Age bin

I see we're celebrating the ninetieth anniversary of the charge of the light horse at Beersheba, a great Australian victory. The Israelis, whose land it now is, are joining in the festivities, the Arabs who lived there at the time having moved on.

My grandfather fought in Palestine with the light horse. He wasn't at Beersheba, unfortunately, having earlier got an arm shot off at the battle of Gaza. The people who live around that battleground may not be so keen on commemorating the campaign that took Palestine away from the Turks and gave it to the English, and later the Israelis. It's worth remembering, in the exhilaration of the moment, that the impressive achievements of Australian soldiers in both wars were partly responsible for the present unsatisfactory state of affairs in that region, a fact that may place some responsibility on us to pursue a balanced Middle East policy that's fair to both the people who were there at the time and the people who came later.

cinema paradiso down under

Now there's a documentary I'd love to do. I note from the online search for the Australian National archives that they have available all the bits that were cut out of censored movies in the bad old days:
Title
Brave Eagle [moving images] [television series cuts] [compile] [censored excerpts] : Date of broadcast 1967. 1 of 1 film reels (198 feet, 5 min 16 sec) : positive print with optical sound; 16mm, b&w, sound

All the biggies - Point Blank, for example. What a reel they'd make.

Great-grandfather Walter

 
 
 
 

Visiting my sister Sally in Belgium the other day I took the opportunity to visit my greatgrandfather's grave in Ribemont Cemetery (Ribemont-Sur-Ancre, that is, not Ribemont; trap for young players which delayed us rather).

A long way from home. Looking into "Curlwaa: a history, by C James and P Taylor -

Walter Sage was born at Angaston in 1861. He married Georgina Forbes in 1883. She was killed in a buggy accident in 1891, leaving five children.
When was was declared in 1914 Walter tried to enlist, but was rejected because of his age(53). He tried again in 1917, lying a little about his age (he said he was 52). He was in the 6th Machinegun Company; joined the battalion in the field 1/1/1918, killed in action on the Somme front in May 1918, at the age of 57. "Buried isolated grave Preux-Sailly rd just S of Preux and 3 3/4 miles S/W of Albert"... You had to be fairly precise about graves so they could be dug up later and reburied in the war cemeteries, as he was. Still only a small cemetery - there doesn't seem to have been a named battle on that day, it was probably just part of the general friction in the trenches.

He was known, apparently, as "The Father of Curlwaa". Also of grandmother.

Second oldest man in the AIF, I believe. Don't know who the oldest was.

I should have taken a libation for his grave - a ricecake, or some oil, or a chocolate bar, or possibly a live chicken to sacrifice - but I didn't think of it till too late.

Alan (in beret) never to be sufficiently thanked for driving us out there from Brussels.

30

Nobody likes birthdays ending in zeroes
Except heroes,
Because they encourage you to take stock instead of just indulging in cake and jelly,
And the last person who really enjoyed taking stock was probably Ned Kelly.
As it is you have to come to terms with your parents’ steadily diminishing hope
That you’re ever going to be a footballer or a ballerina or a great novelist or Pope.
No, it’s better to do it the Thai way, because to travel hopefully is better than to arrive,
And they count in sevens and not tens so the big day comes not when you’re thirty but when you’re thirty-five.

Chris B

One-third of the way

An argument on Kevin Drum gives me a change to try some of the argument I had with Jo over lunch the other day.
"There are two points that emerge from a decade-long involvement in health promotion that are relevant to this debate.
1) Absolutely the only figure that counts in public health is the all-causes death rate. It's the only figure that takes all factors, plus or minus, into account (and it's the only figure that can't be gamed).
2) In Australia, at least - yanks are a much less good example - average life expectancy has for the last several decades been going up by four months a year. That's not bad; for one thing, it's one-third of the way to living for ever.
There are several further points that would seem to follow from this.
a) The "epidemic of obesity" can't be that bad for us, or it would be significantly cutting in to that rise.
b) A much smaller proportion of what matters for our health is under our own control than we think. Most of what counts is secular trends in our society."

Several bridges too far

With two in a week, a trend is emerging. First there was the football coach saying on the ABC that "Well, we want to come to an agreement, but there's a lot of water to go under the bridge yet" - and then, a few days later,
Kaye Grogan
September 4, 2007

What we desperately need in our leaders are "godly" men. Not just in name only, but in actions. Every time you turn around, another scandal rocks Washington, sending the country into a vertigo type of condition with so many twists and turns. The latest scandal involving Senator Larry Craig of Idaho produced another "I didn't do anything wrong" abrupt press conference.

Since Senator Craig pleaded guilty to the charge — it seems a little odd that he held a short news conference stating that he hadn't done anything wrong, and vehemently denied he was a homosexual. Boy, talk about trying to get the water back over the bridge, and the dam patched up after it bursts, I would say this is a perfect example of the horse already out of the barn.

What other variants are foreseeable?

Buffy the script

Have just read the original script to Buffy the Vampire Slayer (the movie)and god, it's good. Leading to the twin thoughts "How in the name of god did the actual film manage to blow all the good lines?" and "Why doesn't somebody do a remake?"
SMG may have aged too much to carry it off by this time (I'd be prepared to cut her quite a bit of slack, mind) but even without her it's a winner.