I don’t actually live in Sydney anymore, but I still think of it as where I live. That said, I have never really appreciated it all that much, because I find any place boring if I a) have no money to spend, and b) have no one interesting to hang out with. Going somewhere pretty does nothing for me if I’m on my own… I’d generally rather be napping or watching TV in my own house. This is probably why I have travelled so little.

Anyway, today I had several hours to kill while my car was getting a scheduled service, and thought since it was such a nice day I’d go wander the legendary Sydney foreshore with the tourists. And I took a bunch of photos around the Opera House, since I don’t think I’ve ever really looked at it closely before.

It really is quite a striking building up close. Still, I would rather have been napping.

The reason I like Sydney is not the sunshine or the atmosphere; it’s mainly that it has people in it who I like… and everything else is window-dressing. As rents continue to rise to stupid levels I start to see the appeal of starting a commune in the middle of nowhere (but I also recognize the hideousness of that idea, see Sartre et al).

PS: Anyone who has read this blog for long has probably worked this out already, but in case it wasn’t abundantly clear I’m not much of a ‘going out’ person. I much prefer home. I like my bed, my bath, my stuff.

More than a year ago I decided to try a sort of Ulysses pact to give up smoking, and it was technically a success. I did not violate the terms I set out, which specified that I must not purchase tobacco within the subsequent 12 months. Unfortunately it didn’t actually make me a non-smoker, instead turning me into an opportunistic smoker– ie I was able to go long periods without smoking, but would still take the opportunity when cigarettes were offered. The deal expired at the end of March 2012, and sure enough my willpower has since crumbled without the threat of an immediate penalty hanging over me.

So as of today I’m renewing it, because it seems for now I still need that external consequence to keep me straight:

COMMITMENT

I hereby commit to not purchasing any products containing tobacco for one year, covering the period from UTC 12PM, 1st May, 2012 to UTC 12PM, 1st May 2013.

PENALTY FOR NON-COMPLIANCE

Should I break the Commitment within the designated time period, I hereby promise to publicly acknowledge this lapse and donate AU$1000 to the Liberal Party of Australia* within 48 hours, after which the Commitment will be terminated or renewed at my discretion.

Part of last year’s compact was that upon success I would donate US$500 to a secular charity of my choosing. To be honest I was thinking of delaying this, since I didn’t specify a particular time-frame for that outcome and my cash-flow isn’t exactly awesome right now. But for these things to mean anything it’s important to hold to the original intention. So now I’m looking for a secular charity deserving of funds, but have’t decided on one yet. Please chime in in the comments if you know of one that is recognized for its good works and efficacy.

* In Australia the Liberal Party are the conservative jerkwads who court the reactionary bigot vote. We Australians are terrified of refugees on boats and gay marriage apparently, although you wouldn’t know it if you asked the average person on the street. They’re not as bat-shit crazy as the GOP in the US but who the hell is? It’s unfortunate in that I would otherwise describe myself as a liberal but it’s not worth it here because you have to explain you mean “small el” rather than “large el”

It’s one thing to decide you don’t need Facebook personally, but then there’s the problem of working on a web app that needs to play as nice as possible with existing networks, the largest of which is of course Facebook. So once again I exist on this network, because basically you have to in order to get by online.

And not only have I signed up once again, but this time I might need to grovel to get my app privileges reinstated, since they seem to have decided I am not worthy:

You can no longer create apps because our systems indicated that your account may not be authentic. Facebook requires users to provide their real first and last names, and fake accounts are a violation of our Statement of Rights and Responsibilities (SRR 4.1), even when used to host or test apps.

Oh what fun!

This is a great way to avoid getting anything done because you have to clear everything out in order to do the job, removing the option of even sitting at a computer for a day or two while you’re prepping and painting.

I’m quite pleased with the cosy-neat look, so I’m totally ready to get loads of work done now!

BTW this is an old photo showing the grim blue-grey that I had before (above the picture rail it is still that color but I’m leaving it to avoid orange overload).

I’d suspected this was the case but it’s nice to see it clearly confirmed here

Gmail doesn’t recognize dots as characters within usernames, you can add or remove the dots from a Gmail address without changing the actual destination address; they’ll all go to your inbox, and only yours. In short:

• homerjsimpson@gmail.com = hom.er.j.sim.ps.on@gmail.com
• homerjsimpson@gmail.com = HOMERJSIMPSON@gmail.com
• homerjsimpson@gmail.com = Homer.J.Simpson@gmail.com

Just listened to This American Life’s unprecedented retraction of Mike Daisey’s story about Foxconn (Apple’s primary manufacturer in China). I hope it gets at least the attention that the original show did.

Basically it turns out that every element in the story with an emotional punch was either definitely bullshit or very probably bullshit. And once these are removed, all you have is a guy speaking annoyingly slowly telling you the same shit everyone already knew about Apple’s supply chain.

Of course when faced with the mounting evidence that he was full of crap, Daisey attempted to justify his work by going for the ‘it’s true in spirit’ defence; an attitude for which I have virtually no sympathy. It reminded me a piece from On The Media last month titled Lifespan of a Fact, in which essayist John D’Agata defends his art on the basis that people have been making shit up and serving it as Truth for thousands of years– and why should we let facts get in the way of a good story? Honestly, when such writers pat themselves on the back for ignoring mundane evidence-based truth for something that just feels true, I want to spit. It takes a whole lot more talent to weave a good story around the facts than it does to massage the facts to fit a ready-made story.

Mike Daisey will go on insisting that his work has been instrumental in increasing the pressure on Apple to do more to reform its suppliers, and therefore he is still the good guy. Never mind that the whole story was serving him very well indeed and raising his profile considerably (even now it’s unclear whether he’s better or worse off than before the original story aired – here’s his most recent blog post about it all).

For my part, thanks to the disingenuous Mike Daisey, I now feel less guilty for liking and buying Apple products than I have for years, because in order to make me feel more guilty in the first place he had to make shit up.

In a fact-based followup, a comparison was drawn between factory conditions in China today vs the US early last century, which were of course terrible. In America, decent people worked and fought to institute fairer labor laws as well as health and safety conditions that made life better for everyone. No American worker today would tolerate the conditions and pay of a Chinese factory, so maybe we in the west should feel bad that shitty factory conditions have merely been exported…

The thing is, Apple doesn’t have the power to enact Chinese labor laws. And most people accept that it doesn’t have the option of taking its business elsewhere. It is likely they could push harder and see some positive results in the conditions at Foxconn. But last I checked, China wasn’t some shitty little third world country under the thumb of the west… it was a terrifyingly huge emerging world power. Is it so strange to imagine that ultimately it’s the Chinese people who might win for themselves better working conditions, to be codified in law? There’s a lot of socio-economic change going on there right now, with a rapidly growing middle class, and I can’t help thinking that working conditions are going to be changing a lot more due to this than any outside pressure.

The best way to get rid of a sweatshop is to make it illegal to run a sweatshop, and Apple simply doesn’t have that power. What they’re doing right now… I think it might actually be enough for my conscience to bear.

Also, I really wanted Ira to ask Daisey to ‘field-strip’ his Macbook right there, as he claimed he liked to do in the original monologue.

Counterpoint: Mike Elk sees things rather differently and applauds Daisey’s passion.