Author Archives: Stu

Tour de France 2009

Tonight sees the final stage of the 2009 Tour de France, which finishes as always in Paris. Overall I’ve found the 2009 tour to be enjoyable, I think that the organisers came up with an interesting route. Monaco was a great place for the opening time trial, Annecy was also a good time trial setting (especially for a Rohmer fan), the stage finish in Barcelona (nasty weather though), the exciting mountain finish in Andorra, some spectacular descents in the Alps and of course the famous Mont Ventoux last night.

Of course the tour has been heavily dominated by to riders, both backed by strong support from their teams. The tour leader Alberto Contador and the incredibly strong Astana team with the likes of Armstrong and Kloden (and Leipheimer until his early withdrawal), but also there is Mark Cavendish who has been incredibly dominant in the sprints with numerous stage wins. His team (Columbia) did a great hob of getting him into the best position each time, especially his lead out man Mark Renshaw. Thor Hushovd has kept things interesting by aggressively going for points to get ahead of Cavendish for the green jersey, there should be enough points up for grabs for them to fight it out tonight.

It’s hard not to wonder what we might have seen if Contador and Armstrong had have gone head to head rather than being team mates, but it looks like we’ll get that next year. Also strong this year was their team mate Kloden, the Schleck brothers and I was impressed by the Liquigas team who had a great team time trial and have the King of the Mountains (Pellizotti) plus two top ten finshers (Nibali, Kreuziger). The other big standout was Bradley Wiggins who put in a great effort to threaten the other big names, and was well supported by Vande Velde.

A number of big names struggled to make an impact, of course the focus was on Cadel Evans here in Australia, but also last year’s winner Carols Sastre, and Giro d’Italia winner Denis Menchov also failed to finish high in the GC.

One big difference this year from recent years is the lack of a drug scandal, which is something of a relief for the follower of the tour, however given the events of recent years you can’t help but wonder whether the riders are clean or the cheats are once again gaining the upper hand over the testers.

Anyway, even with the GC decided firmly in favour of Contador there is still plenty of interest tonight, can Cavendish grab yet another stage win, or can Hushovd gain the upper hand to keep the green jersey. On top of that there’s the usual spectacular backgroung of Paris.

Adelaide Cinémathèque

The Adelaide Cinémathèque has recently announced details of their program for the second half of the year. It is a film society that shows a great variety of films, including many which are rarely seen. It offers a great opportunity to see classic films on the big screen. The program is available here. Due to issues regarding screening rights it is for members only, this just means that you have sign up and you can choose either a 4 film, 16 film or annual pass. Screenings are each Monday and Thursday.

The highlight for me is a collection of three Ingmar Bergman films – The Virgin Spring, Cries and Whispers and Wild Strawberries. Other highlights include a series of films by the Japanese masters Kurosawa and Mifune, a series on race relations in the USA (unfortunately To Kill a Mockingbird clashes with the Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks gig though), a chance to see the spectacular Aguirre The Wrath of God on the big screen (also the only version I’ve seen was dubbed so this should be an improvement), a series of Jaques Tati’s films (I’ve not seen any of his films before but know that many of the French New Wave directors held him in very high regard),  and a series of classic silent films accompanied by live scores. This is just a small selection, there is lots more as well.

Underground Lovers Reunion!

The first announcement has been made for Homebake and it includes the “original lineup” of Underground Lovers. Ever since seeing a near UL reunion at a GB3 show a couple of years ago I’d been hopingthat Vince would join up with the others again. Hopefully they’ll tour elsewhere, though I think I’ll look into whether it’s feasible to visit Sydney in early December. Actually the only other time I’ve been to homebake was the very first Sydney one (the very first ever was at Byron Bay) in December ’96 and the highlight of the day was without a doubt The Undergound Lovers (I particularly remember the climactic finish with Vince ferociously attacking his guitar on Tabloid or Bust ). I’ve seen many other great shows by them as well, including a great one in Novermber ’97 when they played two sets at the Annandale with a set by Grant McLennan in between (when I really should have been putting the finishing touches on my honours thesis which was due the next day). The last time I saw them was on the 31st of December  1998 at the Globe in Newtown and I’ve been hoping for another chance to see them ever since!

In fact the Undies aren’t the only band from ’96 Homebake getting back together, Tumbleweed are also on the lineup for this year. There’s some other good stuff to like Roland S Howard (with Mick Harvey) and Eddy Current Suppression Ring.

It would be nice if they look back at the ’96 Sydney Uni lineup for more inspiration and add Crow to the bill as well. There is an article about their reunion at Mess + Noise.

Full details here

UPDATE – more shows announced on the Underground Lovers Myspace page, including one that I’m going to.

No Australian ATP in 2010

Not according to this. Quite a disappoitment. I was prepared to accept that perhaps there was an outside chance that I wouldn’t be asked to be the curator, but not that there wouldn’t be one at all.

On the other hand there is some good gig news, finally Stephen Malkmus is returning to Australia, and will play a show with his band The Jicks at Fowlers Live on September 24. His last album Real Emotional Trash was one of my favourites of last year and I’d really been hoping he’d tour it in Australia.

Elvis Costello fans in Adelaide are not in luck though, they’ll have to go to Melbourne if they want to see him. Or Sydney. Or Brisbane. Or Perth. Or Canberra. Or Hobart.

(Thanks to The Don for all the updates, I’ll do a full Adelaide gig guide when I get back there)

On the Stereo

  • Various – Tomorrow & Tomorrow & Tomorrow Vol.1 cd (Sound&Fury)
  • 808 State – Quadrastate cd (Rephlex)
  • Clark – Growls Garden cdep (Warp)
  • Portishead – Third cd (Island)
  • Earth – Phase 3 Thrones and Dominions cd (Sub Pop)
  • The Necks – Aether cd (Fish of Milk)
  • Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy – The Letting Go cd (Spunk / Drag City)
  • Flipper – Gone Fishin’ cd (Water)
  • The Monks – Black Monk Time cd (Polydor)
  • Toys Went Berserk – The Bitter & The Sweet 2cd (Memorandem)

Flipper

A few weeks I saw the band Flipper, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect since the only album of theirs that I know came out almost 30 years ago, but as it turns out they were absolutely awesome, easily one of the gigs of the year. Here’s some highlights of what I can find on youtube:

A video for Ever

[youtube _7sPUaedQxo]

a live performance of Way of the World from 1983

[youtube 5MS2mFfN1ks]

Sex Bomb from the same show

[youtube 1WD2pUTO9uU]

(I Saw You) Shine with visual effects

[youtube WUsd2IKwzNI]

The Sea Thieves

Last night the Sea Thieves played at the Grace (just Zac for this show), here is a taste care of Spoz who does an amazing job of documenting the Adelaide music scene

[youtube -JNOUw3wfqw]

and as a bonus here is No Through Road from the Leader Cheetah cd launch at Jive that I couldn’t get into because it was sold out.

[youtube mI3EquI2uE0]

Series 2 of Phoenix on dvd

The second series of Phoenix is out today (at least in my local ABC shop). I used to sometimes complain about Phoenix not being available until the first series finally turned up a while back, I was worried that it might not have had enough promotion to get anough sales for the second series to be released as well, but looks like it was OK. I don’t remember too much about series 2 but from what I recall it follows a similar format with a single police investigation being followed across the course of the whole season, a sort of approach that has been a big hit with many people in recent years with The Wire. Now it’s time to cross fingers and hope for a dvd release of the follow up series, Janus, which was also excellent.

Published by , in TV.

Links Updated

I’ve done a bit of a clearing out of some dead links, also added a few new ones, in particular I’d like to draw your attention to The Michael Duffy Files (aka Loon Pond) which does a great job of keeping track of some of the strange things written by (mostly conservative) columnists in the Australian press. It’s a bit like an Australian version of Sadly, No! but the posts go into much more depth than the quick take downs of U.S. conservatives there. Some examples:

Also I’d particularly recommend the hilarious spEak You’re bRanes where they take the piss out of comments left on the BBC’s Have Your Say site. As well as the posts, the comments are well worth reading through as well. A couple of favourites:

Details of Heaven and Earth

The following post has been sitting around in draft form for a while and was delayed by my computer problems,  so it’s a bit outdated and there isn’t so much discussion on this book now. However, since Steve Fielding appears to be a fan of Plimer’s book I guess it’s still worth posting. I’ve added a few updates to the original post here and there, most notably excerpts of, and links to, reviews from ABC radio at the end.

Both Barry Brook and Tim Lambert have posts which go into the details of what’s in Ian Plimer’s new book which is getting quite a bit of attention in the press. There is also more from Ian Enting. Having previously seen Plimer’s arguments for the non-existence of anthropogenic global warming in interviews and not been terribly impressed by them (see here and here) I was not expecting much from the book, but it seems that it’s much worse than what I might have expected. Both of the links above outline many problems, and it’s important to realise that these are not just nitpicking minor errors. For example, citing the work of EG Beck. This is a graph which shows that before 1957 atmospheric C02 jumped around wildly, with huge amounts of carbon dioxide entering and leaving the atmosphere on a yearly basis to an extent which appears to be far beyond what is physically possible. And after 1957 that behaviour stopped, remarkably right at the time that measurements began from Mauna Loa, a site remote enough to remove local effects and give a true representation of the atmospheric level. It is stunning that Plimer could cite this. We are left with the conclusion that either he believes that huge fluctuations in C02 actually happened until right at the moment we started measuring it more accurately, or he doesn’t and he threw it in there anyway. Neither option reflects well on him, especially as he seems to always be claiming the scientific high ground on the issue of AGW.

This isn’t an isolated example. The paper referred to above was published in Energy and Environment, a journal renowned for publishing anything that questions AGW, no matter how bad it is. For example Khilyuk and Chilingar, which, believe it or not, argues that human C02 emissions are negligible since they are tiny compared with natural degassing over the entire history of the planet. Actually not so surprising that Plimer should cite this, it’s not so different from the sort of arguments he’s been making based on geological timescales.

There’s more from E&E such that the famous Shulte paper, which even they were initially reluctant to publish. There is quite a story behind this one, details here.

And it goes on, Plimer actually uses Martin “You’re a big daft cock” Durkin’s dodgy graph from The Great Global Warming Swindle. Both Brook and Lambert give the details … and many more. Much more on this in one of Peter Sinclair’s excellent youtube videos as well.

The coverage in the mainstream media has been pathetic (or at least was at the original time of writing, there were subsequently a few articles that improved things slightly). Can’t they find anyone who is at least a bit scientifically literate to evaluate the claims that Plimer makes? Instead it has been wall to wall puff pieces which amount to little more than advertising for the book and its central claim that AGW is not a problem. As well as the SMH article I wrote about earlier there’s one in the Independent which is full of irrelevant details of change in the distant past and pushes Plimer’s conspiracy theory about climate scientists. Of course the coverage in the Australian has been a continuation of their usual war on science. The press coverage is full of journalists who are terribly impressed by all those sciency looking footnotes in Plimer’s book but haven’t bothered to see if any of it makes sense. They have missed that many of the references are to such an un-scientific source as Energy & Environment, that old data is used, that bold claims are made without evidence being cited, that flawed and misleading graphs have been included. Just because it’s a book written by a scientist about a scientific topic and it has lots of footnotes and refences it doesn’t make it science. Lambert and Brook have documented in detail (linked above) why it’s not science.

Update: Since writing this there have been a number of reviews on the ABC’s Science Show and Ockham’s Razor, all rather negative (which is either evidence of left-wing bias at the ABC or just indicative of what actual experts think depending on your point of view)

David Karoly’s Review

Given the errors, the non-science, and the nonsense in this book, it should be classified as science fiction in any library that wastes its funds buying it. The book can then be placed on the shelves alongside Michael Crichton’s State of Fear, another science fiction book about climate change with many footnotes. The only difference is that there are fewer scientific errors in State of Fear.

Malcolm Walter’s Review

I think Plimer is entirely sincere in his efforts to argue against anthropogenic climate change. But he is misguided, and his interpretation of the literature is confused. Why do I have any credibility on this issue? Like Plimer I am a geologist, with a very long experience in basic fieldwork. I have particular experience in working on the evidence for severe glaciations in the past, and on understanding the early history of the Earth. I am also a planetary scientist with an interest in other planets in the solar system, including their climates.

Reviewing this book has been an unpleasant experience for me. I have been a friendly colleague of Plimer’s for 25 years or more. I admired his support for innovative geological research during his early career as a mineral explorer in industry. I cheered him on when he took on the so-called creation scientists and their bogus nonsense, a crusade that cost him dearly in the end. I have enjoyed his always lively and entertaining lectures. But this time, in my opinion, he has done a disservice to science and to the community at large.

Kurt Lambeck:

If this had been written by an honours student, I would have failed it with the comment: You have obviously trawled through a lot of material but the critical analysis is missing. Supporting arguments and unsupported arguments in the literature are not distinguished or properly referenced, and you have left the impression that you have not developed an understanding of the processes involved. Rewrite!

UPDATE: A nice summary by George Monbiot, via Deltoid.