and youth station that would, over many decades, expand to become the national triple j network. Triple j is a part of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) and is classified as a public broadcaster. To better understand what the ABC and triple j aim to do, I spoke with Kate Dundas, the director of ABC Radio. According to her, one of the corporation's major roles is to “provide specialist programs and content for smaller groupings which wouldn't make it in any other sense.” Triple j forms a big part of that role for the ABC. Back in April, an article in The Australian [“ABC radio bid to emulate the beeb”, April 2010] criticised triple j for an average listener age of 34 and suggested that big changes to the national youth broadcaster were in the works. So how does the organisation measure success in the youth market? “A lot of ways... we have traditional ratings like anyone else: web trends, concert ticket sales, the number of votes in the Hottest 100, the number of CD sales for the Hottest 100, mobile stats and magazine stats. We get an overall picture

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of the health of the network. The primary one for triple j really is how we're going in that 18-24 demographic, where, I'm happy to say, the audience is building, building, building.

And no, the stats in that article were not true about the average age of the triple j listener.” In many ways, triple j can consider itself a success when you look at the overall commercial performance of its many outputs, but is this any real indication of its engagement with young people? At what point does it stop being an alternative and become part of the mainstream?

I've been speaking to friends, acquaintances and a number of industry people about triple j and how they feel about the youth network's performance. It tends to elicit some rather passionate responses. For every young person who loves triple j, there seems to be one that hates it with a passion. Those who are a bit older often express thoughts of the network “losing its way” relative to what it was a decade ago or more. The problem is that for the sake of consistency triple j has to market to a fairly specific section of young Australians. Triple j's music playlist acts as an alternative to commercial pop music, which is an important part of its role, but so many young Australian's like pop music and dislike the alternative. The problem is that it's impossible to define what “young people” like and to try to do so would inevitably be condescending. If triple j tried to cater to every type of young person, it's programming would be wildly inconsistent, and not really engaging or representative of any youth demographic. The fact that the network has relative success within the market it targets is a good thing and many young Australians do enjoy the network, but what about those of us who feel it doesn't represent our taste?

In the community broadcasting sector, there's many different approaches to “youth media”.

I've just spent two weeks with SYN, a youth led radio, tv and multimedia organisation based in

Melbourne. The organisation has one overarching rule – when you turn twenty-six years old, it's time to move on. Apart from that, they pretty much cater to anyone who wants to get involved. Unlike triple j, SYN caters to a number of different audiences. During the day you might hear high school students playing Justin Bieber and at night you might hear obscure underground grunge. You might hear about human rights in the morning and about shopping in the afternoon. General Manager Georgia Webster says “when SYN was created there was a real commitment to engaging young people by having young people talking to them – creating the radio.” In the two weeks I spent at SYN I listened to a lot of the station. It was wildly inconsistent, and I loved it. Not because I'm a particular fan of Justin Bieber (even after my S Club 7 years) but because it was young people talking to young people on their own terms. I came away from my time there more inspired and passionate about young people in the media than I've ever been.

Triple j and SYN are just two perspectives of what it means to represent youth. If you look across the country there are many different examples of the media industry representing youth. Commercial radio has the youth-skewed Nova network and in television, Channel Ten's key audience is the youth demographic. There are actually a lot of media organisations that purport to represent or target young people, but too often they resort to the lowest common denominator. They make gross assumptions about what it means to be a young person and try to form an identity for us, without any process of dialogue or consultation. Of course, for commercial media and their advertisers this is in their best interests – after all, young people are a market with disposable income waiting to be spent. Most people are fine with adopting mainstream commercial identities and commercial media have their place in our society, but the rest of us deserve a voice too. That's

why organisations like triple j and SYN are important.

I personally find commercial media condescending towards young people. I like to think we're worth more than just commercial units and that our voices should matter. The problem with designating triple j as our one major alternative youth network is that it's simply too much to expect from one organisation. Their presence is really important to many people across Australia, but in order to provide a consistent service they'll inevitably always cut some young people out. The key thing for triple j moving forward is that it does in fact remain as an alternative to the commercial sector. What we really need is more choice.

Young people are too diverse to fairly represent within the scope of one organisation or to lump into one market. The temptation for government and the community is to tell ourselves that because we fund one major national youth network that our work is done and that youth is “represented”. What's really exciting about SYN is that they're teaching young people to make their own media and is giving them a number of platforms to do it on. They treat youth for what it is – a developmental period. Sure, it doesn't have the consistency of an organisation like triple j, but it adds to the choices for Melbourne's youth. Commercial, public and community media all play an important role in the representations of young people, but we must remember not to rest on our laurels and say that we've done our work on the basis of a couple of a few key organisations under the banner of “youth”.

Jonathan Brown is the youth representative for the Community Broadcasting Association of Australia and former Student Radio director at the University of Adelaide. His views are his own and do not necessarily represent the views of either organisation.

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SCRAPBOOK - contemporary and/or local culture, high and/or low -

Stan Mahoney's The Complete Home for the Def & Other Stories Stan Mahoney’s is surely the finest debut collection of short fiction and reportage to be coated in a cover of ruby red menstrual blood (it’s times like these we wish we could spring for colour).

Mahoney, a former On Dit editor, former drifter dude, and all-round nice guy, writes about the life and death of Excitement Machine, bodily fluids, offset printing, Clementine Ford, and Home for the Def, Adelaide's most prolific fart-recording musical whirlwind.

Seek it out at Format (15 Peel St, Adelaide).

Adelaide University's Squat Toilets There’s a new building on the block. But the best thing about it hasn’t been advertised shamelessly by the uni. In fact, it hasn’t been mentioned much at all. This is a grave error, but one we will now rectify. If you’ve had the pleasure of ducking into the building to… um, relieve yourself, you’d already know that Innova 21 has… squat toilets! No longer will your buttocks have to paste themselves on the unsanitary ceramic lid visited by so many buttocks prior! No longer will your bowels be bent as you push and squeeze! Never again will a particularly large stool cause water to splash onto your cold behind! From now on, you’ll be able to shit just like people do in the many nations to our north. Squat toilets, generally acknowledged to be healthier and more hygienic than regular toilets, are just what this campus has needed. Head over to Innova 21 and try them out!

Best Coast's Crazy For You Super good lo-fi pop, full of sunshine and good things. All this from a girl who used to be in a drone ‘band’. Boyfriend is some tune.

Mention it to Connor to get him all starry-eyed.

Box Elder's Rewind the Fall EP Adelaide band channels the spirit(s) of Deerhunter, Liars and early ‘90s Sonic Youth to great effect on debut EP. Dreamy vocals prove a delightful balance to the triple guitar swirl (see: Microdots for the near-perfect realisation of said synthesis).

El Guincho's Piratas de Sudamerica EP

Also on the decks: • Arcade Fire's The Suburbs

Barcelona-based troubadour, who goes by the sobriquet Pablo Díaz-Reixa during the day, turns toward pre-rock Latin American musical styles.

Exactly the right combination of fun and musical snobbery for Mateo.

(Aren't 'Win Butler' and 'Régine Chassagne' the coolest Franglais intellectual-type rock star names ever?)

• Perfume Genius's Learning (29 cathartic minutes from used and abused Seattler, Mike Hadreas, 'Mr. Petersen' being the uncomfortable personal highlight).

Judging a book by its cover Picking out books for hairdressers.

Words, Gemma Parker Illustrations, Louise Vodic

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A

bout six years ago I was working in a bookstore in London when a young woman came up to me and said: “This is rather embarrassing, but I don’t like to read. I mean, I don’t like to read books. I like to read magazines. But I’d like to read a book… What I mean is… Do you have any books that are kind of like magazines?” “Sure,” I said. An armful of books-like-magazines later, she said she thought she had the hang of it. “Basically I look for the books with swirly writing and pastel colours.”

I stared at her. “Do you work in graphic design?” She laughed. “No. I’m a hairdresser.” “Well, anyway. That’s exactly right. Look for covers with champagne bottles on them, high heels, lipstick, confetti, that kind of thing. Good luck.”

This made me wonder. The old adage ‘don’t judge a book by its cover’ is meant to imply that you shouldn’t make assumptions about content based on

appearances. While I certainly believe this to be true when talking about people (or cakes, say) I find it increasingly untrue of books. Modern book covers are a shrewd mixture of practical advertising strategies and dime-store psychology and they’re increasingly sophisticated in their representation of content.

Senior buyer at Foyles Bookstore, Heather Baker spends her days looking at book covers and deciding whether or not to stock in one of the world’s largest bookstores. “I judge books by their covers because often there is nothing else to judge by,” she says. “I am the person who puts the books in the shop, and if it has a rubbish jacket I know people are less likely to pick it up.”

Book covers are first and foremost advertisements for the book. Book covers are not designed by their authors: they are the product of marketing and design teams in publishing houses. A book jacket is usually the product of a cover brief sent from the marketing department to the art department, explaining what they think the cover should look like, or the elements of the book that they would like to see reflected in the

cover. (You can read more about the process at author Justine Larbalestier’s blog). Furthermore, unless it is written by Stephen King, the book cover is generally the only advertisement the book will receive. This singular ad, therefore, a collection of static images and text, is crucial to the commercial success of the book.

Most of us are equipped with a catalogue of images that we associate with certain concepts. Many are subjective (like the fact that snow domes make me feel queasy) but thanks to advertising, many are part of a shared understanding. For example, puppy dogs are used to advertise toilet paper because puppy dogs equal softness. Often, while an image may not be of interest to us, we still understand what it is that the advertisement – or book cover – is trying to do.

This understanding comes from our shared catalogue of images and their associated concepts, relied upon and perpetuated by advertising. This can be seen in the vast amount of ‘derivative’ covers that reference other (successful) titles. For example, Da Vinci Code and Twilight lookalikes are rife because readers understand that publishers are using a derivative book

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cover design to imply like-mindedness.

However, while book covers are advertisements, it is important to remember that where fiction is concerned, a book cover is an advertisement for a narrative experience. It goes beyond simply putting a cat on the cover because the book is about cats. The cover must express the intention of the novel. A book that is meant to be a fun and light read should have a ‘fun and light’ cover, an intellectual book an ‘intellectual’ cover, and so it goes. But just how do you convey ‘fun’ or ‘intellectual’ (besides using Comic Sans or Helvetica)?

This is where a certain degree of pop-psychology creeps in. Modern book cover design assumes that the images that we are attracted to represent what we desire from our experience. For example, they presume that people will be drawn to pretty sketches on a book cover because they want someone to sketch life prettily for them. Similarly, readers will be drawn to harsh, stark photography when they want someone to capture the stark, harsh nature of life. Abstract covers are meant to appeal to lovers of ingenuity. And so on.

To conclude, whilst you should never judge people by the way they’re dressed, or apartments for sale by the photographs on the real estate website, in this glorious new era of über-sophisticated marketing, everyone, everywhere, can now judge books by their covers.

(You can also extrapolate this theory and judge people by the covers of the books they are reading if you’re feeling adventurous). Next time you’re in a bookstore, pick up a book you think looks interesting and test the logic for yourself.

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For those less exposed to the ‘image’ catalogue I referred to earlier, the following is a quick guideline to get you started: If you like: Desperate youths searching for meaning in a cruel and inhospitable world Look for: Covers featuring train tracks, a title written in large font, shadowy figures, cigarettes.

For example: Lean on Pete by Willy Vlautin.

If you like: Negative ruminations on the state of humanity, minimalist prose and unlikeable protagonists Look for: Covers that feature famous European paintings, caricatures in ink that are so abstract they barely look like people, cogs, steam engines or machinery in general.

For example: Perfume, by Patrick Suskind.

If you like: Non-fiction books about how French women are superior to women of other nationalities because they appreciate the simple pleasures in life (smoking and fucking) and know how to tie a scarf Look for: Covers that feature red white and blue font, impossibly skinny fashion sketches of women with small dogs and long eyelashes.

For example: Entre Nous: A Woman's Guide to Finding Her Inner French Girl by Debra Ollivier

The Grand Lodge On Dit infiltrates the Old Boy's Club.

What’s that you say? Freemasonry is just some dusty old boy’s club with allusions to Old Testament architecture artisans and a penchant for set-squares? There’s no way in denominationally-unspecific hell that it could affect me as an Adelaide student? Think again!

Ligertwood! Napier! Kintore! These names are familiar to Adelaide students for the campus buildings and streets they name, but perhaps lesser known is their more dastardly clame to fame. Along with Gouger, Wakefield, Morphett and even King Willian they share the distinction of once belonging to prominent Freemasons of yore. “Gasp!”, you gasp.

Such is the influence of this purportedly shady fellowship in Adelaide’s foundation that much of the CBD’s layout was devised by a panel of Freemasons. Quite selflessly, they also saw fit to donate their own names to mark many streets and landmarks about the city.

“Oh Dear!”, you say, for clearly this provides irrefutable evidence of a latent Freemason conspiracy at the very heart of South Australian society itself a fragile status quo teetering on the edge of a New World Order pre-ordained by our crafty, geometry obsessed forebears. There’s naught to do now but sit back and watch as Mike Rann unmasks himself as the reincarnated Benjamin Franklin and Isobel Redmond declares her alleigance to Hiram Abiff.

Calm down you loon, there’s no need to feverishly pray to The Superior Being just yet! For a start Isobel Redmond being of the female persuasion significantly diminishes the risk of both major parties being secretly led by Freemasons.

Whether you catch the bus outside its steps or sleep through lectures in its Grand Hall, the

Words, Walter Marsh

looming columns of North Terrace’s Freemason Lodge suggest a maze of dusty antiquity, intriguing secrecy, mystifying arcane rites and dastardly machinations. The dustiness is certainly accurate, but for the most part a guided tour of the Lodge (Thursdays at 2pm, a better hour and a half you will definitely spend) reveals an outfit closer to a cross between the Lions Club and some kind of garish Boy Scout club for 50+ men. Sure, it might be peppered with tantalising glimpses of Indiana Jones-esque symbolism, busts of King Solomon and a lot of prop swords, but on the whole it seems pretty harmless. Dull, even.

As pointed out at the start of the tour, Freemasonry is not a ‘secret society’, merely a society with secrets. I was then told that after an hour I would know more than a first level Freemason initiate, which to be honest wasn’t a whole lot.

In many ways its like Scouts for grown ups.

Each freemason has his own Lodge, or scout group, and even has an apron (those mysterious bits of fabric they drape across their mid-driffs) which are increasingly adorned with ornamental rosettes and symbolic jewels which confer their level of ascendancy up the ranks, the amount of “secrets” they’ve been privy too and their role in the lodge. Roles like “treasurer” and “secretary”. Spooky.

So if you’re pushing 50 and lawn bowls or a book group aren’t your cup of tea, then by all means throw on your business suit and practice your secret handshakes. But if its a thrilling, Dan Brown-esque conspiracy of wacky rituals and preposterous belief systems you have a hankering for, you’re probably better off with Scientology or Games Workshop.

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Settling in for the Winter Your guide to the winter months.

Winter has now well and truly set upon us, relinquishing its torrent of environmental bullying via grey mornings, where walks to campus are rudely interrupted by rain, cold cold nights, where one sits by the fire (or heater, if you want to ruin my stereotype) lazily playing scrabble (or checking Facebook, repeatedly, if you want to ruin my stereotype), sipping some fine hot cocoa while the low rumble of the thunderstorm comes hither.

Not that these things are that lame but, with this guide of some good things to do during these winter months, you can give the butt-groove of your couch some time to mellow out.

Marco..!Polo..!Marco..!Polo..!

Forget any preconceptions you have of Polo. Forget the image of Prince Harry prancing about on his horse, (although, for comical purposes do remember the time he fell off his horse) daintily tapping a little ball with a little mallet. Enter 2010 32

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Words, Stamatina Hasiotis Illustrations, Lillian Katsapis

polo – Bike Polo.

Legend has it that some fabled bike messengers established the game in Seattle and New York. So, already, it’s a worldly sport - ticks the box, I say.

And we have it in Adelaide!

So what is it? Adelaide Bike polo in its modern form is a game played on bicycles in a style similar to horse polo or street hockey. It combines elements of both. What you have is two teams of three and the objective of the game is to be the first team to score five goals, using a mallet (homemade if you so wish, although they are provided).

Like all other sports there’s a bunch of rules you need to follow, but to keep things brief, I recommend not being a douche and injuring yourself or others by trying to show off some of your “mad skillz”. Use your brains, people.

Down at ye olde Adelaide Bike Polo headquarters, there is even the chance of playing some international group visitors. Neil from Bike Polo Adelaide (BPA) said, “We sometimes play a friendly match between them and a local team.”

Cool. But don’t take this as an opportunity to tattoo the Southern Cross on your face.

Neil from BPA says that the main tip for success “is to not be afraid of falling off, and a little bit of hand eye coordination.” He adds, “most of the enjoyment I find in polo is the giggle inducing moves and scenarios on court. That ridiculously fluky full court goal or that stack Tom had with Colin, or the stupidity of falling off your bike when stopped. All fuelled perhaps by a couple of beers on the sideline.”

So there you have it: bikes, mallets, stacks and beer. Oh and it’s all FREE! Within the student

budget, I’d say.

Bike Polo in Adelaide is played weekly on Sundays from 1pm. In winter they play at the public courts on Wakefield Road, in the parklands just east of the CBD. To Market, to market.

Markets, from the Greek Agora, is a place where you can buy shitloads of stuff for next to nothing. Adelaide has quite a few. (Lads, if considering going with some lasses – you will, I repeat, you will end up holding shit.) Of course, we all know the glory that is the Gilles Street Market, peppered with inner-city hipsters (you know, I’ve never liked hipsters; they’re just too damned hip) who sell all sorts of things. So if you’re into all that and want to boost your street-cred by donning the finest threads you can find for under $10, try the North Adelaide Vintage Market (NAVM).

Held every 2nd and 4th Sunday (conveniently it fills the gap for when the Gilles isn’t on) at Estonian House in North Adelaide, NAVM is a pretty great indoor thing. There are clothes, there are shoes, there is jewellery, photographs and records, plus, some locally made items too! Smashing. At one time, there was this wonderful stall which was selling handmade bowties which could be used as hair clips and headbands. There is coffee, cakes and pies also. Yes. All that, and sometimes there is a compere and a DJ playing the finest hits of the 1950s and 60s. Some tips, though to make sure you always get what you want: • Haggle. The tag says $15 for a shirt

Chapter 4…

If you don’t want to exert too much energy this winter then, why not do what you do at home, out?! In other words instead of reading a book at home, you should do it somewhere with people, and cakes. This next place is one for the desert boot wearers, clutching a copy of Catcher in the Rye (again, if you want to ruin my stereotype just replace desert boots and Catcher with something else. Sigh) Renew Adelaide is an initiative of some cool dudes who want to revive Adelaide’s cultural slump by renovating empty and unused buildings and creating something with a lil’ bit of culture.

One of their efforts is the Reading Room at 153 Hindley Street. It’s not like the Barr Smith’s reading room, where the shoosher preys upon potential shooshees, but simply a space filled with old and second-hand books, some couches, and a nice view (for Hindley Street, anyway). One can sit there for ages, progressively becoming dizzy from the orange and jasmine incense, reading old issues of Bust, and then attempting a round of Go-Fish while contemplating whether or not to get some tea (It’s okay kids, you can have the tea.). I was in there once, and someone asked, “it’s basically like you’re lounge room at home but in the middle of Hindley Street?” “Yeah, basically.”

Unfortunately, it’s close to Crazy Horse. Importantly it’s close to a cafe. Also, every Saturday night at 6pm, there is a movie night; I hear there’s scrabble too. Go and have a look, it’s a pretty great place, really.

that was once worn by your nan’s friend?

Not bloody likely! I’ll give you $10 and a cookie!

• Not sure if you want something? Take it from the rack, and put it somewhere else.

A little bit sneaky, but hey, that’s potentially your crochet cardigan.

• Smelling of death? Linen spray usually sorts that out.

If you don’t get startled by the huge cardboard cut-out of Betty Boop, you’re in for a wonderful time.

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yyyyyyyyyyy yNew y y y Growth yyyyyyy yyyyyyyyyyy yyyyyyyyyyy yyyyyyyyyyy yyyyyyyyyyy yyyyyyyyyyy yyyyyyyyyyy yyyyyyyyyyy yyyyyyyyyyy yyyyyyyyyyy yyyyyyyyyyy yyyyyyyyyyy yyyyyyyyyyy Renew Adelaide

Words, Steph Lyall Photographs, Haley Kohn

yyyyyyyyyyy yyyyyyyyyyy yyyyyyyyyyy yyyyyyyyyyy yyyyyyyyyyy yyyyyyyyyyy yyyyyyyyyyy yyyyyyyyyyy yyyyyyyyyyy yyyyyyyyyyy yyyyyyyyyyy yyyyyyyyyyy yyyyyyyyyyy yyyyyyyyyyy It’s easy to grow up in Adelaide thinking that there are only two paths in life. Both are equally viable, and are arguably equally satisfying (or unsatisfying). One is to grow up in the ‘burbs, play for the same local footy club your entire life and wind up at 35 with two kids and a mortgage, living two suburbs away from your folks. The other is to plod through high school and a University degree, and then get the hell out of here. Melbourne. Sydney. New York. It doesn’t mat-

ter where, just as long as it’s not Adelaide.

Everyone complains about the lack of vibrancy in the city outside of February/March.

Councillors talk of ‘reactivating laneways’, politicians vow to plug money into ‘the arts’ and property bodies bemoan dwindling tenancy rates. But the laneways still go unused, ‘arts funding’ ends up as multi-million dollar redevelopments and empty properties still sit there decaying. Meanwhile, people with genuinely good ideas for creative initiatives or small businesses get stuck in dead end jobs because they can’t see a way to make their idea happen – council requirements are confusing, leases are too rigid and long term and rents are out of reach for ideas that are just that – ideas.

Which is where the Renew model comes in.

Participants – artists, community groups or simply anyone who has a great idea - are offered the otherwise empty spaces via low cost thirty day rolling licence to access agreements. In layman’s terms it means they can run their project very cheaply but with little security, which is not necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes all someone needs is a chance to test an idea before they commit to a long-term lease, or realise that the idea maybe wasn’t so great.

Likewise, the landlord has the option to take the space back should a commercial tenant be inspired by the new use of the

Left: Workshop at 151 Hindley St

“

They’re transforming derelict shopfronts into spaces people actually want to use... and they are offering options on the much-maligned street other than just ‘getting wasted’.

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space or a pending development gets the green light. In the meantime, the space is maintained to a reasonable standard, the street around it is rejuvenated and the social and economic sustainability of the city is boosted.

The best part is, it’s proven to work. It’s been happening for over eighteen months in Newcastle, NSW, where more than fifty projects have been given the opportunity to move into spaces. Similar pilot projects are springing up all over Australia.

At the moment, we’ve got two spaces – Workshop at 151 Hindley St, a fashion studio and retail space, and The Reading Room right next door at 153, a ‘loungeroom in the city’.

Neither are secure, but both are enjoying success. They’re transforming derelict shopfronts into spaces people actually want to use, they are keeping their participants and the wider community engaged in the city and they are offering options on the much-maligned street other than just ‘getting wasted’. It’s win-win as far as everyone can see, and with any luck the Adelaide leg of the Renew juggernaut will gain just as much momentum as its Newcastle cousins in the coming months.

Above: Workshop

Steph Lyall is a member of the Renew Adelaide committee.

Right and above right: The Reading Room

ON DIT MAGAZINE July 26, 2010

ON DIT MAGAZINE July 26, 2010

37

Living Below the Line.

Words, Jacquie Lee

Remember back in primary school, when $2 at the canteen would get you enough lollies to fuel an afternoon session of Poison Ball, and maybe even one of those weird triangular ice blocks that seemed to last forever?

In the real world, $2 won’t get you much: two-thirds of a latte; an off-peak bus ticket; a cute and quirky but relatively unsubstantial zine from Format.

But consider this – 1.4 billion people around the world living under the extreme poverty line rely on just $2 per day to survive.

That’s a measly US$1.25 to cover their food, shelter, education and healthcare expenses.

This August, I along with a team of other passionate young Adelaide Uni students will be taking up the Global Poverty Project and Oaktree Foundation’s challenge to Live Below the Line. From August 2nd to 6th, 38

ON DIT MAGAZINE July 26, 2010

we’ll be spending just $2 a day on food and raising funds for life-changing education projects both overseas and in our own backyard.

The Adelaide University Live Below the Line team will be holding a fundraising barbeque on the Barr Smith Lawns, talking to people about the campaign and looking hungry and caffeine deprived. We will be raising funds on behalf of Oaktree SA – the state branch founded by University of Adelaide student Nina O’Connor in 2007 following her participation in the Zero 7 Make Poverty History Roadtrip.

Since 2003, the Oaktree Foundation has been uniting young people to work together to end global poverty. Over the years Oaktree has created and implemented initiatives and projects such as the 2007 and 2010 Make Poverty History Roadtrips, Schools 4 Schools, and Generate,

to raise awareness, educate, empower and motivate communities to improve their future.

So how does Live Below the Line work? Participants are sponsored for their efforts, with the choice of raising funds for the Global Poverty Project’s grass roots education campaign in Australian schools, or the Oaktree Foundation’s education initiative in Cambodia. To put things in perspective, $50 will send one disadvantaged student in Cambodia to school for 6 months on a scholarship, while $200 will train a teacher for 1 year.

The South Australian leg of Live Below the Line will conclude with a banquet at the New Caledonian Hotel on Friday, August 6, where participants will no doubt be found relishing in foodstuffs other than rice and mi goreng, and feeling tipsy after one pint. With Live Below the

State of the Union.

Words, Fletcher O'Leary: AUU President

Line set to launch internationally in 2011, be one of the first to hop on the M.A.D. (Make A Difference) bandwagon and sign up today.

If you think you’re up to the challenge, head along to www. livebelowtheline.com.au to find out more about the campaign and how to sign up, or visit the Live Below the Line SA Facebook page (just search 'Live Below the Line: SA') to see who’s taking part and to make a donation.

Keep your eyes peeled and your ears open for more information about campus events.

Above: Estimate of a week's worth of food, subsisting on $2/day.

Image courtesy Oaktree.

The federal election I write this report from the floor of a small education policy forum. There’s muted excitement – the federal election was called yesterday (July 17th), and the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, has declared education to be one of her top priorities.

To be fair, the same had been said of climate change – which Gillard looks to have avoided like a particularly bad case of the plague, but there’s reason for hope considering that Gillard actually held the Education portfolio before replacing Kevin Rudd.

I’m passionate about education. Education is the game changer. It can be the solution to all of the world’s problems. Poverty, hunger, disease and inequality – education is the cure to all of them.

The first draft of this column was written before the election was called, and included a call ON DIT MAGAZINE July 26, 2010

39

Right: Learning Hub artist impressions

for everybody to enrol to vote.

Unfortunately, John Howard has arisen from the grave to give one final, decrepit finger to the young people of Australia and denied a vote to all those not on the electoral roll at 8pm on the day of the issuing of the writs (this year that was July 19). In South Australia there are around 77,000 people not enrolled – mostly young people.

In the end the choice is yours – it’s not my role to pontificate.

But I urge everyone to take a long hard look at the choices that will be presented to you. You only get a say one day every three years – you can spend the rest of the time celebrating, regretting, protesting or ignoring the result.

And I urge everyone to look at the education policies of all the parties. You may think it pretty selfish, but as I said before, education is the solution. No party will get it exactly right, and some will get it flat out wrong, but it’s up to you to make the decision 40

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which gets the chance.

Services on the Learning Hub I’ve been asked to say a few words about what’s been happening on the Learning Hub and provide a bit of comment. I’m a member of the Student Reference Group and the ‘Transforming Student Experience’ committee, which provides some oversight to the project.

Generally, I think that the project is on track. It is perhaps the most annoying thing to face students on this campus; to actually build this thing they’ve split the campus in two and in the process quadrupled the travel time from one place on campus to another – but Hughes Plaza was a dead space that looked like the town square from a psychedelic spaghetti western. Meet under the wrought iron tree for a shoot out at noon? And once it’s complete, a lot of the quirks about the central buildings on campus, such as the fact that

none of them have publicly accessible connections, will be removed.

There was always going to be a debate about how to best use the newly renovated space – and the greatest debate is turning out to be about retail outlets. There are two options being discussed, call them option one and option two. Option one is for three larger food and beverage outlets.

Option two is for a food court.

It looks like non-commercial services (like the University’s student services and your very own AUU) have very little to space.

This may not be a serious issue – many services will be available in an online format, and many services don’t need to be in the Learning Hub itself. But there are some concerns about how effective the service delivery will be, considering the amount of space available. It’s only natural, considering the comparative space given over for retail outlets, that some people aren’t

happy.

In the end, I’ll fight for what I think is best for students and as a student you too can have a say on what’s happening with the Hub. It’s well worth contributing.

Who the hell is Simon Crean and what is he going to do with my education?

The short answer is: Simon Crean is the new education minister (currently in caretaker mode), nobody really knows what he wants to do and everybody is really scared. Crean is also the old education minister, from the Keating government. No one seemed terribly impressed with him last time around, after he changed the funding structure for Universities in what was described in the most recent edition of Campus Review as ‘… probably the worst single decision in the past forty years of higher education policy.’ A lot has changed since then, but it is a worry that Gillard has moved

on from the Education portfolio without nominating a successor who is respected by Universities or students. Crean hasn’t made any major announcements yet as Education Minister, so we’ll have to wait and see where his focus will be.

Events coming up Now that you’re back, there are a few events coming up for everybody to look forward to.

Clubsfest is happening the first week back – 27th to the 29th July. Run by the Clubs Association, it’s sure to be lots of fun.

On August 3 there’ll be an exhibition for the National Campus Art Competition, and throughout August, the National Campus Band Competition heats and final.

The AUU website has an events calendar where you can see what’s happening.

One final thing I love a good conspiracy theory,

and I think that you’d be amazed to discover that there are more AUU alumni with hands on the levers of power in this country than Freemasons.

Let us continue to look at Federal politics, and the Education spokespersons (prior to regime change) of our major parties: • Labor – Julia Gillard, AUU Board Director & President in the early 1980s • Liberals – Christopher Pyne, AUU Board Director in the late ‘80s • Green – Sarah Hanson-Young, AUU Board Director less than ten years ago.

And who is reporting on this outrageous concentration of power in the hands of these old hacks?

Well, Sam Maiden, the Chief Political Editor of The Australian, is a former AUU Board Director, as is Annabel Crabb from the ABC. Just something to think about.

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41

Vietnam:

an an economic economic model model for for North North Korea?

Korea?

Primer : Your Guide to the Modern World

Words, Michael Norris

It is very easy to simplify the dynamics of the AsiaPacific. Observers tend to reduce the region to a handful of countries, such as China, Japan and India. Within that context, the increase in Vietnam’s prosperity has gone largely unnoticed. Vietnam’s economic turnaround provides economists with the second case of an Asiatic centrally-planned economy successfully adopting market principles.

The question analysts should ask is: will Vietnam’s success act as a development model for the world’s most recalcitrant Stalinist regime, North Korea?

Vietnam goes to market, prosperity follows It often comes as a shock to many that Vietnam is one of the fastest-growing economies in the world.

It has posted Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth rates over 5 per cent since 1990. This year, as the world struggles for growth in a steadily recovering economic climate, Vietnam’s Ministry of Planning and Investment predicts that the country’s GDP will grow by 6.5 per cent. Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) inflows into Vietnam are impressive, hitting some $71.7 billion in 2008 before declining as the Global Financial Crisis took hold. Ordinary Vietnamese have benefited too, with per capita GDP rising from US$220 in 1992 to $1052 in 2009.

Progress made yet more must come The country’s turnaround occurred long after the unification of North and South Vietnam in July 1976. The Sixth Party Congress, held a decade after unification, saw the relaxation of Communist ideology in favour of Doi Moi (renovation) initiatives,

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designed to create a business climate suitable for foreign investment. Although Vietnam’s economic situation has improved dramatically, the report card is far from perfect. 50 per cent of the population continues to live on less than $2 per day. Stateowned enterprises have created an opportunity for government officials to embezzle funds. Moreover, economic liberalism has not yet translated into political pluralism. The central role of Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) remains largely unchanged, although, as in China’s case, adherence to ideologi-

ON DIT MAGAZINE July 26, 2010

cal orthodoxy has been subsumed by a preference for socio-economic development.

Pyongyang’s desperation In contrast, Kim Jong-Il’s regime needs an urgent economic overhaul. From what analysts can patch together, North Korea’s Gross National Income (GNI) per capita has fallen by one-third between 1990 and 2002. This is compounded by South Korea’s suspension of economic ties with the North following the sinking of the Cheonan, a South Korean frigate. This places Pyongyang in a delicate situation – its only economic lifeline is Beijing.

Chinese officials, however, are increasingly at odds with its neighbour’s Stalinist policies, which require generous Chinese grain and fuel allocations to keep it afloat. This compels North Korea to implement new measures to boost its economic performance, lest it be totally at Beijing’s behest.

Crunch time In an interesting twist, North Korea has selfimposed a deadline for its economic health. 2012 marks the centenary celebration of the birth of Kim Il-Sung, North Korea’s founder, a figure revered by the impoverished citizenry. The regime has promised its people that they will be living in a ‘strong and prosperous country’ by that time. This anniversary is, according to Gordon Chang, an American political scientist, ‘of special importance and not easily forgotten.’ Given the legitimacy of Kim JongIl’s regime is under increasing strain, particularly abroad, the deadline looms large. The ‘Dear Leader’ is under increasing pressure after a 2009 currency revaluation resulted in widespread riots. This policy failure decisively illustrates two points. Firstly, it is clear that North Korean economic governance is becoming increasingly inept and, secondly, there is salient dissent fermenting inside the regime’s borders. If Kim Jong-Il’s poor health overcomes him without significant improvement of his citizens’ livelihoods, the future of Pyongyang’s dynastic regime will be threatened.

Shifts in the sands of foreign policy In the face of its looming domestic crisis, North Ko-

ON DIT MAGAZINE July 26, 2010

rea faces an impetus to effect change. China and Vietnam have shown that Communist ideology does not preclude economic reform. Crucially important to Pyongyang’s elites is the consideration that market reform and accompanying success can provide the regime with additional longevity. For the wider international community, it is hoped that any North Korean integration into the international economy prompts alterations in foreign policy to attract and sustain development aid and FDI inflows. Consider the case of Vietnam. Following its invasion of Cambodia in 1978, Vietnam was internationally isolated. After international arbitration over the invasion, concluding in 1991, Vietnam has made significant inroads to further integrate with the global economy and boost its growth. It now stands as a member of Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN), the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), APEC and the Asian Development Bank. In December 2009, it concluded its two-year term as a non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council.

This year, it is the chair of ASEAN. If North Korea followed a similar path, diplomats of many nations would sleep easier.

Not just a pipedream Although Vietnam’s integration into the world, economically and diplomatically, may be a far cry from North Korea’s present situation, two factors are cause for optimism. The first is China, which enjoys special leverage over Pyongyang and will continue to petition for economic change. The second is the deadline of 2012, a crucial opportunity to increase Kim Jong-Il’s standing with the North Korean people. In autocracy, self-interest is a powerful motivator. If it wishes to survive, Pyongyang’s regime would be wise to conscientiously examine the precedent of China and Vietnam.

Michael Norris blogs at realpolitiktoday.wordpress.com

43

(un)pop

culture With your host, Elizabeth Tien An Flux

Conventional handshakes getting you down? Tired of freely entering rooms without so much as a password or needing to make the noise of an owl? Are you suffering from an obscene amount of individuality with your sense of dress?

If you also enjoy acronyms and a well timed pun, then you are Welcome And Needed To Establish Dinglebats! ((Wanted) (“Dinglebats” shall be our club name, not an arbitrary word randomly thrown in to complete my ever-so-witty-coughwhat-a-joke acronym.))

Come on. It’ll be a hoot.

So, I’m assuming that’s how the ‘Secret Seven‘ recruits. Sadly for all of us (but especially for me) that advertisement is yet to appear in the local sweet shop. Alas, it would seem that my ambition to solve soft crimes and experience sexism first hand, at least for the time being, has been thwarted.

I guess now I’ll never know how it could have been between me and Peter, the power-mad leader of the ‘Secret Seven’. I could have overlooked the fact that his father was always angry about his grades.

I’m not sure what it was about the combination of fiction, a young mind, and only child syndrome but from the age of around six and up, my tunnel vision was firmly focussed on being in a club. Or a secret society! Or a mystery solving team! Or a parliament! Sorry wait, that’s owls.

Members were solemnly recruited, skills were honed, passwords were made, and handshakes were devised… then quickly abandoned due to socially awkward invasion of personal space and an inexplicable mass intolerance to repeated ac-

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ON DIT MAGAZINE July 26, 2010

cidental poking of eyes. Soft.

Serious Business ensued, though somehow the end result deviated from the intended plan.

What we thought was happening: a secret adversary was identified, and top secret messages written both in code AND in invisible ink were delivered between us on the down-low. We held regular meetings to discuss how chuffed we were with our own superintelligence.

What was actually happening: neighbours were baffled by the gaggle of grave eight year olds peering around corners and writing things such as “1:43p.m. used wheelbarrow…AGAIN” on small notepads. The meetings, however, went down exactly as described.

Note to self: ironing messages written in lemon juice generally results only in brown (yet delicious smelling) paper.

With increasing age it becomes progressively less appropriate to masquerade as any form of crime-busting, planeteering, Scooby ganger. If you hit 14 still shouting the names of elements in a vain attempt to summon an almighty being to rescue the earth, you had best try and convince accidental onlookers that, though it may seem as though you’re not quite over Captain Planet (will never happen), you are in fact quoting “The Fifth Element”. Good luck explaining “heart” though.

Anyway, at 21 years of age, and still finding myself quashing the urge to suggest Fellowship of the Ring tattoos (or at the very least, badges) on a regular basis, it seems, much like Marty McFly in the first Back to the Future, my club dream is rapidly fading. Sure, I could always place an ad I suppose, but I think I’d rather go with my current approach of declaring a “______ Club!” any time anyone has anything in common with me.

“Converse Club” has much potential, as does “Backpack Club”. “Bathroom Club” has caused the “window-cleaner-catching-you-watchingKorean-soap-opera-in-your-pyjamas awkward moment” on more than one occasion. However, declaring “club club” when someone appears with golf clubs is always good for a solid five minutes of giggling.

By yourself.

Columnist illustrations by Chloe Langford

me & my book collection From the shelf of Emma Marie Jones It’s been three months since I’ve moved house, and my book collection is still mostly living in an assortment of Woolworths Green Bags. Over the time that I’ve lived here, a small cityscape of teetering piles has developed in my bedroom. Front and centre is the Harry Potter pile, a kind of shrine to my shameless devotion to the Boy Who Lived. On the floor by the bed is a pile that grows in height by a book a day: what I call the First Chapter pile, a collection of books whose first chapters failed to entice me to read further, and who are condemned by my combined disinterest and laziness to wither and die under my bedside table. There’s also the textbook pile, feverishly thumbed through in the pre-exam period and now crumbling and forgotten in a corner, gathering dust. But I’ve noticed another pile, growing slowly but steadily, horizontal on the shelf above my desk. This pile is groomed, with the books arranged aesthetically by height and spine design. This is the first pile any visitors and/or prospective bedfellows see when they enter my boudoir. This is the hugely pretentious and self-aware display of my Personal Taste.

Now, Personal Taste is, in this instance, a flex-

ible concept. I mean, the majority of the books in this elite selection are genuine, well-loved favourites, but I’ll readily admit that I haven’t even read some of them. Oh, don’t get me wrong – I bought the books with every intention of reading them, I just haven’t gotten around to it yet. (For that, I blame the spurned paperbacks in the First Chapter pile. I’m looking at you, Confessions of a Shopaholic.) Why are these unread, virgin tomes taking pride of place in my collection? Well, for one thing, Dostoyevsky looks good on my literary curriculum vitae, and we all lie on our resumes, don’t we? Some of the books have made it to the shelf purely for aesthetic value (unmarked hardcovers from the second-hand bookstore featuring heavily among them) and some for childish sentimentality (hello, Enid Blyton). Some of the books are there to remind me to read them (I promise I’ll get to you, Ulysses, when I’m done with The Half Blood Prince) and some, to remind me to return them (if the Barr Smith doesn’t have it, it’s probably here).

I’m almost certain I’m not alone in this deliberate arrangement of taste markers. We all do it.

Almost every book, music or film collection I’ve ever laid eyes on – including those of a digital variety – have been pruned and polished to represent a taste that may or may not be authentic. Yes, I like to think that the casual adjacency of my French Dictionary to my anthologies of translated poetry give my makeshift bookshelf (and consequently, myself) the appearance of being cultured, educated and diverse. Yes, I am fully aware that, in fact, this wanky positioning only serves to confirm my vanity. But may I comment on the lack of So Fresh Hits of 2001 compilations in your CD rack? May I question the whereabouts of your celebrity gossip magazine stash, or your American Pie boxed set? Is that Confessions of a Shopaholic under your bed? And you, an English major! Don’t fret, such shame can be easily avoided. I’ve got a couple of spare Woolworths Green Bags in which you can hide the evidence. Besides, those deliberate, faux-untidy piles look far more bohemian and insouciant in one’s domestic domain than an IKEA bookshelf.

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ADELAIDE UNIVERSITY UNION NOTICE OF 2010 ELECTION POLLING DATES:

Monday 30 August until Friday 3 September 2010

NOMINATIONS:

Open at 9.00am on Monday 9 August 2009 Close at 4.00pm on Friday 13 August 2009

POSITIONS AVAILABLE FOR ELECTION: GENERAL MEMBER OF THE AUU BOARD (16 positions) - the AUU Board is the governing body of the AUU and is responsible for managing its affairs. The AUU provides funding for activities, events and services on campus, as well as providing support and assistance to affiliated student organisations. The Board meets monthly and has various sub-committees in which Board members are expected to participate.

NUS DELEGATE (6 positions) - the National Union of Students is the body that is charged with the responsibility of representing student interests. Delegates will be invited to attend State and National conferences of NUS and are expected to contribute to the development of policy and action at a State and National level.

ON DIT EDITOR (1 position, however up to three students may nominate to be joint editors) - responsible for the publication of the AUU’s student newspaper which is published during academic term-time. It is highly desirable that the successful candidate(s) have some knowledge of print media (if you are considering nominating, please find out what is involved).

STUDENT RADIO DIRECTOR (1 position, however up to three students may nominate to be joint directors) - responsible for the coordination of the Student Radio programs on Radio Adelaide and the coordination and training of students involved in producing programs. It is highly desirable that the successful candidate(s) have knowledge of producing radio programs (if you are considering nominating, please find out what is involved).

TO NOMINATE AS A CANDIDATE: 1.

Only students currently enrolled at the University of Adelaide who are financial members of the AUU may nominate.

Members must be over the age of 18 years, able to hold a liquor licence and be legally able to hold the position of a director of an incorporated association.

2.

Nomination forms are available from the opening date of nominations and can be downloaded from www.auu.org.au or collected from the AUU Reception – Level 4, Union House (between 9.00am and 5.00pm weekdays).

3.

Completed nomination forms must be lodged at AUU Reception, Level 4, Union House (between 9.00am and 5.00pm weekdays) or via Registered Mail addressed to: The Returning Officer, Adelaide University Union, University of Adelaide, 5005, by the close of nominations.

4.

A policy statement and photograph can be submitted if desired with the nomination form as follows:

5.



Policy statements must not exceed 200 words and will be cut at that limit.



Electronic versions of the policy statement and photograph should be provided via USB or CD.



Policy statements will be accepted in Microsoft Word or Plain Text with digital photos accepted in JPEG or TIFF format, with a minimum 300dpi (for clarity).



If you are unable to submit your policy statement or photograph as above, please contact the Returning Officer to arrange an alternative method of submission.

All candidates will be required to attend an information session, to be held before the elections, outlining the responsibilities of an AUU director and the structure of the organisation.

NOMINATIONS RECEIVED AFTER THE CLOSE OF NOMINATIONS WILL NOT BE ACCEPTED

POSTAL VOTES FOR THE ELECTION: Applications for a postal vote should be made in writing to the Returning Officer, by no later than 4.00pm, Friday 20 August 2010.

QUERIES: Any questions concerning the Election should be directed to the Returning Officer on 8303 5401 or to the Assistant RO at david.coluccio@adelaide.edu.au Published and authorised by the Returning Officer, July 2010. Please recycle.

STUDENT REPRESENTATIVE COUNCIL NOTICE OF 2010 ELECTION POLLING DATES:

Monday 30 August until Friday 3 September 2010

NOMINATIONS:

Open at 9.00am on Monday 9 August 2010 Close at 4.00pm on Friday 13 August 2010

POSITIONS AVAILABLE FOR ELECTION: SRC PRESIDENT (1 position) – responsible for the overall co-ordination and leadership of the SRC and as chief spokesperson for the SRC. GENERAL SECRETARY (1 position) – responsible for calling meetings, taking minutes and general administrative roles.

EDUCATION OFFICER (1 position) – Acts to highlight issues relating to student’s education and other academic concerns.

WELFARE OFFICER (1 position) – Acts to promote the welfare of all students and to promote and strengthen support for students.

WOMEN’S OFFICER (1 position) – Acts as an advocate for women’s interests, a co-ordinator of women’s action on campus. To be eligible to nominate for this position candidates must identify as a woman.

QUEER OFFICER (1 position) – Acts to advocate on behalf of queer students, to promote and strengthen the rights of queer students on campus and to combat discrimination at university and the wider community. To be eligible to nominate for this position candidates must identify as queer.

INTERNATIONAL STUDENT OFFICER (1 position) – Advocates on behalf of students enrolled as international students at the University of Adelaide, and to promote equality and opportunities for international students. To be eligible to nominate for this position candidates must be enrolled as an international student at the University of Adelaide.

POSTGRADUATE STUDENT OFFICER (1 position) – Acts to advocate on behalf of postgraduate students of the University of Adelaide. To be eligible to nominate for this position candidates must be currently undertaking postgraduate study at the University of Adelaide.

ETHNO-CULTURAL OFFICER (1 position) – Acts to advocate on behalf of students with a cultural or linguistically diverse background. To be eligible to nominate for this position candidates must identify as having a linguistically or culturally diverse background.

ATSI OFFICER (1 position) – Acts to advocate on behalf of students who identify as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander. To be eligible to nominate for this position candidates must identify as being Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander.

ENVIRONMENT OFFICER (1 position) – Acts to advocate for environmental sustainability within the university and broader community.

SOCIAL JUSTICE OFFICER (1 position) – Acts to highlight issues relating to social justice.

MATURE AGE OFFICER (1 position)- Acts to advocate on behalf of Mature Aged students. To be eligible to nominate for this position candidates must be over the age of 25.

ABILITY OFFICER (1 position) – Acts on behalf of disabled students on campus. To be eligible to nominate for this position candidates must identify as being differently abled.

RURAL OFFICER (1 position) – Acts to advocate on behalf of rural and regional students. To be eligible to nominate for this position candidates must have must lived in a regional or remote area, or have moved from a regional remote area, within the last three (3) years and within six (6) months of commencing their studies at Adelaide University.

GENERAL COUNCILLOR (8 positions) – Acts as an advocate for all students, assists office bearers in the fulfilment of their functions.

TO NOMINATE AS A CANDIDATE: 1.

Only students currently enrolled at the University of Adelaide who are financial members of the AUU may nominate. Members must be over the age of 18 years, able to hold a liquor licence and be legally able to hold the position of a director of an incorporated association.

2.

Nomination forms are available from the opening date of nominations and can be downloaded from www.auu.org.au or collected from the AUU Reception – Level 4, Union House (between 9.00am and 5.00pm weekdays).

3.

Completed nomination forms must be lodged at AUU Reception, Level 4, Union House (between 9.00am and 5.00pm weekdays) or via Registered Mail addressed to: The Returning Officer, Adelaide University Union, University of Adelaide, 5005, by the close of nominations.

4.

A policy statement and photograph can be submitted if desired with the nomination form as follows: 

Policy statements must not exceed 200 words and will be cut at that limit.



Electronic versions of the policy statement and photograph should be provided on USB or CD. Alternatively these can be e-mailed to auu@adelaide.edu.au



Policy statements will be accepted in Microsoft Word or Plain Text with digital photos accepted in JPEG or TIFF format, with a minimum 300dpi (for clarity).



If you are unable to submit your policy statement or photograph as above, please contact the Returning Officer to arrange an alternative method of submission.

NOMINATIONS RECEIVED AFTER THE CLOSE OF NOMINATIONS WILL NOT BE ACCEPTED POSTAL VOTES FOR THE ELECTION: Applications for a postal vote should be made in writing to the Returning Officer, by no later than 4.00pm, Friday 20 August 2010.

QUERIES: Any questions concerning the Election should be directed to the Returning Officer on 8303 5401 or to david.coluccio@adelaide.edu.au Published and authorised by the Returning Officer, July 2010. Please recycle.

Vox-pop Your cult run-ins

Ryan Winter: Chemtrails... just google it.

Katharine Nicholson: Two words: David Icke. According to him, the Royal family, assorted world leaders, etc are actually reptillian lizard people.

Andrew Glancey: If you want conspiracy theory nutjobs, u can't go past AVN.org.au - these anti vaxx ghouls believe vaccinations are a plot by the reptillian illuminati (see above) to microchip the population and cull 90% of humanity. They were recently investigated by the NSW HCCC who ruled the AVN misquote studies out of context to support their anti vax beliefs and provide unbalanced anti-vaxx info under the guise of 'giving both sides of the debate' - when there is no debate and clearly they're anti-vaxx, not "pro choice" as they claim. the HCCC have ruled they must put a disclaimer on their site saying they're anti-vaxx, their info is not scientifically based and should not be construed by concerned parents as medical advice. A good example of where conspiracy nutjobs and real life clash.

Iordan Kostadinov: A friend of mine's mother was/is part of the agape cult. she is still convinced that the world will end in 2012 and that only the cult followers will survive by getting to their own island in the pacific - and since pacific islands are expensive... well, you know the deal.

Walter Marsh: A friend of a friend joined the Jesus Christians who embrace God's teachings by giving up all earthly possessions and going freegan... and give up one of their kidneys.

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