Episode 7: A Good Man and A Bad Deed

The 7th rendition of the Comrade Contrary files is going to take a turn for the serious, particularly after last nights dip into the Marvel comiverse. The subject of this post is the Honorable former Australian high court Chief Justice, Sir Anthony Mason (if you will excuse his long title).

This man is one of my political heroes. For those of you whom are not familiar with him, he handed down the Mabo2 decision in June 1992. This is one of several cases that marked the beginning of a change to reform to include the Native Australians. This case is one of the best known in Australia, it is one of the first cases that is introduced to any legal studies student in the country because it was so big.

For those of you who don't know what happened; a case "led by Eddie Mabo, David Passi and James Rice, all from the Meriam people (from the Murray Islands in the Torres Strait). They commenced proceedings in the High Court in 1982, in response to the Queensland Amendment Act 1982 establishing a system of making land grants on trust for Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders, which the Murray Islanders refused to accept. The Plaintiffs were represented by Ron Castan, Bryan Keon-Cohen and Greg McIntyre.
The action was brought as a test case to determine the legal rights of the Meriam people to land on the islands of Mer (Murray Island), Dauar and Waier in the Torres Strait, which were annexed to the state of Queensland in 1879. Prior to British contact the Meriam people had lived on the islands in a subsistence economy based on cultivation and fishing. Land on the islands was not subject of public or general community ownership, but was regarded as belonging to individuals or groups.
In 1985 the Queensland Government attempted to terminate the proceedings by enacting the Queensland Coast Islands Declaratory Act 1985, which declared that on annexation of the islands in 1879, title to the islands was vested in the state of Queensland "freed from all other rights, interests and claims whatsoever". In Mabo v Queensland (No 1) (1988) the High Court held that this legislation was contrary to the Racial Discrimination Act 1975."

This case debunked the argument that Australia was founded by the English under Terra Nullius, it was a big step forward for the Australian government. The reason now that I am questioning Sir Anthony's place on my list of political heroes is because of an event that happened on November 11th, 1975. This was the dismissal of Labor Prime Minister, Gough Whitlam by Governor General, Sir John Kerr. This was a controversial issue as Kerr had been discussing with the opposition leader, Malcom Fraser, as well as Whitlam had been immensely popular with the public, however his economics was not very fitting for the times and was sending the country bankrupt.

Recently, 'the record was uncovered by the Whitlam biographer Jenny Hocking, whose book Gough Whitlam: His Time will be published next month. Hocking says Kerr's records suggest ''Mason was not merely the third man: he was, in many ways, the man''.' The correct response here is OH MY GOD! This is a massive corruption of powers, not only that but it is massively tainting to the image that people like me have of Mason.

This is upsetting for many reasons but I think the biggest one is, many people know of the Mabo cases yet people don't remember the Judge. People will remember Mason as the "third man in Whitlam's downfall' and not one of the men who helped start the stand against discrimination against Aboriginals.

Episode 6: The Black Widow

This is a slight diverge from my Blog but rather an argument response to a friend of mine, feel free to read or ignore.
I recently watched the Marvel film, The Avengers and one of the first things that struck me was why Black Widow is a member of the Avengers? Upon wondering this I brought it up with one of my good friends who is quite a big fan of the movie and she claims that she is a very important character and that it would be laughable had she not been present in the Superhero squad. I however claim that she has no place on the squad as she herself possess no superpowers and hence not a superhero.
Her listed abilities include many higher order skills; The Black Widow is a world class athlete, gymnast, acrobat, aerialist capable of numerous complex manoeuvres and feats, expert martial artist (including karate, judo, ninjutsu, aikido, savate, various styles of kung fu, and boxing), marksman, and weapons specialist as well as having extensive espionage training. She is also an accomplished ballerina. Yes a Ballerina…(no offense to Ballerinas)
HOWEVER, these are qualities possessed by the majority of KGB, MI6 and other secret service agents, they are not superpowers. It is for this reason that she should not be a member of the Avengers Squad.
Now this is where you all go what about her “genetic enhancements”? Natasha has received the Red Room's variant of the Super-Soldier Serum. As a result, her physical and mental abilities had been enhanced much like Captain America. This is the equivalent of steroid with a fancy name and yes with that line of argument it also suggests that Captain America should also not be an Avenger, this is true however this is not a dispute about him.
The Black Widow has been enhanced by “biotechnology” that makes her body resistant to aging and disease and heals at an above human rate (this is a dressed up equivalent of immunisations and anti-aging methods such as caffeinated creams and Botox, nothing inaccessible to everyone) as well as psychological conditioning that suppresses her memory of true events as opposed to implanted ones of the past without the aid of specially designed system suppressant drugs (everyone’s brains already do this, they are referred to as defence mechanisms that were extensively explored by Freud and this is done without adding artificial substances to the body). Not to mention that all of these experiments undertaken by the soviets have rendered her body infertile.
Due to the Super-Soldier Serum, the white blood cells in her body are efficient enough to fight off any microbe, foreign body and others from her body, keeping her healthy and immune to most, if not all infections, diseases and disorders (I admit that this is a positive to the experiments that is difficult to replicate in reality but similar drugs can be found in most hospitals ICU’s). Also, it takes quite a bit for Natasha to become intoxicated (Awesome, so I won’t be starting a drinking contest with her sometime soon.)

Now you say that “even if Natasha was not genetically enhanced, she wouldn’t be the only Avenger without superpowers. For example, Sharon Carter, daughter of Peggy Carter is a member of the Avengers. However her skills are based on training, not test tubes and gamma radiation. Keeping her company is Clint Barton, a.k.a Hawkeye who “has no superhuman powers (with the exception of the period when using Pym particles to become Goliath), he is at the very peak of human conditioning; he is an exceptional fencer, acrobat and a grandmaster marksman, having been trained from childhood in the circus and by the criminals Trick Shot and Swordsman. This includes considerable strength, as a supervillain found out when he tried to use the superhero’s 250 pounds-force (1,100 newtons) draw weight bow and found that he could not draw back the string to launch an arrow. Hawkeye has also been thoroughly trained by Captain America in tactics, martial arts, and hand-to-hand combat. Hawkeye excels in the use of ranged weapons, especially the bow and arrow, and carries a quiver containing a number of customized “trick arrows”.” My dear this only strengthens my argument and a reminder that we are debating Black Widows membership to the Avenger superhero squad.

“Hawkeye has no powers, and neither does Sharon Carter. Both are fully-fledged members of the Avengers despite this. This means that even if Natasha had no powers, there would be no grounds to refute her membership based on her lack of powers, since it would also mean denying membership to two other major characters in the Marvel comicverse. (I’m sorry what?) Not including any other Avengers without superpowers that I may have missed.” I am not sure what you were trying to suggest here but my dear what you have presented is no argument to her membership but rather an attempt to justify her presence on the squad with other members. Other members that should also be scrutinised, if the “Avengers Superhero Squad” claims to be a superhero squad it should be a squad of superheros if not it should not claim to be.

Episode 5: Escape

"If you like Piña Coladas, and getting caught in the rain.
If you're not into yoga, if you have half-a-brain.
If you like making love at midnight, in the dunes of the cape.
I'm the lady you've looked for, write to me, and escape."


For the 5th rendition of the Comrade Contrary files the subject with be relationships.

*

Let me stop you right there, despite the fact I am destined to fail this will attempt to be as entertaining as a Michael Bay film.....without Pamela Voorhees and Freddy Krueger... The slower ones of you may still be struggling with the connection between the Piña Colada song and relationships, because I mean seriously what do coconut and pineapple rum have to do with relationships? Well...the song is about a man who is awake in bed at night with his partner yet is unsatisfied with the relationship. So he picks up the newspaper and starts reading the 'lonely hearts' section. There he finds an article written by a woman looking for her perfect man. The article reads; 'if you like Piña Coladas, and getting caught in the rain, if you're not into yoga, if you have half-a-brain. If you like making love at midnight, in the dunes of the cape. I'm the lady you've looked for, write to me, and escape.' Upon reading this the man writes back; yes I like Piña Coladas and getting caught in the rain, I'm not much into health food, more into champagne, I'll meet you at a bar called O'Malley's, there we will plan our escape. As you can imagine they meet fall in love and run away together, the song concludes.

Now, very few relationships are this simple, particularly since the number of people that like Piña Coladas has significantly dropped since the late 70's, those people also tend to be pirates. Still the principle is there that if two people like something that is obscure they will most likely rather be together than with someone who doesn't share that interest. However please do not think that I am endorsing affairs or breaking up with your partner because you found someone better, that is a pretty nasty thing to do, but some people work better than others. This is a fact that anyone who has been in more than 3 relationships will understand, and just because you do not fit well together as a couple doesn't mean you can't be friends (but don't push yourself or the other person).

Still on that note this concludes today's blog post before it gets too sappy, on an end note;

'Yes, I like  Piña Coladas, and getting caught in the rain.
I'm not much into health food, I am into champagne.
I've got to meet you by tomorrow noon, and cut through all this red tape.
At a bar called O'Malley's, where we'll plan our escape.'

* SIDE NOTE: This is not intended to be derogatory to any homosexuals I myself am one, this was solely intended as a pop-culture reference and nothing more. If you have a problem with it, comment and I will remove it, if you have a problem with it in general, write to your local member of parliament and have your government take steps to minimize the  derogatory terms towards minorities.

Episode 4: The Chicken or The Egg

Which came first the chicken or the egg? An age long debate that is still unanswered. The subject of episode 4 of the Comrade Contrary files poses a similar question, what came first, people or society?

*DISCLAIMER*
THE VIEWS OUTLINED IN THIS ARE SOLELY MY OPINION AND I AM VERY OPEN TO DISPUTE THIS WITH ANYONE SO LONG AS THEY UNDERSTAND I AM NOT CLAIMING THAT THE FOLLOWING IS FACT BUT RATHER EVIDENCE INTERPRETED IN A PRAGMATIC WAY TO SUPPORT MY IDEAS.

Every person on the planet has an agenda, this is what influences what we say and how we act. This agenda is influenced by this thing we call society.
But what about outliers? What about the people who rebel? What happens with them? Their actions are not fueled by societies influential agenda.

Now that's where you're wrong. Without society, those people wouldn't know what to rebel against. People underestimate the power society has over people's actions.

But why is the initial idea of rebellion there? It's not society causing the rebellion, simply giving rebellion shape. It doesn't explain why people rebel, simply giving them a model to rebel against. I'm not disputing society's importance in defining what to do and what not to do, I'm simply questioning how the basis of the idea came around in the first place. Society was formed by something, but where did the idea of that something come from?

An act  cannot be considered rebellious if there is no codified or otherwise accepted code of conduct. Society is an aggregate collection of people living together in a harmonious group. Whether people like it or not, as long as people have lived together society has existed. Even those that rebel, are only seeking to change the rules to suit a society that they want. Unless you are a hermit living under the earth in an impenetrable cave everyone is a member of society, outliers and rebels included.

I guess coming to that conclusion also defies this as a chicken or the egg question. Whether you accept creationism or evolution, there has always been society.

Episode 3: Time Immemorial

*chants*
WHAT DO WE WANT?
TIME TRAVEL!
WHEN DO WE WANT IT?
IRRELEVANT....

Yes time travel, parallel dimensions and infinite universes. For your third installment of The Comrade Contrary Files we have taken a turn for the nerd, I thought we would visit an idea that has racked mankind for what would seem like time immeemorial. According to Wikipedia; the greatest thing since Microwave Brownies, "time travel is the concept of moving between different points in time in a manner analogous to moving between different points in space. Time travel could hypothetically involve moving backward in time to a moment earlier than the starting point, or forward to the future of that point without the need for the traveler to experience the intervening period (at least not at the normal rate). Any technological device – whether fictional or hypothetical – that would be used to achieve time travel is commonly known as a time machine."

Eisenstein said for time travel to occur (please note that this is grossly oversimplified due to the fact I am no physicist and I cannot count past 22 because after that I run out of fingers and toes.) you need to break the light barrier.(travel at the speed of light) When an object travels at the speed of light and over the linear appearance of time is warped. (Though time appears linear in the 3rd dimension (our world) time is more of a 'wibbley wobbly timey wimey" mass) When this occurs the faster you travel the more time effectively folds back on itself to cause a time jump. With this in mind, theoretically anything can be a time machine if you are able to make it travel fast enough.

Now the concept of time travel appears in most Sci-fi shows at one point or another, or if you are Doctor Who, its the entire show. There are many ethical issues and other problems associated with traveling in time besides being able to travel at the speed of light. Backward time travel would have the potential to introduce paradoxes related to causality, and a variety of hypotheses have been proposed to resolve them, as discussed in the sections Paradoxes and Rules of time travel. And well there are many issues about knowing the future, many of them visited in the BBC Series Red Dwarf.

Episode 2: Ignorance is Bliss

The Comrade Contrary Files Act 2 Scene 1

To know or not to know. That is the question.

I am a knowledge-is-power, the-truth-will-set-you-free kind of guy.  But I stopped to think about it for awhile more.  Is ignorance really bliss?  Or not?  Never?  Or sometimes?
So I did a little digging about the origin of the phrase and discovered Thomas Gray's famous poem.  There, he nostalgically reminisces about the bliss of youth with its carefree days of playfulness unmarred by the dark realities of adult life.  The poem reveals Gray's double perspective that not only is ignorance bliss but knowledge is misery.

Act 2 Scene 2

We all will experience the pandemonium that is adolescence in our lives, and most of that is well, gossip. Finding out that Marnie kissed Jake behind the toilet block or that Cameron and Tony are now going out. In adolescence there is two kinds of ignorance, there is the dunning-kruger effect and then there is the finding out that your best friend is now dating your crush or ex or baboon. I myself don't much care for adolescent dramas like your best friend dating a baboon. I am however really amused by watching the dunning-kruger effect in motion. For those of you who don't know, the dunning-kruger effect is when someone, usually young, thinks they know everything about everything yet really could not differentiate between a dog and a cat. The smart people are aware that they truly know nothing at all. What I think is the best example of the dunning-kruger effect is those teenage girls who believe they do not need their parents (despite being totally dependent on daddy's pay check), my advice to them; move out, get a job, pay taxes, get married, have kids, QUICK! while you still know everything!

Act 2 Scene 3

Ignorance has its place in life for awhile, though.  Parents protect their children from knowledge which is too much for them to bear, too confusing for their little minds to process.  For some time, children can operate successfully under the "need-to-know basis" of parental protection.  But ignorance in this sense only works if there is an adult mind on the scene to do the protecting.  As we grow and become more independent, we must develop an adult mind of our own (in most cases).  Otherwise, we are in big, big trouble.  It's not hard to imagine what I mean by that, but I like how one person put it: "When you're an adult, ignorance-is-bliss today means you have an STD tomorrow."

Episode 1: Courage

For the first rendition of the Comrade Contrary files, (that's a great name, 'The Comrade Contrary Files")  I present to you a interpretation of a characteristic that has been spoken of for many years, yet I doubt many understand what true courage is. Please note that I do not claim to understand it, nor do I claim to be in any way courageous. Though let me start with this:

“There is a tide in the affairs of men.

Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;

Omitted, all the voyage of their life

Is bound in shallows and in miseries.

On such a full sea are we now afloat,

And we must take the current when it serves,

Or lose our ventures.”

                                  - Brutus, Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar

This quote is the basis of my blog and yes I should have explained this in the first blog but sue me. Shakespeare is famous for his plays and ability to write about people in a way unique for his time, however don't quote me on that I am no English academic, but he was able to express events in a way that resonated with all of society. Personally I think this quote perfectly captures the way that life is.

Courage is a part of life and it can take many forms. There is the courage that is shown through a soldier who stands on the front line, ready to to be riddled with holes all for the sake of politics. There is the courage shown when a man has been sitting in a bar for hours looking at a beautiful woman, trying to muster up the nerve to buy her a drink. A school girl shows courage when she walks through the halls of her school wearing an outfit that wouldn’t be the popular kid’s idea of cool. Then there is the courage when a 9 year old boy presents his first oral presentation on how bees make honey. But then there is the courage that a 4 year old child shows when their mother turns the light off for the night and the darkness engulfs their room.

Pericles said that “others are brave out of ignorance; and , when they stop to think, they begin to fear. But the man who can most truly be accounted brave is he who best knows the meaning of what is sweet in life and of what is terrible, and then goes out undeterred to meet what is to come.”

Atticus Finch said that “courage is not a man with a gun in his hand. It’s knowing you’re licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do.”

Churchill said that “success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts”, he also said that “courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.”

Now I understand that this 'episode' has turned to that of a philosophical nature but hear me out. I am not sure who of these men is right in assessing the true meaning of courage, somehow I think they are all right, though here I loan the words of Mark Twain, “courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear”. I think that maybe Mark Twain has it right. Maybe courage is not being without fear, but rather knowing that you are scared and taking it with you, having the strength to know that you are not perfect. That you are, riddled with holes, may be rejected, that the popular kids think that your skirt is ugly, pronouncing the word wrong that your father insisted you include, and knowing that the monsters are coming to get you; yet still being able to be there and chose to take the path where you will fail. If you really fail is questionable, but maybe courage is being scared and being able to carry it with you.

And then it was dawn...

"To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else, means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight. And never stop fighting."

E.E. Cummings said that, as a teenager I can understand this quite well, though I write this blog with the intention to maybe help the world or perhaps myself understand things a little better. I doubt it will be informative but rather an exploration of existence, the 'tides in the affairs of men'. If you are reading this you have already put enough faith in me to read my blog, maybe try a little more faith to keep reading and understand the small yet ever so complicated cosmic space that is my life.