The Palimpsest

In which Nathan's wife is stolen away by a cult

2012-01-19T00:42:00.003+11:00

The Nightmare, Henry Fuseli, 1781

This story is the second of a three part series. You are encouraged to read the first part, also at this site.

I am telling this story in the sincere belief that I am speaking for the voiceless; for all the victims of cult abuse and for the victims of when any religious belief, even an originally well-intentioned one, turns sinister.

I am also writing in the conviction that if no one speaks out, other people inevitably will suffer in the future at the hands of the same group. Where I make an assertion that is coupled with a quote written by the cult, I claim the defence of fact. All other statements in this article are presented as the honest opinion of the author, speaking out on a matter of public importance.

I feel the need to impress on readers the ordinariness of our lives before this tragedy befell us; we were an average, happy family, with community interests and good jobs. This did not happen because we were into some "weird stuff" ourselves; quite the opposite. My skeptical streak is a mile wide and always has been (evident if you see the other articles on this website).

-------- ~~~ --------

I have a sad story to tell. Friends and family have shared this journey with me for the last three years, but the time has come to speak publicly. The telling of this tale has put me on TV twice over the last two months. It has also placed me at a lectern speaking to an international conference hosted at Parliament House in Canberra in front of a room full of MPs and dignitaries. My dual intents are to lay out a fuller version of this story, and to provide a warning. Perhaps telling my story will prevent another family from having to endure what mine has.

"If I run I die
If I talk I die
If I disobey I die"

I lost my wife, Kylie, to a cult. I believe their influence ruined her health, her career, and robbed a 6 year old boy of his mother. That they unpicked the threads of her life and of her mind. That she cast aside her home, her wider family, even her name for the sake of a pseudo-Christian group that she had never met six months previously. She now goes by a name given to her by the cult, Hope, after she was told that the person named Kylie had never existed. At a point where she was mentally unwell and exceptionally vulnerable, this cult misdirected her therapy, providing instead what a psychologist identified as a "treatment program" written by a group who believe Nazi-built, demonically piloted UFOs kidnap women and impregnate them to create a race of half-demon super soldiers. They took the most febrile delusions occasioned by her illness and convinced her they were real; that she was the victim of Satanic abuse; that she could speak to Jesus Christ and had a gift of prophecy; that her multiple personalities were evidence of demons that had to be exorcised; that she was involved in spiritual warfare against "astral travellers" from local covens who psychically bombarded her and the group; that her real family were evil. Crazy, evil stuff.

What Kylie wrote...

But, as this horror-story unfolded, I found people placed in my path through the most extraordinary coincidences imaginable. People who added pieces to the puzzle; people who were worried enough to implicate members of their own family if it meant a little light could be cast into some dark recesses. People who came forward, prepared to stand by me on TV, as it happened, to say "my family were damaged by the same group." Slowly, what the cult wrote, what they said, and what they believe was, amazingly, dropped into my lap. Often accompanied by a hand on my arm, an earnest look, and the benediction; "Nathan, do something." I've been joined by eminent university lecturers, members of Parliament, cult experts, and support groups. I've joined a crusade to have laws against cults improved. I've made lifelong friends, and one or two enemies.

I name the people responsible.
Oderint dum metuant, I say.
This is our story. It's a corker.

-------- ~~~ --------

I name the people in question as Virginnia Donges, Jenny and David Buckingham-Jones, and Annette and Adrian (also known as Danny) Wotherspoon. All live in the Springwood/ Faulconbridge area, and their group have collectively gone by the name the "Springwood Faulconbridge Home Church" for over 15 years. If you or loved ones have had a harmful encounter with this group, please contact me or one of the anti-cult support groups mentioned in my other article.

Let me take you back three years. Kylie, a beautiful, vivacious lady, was working odd shifts at the reception desk at the private school that I had worked at for ten years. She was doing that because our son had started Kindy at the same school, and after years of being a stay-at-home mum. She was grateful for the distraction while she waited to get back to her "dream job", which was working as an E.N in the emergency department of Nepean hospital. So, the three of us often travelled to school together as a family. It was awesome. I ticked all the boxes. Beautiful wife, great job, own home, station wagon, a raft of civic engagements. The good life.

But there was a cloud on our horizon. Hear me: Mental illness will affect half the population over a lifetime, and 20% of the population in any given year. This means mental illness will either affect you or someone you love. Yes, mental illness costs over $20 billion to the economy, but it's far more important for me to take this time to say this: "It's not their fault". Mental illness shouldn't be stigmatised, and there is support out there (despite some bad apples). For us, it was just one of those challenges that lay on our journey. Kylie was occasionally unwell, but she was loved and always brought back to health with the support of her family. Every time she recovered, we were so proud of her, and we felt we had a stronger empathy for those in the same situation. People with mental illnesses deserve our love and support.

Now this school we worked at, Wycliffe Christian School at Warrimoo west of Sydney, is a non-denominational Christian school, pretty enlightened in most respects. I loved working there, but you know how it is. There are always the crazies that take up the outer orbit in any community, especially in the Blue Mountains, where crazy seems to be in the water. Except these crazies weren't in the outer orbit. Two of them were on the school board, at different times. And a third worked at reception, alongside my wife. There were stories; they'd stick their head up and say something... heterodox, that would make those within earshot blush, or cringe. The board president and the Principal were cautioned about letting them have any influence. Shoulders were shrugged. We had to be "ecumenical".

Soon, Kylie was being sucked in. It was "Hey, come to our Bible study group". I kick myself now, because that's when the trouble started. No one recruits you to a cult by saying "Hey, join our group and we'll ruin your life." But at the time... I just had no idea. So off she went on odd evenings to socialise with this group. I even felt pleased that she had made new friends.

No sooner had Kylie struck up this friendship that I started to see her change. Some of these outings had her coming back later and later. Midnight would come and go. I had a sleeping child in his bed. Her phone was off. Was she dead on the side of the road? I could tell she was at the cusp of becoming unwell again. And unwell meant... vulnerable. What were these people doing to her? The explanations, when they were offered at all, was Kylie was going through some pretty heavy "counselling". But hey, these were respectable people, right? On the School board and all?

On the 4th of January 2009, she told our son and I that she was going to her Bible study, and she would be back for dinner. We waved her off.
She never came home.

Kylie, when she was descending into an episode of mental illness, had the misfortune to fall into this sinister and manipulative group at precisely the worst moment.

Now, I know better. Now, I know this group have form. That they have damaged other people, other families. Years ago, they prophesied their group's pre-eminent role in the return of Jesus Christ. They went through spiritual passions when a member of their group was seriously ill, engaging in a prayer life that crossed a line into the bizarre. Their spiritual warfare centred on a belief that organised Satanic covens were attacking them, spiritually, all the time. Others, like my wife, had been taken in and "counselled" that they had repressed the memories of Satanic abuse by Dissociating the memories.

One former member who escaped from the group with her children 12 years ago has been happy to speak out, and was interviewed for Channel Nine's A Current Affair. Here's what she said:

"We were attracted to them at first. But their beliefs changed. They became more extreme. Certain members of that group were prophesying about end times. They predicted the return of Christ, at a particular time, and ascribed certain roles for members of the group in relation to it. One of the group would lay on the ground and speak with what he said was the voice of God.
I became increasingly uncomfortable. We left because it became damaging to my family. I went to a friend I trusted, I went to a couple of Pastors I knew, and they all thought it was too strange, and dangerous, and that our family shouldn't be involved in it any more.
When I hear about the stuff this group are doing now, I'm very glad I'm no longer involved. It's contrary to my own experience of God, of prayer, and of reading the Bible. What it has to do with is peoples' egos; their unwillingness to stand back from their behaviour and examine it critically.
I think what they are doing now is dangerous, because they seem to have power in these relationships. Power that's quite negative. It brings discredit to God.
I don't know if these people are Christians, but I don't believe they are displaying Christian behaviour.
I hope they are called to account for their behaviour."

Within a year, I found Kylie now went by the name the cult provided for her; "Hope Hopie". Hope had a Facebook page. It's Kylie's face, but gaunt... haunted. She had lost maybe 25 kilos. As one of the cult members, Virginnia, explained to her own family, "There was no Kylie, ever." The smiling, vivacious, grounded women I courted, married, bought a house with... That person was gone. Erased. "Hope" was encouraged to refer to her own mother as "Filth", and to have nothing to do with her family.

She missed her sister's wedding. She missed the birth of three nieces and nephews. Contact with her family, including our son, progressively diminished.

"Hope Hopie"'s Facebook page (since deleted). A suffering woman,

who bears my wife's face, stripped of her identity.

(click for larger)

The first Christmas she was gone, I called her.
"There's an empty chair here, and you're missed terribly. Where are you?"
"I'm with my real family now."

I was gutted.
What happened?
This is what happened:

"My family is the cult"... What Kylie was taught.

Kylie's natural affections for her family, which were so loyal; her maternal bond with our son, which was so fierce, were pared away. She was persuaded that they were evil; that she had spent her childhood exposed to satanic torture (Necessary interjection: Kylie's family are good, kind, civically engaged people, and their support has been indispensable). Her illness, the presentation of alternate personalities, was perverted into some kind of spiritual attunement, a conduit to hear messages from Jesus springing from Kylie's lips; her altered states the channel to a prophetic gift, to foretell the future; to detect and oppose "astrals", which were satanists purportedly making psychic out of body attacks on the group. These ecstatic spiritual experiences often caused Kylie to lapse into a catatonic state. At the time, Kylie wrote:

"God just told me the next one will be different, it will be like the

other night when I couldn't fall unconscious or stare too long

'cause of the risk of catatonia. He said trap the astrals, get rid of them,

then keep me awake for half an hour. I'm sorry!"

What the cult believe is that Kylie has a condition known as "Dissociative Identity Disorder", and that the person I knew as Kylie was merely a suffering community of "alters" who had "split" in order to protect her from the traumatic memories of satanic abuse as a adolescent. This was controversial enough as a medical diagnosis; equally as many people in the psychiatric community believe this condition does not exist. "Why," they legitimately ask, "did Holocaust survivors preserve relatively whole memories of their trauma, and yet you say that this abuse forces multiple amnesias and the fragmentation of a person's entire personality?"

One personality could supposedly speak directly to Jesus Christ, and that one must have been useful. However, Virginnia gave an account of the terrible toll this "gift" was having on Kylie, saying "She has the gift of prophecy... But some (of these alters) wanted to hurt her, so they would go and drink bleach, they would eat firelighters, they would try and get her hand in the fire, they would run in front of trucks, all that sort of thing. So we kept the doors locked to keep her safe." Some alters were infantile and mute. They were put to bed with a sucked thumb and a teddy. And others... well, there's no polite way to put it. They were demons, and the only remedy for demonic possession is exorcism. Virginnia boasted the group cast out 88 of them in a single evening.

So Kylie was subjected to exorcism. In Australia, in the twenty first century.

Within months, Kylie wrote a suicide note, addressed to our son. I can't repeat that. But these notes made about Kylie's ongoing treatment at around that time are disturbing:

"The only way out is death"

"Watching death makes me stronger"

"I will obey at all costs"

My blood ran cold.
Local ministers, former colleagues, people of better sense, did what they could to intervene. They were told to "butt out".

My wife... my boy's mummy, was gone.

Fade to black.

-------- ~~~ --------

A year later, I sit with a man, his face creased with worry, He has lost his wife to the same cult. We're at his kitchen table.

He pushes a binder of papers three inches thick across the table at me.
"These were laying about the house, before my wife left. I collected them. They were..." (he searches for a word) "treating Kylie. I can't believe it, but they kept notes on everything. Go on, look."

What I read shocks me to the core.

And it's what you have been reading, scattered through this article. Just a small sample from these documents. It represents a rare insight into the inner workings of a religious group, turned toxic. I am not aware of many people fighting cults who have had such incriminating material dropped in their lap. I've thought long and hard about what to do with it, and my decision to publish has not come easily.

Most assuredly, this group are... unhappy that I have this material.
Actually, that's something of an understatement.

For example, witness this death decree against myself, written by Virginnia Donges on behalf of the group:

The Death Decree written by the cult against myself. Similar threats of

calamity were made against Kylie's mother.

"They are going to hang themselves". That this was not meant to be taken figuratively was underlined by Virginnia on one occasion she spoke to me. It meant just that, and they were praying for it to happen.

"Pray that the wombs are closed of all women.
Pray that the leaders come down first - taken out.
Pray them out - Death or Conversion."

I'm pretty sure they didn't want me to have that. Or that it would be published. Or that I gave it to Channel Nine. Or that I presented it at Parliament House to a conference where our Federal member of Parliament took time out of her schedule to be in the audience as a support to me (which was greatly appreciated).

The man gestures. He points to some smudges above his doors and windows.
"Do you see those greasy marks, Nathan? They met here. That's where they made little crucifix marks with holy oil. To keep the demons out. They thought that there were coven people hiding in the bushes outside this house, every night. They thought they saw objects moving by themselves in the house. My wife said I brought demons in to the house, on my back."

"Jesus revealed 1 person in back of yard in bush every night 4
last 2 weeks keeping surveillance of coming and going and
keeping notes on lights off. He said pray, link angels around
boundary every night. Man ran away"

I leaf through hundreds of pages of handwritten and typed documents, some in Kylie's writing, and some in the hand of various cult members. Pronouncements, curses, abjurations. Notes made by cult members as they guided my wife's therapy, encouraging her to verbalise ever more lurid accounts of satanic murder and torture, with no evidence that they ever stopped to ask if it was true, but ecstatically wishing it to be true; insisting, surely it must be still worse, and pray, go further? Crudely drawn pictures of stick figures having indignities performed on them with bombs, torture devices, even a helicopter suspending victims over a mine field. Kindergarten scrawls of obscenities, ostensibly written by Kylie as she "regressed" to infantile alters to re-live her traumas. Crayon daubings of rainbows, roughly done.
Immediately, my thoughts turned to Kylie, working in the emergency ward; competent and vibrant. A loving mother. A homemaker. My best friend.
I feel sick.

I see Kylie, systematically persuaded that her youthful life was in thrall to a satanic coven, and that only now can she be free, with the cult, her new family.

This is where it gets confusing:

Where the material I am showing you uses the word "cult", it is the Springwood Faulconbridge Home Church referring to basically the whole world. Everyone is compromised. You might be a satanist. The minister of your church might lead a coven on odd numbered Wednesdays. (Virginnia: "The higher up they are in the coven, the higher up they are placed in the Church")

They are referring to Kylie's supposed abuse at the hands of a satanic cult in her youth, and of satanic cult activity they believe is presently rife in the community

When I use the word cult, I am referring to the group Kylie is with now.

Yes, you're allowed to be confused.

I do not believe Kylie was either subjected to, nor witnessed, any of the indignities described.

Ten years of marriage to her, and all the testimony of her friends and family who knew her long before I did, convinces me that Kylie has been schooled into this bizarre, sinister vein of end-times spiritual warfare at a point where she was seriously mentally ill, and uniquely vulnerable to their depredations.

Keep this question in mind; what catastrophic harm befalls a seriously mentally ill person when they are encouraged to believe such things, in lieu of proper psychiatric care?

Every page I turn to reveals a new horror. The cult believe they were engaged in invisible war with satanists operating up and down the Blue Mountains. That my family had satanists as well:

The cult believe they are involved in spiritual warfare against
covens in the Sydney area, whom they identify "in the spirit" by
name, age, vocation, location, seniority, and the nature
of the attack these "astral travellers" visit upon the group.

Psychically identifying cult members: "10:45pm Blackheath:
Jason 27 car salesman (level 2)
Brad 24 labourer (level 1 - highest)

Psychically identifying cult members:
"Katoomba youth coven - higher rank than shane
Chad - Uni 22, Jake - unemployed 19."

Psychically identifying cult members: "Seth - 24 Lithgow, stray astral

hit later and set off catatonic", to which is added the strange

warning "From Joy: Kylie is so close they are pulling

out all stops". (Strange, because "Joy" may be an one of the alternate

personality of Kylie's)

"For those who hurt big Kylie, Prayer: Dear Jesus in your authority of your mighty name we decree that Matt and Jan that just astralled in and brought pain to Kylie we decree in Jesus' name that pain be thrown back on to you and that you will be subjected to it three times worse. (?) power until judgement day."

As I read, I see evidence of Kylie being encouraged to believe that she witnessed and participated in shocking acts. Torture and mass murder:

"I am invincible because I defeat death...

In a hole, tarp over, dirt over"

"If I disobey, I die.
Lite stick, pushed down throat. Eyes burned with flaming stick"

"If I talk, I die. Man chair/ tongue cut
out, stapled. (head cut off)"

"I will kill for the cult... baby out of mother"

"small baby- head cut off, put in hole"

"I am invincible because I beat death.

Heated faeces up on fire in large

barrel and tried to drown in hole."

"If I talk I die

Very angry - cut tongue out stapled mouth shut and died."

"Young guy - stick on fire down throat and then put in fire.
Acids put in throat and other places"

My womb belongs to the cult - Anything from it is theirs

Watched baby being extracted (woman died)

Kill or be killed - thought she killed a girl - but already dead

"(explosives on women)"

"I will obey at all costs. Cut throat - layed all night in body bag."

"body - intestine"

"I'm nothing but a burden. Dead body overnight"

"Pig - explosives - sex X2"

"9 year old murder"

"body bag. Cult killed with bats and spike straps,

made to orgasm before death - seed gives power"

"My only way out is death

Witness murder - she held head of man, chopped off, stick."

"Purification ritual - bleach and paintstripper"

"Man dragged out, hit with bats till dead & broken,
then hit with metal ball with spikes. Covered K with bits of flesh"

"cut out tongue - stapled lips & nose - hung him from a tree"

"I will kill for the cult when instructed...
made to kill 20+ old then lay in body bag all night"

"Man made to put hand x2 in large blender
powered by generator. Then poured over Kylie all night"

One obvious question is; if these people believed that any of this was true, why did they not go to the police? Surely this represents first hand testimony of a survivor who has witnessed torture and mass murder on an unprecedented scale! Why, it's because the police were infiltrated by satanists as well!

Psychically identifying cult members:
"Justin - Policeman 32, Phillip - Uni student 28."

I begin to understand why Kylie is not getting better. Why she has cast aside her family. Her head was being filled with bile:

"I'm nothing but shit"

"My life belongs to Satan... body chainsaw / put in bag with parts (blood oath)"

"I am a bad girl and I deserve this"

"I'm fat I'm fat I'm fat - dog pooh eat"

"Blood makes me stronger. Put in a hole - buckets
of body parts and blood tipped over her"

"I'm ugly, I am nothing. I only matter to the cult"

"I decree all humanity of Kylie will leave"

"I will kill when instructed. I am Satan's little whore"

"I am a bad girl and I deserve this"

"hang from tree (dog). Dead over top all night"

"I will kill for the cult"

"I am a bad girl and I have a bad heart"

"Seeing death makes me stronger"

"I can trust no one but the cult" (Family) Code word
The cult are my family. (people not in the cult are called non family).
Pray a covering every time he speaks to her"
(this may be in relation to my efforts to speak
to Kylie to express my concern).

The "Repressed Memory Therapy" which Kylie was buckling under was taking a terrible toll. A Psychologist named Sue Bartho who was being duped into approving this therapy provided the confirmation:

See the first part of this story for more commentary on this point.

While her contact with us, her real family, tapered off, I noted with concern on rare occasions we saw her, how thin she looked, and that she always had a thousand-yard stare. Meanwhile, Virginnia was boasting to her own children:

"Absolutely. We have written a new textbook about psychology, and that's what we are in the process of doing. To deal with this particular type of D.I.D that no one knows about, how to deal with it... We have rewritten it, and we've been told that we've rewritten it, and it will change mental health care, when the time comes"

This was what that therapy was producing:

"threted (sp) to give me a needle/ Hurt me in my special place.
Held my nose and made me swallow. If I didn't the needle would kill me."

"Kill coz I told u"

"Killed dog... Can't move or cry or will push button, blow up"

One note suggests. "Kylie has chosen this road". Like fuck she has.

And on, and on, in notebook after notebook.

Lastly, I read: "If I talk, I die."

At that moment, I decide to speak for the speechless.

Kylie had been brainwashed, poisoned against her own family, persuaded at a point of utter vulnerability (and certainly at a point where she needed professional psychiatric care), that members of her own family were Satanists, and that she lived a tortured life of oppression and terror. When they changed her name, Virginnia came to a decision with Jenny Buckingham-Jones:

"The name Kylie became sickening to us. She was cursed with that name, it wasn't a name that was an honouring name to her. It had the word 'Lie' in it, and right from the time she was born, everyone was told that she was a liar, and she was herself told 'no one will believe you'. This little one that came… I really believe that it had to be Hope, so I called her Hope. Hope then became Hopey. Because “little Hope” didn't sound very good. So the one that I live with today, with no other parts, her name is Hope. She has the emotional level of a five year old."

And at the time this happened, Virginnia Donges, was working at the school where I worked. Where my son was enrolled. Jenny Buckingham-Jones was on the board of the school. Her husband David Buckingham-Jones was a former board member. It was absolutely intolerable. And at the point I needed the support of that community more than ever; after I had given a decade of my working life to that community, it failed me.

-------- ~~~ --------

Throughout the notes I had been provided, there was the repeated reference to two names: "John and Glenys Darnell" and "The Shepherd's Heart Church", based in Canberra. Who were they?

I have covered the beliefs and practices of the Darnells in the first part of my story, however, all I need to note here is that the Blue Mountains cult had consulted John Darnell on at least one previous occasion when they were helping another woman named Elizabeth, and then quote Virginnia's words concerning the Darnell's role in Kylie's "treatment program":

"So I started to talk to John, I started to read his material, I started to see what caused D.I.D... John came from Canberra to give us the techniques... One of the first 'parts', the first time out of all of them (there had been hundreds and hundreds up until then, which came out), and he recognised that one and said 'I think you're going to be asked to stay, and not to not be taken out'. And as it turned out, it did, but this one was our first one and she was 10. And he said to me, 'Gin, can you name her?' So I called her 'Hope'."

So Kylie didn't change her name. She had it changed for her. Kylie had "never existed", and yet was apparently sufficiently competent to sign a power of enduring guardianship over her medical care to members of the cult.

I did some digging. John Darnell believes demons walk the earth in human guise, called "Nephilim". They breed with women, creating half demon-half human hybrids. They fly around in Nazi-built, demonically piloted UFOs. They kidnap women and take them to a secret underground base where the half demon embryos are removed. Oh, and the British Royal Family may be reptilians. All of this wackiness is recorded in the church's own materials, or in a series of radio interviews John Darnell gave to some fringe U.S based Christian radio stations over the last 2 years. In one interview, John Darnell talks specifically about the "help" he gave Kylie and the fact it came under official investigation by the Health Services Commissioner. His response?

"Well, so what? I'm prepared to go to gaol, I'm prepared to die, to help these people who don't have a voice." (Radio interview, 17-10-2010)

Yeah, thanks so much for all your help, John.

"11/5/09 - Monday of John's visit... Will bring out the big ones tonight. A "system". How big Kylie's system is and how complicated it is. Tell us about codes. Be really careful because what you see in there is hidden setups. Go really slowly." (See my other article for Darnell's beliefs on "systems")

I suspect this template, used in the example above, was provided by
John Darnell as part of Kylie's "treatment plan"

Examples of the strange abjurations Kylie and the group participated in.

-------- ~~~ --------

It is January 2012. Three remarkable years of trying to understand what went wrong. Kylie has divorced me, but a magistrate granted me sole custody of our son, not seeking even to impose any schedule for contact between our boy and his mother. I've joined several organisations to try to do what I can to help others who are going through similar situations. One is the Australian False Memory Association (AFMA). The other is the Cult Information and Family Support Network (CIFS). I am now aware that there are others out there who are doing the same thing, who believe in Ritual Satanic Abuse and Repressed Memory Therapy, and the shattered victims and their families need help. People like me, who have had the fortune to arrive at compelling proofs of the phenomenon, must speak out, or others will suffer. As I said, I've been on TV and I've spoken at Parliament House to tell a part of this story. I've met with the NSW Attorney General, and various other MPs to try and push for stronger laws against this kind of psychological abuse, but this will be the subject of the third part of this series of articles.

Now, I'm back at Uni completing my Masters in teaching with a near High Distinction average. My boy is thriving. I'm actively engaged in various civic pursuits. I would like to think that I inspire both the esteem of my colleagues and friends, and perhaps a modicum of dread among my enemies.

I freely admit that telling this story, and especially in naming those whom I believe are responsible, carries some risk. But there's no malice in me telling you this tale. I'm no Ahab, nor is this blog my Pequod. You see, someone will die if these kinds of therapies are allowed to persist without censure or restraint. I'm doing what I feel I must to raise the profile of this issue, in which, I assure you, I had neither knowledge nor interest before it fell like a flaming airliner on my house.

Lastly, a legitimate question is "What of Kylie?" It is enough to say that she is a victim, who has not been able to speak this truth for herself. She is loved still, and missed always. When she escapes (not if, when) then she is entitled to a narrative which will grant her back some modicum of dignity, and which will let her hold her head back up. She is more sinned against, than sinning.

Your feedback regarding this story, especially if you or a loved one have endured something similar, is welcomed.

-------- ~~~ --------

I'll include here the videos of the two TV pieces and my Parliament House speech that went to air in early November 2011 where I begin to tell my story.

Video of second "A Current Affair" piece:

Video of Parliament House speech:

Video of first "A Current Affair" piece:

Who are the Shepherd's Heart and what do they believe?

2011-12-19T05:00:00.000+11:00

If you have had a harmful encounter with this group or another like it, please contact the author, the Australian False Memory Association (AFMA), or the Cult Information and Family Support network (CIFS).

When reading, please keep in mind that I am reporting the words and beliefs of John Darnell and the Shepherd's Heart Church. The sources quoted are the Darnell's own writings, videos and radio interviews.

Those who are here to find the video of the TV exposés of the Shepherd's Heart and of the Blue Mountains cult who took my wife should scroll to the bottom of this piece.

After you have read this first part of our story, then you are encouraged to go to part two, which is about the Blue Mountains cult who took my wife to the Shepherd's Heart in the first place.

---------- ~~~ ----------

Today, I'm putting on my hat of citizen-journalist.

John Darnell and his wife Glenys run a church in Canberra called the Shepherd's Heart. Formerly it was called The Fold Christian Fellowship. Because I have no aversion to calling things by their right name, I say they are dangerous lunatics. I know this because they wrote the treatment program provided to my beloved wife which contributed to the ruination of her life.
I am writing, obviously, to warn others.

The Darnells believe they have a special calling. For years, they have received people (disproportionately, women) whose initial presentation may only be of emotional distress. Some may have diagnosed or undiagnosed mental illnesses. They believe that their calling is to assist their subjects recall, acknowledge and then heal from trauma, even abuse, experienced earlier in life. Critically, the subject may be entirely unaware they had endured this abuse and trauma until the Darnell's techniques produce distressing recollections that then have to be interpreted and processed.
But what happens if these recollections are false?
The implications are devastating, both for the subjects of such counselling and for their families.
There is also an uncomfortable implication for those poor souls who may actually have endured some form of abuse in their past, and for whom this style of counselling muddies the waters no-end.

This is a well known phenomenon called False Memory Syndrome. It is otherwise known as Repressed Memory Therapy (RMT). It has been widely reported, even in the Australian media, and the archetype case, that of a woman named "Sybil", has been comprehensively discredited and debunked.

In the more bizarre and extreme cases of RMT are interwoven fantastic claims that the abuse that subjects have endured (and note, never remembered, and had no prior awareness of) was of a sinister occult character, involving Satanic rituals, sacrifice, cannibalism and quite spectacular end-time conspiracies. This related phenomenon claims there is a concealed epidemic of Satanic Ritual Abuse (SRA) in the world.

Enter, John Darnell and his tinfoil-hat wearing ilk.

. John Darnell, radio interview, 18th August 2011.

Belief in Satanic Ritual Abuse has been around for years, confined to the most disreputable and wild-eyed fringe of the Christian church. Despite this dubious benchmark, John and Glenys Darnell have brought fear-mongering about SRA to a histrionic and dangerous pitch never before seen in Australia. There is, according to Darnell, a Satanic conspiracy that has pervaded our mainstream churches and civil governments alike, to the highest levels, to cover up the wholesale kidnapping, sacrifice and cannibalism of thousands of people.

There are, apparently, spiritual beings named Nephilim, who are demons, walking the earth in human guise and mating with women in unwilling trysts. There is a secret breeding program, aimed at producing half-demon "super soldiers" implanted with some kind of ingrained subconscious programming, ready to be activated at the advent of the apocalypse. They look human. You might be one of them, without knowing. Some women are kidnapped by demonically piloted UFOs, taken to a secret underground base near Mt Hermon in Israel, and have their half-demon foetuses removed. Some people with a strong demonic bloodline occupy the highest stations of power in the world (for example, the Royal family). Lastly, to cap it all off, the post WW2 Satanic strategy springs, in large part, from the work of Dr Mengele and other occult-crazed Nazi scientists imported to the West in Operation Paperclip at the close of the war.

John and Glenys Darnell believe all this and extraordinarily, they preach it with a straight face. Darnell has written a book on the subject, and these beliefs are the disturbing background of his program of counselling, therapy, treatment; call it what you will; inflicting it upon people who are in reality desperately in need of proper psychiatric care. The Darnells have been the subject of Government investigation, yet insufficient censure by the Health Services Commissioner in the Australian Capital Territory. They have been forced to modify the presentation of their material, but their core beliefs remain unfettered. As Darnell explained to host Richard Grund in an extended radio interview on 17-10-10, "So what? I'm prepared to go to gaol. I'm prepared to die, to help these people... They may sue me. I don't care!"
Well they may, John. And well they ought to.
This is why I call Darnell dangerous. He claims to have a holy calling. Mere government censure is irrelevant, and probably demonic as well. Where there is no accountability, save to God, evil is always sure to flourish.

And what impact is Darnell having? In August 2011, Darnell was asked how many people are presently under his "ministry". His cagey answer was "a couple of dozen", adding he "doesn't keep notes". The ministry, however, has run for over a decade, and "hundreds" have been "touched". Here's what just a few of those who have been "touched" have to say. One Internet poster states in 2008, "BE VERY CAREFUL OF 'SHEPHERDS HEART' operating out of Canberra. It is run by 'John Darnell and Glenys Darnell' and they claim to do 'deliverance ministry' and remove 'psychic intrusions'... What they don't tell you is that they are worse than the problem you may be having. The spirits behind them and who use them are are NOT OF GOD."
Another undated warning comes from a person who states "I very unfortunately got involved with a 'pentacostal deliverance ministry' called 'Shepherds Heart' in Australia, in Canberra... Glenys mentioned that her husband John had communication/contact with 'celestial beings'. I asked her 'Were they angels of God?' She replied , 'Well, no'. I responded 'Well, they must be demonic then'. She said, 'well, they are still 'celestial beings'. Her response actually quite surprised me. They ended up getting quite nasty, particularly John and his pseudo Christian clairvoyant/medium/witch. I ended up leaving before the intensive finished."
Yet another warning stated in May 2007, "I decided to try out ‘Shepherds Heart’ in Canberra & Moss Vale Australia. John and Glenys Darnell run it, who supposedly ‘help’ others get ‘free’ from spiritual attacks and psychic intrusions. I had the worst ongoing experience I have ever had... This is what these so-called ‘deliverance ministers’ are doing. Nothing to do with Christ, just apostate, preying on those who are vulnerable and need help... They are so corrupt, BEWARE ! Pray for their victims."

Now, I freely admit that these claims cannot be verified. Indeed some of the people who post rants like this confirm my thesis that they're a little unhinged to start with. I find it alarming, however, to see the same claims of manipulation and malpractice dating back years and years.

However, let's back up a little and unpack some terms first. What are the Darnells purporting to treat? Dissociation is a medical word, a psychiatric concept, to describe a certain lack of integration in an individual's conscious experience. The popular conception is the person with Multiple Personality Syndrome (MPS), who has allegedly internally partitioned their mind to wall off an unpleasant experience, and who has created "alters" who present by turns. These personalities may possess separate, even contradictory and mutually exclusive, memories, intentions and traits. Think United States of Tara for a glib and pablum rendition.

The mental-health profession now deprecates the term "multiple personalities" in favour of a new term, Dissociative Identity Disorder (D.I.D). It is a controversial and hugely disputed diagnosis, attracting advocates and detractors of uncommon passion. The Darnells possess no qualification to make or treat such a diagnosis. But for over a decade, the Darnells were happy to promote via manuals, workbooks, seminars and videos, and in their one-on-one counselling, a program which explicitly used medical and psychological terminology to describe the "formation of memory", and which, superficially at least, sounded more clinical than pastoral.

Glenys Darnell uses pseudo-medical and pseudo-psychological terminology (here, talking about role of the pre-frontal cortex in the formation of memory) in a video now withdrawn from use after an official complaint was upheld.
(Click for larger)

John and Glenys Darnell only recently placed a mild caveat about their lack of qualification to treat a condition whose name only appears in the medical literature, after they became the subject of official complaint. Their website has only recently acquired this rider:

Disclaimer.

Where medical or psychological issues are discussed they are from a layman's understanding and not intended to be a substitute for qualified professional opinion. If such opinion is required please consult with suitably qualified personnel.

...and they have now substituted the term "Dissociation" with "Spiritual Dissociation", which is as weaselly as it's possible to be when you know you're being subjected to uncomfortable scrutiny. "No!", they say, and probably now with some panic; "This isn't... medical, this is a ministry to the body of Christ."
St Paul's conversion could not have been more convenient. It won't wash.

Why? Because there is proof that this has been portrayed by the Darnells as more than a "ministry". A letter from a Sydney-based psychologist, Sue Bartho, wrote that my wife "is undertaking a D.I.D treatment program from the Shepherd’s Heart centre in Canberra, which is being administered by a team of women. My role has been to monitor this treatment during the integration phase."
So, a Psychologist was prepared to write and endorse the Shepherd's Heart program (some materials from which are available at this archived site, predating the incriminating material being removed from their current website) as being fitting, perhaps even clinically endorsed in some way, for the treatment of a specifically psychological malady. I also have a letter from a general practitioner who has fallen for the same ruse and uses similar terms.

Was Sue Bartho duped by the Shepherd's Heart into thinking that this therapy was clinically endorsed, or was she an enthusiastic advocate for a therapy which included a belief in Nazi-demon-UFO-impregnation and exorcism? Criminy, the preceding sentence sounds like a Weekly World News headline. At the least, did she give enough scrutiny to the "treatment" she was "monitoring"? All the warning signs were present, and Sue Bartho was warned repeatedly of the misdirection of my wife's psychological care and chose to do nothing. Thus, sadly, I must provisionally conclude the latter. Bartho was invited to repudiate the beliefs and therapy practices she has confirmed she was "monitoring", and she declined to do so. This puts her self professed claim as being "a spiritually sensitive therapist, who believes that we benefit from being connected, not only with ourselves and our loved ones, but also with God" on doubtful footing, considering this very therapy has robbed at least one women of her family. (This blog, as always, stands ready to publish a corrective, should it arrive.)

. Beliefs appropriate as an underpinning to the treatment of Dissociation, according to Psychologist Sue Bartho.

The "team of women" mentioned as providing this treatment are Virginnia Donges, Jenny Buckingham-Jones and Annette Wotherspoon, who travelled from a cult group in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney to confer with John Darnell and attend a seminar intended to teach the treatment program. They are, in many respects, fellow travellers with John Darnell, and share a great deal of common belief, especially in the area of "spiritual warfare". Their role has been the subject of two television exposés, and a speech at Parliament House in Canberra. Their role has been told in a separate article, which you can find here.

John and Glenys Darnell demonstrate a feature of their
"repressed memory therapy", the regression to infantile states
where "trauma" can be relived. In this role-play, Glenys
pretends to be a toddler, while John Darnell elicits the
bad memories, without skepticism. (The Latin word "elicit"
means "drawn out by trickery or magic", which seems
apposite). The source video (since removed from
the Shepherd's Heart website) is bizarre and disturbing.

Imagine how the life of a mentally vulnerable person would be devastated if their therapy was perverted by unqualified people causing them to believe in abuse that never happened? Which causes a person to make false accusations against family members? Which separates them from the very family who should be there to support them through their illness?

Imagine therapy predicated on a belief that a sufferer has been kidnapped by demonically piloted UFOs, or has been impregnated by demons, or which suggests the victim may possibly be less than human because they have a "demonic bloodline"?

Darnell reported once that a subject he was counselling said "if you can't help me, I'll kill myself". I'm hardly surprised. My wife was assessed by Darnell, then treated extensively by others from the treatment program he authored. She subsequently wrote a suicide note, addressed to our 7YO son.

Will someone come to catastrophic harm as a result of these beliefs?
Yes. I believe it is only a matter of time.

I end this piece with a selection of quotes from John Darnell's own mouth, largely given from an August 2011 radio interview. Consider the impact of the following beliefs on people who need professional psychiatric care and who instead receive... this, as any kind of substitute.

About the nature and treatment of Dissociation:

"The main person doesn't know about the abuse. And the Satanic groups know this and use it to split off hundreds or thousands of parts, who they train to do cult work. You can meet them, and they will not have a clue of what's going on in their life... These people are planted in churches, they're planted in society, in government. The Lord told me last year, 'John, start speaking out'."

"...But we can't call it 'Dissociative Identity Disorder' because we got in trouble from the Health Services Commissioner, so we don't. I don't treat Dissociation. I don't treat Dissociative Identity Disorder. I minister to a spiritual phenomenon."

John Darnell: "I don't treat Dissociation. I don't treat Dissociative Identity Disorder..." Right: Cover of John Darnell's workbook, "Ministering to Dissociation: Course Manual" Cognitive dissonance?
John Darnell: "...I minister to a spiritual phenomenon." Right: Part of the table of contents of John Darnell's purely "spiritual" course manual on Dissociation. You be the judge about whether this looks like its from the Bible or from a medical textbook. (click for clearer version)

Above: The warning Darnell placed on his therapy manual.

This material has now been banned from use by the

Health Services Commissioner of the ACT after an investigation.

Q: How many alters do you see in victims? 4? 5? 10? 20?

Darnell: "You can go from the dozens, where there's sexual abuse; not a lot of occult. If it's a highly sophisticated [cult], and most of the ones we deal with are, it can go to the tens of thousands... It's highly technological. They have machinery and equipment to cause these people to split over and over. What my book talks about is, there's thousands of personalities, but they're in the second heaven. All those who have recovered from this will have some recollection of system, which is a construction in the second heaven. You can best think of the system as a small, city-sized prison [for split off personalities]"

The Blue Mountains cult's own notes on John Darnell's advice
concerning the "system" containing Kylie's
alternate personalities. (Click for larger)

About Nazis, the Fourth Reich, and the New World Order:

Darnell is asked "Is it true that this D.I.D and S.R.A really started at the end of World War II, and that this is based on the work of Dr Mengele?",
John Darnell: "Absolutely, that's a common thread... Go onto the Internet, look up Operation Paperclip; it's well documented. Nazi scientists were taken into the west, but those scientists were heavily involved in the occult; they were involved in the research to re-create the 'sons of God', which were the Nephilim. American governments, Australian governments. I believe they are in high positions in every western government. There are people in government departments, who do not know that they have 'multiples'. There are Nephilim planted in governments. Everyone wants to see people with horns.. but these people are in suits. They are in government departments. The vast majority don't even know what's going on in their lives... These people will be switched to their New World Order personalities when it happens. The personalities who know nothing about this will be pushed out of the way, and the ones who do know will come forward, and you'll have an already functioning government. I believe it is already in place... It's the Fourth Reich. Based on the evidence I have, the people I've ministered to... Every single person I minister to, sooner or later, you come across the Fourth Reich. They're trained, they have the ideology."

"(The Demonic Super Soldiers) that I have seen all have personalities, dissociated parts, who are trained to execute; to go on the rampage... They are what we see in ministry over and over again." (the implication here is all spree killings we see, such as those of Anders Breivik or Jared Loughner, are test runs performed by satanic operatives, and which will be repeated "x1000" at the appointed time).

About UFOs
"Fallen Sons of God have been materialising in physical form, doing things, usually sexual, with victims of Ritual Satanic Abuse. You discover there have been pregnancies... I did not want to believe it! But we discovered there are births that have happened, and that they weren't human... We've chosen to go with what God has shown us; the jigsaw pieces start to fit together. We became aware of a breeding program. A UFO. In the Second Heaven. A living creature... I can promise you that this stuff has been confirmed again and again and again. Oh, I believe there is hardware, there's all sorts of stuff that's under wraps, but I'm dealing with spiritual stuff... People are being abducted, people are being taken. There is a breeding program going on... In working with Satanic Ritual Abuse survivors, and what is happening out there with UFOs, and UFO abductions, they are one and the same thing!"

About the Demonic Breeding Program:
"What I have discovered is that every high ranking, international satanic group, they are all involved in the breeding program. All the women get used. If you're really working in the Holy Spirit, if you're really being guided by the Lord, sooner or later you'll encounter the hybrid breeding program. The eggs get harvested; their womb's get used."

"All the girls get used for breeding. I hear story after story about rapes by fallen angels, or by Nephilim hybrids. I hear of abductions. I understand that a lot of this happens underground, in huge places, under the earth... They are here. They look human. They are positioned."

"[Victims] have Dissociated parts, that don't know they are Nephilim. They don't know! They haven't got a clue as to what they are!" (consider the injury to a mentally ill person when they are counselled that they might be a fragment of a demon!)

"Until the last couple of years we were as much uninformed about the UFO phenomena and abductions as the average citizen. We had encountered the reality of horrific creatures materializing in satanic rituals, and, raping girls who we were later helping. It just never occurred to us that a conception may have taken place as a result of the rape. We certainly did not make any connection with the UFO phenomena. We had our first experience with a girl as she relived the birth of what seemed to be a non-human baby, but even then we did not make any connection. Sometimes the Lord has to keep our noses pressed against the window until we see what it is He is trying to show us. Then, in ministry, the Lord led us to renounce involvement with the US military, and her being twisted with "sons of God‟. We saw deliverance and freedom as we did so, but had no understanding of what was beginning to be revealed."
(This extract from John Darnell's latest book "Satanic Strategies")

...And generally:

"I can't prove any of this, but I believe there is cannibalism, there is eating of flesh, drinking of blood... You tell me there are one hundred thousand people who go missing every year in the United States? Let's think about that. That's 2000 a week. Why aren't bodies found?

Listener Question: "My question for John is: I heard an interview stating that the British Royal Family turn into reptiles. There are deep occultic ties in the Royal bloodline. What is your stance? Do people actually turn into reptiles?"
John Darnell: "The Lord has had my nose against this particular glass for three months now (laughs). All the evidence that I have. All the stories, all the tales are that this is real. The things I've been learning about is that they probably have a high concentration of Nephilim blood, or fallen angel blood. Sometimes, with the genetic stuff that they do in the world today, there may be other species spliced in, which facilitates what goes on. But do I believe it happens? Yes! Can I say it happens to the Royal family? No, but I believe so... There is an International, world-level conspiracy where families, politicians, bankers, the entertainment industry are in collusion with fallen angels in exchange for power and money, and it's gone on for a long time, but it's exploded since World War 2. But do I believe that people shape-shift into other creatures? Unfortunately, I do. I've been dealing with people who have actually done it. We've seen it happen. It is very, very deep level, occult power."

Postscript:
In a pluralist, democratic society, we fiercely defend the rights of individuals to believe whatever they wish, and to follow their lights. To the frustration of some, this includes the right to believe things that are absurd, embarrassing, palpably wrong, incompatible with any society founded on the principles of the Enlightenment, and yes, even beliefs that are personally harmful.

However, society also draws lines, and we hope that these expectations are adequately reflected in our laws. We properly say that a minor cannot give informed consent to a sexual relationship with an adult. We say that a mentally ill person should be protected from the aberrations of their own mind that might bring them to self-harm. We award the custody of children, even occasionally going against the grain of parentage, on the basis that some choices place children at risk.

If you inflict a sexual abuse, or commit a financial fraud, or attack a person in an act of battery, there are laws standing by to bring you to book. If, however, a person is subjected to a gross act of psychological abuse; an abuse that takes a vulnerable person and weans them off the attachments of their family by convincing them that their family are Satanists, or misdirects the course of their medical care, or causes a person to adopt beliefs that rob them of their dignity, their career, even their name... well, I'm sorry to tell you that in Australia there is no law against such a crime (and make no mistake, it is a crime).

My quest over the last three years has been to meticulously collate evidence that demonstrates that this deficiency in the law is overdue for amendment, and to prosecute that argument to a conclusion that makes society safer from such quacks, prophets and deluded fools.

So profound and distressing are the changes in my wife that many of us despair of regaining the smiling and vivacious woman she once was, although we always pray for just such an event. But if writing, and warning others prevents a single family from having to fall prey to evil such as this (and I use that word entirely deliberately), then my time, and any risk entailed in the exercise, will be well spent.

---------- ~~~ ----------

VIDEOS:

The Shepherd's Heart, and the Blue Mountains cult that took my wife have been the subject of two television exposés in late 2011 (with many thanks to "A Current Affair" journalist Nick Coe for his interest and professionalism). I also spoke at the CIFS international conference on cults at Australia's Parliament House in November 2011, a conference I am pleased to report was co-sponsored and hosted by Liberal Senator Sue Boyce, and which was attended by a number of Federal MPs, foreign dignitaries, and Australian of the Year (and leading advocate for mental health issues), Professor Patrick McGorry. It was heartening, for example, to hear the chief public prosecutor of an Australian state, after hearing our stories, say that these criminal acts should not go unpunished and that the law should be strengthened.

My suggestion is you watch these videos in the order they are presented here.

Video of second "A Current Affair" piece (17th November 2011):

Video of Parliament House speech (2nd November 2011):

Video of first "A Current Affair" piece (2nd November 2011):

Remember: After you have read this first part of our story, then you are encouraged to go to part two, which is about the Blue Mountains cult who took my wife to the Shepherd's Heart in the first place.

Abandoning the Cubby

2011-09-04T11:38:00.000+10:00

Where we love is home;

home that our feet may leave,

but not our hearts.

- OliverWendell Holmes, Sr., Homesick in Heaven

I took a forlorn, last look around mefrom the throne of my childhood.

The huge old tree under which I sat wasleaning against the neighbour’s brush fence, as it always had. Suddenly, I had the sense that it wasfrom exhaustion. We won’t play like thisagain, but it was grand, wasn’t it? It had grown in a curious arch from theground and curved overhead, the pendulous branches creating a cave-like spacelarger than a truck, enclosed on three sides, once you included the fence. Ihad crafted the opening into a door with bales of straw and woven branches. Itwas a dappled, cosy space, but the day was cold and wet.

I sat on one of the branches inside thatformed a natural seat. I had to hunch forward a little more than I used to. Itused to be a more comfortable fit. I wondered if it was as much the treegrowing, as I.

I smiled as I ran my hand over themarks, in liquid paper, painted on the adjacent branches; crude icons andbuttons. Power, I mouthed silently. Shields. Lasers. Scanners. I surveyed, for the last time, the bridge ofmy ship; the console of my time machine; the keep of my fort… the last line ofmy defence against growing up, fallen silent now in valediction.

And there, over in the corner, was thedepression where, years before, I had commenced digging a hole which I hadannounced would be the entrance to a series of underground tunnels, lit andpaved, like in Hogan’s Heroes. Mygrandfather, impressed and indulgent, gave me a shovel and a knowing wink. Thehole never got more than 3 feet deep.

How many hours, I wondered, were lost inthis space? No, not lost; found. Mysister said once that she had spied on me, and wondered why I wasn’t doinganything. “You were just staring into space, for like, hours.”

“Of course,” I replied “but you didn’t see what wasgoing on up here” as I tapped my forehead.

“Well I should know,” my sister, four years youngerthan I, argued. “We never played my gamesthere.”

“My prerogative. My cubby, my rules.”

“What? Like that time you insisted we had landed on a,a…” she searched for a word, “a mysteryplanet that looked just like ours, and we had to go into the house andpretend everyone were aliens?”

I smiled at the recollection. I warmed to the topic.

“I remember that!. And the time after we had just comeback from Jenolan caves, and we were in the house and I said we would pretendthe cubby was the Skeleton cave andwe had to sneak up to it to see the real skeleton, and you were so frightenedyou wouldn’t go in.”

My sister affected mock bluster. “I was, like, six.”

My reverie was broken by the whine ofthe removalist van laboring up the driveway. I hated it, with all the lack ofambiguity only a 15 year old can project onto the world. Because it wasn’t fair.

I looked toward the house to see ifanyone was emerging to direct the van, past the huge, imperial Jacaranda thatdominated the centre of the property. The Jacaranda was losing the last of itsautumn leaves, and dripped with the drizzle that had set in.

It matched my mood.

That tree was planted by my greatgrandfather, and that one by his father, my heart cried. Well,probably. But our property had been in my family since the 1850s and at thatmoment, every blade of grass was sacred, and its abandonment, an outrage. My world was upended and ending.

Mum, haggard, had indeed emerged fromthe house and was futilely gesturing for the driver to drive beside the driveway at the top becausethe unparalleled comings and leavings had turned the top yard into a sea ofmud. Yesterday’s truck had become bogged. Yes,I thought. Our place… she doesn’twant us to leave. She’s hanging on. I felt the weight of history like aphysical force. I felt it radiating out of the ground. Not fair.

Mum sighed in frustration.

“You’re not making this any easier,” shehad said, months before. We were sitting at our kitchen table. She took my handin both her own; her sure sign that what she was saying needed to be absorbed.By osmosis, if necessary.

“Your grandparents aren’t well enough to keep up theplace any more. Won’t you look forward to them coming and living with us at ourplace? There’ll be all the building, while we build the granny flat. And then,well, you won’t have to wait to visit; they’ll be right here with us.”

My mouth made shapes while I considered theproposition, like I was turning over a sourgum I couldn’t decide if I liked orhated.

As if. I would be irrational; “No. It’s the familyproperty. No one will care like we do, who grafted which tree, and whichgardens the pets are buried in. It’s everything that’s constant in my life, andI don’t want it taken away.”

Mum’s look of sadness was almost enough to tip me overthe edge, because she knew I was right. Nevertheless, the pitiless Universesaid she was right, too, and I knew it. And the knowing made me just that bitless a child.

I hope, I thought, as I left my cubby behindfor the last time, I hope someone findsyou. I brightened. Maybe this willwill become a special place for someone else. Maybe they will find it andmarvel, like ‘The Secret Garden’. I was told that the buyer had a family,but the details were sketchy.

I left behind a part of myself on that day, but I alsotook the seed of what that space meant. In time, it took root.

I glance out my window. My eight year old son isshouting at the world from the cubby I have built him, defending it against invisiblefoes. Our property is salted with good climbing trees, many of them scions of the trees of the old place,gifted by my grandparents when the family moved.

Continuity is preserved. The force of history stillradiates from my ground, and it is warm.

I smile.

This piece was written for a creative writing unit

I am doing at University. The brief was to write 1000

words about a vivid childhood memory.

In which I muse upon the present felicity of my life

2011-05-29T02:06:00.001+10:00

I should like to dilate, for a moment, upon the awesomeness of my life.

Take one day: Today started early, with my son's Soccer game. Man of the match.

Then I gave two well-received performances of a play I'm in with my local dramatic society, The Richmond Players, 'Dial M for Murder'.

Then I retired to the Local for a well earned drink with my friends, some of whom I've known for decades, and some of whom were not my friends until this year.

Then, on the way home, close to midnight, I happened to pass the 'Hawkesbury Relay for Life', happening at the local showground, being a 24-hour walk-a-thon for Cancer research and support. So, on a whim, I did a spontaneous lap, remembering those (too many) in my life who have been taken by Cancer, and made a donation. I arrived home to a warm hearth and my sleeping bairn.

My Son adores me, and I him. I'm half way through my Masters at Uni and I'm loving every minute of it. I own a house. I'm civically engaged. I walk the corridors of power. I work for a parliamentarian. I organise and I influence, in my own modest way. I am heard. Someday, perhaps, I will do more, if I'm good enough.

I have my health, I'm comfortable in my own skin, and I pay my bills well enough to ease small burdens elsewhere. Throwing a ball with our two dogs at the end of a day, or observing the turn of the seasons, or hearing my boy say "I love you, Dad" carry more moment than the pronouncements of the great, and that is precisely the perspective I ought to have. Those whom I care for are prospering, and so, I prosper too.

I cannot say I have no enemies, but I can say that they fear me. I am wrestling with the Great Questions, and those I am on the journey with share the same curiosity.

I have, in short, an awesome life, and I love it.

That is all.

Revenge is a dish best served cold.

2011-03-19T16:35:00.000+11:00

There I was, stuffing envelopes for a worthy cause.

Suddenly, my blood ran cold, and the crisp inflections of my old nemesis rang in my ears...

"He tasks me.
He tasks me and I shall have him!
I'll chase him 'round the moons of Nibia and 'round the Antares Maelstrom and 'round Perdition's flames before I give him up!"

Occasionally, very occasionally, I wonder if I watch too much Star Trek.

...Nah

Megan Stack on Adrenaline

2011-01-22T01:53:00.002+11:00

I've tried to hone some small skill as a writer through my blog. Sometimes I read back over my turns of phrase and wince. Sometimes, I grant myself some small satisfaction. Sometimes.

Rarely, however, have I been completely arrested, I mean stopped dead in my tracks, by a passage in someone's writing. I was listening to an ABC Radio podcast from the Byron Bay writer's festival yesterday (god I sound like a snob) and something really, really grabbed me.
To appreciate it, you only need this context; Megan Stack is a journalist who has covered conflict zones (22 countries) for nine years. In this interview she relates the emotional ups and downs of facing intense war zones and real dangers, and then trying to acclimatise to the pedestrian life back home on furlough. She's written a book, and this passage is about being addicted to adrenaline. The interviewer reads this passage:

"Adrenaline is the strongest drug when it floods your veins, the world smears around you in a carousel spin. Except that each detail is crisp and hard, the colours are not negotiable, the hardness of shadow and sunlight cuts you, but they feel good and real and you keep on standing. Words drift for hours and days on the surface of your thoughts, gathering like algae. Ever since the mass funeral I've had these words in my head. Killing the dead, killing the dead. People look like ancient animals, lurching over some primordial land. A single bird's cry is clean and hard enough to carve your skin. This is why people get addicted. When adrenaline really gets going, you can't get sick, you don't need sleep and you feel you can do anything. I know when this is over it'll be like dying."

The audience then breaks into sustained applause.
Wow... Just, wow.
I'm decidedly not an adrenaline junkie; this passage doesn't describe me. But isn't that powerful writing? I know nothing of this journalist, or her book, Every Man in this Village is a Liar. I'm pretty sure I would disagree with Megan's politics, but I'm in awe of her prose.

On the Inevitability of a Serious Flood in the Hawkesbury

2011-01-12T00:19:00.002+11:00

Extent of the 1867 flood in the Hawkesbury (from Hawkesbury Council)

I hate to say it, but it is inevitable that one day we will have a flood in the Hawkesbury-Nepean as least as serious as the historic one we are currently seeing Queensland, and it won't be until then that we'll get real action on flood mitigation in this area.

Then all the pollies will wail about the loss of property and life, all the residents who've moved into the area and have no idea what it's like to live on a floodplain will ask why they were allowed to build or buy in flood-prone areas, and all the Cassandras will say "we warned you for years, and you ignored us."

The map above shows the extent of the largest historical flood experienced in the Hawkesbury, in 1867. If you live around the Hawkesbury, there are two markers you need to visit. One is a nail in the outside wall of the Macquarie Arms pub at Windsor. A second is in the grounds of Windsor Public School. If you cast your eyes across from either of those points and use your imagination, you may get a sense of the scale of a major flood. The water reached that level in 1867. Now look at that map again. If you live in the Hawkesbury, there's a better than even chance that your home lays in that blue area, since our population is densest around Windsor, South Windsor, Bligh Park, Richmond and so on. And any flood will not have to be of the scale of the 1867 event to be catastrophic. This year marks 50 years since the last big flood in living memory, in 1961. It's a common misconception of statistics to think that a statistically overdue event becomes more likely as time passes, but it underlines that a generation of Hawkesbury and Penrith area residents have little personal experience of a big flood. The terrible things we are seeing on TV today will one day play out in our own back yards. Why should we believe that something that has happened many times before will not happen again?

What will we do? What should be being done now?

Why has intelligent life only arisen on the Earth in the last two hundred thousand years?

2010-06-18T14:46:00.001+10:00

There are certain readily-filled niches in ecosystems. Even when the slate is wiped clean by some mass-extinction event, the evolutionary process means that animals from wholly different orders are plastic enough to re-fill those niches quickly.

Thus, if terrestrial ecosystems have generally had room enough to tolerate thriving populations of arboreal animals, flying animals, burrowing animals, fast moving carnivores who prey on large lumbering herbivores, carrion eaters in their wake, semi-aquatic animals, and so on, then we have found that such niches are invariably filled.

Velociraptors, Moas, Tigers and Marsupial Lions have occupied one such niche (predatory carnivores) by turns. Apatosaurs, Elephants, Diprotodons another (large herbivores). Pterodactyla, Archaeopteryx, Modern birds, and bats still another, and so on.

When a living can be had as an occupant in one of those niches, it seems applicants have always queued up, regardless of whether they have cold blood, feathers or pouches. These niches must represent enduring evolutionary "sweet spots", since they are filled over and over.

Obviously, intelligence confers a huge survival advantage. It enhances the ability for creatures to plan, and to act in concert through the use of language. Although many other animals are social species, an intelligent individual's ability to survive and reproduce is further multiplied through greater co-operation with the whole. The aggregation of learned survival strategies suddenly can be passed down the generations via a means better than mimicry or instinct. An animal can only mimic what it has seen, but language means the memes for, for example, an improved hunting method, or of rendering a food otherwise poisonous fit for consumption, can be passed across continents and down the centuries by stories, and eventually, writing. Intelligence means an unprecedented ability for a creature change its environment to suit itself, rather than need to continually adapt to suit the environment.

So if nature has continually repeated herself through the repetition of forms and characteristics advantageous to exploit a niche, and intelligence is manifestly such a characteristic, why is there no indication that intelligent life or civilisation has ever appeared before in the half-billion years that have elapsed since complex life arose?

I just through I'd throw that out there. It's a question I've turned over periodically. If anyone knows if any of the major writers like Dawkins have addressed this question, please point us in the right direction in the comments.

(The picture: Doctor Who's answer to this question. Intelligent life did arise before; the Silurians!

I'm not sure I subscribe to this theory, but my 7YO son may well).

Only the good die young

2010-05-01T15:37:00.002+10:00

Rex and I, midnight screening of Star Wars. I was no match for his skill with The Force

Sadness is compounded when you have to bury people before their time. Dr Rex Stubbs OAM was a friend and a mentor to me. He died last weekend and the funeral was Thursday. He was 60.

Rex typified for me the model of a community minded man, a lot like my grandfather did in my earlier life. Rex just seemed to be everywhere. He served on Hawkesbury Council for 26 years, and spent ten of those as Mayor. He was my GP, he was a local historian, and he was a patron of the arts. He was, in a cynical and thankless age, a Good Man. I shall miss him so.

But he was also a friend. I remember on many occasions where he saw my interests in history or local politics overlapping with his, he always offered his quiet and deliberative encouragement. That encouragement will stay with me all my life. Those who knew him well said at the funeral that they never once heard him raise his voice, and I believe it.

But there was a vein of humour as well. Rex was a proud sci-fi buff and I always thought it was a hoot when I was organising midnight screenings of Star Wars premieres for my youth group and there he was, turning up with a bunch of young people (some in dressing gowns), fighting with plastic light sabres, his wry smile winking over the top of his glasses.

It was often like that. Usually when someone was being too pompous, Rex would glance at us, over his glasses, and the wordless look he gave let us in on the joke, and you felt you were with him, and there was... an understanding.

Too much of what passes for politics these days is bled dry of any humanity. It’s all calculation and ambition. Rex genuinely looked down from the mayor’s chair through the lens of history, rather than merely an eye to the next intrigue, with a genuine appreciation for the heritage and history of the shire he served. He was a man of soul in an increasingly soulless avocation. If there's anything I choose to take away from Rex's influence in my life, it's that. People matter. History matters.

I read somewhere recently that all people die three times. We die once when we draw our last breath. We die again when our earthly remains return to the earth and lose their form, and we die a third time when our name is spoken aloud for the last time. This idea affects me very much. When will we all die that last time? When will we be invoked in conversation or recollection a last time, or the cadence of our voice, or the values we transmit to others, be lost to living memory? After how many years? In that sense, many die quickly, and some are still with us centuries on.

I have a hunch Rex will be with us for a very long time.

In which Nathan considers his good fortune

2010-03-29T02:33:00.000+11:00

Recently, I was sitting with nine good friends and I was trying to articulate a principle of life. "I am beset by trials," I began, "but I seek to keep life in proportion by kindling gratitude in my heart for the simplest things."
"Such as?" my friends inquired.
"The smile of my sleeping child; the accident of birth that makes me Australian; the laws of physics and mathematics."
"Physics? Maths?"
"Did you know that you can zoom into a Mandelbrot set so deeply that if the original was as big as the entire universe and you zoomed in so that what you were looking at was smaller than a quark, you would see a tiny little simulacrum of the original shape repeated anew? There it is, woven into the fabric of reality. Like a signature."
The purpose of our gathering was philosophical, and just as well. Such observations rarely travel well at the pub.

And why not choose to feel some sense of wonder and gratitude at both sunsets, and the laws of physics that make sunsets possible? A few nights ago, I told my son to regard his upraised hand.
"Many of the atoms in your hand, your body and everything you see around you were made in a Supernova, before the Solar system was even formed. What planets did that star keep warm, I wonder?" I explained.
His eyes widened. I love doing that.
Carl Sagan's observation that "We are made of star-stuff" stands to me as one of the most wonder-inducing and humbling statements we can reflect on. To think that the glint of gold on my wedding band came from the core of an exploding star 5 or more billion years ago is a fine reminder of both our transience, and equally our participation in the Universe. I give thanks for that. That the Universe is interrogable by Human intellect at all (a situation in which the Universe could equally have felt no obligation)... that is grounds for wonder and thanks.

Strangely, these are among the thoughts that sustain me in my earthly trials. Family, yes. Friends, of course, but some sense also that the world is full of hidden joys and marvels that we miss through harried inattention. When my 7YO son has built a Lego model of the Yamato because we're watching Star Blazers on my laptop together at bedtimes (one episode a night. "Hurry, Star Force! There are only 315 more days to save the Earth!"), and he wants to explain how the guns work at exhaustive length; that moment has as much significance as any could in history. Making my son feel listened to is as profound a purpose I have as I can conceive.

How easily I could have missed that. Or to let my other trials wear at my soul until the bone shows. The best philosophy is to expect a better day and to not be idle in the meantime.
To get to that gathering of my friends I recounted, my brother in law had dared me to ride from Oakville to Wilberforce, some 28km round trip, and I had acquitted myself. It was further than I had ridden since High School.
Yesterday, I sang at a good old fashioned Australian bush dance (My big number was The Wild Colonial Boy. Did you know that song was considered seditious in the 1890s and banned?) We wheeled and cavorted, my son partnered by grandmas and aunties alike through the heel-toe polka or the Drongo, now inducted like his immemorial ancestors into the courtesy of bowing and asking girls sweetly if they will dance. I beamed.
Today, I constructed the frame of a grand new cubby house for my boy while the family gathered in the back yard. Sprinklers were jumped through. Balls were chased by the dippy Spaniel. The BBQ setting was repainted, largely to cover the sins of a previous artistic painting afternoon 7YO son and I had in which the garden furniture came off second best.

Tonight, I cleaned the study. As Satie's Gymnopédies shuffled through iTunes, my hand chanced to rest on the volume of Marcus Aurelius' Meditations I borrowed from my friend Grant years ago and haven't quite managed to return yet. As it fell open, there it was. What I'd been trying to say to my friends that night:

"Be like the headland against which the waves break and break: it stands firm, until presently the watery tumult around it subsides once more to rest. How unlucky I am, that this should have happened to me!' By no means; say rather, 'How lucky I am, that it has left me with no bitterness; unshaken by the present, and undismayed by the future'. The thing could have happened to anyone, but not everyone would have emerged unembittered. So why put the one down to misfortune, rather than the other to good fortune? Can a man call anything at all a misfortune, if it is not a contravention of his nature; and can it be a contravention of his nature if it is not against that nature's will? Well, then: you have learnt to know that will. Does this thing which has happened hinder you from being just, magnanimous, temperate, judicious, discreet, truthful, self-respecting, independent, and all else by which a man's nature comes to its fulfillment? So here is a rule to remember in future, when anything tempts you to feel bitter: not, 'This is a misfortune,' but 'To bear this worthily is good fortune.'"

This neatly encapsulates the view I want to have about life. This is what I would like others to say of me. Stoicism has always had a strong appeal, but this passage is beautiful in its truth. To be sure, recent loss gives my son and I, (and others in the family) a sadness that sometimes verges on the inconsolable, and an anger as well, and a railing at injustice and helplessness. But equally, I carry a sense that if I keep my nerve... if I focus on my family, my community and my study, then our satisfaction and happiness will be inevitable.

Ruminations - The Podcast of Nathan Zamprogo

2009-11-13T02:00:00.001+11:00

Hey there. I've been doing this blog thing for five years now. I've covered a lot of territory, and it's been fun. In the meantime, I've been fortunate to have heard some wonderful podcasters out there. I'd like to single out Patrick McLean's The Seanachai, Wil Wheaton's various offerings , and even anything by our venerable Aunty. This is the future.

Self, I said to myself, you could do that too. Hmmm. Maybe. This may not work. No one may be interested. I may have a rotten feel for the spoken word. Fine. This is an experiment, and, as Henry Ford said, failure merely presents us an opportunity to start over more intelligently.

So let's dabble. Any of my posts that carry the banner you see above are also available as a podcast. Sometimes I'll do a written piece and an audio version, sometimes only one. Hey, it's my sandpit.

Here's the separate website where you can see the list of episodes.

Here's the iTunes URL to subscribe it to your podcast lists, and

Here's the more generic RSS feed URL if you use a feed manager other than iTunes.

Thanks. I'm excited! Don't forget to leave some feedback. Poor Nathan thrives on the occasional kind word.

Henry George Holland

2009-11-13T00:42:00.005+11:00

“No more stories.
We’re still using your imagination,
it was stronger than ours.”

Les Murray,

The Last Hellos

Twenty years ago, exactly to the day, I sat next to a man on his bed. If my arm hadn’t been around his bony shoulders, he couldn’t have sat up. His frame barely filled the pyjamas which spoke of a time when he weighed more. Much more. His wispy hair, white now, stood up at a crazy angle.

A flash of childhood memory: I used to think his morning hair was comical, like a cockatoo’s, before he’d put himself through his morning ritual of Brilliantine to become more senatorial in his presentation. He’d stand in the bathroom and look down at me in my dressing gown, smiling. Was I five? Six? He’d lean down to put shaving cream on my face and then shave it with the back of a comb. I’d get a fingertip’s worth of Old Spice dabbed on my cheeks and have my hair tousled before I would run out, beaming, to be told how grown-up I was.

No more. The lung cancer had won. One eye was a ruin of inflammation, and the other barely held a spark of the old man. Just sunken cheeks and a gaze of unspoken sadness and disgust at a life of self-reliance brought down to this degraded state. He was sobbing, but was almost too weak to do so.

I was sixteen. And I had no words. Just an inchoate sense of dread. This trip to hospital would be the last. My grandfather died later that day, 13th November 1989.

If you’ve lost someone like that, what do you think is worse? The death, or having the majesty of who they used to be taken away first? It’s such an affront, isn’t it?

How my grandfather died says absolutely nothing about who he really was. No, there was one thing: At his funeral they were bunched up the back and pouring out the door.

So let me tell you about Henry George Holland.

He was born in 1923. Only my gran ever called him Henry. Usually as a one-word exclamation of reproof after he’d told a risque joke and she felt the need to fake being scandalised, while he’d roar laughing for whole minutes with his brother, Uncle Claude. Laughter always surrounded my grandfather. And to every other soul, he was Harry Holland from Glenhaven.

More than any other person in my life, Harry defined the kind of person I wanted to be. He was involved in everything. Even from the earliest age I remember him disappearing out the door, meticulously turned out in one of his dapper brown suits (always brown) to preside at this or that. President of Glenhaven Bushfire Brigade. President of the Glenhaven Progress Association. President of the Hills Shire Chamber of Commerce. President of the local branch of the Liberal Party. People were always calling at the house; city Councilmen, State and Federal MPs. They came to take tea with Harry, shake his huge, rough hands, and chew the fat. Because if you had Harry on-side, you had a lot of others as well. There was no bluster to Harry; just a chestful of the good sense he had inherited from a long line of ancestors. That sense was up on the wall of the local Church, where his grandfather’s name plaque (James Holland) was there as a founder, and around the corner, in Holland Road, named after the family; and in the local park, Holland Park, named because, by my grandfather’s generation, we weren’t just from the area, we were the area. He was awarded the National Medal with two bars, which was almost unheard of.

Our family used to run Glenhaven Post Office (see painting to the left), which was a hub for local gossip. But Harry was also the manager of the original Castle Hill Cinema (knocked down in the 70’s to make way for where Castle Mall is now. See below B/W photo)

What I learned at my grandfather’s feet was that civic engagement, especially as voluntary service in one form or another, should be as compulsorily a part of life as breathing. You got involved in things. You invested in something that was larger than you were, and you did it cheerfully, recognising that civic virtue should be an end in itself. That had a powerful effect on me.

Almost everything I’ve applied myself to as an adult has that thought lurking at the back of my head. I hope he’d be proud of me. People massively over-analyse nowadays whether it’s healthy to have ghosts like that at our elbows, but let me tell you, I’d rather be haunted by the expectations of someone like my grandfather to goad me on to better things than not to have had such a role model in my life.

Another flash of memory: Some circumstance caused a need to put all the Fire Brigade’s trucks on our lawn, since we were over the road from the station. Was I seven? Eight? Imagine the look on my face when I came out of the house. My grandfather gave me real fire trucks, be it only for a morning. I still remember his words: “You can push that button,” (the lights), “but NOT that button” (the siren). I think I short circuited from excitement. It was magic. I've written elsewhere about that yard.

There were a few things I shared with my grandfather that were definitely his and mine alone. One of our solemn rituals was to put up the chain of coloured party lights a few weeks before Christmas on the front verandah. I had a dog-eared sheet of paper where I had worked out the perfect sequence of colours that was aesthetically pleasing. He used to indulge me as I consulted the sheet and passed the bulbs up the ladder. He got why it was important. The sense of continuity from year to year might have seemed trivial, but it was significant to us. I still do it, working from the same Arnott’s tin of bulbs and the same dog-eared piece of paper.

When the Bathurst 1000 touring car race was on (the James Hardie 1000 back then. Oh my, how times have changed), we used to get out a big toy racing car set and take over the lounge room on the race weekend to play while we barracked for Peter Brock or Dick Johnson (Brock would normally lead until his engine invariably blew up half an hour from the finish). Grandma would keep us plied with scones and milkshakes, stoic about the chaos in her lounge room.

My grandfather was a wizard with all things mechanical. He was fascinated with engines and gadgets and he bought me my first computer, a Commodore 64. This love of technology meant that, long before consumer video cameras existed, there’s a rich history recorded of my first years on 8mm film. I’m so grateful for that, as I am for the precious library of reel-to-reel audio tapes of him in correspondence with his brother in Lismore. When I evoke his ghost from the machine, I travel back in time. His voice is at the end of the podcast version of this essay.

He was bawdy, yet gentle. He was casually racist about Japan, like so many in his generation, yet expansive towards anyone who took on Australian values. He did not suffer fools gladly, yet the twinkle in his eye showed that any censure was temporary.

My regret of course, was that he died when I was only 16. I remember starting to go to a few meetings with him (“Sit quietly”, I was told), but I think he was delighted I was inheriting the same values. He’d have been 86 if he’d been alive today. I think of all that life and advice he could have imparted to me if he’d still been here. His absence is still an ache in my heart. I miss him so.

His example gave me my enduring fascination in how the web of community we create around us, through service organisations, churches, sporting clubs, veterans groups, dramatic and creative societies, political parties and so on collectively defines the kind of civilisation we can be proud of. It doesn’t come from our governments or corporate goliaths. It comes from people like Harry. I’m a member of a few community organisations myself, and sometimes I’m among the youngest in attendance, at 36! I wonder how we can ensure community spirit does not pass from our society, and how we can foster it in a selfish and introverted generation.

When my son was born in 2002, it seemed fitting that I would somehow name him after my grandfather. So, my son’s middle name is “Henry”, and sometimes I call him Harry because it pleases me (and because it makes him think he’s Harry Potter!)

My mind is flooded with stories, and I wonder what to else share. There’s a lot of memories my mother, Helen has been fortunate enough to recount for a local oral history project and the text and audio are available at the Baulkham Hills Council historical website (here and here).

I’d like to think I carry the better part of who my grandfather was with me. If I'm lucky, I might even manage to pass it on to my son as well.

And in case you’re curious, yes; I do wear Old Spice after shave, and I’m proud of it.

I opened with Les Murray’s poem “The Last Hellos”, which he wrote about the death of his own father. He said,

“People can’t say goodbye any more.
They say last hellos.”

That’s true, but I like the last lines of that poem still better:

"Snobs mind us off religion

nowadays, if they can.

Fuck them. I wish you God"

In Which Nathan Becomes Subversive

2009-10-16T01:55:00.009+11:00

When I was at Sydney University as a callow teen, ooh, 18 years ago, I wasn't really the seditious type. Membership of S.U.S.S (the caving society) was my only indulgence, and well I was rewarded with the fondest memories of that season of my life. I recall I could have joined S.P.A.M (Sydney (Monty) Python Appreciation Movement), S.U.C.R.O.S.E (Sydney Uni Chocolate Revellers Opposed to Sensible Eating), even S.U.C.C.A.S (Sydney Uni Cuban Cigar Appreciation Society), but I seem to have passed on those. Ah, salad days.

Politics though, seemed the province of those with more ego, or bile, and certainly more time, than I. I was a member of the Sydney University Liberal Club, yes, but really I only watched with bemusement at the internecine factionalism that wracked the movement in the 90's. Let's see; There was a Group, I think. And a Team. The Group didn't like the Team and the feeling was mutual. And... Sorry. The memory's gone. It was all rather petty. There were banners and fliers and a ticket for the Student Council election named "I hate Justin Owen" (don't know why the name sticks in my mind; I have no idea if he deserved that kind of disapprobation). This was served with the explanation that Universities are traditionally the place where you can cut your teeth being unpleasant before you become professionally unpleasant in the corporate world or grown-up politics. Sometimes it was clever, but mostly it was blunt. Holding a megaphone or a banner wasn't my shtick. My flaw was wanting to discuss ideas rather than playing the man. Silly me.

When I decided to go back to Uni, I formed a notion I'd perhaps been too pliant before, and maybe should use my life-experience and this second chance to kick up a little more dust this time. Besides, University life nowadays seems so... banal. I don't know if it's the passage of the years or going from a Uni like Sydney to the decentralised and brutalist UWS that marks the difference. There's so little dissent, or intelligent questioning going on that I can see. There's no sign of a Conservative political presence on campus. A smattering of your typical ratbag Greens, of course (which the Trotskyists at Syd.U would have eviscerated and eaten for breakfast as "right wing running dog lackeys").

So when our English Literature lecturer referred cryptically to a "celebrity guest lecturer" coming up, curiosity was piqued. "Who?", we queried our tutor. "Nathan Rees, Premier of NSW." came the answer, "He's got an honours degree in English Lit., you know".
Oh, great. So we lose a week to hear the Premier tell us what's on his bedside table.

We've been studying some impenetrable texts this semester; Shelley's Frankenstein, T.S Eliot's The Waste Land, and Beckett's Endgame among them. Oh, and those last two are utter meaningless rubbish, thank you. Bleak, dystopian tosh. But we have to understand them, not like them, and now we lose a week.

So, I thought I'd make amends for my milquetoast former career as a student and, like I said, kick up a little dust. For those who might not know, Nathan Rees is our State Premier and leads the most tainted, tired, ramshackle, incompetent, faction-ridden, overdrawn government our fair state has ever had the misfortune to fall under.

So I made some banners and put them up just before the Premier came in to speak. I wanted to stay with the theme of our course, but still be a little pointed.

Yes, a little dense, but those in our course would have understood immediately what I was driving at. Better than "F*** off, Nathan", at any rate.

To my utter surprise, no one immediately took them down and frog marched me out. A few students took photos with their iPhones, and one said "Wow, I really admire your balls", which I haven't heard said to me outside the confines of a bucks night for many a year. I'd like to think the Premier had to look at those two banners the whole time he was speaking.

The Premier came in, gave a rambling speech which a friend afterwards described as "not entirely unconvincing all the time" (I think that's called damning with faint praise), took only two questions and answered neither of them. I however, felt a certain sense of triumph. I had done something... well, naughty. I was subversive! Where would this end? Visions of wearing odd socks or parting my hair on the other side swam giddily in my head.

My sense of triumph lasted precisely until I shouted myself an extravagant lunch of fish and chips and put two sachets of sugar over them instead of salt. But beware, the beast is now unleashed.

The Cetaceous and the Celestial

2009-10-06T23:56:00.006+11:00

Hate to do a "best of" to you today, but I thought I'd
bring you a post I made on my other blog (sadly neglected of late)
a while ago, because it says a number of things that
are important to me, and I liked my turn of phrase in it.

I once holidayed on Moreton Island, off the Queensland coast. One of a tiny handful of places on Earth where wild dolphins nightly congregate to be near, and fed by, humans. There we were, I and my wife and young son, standing on a long wharf under the brilliant splendour of a starry southern-hemisphere sky. Below us, in the shallow water, sentient beings were bringing their young to the sandy shore to be fed fish and, I am sure, to gaze curiously up at their distant, landbound cousins. If you’ve ever been regarded by a dolphin, you'll know what I mean.

Occasionally, the dolphins would break their formation along the line of handlers moderating the queue of people who wished to feed them, wheeling away to chase off an interloping (but entirely harmless) Wobbegong shark in silent but flawless concert, or reprove an errant calf back to within its mother’s watchful gaze. I looked upward to see the warm breeze stirring the palm trees along the beach, and the dunes of the island rising to black silhouette against the velvet sky.

Suddenly, half the sky was incandescent- immediately where I had rested my gaze. A massive fireball, green and white, was streaking across the sky, comet-tailed, writhing. For perhaps four long seconds, a hundred people froze with upturned faces; gasping. The Meteor was significant enough that it featured on the TV news the following night, and there was speculation it had landed, somewhere inland.

Afterwards, on a long walk along the beach alone, I was struck with a powerful sense of… planethood. Of being a citizen of the Cosmos, given a sliver of the grandeur that the Universe is full of, but hidden from sight by the tyranny of distance and human mortality. Friends who know me well will recognise my disorder, which I refer to as a propensity to “come over all Carl Sagan” at such moments.

I held a sense that such wonder as I felt is more than atoms just bumping together. That dolphins, palm trees and meteors, along with the delight of my Son’s efforts at sand castle building, were emergent properties arising from the same physical laws that were equally valid near each of the 200 to 400 billion stars I saw above me in the edge-on view of our galaxy, one hundred thousand light years across.

This Uranian muse led me further: I became aware of how my love of Science was contributing to my sense of wonder. I was turning over in my head many things- the scale and age of the Universe wheeling above me; the philosophical debate about animal sentience and the nature of consciousness; the Deep Time that freed the sands upon which I trod from their parent rocks; the probability that the colour of the meteor’s ionisation trail was indicative of its metallic composition, the notion that this breadloaf sized piece of rock had probably silently orbited the Sun since my ancestors were lobe-finned fish, before choosing the very instant I was looking up to meet its end. I imagined that the rock’s entire history- every microscopic perturbation of its orbit, its lonely solitude in the outer solar system, and its precise moment of death, were in some sense purposed. Meant for observation. So I would be inspired to write this. So that you would read it, and so that you could share in the singular sensation it evinced.

At that moment, my heart was full. I gave thanks that I lived in an age where, even though we are only one rung above the ignorance that has characterised most of human history, what we have learned as a species through the application of Science had brought me, for a numinous instant, closer to God.

Later, I wondered at how others might interpret the same things as I had observed, believing themselves to be both sane and wise. Without the benefit of the insights Science have afforded, I might have regarded Dolphins as little more than food, never inquiring concerning their ability to love or suffer. I might have regarded the meteor as an ill-omen, perhaps requiring some kind of sacrifice to propitiate an angry deity. The galactic vista spread above my head would be seen as little more than window dressing- the irrelevant backdrop to an entire Universe which was not merely Geocentric, but Homocentric.

Lastly, I realised that there were those- many, in point of fact, who would regard all the Science that was brought to bear to enable my sense of wonderment, as... suspect. Certainly presumptious. Possibly even evil. The Geology accurately explaining the sandy strata in the cliffs above me would be seen as a deliberately deceit, pushed by those seeking to “do away with God”. The Astronomy purporting to describe a Cosmos of many billions of light-years and many trillions of stars would be seen as, quite literally, diabolically inspired, and eroding of faith. The Biology which shows the evolutionary vestiges of the Dolphin’s Artiodactylic, terrestrial ancestors would be dismissed out of hand as “foolishly based on the wrong worldview”.

Experiences like these have shown me that my Universe is immeasurably grander and honouring to the extravagant creativity of God than the tiny, middle-eastern, pre-Scientific, vengeful god that many people incorrectly presume to extract from the pages of the Bible. The views of such people are as outdated as witch burning and will be looked upon as such by future generations.

And if this annoys you, good.

A personal interlude

2009-09-02T10:57:00.005+10:00

I worked for a long time at a private School. I was always flattered when colleagues said “You ought to teach”, but I was happily in a groove where the technology I managed dominated my sense of identity. I was happy to pour myself into work where the satisfaction I gained was from enabling others to teach well. I got a real thrill when I saw people using technology to educate better, but there was always something else lurking at the back of my mind.

You see, I was always something of a "Philosopher-IT Manager", and friends became used to a lecture in politics as I fixed their email, or a spirited debate on the interface between Science and Religion while I fixed a printer (especially when I was cruising the Science faculty), or perhaps a bon-mot from my slightly warped sense of humour. If you passed my cramped but familiar office you may have heard me quoting Carl Sagan as likely as Augustine, while my walls were a shrine to photos of my beloved wife and son, salted with dog-eared sheets with quotes by Teddy Roosevelt, XKCD cartoons and a huge, byzantine map I had made of our burgeoning network. For those who looked closely, the map included several easter eggs, like a Where's Wally figure, or the USS Enterprise tucked into a corner. Yes, I was chronically overworked and under-resourced, but for the most part, I felt appreciated and the time, ten years, just kind of blissfully slipped by. It was the ideal life. I was blessed beyond measure. I was paid what my skills deserved. Until nearly the end, I loved what I did. I was among friends, and I had any number of outside interests, like my local dramatic society The Richmond Players, a place of respect in local politics, welded-on friends, and material and spiritual richness in my life.

I could have joyfully seen my days out doing that, regarding my service as worthy. But I had a growing conviction, starting a few years ago, when I realised that my real passions lay with ideas. The prospect of a life where debating bigger questions was not just an amusing adjunct to work or evening avocation seemed like an impossible dream. Imagine being paid to think and argue! Or teach! Colleagues, mistaking my intentions said, "Oh, you'd make a great computing teacher." Frankly, the idea of teaching computing now makes my skin crawl. I'm still a tech-fanboy (or it's sub-specie, the Apple fanboy), but I'm done with that. Something else has taken a hold of me. Exactly what direction I'm being led in isn't clear yet, but I am now enjoying the journey again. I'm back at University, and my recurring thought is “I should have done this years ago”.

I won't pretend that the decision came easily. This year has been the most challenging of my life, but I'm amazed at the serendipity of life. That security of circumstance which I feared most to lose was precisely what held me back. Anyway, I can’t abide self-pity. You get back up, shake the dust off, and you get on with things. The best is yet to come!

I've been into my new degree for a couple of months now, long enough for some distinct impressions to crystallise. Studying History, Politics and Philosophy has plunged me right into the debates that interest me most. Despite initially chafing at the absence of choice in the first year, doing subjects regarded as "foundational" like Media and Visual culture, or Australian History, I’m hugely enjoying having my beliefs subjected to the need for analysis, emendation and proof. When I get time, I’ll share some vignettes with you.

Welcome to the University of Nathan.

Ai! Ai! Cthulhu F'taghn!!

2009-07-27T23:59:00.004+10:00

“It represented a monster of vaguely anthropoid outline, but with an octopus-like head whose face was a mass of feelers...”*

This explains a lot. 6YO son is back at School tomorrow. Not a moment too soon.

* With thanks to H.P Lovecraft and Defective Yeti.
It's not plagiarism, it's a meme.

Normal Transmission Will Resume Shortly

2009-06-25T23:55:00.009+10:00

I always loved the story of the British journalist William Connor, who enlisted during World War II. As a consequence of that catastrophic tumult which killed millions, wracked the world and changed its shape, his regular column in The Mirror was absent for some years. In 1946, resuming his column under his byline of Cassandra, he dryly began "As I was saying, before I was so rudely interrupted".

Indeed. I'm sorry I've been away.

The anecdote is ironic and tragic, too, since I am presently fated to have a Cassan dra in my life as well. But that is a story for another time.

In the last six months I've quit my job of ten years, changed houses (and as a corollary, acquired a new station in life as a Landlord), changed my son's school, endured personal tragedy, and confronted malevolent forces at play contending for the happiness of my family. On the upside, I have decided to return to study (after an absence of 16 years) and that's an exciting opportunity I'm lucky to be able to take.

I've decided to take a degree in History, Philosophy and Politics, with the option of a Masters in Teaching in the last year, should I choose it. Needless to say, gentle reader, I insist you come along for the ride.

Life throws us googlies occasionally (I almost said "curveball" but find the Anglo term more satisfying), and the rational man looks for answers. If answers are not readily at hand, a quest is in order. Several friends have pointed out that not all men choose to take a degree in Philosophy in order to answer a personal question, but that's just me.

Although we're diametrically opposed on matters of faith, I'm reminded of Betrand Russell's view:

"The man who has no tincture of philosophy goes through life imprisoned in the prejudices derived from common sense, from the habitual beliefs of his age or his nation, and from convictions which have grown up in his mind without the co-operation or consent of his deliberate reason...while diminishing our feeling of certainty as to what things are, [philosophy] greatly increases our knowledge as to what they may be; it removes the somewhat arrogant dogmatism of those who have never travelled into the region of liberating doubt, and it keeps alive our sense of wonder by showing familiar things in an unfamiliar light."

Lastly, I've been noting things that strike a chord with my current state of mind. I thought this was a gem (having studied and worked in a technical discipline for 15 years, I was starting to feel like this):

Attribution (highly recommended webcomic)

Hang on, folks. We're in this together.

Time to Think

2009-01-26T00:14:00.003+11:00

Image credit

I've neglected my writing, sad to say. Personal issues, yada yada.
But look! A friend writes with a question and my muse grew to such a length I thought I'd share it with you.

My friend Emma writes:

"hi guys, this is an odd query but I am writing a children's story in which time will stand still for a number of minutes/hours. I have tried looking up stuff relating to the physics of timelessness/time stopping/the illusion of time and am not ashamed to admit I was completely confused! I thought you might have some ideas...if time was to stand still, what would the effect of that be on the world?

any ideas would be much appreciated!
em"

Ah, Time. As The Doctor once said "I do wish I had the time to explain dimensional transcendentalism to you". Then again, he also said "Don't move! Or I'll kill this man with this deadly jelly baby", so maybe he was just balmy.

The notion of "stopping" time makes certain assumptions which may have a dramatic consequence for your story. First, stopping time relative to what? If you say "Lucy froze. Time ceased to flow for five minutes; her dropped porcelain cup suspended in the air, surrounded by a nimbus of oblately spherical droplets of tea, except for one somewhat larger blob which, at the point of motionless, had assumed a shape not unlike a cow's amygdala as it attempted to leave the cup, the metaphysical significance of which would never be detected, let alone debated by philosophers.", then her timeless state enduring for "five minutes" can only have any sense if there existed an "outside reference point" by which to have measured the interval. We commonly ascribe God as inhabiting this realm "outside time", also accounting for his ability to "see all of time at once" and unerringly picking next week's Powerball numbers.

As for poor Lucy, if time stopped for her for any stretch of (outside reckoned) time, by rights she should be entirely unaware of the phenomenon. For all you know, God popped the Universe on pause half way through you reading that last sentence to go to the loo, paused it for a million years in fact, and only just came back then and pressed play again. Did you notice? How could you? It's like another gedankensexperiment: "Imagine you wake up tomorrow and every atom in the universe is twice the size". How do you tell without a reference point?

Descending from the heavenly sphere for a moment, there is a scientific analogue: Relativity. Einstein's theory suggests that time does not flow equally fast for all observers in the universe. The flow of time for an observer can differ from his observing twin if he is subjected to an intense gravitational field, or subjected to acceleration at close to the speed of light. Doubtlessly this conjecture will be tested by the Mythbusters team in due course, but the physics are reasonably well established. Read this synopsis for Heinlein's "Time for the Stars" for a typical fictional treatment of this phenomenon. At the extreme end (for instance, close to the event horizon of a black hole) a clock dropped towards a black hole will appear to an outside observer to tick ever more slowly, and even freeze. However, it must be stated that to the other participant, time seems to flow normally, and will even observe the reverse effect (the other twin's clock ticking more and more quickly). Einstein, despite never wearing socks, seems to have had the physics down-pat.

One favourite plot device used by "time freezing" stories involves only a "partial freeze". Our protagonist freezes time and yet retains the ability to move about - rearranging people or objects for comedic effect, for example. A classic example of this scenario is from an episode of the Twilight Zone I vividly remember from when I was 13.

Dramatically, this is entertaining. From the standpoint of physics, it's a muddle. What atoms are "frozen" in such a partial freeze and which aren't? In theory, our non-time-frozen subject could not move or breath, as the atoms of air through which she moves would be fixed and immobile. I recall a CS Lewis story where a character could not walk across a lawn of time-frozen grass because each tender blade, being locked in place, was now like a knife.

Lastly, there's the sneaky-cheat way of stopping time. If you want a character or scene frozen for a "span" that has some meaning to some outside observer, maybe stopping time isn't what you need. All you need to do is render motionless each atom in your tableau, preventing chemical or physical interactions from occurring; effectively stopping entropy (the tendency for things to fall into disorder) in a localised space, for a time, even though time itself is still flowing. If such a situation could be engineered, I would imagine the people therein would say time froze for them, although the persistence of conscious thought during such an interruption would make a fascinating debate between those who place the conscious essence in the metaphysical realm and those who tie it to the atoms bumping about in your head.

I hope this meandering muse helps you formulate your story. I wonder what others will have to say?

Regards,
Nathan

Nova Scotia by Limosine

2008-10-02T03:40:00.001+10:00

"What? The $230 Limosine tour of Halifax is only half booked? How would you and your sister like to tag along for free?"

It's OK to hate me now. I understand. And every day is like this at the moment.

All I have to say, so far

2008-09-28T06:54:00.004+10:00

I am in America. I have seen many things. I have witty observations accumulating on my iPhone like topsy. Strangely, all I have to show you so far is this:

Says it all, really.

Well, if you must see more then try the Photo gallery on my Facebook page or my Flickr account. Internet access proving slightly harder to get than expected, so stay tuned.

A different take on the Howard legacy

2008-09-11T00:43:00.007+10:00

'Politics is not a bad profession. If you succeed, there are many rewards; if you disgrace yourself, you can always write a book.' - Ronald Reagan

Australia's interest in Peter Costello will peak this week, after two decades in the national spotlight. Interest in the man and his views may have been higher in the past when the Liberal/National coalition was in office, but it will never be higher again than they will be this week in September 2008, with the release of Costello's political memoirs.

As the co-architect of some of the Howard Government's most important economic reforms, Peter Costello deserves respect. Perhaps the hysteria about his "will he/won't he" attitude towards the Liberal leadership springs, in part, from a legitimate nostalgia borne of the realisation Australia was a more competently run place under the Coalition; also, from the fact that the Government of which he was a member from 1996 to 2007 really did better represent the mores and natural conservatism of the Australian populace than the clowns who are wrecking the place now.

Since he has now redeclared his intentions more emphatically, that he is not interested in the Liberal leadership, this essay is not concerned with that matter. But since, along with this declaration, there are the reports that Costello has picked out the three biggest failings of the Howard years as themes for his political bildungsroman, I think there are a few things worth saying.

Costello "lists the Republic, Reconciliation and the rise of Hansonism as the major challenges John Howard failed to meet." I was indifferent on the question of whether Costello would choose to become leader until I read those words. Now, a flood of half recalled memory snippets are re-assembling themselves in my brain, and they are causing me to see the man in a different light. Why? I would single out those very three issues as the triumphs of the Howard years.

Under Howard, the Republican charge was stopped cold. Howard, an avowed defender of the current constitution, like myself, delivered a master-stroke by bringing the Republican question to a head under his watch, rather than try to bury the question. We had the whole three ring circus, a Constitutional Convention (only the fourth to be held in Australia in over a century of Federalism), a spirited public debate and a referendum, which the republicans lost comprehensively. Did Howard fail the Australian public by denying them their say? No. Did he hobble the process by endorsing a half baked process to resolve the matter? No. Was the will of the Australian people reflected in the result? Overwhelmingly. Australians, regardless of their position on monarchism per se, gained a re-awakened sense of pride in the stability and effectiveness of their constitution, even when tested to its limits by the necessity of dissolving corrupt and failed Governments. Wisely, they fell back to the Aussie maxim "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

On the question of Reconciliation, John Howard's instincts were also right. As I have written before, I am an unashamed believer in the hegemonic view: Support for the 2007 intervention isn't anything a Liberal should be ashamed of, and its continuation under a Labor government must surely be an affirmation of its bipartisan, and obvious, rightness. I saw a T-Shirt recently and would love to get one for myself. It says, in type of decreasing size

Not Sorry.

Not even a little bit.

Would do it again in a minute.

Remember that in 1996, the incoming Aboriginal Affairs minister raised the issue of endemic domestic and sexual violence against women and children with the ATSIC board and met with "total denial'. He recounted: "They said: 'What are you talking about?' There was only one female board member and I said to her 'Why didn't you stand up to them?' and she said 'I'm too afraid'."

And since my views on reconciliation are fairly clear, you can ditto me on Howard's approach to Hansonism. Although Howard was muted about Pauline Hanson herself, I suspect his sympathies were more with One Nation than against them. Despite my respect for the man, I've got to say Tony Abbott's anti-Hanson subterfuge with his "Australians for Honest Politics" gambit was misguided, especially since Abbott's politics are instinctively towards the right of the Party. Abbott saw the erosion of the conservative vote from the right as a threat, and rightly so. The ALP are now mired in the same problem from the left with the Greens and seem incapable of addressing it as decisively. But when Howard embraced Hanson's politics it was always to his advantage, especially on the questions of abolishing ATSIC, and in enforcing better minimum English language and cultural literacy standards for immigrants. Let's be clear; none of us should rue the departure of One Nation from the political stage. In the end, they were inept and disorganised. Ironically, though, they happened to be right, and Howard instinctively knew Hanson had correctly read the zeitgeist.

So, if Costello's recollection of a decade in power is going to focus on these areas as "failings" then I'm afraid he's got it wrong. Costello helmed a decade of unprecedented economic growth and reform, but with these views, I'm almost glad history has passed him by as a potential Prime Minister.

Vodafone sucks

2008-09-02T16:18:00.006+10:00

I rarely give flight to a fully fledged rant on this blog, but today I'm going to make an exception. Vodafone? You suck. I'm flying to New York and Canada next month (and yes, I'll blog the trip) and I wanted to use my new iPhone to access the Internet in the Big Apple. The cost?

That's right. 1c per kilobyte. $10 per megabyte. I subscribe to a data bundle here in Oz. $30 for 500Mb over a month. If I downloaded the same amount in the U.S on Vodafone's roaming plan it would cost me $5000.

$5000 instead of $30. And in the U.S, where I would be roaming with AT&T, they offer data bundles for smartphones and PDAs at the rate of $35 for unlimited data.

Which I would buy, if Vodafone had not locked my iPhone to their network.

Idiots. Unmitigated wanking idiots.

A man and his boy. I'm testing a new iPhone application that lets me take and upload photos and blog from anywhere.

2008-08-27T23:26:00.001+10:00

Google Streetview exposes outrageous secrets

2008-08-06T15:38:00.003+10:00

A lot of people are in a lather about the new Google Streetview service going live in Australia. I checked it out and am amazed at how many poky country roads they managed to get to. If only I'd known when they were coming I could have dressed up as the Statue of Libery or something, like Corporal Klinger in that episode of M.A.S.H.

But I digress. And what scandal might Google Streetview expose about my life?
You'll be shocked.
Brace yourselves.

At our place, bin night is Thursday. Phew.

Cognitive Dissonance in Women's Magazines

2008-05-29T22:48:00.003+10:00

I saw this today at the checkout of the local supermarket.

I am reminded of two things. One is that neither the words "cognitive" or "dissonance" are likely to appear in either of these publications. The other is Orwell's description of "Doublethink" from 1984:

"The power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them . . . . To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies — all this is indispensably necessary. Even in using the word doublethink it is necessary to exercise doublethink. For by using the word one admits that one is tampering with reality; by a fresh act of doublethink one erases this knowledge; and so on indefinitely, with the lie always one leap ahead of the truth."

What I find curious is the authority that both magazines make about their claim. Both make the claim that their source is a quote from Britney Spears herself. Thus, regardless of Britney's pregnant status, they are both lying. Personally, I think it's cruel to subject the poor girl to this Schrödinger-like uncertainty. Somebody collapse that girl's wave function!

Who weekly claims a regular circulation of 150,000 and is owned by the Seven Media Group through Pacific Magazines. NW Weekly (circulation ~200,000) is owned by Consolidated Media Holdings, a Packer entity associated with Channel 9. Thus, this boils down to a typical 7 vs 9 stoush. They should both be ashamed to so willingly lower the collective IQ of our society.

Why we can't put the people responsible for this tripe into pillories in Martin Place so we can chuck smelly things at them is one of the chief things wrong with the world.

ANZAC Day: A Commemoration, not a Circus

2008-04-24T02:05:00.006+10:00

Click here for the full Flickr set of photos associated with this story- my Gallipoli photos.

Seeing our TV Screens full of Australasian backpackers flooding onto the Gallipoli peninsula is an ineluctable and annual staple. “Good on them”, we think. The commemoration of that singular event in our history which gave birth to our national identity is carried to a new generation by young people picking up the mantle saying “Lest we forget”. If we look a little closer, we note that those making the pilgrimage to the sacred site don’t always pick up their rubbish, some look a little worse for wear, and sometimes the gravity of the occasion has been lost a little. Most have made an overnight coach trip from Istanbul, which is nearly 300km away, stay to see a compressed guided tour of the ANZAC precinct, and head back the same day. Those seeking the historical flavour might sit through The Gallipoli movie with their package tour group the night before the trip. Few, if any, actually make it to the town called Gallipoli (Gelibolu, to the locals), which is some distance from ANZAC Cove.

Every year I see those pilgrims, I’m filled with pride that so many people continue to be motivated to travel to what’s still quite a remote spot to stand with other Aussies and Kiwis and blow on the coals of remembrance.
I’m also filled with a lot of sadness, because they’re robbing themselves of the best ANZAC experience. Let me share my Gallipoli story…

I was fortunate enough to travel to Turkey in 2000. Making my way from Ankara, 750km away, and with no fine command of Turkish, all I decided to do was keep saying “Gelibolu” at bus depots and sea ports and then go in the direction people were pointing. For simplicity, my plan was a 10 out of 10. For accuracy, as my five-year-old says: “minus zero”. Not that it mattered. I was mesmerised. Every waypoint was a palimpsest of history. Getting lost was a pleasure. Beneath the modern city of Istanbul lay the Ottoman’s den. Beneath that, the Roman city of Constantine. Beneath that, the Greek’s Byzantium, and beneath that, a Phoenician’s Seaport. As I was crossing the Dardanelles by boat, I was dreaming of those young, brave souls from country NSW or outback Queensland, about to set foot into hell. But I could have as easily dreamed I was Paris of Troy, or Alexander the Great, or Xerxes, or the Apostle Paul, all of whom made the same journey over the same stretch of water.

Unfortunately, my geography wasn’t quite as good as my history. Shortly after my triumphant arrival in the actual town of Gallipoli was the news that, sorry, Gallipoli isn’t actually anywhere near, well, Gallipoli. Only a minority of ANZAC pilgrims end up there, although there must have been enough; the local lodgings were called “ANZAC House”. Ah, ANZAC House… where the toilet next to my bed whose interior surface was black ran all night, and the showers wouldn’t. Long story…

Now those that know me well will expect me at this juncture to tell my How I Got Arrested By the Turkish Army Story and Held at Gunpoint story, and perhaps I will… another time. I want to make a different point.

You see, all those well meaning pilgrims attending the ANZAC Day dawn service are missing out on an enormous part of the Gallipoli experience. It’s like going to the Louvre and staying half an hour… it’s just not on. Certainly, there is a unique feel to being there with so many other people, but my own experience was far more moving because of how I found myself there. Here’s what happened.

Firstly, I wasn’t travelling in the area at ANZAC time. I happened to be in the area in early April, weeks out from ANZAC Day.
Second, since my poor navigation landed me in a fishing village bearing the name of my destination but unfortunately not the co-ordinates, I got to see somewhere that a lot of people don’t, even those who come back saying “I’ve been to Gallipoli”.
Third, as a result of losing myself, I was approached by a charming local man, Gurkay, who negotiated a price to drive me down the peninsula in an ancient Combi and show me personally all the sites I wanted to see, such as the Gallipoli museum, Lone Pine, ANZAC Cove, and all the various monuments one would expect; a trip which would last a long day. I had my own personal guide! He thought he was rorting me blind for AU$100, and I thought I was getting a bargain. He had no English and I had no Turkish (unless you count “I love you, my darling”, “get well soon”, or “thank you”… long story). We were firm friends by the end of the day.
Fourth, I had a mission- something to personalise my trip. A dear family friend in his nineties had heard I was going to Gallipoli. He explained that his older brother, Stan, had died at Lone Pine and that in all the years since, he had never seen as much as a photo of his grave. Wow. What a mission!
Fifth, when I made it to ANZAC Cove, and Lone Pine; when I walked the partially reconstructed trenches, and when I went bush-bashing a bit just to see what it felt like to climb a hillside in Gallipoli with no railing or path, I was able to think in silence, by myself. I think I thought for a long time. A really long time. It was a sunny, breezy day, and birds were chirping, but I think that only by standing there quietly for half an hour allowed me to hear the faint echoes of the fallen, and what they were trying to say to me.

Sixth, when I found the grave I was looking for, the depersonalising nature of the huge number of dead was all washed away. Courtesy of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission Website, I had located one of nearly a hundred thousand graves, and yet, this one was special. I arranged it with an Australian flag I had brought for the purpose, took photos and video of the area, and yes, I cried. I cried for a man who had not had a single soul to cry by his grave in 84 years.

If you’re contemplating a trip to Gallipoli, don’t settle for the prepackaged “back to the bus in 15 minutes”, shrink-wrapped, cattle-class version. See it properly. See it with time to sit quietly somewhere, by yourself. If it’s just an item on your itinerary and someone is holding your hand the whole way, then it isn’t a pilgrimage- it’s just a trip.

A Major Australian Museum’s Disgraceful Concession to Creationism

2008-04-19T00:55:00.008+10:00

Jan 2009: A warm welcome to those who have been directed here by John Stear's NAiG site. If you want a one-line summary of the direction I am coming from, it's as a Christian (who works at a Christian School), who loves Science and regards the non-Scientific, ideological rantings of Young Earth Creationists as deeply corrupt and damaging to our faith.

If you enjoy this article (ironically, what I regard as my thinnest on the topic of Creationism), then please feel free to explore my other posts on the same subject which carry the tag of "Creationism"

Young Earth Creationists suffer from a humiliating lack of credibility, and rightly so, among the mainstream scientific community. Hence, if any “secular” institution appears to slip and confirm any tenet of the Creationist worldview, you can count on them to crow about it. Of course, the context or intent of the reference is rarely of interest to them.

Our major museum of natural history in Sydney, the Australian Museum, has very recently opened its long awaited and overdue Dinosaur exhibit. It’s impressive, and I attended today with my five year old son (pictured above) to check it out.
Being the School holidays, I was surprised (and delighted, and then surprised that I was delighted) to be standing in a long queue that stretched out the door and around the corner. The queue was full of families and kids, all in high spirits. A large banner outside the grand old Victorian sandstone museum portrayed an archetype carnivore, rampant, and the words “Can’t wait to meet you”. The “m” in meet was slashed out with claw marks. Cute. The museum had languished for many years and this exhibit is the first proper Dinosaur exhibit it has probably ever had, and a major shot in the arm. I harbour fond and dim memories of the “Dinosaurs from China” exhibit at the same museum when I was a kid, and here I was, my rambunctious, blond, paleontologically encyclopaedic offspring in tow, passing the dino-mania on to a very willing next generation.

Of course, one of the cardinal assumptions in palaeontology is that Homo Sapiens and the Dinosauria occupied far removed and mutually exclusive epochs in the Earth’s history. Any admission that men and dinosaurs co-existed would be a major gaffe, right? Something so crazy and stupid, you would only expect that from, say a pretend museum that corrupts and prostitutes the very concept of a museum, yes?

Well. Oooboy, are the Creationists going to be cock-a-hoop over this one. This was part of the exhibit.
OK. OK. I can’t keep this up. I’ve been stringing you along. Of course the Australian Museum aren’t being serious. When I read this, if I’d been drinking milk, it would have come out my nose, if you know what I mean. It tickled my fancy, being a huge fan of The Far Side. The Thagomizer. I love that. And while they aren't serious about cavemen and dinosaurs co-existing, scientists do actually use this term. Here's my photo of one.

And now I feel guilty. If you’ve read this far, suckered by my claim of a Creationist gaffe at a respectable public institution and angry, let me make amends: This is how a museum should be- full of questioning and the joy of engaging young minds, rather than full of tawdry appeals to ideology and Flintstones-level fantasy. Differing views are presented in the exhibit, such as the debate between catastrophists and gradualists concerning the end of the Mesozoic era; Care was taken to represent Archaeopteryx as an offshoot of bird development rather than as linear antecedents of Aves, and each of the many transitional features marking the difference between reptiles and birds were mentioned (and supported by examples). The evolution of snakes was explained with an Australian example of sand swimming skinks, which are living illustrations of the varying stages of limb loss. I was impressed at the degree to which propositions made about Dinosaurs, their lives, behavior and evolution were backed up by so much evidence from the fossil record. Some might say that the degree of explanation might put people off, but I thought it was all very accessible. Obviously the authors of the exhibit had an eye to the criticism that many statements about Dinosaurs are made without qualification, and then accepted because of an "appeal to authority". I felt sure that if the exhibit said something factually incorrect about Dinosaurs, one of those bright eyed 5 year olds like mine might be the one to correct it in the years to come, and that no one at the Museum would be unhappy about that.

I only had one gripe. One Velociraptor was portrayed with hairy feathers.
I don’t care what the science says. It looked silly, like some cast off carnival haunted house prop. Many of the displays were hands-on, and there were palaeontologists exhuming fossils from real rocks as part of the exhibit.

As I was walking through the exhibition, one of the things I couldn’t keep out of my mind was how any Creationist viewing the exhibit would find the visit ruined for them. Of course, I use the term "Creationist" here as shorthand for Young Earth Creationist- I regard myself as a "Creationist" by definition as a Christian, but I'm poles apart from being a Young Earther. Never mind the hordes of young people being sparked to an interest in science and learning, or the quality of the multimedia and static displays. I can just imagine these people, indoctrinated into hating science in a kind of sick, pavlovian response, as they would fume and rail at the references to deep time and evolutionary processes scattered throughout the exhibit. It reminded me of just how embarassing Young Earth Creationist organisations like CMI and AiG should be regarded as by Christians of all creeds.

People who know me know that I get a bit knotty when people eject their brains in matters of Faith. If people go to museums like this one and lose their faith in God because the sign says “millions of years ago”, then I’d have to doubt their faith was very grounded to begin with. However, when people start teaching that you can’t believe in Jesus without regarding the presentation of such a wonderful Dinosaur exhibit as a monstrous atheistic conspiracy then, well, perhaps the kindest thing I could say about such people (alas, even as a Christian) is that they should be publicly ridiculed. And then flogged. And then fed to Velociraptors. With lasers on their heads.

When Computers are Smarter than we are

2008-04-15T11:33:00.006+10:00

For years now, I've subscribed to an email list from the Australian Prime Minister's department. This mailing list sends me a copy of all Prime Ministerial speeches and press releases.

When John Howard was the Prime Minister, these emails arrived regularly and always came straight through to my inbox.

Since Kevin Rudd has been Prime Minister, using exactly the same mail client and settings, this now happens on a very regular basis...

Artificial Intelligence is nigh upon us. My automated Junk Mail filter instinctively knows that what Kevin Rudd says is utter rubbish. My mail filter applies a dispassionate algorithm to look for shonky language, spin, fake deals and nonsensical claims. My filter correctly categorises Kevin Rudd's speeches as being in the same category as cheap Rolex watches, penis extension pills and Nigerian banking scams. How apt.

There are no noble savages, only savages

2008-02-13T00:09:00.001+11:00

The high moral ground is coveted territory in politics, and elusive.
We can distinguish two ways of attaining it. One is to make pragmatic, and often unpopular decisions about difficult issues, such as concerns the welfare of those who can not or will not take such responsibility for themselves. The other method involves declaring by fiat that you inhabit the pointy summit of the high moral ground and that this can be best demonstrated by manufacturing as much collective guilt as possible and then liberally spreading it around (or in this case, spreading it around the Liberals. More of that shortly.)

Today our Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, will apologise in Parliament to Australian Aboriginals for decades of supposed mistreatment at the hands of successive Governments, missionaries and social welfare agencies.

Well, I’m writing to say, “Kevin, count me out.”

I’m not sorry, Kev. Not in the slightest, and you’ve debased the dignity of our nation by dishonestly saying something on behalf of millions of other Australians that isn’t true and isn’t felt by us.
If you’re sorry, that’s your right. If the Union thugs now running every government in Australia get teary and feel the need to send flowers, good on them, but don’t presume to speak for me.

I take the view that the so called “Stolen Generations” weren’t stolen, they were rescued. Often in a flawed, under-resourced way, but always with high minded and beneficent intent on the part of dedicated social and mission workers who felt they were giving impoverished Aboriginal children a chance of a better and more civilised life away from the abusive, primitive shanties they were coming from. Keith Windschuttle, armed merely with facts, does his usual good job of demolishing the myth of the Stolen Generations in this piece in The Australian. This view is not racist. There's a white drug dealing single mother in our own street whose poor children run feral through the neighbourhood. Someone should give them a better chance too, and that would probably involve forced separation as well, and I take the same view towards her without partiality.

The only person in Australia yet to be declared as having legal standing as a “stolen” child came from a situation where, as the case notes of the time say, he was a "neglected child without parents" at 13 months old, "suffering from malnutrition and infective diarrhoea". They add: "The other two children are neglected. Mother has cleared out and father is boozing." This man was given half a million dollars by a South Australian court for being taken from that environment as an infant, with scant acknowledgement that the intentions of those orchestrating the move were far from sinister.

I would regard such a situation as common to the many supposed incidences of government sanctioned separation. Rousseau was wrong; There are no noble savages. There are only savages, and those who are not.

Our new Labor Federal Government, swept away in a trendy stupor of social conscience is naïve to the point of recklessness if they think that an apology will not be followed by a flood of punitive legal claims, as the usual drones in the corrupt Aboriginal industry want to claim (repeatedly trying, as in this example to insert the words “attempted genocide” into the apology; a disgraceful slur on the Christian dedication of those who ran the missions and schools of outback Australia in the last century.)

I don’t accept that the “oldest and enduring cultures in human history”, as Rudd’s wording will say, is anything to be particularly proud of when that history involves forty thousand years of living in abject superstition, and failing to create anything approaching systemised agriculture, a written language, architecture, philosophy or even the wheel. Nor have I never subscribed to the politically correct doctrine that there is never any place to evaluate the merits of differing societies for fear of causing offence.

The broad march of history is inexorably one of increasing civilisation and technology, all the way back to the pre-history of Africa, Europe and the Middle East. Far-away Australia was a stagnant gyre in this upward struggle, but no one should make the mistake of thinking that civilisation wasn't going to arrive sooner or later, and would represent a massive "outside context problem" for the inhabitants of the continent when it arrived. Western society may indeed have caused and suffered a great deal of misery over the centuries, but they certainly don’t have a monopoly on it. The misery endured by thousands of generations of Aborigines as a result of starvation, tribal warfare and superstitious fear genuinely deserves comparison with the benefits of Western medicine, representative democracy and impartial justice. We may have brought alcohol, smallpox and the gun, but Aboriginals should count their blessings that Australia was settled by the British instead of the Spanish, French or Portuguese, because manifestly their fate would have been far worse.

It's rich for people to criticise white Europeans for decimating their culture while they do so wearing fabrics invented by western chemistry, standing in front of temples of legislation and litigation invented and refined by the West over a period of two thousand years, speaking into cameras the technology of which would have been regarded as black magic by those people an uncomfortably short time ago, historically speaking.

An apology will do nothing to reconcile Aboriginal Australians to the rest the nation in either the short or the long term. As my good friend (and Army Major) Michael Sutcliffe points out in his own blog, what is curiously missing here is any reciprocal intention to make a universal declaration of “forgiveness” as a counterpart to this national apology. Such an absence reveals the ruse; because what this is really all about is continuing the debilitating culture of victimhood Aboriginals have genuinely suffered under for as long as there have been trendy lefties to champion their cause. You know, the ones who promise them a bucket of money to palliate their grievances.

This logic, ably articulated by former government minister Tony Abbott, stands in stark contrast to the soft indecisiveness that has overtaken the Liberal/National opposition. Those parliamentarians, to a man, should absent themselves from tomorrow’s gesture. I am disappointed that they have too-quickly abandoned the closely reasoned and eminently justifiable policy of the former government which was upheld for over a decade. Aboriginal Australians, like all Australians deserve nothing from life except equality of opportunity, which they've had since Phillip landed.

Usually the “greatest good for the greatest number” in national governance comes not from symbolic gestures but from pragmatic decisions made with a full and frank acknowledgement that some people can’t govern themselves until they can stand proudly as individuals who take responsibility for their own fate, not merely as members of a racial or ethnic grouping. In such cases, paternalism isn’t a dirty word, it’s a high virtue.

Irony

2008-02-11T11:02:00.000+11:00

I was at my local ex-servicemen's club for a meal at the bistro with the family when something occurred to me. There is a children's play area next to the restaurant where the little'uns can tear around and distract themselves while the adults get on with the job of gambling, drinking and becoming obese.

In that play area are a row of consumer gaming consoles locked into wooden boxes. I think I saw some PS2's and even a couple of XBox 360's. Cool. All free for the kids to play with. That must have cost some money.

Next to the new consoles are some of the older style arcade consoles. And if you want to play Galaxian (1979), Gyruss (1983) Point Blank (1994) or Virtua Racing (1992), that will be at least $2, thank you.

Is that insane or what? Why would I pay $2 to play a twenty nine year old arcade game when there's an XBox 360 sitting next to it for free? Never mind that arcade consoles used to be twenty freaking cents.

I feel old. So old. Because... I was tempted. The 8-bit glory, she did call to me. But that's just me. My son will have no such nostalgia.

When people aren't who you thought they were

2008-02-05T12:51:00.000+11:00

Life is a process of discovering that people often turn out to be not at all who you thought they were. Sometimes, this is a good thing. As a child, I regarded my parents as the gods of my small universe. Now, as an adult and parent myself, I appreciate them more, despite their faults and foibles, and honour them for their honest efforts in raising a family and building a home.

But sometimes, the process of discovery leaves us wounded and grieving. This is especially true when people held a place of authority in our lives, or were special to us in our hearts. Of course, people make mistakes. Often, catastrophic ones. Sometimes they are in thrall to circumstances beyond their control. We extend grace to such people and embrace them as they use their pain to become more like Jesus. But sometimes, such people have no one to blame except themselves, especially if they pinned their ministry and their prestige and their authority and the worth of their good name on their mastery of moral values.

All I can say is, God give me strength to be a good father and husband, and give thanks for rescuing my family from hypocrites.
Cryptic, I know.

Let me leave you with a little Bonhoeffer

“Sin demands to have a man by himself. It withdraws him from the community. The more isolated a person is, the more destructive will be the power of sin over him. And the more deeply he becomes involved in it, the more disastrous is his isolation. Sin wants to remain unknown. It shuns the light. In the darkness of the unexpressed it poisons the whole being of a person. This can happen even in the midst of a pious community. In confession, the light of the gospel breaks into the darkness and seclusion of the heart. The sin is brought into the light. The unexpressed is openly spoken and acknowledged. All that is secret and hidden is made manifest. It is a hard struggle until the sin is openly admitted, but God breaks gates of brass and bars of iron”
--Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945), Life Together

Amen.

In which Nathan succombs to facial trichosis

2007-11-08T12:47:00.001+11:00

Below is a photo of some of my work colleagues (and good friends). We are all growing moustaches for "Movember", a movement to raise money for cancer research and men's health issues (including depression).

That's me at the far right, which, for those who know me, is entirely appropriate. Consider this something of a "before" photo. At the risk of opening myself to public ridicule, I promise to post an "after" as well.

Thank you to all my hirsutely challenged friends who are sponsoring me to grow a mo. Go on, you can spare a tenner for Cancer research, can't you? Click the blue button below and it will take you to the Movember website and register your sponsorship for our team (which is named "Los Guapos" (the good-looking ones).

Update: The after photo, as promised. I beleive that, as a group, we raised a respectable sum. Most thanks go to Daniel Zanardo! Gracias, Daniel!

My God, It's Full of Stars

2007-08-23T12:00:00.000+10:00

Those folks at Google are at it again, and they obviously know something we don't. I'm not sure what it was that started to make me suspicious. Was it the innovative lateral thinking that has made them the premier Web 2.0 company? The green blood and penchant for eating whole, live rats? Finally though, the smoking gun.

Google Headquarters. A couple of arcseconds from the California Nebula in the Constellation of Perseus. It's about a thousand light years from Earth.

This, courtesy of the latest coolness from the Google Earth application. The latest version (4.2) allows you to swing 180˚ from any location on Earth and explore the heavens.
It's insanely great. My favourites: The Sombrero Galaxy (NGC4594) and the Antennae Galaxies. Ah, how they make me pine for the triple sunsets and purple grass of home... but I digress.

I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords from the planet Googalia. If I keep them fed, they may spare me.

Addendum: It's worse than we feared. There it is, just near the twist in the tail of Scorpius. A Borg Cube, face on and heading for sector zero-zero-one.

Family First- An Analysis (part 1)

2007-07-24T18:24:00.000+10:00

In 2004 and 2005 I wrote about the new and Federally untested political party, Family First. Family First, as a party with niche appeal but larger ambitions, instinctively knew that the only path to parliamentary success was to cultivate preference deals with the major parties. The perception among the Conservative parties at the time was that they had natural "fellow travellers" in the shape Family First. Mutually beneficial deals were struck with them in a majority of seats for an exchange of preferences. Family First were cocky enough of the support they assumed the Coalition would provide to ask their suitors to sign up to a raft of policy positions in exchange for their preferences. Labor, more wary, still felt that a deal with FF had strategic merit in the Victorian Senate contest, assuming that FF would drop out well before other players and that the flow of preferences would deliver Labor an extra seat ahead of the Greens. In a stunning miscalculation, Labor preferences ensured that Family First's Steven Fielding secured the party its first Federal win, despite a primary vote of only 1.77%. Until recently, I would have said that Labor's post-election embarrassment at helping to elect Fielding would have ensured that such a preference deal would never be struck again. However, with Kevin Rudd at now at the helm of the party, perfectly happy to play the religion card if it greases his path to the Lodge, anything is possible. Mark Latham's bile must be rising still.

However Family First protest their political independence, it remains true that they overwhelmingly gave preference to, and received preference from, the Liberal and National parties. Family First did not preference a single Labor candidate anywhere in Australia in 2004 (correction: FF preferenced Labor ahead of the Liberals in the seats of Brisbane and Leichhardt because the candidate Ingrid Tall is a Lesbian and Warren Entsch is in favour of gay marriage). Similarly, their efforts to claim independence from their churchish origins, their founders and sponsors in the Assemblies of God Church movement, were singularly unsuccessful, a subject I have written much on (and at much personal cost). Their progress since 2004 (if any) in establishing a party structure worthy of a mainstream political force will be the subject of part two of this article.

The Coalition, having struck this deal in 2004, should be asking themselves how the deal has panned out. Now Family First have had nearly three years to show their disposition towards the Government, what has their grace and favour have gained them?

An Analysis of Family First's Performance:

This article seeks to present an analysis which will bring some facts to bear on this question. I have analysed all Senate divisions since 2001 to assess the overall behaviour of independent Senators in general, to see if Senator Fielding has been as good a performer as others in similar circumstances. Additionally, I have analysed all the Senate divisions since Family First took their seat to see how they have disposed themselves to the major parties. The source data I have used is freely available at the Parliamentary web site.

It should be admitted that any Senator sitting as an independent or for a micro-party takes on a disproportionate workload, seeing as they must act in some capacity as a spokesperson in every portfolio imaginable, as well as participating in votes and debate in the Senate chamber, and receive delegations from lobby groups, constituents and colleagues.

Senator Steve Fielding took office in July 2005 having been elected in October 2004. From that time until the end of June 2007 there have been 588 divisions in the Senate, divided between the Senate sitting as the full chamber and the Senate in Committee.

In comparison, there were 443 Senate divisions in the preceding four and a half years, between February 2001 and June 2005. This suggests an interesting observation in and of itself: The tempo of senate divisions in the two years of the current parliament is very nearly triple (x 2.98) than that of the preceding four and a half years. This is no doubt a direct reflection of the Coalition's wish to maximise its rare majority in both houses.

Attendance:

The next relevant statistic regards attendance. Since taking office, Senator Steve Fielding has been absent for 148 divisions, yielding an attendance rate of 75%. How does this stack up? Should one could be forgiving of such absences, considering a party with only one sitting member would find it difficult to be in the Senate chamber for every division? Let's look for a reasonable parallel.

There have been four independent senators in recent history to whom we can look for a comparison.

Senator Brian Harradine served as an independant Senator for Tasmania between 1975 and his retirement in 2005.
Analysis of the Parliamentary records between February 2001 and June 2005 showed Senator Harradine was present and voted in 216 of these divisions, or 48% of the time.

One Nation had Senator Len Harris representing them as the party's sole Senator over the same period. He was present for 180 divisions, a relatively disappointing 40% attendance rate. I am among those who supported One Nation for their ideals but became profoundly disenchanted by their lazy, undisciplined approach. This is one reason why.

Senator Shayne Murphy sat as an independent from February 2002 after resigning from the Labor party. While he sat as an independent, there were a total of 377 divisions. Murphy voted in 163, or 43% of the time.

Senator Meg Lees sat as an independent after Feb 2003 after resigning from the Australian Democrats. She formed the unsuccessful Australian Progressive Alliance party and lost her seat in 2005. Over this time there were 339 divisions, and she voted in 233 of them, an average of 69%, making her a diligent legislator in comparison. Lees broke away from the Democrats after concluding they had drifted too far to the left. Her concern seems amply justified, considering the Democrats sided with the ALP in 91% of divisions between 2001-2005 and an astonishing 99.3% of the time (4 votes from 588) since 2005. So much for the "party of balance" the Democrats claimed to be.

Voting Patterns:

It must be remembered that there are many Senate divisions that are of a purely procedural nature and both the major parties vote the same way. This was true a surprising 59% of the time from 2001-2005, but dropped sharply to 32% of the time after 2005.

However, if one excludes these times and only counts the times that Family First voted with one major party and against the other (that is, on votes of substance where the major parties disagreed) then Family First favoured the Opposition 175 times (30% of all votes) as opposed to the Coalition 119 times (20% of all votes).

Even more extraordinarily, Family First voted with the Greens on no fewer than 198 occasions, when both were voting in concert to oppose the Government, a significant 34% of the time. The natural antipathy between Family First and the Greens makes this revelation of more than passing interest.

Family First saw fit to oppose both major parties on 87 occasions, or 15% of the time.

Conclusion:

One could look at the above results in a number of ways.
Firstly, Steve Fielding's attendance in the Senate chamber reflects well on his diligence as a parliamentarian, equalling that of ex-Democrat Meg Lees, and greatly exceeding that of other independent Senators of recent time.

Secondly, Family First have distinguished themselves by not slavishly following the voting pattern of either major party. However, this should cause the Coalition to totally re-assess whether Family First deserve their preferences in the unqualified way they have been dispensed previously. Family First voted with Labour 50% more often than the Coalition when real differences of opinion (not just procedural matters) were at stake. The Coalition should be very cautious about giving Family First any endorsement when they now have a track record like this.

I approached this article with a measure of scepticism concerning Family First's motives and predispositions as a new political party, and I am on the record as being highly critical of them in the past. In assessing their Federal parliamentary performance, I was surprised with what I found. Much was done in 2004 that was badly planned, ineptly executed and caused many Christians a deal of grief because of the way in which the entanglements between Church and State were mishandled, especially in NSW. My concerns in this area remain, but at least Senator Fielding has given a balanced and applied face to the party in the Senate, even if it is at variance with what the Coalition had been led to expect from it.

In the next instalment of my analysis, I will focus on the party structure Family First promised would be constructed at the time of the 2004 Federal Election, and what (if any) progress has been made since. I will ask what evidence there is concerning whose views have been represented by Family First in their voting patterns detailed here, and whether they show signs of growing into a genuinely broad-based political movement.

-Nathan Zamprogno

Random questions: Spiders and what they eat

2007-07-12T23:34:00.000+10:00

Just occasionally, I think I'll just throw out to you some of the random questions that have cluttered up my brain for years.

Here's todays:

"If a spider bit another spider it would probably die. But if a spider bites a fly and then eats it, why doesn't it poison itself?"

When you can't convince unreason

2007-07-02T15:13:00.001+10:00

(Update: July 6th with additional quotations)
Flamewars are unbecoming. Mostly. Sometimes I just can't help myself.

I feel torn. In my twenties I used to think that "boots and all" was the best debating tactic when closely held principles were at stake. Now, in my thirties, I wonder if my debating reserve is now more a function of my mortgage, my more-than-full-time job, or a little more life-experience. Could it be a loss of idealism and a lack of care? That last prospect gives me the shudders. God save me from a lack of care.

But sometimes you just have to throw the towel in. Sometimes, the degree of ignorance you encounter in a debate makes progress impossible. Perhaps this is the lesson I am now slowly learning in my thirties: When to leave people to their own delusions. As Edith Sitwell once said "I am patient with stupidity, but not with those who are proud of it." Perhaps I should be more mindful of the question of whether giving vacuous ideas oxygen by arguing against them does more harm than good.

I refer, in this instance, to my enduring, horrified fascination with Young Earth Creationism. This vein of Creationism is, in fact, more than just the logically broken, medievally minded, simplistic, bibliolatrous notion that the Earth is 6000 years old. No, what is worse is its deeply offensive claim that those who do not support Young Earth Creationism (and their advocates) are apostates; less enlightened and less effective as Christians than the "true" Church that remains faithful to a literal reading of Scripture; even that opponents are "tools of Satan". Oh, and those in the tent of Deceived Christianity include Anglicans, Catholics, and those in the Salvation Army. No wonder that many questing and intelligent seekers are permanently put off believing in Jesus! In this age, Young Earth Creationism is the primary engine causing Christianity to be rejected among those who are seeking spiritual truth, and yet who can plainly see through Science that Creationist claims about the natural world are patently false.

I maintain a strong position in opposing those who tarnish Christianity with such casuistry, and without apology. Perhaps worst in this field is Kent Hovind, who pushed all kinds of Creationist quackery until he was finally sentenced to ten years prison for tax fraud earlier this year. His wife will now also be sent to prison for the same offences.

Well, Kent maintains a blog, even from prison. And what a magnet it has become to people who share his views! When I read it, my palms itch. It's a tragic circus of the absurd, the credulous and the angry.

Thus, I belatedly arrive at my purpose for this essay. I have trawled the gibbering insanity so you don't have to. What do Creationists really believe? What do they believe when they apply the same degree of skepticism to other propositions as they do to their basis in their belief in the age of the Earth?

What I present below is a quick and non-exhaustive snapshot of who believers in Young Earth Creationism find themselves as fellow travellers with. It's scary, and it's sad.

All the quotes I present below (including spelling mistakes) are quoted verbatim from the comments to the various postings on Kent Hovind's blog. Where links are included I am using Google's index to present the URLs where that phrase is used. So...

What do a lot of people who believe in Young Earth Creationism also believe?

1. That The United States Government does not exist.
• "It is an established fact that the United States Federal Government has been dissolved by the Emergency Banking Act, March 9, 1933. The receivers of the United States Bankruptcy are the International Bankers, via the United Nations, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. The receivers of the Bankruptcy have adopted a new form of government for the United States. This new form of government is known as a Democracy, being an established Socialist/Communist order under a new governor for America"
• "Since the dropping or the gold and silver standards and the complete floating of the dollar 'lawful money' has ceased to exist".

2. The IRS is an illegal entity and no one has to pay tax! Yay!
• "So has Dr. Hovind commited any wrong? YES! He is serving Jesus and that royally disses the devil (the god of this world) off ...He has done no evil becuase the IRS is 100% illegal anyways!"
(Oh, and the IRS are demonically inspired.)
• "Don’t we have enough against us with satan and his demons which include certain irs agents?"

3. The U.S Government was responsible for the 9/11 attacks, as part of a sinister plot to create a despotic state, just like Pearl Harbour (which was, of course, also a conspiracy).
• "The gov’t’s story of 9/11 is impossible according to the laws of physics, and therefore was likely an inside job a la Hitler and the Reichstag fire."
• "I’m guessing you are one of those scoffers that the Bible told us about that would pop up in the last days, the type that doesn’t allow himself to be so confused like the rest of us Christians, with the facts. As for 9/11 there are only 400 physicists and engineers that all say that it was impossible for a building to pulverize itself by the damage done by the planes and the puny fires. How do you explain building 7 being reported as collapsed 1/2 hour before it fell and the testimonies of all the eyewitnesses who heard explosions prior to the collapse? How about the picture of a melted core column that looks like it wa cut at a perfect 60 degree angle with luke skywalkers laser sword? Yeah the planes did it.Forget the eyewitnesses cause they were there and you weren’t so you know more than those who were there. OK so good is evil to you?"

4. The U.S Government are involved in a conspiracy to keep Hovind in jail, or worse, simply because he is a Christian. His theft of $600,000 in taxes had nothing to do with his conviction.
• "You know why he’s REALLY in prison. It has nothing to do with taxes! This is not a political free feral. As Christians we are at war with all those who want us silenced. My family finally found out the status of Dr. Hovind. He’s in solitary confinement and the government is trying to put him in prison overseas. There is only one reason for this, THEY WANT HIM DEAD!"
• "I heard of your arrest. And as I had suspected, it was for the unconstitutional non-law of the Federal Income Tax. And as I had also suspected, many disinformers would use that to discredit you and your works. On wikipedia, youtube, or just any where that you are mentioned, they keep using the lie that you had broke a law."
• "(Hovind) has taken a stand for the work of God to not be a tax collector"

5. Don't vaccinate your kids. The Government is trying to kill them.
• "They will try to kill your kids through vaccinations and if that doesn’t work, they have other ways."

6. The Government is poisoning your food. With soy. Don't eat the soy!
• "They poison our food with chemicals, give us soy to drink and eat. They put it in most of our packaged foods."

7. The Government has a cure for Cancer but hush it up because of "big money".
• "Cancer is being cured all over the world. There is a cure today yet in America there are those who are doing their “research” to find a “cure” and it has already been found. But it is a big money making project for them NOT to find a cure for cancer in America."

8. The Government is poisoning your drinking water. Don't drink the water!
• "They contaminate our drinking water with flouride and clorine. Even our toothpaste has flouride and it has been outlawed in many parts of the world."
• "there is a poison warning on all flouride toothpaste tubes that has only shown harm rather than benefits."
• "other countries refuse to use flouride or treat with that well known poison"

9. Canola oil is toxic. Don't eat Canola oil!
• "Many places are using Canola Oil to cook the foods that we eat. Canola oil is toxic."

10. Actually, everything, everywhere is a conspiracy. Do you need proof? Look out! behind you!
• "Kent Hovind knew about this information" (and is in prison because of this)
"This nation is being run by a CRIME SYNDICATE, of which the Bushes and Clintons are part and parcel"
• "G.W. Bush drunk blood out of a skull, sat in a coffin naked, and swore occultic oaths to an extremely powerful secret society which he has continued to rely upon for favors up until this day"
• "The Bush clan got their family fortune from the Opium Trade back in the 1800s"
• "The Bush clan is one of the world’s ranking Illuminati bloodlines."
Apparently, the Clintons are just as bad:
• "The Clinton clan is partners in crime with the Bushes. When Clinton was Arkansas’s governor, and Daddy Bush was president, TONS of cocaine was being smuggled in nightly into the Mena, Arkansas Airport by CIA black operatives."
• "I admit to being slow, dull, and dumbed down by western institutions to which I have been exposed: but it only just really occurred to me that the reason a lot of people come here is because they have sold their very own moral souls to a beast of biblical proportions and they want submissive Y.E.C. to come to them cowering, begging to lick the blood from their very own Gestapo issue knee high black boots and swell their faltering confidence in their shameful decision to sell all that they have and ever will have to a foreign faceless and alien power."

11. Hovind was right to ignore all letters demanding payment of taxes because (silly IRS), they wrote his name in UPPER CASE. Everyone knows that if your name is written in UPPER CASE it's not actually referring to you, but a legal fiction involving the same sequence of letters. (BTW: Cheques sent to Hovind spelling his name in UPPER CASE were always summarily banked.)
• "...alternatively, he might have simply tendered a affidavit declaring that he is not the PERSON named on the documents before the court but that he was there to represent that entity."
(to which one response was, seriously: "I want to faint. How can Kent Hovind stand alone against our entire country’s misunderstanding? Somebody needs to write a book. This is HUGE!")

12. And yes, so we have the complete set: The moon landings were fake.
• "I found this video on whether we really even went to the moon at all. What a deception it could be."
• "I have finally sat down and watched a serious documentary about the photos and film/ video evidence of the moon landings - and you can now put me down as one who believes there are questions to answer - many photos / video was filmed on earth [maybe all of it] - there is no doubt some filming was a mock up made on earth - the question is why? it is the same question dave von kleist asks about 911"

13. People opposing Kent Hovind without question are children of Satan, apostate deceivers, Jesus denying mockers and God-haters. Your sincerity as a Christian is irrelevent and void if you take a Christian brother to task over faulty doctrine, regardless of how damaging it is to the Body of Christ.
• "You’ve taken Satan’s number"
• "You are spiritually blinded and a child of Satan."
• "It IS the time of the Apostate church folks. The End is getting near."
• "Most of the persecution meeted out on Gods People in the bible was done by the so called religious rulers. Many reasons for this,but afew I can think of-/ Hatered of God word/ Shows up their evil deeds" (spelling mistakes in original)
• "Remember ye the words which were spoken before of the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ; How that they told you there should be mockers in the last time, who should walk after their own ungodly lusts. These be they who separate themselves, sensual, having not the Spirit."
• "Just remember when it is time to receive your mark on your right hand or forehead, we tried to warn you. Jesus Christ is the truth and we have tried to show you the truth to wake you up from your demonic stupor, but I’m thinking the real reason behind your scoffing is your love of sin. Forsake it before it is too late for you, it is a delusion, and does not last forever but life in Christ does. Hell awaits all you scoffers... God is angry at the wicked every day Ps. 7:11b and you are but a breath and a heartbeat away from his eternal wrath."
• "You are again calling Jesus a liar, yet you claim to follow him. Further, you again publicly ridicule your “fellow brethren,” whether some are strong or weak in the faith."

14. Spelling. Creationists Don't believe in spelling. Or Logic. Or Reality.
Take, as one small example, one random but representative example of Creationist Logic:
• (speaking of the plain meaning of a phrase)
"Is the question “Do you understand the charges?” the same as “Do you comprehend these accusations?” I suggest that there is a profound difference between these two simple questions"
(tortured logic excised, but this poster eventually "interprets" this phrase as actually meaning)
"Do you presume to take a maritime commercial material liability onto your trading vessel in the form of the persona you are presuming to take possession of?".
This, then being a partial justification for Hovind to regard the Court's authority as null and void. I think "yes" would have been perfectly sufficient an answer to the original question.

And the spelling mistakes? Far, far too many to list.
• “Jesus made this sacrafice so that we, as sinners, could have eternal life… Jesus didn’t sound all that humble when he turned the tables over in the sancuary. The biggest problem in America today is our 'sancuaries'”
• “The catechism of the catholict church they give it to children.”
• “I am apalled at this convinction…”
• “flouride” (a lot of people are concerned about this dangerous chemical. Must remember not to bake with it)
“…There is no constition right not to be”
• "A couple manage to mis-spell Hovind. (Hoving, Howind)"
Lastly, I especially regard it as telling when people describe themselves as “Christions”. Hallelluyah!

15. Guns. Yep. Lots of guns.
• "PS. I’m big on the second amendment too. I carried to church this morning, and I’ve got a loaded gun in my back pocket as I’m typing this!"

This list is a sample, and I believe a fair one, of the tenor of support for Young Earth Creationists. Well, these quotes are drawn from a longer narrative involving impenetrable quantities of doublespeak and an assumption of greater knowledge of constitutional and taxation law than two centuries of polity.

From my reading, there is a substantial overlap between these views and those of Hovind himself. Hovind believes, for example:

The pyramids were not built by the Egyptians.
The notion that UFO's were "Satan's transport" should not be dismissed out of hand.
The 666-barcode argument is valid and a concern.
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is worth endorsing and selling at Hovind's seminars. (quote: "Be sure to read PROTOCOLS OF ZION [sic] call [sic] my office if you cannot find a copy."
Sonar is part of the electromagnetic spectrum.
A fighter pilot "escorted" the second plane into the twin towers on 9/11. (reference: Hovind DVD Seminar, #5 I think)

(Update: July 7. As I've been Pharyngulated, I thought I'd enhance this article with a few Hovind quotes. This article started as an analysis of Hovind's supporters. Let's hear from the man himself!)

"Four people have called me from Arkansas and Missouri, to report seeing customers at the grocery store pay for purchases by scanning their hand."
"There is much empirical data that conclusively proves vaccinations can be harmful, and in many cases fatal, and should therefore be avoided. [.....] There is also a book available through CSE which provides in-depth information concerning the dangers of vaccinations and how they destroy our God-given immune system. "
"Democracy is evil and contrary to God's law."
"CALLER: You think the 9/11 conspiracy has bigger implications as to it relates to a One World Government? HOVIND: Absolutely. That's the whole purpose."
"I think when somebody does study this and realises that a ball falling from the top of the Twin Towers would fall in nine and a half seconds and the Towers came down in ten and a half seconds. Something's wrong."
"There is about four or five [feathered dinosaurs] that have been found. They're all fake. They're coming from China. These Chinese guys who make 40 cents a year. [...] They're faking them. They spend years forging these things."
"We just had a report from a missionary. I talked to him today for 45 minutes. He's going over and I'm going over with him for sure this time. They have located a pterodactyl, several pterodactyls, a apatosaurous and a plesiosaur. All on the north-east side of the island of Indonesia."
(advice to the mother of a cancer patient): "If you do nothing with cancer your life expectancy is somewhere between 6 and 10 years. If you take chemo your life expectancy is between 1 and 2 years... I think the last thing I would do would be to take the medical profession's approach."
"The Bird Flu is mostly hoax."
"Satan is going to work towards reduction of the population and lowering cholesterol is good way of doing that."
"AIDS was purposefully developed in a Maryland laboratory to wipe out population."

With thanks to this site for the above info.

Oh, how I could go on. I want to pose this question: If these are the kinds of beliefs, and the kinds of supporters, that stubbornly refuse to be separated from Young Earth Creationism, then what does that say about the rigour of Young Earth Creationism itself? Is it, on this analysis, likely to be based on a genuine search for truth, or merely on the reinforcement of benighted prejudice?

It is these people- the scared, hayseed conspiratorialists that provide the backbone, the funding, and the moral support for Young Earth Creationism, and the Creationists are happy to take their money and their devotion without ever challenging them on the more fringe beliefs they hold. Apparently it is more important to convince infidels to believe in your model of radioactive decay than it is to convince your Christian brother to get his kids inoculated against the measles. This willful blindness has made corrupt organisations like Answers in Genesis rich. Christians should do more to expel these teachings from their midst. As a Christian, who has seen this kind of rubbish preached in my own Church (although not to the extent seen here), I just can't apologise to those who think we should be "softly, softly" with nitwits like these. Anyone who supports a Young Earth Creationist ministry such as AiG or CMI, or ICR is damaging the cause of Christ by encouraging people to base their faith in Jesus on demonstrable lies.

So, do we continue to argue with such people? A quote I read years ago sticks with me:
"Reason's weakness is its belief that it can convince unreason". Is there any point in wading into such debates and enduring the ignorant flack that follows? Is there any benefit to be gained?

I'd like to think so, but I'm no longer sure. Your views are invited (as indeed are additions if I have missed any of the stranger beliefs that Creationists share).

-Nathan Zamprogno