Could it be that a national attitude or psychology of the times has eroded and distorted human values to the terrible extent that this generation rewards indolence, exalts muggers, tolerates murder and encourages people to believe they have some proprietary right to other people's properties and, indeed, even their very lives? If so, we are engulfed in a massive moral breakdown that generates civil disobedience and promotes elastic tolerance of wrongdoers.
-- Leroy K. New, 1966, introduction to: John Dean's 'The Indiana Torture Slaying: Sylvia Likens' Ordeal and Death'

Terrible crimes like the torture of sixteen-year-old Sylvia Likens in 1965 always make me wonder: how do we judge humanity? By its best deeds, or its worst?

Because, man, we are complicated little machines, aren't we?

Check it. Scorched.tv is the story of Sydney in 2012 -- out of water and on the edge of burning down. It's fiction. As far as we know. It's also an 'integrated cross-platform narrative'.

A new Nine drama set in climate-ravaged Australia is straddling the divide between TV and the web, and its creators hope viewers will continue to build on the story well into the future. [snip]

To supplement the basic show, creators Firelight Productions have developed 120 minutes of short web-only episodes and five fictional websites inspired by characters and organisations that appear in Scorched.

Will television end up playing second fiddle to the web?

World Youth Day (All Week Long) is having some unexpected benefits:

1. In jaded inner city suburbs such as the one I like to inhabit, there is now often the sound of cheering, singing and clapping. Yes, clapping. Not clapping as in applause, but clapping like a production of Hair when they start singing Let The Sunshine In. You know, clapping ... with rhythm. It's weird. But oddly ... cheering.

2. People are wearing funny hats and bright yellow-orange-blue backpacks on the bus. And they're *smiling*. In a kind of benign, good-natured way. And occasionally taking the mickey out of themselves by loudly counting the number of souvenir flags they've affixed to their funny, funny hats. How can you not laugh along?

3. There's a buzz of activity on the edge of town even on a Wednesday night.

4. The age of people hanging out after dark at the local pizza cafe has just trebled. Older people are sitting at tables; middle-aged people (ie. anyone 15-20 years older than whatever age I happen to be) are chatting and laughing at the bus stop, eating chips and interacting with teenagers. (There's also a fair share of sullen teenagers and strange, loud types with giant flags, but luckily I don't think they're allowed on buses. The flags, at least.) I kinda like seeing the crowd get a little mixed up for a while.

Reminds me of a night I had in Naples four years ago, sitting at a stepped restaurant on a steep cliff opposite Mt Vesuvius*, eating something my hosts referred to as 'Italian sushi' (a kind of ceviche, I think) and trying to ignore the sense of dread that comes from watching the volcano that wiped out Pompeii so very effectively.

So I was instead staring at the people around me, the elders sitting in the family groups, the youngsters watched over by aunts, cousins, parents. And I was just on the verge of verbalising how nice it was to see these extended family groups, the crossing of generations, etc, etc, when my young host said in his thick accent,

"I miss Sydney. I miss all the young people in the city." Then he eyed me morosely and said, "I don't want to grow old."

He was strange & maybe kinda fucked up, & I reflected he probably wouldn't.


-----
* Says wikipedia of Mt Vesuvius, "It has erupted many times since and is today regarded as one of the most dangerous volcanoes in the world because of the population of 3,000,000 people now living close to it and its tendency towards explosive eruptions. It is the most densely populated volcanic region in the world."

Technorati founder David Sifry, who compiles extensive blogosphere stats from time to time, released numbers last spring that showed a potential plateau of blogging growth. While the number of blogs was still increasing at an impressive clip, the stats showed more and more people weren't updating the old ones, thus keeping the number of active blogs stalled at about 15.5 million. Blogging activity appeared to have peaked.
-- Rob Peters, Is Personal Blogging Fast-Fading?, June 26, 2008.

Blogging, sez the article, has become business rather than fun. Personal bloggers are heading towards 'microblogs' -- 200-character text boxes that promise bloggish wisdom in small doses.

... not a bad idea.

The most drought-ravaged areas of NSW have received the cruel double blow of worsening conditions and a looming locust plague. [snip]

Up to 900 properties have discovered "beds of locust eggs" -- though apparently the government has a plan. I hope the plan at least in part is to destroy the beds of locust eggs.

Beds of locust eggs. What a revolting phrase.

Tangentially (because my brain works that way), there's this: Not long after 1400 the palm finally became extinct, not only as a result of being chopped down but also because the now ubiquitous rats prevented its regeneration: of the dozens of preserved palm nuts discovered in caves on Easter, all had been chewed by rats and could no longer germinate.

That's Jared Diamond on the death of civilisation on Easter Island. Rats instead of locusts, but there's a certain similarity in pestilence, don't you think?

Smart, savvy, entrepreneurial authors are going to wonder why they’re giving away an average (a loose average) of 90% of net income for what amounts to very little support, though I hope they consider the expense side of the equation before saying ta-da to the traditional publishing business. It seems rather odd that so many authors are busting their butts to reach a magical sell-through rate in order to achieve the golden ring of another contract, yet the actual support provided by their publishing house, the other half of an ostensible partnership, ends at dumping the book into a huge pile with the masses of other books released that month; how long before they realize that they’re doing the work, someone else is making the money?
-- Kassia Krozser, 'What Have You Done For Me Lately?', February 17th, 2008

Actually, this particular death knell is pretty interesting. Via Matt Cheney.

How I pity them. They will never be truly well educated, because they do not read. They will never understand the human condition of people outside the limiting walls of their lives. They will never understand what it is like to be a different person, living in a different world, experiencing another vastly different life.
-- glendalarke

In ancient Greek, if you knew how to pronounce a word, you knew how to spell it, and you could sound out almost any word you saw, even if you’d never heard it before. Children learned to read and write Greek in about three years, somewhat faster than modern children learn English, whose alphabet is more ambiguous. The ease democratized literacy; the ability to read and write spread to citizens who didn’t specialize in it.
-- Caleb Cain, Twilight of the Books, The New Yorker, 24 December 2007

I'm not really all that bothered by the idea that reading will one day perhaps be confined to a "reading class," primarily because, as far as literature is concerned, it more or less already is.
-- Daniel Green, The Prestige of Exclusivity, The Reading Experience blog, 26 December 2007

It's interesting to take a second to look at wikipedia. It started with the most populist, inclusionary point of view of all, but over time, people being people, a hierarchy and inner circle has been created. The exclusion is based on effort and skill, not race or income, but it's still exclusionary. And at its best, it makes the site work. When it fails, it limits discussion, reinforces small thinking and enrages the outsiders.
-- Seth Godin, Exclusion, Seth Godin's blog, 25 December 2007

Three tracts on the uses & abuses of exclusivity came through the RSS feed ( last week. )

Woo hoo! I found another death knell!!

But does the shrinking coverage of books in newspapers, which has caused so much frantic commentary in recent months, really sound the death knell for literary culture? Maybe not. "Never before in the whole of human history has more good literature, attractively presented, sold for still reasonably low prices, been available to so many people," Wasserman argues; the real problem is that the people who cover literature for newspapers haven't figured out how to tell that story. Which is why, although he still has a healthy skepticism about the literary blogosphere, Wasserman still thinks online criticism as having the potential to becoming a viable alternative: "What counts is the nature and depth and authority of such coverage," he says, "as well as its availability to the widest possible audience."

Via editorial ass, who is also looking for recommendations for good online book reviews.

Actually, I'd kinda like to know that myself.