Uncategorized – Graham Clements

Best Time to Blog.

Graham Clements — Mon, 04 Aug 2014 01:26:00 +0000

I recently read a blog post titled A
Scientific Guide to Posting Tweets, Facebook Posts, Emails and Blog Posts at
the Best Times, by Belle Beth
Cooper. The post had me thinking about the random nature of my blog posts. I
have been trying to post once a week. For a while that used to be on Monday,
but as my posts began to require more research it slipped to later in the week,
with a few last desperate attempts on Sundays.

I had not really noticed if the day or time I posted affected
the amount of views or comments. I was thinking the number of views or comments
had more to do with the topic of the post. Like if I reviewed a current film or
talked about television science-fiction I usually get more hits and comments
than when I review a book. When I write about ebook sales, the number of
comments seems to increase too.

But what other factors affect the number of views or
comments on my posts. One factor that seems to limit comments is the perceived difficulty
of making comments on Blogger due to the authentication process. But having
being inundated by spam when I remove it, I’ve decided to keep it on. Another
factor that might affect the number of views my blog gets is the time I post.

Best Time to Post.

According to Cooper’s post, 70% of people read blogs in
the morning. My blog is aimed at readers and writers of science-fiction, and a fair
few of my social media connections are writers. I can imagine many of those
writers being procrastinators, like me, so they would probably read blogs in
the morning.

Cooper’s post says Monday is the highest traffic day,
with 11am being the highest traffic hour. But she warns that if a lot of blogs
post at this time, a post is more likely to be lost in the noise.

Cooper’s research also shows that comments are usually
highest on Saturdays and around 9 am on most days.

I had a look at my stats for Blogger over the past month.
My traffic is greatest on the day I post and the day after. No other day stood
out. There is no real pattern. My posting time varied from morning to evening
too, and I have not noticed the time of day I post having any effect on views.
My comments also seem to be highest on the day after I post.

Plugging a Post.

I plug my posts on Facebook and Twitter and in a few
other places. According to Cooper’s research, 18% more people engage with
Facebook on Thursdays and Fridays. Friday is one day when I seem to get more
comments on my status updates. Early afternoon is supposedly the best time to
post.

Cooper’s research also found evidence that 32% more
people engage with Facebook on the weekends. I would have to disagree with this
as Facebook is definitely quieter for me on weekends. Perhaps many of my writer
friends are following the traditional alcoholism path, so they are too hung-over
to engage with Facebook on the weekends.

The blog post says that getting other users to engage in
a discussion after dinner on Facebook is a long shot.

I tweet, but not very much. I generally only use it to
plug a blog post or article I have up on the Divine website. I view Twitter as a platform where the
majority of users are just plugging something.

So when is the best time to plug something on Twitter? According
to Cooper’s post, many people are using their mobiles to access Twitter when
they commute. So the best time to get a tweet noticed would probably be 7.30 am
to 9.00 am or 5 pm to 6.30 pm.

If I want to increase my blog traffic it seems I should
be posting on Mondays at 11 am while plugging that post on Facebook on Friday
afternoons and on Twitter during commute times.

So when do you read blogs? And when do you engage most
with Facebook? And if you bother with Twitter, when do you make time to follow links
in tweets?

Medical Use of Cannabis

Graham Clements — Wed, 23 Jul 2014 01:20:00 +0000

I wrote this article just over a year ago but I could not find a paying home for it, so here it is.

Up until the twentieth century, cannabis was frequently
used in western medicine. But more effective painkillers such as those
containing opiates were developed. And then concerns about recreational abuse
of cannabis lead to its use being prohibited. Despite it being illegal, research
continues into the medical uses of cannabis, and people continue to use it as a
medicine.

Recent research at Tel Aviv University in Israel studied
the effects of cannabis on Crohns Disease. Eleven of the study’s participants
smoked cannabis twice daily, while ten others smoked a placebo where the
tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) had been removed from the cannabis. The Crohns
disease of five of the eleven who smoked the unaltered cannabis went into full
remission. But so did the Crohns Disease of one of those in the placebo group.
The researchers say more research needs to be done.

Research is also under way into the effect of cannabis on
medical conditions such as ulcerative colitis, multiple sclerosis, diabetes and
arthritis. Cancer cells have been killed by cannabis in experiments. Cannabis use
has decreased nausea and increased appetites in people undergoing chemotherapy and
who are HIV positive. Cannabis is used by many people battling chronic pain. Cannabis
is also reported to help in the treatment of hepatitis C, skin cancer, migraines,
morning sickness, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease.

Possession of cannabis is illegal

Anyone tempted to conduct their own personal research
into the effect of cannabis on their medical condition should be aware they are
committing a crime. In Victoria anyone caught with less than 50 grams of
cannabis risks being fined $700 for possession. They can be fined a further $700
if they are caught using it. The Victorian Legal Aid website says first
offenders will usually get a caution, rather than be charged and fined. People
caught with more than 50 grams risk being charged with trafficking drugs and sentenced
to jail.

Harmful effects of cannabis

According to the Victorian Health Department’s Better
Health website, short term use of cannabis can cause:

·
impaired coordination

·
drowsiness

·
confusion

·
vomiting

·
hallucinations

·
detachment from reality

·
anxiety

·
and paranoia.

Long term use of cannabis can cause:

·
poor concentration

·
memory loss

·
an inability to learn new tasks

·
increased risk of infections

·
asthma

·
throat, mouth and lung cancers

·
and serious mental illness such as
schizophrenia.

Many health professionals are very much against cannabis
being smoked, but are more receptive to its medical use if it is taken in other
ways. Cannabis can be smoked, eaten, diluted into a tincture, inhaled as a
vapour, drunk as a tea or absorbed into the skin as a cream or from a nicotine
type patch.

An oral spray

In November 2012 the oral spray Sativex was included on
the Australian Register of Therapeutic Goods. The spray contains extracts from
cannabis leaf and its flower. A change to the Standard for the Uniform
Scheduling of Medicines and Poisons still needs to be approved before Sativex
can be marketed in Australia. A final decision about that change is due on the
27^th of June.

Research has shown that Sativex is effective in the
treatment of symptoms of Multiple Sclerosis. If approved, Sativex will only be
prescribed to people with MS by authorised medical practitioners.

Sativex has equal parts THC, the psychoactive part of cannabis, and cannabidiol (CBD), which
typically lowers the anxiety and psychotic symptoms of cannabis. So according
to its manufacturer, GW Pharmaceuticals, Sativex does not produce a “high” in
its users.

Trials of Sativex on pain in cancer patients are
currently being conducted by Dr Brian Le, a palliative care specialist at Royal
Melbourne Hospital.

Unfortunately, Sativex
could cost up to $500 a month because it will not be under the Pharmaceutical
Benefits Scheme.

NSW Government enquiry into medical cannabis

In May this year (2013) a NSW Government committee released a
report on “The Use of Cannabis for Medical Purposes.” Many of the submissions
to that report suggested that cannabis should only be used when other legal
drugs have not been effective for a patient.

The committee heard from many people who illegally use
cannabis to self-medicate. They were told of a national survey where 18 per
cent of Australians with HIV said they used cannabis as a complementary
medicine. A person with Degenerative Disc Disease told the committee how she managed
to get her pain under control by eating cannabis butter and cookies. She no
longer had to take a long list of pain killers that left her wanting to spend
all day in bed.

The report recommended the legalisation of the medical
use of cannabis for people with a terminal illness and AIDS. They also
recommended that the NSW Minster for Health write to the Commonwealth Minister
for Health and Ageing expressing support for the evidence based approval of
cannabis for other patient groups,
including those suffering chronic pain for whom existing pain management
was not effective.

Australian Drug Law Reform Foundation

Alex Wodak is the Emeritus consultant at St Vincent’s
Hospital in Darlinghurst and president of the Australian Drug Law Reform
Foundation. He wrote on The Conversation
website that the legalisation of cannabis for people with terminal conditions was
a good start. He said this should be a national approach. He also said cannabis
would be cheaper than many currently available medicines.

Victorian Government

A senior media advisor at the Victorian
Department of Health, said: “Currently there are no plans in Victoria for
an inquiry into the medicinal uses of cannabis.” He went on to say “The Victorian Government will monitor
closely any plans to implement the recommendations of the recent NSW inquiry
into the medicinal use of cannabis among a very specific group of patients.”

Updates

Sativex was approved but because it was not placed on
the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme the manufacturer decided not to make it
available in Australia.

Lucy Haslam has a petition on change.org to get medical
cannabis decriminalised so her terminally ill son can use it. She recently got the NSW Premier Mike Baird onboard (picture).

Links

NSW Government inquiry: http://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/prod/parlment/committee.nsf/0/7641E8D87AC53FB3CA257ABF00134E57

Alex Wodak – President Australian Drug Law Reform
Foundation, article written for the website The Conversation:

http://theconversation.com/legalising-medicinal-cannabis-is-a-leap-forward-for-compassion-14297

Victorian Legal Aid, drug possession in Victoria:

http://www.legalaid.vic.gov.au/find-legal-answers/criminal-offences/drug-possession

Sativex

http://www.msra.org.au/cannabis-based-medications-tested-symptom-relief-ms

Sativex trials in Victoria:

http://www.theage.com.au/national/health/cannabis-spray-may-help-severely-ill-cope-with-pain-20121028-28djr.html#ixzz2AknlRFck

Better Health Channel, harmful health effects of
cannabis:

http://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/bhcv2/bhcarticles.nsf/pages/Cannabis_marijuana

Crohns cannabis study

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23648372

Time to Boycott Australian Goods and Services?

Graham Clements — Fri, 18 Jul 2014 04:41:00 +0000

I am a bit meh about the government scrapping the carbon
tax. The fact that it seemed inevitable has negated much of my potential anger.
If anything, I just feel vindicated. It is what I expected would happen from
about 2011, when I realised the Labor government had no hope of winning the
next election.

I also expected the majority of Australians to be in favour
of getting rid of the carbon tax. They claim to want the government to do
something about climate change, but not if it costs them. Australians as a
whole are becoming more selfish and ignorant. Just look at our attitudes towards
refugees and the pathetic employment rate for people with disabilities in this
country compared to the rest of the developed world. It’s all me, me, me in
Australia, and it is getting worse.

Selfish and Ignorant Murdoch.

Our rising selfishness and ignorance can partly be blamed on
our media, especially anything owned by Rupert Murdoch. Rupert Murdoch is one
of the most selfish and ignorant media barons in history. As this article in the Guardian shows, he does not understand or is deliberately lying about climate change. If his only source of information on climate change is his own media outlets, than one could understand his ignorance. But I think it is more likely that he is a supremely selfish man who couldn’t care less what state the world is left in after he dies.

Too Late to Act.

When he finally dies it might be too late to act on climate change. What Australians don’t seem to understand is if they think
they can’t afford to do anything about climate change now, they are unlikely to
be able to afford to do anything about climate change when it really starts to affect us as much
of the budget will then be spent on fighting the effects of climate change.

I was thinking that if I lived in another country I would be
very unimpressed with Australia’s decision to scrap its carbon tax and do
bugger all to limit its carbon emissions. I would be especially unhappy if I
lived in a country that is doing something about climate change, like England,
Germany, Denmark, South Korea, New Zealand, even the US.

Dumb Aussies.

If I lived in New Zealand I would be feeling pretty superior
to those dumb selfish Aussies right now. If I was an environmentalist in
England I might start boycotting all Australian products. After all, Australia
is the highest per capita emitter of greenhouse gases in the world. And that does
not take into account all the coal we export and all the gas we will soon be exporting.
Our contribution to world global warming is only going to increase.

Boycott Aussie Aluminium.

But I have been thinking, why don’t I boycott Australian
products anyway, particularly those products that use a lot of electricity in
their production. I could start by boycotting any Australian products that have
a lot of aluminium in them or their packaging. So no more cans of soft drink,
and I could buy imported aluminium foil. Aluminium produced in Victoria using dirty
brown coal electricity is probably the highest greenhouse gas producing aluminium
in the world, even beating that produced in China.

Dairy farmers use a lot of electricity, so I could just buy
imported Danish or German cheese and perhaps give up my occasional glass of
milk. Our textile manufacturers obviously use a lot of electricity, so I could
boycott any clothing, shoes, towels and sheets made in Australia. I could
boycott any manufactured food product that has an imported substitute. Probably
work out cheaper too. Luckily I grow a lot of my own fruit and veggies. I must
start looking into solar panels too. We already have solar hot water. And I would
have to buy ebooks instead of printed books from Australian authors from now
on.

The one upside of scrapping the carbon tax and Australia
doing bugger all about climate change is that it keeps the global warming plausible
in two near future stories and a novel I have been writing.

Bugger off Deniers

Oh, and anyone who denies that global warming is occurring and
caused by humans, is either ignorant or selfish, probably both. So don’t bother
commenting because your ignorant and selfish denial will be deleted. Whenever I
check the so-called facts presented by deniers invariably turn out to be
deceptions or just lies. Science has proven that global warming is happening,
and the major factor in this warming is human made greenhouse gasses. What they
have not concluded is how bad the effects of global warming will be. But with
each passing year, the warnings from scientists are getting more dire.

Rebooting Books.

Graham Clements — Sun, 29 Jun 2014 06:40:00 +0000

So
many movies are scheduled to be remade or rebooted. In the past few weeks I’ve
read or heard that Stargate, Predator, Highlander, Gremlins, IT, Jumanji, Star
Wars, Logan’s Run, Poltergeist, Videodrome, Starship Troopers, and even Police
Academy – please don’t, have some mercy – are going to be remade or rebooted.

With
all these reboots and remakes, I got to thinking about the books I would like
to see rewritten or rebooted. The first one that came to mind is 1984, and not just to update the title. Imagine
including all of the current and near future technology in a rebooted 2048. Winston
Smith would find it much harder to hide from today’s surveillance technology,
but much easier to edit the truth. And instead of discovering a book in the
attic above the shop, Smith could find a USB flash drive once owned by Julian
Assange.

Going
on similar lines, the next book I thought is long overdue for a rewrite is The Bible. Imagine rewriting The Bible so it took into account all we
now know about the world and universe. It could be made to be a lot more
factual. It could start with a big bang. The ark could come to rest on Mt
Everest and have dinosaurs onboard. And God could tell one of his disciples
that the earth is really a lot older than some fools believe. The text could also
stress really bad outcomes for paedophiles.

Then
we have Shakespeare. I’ve only read Macbeth,
which I gather is one of the less boring books for an, at the time, 14 year-old
to read. I found if pretty difficult to read, with the plot being a bit Game of
Thronesish. Perhaps I missed its point all together, but I reckon it would be so
much easier to understand his books and get their meanings if they were
rewritten in modern English. Perhaps George R. R. Martin could try to rewrite
them and include more sex and violence. A rewriting of Shakespeare could help
alleviate the disdain for books that many high school students develop after
being forced to read his antiquated novels.

Many
foreign movies are remade into American versions. I did not mind the American
adaptions of Vanilla Sky or the 1998
version of Godzilla. For the same
reasons I think Harry Potter might get a whole new audience if it was rewritten
and set in the US. It could be called Chuck Pothead, and filled with sassy
teenagers who use magical Apple products, like the iwand.

I
often wondered how the world might change if women were in charge. Apart from less
beer being drunk and no Police Academy movies, the world might be a more
peaceful place, or we could all die horrible deaths. A perfect way to explore what
would happen if women were in charge would be to rewrite Lord of the….you
thought I was gonna write Lord of the
Rings didn’t you? Well no, I reckon someone should rewrite William Golding’s
classic Lord of the Flies, with an all-female
school class being stranded on desert island. Instead of Jack we could have
Jill. Instead of Ralph we could have Arya. Who would they vote off the island first?
Would Arya take revenge on all the girls who had been mean to her? And the
rewrite could fix up the big plot hole in the original, by coming up with some
other way to create fire than using spectacles.

Apart
from fixing up plot holes, rewrites could also fix woeful endings. And one of
the worst novel endings I have read was in Stephen Baxter’s novel The Ark. [Spoiler Alert]. In that novel
a specially trained group of young adults are launched into space from an earth
that is slowly drowning in floodwaters. They spend years in space, only for a
group of them to decide they want to return to earth. Morons. So they cut the
ship into two and the morons return to earth. This is where the rewrite should
really cut in, by having them return to a totally devastated Earth that imploded
from the weight of surface water. That would teach the morons. Meanwhile the
rest of the crew could actually make it to a hospitable planet.

Finally,
I think the most over-rated novel in the history of the universe not only could
but should be rewritten. Those who frequent this blog would correctly guess
that novel to be The Great Gatsby. I
think that meaningless assemblage of words would greatly benefit by being set
during a zombie apocalypse. With Daisy having recently been infected, Jay
Gatsby would be the only surviving human. Then we really could feel sorry for a
bloke surrounded by zombie hangers-on.

Unlike
many Hollywood film-makers who seem incapable of coming up with any original
ideas, I could come up with many more books that not only could but should be rebooted.
How about you?

The Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame.

Graham Clements — Wed, 25 Jun 2014 06:03:00 +0000

While
writing my last post, a review of the excellent movie Edge of Tomorrow, I had
cause to reflect on science-fiction movies starring Tom Cruise. He has some impressive credits: Vanilla
Sky, Minority Report, War of the Worlds, Oblivion
and Edge of Tomorrow. I have enjoyed
them all.

I
then contemplated whether any other actors have appeared in so many great
science-fiction movies. Charlton Heston immediately came to mind with Soylent
Green, Planet of the Apes and The Omega Man. As I am a fan of John
Carpenter movies, I then thought of Kirk Russell who stared in The
Thing, Escape From New York and Escape From LA. He also appeared in
the big screen version of Stargate and had a small role in Vanilla Sky.

But had any of
those actors made it into a science-fiction hall of fame? There is a Science Fictionand Fantasy Hall of Fame located at the EMP museum in Seattle, a museum dedicated
to contemporary popular culture.

Hall of
Fame Members

Brian W. Aldiss
Poul Anderson
Isaac Asimov
Betty Ballantine
Ian Ballantine
Alfred Bester
James Blish
Chesley
Bonestell
David Bowie
Leigh Brackett
Ray Bradbury
Edgar Rice
Burroughs
Octavia E.
Butler
James Cameron
John W.
Campbell, Jr.
Sir Arthur C.
Clarke
Hal Clement
Samuel R. Delany
Vincent Di Fate
Philip K. Dick

Gordon R.
Dickson
Gardner Dozois
Harlan Ellison
Ed Emshwiller
Edward L. Ferman
Virgil Finlay
Frank Frazetta
Frank Kelly
Freas
Hugo Gernsback
William Gibson
Jean ‘Moebius’
Giraud
Joe Haldeman
Harry Harrison
Ray Harryhausen
Robert A.
Heinlein
Frank Herbert
Damon Knight
Stanley Kubrick
H.R. Giger
Ursula K. Le
Guin
Fritz Leiber

George Lucas
Richard Matheson
Anne McCaffrey
Judith Merril
Abraham Merritt
Hayao Miyzaki
Michael Moorcock
C.L. Moore
Andre Norton
Frank R. Paul
Frederik Pohl
Richard M.
Powers
Gene Roddenberry
Joanna Russ
Eric Frank
Russell
Ridley Scott
Rod Serling
Mary W. Shelley
Robert
Silverberg
E.E. Smith

Steven Spielberg
Olaf Stapleton
Theodore
Sturgeon
James Tiptree,
Jr.
J.R.R. Tolkien
Douglas Trumbull
Wilson Tucker
A. E. van Vogt
Jack Vance
Jules Verne
H.G. Wells
Michael Whelan
Kate Wilhelm
Jack Williamson
Connie Willis
Gene Wolfe
Donald Allen
Wollheim
Roger Zelazny

Tom
Cruise, Charlton Heston, Kirk Russell and John Carpenter haven’t been admitted
yet. Unless I am mistaken, no Australians have entered either.

Nobody in this hall of fame has me questioning its validity. The vast majority of hall of famers are authors and male.

Who Else is Missing?

After
a bit of thought, I could not come up with any other science-fiction authors
who should absolutely be in the hall of fame. I think Margaret Atwood is close,
perhaps when I finish reading Madd Addam she might have me pushing
for her admittance. I think the only Australian science-fiction author who
comes close to getting in is George Turner. Greg Egan has the talent and
critical acclaim to get there one day.

I
could think of a few television/film makers who should be in the hall of fame. JJ
Abrams should be there for Lost, Fringe, Revolution,
the movies Super 8 and Cloverfield, and the reboot of Star
Trek. We do have to forgive him for writing Armageddon and being executive
producer for the television series Alcatraz.

Joss
Whedon should definitely be in the hall of fame for Firefly, Dollhouse
and Agents
of Shield on the small screen, and the movies Serenity, Avengers
and Cabin
in the Woods.

Russell
T. Davies should be in just for rebooting Doctor Who. If that is not enough, he
also created the spinoffs Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures.

Who
do you think is missing from the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame?

A Divine Problem

Graham Clements — Fri, 13 Jun 2014 05:57:00 +0000

I
have had a busy couple of weeks thanks mainly to the Divine website that I
write for. Two weeks ago we were told by Divine that the website was being
moved onto a new server, and they were taking the opportunity to archive all pre-2013
stories. Twenty-four articles of my stories would no longer be viewable. And
some of them were very good. I was not that impressed.

I
had been under the impression that the articles I wrote would be on the web for
at least as long as Divine existed (I hold my breath each time a state budget
comes along and at the end of each financial year). If Divine stopped
operating, I hoped that the Office for Disability, which owns the website, would
keep my articles viewable.

I
contacted the editor by email and on the phone to express my disappointment. I
was told that most online publications end up archiving much of their content.
Just over 750 stories are on Divine at the moment, so to make the site more manageable
pre-2013 stories need to be archived. But 24 of them are mine!

I
made suggestions, like each writer nominating two of their own pre-2013 stories
to stay on the site, but that went nowhere. Many of the other Divine writers
expressed their unhappiness in an extended email exchange. I feel particularly
for those writers who have not written for Divine since the beginning of 2013.

But
rather than get angry or depressed or both, I have been working on a solution where
readers and potential employers can still read my work. I have decided to put
the articles up on my own website. I have 24 articles to play with so I could create
a divine Divine section on my site.

I
saved screen shots of all the affected articles, and tried to copy them onto my
website using my website provider’s primitive website builder. I quickly found
out it was not going to be that easy. After baulking at the $399 price of an
up-to-date version of Dreamweaver (which I had used to create the original
site), I reinstalled Dreamweaver 2004 on to my computer. Surprisingly it still
seems to work.

After a bit of fiddling in Dreamweaver, I was able to copy the saved source
code from one of my Divine articles into my website provider’s website builder.
After more fiddling, this is the result: https://grahamclements.com/freelance%20writing/a%20novel%20approach%20to%20writing.html

What
do you think?

So
far my attempts to get the text to wrap around the picture have failed. I can wrap
the text using Dreamweaver, but the formatting does not stick when I transfer
the source code to my website.

Goodbye Doc.

Graham Clements — Wed, 04 Jun 2014 04:49:00 +0000

It’s a very sad day today for me. Doc Neeson, the lead singer of The Angels, has died. He was 67 and
died of a brain tumour. The Angels were, and still are, my all-time favourite
band. I first went and saw them at Latrobe
University in 1979 (see video above, I was there). I was in the first year of
university at the time, staying at Menzies College. The Colleges at Latrobe are
located on campus and are only a few hundred metres from Union Hall, which became
a big live music venue while I was at uni.

A few months into my first year at uni, a concert was put
on, featuring The Sports and a band I
had never heard of, The Angels. I didn’t plan on going, but me and a mate
scored pass outs from a couple who were more interested in each other than live
music. I can’t remember much about The Sports set, but then The Angels came on.
They were loud and aggressive, with an amazingly energetic front man, Doc
Neeson. By the end of the night I was in a state of euphoria from jumping
around to them.

I rushed out and bought their second album, Face
To Face. It contains some of their classic songs like Take
A Long Line, I Aint the One and After the Rain. I then bought their
third album No Exit which contained further classics like Shadow Boxer, Can’t
Shake it, and my all-time favourite song of theirs: Ivory Stairs.

Lyrics of Ivory Stairs:

Rumour has it that
you got a well laid plan
To make yourself a singularly self-made man
Imported shirts from Yves St. Laurent
You got everything that you want
Catch you running to your candy colored Chevrolet
Consumer consumed, the loser has to pay
The higher you climb, the deeper you go
Talking about a change, nothing changed so slow

Climbing up the ivory stairs
Never gonna get anywhere
Slipping on the first step, can’t get a good grip
Climbing up the ivory stairs

Any kid on the street with his ear to the ground
Knows credit card conspiracy and flesh by the pound
Harlequin dancin’ ‘tween the sun and the moon
They got you dancing to a gallows tune

Climbing up the ivory stairs
Never gonna get anywhere
Slipping on the first step, can’t get a good grip
Climbing up the ivory stairs

Climbing up the ivory stairs
Never gonna get anywhere
Slipping on the first step, can’t get a good grip
Climbing up the ivory stairs

(Solo)

Oh no, you found the door
Too late you found that you never got the key
Oh no, in the confusion
Don’t turn your weary eyes on me

Harlequin dancin’ ‘tween the sun and the moon
Got you dancing to a gallows tune
Tell me what happened to your well laid plan
To make yourself a singularly self-made man
Catch you running to your candy colored Chevrolet
Consumer consumed, the loser has to pay
The higher you climb, the deeper you go
Talking about a change, nothing changed so slow

Climbing up the ivory stairs
Never gonna get anywhere
Slipping on the first step, can’t get a good grip
Climbing up the ivory stairs

Climbing up the ivory stairs
Never gonna get anywhere
Slipping on the first step, can’t get a good grip
Climbing up the ivory stairs
Ivory Stairs

(Watch your step)
(Watch your step)
(Watch your step)
Climbing up the ivory stairs

(Watch your step)
(Watch your step)
(Watch your step)
Climbing up the ivory stairs

It’s a song that contains my all-time favourite lyric: consumer consumed, the loser has to pay.
I loved the Angel’s introspective lyrics.
They were singing about me and the world I lived in.

I saw Neeson launch himself from the speaker stacks many
times. One of their most memorable
performances was with Midnight Oil
at the Melbourne Showgrounds. I even paid to see AC/DC at the Sidney Myer Music Bowl, because the Angels were their
support act. The crowd was so ecstatic after The Angels set that AC/DC waited
45 minutes for us to calm down before they started ringing their bell.

The Angels huge amount of live performances lead to them
making the greatest live album ever, Live Line.

So it is a sad day for me and all the fans of Australia’s
greatest ever rock band. I feel like the rain has started to fall.

Somebody save me,
the water’s rising
sweet Jesus take the blame
who knows whose star is falling
after the rain, after the rain.

You will be missed Doc.

The Best Science Fiction Novel of 2013 is…

Graham Clements — Thu, 22 May 2014 06:19:00 +0000

I came across a post about the recently awarded
Nebula awards the other day. I was curious how close its short-list of nominees
for the best science-fiction/fantasy novel of 2013 matched those of other
awards, so I had a look.

Nebula Awards

We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, Karen Joy Fowler (Marian Wood)

The Ocean at the End of the Lane, Neil
Gaiman (Morrow; Headline Review)
Fire with Fire, Charles E.
Gannon (Baen)
Hild, Nicola Griffith
(Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Ancillary Justice, Ann Leckie
(Orbit US; Orbit UK)
The Red: First Light,
Linda Nagata (Mythic Island)
A Stranger in Olondria,
Sofia Samatar (Small Beer)
The Golem and the Jinni,
Helene Wecker (Harper)

Hugo
Awards

Ancillary Justice, Ann Leckie (Orbit
US/Orbit UK)

Neptune’s Brood, Charles Stross (Ace
/ Orbit UK)

Parasite, Mira Grant (Orbit US/Orbit UK)

Warbound, Book III of
the Grimnoir Chronicles, Larry Correia (Baen Books)

The Wheel of Time, Robert Jordan and
Brandon Sanderson (Tor Books / Orbit UK)

Arthur
C. Clarke Award

God’s War by Kameron Hurley (Del Rey)

Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie
(Orbit)

The Disestablishment Of Paradise by Phillip
Mann (Gollancz)

Nexus by Ramez Naam (Angry Robot)

The Adjacent by Christopher Priest
(Gollancz)

The Machine by James Smythe (Blue Door)

They didn’t match at all. Only one novel made it
onto more than one list: Ancillary
Justice by Ann Leckie, which made it on to all three of the award
short-lists.

So why didn’t any other novel make more than one short-list?
Probably because of the way they are nominated.

How are the Novels Nominated?

The Nebulas are nominated and voted on by members the
Science Fiction Writers of America. Membership of the SFWA is restricted to published
authors, including people who have sold at least three short stories to
professional markets. Reviewers and scriptwriters can also become members. The nominated
books must have been first published in America in the nomination year.

Anyone who buys a membership to World Con can
nominate novels and vote for the Hugos. This year’s World Con is in London. Anyone
going to Loncon3 could nominate novels that were published anywhere in the
world in 2013.

Novels are submitted by their publishing company for the
Arthur C. Clark award. Members of its judging panel and organisation committee
can also nominate novels. This year’s award was judged by Ian Whates and Duncan
Lawie from the British Science Fiction Association, Sarah Brown and Lesley Hall
from the Science Fiction Foundation and Georgie Knight from the Sci-Fi-London
film festival. The nominated books must have been published in the UK in the
nomination year.

Depending on the judges for the Arthur C. Clarke
award, it or the Nebula award would have better qualified judges than the Hugo award.
But the Hugo is open to nominations of books from all around the world,
including non-English written books.

Whose Judgement to Trust?

I wonder how many of the short-listed novels are
read by those who vote. I would expect the judges of the Arthur C. Clarke award
to read all the short-listed novels. I would imagine that the authors of SFWA
would try to read many of the nominated novels before they voted for the
Nebula. But for the Hugos, I doubt whether many of the general public who
travel to Loncon3 will read more than one or two of the novels, if any. When I
went to Aussiecon I did not read any of the nominated novels, so I did not vote
for that part of the Hugos.

Due to the different nomination and voting
processes, Spock would give more credence to the Nebula and Arthur C. Clarke
awards, until he found out no Vulcan literature would be accepted for them.

Whose judgement do I
trust?

I had a look at the past
winners of the awards. I have not read many of the winners due to my concentrating
on reading Australian authors. And only one of them, George Turner, has won any
of the three awards. My favourite international authors do not seem to have won
many awards either.

I have read only three of
the Arthur C
Clarke Award winners from its 27-year history. I have read eight of the Nebula award
winners from its 47-year history, and nine of the Hugo award
winners from its longer 61-year history. With the slightly shorter history,
it looks like I am more likely to have read a winner of the Nebula award. It
must be noted that a few of the award winners that I read did not live up to their
hype, but that seems to apply equally over the awards.

Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie won the Nebula
and Arthur C. Clarke awards. I must get a copy. Will it win the Hugo?

The Budget or Mad Max, Here We Come.

Graham Clements — Fri, 16 May 2014 05:38:00 +0000

I have
been very distracted over the past couple of weeks by the Australian Government’s
budget. I worried about what the Government might cut, and how it might affect
the poor. My concerns were realised when the Government produced a horror
budget that attacks Australia’s most vulnerable.

Hurting
the Unemployed

The budget’s
most appalling measure is that people aged 25 to 30 will have to wait six
months to claim unemployment benefits, then be kicked off them after six months
and have to wait another six months before they can get back onto them. Imagine
the stress of having to live on nothing if you had no family to fall back on. A
25 to 30 year old who moved to the city to work and lost that job would probably
have to move back home again.

Hurting
the Sick

The
government wants to introduce a seven dollar co-payment for doctor
appointments. Seven dollars can be a lot of money to the poor. This appears to
be an attempt to destroy the universality of the Medicare scheme. A scheme that
was designed to provide quality free health care to all.

Hurting
People with Disabilities

People who
were given a disability support pension after 2008 will be reassessed. Imagine the
stress they are going through now. Will the so-called independent government
appointed assessors get bonuses for the number of people with disabilities they
remove from the disability support pension?

Hurting
Education and Health

The government
wants to cut university funding by 20% and then let the universities charge
whatever fees they like. This will leave universities little choice but to put
up fees, massively. It will make university less affordable and leave students
with greater debts when they finish. Imagine if you started a course and then
were incapable of finishing it. I predict the collapse of Victoria University due
to a lack of students.

The
government wants to cut $80 billion out of the health and education budgets of
the states over the next decade. It appears to be an attempt to get the states
to demand that the government increase the GST, which it would obviously be
happy to do. The GST is a regressive tax that hits the poor harder than the
better off.

Hurting
Families

The
reduction of family tax benefits will massively hurt many.

Other
Measures

I am not
so fussed about the fuel excise increase, which will add only about one cent a
litre per year to the price of petrol. And I really think anyone earning over
$180,000 who can’t afford the debt levy needs to seriously look at their
spending.

Bloody
Hypocrites

One
strange thing about the budget is that the government has stopped funding the
energy discounts for pensioners. This is after them repeatedly screaming before
the last election that the carbon tax was hurting the ability of pensioners to
pay their energy bills. The pensioners will be much more impacted by the end of
the discount then they are by the carbon tax, which they received supplementary
payments for.

No Budget
Emergency

Why does
the Federal Government want to do this? Evidently we have a budget emergency,
even though our budget deficit as a percentage of GDP is just about the lowest
in the western world.

If there
was such a drastic need to cut spending in a hurry than why get rid of the half
billion dollars or so the mining tax brings in? Or
the $6.7 billion the carbon tax makes. Why use the $7 Medicare co-payments to
create a research fund instead of using it to pay off debt? (Obviously to try
and wedge the opposition by saying they don’t want to fund research.) And why are does the government want to spend billions
on a gold plated maternity leave scheme when there is already a pretty good
Labour scheme?

An
Ideological Budget

This
is not a budget designed to fix the budget deficit, it is an ideological budget
designed to hit those people and institutions like the CSIRO and the ABC whose
views and lifestyles differ from the rich white men who are currently running
the government.

It
is a budget designed to please Rupert Murdoch who tweeted after the coalition
won the last election that now it was time to cut all the welfare fraud.

It
is a budget that will divide Australians into two classes, the very rich, and
the rest of us. I hope many in the rest of
us underclass wake up before they lose their lifestyles, and vote those rich
white men who have no empathy for them out.

If
the measures in this budget go through, I predict a very different Australia in
the future. A land of security guards protecting gated communities as crime rates
sour. A land were illiteracy flourishes. A land where anyone born poor will
stay poor. A land where people die in
the streets from lack of medical care. A
land of hatred and confrontation. Mad Max, here we come.

Next week I hope my mind will be back
on to science fiction and writing.

Murdoch Versus the NDIS

Graham Clements — Mon, 05 May 2014 05:50:00 +0000

It
has been an interesting time to be researching an article on the National Disability
Insurance Scheme in Australia, with lots of discussion about it in the
Australia media and on social media.

My
aim is to write an article based on interviews with one or two of the
participants in the scheme. So I joined a Facebook discussion group on the NDIS
and hoped to find someone who was part of the Barwon regional trial in Victoria
to interview. I decided to lurk for a while to see what they were talking about
and hopefully identify a few people to approach who were part of the Barwon
trial.

Beaten
to the Request

Unfortunately,
while still lurking, a journalist from The
Australian posted an interview request. I worried what sort of interview he
would conduct. For those who don’t know, on the night of the last federal
election Rupert Murdoch, the owner of The Australian, tweeted something along
the lines of “now we can get rid of all these welfare bludgers.” So I worried that
his journalist might have an agenda to show the NDIS, which the ill-informed mistakenly
think of as welfare scheme, in a bad light. I have had a look in The Australian and there articles seem to be overwhelmingly negative towards the NDIS.

Meanwhile,
I decided to wait a day before posting my interview request on the discussion
group. The next day, I logged on to the discussion
group and find that the administrator of the group has had a request from the
ABC to interview NDIS participants about their fears of the upcoming budget.
Bloody hell. I decided not to delay my request for interviewees any longer and
posted a request to the group. I stressed in my post that I did not have an
agenda, hoping they would take the hint about the journalist from The
Australian.

Negative
NDIS Article in The Australian

The
following day I logged onto the Facebook and the NDIS discussion group is abuzz
about an article that has appeared in The Australian: Mother
sees merit in NDIS slower rollout. The article was written by a
different journalist to the one who had contacted the discussion group.

In
the article, a mother suggests that the NDIS be delayed because she had some
difficulties with it. As pointed out in the discussion group, if she had had
the years of frustration of trying to survive and cope with a fragmented and
underfunded non-NDIS disability sector, her attitude to her NDIS hassles might
have been very different. I am curious, if she had enthusiastically endorsed
the NDIS and not said its rollout should be delayed, would the Australian have
reported her comments?

Found
an Interviewee

So
far, no one has gotten back to my post. I am not surprised, as I have had
limited success with similar requests I have made on social media. But while
doing more research, I discovered the LEAD program in Geelong which has a
number of participants in the NDIS who volunteer to tell people about it. And one
of those participants is a fellow Divine writer. I sent him an email and he has
agreed to an interview. Yay. I just sent him a number of questions.

But
I would still like another point of view for the article, preferably from
someone who is just an ordinary client of the NDIS. So I have just reposted my
request to the discussion group, this time including my questions.