I have not been through many recessions but my memory of the last recession, the one at the beginning of the nineties was that it was very Australia focussed. This one seems to be much more of a global phenomena. But maybe that is just how your memory works.

On looking, it appears my memory is wonky. The very first line of the Wikipedia entry for the Late 1980′s Recession is:

The recession of the early nineteen-nineties was an economic recession that hit much of the world in 1990-91.

I followed the US election campaign quite closely with my hopes pinned on the election of Barack Obama.

Now that he has won I find myself somewhat disinterested in the US political scene. This may be because not much is happening beyond back room meetings on selection of political appointees, the politics of which is not very interesting.

Maybe, in an election campaign that was so long, I have already intellectually and emotionally processed all the policies and promises of President-Elect Obama and in my mind they have already been implemented.

More likely I have not had any great expectations for any specific policy outcome from Obama, rather it is the ‘tone’ of Obama that was so attractive.

The election outcome didn’t lead to cries of jubilation from me or excitement about ‘change you can believe in’, instead I have just released one almighty long sigh of relief. The US Government has returned to a level of normalcy experienced in most of the rest of the developed world.

No longer will the US Government use fear as a key policy lever. No longer will climate change be viewed through ideological rather than scientific filters, no longer will the military occupation of a minor middle eastern country be viewed as core American policy. The republican war of science will be muted and the right-wing echo chamber will no longer reverberate in the corridors of power.

The US has returned to a reality based, deliberative government. This in reinforced by the appointments Obama has made so far in his transition. According to Kevin Drum:

So far, then, Obama’s cabinet looks like this:

State: Hillary Clinton
Treasury: Tim Geithner
Defense: Robert Gates (maybe)
Attorney General: Eric Holder
Health & Human Services: Tom Daschle
Homeland Security: Janet Napolitano

Whatever else you can say about this crew, there’s not much question that Obama is assembling an extremely experienced and competent set of advisors. This is a team that can definitely hit the ground running.

A smart, deliberative president with good policies and an experienced and competent team to implement those policies. I can now think of a word to express how I am feeling: satisfied.

For those of us who love Arrested Development, the crazy US TV show, it is interesting to discover the back career’s of some of the actors.

The actor who played Tobias Funtke (The neurotic, surpressed homosexual psychologist), David Cross:

was in a comedy show called MR Show and did skits on other shows, and with the power of youtube we can still see them. See if you can watch the two skits below without breaking out in a hard physical laughter.

The Pre-Taped Call-in Show

The Audition

My local supermarket has established a self check-out system for purchases. It was obvious that they were up to something as the whole supermarket was being uprooted and redesigned. And there was a problem to fix, the peak hour lines were absolutely ridiculous and the space for queuing was completely inadequate.

In the end what emerged was rows of new self-service check-out counters where you can scan your own basket full of products and then pay yourself; one or two staff members with “information” sashes would be hovering around.

Still, forcing the costs onto your customers by having to do your own check-out seems like a pretty stingy was of solving the problem, and in my mind I was implacably opposed.

But having now experienced the service I am very pleased with it. Not that I have done any self-service checking out! But lots other people have and the express check out (express staff operated check-out) line is really short, even during peak times.

And so in the end the solution is actually quite a useful one, it allows for self-selection. People choose which line they wish to go to, and they get through faster than they previously would, but no one is forced to use out check-out method they didn’t want.

The song “john Wayne Gacy Jnr”, which is mentioned below in the post on Sufjan Stevens, is not obviously about a serial killer on first listen. If you know the story of JWG because you are from Chicago, or you read about it on wikipedia, then the lyrics change shape and become more obvious.

It is an incredibly sad song, almost unbearably so. Some people have a bad reaction to a song like this, for example this listener:

Listening to this song my first reaction was “is this SOB actually trying to make me feel sympathy for JWG?” Quite frankly I don’t care what upbringing JWG had there are no mitigating circumstances for being the definition of evil.

I’ve never been so disgusted in my life. JWG is nothing short of a Monster. For his sake I hope there is a hell and I hope he rots there forever.

BOO HISS – Bill please remove this garbage from rotation.

Not that everyone has that opinion:

I never would have thought it would be possible for someone to make a song about John Wayne Gacy that would be sad and beautiful, and probably would have thought the very idea was horrible. It’s a testament to Sufjan’s talents that he pulled it off, partly by making it about more than just Gacy. Still gives me the chills, a year and a half after first hearing it.

Stevens does end up with a song that is sad and beautiful? How does keep it from being morbid or from “expressing sympathy” for JWG?

By expressing sympathy for everyone.

The song is one huge sigh at the sadness of the world: that JWG could kill, that he would get in a position where he felt he had to do so, sadness at the feeling of the relatives of the dead, that evil exists.

He ends to song by even bringing himself into this world of sadness:

And in my best behavior
I am really just like him
Look beneath the floor boards
For the secrets I have hid

This was noted on the radio station discussion board that the above quotes come from, alluding to his purported christian upbringing:

He concludes with a reference to christian scriptures that says (paraphrased) we are all sinners, whether we steal money or kill 27 people.

If you are interested in what it would be like to ram one tourist boat into another then this video should sate your curiosity:

As a prior St Kilda resident and property owner in St Kilda I have just completed my ballot paper for the St Kilda election.

I voted for a group called Unchain Port Phillip, a group based on Unchain St Kilda, which I discovered while searching the interweb about the candidates. While I had never heard of them before they did gel with my opposition to the proposed development of the St Kilda triangle.

The St Kilda triangle is a triangular parcel on land near the beach front of St Kilda (just next door to Luna Park), which currently contains the Palais Theatre and a lot of car parks.

From Google Maps it looks like this:

From the Unchain website it looks like this:

Why did I vote this way? It is not based on some kind of particularly lefty social justice viewpoint; to most of the soft left hippy St Kilda types I imagine I would be considered quite right wing, given my pro-free market stance. Our country wouldn’t be where it is without free-markets and an active business community.

But we do have a balanced economy with a private and a public sphere. One thing the early Victorian public administrators did in Melbourne was to set aside land for private use and land for public use, giving us the legacy of public parks that are distributed around Melbourne.

This balance between public and private space seems to have been abandoned in recent years such that public spaces are routinely turned over to completely or predominately commercial activities, and so the public sphere is continually diminished to our societies detriment.

I admit to no great knowledge of the detail of the triangle development, but it was clear from the media reports that it was to be another anonymous development of shops and bars and restaurants and cafes. Did anyone ever think of just turning it into a public park? That not every space that becomes available has to be turned over to a developer?

This is all ironic given the proximity to the memorial to Carlo Catani nearby on the Esplanade, the designer of the original St Kilda foreshore. I get the sense that if the foreshore was developed now, the development would be handed over the Metrocone Developments and the St Kilda pier would not have a kiosk on the end, but rather three restaurants, a 24 hour bar/nightclub and a pokies venue.

When reviewing the information on the triangle development of the Port Phillip website, it reported that the development will devote a massive 16.5% of the total ground space to retail development. If this same approach were used for Fitzroy Gardens there would be 4.2 hectares of shops in the gardens, rather than one small café. (and Unchain asserts that you only get this 16.5% figure because the “public space” includes walkways between the retail venues).

Maybe I am being old fashioned but I think that we should use public space for public purpose, and the proposed triangle development does not live up to that objective.