How to design a book cover

As a former book designer I love this 2 minute animation of the entire process. Pity they don’t show the endless meetings in the lead-up and aftermath, and the subsequent death by a thousand (committee) cuts that so many designs go through!

Australian Modernism in all its glory

It’s been a while (been a very busy start to the year), but I just wanted to share this. It’s a site devoted to Oz mid-century modernist architecture. My fondness for all things late 50s and early 60s is, for today, now sated!

The world is going eBook crazy

Yep, just a couple of days till Steve Jobs’ rumoured Apple tablet announcement. And publishers have not much choice but to get on board anyway. A couple of colleagues and I recently published a comprehensive report on the Australian publishing industry. Here’s a spin-off piece I wrote for Crikey today on how Ebooks and digital media in general are painting mainstream publishers into a corner.

You just have to see this

Well, if you are a book-lover of any shape or description. It’s from the New Zealand Book Council.

Are the denialists winning? Or is the real problem stasis?

George Monbiot certainly thinks the first is true. Here are some quotes from a post on his blog on Monday (you’ll find all the data footnoted in the blog):

There is no point in denying it: we’re losing. Climate change denial is spreading like a contagious disease. It exists in a sphere which cannot be reached by evidence or reasoned argument; any attempt to draw attention to scientific findings is greeted with furious invective. This sphere is expanding with astonishing speed.

A survey last month by the Pew Research Centre suggests that the proportion of Americans who believe there’s solid evidence that the world has been warming over the past few decades has fallen from 71% to 57% in just 18 months. Another survey, conducted in January by Rasmussen Reports, suggests that, due to a sharp rise since 2006, US voters who believe that global warming is the result of natural causes (44%) now outnumber those who believe it is caused by human action (41%).

A study by the website Desmogblog shows that the number of internet pages proposing that manmade global warming is a hoax or a lie more than doubled in 2008. . . . On Amazon.co.uk, books championing climate change denial are currently ranked at 1,2,4,5,7 and 8 in the global warming category. Never mind that they’ve been torn to shreds by scientists and reviewers, they are beating the scientific books by miles.

As he asks, ‘What is going on?’. One possibility he raises draws on the cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker’s idea that we protect ourselves with “vital lies” when under threat. I’m not so sure. As Monbiot says, there are two opposed armies at war here: armies of right wing bloggers and their ilk in one corner, and concerned scientists in the other.

What we are seeing, then, is the wash-up of years of political tribalism; a kind of gruesome end-game to the culture wars, and a weak media that lumps science in with questions of ‘balance’ as if scientific opinion were like any other, and that reports climate change as a kind of remote novelty. What chance did science really have?

Meanwhile, Ross Gittins has an excellent column in today’s Fairfaxes, reporting on Treasury Secretary Ken Henry’s recent speech about ‘The Shape of Things to Come’ in Oz. Population growth, global warming, technological change and the rise and rise of India and China are Henry’s themes. But warming is the bit where he gets really interesting. As Gittins says:

His second long-term force bearing on us is climate change. So far, the main thing occupying the minds of our business people and politicians is how we can introduce an emissions trading scheme without hurting anyone.

Henry offers the tart observation that the introduction of such schemes ”is intended to cause a significant shift in the structure of the Australian and global economies over coming decades; quite possibly the largest structural adjustment in economic history. That is the point of doing it.”

Translation: It’s meant to hurt because that’s what changes people’s behaviour. If it doesn’t hurt it won’t work.

So there’s another plank in Monbiot’s thesis about growing denialism: it doesn’t hurt as much right now. But perhaps denialism isn’t the real problem so much as stasis. Gittins continues with a spot-on assessment of the consequences of Ruddism:

Even if the world does get its act together on fighting climate change, we’re in for a fair bit of it anyway. And if the rest of the world is being led by far-sighted leaders like Kevin Rudd, with oppositions like ours, the likelihood is the world won’t get its act together.

If so, we’ll reap the whirlwind. If we find the consequences of mitigating climate change so daunting, what’s it going to be like adapting to it? Our already dry continent will become drier. It’s likely some of our agriculture will be wiped out, with much of the rest having to move north.

It could be that much of the population has to move from the south-eastern corner of the continent. You think we’ve got a problem with boat people? Can you imagine how many there’ll be if the Pacific islands and half of Bangladesh are under water?

But he’s not done yet:

It’s how these four disparate forces could fit together that worries me. Analysis is one thing, synthesis quite another. The possibility of our indulged and indulgent electorate successfully navigating all these cross-currents I find remote.

Which brings us back to where we started: we are now paying the price for an era of extreme political populism is which every voter whim has been pandered to, and in which people expect every policy solution to be cost free to them. Rampant denialism, in other words, is just one more symptom of a deeper political disease. The old public sphere and its redoubts in science, expert opinion and rigorous reporting, has fractured, with some gains (it was rather paternalistic and white and blokey, chums), but at what cost considering that what remains has been handed over to and is dominated by a conservative movement far more powerful and less democratic than its (lefty) critics ever anticipated was possible?

No wonder we can’t move forward on climate change.

'What's the Matter With Cultural Studies?'

I’ve always enjoyed Michael Bérubé’s criticism, and his take on the fate of cultural studies versus the failures of the left, in a recent Chronicle of Higher Education is well worth reading:

. . . has cultural studies transformed the disciplines of the human sciences? Has cultural studies changed the means of transmission of knowledge? Has cultural studies made the American university a more egalitarian or progressive institution? Those seem to me to be useful questions to ask, and one useful way of answering them is to say, sadly, no. Cultural studies hasn’t had much of an impact at all.

Unclean coal and the democratic race to the bottom

It’s no news that the Rudd government’s ETS is probably the policy failure of the decade. But that hasn’t stopped to coal lobby from pulling out all stops to see how low they can go. Here’s their lobbying site and the ads they’re running in key marginals. And apparently it’s working. According to Get Up, a few waverers in government circles are being impressed by the latest lobbying efforts, even if, obviously, all the talk about ‘clean coal’ is total bunk.

GetUp are running a fund-raiser to get a counter-ad shown. It’s excellent.

And Hungry Beast (disclaimer: I was involved in the backgrounding for the show) have also done a pretty good take on things as well:

But perhaps pollies are right to be backing away from the ETS. After all, according to a Lowy Institute poll released today, as reported in the Oz, the public appear to be losing interest in the issue:

In 2007, tackling climate change was perceived as the joint top foreign policy goal, together with protecting the jobs of Australian workers.

In 2007, 75 per cent of those surveyed said climate change was a very important issue. Last year, this fell to 66 per cent, and this year to 56 per cent.

Global warming was viewed as “a critical threat” by 68 per cent in 2007, 66 per cent last year and 52 per cent this year.

Admittedly the sample was only 1003. But the government has done its best to run dead on the issue and kill any real expectations of change, and the rear-guard action from denialists has been strong, especially those arguments that counterpose action on warming against job losses and energy price increases – both issues bound to make any marginal seat holder nervous. And other immediately pressing issues like the GFC have also raised fears about job security for many.

The public and pollies seem to be caught in a mutually reinforcing downwards spiral. Pollies won’t act because the public doesn’t care. No-one in power is showing real leadership, so the public have switched off. 

Global warming? Oh that was so 2007.