SMH – Page 5 – St. Eutychus

Six easy steps to speaking like Obama

Interesting little article from the SMH on Obama’s oratory and the elements of a good speech. Which, according to a Sydney businessman who plans to make money offering a course on how to imitate Obama, actually come out of his writing style first and foremost.

This guy’s theory is based on an analysis of Obama’s books – and the common elements he finds between books and speeches are as follows:

a) Clarity – simple english, easy to understand vocab and short sentences.
b) Tone – not vocal pitch but the “voice” in which you establish yourself – for Obama that meant a blend of self deprecation and confidence.
c) Nuance – explaining complexity with a simple turn of phrase and picking up on subtleties, tying them together and presenting a strong case in the listeners mind.
d) Poetry – the use of metaphor, a poetic voice and literary tools to create a sense of more than just straightforward prose or buzzword filled jargon.
e) Rhythm – developing a common refrain like “yes we can” that links ideas into a broader narrative and develops catch cry status.

The sixth point was a bonus/afterthought. It’s the idea that infusing your messaging with religious imagery and undertones will add that extra touch of inspiration. I guess that’s one that’s particularly transferable to the pulpit.

Clarity is the low hanging fruit – and the most important element for any piece of communication. It’s also where so many politicians and speakers fall over. If people can’t figure out what it is you want them to know it doesn’t matter how beautifully phrased it is or what sort of rhythm you develop. It just won’t stick.

January 25, 2009

Arrested Development

Here’s a great moral question for today… if your child caused you to be thrown into prison would you still love them?

A Canadian father is faced with that dilemma after his 11 month old baby inadvertently caused his arrest by placing a 911 call while playing with the family phone… from the SMH… this is one baby that will grow up with a significant guilt complex.

“A baby playing with a telephone inadvertently called police to his house in westernmost Canada and to his “very surprised” father’s marijuana-growing operation inside, police say.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police responded to an emergency 911 call in which the caller hung up without saying a word, Constable Janelle Canning told AFP on Wednesday.

The officers entered the White Rock residence, after knocks at the door went unanswered, she said.

“The father was very surprised to see us and insisted he hadn’t called police,” she said.

“The officers then observed his 11-month-old child playing with a cordless phone, pressing buttons randomly.”

The mystery caller was identified, she said. “It appears the baby called us.”

During a routine search of the house, the officers also uncovered 500 marijuana plants in two locked rooms on the main floor.

The 29-year-old father was arrested and faces charges of production of a controlled substance and mischief. He is to appear in court in April.

The baby boy was removed from the home by the Ministry of Children and Family, and was later released into his mother’s custody.”

So, when this father gets out of jail and his son is in his early teens that’s going to be one awkward reunion.

January 23, 2009

For Sale: 82 Metre yacht

Complete with missile launcher and mini submarine. The yacht only has one previous owner, who didn’t even sail it to church on a Sunday – it has its own mosque on board. Low kilometres and government guaranteed sale. It has only had one previous owner. Saddam Hussein.

Here’s the low down from the SMH.

The yacht was built for Saddam 28 years ago, but the Iran-Iraq war – which saw it moved from the southern port of Basra to Saudi Arabia – was among the factors that meant the dictator never savoured its ostentatious facilities.

The vessel became the subject of a legal wrangle when it appeared in the French Riviera city of Nice in autumn 2007, where a British boat dealer tried to sell it for 23.5 million euro ($46.76 million).

January 22, 2009

If at first you secede… try again

The much hyped inauguration of Mr Barack H. Obama went off with just one hitch. There was a mistake in the swearing of the oath. So he did it again, in the Map Room at the Whitehouse. The SMH reports:

“We believe that the oath of office was administered effectively and that the president was sworn in appropriately yesterday,” said White House Counsel Greg Craig.

“But the oath appears in the Constitution itself. And out of an abundance of caution, because there was one word out of sequence, Chief Justice Roberts administered the oath a second time.”

Does this mean that anything President Obama did prior to the second swearing is open for legal challenge? Apparently not.

On Tuesday, Jeffrey Rosen, a US constitutional law expert and professor at George Washington University in Washington, said stumbling over the oath had “no impact. News flash: He’s president”.

Rosen pointed to the 20th amendment of the US Constitution, which provides that the president and vice president’s term begins at noon on January 20th.

“Lots of people have flubbed the oath, perhaps most memorably Chief Justice (William Howard) Taft, who sort of riffed and then made up his own” upon swearing in then-president Herbert Hoover, said Rosen.

But Obama, like our own K-Rudd (at least in this regard) seems to be big on symbolism.

January 22, 2009

Audacity of hope

The market is down 1% so far today. And closed 4% down in the US. So much for the much hyped Obama effect. Just yesterday ABC Radio’s morning show was telling us the market would bounce the moment he was sworn in.

Update – it seems this image from the SMH changes in real time.

January 21, 2009

Daily bread

The bread of life

This unleavened (probably kosher) pita bread Jesus is on sale via New Zealand auction site TradeMe. The story is here at the SMH. There are plenty of good bread puns to be made with a story like this. But I won’t. They wouldn’t be in good taste, and would likely be stale.

This bread immediately reminded me of this Museum of Idolatory that keeps track of modern Christianity’s dalliance with commercialism.

iJesus

Robyn and I failed miserably in our attempt to read the bible in a year last year. Largely because I’m slack when it comes to personal motivation to chew through the boring bits of the Old Testament. Chronicles anyone? Maybe this year will be different – perhaps Jesus shaped toast is the motivation we’ve been missing.

January 3, 2009

Magical Mystery Cure

Another shared item from Dan. This story from the SMH.

AUSTRALIA urgently needs a national screening policy for Down syndrome, experts say, after international research showed it could halve the number of babies born with the incurable genetic condition.

So how does testing produce such amazing results?

Access to the four tests that help detect if a foetus has Down syndrome varies widely between states, urban and rural areas, and public and private patients, leading to stark differences in birth and termination rates.

Amazing. The miracles of modern technology.

December 8, 2008

Dangerous book for boys

Nine year old Alex Greven is putting out a self help book for guys called “How to talk to girls”. Advice from a nine year old with no experience may be a bitter pill to swallow. But here are some quotes from Alex (via the SMH)

On brains v brawn

“You want the girl to notice you,” he writes. “But you don’t want to draw too much attention to yourself or she will think you are a crazy madman who doesn’t even know where his brain is.”

He says it is important not to be a show-off.

But it is good to be the smartest boy in the class, because “girls will be prowling at your feet”.

On grooming

“Comb your hair and don’t wear sweats. Control your hyperness (cut down on the sugar if you have to). Don’t act desperate.”

On pretty girls

He warned boys to be wary of “pretty girls”.

“It is easy to spot pretty girls because they have big earrings, fancy dresses and all the jewellery … pretty girls are like cars that need a lot of oil,” he writes in chapter three.

On heartbreak

“Sometimes, you get a girl to like you, then she ditches you. Life is hard, move on!”

“Or sometimes it doesn’t work out. I had a crush on a girl in preschool. Then my family had to move, so I had to let her wash out of my mind.”

“About 73 per cent of regular girls ditch boys; 98 per cent of pretty girls ditch boys.”

“If you do get a girl to like you, that is victory. Winning victory is a dream for most boys, but it is very rare.”

The boy is clearly a genius.

December 3, 2008

A good analogy

I know Ben hates analogies. This will annoy him. But if Annabel Crabb is my Herald pin up girl then Peter Hartcher is a close second as far as his writing is concerned.

“Rudd has grown attached to his description of the crisis as a result of “extreme capitalism”. That’s akin to saying the Titanic sank because of “extreme sailing”. The US economy and financial markets collapsed not because of the doctrine of capitalism, any more than the Titanic sank because of the practice of international shipping. The cause of the calamity was bad policy, just as the cause of the Titanic’s fate was bad navigating.”

Both Rudd and Turnbull cop a tongue lashing in the piece. Well worth reading.

“Why does it matter what Rudd calls it? Because from the diagnosis comes the cure. The fault was not capitalism, extreme or lame. It was bad policy.

As for Malcolm Turnbull, he has made some sensible suggestions on how the Government should respond to the crisis, but the one he made this week is not one of them. Turnbull claims the Government must not allow a budget deficit. Already, Rudd has used half the projected budget surplus for this fiscal year as apackage to stimulate growth.”

November 28, 2008

K-Ruddy Year

A year on, K-Rudd hasn’t grown on me. He’s still a triumph of symbolism over substance. What has he done? Not much. Annabel Crabb, still my favourite political commentator, obtusely reviewed his year in office… complete with Shakespeare reference. I’m still in awe of her. She is brilliant.

And then, in a story on his dropping the d word – “defecit” in parliament yesterday – highlighted this little gem from the PM’s first post trip question time…

As he arrived for question Time, at 2pm, the Prime Minister scanned the Opposition front bench and performed a double-take when he espied the employment spokesman, Andrew Southcott, whose Movember moustache has survived a sickly infancy to become a luxuriant ornament to his upper lip. Noticing the PM’s surprise, Mr Southcott told him: “I grew it – while you were away.”

The comment was a palpable hit; even the row of disciplined countenances along the Government’s front bench betrayed the odd appreciative smirk.

Anyway, a year of Labor in power. Interest rates have plunged – which would be a good thing, if they hadn’t been raised first. But in isolation it’s quite a positive – shame about the rest of the economy – and the deficit… politically a bad move, given a budget surplus is generally understood by the population as being a marker of successful fiscal managment. I think a deficit is not necessarily a bad thing – provided it’s contained to spending on infrastructure. What’s the repo man going to do? Take away our roads and ports? The rest of the population is happy to borrow beyond its means to finance a lifestyle and to invest – why isn’t that thinking extended to the government? Anyway, Rudd will have to be prepared to die by a sword of his own making – given that he promised a surplus budget. The Coalition will no doubt continue hammering the fact that they paid off Labor’s debts and they do still have a reputation of economic management – conveniently the Global Economic Crisis really began to be noticed under Rudd’s watch, and there blame will be apportioned. The global economy is largely out of governmental control. I’m more interested in Rudd’s bad policy moves in emissions trading and other decisions that will ultimately cost jobs and make us less competitive – and the fact that he’s the most boring Prime Minister in the world with a massive reliance on cliche and cheap buzz phrases like “a bridge too far.”

November 27, 2008

Tanner’s hide

Finance and Deregulation Minister Lindsay Tanner is Web 2.0 enabled with a blog over at the SMH. Today’s post is all about the government’s new Web 2.0 based thinking – they’re probably going to use blogs in some upcoming community consultation. Ironic really, given that the same government is advocating restrictions to the internet that would put us on par with China. Perhaps comments they don’t agree with in the consultative process will be blocked? Or the IP address taken down and the perpetraitor (sic) silently removed from their homes and literally excommunicated (possibly a removal of Internet privileges).

Here’s Tanner’s rather convoluted description of what he thinks about Web 2.0…

“This new mode of production is known in the academic literature as peer production, but is more commonly referred to as Web 2.0. It is a trend that applies to much more than the creation of cultural goods, although these goods, such as the innumerable YouTube video mashups which poke fun at politicians, are acting as the harbingers of change.”

“Peer production empowers every citizen to be creator and critic, as well as consumer, of information. It is a mode of production that is enabled by two key factors. The first is the collapse of cost barriers to producing information – computers are now widely accessible in western society. The second is the removal of logistical and functional barriers to collaboration through new internet based networks.”

“The glue that binds peer production together is the ethic of collaboration it inculcates among groups. People contribute their time to peer production because they find communities with a passion for making their adopted content niche the best it can be.”

“This environment also creates efficiencies by allowing skilled amateurs to allocate their intellectual capital to the content niche about which they are most passionate. This is significant when you consider the quality and value of work done by people for love and not money.”

All in all, his article is a pretty garbled way of saying the Government is down with the Internets and all that.

“These changes are not easy for government to process. Our Westminster bureaucracy has optimised its policy production processes over centuries. Adaptation to the new information environment will be neither quick nor easy.”

I guess that’s something Obama can relate to.

Here’s his obligatory dig at the Howard Government:

“The Australian Government should be leading the way in adapting our old processes of consultation, policy making and regulation to the connected world. Yet we lag behind other nations in both the scale and pace of reform, a situation largely attributable to the culture of secrecy, spin and apathy of the Howard years.”

“I am taking steps to reinvigorate the Commonwealth’s efforts in this area. For example, early in the new year the Government will run a number of trial online consultations using blogs and other Web 2.0 tools”

You know what would be brilliantly ironic – if all this consultation got blocked by the Government’s proposed clean feed (a very bad idea – putting us on par with China in terms of restrictions) with it’s invisible blacklist of sites. My disdain for the Australian Christian Lobby is growing – I think they miss the point on so many issues when dealing with a secular government and trying to impose Christian values on the general public – who generally aren’t Christians. I acknowledge that as Christians we believe our way of life is better – and more in line with God’s expectations – but it’s not for us to impose our code of conduct on the rest of society. I also acknowledge that increased consumption of pornography has some links to increases in sexual violence and is socially undesirable. But I don’t think this is the way to tackle it – and I don’t think – as Jim Wallace so tactlessly put it that opposing this plan is tantamount to supporting the evils that lurk in the dark corners of the internet. Here’s the quote from the ACL Media Release.

“Obviously the Internet industry is going to continue to fight this important initiative

but the interests of children must be placed first.”

“The need to prevent access to illegal hard-core material and child pornography must

be placed above the industry’s desire for unfettered access.”

Censorship is bad. Particularly for the church. Once you start advocating censorship what happens if a militant anti-Christian or Islamic party gets in and adds all the Christian sites to the black list? Have you thought about that ACL? Have you? Christians who are serious about Christianity’s real agenda – which is the proclamation of the gospel can not be supportive of Government intervention into the minds and beliefs of the general public.

By all means, if you’re a Christian then take part in the political process – but don’t pretend to speak for all of us – and do so to raise your opinion on a matter – not to demand legislation be based on a Christian world view. That is not in the spirit of democracy – that’s a theocracy.

Oh, and if you want to voice your opinion on this matter through the press (or the Government’s upcoming Web 2.0 consultancy process) – the ACL has a handy letters to the editor writing guide.

I’m going to do some work now.

November 24, 2008

LOL Catz

Haha. This cat has two heads… seriously though, I’m not a cat person but a two headed cat would be an awesome pet. What would happen if you simultaneously tugged the left hand face’s left whisker and the right hand face’s right whisker. Cat chaos. Brilliant.

November 21, 2008

Beat around the Bush

The scandal surrounding the “leaked” phone conversation where George W. Bush was heard to gaff “what’s the G20” refuses to go away. It was the opposition’s favourite pinata in parliament yesterday – they kept beating it hoping all sorts of apologies and recriminations would flow out of the wound.

It’s pretty much a lay down misère that The Australian Editor Chris Mitchell was responsible for the leak. It was an Australian exclusive, he was at Kirribilli for dinner the night the conversation occured, Rudd is the Godfather of Mitchell’s child – it’s an old relationship that ensures certain privileges…

The Opposition however, seem oblivious to the fact that Mitchell is the obvious leak – or are too timid to point the finger given the respective audiences of Question Time and the Australian newspaper. Leave that to the paper’s opposition, the Sydney Morning Herald’s Annabel Crabb…

Her take on the original story…

“Several weeks later (October 25), a description of the Australian Prime Minister’s heroic performance during the phone call appeared on the front page of The Australian.

Mr Rudd was depicted as dogged, incisive and masterful; all it lacked was a reference to the PM’s rippling musculature and steady blue eyes.

And buried deep in the story was a reference to Mr Rudd’s well-bred surprise when at one point the President was heard to ask: “What’s the G20?””

And then pointing out the hypocrisy of the Opposition leadership’s (Malcolm Turnbull and Julie Bishop) position on damage done to US relations as a result of the leak…

“The pair’s protestations might carry a little more bite had the official position of the Liberal leadership until November 24 not been that Barack Obama was a terrorist stooge whose election would be an excellent result for Osama bin Laden.

And their protection of the editor seems craven at best.

It’s a rough day in Parliament when visitors in the public gallery can look down and fear that their choice is between one man who shows off to editors and another who sucks up to them.”

Have I mentioned how much I like Annabel Crabb? I believe I have.

November 12, 2008

Over rated

Really, this is another post largely due to the clever title I can ascribe to it. I don’t like Ricky Ponting being the Australian test captain. I haven’t for ages. Pretty much since he took the reigns and lost us the ashes.

I can’t begin to fathom his approach in this test. Why a captain was more worried about a one game suspension for a slow over rate than winning an arguably pivotal series by bowling his best bowlers against India in the final session yesterday is beyond me. I am left scratching my head. ABC commentator and SMH columnist Peter Roebuck likes Ponting’s captaincy even less than I do.

India are the new global super power when it comes to cricket – winning a series on Indian soil is already as rare as hen’s teeth. Ponting essentially sacrificed this chance for the chance to play New Zealand at home in Australia. What’s with that. It beggars belief.

November 10, 2008

That’s annoying

4,400 respondents were interviewed with 32 options for the 20 most annoying occurences.

Who, when asked “what annoys you” says sensationalising the news or biased reporting? I concede that they might be annoying, but more annoying than road rage?

I can think of heaps more annoying things that don’t appear to have made the list – parents who let their children run amok, slow walkers in heavily populated areas, inept government decisions, poorly framed consumer research, people who write letters to the editor, being David Koch… the list goes on.
From the SMH.

November 8, 2008