NBA Franchise Catch-up

If you’re even a mildly-serious hoops fan, you’d surely agree with me that the golden era of the NBA was the 80s to early 90s. Close your eyes for a moment and it’s easy to drift back to a time when Spud Webb was winning dunk comps, Craig Ehlo was repeatedly made a fool of by a rampant Michael Jordan, and Kurt Rambis was being clotheslined by the ghoulish Kevin McHale 

So if, like me, you’ve let your attention slip in the last few years as the decade-long Carfino/Woods dynasty was usurped by a cashed up Fox Sports, you might be surprised to learn that there are a few new teams out there, some of which have stupid names and others which you’ve never heard of.

Why not begin with the Charlotte Bobcats? You mean Larry Johnson and the Hornets aren’t around anymore? That’s right! But they still exist as the New Orleans Hornets. So the Bobcats moved into Charlotte instead and that city was finally blessed with one of those lame sporting logos with an animal all stretched out so it looks tough/fast. You know the ones.

But back to the Hornets. Can’t New Orleans just call themselves the Jazz like they used to in the 70s? No, because that’s what Utah are now and you don’t want to make The Mailman angry. So what about when Hurricane Katrina hit and New Orleans was all trashed? Oh, they just moved the team to Oklahoma for two years and called them the Oklahoma City Hornets. Pity all the kids who rushed out to get Chris Paul jerseys only to have the team moved back to Louisiana after two seasons.

Well, I guess that’s the end of pro ball in Oklahoma city for a while. Unless … hang on … the Seattle Supersonics owner had a dispute with the city of Seattle and the Sonics now don’t exist? What about Shawn Kemp and Gary Peyton? Irrelevant – they both retired years ago. Ahh. So, what happened to that franchise? Well, it relocated to … Oklahoma City and called itself the Thunder. Why would anyone bother supporting one of these teams? Cause it’s pretty much just a matter of time until some oil billionaire buys you out and you have to move to Calgary to see your team play.

But there’s no need to be cynical, because if there’s one thing you can set your watch by it’s the Vancouver Grizzlies, shoring up the place of basketball in Canada, playing with panache, entertaining crowds of … sorry? Yeah, they don’t exist anymore either. In 2001 their license was just bought by some guy in Memphis (that’s apparently how easy it is) and off they went to another city.

If all that makes your head spin, don’t despair. The history of basketball in the US is littered with examples of teams dying, relocating or changing names. Pittsburgh Ironmen, anyone? Sheboygan Redskins? Fort Wayne Pistons? So put your feet up and embrace the changes. Enjoy watching fine athletes in all their glory, running the court on a fast break and finishing with a menacing dunk.

If only Kevin McHale was there to stop them …

There’s a classic philosophical thought experiment called the ‘brain in a vat’ theory which proposes that you’re really just a brain floating in a tank and are hooked up to a computer which simulates all your experiences. Therefore, it says, there’s no way of knowing conclusively whether you are actually yourself, with a brain inside a skull connected to a body, or whether you’re just a brain in a vat being manipulated by outside forces. From your point of view, the experiences you have could be produced either way.

Throw in a bit of modern technology to this theory and apply it on a massive scale and you get something called the Simulation Argument, first proposed by a philosopher at Oxford University called Nick Bostrom.

In a theory that at first appears either moronic or just way too sci-fi, Bostrom argues that it’s almost a mathematical certainty that we are living in someone else’s computer simulation. He claims that once computing power reaches a certain level (in any civilisation, not just ours), advanced people could run simulations of, for instance, their own evolutionary history which would involve the creation of millions of fully-developed virtual people, as part of which you and I are included.

Bostrom reaches the conclusion that it’s almost certain we’re living in a computer simulation through some old-fashioned probability theory. At least one of these propositions must be true, he says:

1. Almost all civilisations at our level of development become extinct before becoming technologically mature.

2. The fraction of technologically mature civilisations that are interested in creating ancestor simulations is almost zero.

3. You are almost certainly living in a computer simulation.

So, if the first proposition is false, then a large proportion of civilisations become technologically mature at some point. If the second is false then a large proportion of civilisations run “ancestor simulations”. Therefore, if you reach the (presumably likely) conclusion that the first two statements are false then the only position you are left with is to accept the third proposition as true.

As part of this argument, the humans involved in the simulation would have no idea whether or not they’re actually real people or just computer circuitry. This prompts all sorts of questions about how one should behave within a computer simulation – do the designers of the simulation reward certain types of behaviour or not? Is there any meaning to life at all if we have no control over it? Will the designers of the simulation just shut the whole thing down before we get to the point where we can make our own simulations on the same scale? Are they themselves living in a simulation?

Or maybe they just want us to be nice to people and to try to lead interesting lives. That’s not too much to ask, is it?

 …

Hello? Can anyone hear me? 

Hey man, I just … I can’t function in the morning without my morning coffee. I really fuckin love the coffees they make at Single Origin man. Single Origin FTW!! I mean, that guy – he’s so crazy! But I reckon he’s good for business, right? Yeah, LOLz man! I dunno anyway … what? Yeah ahh shit that’s shit’s out of control. Have you heard it? Ahh nah man the other one, from that night with all those dudes hanging around … Yeah at the time dude, you were all like fuckin eyes popping and loving it you couldn’t even fuckin talk! LOLz yeah dood! … So you got the one with the fixed fuckin gears man? Yeah fuck it’s hard to ride brah but it’s fuckin sweet and the babes keep on checking that shit out! I still can’t brake and I ran into a junkie on Crown! LOLz man! NAGL man!! … Hey man you got any more of those. Is that shit from the same guy as last week? Ahh man I don’t know about that shit, hey. It was alright brah, but I dunno if I can pay that shit again. Nah man my olds stopped sending me that money and shit’s getting hard man. LOLz fuck you dood, it ain’t like that! … I can’t even fuckin hear you man. Eh? Aww brah let’s just take this shit outside and do it there. Haha! yeah fuckin bad boy, whatever man! Nah just have it all, it’s better like that. … Dood what’s in that shit? I can’t see properly man. Ahh shit nah it’s making me feel fuckin weird man. What is it? What the fuck’s in that shit? Ahh man I need to get out of here. Man … where are you man? … hey dood you know where I am? I can’t see properly. I dunno. Maybe a hospital man … LO … nah man … it’s weird. Ha … ahh fuck. … can you help me? Nah fuck man. Ahh shit. Nah it’s fucked up. I can’t do this shit anymore … ahh fuck. … are you a nurse? I dunno what it was … yeah all of it … ahh fuck. Help me … can you call my parents? Fuck … nah mum I don’t know man. *sob* I’m sorry … nah I need to keep that place. Just give me some more money or something … fuck I’m sorry. Yeah I promise. All good mum. All good.

Hey man, I just … I can’t function in the morning without my morning coffee. I really fuckin love the coffees they make at Single Origin man …

I apologise for straying into the subject area of my esteemed colleague Jo Jo Zep, but some things just need to be said. Sneaky Sound System are the without doubt the most creatively bereft, musically ignorant, worst ‘band’ in Australia.

I know, I know, it’s a tough call to make with competition of the standards of Jet and Thirsty Merc plying their trade out there, but it’s become clear that these people deserve to be abused in the street and their fans made to feel like the losers they are.

My ire was stoked recently by their comments in a sycophantic article in the lame celebrity section of the Fairfax press (itself currently in the throes of a death spiral which a few puff pieces on the latest musical flashes in the pan will do nothing to arrest), which seemed about as divorced from reality as ‘serious’ journalism could be.

We’ve all seen bands get carried away with ill-founded delusions of relevance but SSS appear to be suffering from a prolonged hallucination if they actually believe the drivel that they subject the public to.

Examples? Sure. This from band member Angus McDonald – he’s the creepy looking old man who stands up the back pressing ‘start’ on his mp3 player during live sets:

The word ‘pop’ was certainly a dirty word and dance music was like a poor cousin. I don’t know, it seemed like there were a lot of bands that didn’t have the courage to make electro-pop.

It’s done a lot for these other bands, who would never have imagined being in the top 40, and all of a sudden charts are dominated by electro-pop bands.

Huh? Presuming those comments were actually made seriously, it’s fairly safe to assume the actual musicians from the likes of The Presets and Cut Copy who McDonald seems to be referring to were doing just fine when they released albums and EPs that predate anything SSS ever put out. The late 90s wave of French electro groups will also no doubt be thankful (if confused) that SSS cleared the decks for the electro revival that they pioneered in the late 90s.

Drop the pretensions to legitimacy, losers. SSS are the just the latest tired evolution in corporate record label rubbish piggybacking on the success of actual trendsetters. You have nothing anybody needs or wants. You’re a waste of space.

I’ll leave it to lead singer Connie Mitchell to hang herself with some final remarks: “We’re very lucky like that – you can’t fake it. People will spot it a mile off.” Consider yourself spotted. Fuck off.

Photo by Martin Kingsley

To help celebrate this milestone it’s instructive to put Kruddy’s story into the context of his past – as a prime dork. The type of guy at school who would sit under shadecloth at lunchtime rolling 25 sided dice in between bites of his mum’s special salad sandwiches, maximising his charisma points in preparation for an assault on his nerd sorcerer friend’s castle of special loser power. Yeah yeah, it’s hardly original to characterise him as a D&D dude, but you know it’s true. The meek inherited the country.

The smartest thing Kruddy did though, was to remember those lunchtimes with the skinned knees and the reddening of the white skin on the back of his neck in preparation for an assault on the Usurper of Canberra, John Howard, during the 2007 election. At first it seemed reckless to make such a challenge, but the years Kruddy spent optimising his cloak of invulnerability reaped dividends in the face of old fuckface Howard’s dwindling reign of evil. Unfazed by the ancient master’s use of the double-sided wedge card, he slipped a mortality serum into Howard’s non-alcoholic ale and nullified his +10 election hit points to take power in a bloodless overthrow. Dorks rejoice.

But for serious, how has Rudd done in office? There have been a few ups and a couple of stuff-ups, but nothing amazing. Ticks for saying sorry to the indigenous folk (who had their traditional kingdoms stolen by prior generations of English fantasy lovers) and for ratifying the Kyoto protocol. But how hard would it have been to achieve those two feats? It’s ok I guess but a few more magic tricks might be required before our attention gets diverted.

Ok, he also did some pretty sweet globetrotting on his white stallion. He pulled Australian troops out of Iraq earlier in the year but they weren’t doing much anyway and nobody really noticed. Then when the economic crisis hit he accidentally made himself look pretty good by making up details of a private phone call where Dubya supposedly didn’t know what the G20 was. But did you know?

Domestically he’s made some announcements about strengthening public and tertiary education and helping homeless people a bit, but what you didn’t notice at the time with the flapping of his cape and releasing of some white smoke was that nothing’s actually happened in those areas. We’ve been had! The medieval charlatan has skipped out of town! Same with the Garnaut report into climate change. Nice work to get it all done and get some serious economic stats behind something that most people know is pretty logical, but what are you actually gonna do about it Kruddy? Oh. A bit of tinkering at the margins. Say some stuff and then don’t do much to back it up. I see what’s going on here.

All up he gets 5/10. In the true fantasy story tradition, Krudd’s rise to power was impressive and slightly supernatural. But after getting so wrapped up in the magic it was inevitable that the reality was just a bit … vanilla. Sometimes what you see is all you’re gonna get.

Photo by mao_lini

I was once accused by an Irishwoman of being insensitive for belittling the trauma to the Irish people of the Great Potato Famine. I’d like to restore that woman’s faith in my humanity and compassion by explaining the importance of this harrowing historical episode to a wider audience. 

Firstly the numbers:

The famine lasted for six years

1 million people dead

1 million people emigrated

The population of Ireland reduced by 25%

 Ireland in the nineteenth century was an occupied country. The British had dissolved Ireland’s independent parliament in 1800 and instituted a range of laws discriminating directly against the 80 per cent Catholic population.

 English and Anglo-Irish landlords owned almost all the land and collected a wage from the peasants who lived on their property. Around two thirds of the population of Ireland lived in this situation, dependent on agriculture for their survival, subsisting solely on potatoes which were the staple crop in the poorest regions.

The most fertile land in Ireland was in the north and east of the island – land which was owned and occupied by the English, forcing poor Irish peasant families onto only barely fertile land in the south and west with large areas of bog and rocky soil.

The English occupiers essentially treated the Irish inhabitants of the land as a mass army of slave labour, forced to eke out a miserable existence cultivating potatoes to enrich the English aristocracy.

In September 1845 the famine began. Potato crops mysteriously began to die as a result of an unknown airborne fungus carried in the holds of ships from North America. By November 15 half the crop was destroyed. By 1846 people began to die of hunger and the British Prime Minister Robert Peel attempted to implement a large scale public works program for Ireland’s unemployed. Shortly after though, the new Whig Government in Britain, believing that the market would provide food to cover for the failed crops, halted relief programs and continued to profit from the export of wheat.

Through the next three years each harvest also failed due to the blight and, on top of a crippling famine, typhus and cholera were rife. Victims were offered temporary relief through the Soup Kitchens Act of 1847, but this act was withdrawn a few months later and the destitute left to rely on scant local assistance. Hundreds of thousands of destitute and starving peasants embarked on journeys to America or England to find work and food.

The result, along with the loss of a million lives, was the utter destruction of large swathes of villages and towns, and mass eviction of peasants from now infertile land. Historians later noted that the famine was neither inevitable nor unavoidable and that the weak British response to Irish suffering was actually a calculated act of genocide, motivated by an ideological desire for population control and consolidation of property – a deliberate measure to destroy the Irish people.

That the Irish nation was able to prosper and grow into the flourishing democracy it is today is a testament to the resilience and courage of its people.

President Obama

Imagine a winning contender for an Australian election standing in The Domain in Sydney on a cold autumn night to deliver a victory speech. Imagine that the speech was delivered not to ‘the party faithful’, colleagues and staffers but to 75,000 ordinary people drawn there by the pure charisma of the candidate, the otherworldly power of his oratory, and the inspiration of a message you accept, through tears, as nothing less than a rewriting of history.

It’s the answer that led those who have been told for so long by so many to be cynical, and fearful, and doubtful of what we can achieve to put their hands on the arc of history and bend it once more toward the hope of a better day.

Pause and consider the hardened internal narrative you hold about America. Country of rednecks, moronic, bible-bashing, capitalism-loving militaristic hicks. Ruiner of lives in foreign invasion after invasion. Racist, arrogant, jingoistic, ignorant. A force for evil in the world.

And to all those who have wondered if America’s beacon still burns as bright –tonight we proved once more that the true strength of our nation comes not from our the might of our arms or the scale of our wealth, but from the enduring power of our ideals: democracy, liberty, opportunity, and unyielding hope.

Decide whether you’re now still comfortable with that narrative. Consider whether you’d ever realistically believed that America would elect the black guy with the funny name. The secret muslim, ivy league elite, Junior Senator from Illinois.

Last November Australia elected a competent, managerial-type Prime Minister who gave plenty of people a lift when he overthrew a nasty power-hungry old man. And we congratulated ourselves because, while our stable political history may be boring, at least we don’t consider ourselves the greatest country on earth. We carry our cynicism as a badge of pride.

The American dream we argued smugly, the dream so derided by the more sensible of the earth, has so often proven destructive in its self-assuredness. But the value of that dream lies in the little chink of light which we saw in the distance, from a fabled, possibly even fabricated past. The chink of light that President-elect Obama saw in the darkness all those years ago and refused to ignore. The audacity of hope.

This is our moment. This is our time — to put our people back to work and open doors of opportunity for our kids; to restore prosperity and promote the cause of peace; to reclaim the American Dream and reaffirm that fundamental truth — that out of many, we are one; that while we breathe, we hope, and where we are met with cynicism, and doubt, and those who tell us that we can’t, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of a people: Yes We Can.

The fantastic tale that motivates the American people could never exist here. The naïve idealism seems to have been drilled out of our politics. The Australian style is epitomised by the aloof incompetence of some of our state governments, seemingly elected only to shuffle leadership cards between factional warlords.

In the United States, it took one guy who refused to let that type of system prevail. And while his greatest flaw may have been to set the bar impossibly high, the value of Barack Obama’s victory is in the demolition of old norms. People all over his country will now be motivated to turn the talk of the American dream into reality. The name ‘the land of opportunity’ may no longer be used as a sarcastic jibe after such a vivid evocation of its power.  

Other presumptions also fell by the wayside. The necessity of the Atwater-Rove ‘ends determines the means’ style campaign tactics. Likewise, going negative in an election campaign became a hindrance. McCain, that decent man with the history of bipartisanship, started to look like a puppet, his misguided advisors twisting and distorting his ideals and motivations.

The chestnut that only a Southern Democrat – Clinton of Arkansas, Carter of Georgia or Johnson of Texas – could ever convince the rednecks to vote blue suddenly looked shaky as Virginia, Florida and North Carolina came into the fold, changing accepted electoral thinking set in stone since the civil rights movements of the 60s.

The initially derided fifty-state strategy of Obama and campaign manager David Axelrod seemed both shrewd and prescient once the polls in formerly solidly-red Indiana, Missouri and Georgia started to turn. The messages of hope and change really did transcend old barriers. Red states and blue states were becoming the United States.

And the power of Internet campaigning, first hinted at by Howard Dean in the 2004 Democratic primaries, was devastatingly confirmed as Obama smashed previous fundraising records and the assumptions that accompanied them. Those who had previously felt left out from the political process only needed make a $10 donation here and there and suddenly they held more power than the richest Republican fundraisers. The people were speaking.

Of course, the new President will inherit a country teetering on the brink of a collapse ushered in by the wildly incompetent Bush-Cheney regime. It’s as though Bush’s rich get richer message of corruption and pandering to elite interests was tailored specifically to engage those formerly excluded citizens who turned out in their millions to propagate the Obama message.

Such was the strength of that message that surely now even those who voted against Obama have had their freedom restored. The freedom to dream that had seemed crushed in modern America. And hopefully, now, freedom from the internal prison of hate that is racism – the wilful denial of reality which fuelled the suppression of black Americans since the days of slavery. The dream of Martin Luther King, whose words now sit side by side with those of the President-elect has finally been realised. Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!

Chocolate Gelato

I think we can all breathe a sigh of relief that the resolution of Coogee Bay Hotel vs shit eating Whyte family has finally been reached. While it’s nothing short of deserved that the CBH now has a permanently tainted reputation, the Whytes carried an air of taking themselves a little too seriously that always grated. And while I personally was never a big fan of chocolate ice cream, I’ll be glad to be able to eat it in future freed from the constant reminder of shit-spiking. To see it finally return to its roots as innocent comforter of five year olds and fatties will be to see the world a better place

Of course for those interested, coprophagia does have its rewards. You’ll often see dogs tasting their own poo, which they find a delicious snack that can provide a useful nutritional addition for growing dogs. In fact, the faeces of herbivores such as sheep, cows or rabbits are more likely to benefit the digestion of dogs than harm it. As for bunnies themselves, they have a special type of poo called cecotrophs which are ‘special’ faeces that are very high in vitamins and an essential part of their digestive system

Being a human, Mrs Whyte’s shit eating may have ended in less healthy results. Our faeces contain E. coli, a bacterium that sits in the lower intestine and breaks down food into waste. Ingesting E. coli and having it enter any other part of your body will cause any of a smorgasbord of colourful sounding diseases – take your pick from gastroenteritis, urinary tract infections, neonatal meningitis, hæmolytic-uremic syndrome, peritonitis, mastitis, septicaemia and Gram-negative pneumonia – some of which can mess with your health for years after first striking!

So you’ll probably be wondering if the awesome New South Wales government actually does anything to protect people from this sort of thing. Well, they have a ‘name and shame’ website which, while it won’t prevent a chef from putting poo in your gelato, does actually make pretty interesting reading for those with a lazy few minutes. Find out gems of information, like how the Hokka Hokka in Martin Place doesn’t have hand washing facilities in the kitchen. Yuck! And how Sushi on Stanley in East Sydney hasn’t been able to maintain their food premises in a clean condition. Vom!

Enough! Make it all stop! I’m eating at home from now on.

Image by lwy

I was anxious the other night. There I was, bending forward on a couch, watching a TV that wasn’t quite at a volume I could hear comfortably, allowing some mild obsessive compulsive rituals to play out – drawing patterns on my thighs with my index finger and thumb, tapping out rhythms with my foot against the table leg. I was at the local stylessly-renovated Beer Barn watching the Australian football team play a World Cup qualifier against Qatar.

‘What’s wrong with me?’ I vaguely remember thinking, as each speculative Qatari shot from impossible range caused me to twitch involuntarily as it floated harmlessly over the cross bar. The game wasn’t close and had never been expected to be – the Socceroos were clear favourites and didn’t ever look like losing. So why, I thought, did this game have such a hold over me?

Anyone who sits down and thinks about it all might find such an obsession ridiculous. I have no interest in nationalist politics and find the idea of, say, having a southern cross tattooed on my shoulder blade an infantile expression of insecurity masked as national pride. But I’ll wear a yellow shirt, scream at opposition players and become uncontrollably emotional while watching the national football team play.

At the same time I find ways to justify such feelings in order to quieten the more sensible voices in the back of my head. The Australian football team is a positive expression of the success of multiculturalism, I reason. And besides, playing football is fun, so why would I begrudge anyone playing it as well as these guys do? But the voices nag away. Thoughts about hooliganism, overindulged idiot players, the absurdity of prowess at kicking a ball as a measure of national virtue (to paraphrase George Orwell).

Maybe then, there’s an evolutionary explanation for the way I feel. Was it so important for prehistoric humans to feel part of a tribe that the defeat of another tribe in competition could produce such unparalleled feelings of ecstasy and satisfaction? Maybe the caveman who didn’t care about the ability of another caveman to throw a spear accurately was the one who was sacrificed to the gods when the mammoth hunt failed.

I’ll usually make a last attempt to silence the voices by agreeing with them to some degree. I guess sport is the healthiest expression of low-level nationalism – one where nobody dies and everybody knows it’s all ‘just a game’. It’s just a circus that would exist in some form or another anyway, so let’s not take it too seriously.

But the voices never stay quiet for long. Back at the pub, the game ends in an easy 4-0 win and I walk home satisfied, for now, with all anxiety quelled. My thoughts turn to the next game and a hint of fear seeps back … What if we lose? … What then?

There’s less than a month to go in the contest to choose between the donkeys and the elephants for the title of Emperor of the Free World… also known as the US Presidential elections. Don’t worry if you’ve been too busy downloading iPhone apps to keep abreast of developments, because we’re here to fill you in on what you need to know to enjoy the election night fireworks. First up, the contenders:

Republican

John McCain

There are plenty of things to like about this guy. After being born into a proud military family (as opposed to a proud war profiteering family in the case of the Bush presidents), McCain impressed as a future achiever by finishing 894th out of a class of 899 at Naval Academy. Amazingly he was still allowed into a cockpit, so to prove he knew what he was doing, he crashed three planes in separate incidents in the 60s, put down variously to his ‘cockiness’, ‘clowning around’ or ‘not paying attention’. During the Vietnam War he earned the poetic nickname ‘Songbird’ while a POW by giving information about his fellow captors in return for some extra yummy Vietcong bun cha gio. Emerging from this culinary excursion only partially scathed, McCain won election to the US Senate in 1986, where he gained fame by carefully cultivating a fabricated maverick image and calling his wife a “fucking cunt”.

Sarah Palin

Actually believes that humans and dinosaurs co-existed.

Democrat

Barack Obama

Born an adorable mixed-race baby amongst the swaying palm trees of Honolulu, Hawaii, Obama travelled the world with his mum before returning to high school in Honolulu after her death, and subsequently got into weed and blow. As a young man he studied law at Harvard University, palled around with terrorists and formulated a personal political ideology so uppity that he seriously advocated teaching sex education to foetuses. He was elected to the Illinois senate in 1997 on the back of the votes of America-haters, which he parlayed into a successful run for US Senate in 2004. If he wins the election, Obama will become the first black President since Calvin Coolidge in 1924.

Joe Biden

Joe Biden was the first Biden in a thousand generations to get a college and a graduate degree because he was smarter than the rest.

Next issue – Who should I vote for?