On Dit Edition 82.4

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contents

VOLUME EIGHTY-TWO, EDITION FOUR.

N IO T A

& SOCIAL

4 6 8 10 12

ME A DI E 14 PAG

DEF AM

CORRESPONDENCE WHAT’S ON PRESIDENT SPIELS POLITICS VOX POP

INTERVIEW

PERMACULTURE EXCLUSIVE FEATURED ARTIST SECTION 18C

RED BULL

HEALTH ANXIETY SCIENCE ARMPIT HAIR

17 20 24 26 29 32 34 36

CREATIVE WRITING COLUMNS REVIEWS DIVERSIONS ELEANOR’S KITCHEN

38 40 44 46 48

Interwebs: auu.org.au/ondit. Vous pourriez nous adorer.

Editors: Sharmonie Cockayne, Daisy Freeburn and Yasmin Martin.

Front and back cover artwork by Nicky Mellonie.

On Dit is a publication of the Adelaide University Union.

On Dit is produced and printed on the traditional country of the Kuarna people of the Adelaide Plains. We recognise and respect their cultural heritage, beliefs and relationship with the land.

Published 29/4/2014

editorial

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T

his week, a group of researchers at the University of Adelaide discovered that a melanoma vaccine they’ve been trialling actually increases patient survival rate and possibly has the ability to halt the growth of the cancer, and maybe even reverse it.

That’s pretty remarkable in itself, and promising news for melanoma sufferers. I’m a red-headed, fairskinned walking UV absorber, so this could really come in handy for me if I keep forgetting to put sunscreen on. The vaccine trial, spanning 14 years so far, increased the life longevity of most of the 54 patients who all had either Stage III or IV advanced melanoma, with 30% surviving two years or longer.

One survivor is still alive, 10 years after the trial began.

It’s fascinating how brilliant the human mind is; we’re living longer than ever all thanks to ourselves and the amazing innovations we come

up with. It’s not all that outlandish to say that perhaps one day we could reach immortality.

ecosystems we live in, so much so that it might crumble under the weight of humankind.

But at what cost will this come?

I’m not suggesting I have any idea what the solution is; I really wish we could have modern medicine and not the problems that are likely to come along with it, but there doesn’t seem to be any clear way of solving it.

I am so grateful for modern medicine – it’s given us longer to live, it’s given us comfort. It’s put us, in the developed world, at the healthiest and wealthiest humans have ever been. And for that, I thank the scientists that have gotten us here.

But my conscience tells me that while it’s wonderful, it might be, ultimately, detrimental. Not only to us, but also to every other living thing on this earth. If we are all living longer, it can create an imbalance in the structure of society if at the same time the birth rate decreases – more dependent people, less working-age people. If our population continues to increase even more than it already is, we are going to be placing even more stress on the

In the meantime though, until a solution comes along or society implodes, we might as well just enjoy what we’ve got, hey?

So read on, interesting things abound, like prehistoric giant killer shrimp, armpit hair and John Keats’ Collected Poems being used as toilet paper.

Daisy (and yasmin and Sharmonie)

regulars

By Rowan Roff

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Many thanks

Thank you to Angus, who distributed our magazines even though he was falling asleep on his feet. Max for Vox Popping. Sam for Icecream. Justin Boden for damage control. Idris and Chris for proofreading our pants off.

Easter for the excuse to eat more chocolate than usual. Unthanks to architecture: you are killing Daisy slowly.

regulars

correspondence 4

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Dear Simon,

Dear Editors,

I’m slightly confused by your letter. You claim to be attending university for free while acknowledging that you are accumulating debt – bit of an oxymoron no?

I took exception to your article on the Ukrainian conflict written by Alyona Haines in that it was a simplistic and sensationalized piece of journalism which parroted the MSM portrayal of the Russians as the aggressor/ invaders in the conflict.

I believe that university education should be free, however that is not the system we are operating under at the moment. We operate under an income-contingent loan scheme that already sees students graduate with almost decade’s worth of debt to pay off and we shouldn’t be supporting any measures that make that worse – particularly for people who are already financially worse off.

Also let’s remember that the reason there are support payments for people who go to university is because the government is investing in students, as it has benefits to the economy and society that outweigh the financial cost of supporting students.

I’m glad you’re grateful for the opportunity to attend university and pay a lot of money for it. I’m glad it works for you.

However, education should work for everyone, and there is evidence to suggest that people from low Socio-Economic Status backgrounds are debt averse and may be discouraged from studying at university by the debt they will incur.

You seem to be under themisapprehension that students don’t actually pay taxes – you’ve heard about the GST right?

So while you’re describing students as leeching off the government you might want to remember that we actually all pay tax. As a taxpayer this is where I want my tax money to go so I’m not sure that it’s appropriate to call myself and other students who agree with me ‘greedy and unappreciative’ because we have an informed view about where we want our tax dollars spent. However, what I think you were trying to say is that paying income tax specifically is the threshold for being able to criticise government policy. I guess it’s lucky I paid income tax last year (PHEW amirite?) otherwise you might write me off as an ‘ungrateful and greedy’ leech – oh wait…

The article ignores the role of the US in funding the Ukrainian neo-nazi Svoboda party to overthrow the democratically elected government of Ukraine and the enormous amount of funding/loans that they are now channelling to that same party to keep it in power.

It also ignores the fact that under the Russian Ukrainian Naval Base for Gas Treaty (referred to as the Kharkiv Accords) allowed for the presence of 25 000 Russian troops stationed in the Crimean Oblast in support of their naval bases in Sevastopol. So rather than an “invasion”, the troops were already stationed there.

It ignores the fact that a referendum was held in the Crimea region and the vote returned an overwhelming majority of 96% (with an 83% turnout) in favour of rejoining the Russian Federation. Historically it was the (Ukrainian) Russian leader Nikita Khrushchev who in 1954 donated the Crimean Oblast to the Ukraine in a symbolic gesture; as both were members of the USSR, not much was made of it at the time.

Sentences such as ‘We cannot know what is in the mind of dictators’ are unhelpful and (whether intentional or not) introduce a fearful tone into a discussion which would be best served by careful analysis of fact. The concluding sentence is the only concession in the article to the possibility of ‘jumping to conclusions’ which the writer seems to have done already.

There is no such thing as a free lunch, so just remember every time you receive your student start up scholarship or Centrelink support payment that not only did I contribute to that but so did you and every other student. And I’m glad because the education system and struggling students are better off for it.

I am disappointed that such poorly researched fare is served in a student magazine, when it is younger members of society such as your readership who will be the ones in any conflict expected to kill and die for the propagandised issues serving the whims of their international financier and political masters.

Regards, SRC President and Australian Taxpayer Lucy Small-Pearce

Yours in the hope of peace and a just solution for our brothers and sisters in Ukraine, Jon Van Bowman

regulars

Dear Jon,

which is at a minimum, shifty.

Like most people who get outraged about articles and take it upon themselves to write to editors, you seemed to have completely misunderstood (read: not read) my piece.

Finally, you seem to think that I align myself with mainstream media because I portray Putin as a dictator.

I am allowed to have my own opinion in an unpaid student magazine article, and quite frankly my opinion of Putin is not of a high standing. He is a homophobic, ex head of KGB, who breaks international law at will, and manipulates the Russian political system to stay in power. Just because the rest of the world has figured it out too doesn’t make it any less correct.

The purpose of the article was to provide a historical context for the Russian/Ukrainian conflict, to illustrate that the situation is far from straightforward bad/good guy scenario. That said, it is not possible to cover every single issue in fifteen hundred words. Talking about a neo nazi conspiracy would have been completely out of place.

Saying that it is not an invasion because the troops were already stationed there (for a completely different purpose, mind you), is like saying that if the US were to annex Northern Territory that would be fine because they have a military base at Pine Gap. The fact that the article doesn’t address the referendum is because I wrote it before the referendum was held. That’s just how publishing works, my friend.

Regardless, the referendum was not held by Ukraine,

Take care, Alyona

got your knickers in a knot?

Write to us. Our correspondence page is waiting to be filled with your rants and raves. Send us an email at ondit@adelaide.edu.au with the subject line ‘Letter to the Editor’.

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what’s on

regulars

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hey there, stranger.

On this page you’ll find all of the events, info, strange things people say sometimes, news, bake sales, pub crawls, tarp-surfing competitions and anything else you could possibly want to know about the University of Adelaide. Did we miss anything? Let us know at ondit@adelaide.edu.au.

textbooks

What: The Student Co-op When: 10am - 4pm every day this semester Where: Level 4, 230 North Terrace

meetings SRC and AUU Board meetings are open for all students. Join On Dit on the guest bench and watch as the pollies get shit done (or not done).

overheard

“What you don’t undertsand is that for us, pooing is a delicate and precise art.”

david hunt

Australian history buffs, unite!

AUU Board meetings are held monthly, and all students are welcome. The next meeting is on May 14th in the Union Board Room on Level 4 of Union House.

What: Putting the story back into Australian history: archetypes and stereotypes Who: David Hunt is the author of the best-seller Girt: The Unauthorised History of Australia.

When: 6pm, May 15th Where: Ira Raymond Exhibition Room, Barr Smith Library Cost: $5 Booking: robina.weir@adelaide.edu.au

free brekky

movie night

SRC meetings are fortnightly; the next is May 12th.

What: Weekly free breakfasts to keep our keen eyed students healthy and happy on campus.

When: Every Tuesday (excluding holidays), 8.30am – 10am Where: The Fix Lounge (next to Unibooks) Brought to you

by Student Care and the SRC.

Adelaide University Film Society holds weekly viewings of all of the best films.

When: 7pm, every Thursday Where: The Union Cinema Cost: $3 for a temporary membership or $10 for the year Week 7: Flash Gordon Week 8: Footloose Week 9: Delicatessen Week 10: Bill Murray double feature (Caddyshack and Groundhog Day) Week 11: 2001: A Space Odyssey

regulars

round she goes

festival

Adelaide’s only market dedicated to women’s preloved fashion.

When: 10am -3pm, May 10th Where: German Club, 223 Flinders St, Adelaide Cost: Entry is $2

romeo and juliet

“My only love sprung from my only hate.”

What: Theatre Guild play When: 7.30pm - 10pm, May 3rd May 21st Where: Little Theatre, (The Cloisters), North Terrace Campus Cost: full $28, conc $23 Bookings: adelaide.edu.au/theatreguild/booking/ or via Bass on 131 246

Tasting Australia Food Festival When: April 27th - May 4th More info: tastingaustralia.com. au

Kodomo No Hi Japan Festival What: Kodomo no Hi means Children’s Day and in Japan the day is a National Holiday where parents rejoice in their children’s wellbeing When: May 4th More info: jafa.asn.au

uni sports

Southern Uni Games What: Universities from SA, Tasmania and Victoria fight it out to qualify for the Australian University Games.

When: July 6th - July 10th Where: Wodonga, Victoria More info: theblacks.com.au

youth art competition

What: Youthscape- Youth Art Competition (June 22nd- July 23rd) Why: It’s a great way to obtain experience in an exhibition and all that it entails, as well as meeting other young artists.

Contact: If you’re interested in being involved in the committee and assisting in organising this exhibition, contact rsasarts@bigpond.net.au

meeting Art History Club of Adelaide University What: Inaugral general meeting When: 6pm, May 1st Where: Lady Symons Club Room

7

Gumeracha Medieval Fair When: May 3rd - May 5th More info: medievalsa.org

pubcrawl Adelaide University Media Association (AUMA) SchnappsChat When: May 23rd T-shirts: Sold outside the Hub from 12-2pm weekdays for $25 until May 23rd

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film screening

Adelaide University Student Representative Council proudly presents: Utopia by John Pilger When: 5:30pm, May 1st Where: Napier Lower Ground LG28

drugs forum

Youth Forum on illicit drugs When: 6:30pm, May 7th Where: Allan Scott Auditorium, Hawke Building, UniSA City West More info: australia21.org.au

robogals Robogals and Girl Geek Coffees networking event When: 5pm, April 30th Where: Hub Seminar Room (Lvl 3)

talk to us. please.

Email: ondit@adelaide.edu.au Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/onditmagazine Twitter: @onditmagazine Instagram: @onditmag Snail Mail: On Dit, c/o Adelaide University Union, Level 4 Union House, University of Adelaide, 5005 In Real Life: Pop into our office on the West side of the Barr Smith Lawns. Yep, you’ll have to walk down those gloomy looking stairs. Sorry.

glorious leaders

state of the union Sam Davis, auu president

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campuses. Since then, we have also hosted Nacho March-O and the Great Aussie BBQ at Waite. We’ll be running heaps more events at the campuses this year, including more BBQs, members’ lunches, and health and wellbeing events with cooking and fitness demonstrations.

Both Roseworthy and Waite have some great clubs, and the clubs run stacks of social events for students, as well as help students to go further in their study.

Waite has three clubs: Adelaide University Agricultural Students’ Association, Adelaide University Wine Club and AgPOGS (Agricultural Postgraduate Research Students). If you want to get involved with any of these clubs, pop past the Union office and speak to Lenore.

Since starting my term as president, I’ve visited the Roseworthy and Waite campuses a few times now. For those of you that don’t know, the Roseworthy campus is where Veterinary and Animal Science is studied…

And it is home to freaking ALPACAS! Waite is where Agricultural Science and Oenology are taught (also, according to a friend at the campus, there are posters of me in a set of cubicles, which makes it impossible to pee).

Both Roseworthy and Waite campuses house staffed Union offices. At Roseworthy, our staff member is Tracey, and at Waite, our staff member is Lenore. You can pay for memberships there, and we have membership offers in the area around those campuses (go to auu.org.au to learn how you can start saving). We also run a small convenience store with food and other items you need for study.

We stock lab coats and overalls and other things you will need for your practicals, which are discounted for members. You can also organise with Tracey or Lenore if you want to book an appointment with Student Care or the Employment Service when they do their campus visits.

The Union runs regular events at Waite and Roseworthy.

At the beginning of this year we ran O’Days at both

Roseworthy also has a number of clubs, including The Roseworthy Agricultural College Student Union Council (the big club for social events on campus for all Roseworthy Students), the Adelaide Veterinary Students Association (a social and academic club for Veterinary Science students), and the Animal Science Committee. A number of special interest groups are also around for students who are interested in specific animal issues, including Companion Animal, Equine, Production Animal, Wildlife and Animal Behaviour groups. Tracey at the Union office has all of the information you need if you want to join any of these clubs.

This year the University of Adelaide is developing bothcampuses. There is a new student hub currently being built at the Waite Campus in McLeod House, which will provide a similar experience to students as North Terrace’s Hub Central, which should be finished for the start of second semester. There will also be a similar hub built out at Roseworthy, with work starting in the summer break. Along with the addition of the new learning hubs, there will also be a massive expansion in the floor spaces of the two Union-operated gyms, as well as new equipment.

Take advantage of the services we provide on these campuses. After all, they’re there to be used by you, so you might as well enjoy them!

glorious leaders

student representative column Lucy Small-Pearce, SRC president

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Around now students are handing in their first assignments, making new friends and really getting the hang of university life. So what happens if you’re not?

Study Problems

If you’ve received your first assignment back and your mark is less than you had hoped, The Writing Centre and the Maths Learning Centre (MLC) (both located on Level 3 of the Hub) are both great places to go for help. The Writing Centre can help you with writing and referencing and the MLC can help you with anything maths related and there are lots of online resources on offer. Both are open 10am-4pm Monday-Friday during teaching weeks and SWOTVAC.

Financial Woes

If you get an unexpected bill or need to get your car fixed, Student Care (located in the Lady Symon building) can help you out with small loans of up to $500 unsecured.

They can also help you out with Centrelink issues. If you’re not sure if they can help just give them a ring and they can let you know.

The AUU’s Employment Service can help you to find a job that fits around your study. There is also a lot of discounted training (such as barista courses ) for students to help you get a job.

You can also come along to the Breakfast Club, a free weekly breakfast in Fix Student Lounge (George Murray building) every Tuesday 8.30-10am. This will help out with a healthy, free breakfast and you might make some friends as well!

Personal Help

If you’re feeling overwhelmed with study, work or general life or you just need help managing your time, the Counselling Service is a fantastic place to go for help.

Any student can use the counselling service and you can book an appointment ahead of time, however if you need an appointment sooner they have a drop in service from 1pm-4pm Monday-Friday for 20 minute appointments. You just need to pop in from 1pm and ask for an

appointment (pro tip: try to get there 10 minutes earlier as they book out very fast). They also run workshops throughout semester; the next workshop is on Monday May 5th 12.10-1pm in the Ira Raymond Room in the Barr Smith Library. It is about a topic that is very close to my heart, ‘Procrastination: Overcome It’.

Making Friends

Feeling isolated on campus is the pits and without the support of friends you’re more likely to drop out. But how do you make friends at uni? The easiest way to make friends is just chat to people in your tutorials. It may sound daunting at first but I have made some great tutorial friends just by introducing myself and saying hi (and maybe weirdly suggesting to get a coffee after class).

If you’re going to be in class with someone all semester you may as well know a little more about them!

You can also join one of the 100+ clubs on campus, from the Chess Club (who have been super active in the Hub lately – you go Angelo!) to the Swing Dancing. They are usually either pretty cheap to join ($5-$10) or are free!

You can find a list of the clubs and contact details to get involved at auclubs.com.au.

reportage

a fairly current affair ELLIOT HOSKIN sums up the latest political shenanigans Art by daisy Freeburn

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Australian political news has been dominated by the corruption hearings of Australian Water Holdings (AWH) and New South Wales Premier Barry O’Farrell has been the highest profile scalp. The Liberal leader received a bottle of 1959 Penfold Grange from AWH valued at $3000, which he failed to declare as a gift over the political threshold (Maybe he drank it too fast?).

When he appeared before the Independent commission against corruption (ICAC) on Tuesday he said he had no recollection of ever receiving the bottle.

However, evidence emerged Wednesday that he had indeed received it, including courier papers and a hand written note by Mr. O’Farrell thanking the Director of AWH, Nick Di Girolamo for the wine. Mr. O’Farrell stepped down immediately after hearing of this evidence, blaming a ‘massive memory failure’, maybe Mr. O’Farrell has had a few too many $3000 bottles in his life to forget something of this magnitude. A new leader for the NSW state parliament will be decided on the 24th of April, and it is expected to be a smooth transition, with only Treasurer Mike Baird nominated.

Relations with Japan have been in the spotlight following two major announcements; the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruling that Japan’s whaling in Australian waters is illegal and a new free trade agreement has been set up.

On April 1st the ICJ voted in support of the Australian argument that Japan’s whaling program was not scientific, saying that Japan should immediately revoke its current whaling licenses and that no more could be issued. Japan then announced that they would abide by the court’s ruling, however, the Japanese government have begun plans to redesign their whaling program so that it falls in line with the research standards allowed by the UN. Ironically, they are saying they need to kill whales to research sustainability. I guess you can’t make an omelet without breaking a few whales.

Additionally, Australia will now be able to export twice as much cheese. I guess the Japanese need something to replace all the whale meat… Australia will receive cheaper white goods, electronics and cars. A Japanese car is now expected to be around $1500 cheaper.

The results of Western Australia’s senate revote are in, and the Palmer United Party is the big winner, gaining a seat. The vote was called after votes went missing after the initial election. The ALP have lost a seat in WA as a result and both major parties saw a swing away from them, whilst the Greens and PUP gained support.

Controversial Greens senator Scott Ludlam retained his seat, following his ‘Open letter to Tony Abbott’ speech.

The results of senate vote in SA’s state election have been finalised and it is now clear that the Legislative Council is as hung as the lower house. Both major parties won four seats, and the X-Team (Nick Xenaphon’s party), Greens and Family First won one a piece. This will leave the Legislative Council with eight representatives from ALP and the Libs, two from the Greens and Family First and one from Dignity for Disability and the X-Team. It is going to be an insanely hard task to pass legislation in South Australia this term.

I will talk to you next time. Who knows what alcohol fuelled insanity I will have to muse on?

The ruling was announced only a week before PM Tony Abbott revealed a new free trade deal with Japan.

The deal will see massive cuts to the current tariffs in place, with Australian beef standing to gain the most.

Elliot Hoskin is every piece of clichéd advice you get from your elders. He is average height for a woman.

reportage

this is adelaide student politics yasmin martin suffers from FACTION DISTRACTION art by Sharmonie Cockayne

As William Deacon jets across the world, I humbly step into his shoes for this edition to bring you the latest in student political news and happenings. We last left you on a cliff-hanger, wondering desperately whether we’d ever find our Pax Unionica. Sadly we don’t have an update for you. The Student Representative Council (SRC) was set to continue debating its affiliation to the National Union of Students (NUS) at the last meeting, but the discussion was postponed.

Instead this edition’s drama comes courtesy of the latest Adelaide University Union (AUU) Board Meeting. On April 16th the Board Directors bundled up into a bus and made their way to the University of Adelaide Roseworthy campus for a special meeting – I presume to give the Roseworthy students a chance to attend a board meeting (they’re open to all students). No Roseworthy students took the Board up on this, but hey, it’s the thought that counts.

While Roseworthy students might not need too much consoling over missing riveting discussion about reports, procedures and events, they may have appreciated the opportunity to weigh in on the AUU’s Voluntary Student Unionism (VSU) position statement. No? Well, they should’ve.

Until 2006 all university students were automatically members of their student union, paying a services and amenities fee that was then distributed or spent by their relevant student association. Students could opt out of their membership, but typically still had to pay the fee in one form or another. In 2006 the Federal Government introduced Voluntary Student Unionism (VSU). Without union dues for income, student organisations around the country collapsed.

The AUU hung on by the skin of its teeth by making a funding agreement with the University.

In 2011 the Federal Labor Government legislated the Student Services and Amenities Fee (SSAF), allowing universities to collect up to $281 from full-time students to fund, well, student services and amenities. VSU supporters, who felt the move was a sneaky return to Universal Student Unionism, were unimpressed.

Organisations like the AUU, however, have benefited immensely from the SSAF.

Whilst the SSAF is old news now, the AUU had yet to state a formal position that included this new legislation, and set about to do so at the Roseworthy board meeting. Among President Sam Davis’ recommended amendments to their previous statement opposing VSU was an acknowledgement that whilst the SSAF is a significant improvement on VSU, Universal Student Unionism remains the AUU’s primary goal.

Robert Katsambis was the sole Board Director to vote against these amendments, circulating a memorandum the day before the meeting stating his opposition to both the SSAF and Universal Student Unionism.

Katsambis believes that the proposed amendments endorse a ‘draconian’ stance that denies students their right to freedom of association. He expressed concerns that the SSAF requires students to pay for services that they may never use or benefit from.

Supporters of Universal Student Unionism argue that the services and representation provided by student organisations like the AUU must be communally funded by necessity, and that students should take advantage of these services. Katsambis also echoed VSU proponents’ concerns that student organisations are dominated by leftist student politicians who use students’ money to fund left-wing projects and campaigns that are not ideologically supported by the rest of the student body.

Katsambis is correct in saying that left-leaning students dominate our university’s student political landscape. If you’ve read this column at all this year, you’ve seen the political breakdown. However, never forget that your SRC and AUU Board Directors (and your On Dit editors, too!) are democratically elected by you. If you voted. Which you should have.

Nevertheless, the SSAF will continue to be collected, regardless of the AUU’s position on the matter. What may be more relevant now is how this money is spent.

Casey Briggs wrote a great breakdown in the last edition of On Dit of how our university has spent it so far. You as a lay-student may not be able to directly influence the choices the University makes about its SSAF expenditure, but you can vote for the student representatives who can.

Yasmin Martin is not William Deacon.

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regulars

vox pop

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belinda // 3rd-ish year

lauren // 3rd year

mechanical engineering

matthew // 1st year science (adv)

1. Never breathing. Breathing can lead to all kinds of complications – there are some really high correlations between breathing and getting colds... like, almost ten!

1. Not interacting with people.

1. Put a jumper on.

2. Lady Lauren of Liquor.

2. Sir Matthew of Tardis.

3. Laneway, for its relaxed atmosphere and great hipster jugs.

3. Haven’t been to any – I’m still quite new here.

4. Hopefully! Yes. I’ll find a way. A job will happen.

4. Depends on what the economy will be like in four years.

5. Pretty inappropriate, really.

5. Very good wine?

6. Yeah, I’m friends with my Mum. My Dad doesn’t really use Facebook.

6. No.

psych science

2. Lady Bella of the Black Woods.

3. I really love Fumo Blu because I’d rather sit down and sip sweets with friends!

4. NO. Is anyone?

5. Remember this forever...

6. Yes and yes, but the great thing about privacy settings is that they never see anything.

regulars

On Dit popped these students’ voxes and asked:

1. What’s your top tip for avoiding a cold?

2. Tell us your knight/dame name.

3. What’s your favourite bar or club in Adelaide? Why? 4. Are you confident you’ll secure a job once you graduate?

5. Describe Barry O’Farrell’s resignation in three words.

6. Are your parents on Facebook and are you friends? Or, would you be if they were?

jordan // 4th year

viral // 1st year

masters Project management

nathan // 1st year media & game art

1. Orange juice and Vitamin C tablets. They don’t really do anything, but they taste nice.

1. I drink beer.

1. Stay warm. That’s the main one.

2. Sir Viral of Not Much.

2. Sir Griffiths the 5th of Awesome.

2. Lady of the Long Slumber.

3. Boho Bar because there is a lot of space to relax in.

3. Chalkers in Glenelg. Good music, nice price, relatively chill.

4. Yeah. 100%

4. I think so, yeah.

5. Don’t know much.

5. The wine incident.

6. They aren’t, but yeah, I’d be friends with them.

6. My Dad is, but no.

art/ science

3. Super High Distinction Club, ‘cause I’m a cool hipster who studies instead of partying, ‘cause that’s cool.

4. Nup! Definitely feel in order to secure a job, I will need to do further study. Especially if I want to continue science.

5. Typical corrupt government.

6. Yes and yes, but Mum’s not awkward about it, thank God.

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feature

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defamation & social media when is it better to just shut your face(book)? words

by

penelope

evans, Serge

Nine million Australians check in every day.

After check-in, they socialise, play games, connect with distant family and friends, share inappropriately intimate details of their lives, and loudly announce that they’re ‘sick of this shit’ before sitting back and soaking in the attention.

But we’re not talking about an enormous hotel. We’re talking, of course, about social media; and those nine million daily users are on Facebook and in Australia alone (as of February 2014). The number goes up exponentially when you include YouTube, Twitter, Instagram and the plethora of other social media sites currently available to anyone with access to the Internet worldwide.

It comes as no surprise, therefore, that social media is commonly used as a platform for spitefulness and complaints. After all,

Fursa, Kat

Sakoulas

where better to vent your frustration than a place where literally the entire world can hear you, and you can actually see how many people support you through ‘likes’ and ‘retweets’. Users commonly take to social media to give poor reviews to restaurants or – in spectacular displays of poor judgment – go on expletive-rich rampages about their employers; a phenomenon that has already resulted in more than a few dismissals. With these platforms now readily available on portable devices, comments can be posted with the push of a button in any place and at any time, without the benefit of a cooling-off period.

But when do such comments cross the line from nastiness into illegality? When, for lack of a better pun, is it better to just shut your face(book)?

As fun as it may be to post facetiously about your neighbour, friend, boss or local small business,

and

Toneya Young

some comments can damage a person’s reputation almost beyond repair. And under Australian civil law, people can sue for damage to their reputation under an action known as ‘defamation’.

Defamation exists where defamatory matter identifying a person or small company is communicated to a third party, and the publisher of that matter does not have a lawful excuse. The result is that if a person uploads a status, picture or video about another to a social networking site, and the material would cause those who see it to form a serious and lasting negative impression of the individual depicted, that individual may be able to sue.

But nobody takes that stuff seriously, right? If it’s on your personal social media page, everyone knows it’s a joke – and nobody really cares about your opinion anyway, right?

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Twenty-year-old Andrew Farley was recently ordered to pay teacher Christine Mickle $105,000 in damages for defamatory ‘tweets’ he posted about her on his personal Twitter page in late 2012. Farley argued that his comments were true – which would be lawful excuse for publishing defamatory comments – but the judge found that he had no evidence to support his claim.

Similarly, media personality Marieke Hardy reportedly paid $13,000 in an out-of-court settlement to a man she accused, in a blog post and without sufficient evidence, of being the person behind vicious online attacks on her. Cleary, the fact that a statement is published on a personal webpage has no effect on the application of defamation law.

And it’s not just individual people who are protecting their online reputations.

Businesses employing less than ten people are also protected by defamation law – so next time you’re unimpressed with the food at your local restaurant, be careful what you write in your online review.

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Wrong.

defamation is no longer confined to newspapers and tabloid magazines.

Saying you didn’t like the food is your honest opinion, which is a lawful excuse for defamation.

Saying that the chef clearly has no culinary training, runs a clusterfuck of a kitchen, and forces his wait staff to work in slave-like conditions may be considered a defamatory statement of fact.

South Australian man Rick Bosworth took to social media to make complaints about repairs

done to his motorcycle by small business SA Motorcycles. He is now being sued for defamation by the business. Bosworth claims in his defence that all of his statements were either based in truth or were his honest opinion at the time of the repairs. The outcome of this case remains to be seen.

With the number of similar cases filed in local courts steadily increasing, it’s clear that defamation is no longer confined to newspapers and tabloid magazines. This new environment raises a number of issues with current Australian defamation law’s ability to adapt.

We know that content must be published to a third party in order to come under defamation law. But does that mean that you can only sue for defamation in the country where the matter was posted online? Most of what is published on the Internet is – surprise, surprise – available

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globally. A person’s reputation can therefore be damaged in Australia even by matter posted internationally. If the claim must be pursued internationally, the costs of doing so would be astronomical.

Luckily, the High Court of Australia has recognised that, as long as your reputation is damaged within your own community by content available for Internet download, you can sue the international publisher under Australian law. But how can this possibly be enforced? How can you realistically claim money from publishers who are oceans (and multiple jurisdictions) away?

Publishers in countries such as the USA, whose defamation laws are far narrower due to their constitutional right to freedom of speech, may rightfully fail to recognise the authority of Australian law – particularly if the matter would not have been unlawful in their home country.

Most networking sites have users agree to extensive terms and conditions of use – you know, that text that no one ever reads – which absolve the website of responsibility and place liability for posts on individuals. To add insult to injury, defamation can succeed against people even where they did not intend to damage a person’s reputation. As a result, the frivolous social media musings of notoriously flippant teenagers can result in bankruptcy, as was the case for Andrew Farley.

When was the last time you had

It’s equally as important to note that not every ‘mean’ comment is automatically defamatory. A number of pathetic trolls tweeted TV personality Charlotte Dawson to “go hang [her]self ” just hours before she did, in fact, commit suicide – and they’re assholes for sure; psychopaths for maybe. But they’re most likely not liable for defamation.

an editor or lawyer vetting every word before you tweet? Never?

We thought so. And yet, you are subject to the same punishments as massive media corporations.

We’re not saying that everyone should quit the Internet and retreat to Amish communities for the rest of their days. All we’re saying is, be careful. Social media makes defamation easier than it has ever been. If you ‘share’ an article that contains a defamatory statement, you may also be liable for defamation because you reproduced it. If you comment “#dictator” on a picture of Prime Minister Tony Abbott – aside from

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At present, it seems the best way to protect Australia’s bloggers, tweeters and YouTubers from defaming or being defamed is through education. Parents need to teach kids what they can and can’t say online – pretending your child is an angel won’t stop them from being a troll. And as we noted above, even innocently-meant public complaints can land people in seriously hot water.

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The frivolous social media musings of notoriously flippant teenagers can result in bankruptcy.

getting millions of virtual high fives – you may also be liable for defamation under the principle of ‘false innuendo’, because that hashtag connected ol’ Tony to images of Stalin and Mussolini. If you declare, while walking down the street, that Sally Bloggs is a slut, people may not know who you’re talking about. But if you write it on your Facebook and poor Sally’s profile is linked at the mention of her name, there’s no doubt about who you’re erring to – and you may be liable for defamation.

Think before you post. And don’t be afraid to seek legal action if you think something online has damaged the way others see or treat you. Social media is here to stay and growing every day – as is the law.

Use it wisely.

If you think you may have been defamed, or have other legal questions, the University’s studentrun Magistrates Court Legal Advice service provides free legal advice two days per week.

Call (08) 8204 2444 to make an appointment.

After undertaking placements at the Magistrates Court Legal Advice Service, these four Law students banded together to pen this cautionary piece.

interview

write me like one of your your adelaide girls

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miranda freeman talks b. media, the adelaide publishing scene & getting paid to write WORDS BY sharmonie cockayne Photo by kenneth koh

At just 25, Miranda boasts an impressive CV. I know this because I’ve stalked her glowing LinkedIn profile, which contains the long list of South Australian publications she’s written for. Also, you know, because you can’t pick up a publication in the CBD without spotting her name.

Since studying Journalism at the University of South Australia (UniSA) and later a Bachelor of Media at the University of Adelaide, she’s written for local magazines FasterLouder, dB, Merge, Collect, Five Thousand, Attitude Magazine, Collect, The Adelaide Review and Rip It Up, as well as The Melbourne Review. Currently, she holds the enviable position of Digital Editor at Rip It Up, and has held it for three years now.

It wasn’t exactly a straight and narrow path, though. One’s journey to the top in the media industry is a bit of a Yellow Brick Road – winding paths, hidden tracks, and hurdles in the poppy fields.

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Usually the person to be hitting the record button on the iPhone, South Australian writer Miranda Freeman sat down with me to talk about her success in the Adelaide publishing game since studying a Bachelor of Media at the University of Adelaide.

It’s not just everyone sitting around and relaxing and drinking coffee and smoking.

‘I started at humble FasterLouder when I was 19 and that was just really simple to do,’ says Freeman, who wrote for them whilst studying Journalism at UniSA. ‘I did that for a couple of months and from there I did dB. I applied for dB, sent an example of my work and then got a job with them.’ To start out in the Adelaide writing scene, Freeman says ‘it’s really simple.’

‘That’s how I got started at Merge. I picked up a Merge and I just found

contact details and I emailed Josh and said “Hi, I’d like to write for you and here’s an example of my work.”’

Taking a few pages out of Dorothy’s book, Freeman knows that while talent and passion will get you a long way, friends can get you further. Although kicking things off is as easy as an email, networking, she says, is essential. ‘You have to make those connections, have beers with them, continue to be relevant in their life so they think of you when they start a publication.’

When Joshua Fanning and Owen Lindsay started up Collect, Freeman was a shoe-in, as she had worked previously for Fanning at Merge.

Freeman went from one year of solid freelancing to her nine to five office job at Rip It Up as their Digital Editor. That year, she freelanced for Rip It Up, Five Thousand, Merge, and Attitude all at once. ‘I really threw myself everywhere,’ she said, ‘and that was good writing experience.’

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It was a ‘crazy’ time in her life and she enjoyed the ‘mellow’ leisure of working from home, but when it comes down to business, you just can’t deny the comfort of a stable income. What’s greater: freelancing or an office job? Freeman’s immediate response was clear.

‘Being paid to write is so good.’

The sting of tearing away publications (who, at the very least for the sake of networking, are more than likely your friends) like a Band-Aid is bittersweet. A necessary pain it seems when you’re at the cusp of achieving your life long dream.

Despite a brief moment in time when Freeman wanted to be a pet shop owner, her long term goal has always been ‘just to be paid to write.’

Transitioning from freelancing to full-time employment at Rip It Up sounds a lot like friendship woes in the school playground. ‘You have to have loyalty. I had to pretty much say goodbye to Collect and Five

Thousand.’ You can’t roll in the hay with other publications once you’ve committed. ‘It’s like you’re cheating on your husband.’

But if switching to full-time employment is like cheating, skipping out on Adelaide for the UK must be like divorce. As I write this, Miranda is making her way over to London - a move that is equal parts career move and equal parts a desire for a change in scenery. ‘Publishing can be really limited in Australia and I think, oversees especially, digital platforms are really advanced at the moment.’

As well as expanding her writing experience and finding new opportunities, she kind of just wants to leave the nest for a year or two. ‘When you’re in your 20s I feel you’ve got to really push yourself.’ Moving to a new country without a prospective job, a home or a return ticket? The girl’s got guts.

A sceptical media student myself, I’ve always wondered just how much

university prepares students for life in the media industry. How exactly did Freeman’s time at university help consolidate her successes in South Australia and her journey beyond?

Her time at UniSA helped her define herself as a lifestyle-culture-art-music-food writer. ‘If you want to be a hard hitting news journo, do journalism. I didn’t want to do that. I wanted to be a writer.’ The Media discipline at the University of Adelaide is ‘a lot broader, and it teaches a much more relevant skill set,’ she explained.

According to Freeman, the reality is that writers need to be versatile. ‘You have to have multiple skills. You can’t just write. You should be able to use Photoshop, use Final Cut Pro, be digitally skilled.’ For students whose career path is broader than pure journalism, she says, the Bachelor of Media offers a lot more.

‘Understanding your demographic is really really important and it’s one thing that I’ve taken from the

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You no longer have the right to really work for other publications.

It’s like you’re cheating on your husband.

[Media] degree that I’ve applied to my job,’ she said. ‘Picking up on what people like and key words and just responses to posts. I probably would not have paid attention to that if it hadn’t been drummed into me immediately how essential it is to know the audience and what they like, in my in my degree.’ Being responsible for social media growth and development at Rip It Up, I’d say that’s a fundamentally necessary skill.

When you’re still at uni, she says, it’s a good ‘time to get your feelers out there,’ whether it be commissioning your work, networking or interning.

‘Its really really good to get in and actually experience it. [When you’re interning] you’re actually in the office, you’re actually experiencing the deadlines, you’re experiencing how an office works. It’s not just everyone sitting around and relaxing and drinking coffee and smoking.’

Like a proud mother, Freeman revealed to me that of the five

interns that she had whilst working at Rip It Up, one of them, Ilona Wallace, is now ‘a fully fledged writer’ at the publication. And so the student becomes the teacher. Funny how things turn around.

On a serious note to aspiring media junkies, Freeman warns that writers ought be prepared for the uncertainty that is the media industry. ‘Anything can happen. People who have been working for publications for decades can be made redundant like that.’ ‘The way the industry is at the moment,’ she says, ‘it’s very cut throat and hard and its only going to get harder.’

Miranda is frank about past aspirations of owning her own print magazine. ‘I think the dream of having my own magazine is dying quickly just by the way the climate is at the moment. It just isn’t going to happen.’

Her point could not be more apparent as she steps out of her role

at Rip It Up, which, as of April 18th, became a digital-only platform.

After 25 years of music news, reviews, and features, the magazine will now be based solely online.

That being said, while jobs in print media are dwindling, there are a lot of jobs opening up in digital. For Miranda, the prospect of being an editor may still be real. Although her future mag may not be in our hands, it’ll probably be on our screens.

Who knows what type of platform she’ll be writing for in London, but whatever it is, I’m confident Freeman will colour it vibrant with her words.

And when she’s soaked up the all of that rich writing culture, Adelaide will welcome her home with open arms- a beer in one hand and a voice recorder in the other.

After all, there’s no place like home.

Sharmonie transcribed to Iggy, wrote this to Lorde and edited it to Haim. You be the judge of how well that turned out for her.

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is permaculture having a baby? and exclusive: Farming’s SHOCKING post-rehab tell-all

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words by justin mcarthur, natal-agriculture correspondent

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art by monty do-wyeld

• ‘I’ve still got it’, Permaculture tells paps at 36 – and is she boasting a baby bump?

• EXCLUSIVE post-rehab interview with Farming: the potential father-to-be?

• Nutrient-rich: Farming’s rebound health tips

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ith a possible new baby on the way, savvy eco-nut Permaculture had good cause to be cheerful as she made her way out of her Gawler home-base on Saturday.

The self-reliant 36-year-old natural beauty was in high spirits, greeting paparazzi with a sunny smile. ‘What are you all doing here? Guess I’ve still got it,’ she said, beaming.

Taking a leaf out of her pal Nature’s book, Permaculture looked organically low-maintenance, in a breezy, passively-cool sundress – beneath which a growing baby bump seemed evident as she posed for photos.

Alongside photos taken with Farming before he went into rehab in early March, Permaculture’s expanding midriff has cultivated rumours she’s become Farming’s budding new bud.

A source close to Farming told On Dit that Farming and Permaculture have been ‘growing close’ in recent years – and the pastoral maestro does sure seem happy to be seen alongside the long-term companion-planter.

‘At first I didn’t think they’d work out,’ confided a mutual

BLOOMING LOVELY: Permaculture seems to show off a bulging belly as she poses for the paps

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friend. ‘But now I really believe Permaculture has given Farming a new lease on life.’

Meanwhile, Farming has broken his silence over the pesticide dependency that plunged his life into chaos, forcing him to check into a Barossa rehab clinic at the start of March. ‘This has been a tough decision for me, but I need to make some big changes,’ the star confided at the time, tearyeyed – a big fall for the celeb spotlighted through his appearances on Big Brother and Dancing with the Stars, as well as through his integral formative role in the entirety of human civilisation.

March’s news was just the latest in a long line of scandals. In a series of tweets last December, he lamented the number of ‘haters’ he’s got over the years, which seemed reasonable to some commentators – his enviable tracts having attracted both tractors and detractors over a long career. But his breakdown became more apparent following revelations that he’d been caught up in monocultural planting, an unhealthy devotion to singledom that ultimately rendered him disease-ridden. Further devastating was the news that he’d become dependent on performance-enhancing drugs like RoundUp, Rodeo, and X-77 Spreader. A source close to Farming even suggested he’d become infertile.

‘I’d been talking to my friends and I’d said things to my mate Electricity for probably 12 months prior to that, saying I don’t feel like I’m coping that well anymore with so many different elements of my life,’ he told On Dit. Farming said he had been taught to endure weakness from a young age, and it was a mentality that stayed with him as he matured over the years.

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BEFORE A FALL: Farming and Permaculture share a friendly picnic at the Botanic Gardens in Feb.

BAA BAA BABY BUMP: Permaculture arm in arm with rumoured beau – is their flock growing?

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‘so, i just read that whole article and have no idea what permaculture is...’

Permaculture is a term coined by Australian pioneers Bill Mollison and David Holmgren to describe a series of practices that combine ‘permanence’ with ‘agriculture’ (though the portmanteau was later expanded to apply to ‘culture’ more broadly). As a movement, it focuses on the inherent interconnectivity of various sustainability practices – combining ideas such as companion planting, rainwater harvesting, sustainable architecture, reusing by-products, and maximising the use of space so as to minimise the overall impact of a project.

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HARD GROUND TO BREAK: Farming blamed ‘country-instilled toughness’ for his delay in seeking help

‘I’ve been doing this for a really long time, and every time I came to a decision it was just about pushing through, overcoming, just get on with it,’ he said.

‘But when it came to something environmental, you just learnt to suppress it. To actually stop and assess for a second, you didn’t do it. You just get on with it and just execute what you have to do and you kind of get to a point where you probably can’t keep going like that. It’s unsustainable.’

I feel much less like a relic of a diseased, nutrient-exhausted and/ or eutrophicating, chemically dependent industry.’

‘I guess sometimes you feel ill-atease with things, when you should feel fine where you are,’ he reflected.

‘But then again, sometimes the grass really is greener on the other side.’

Whatever else may be true, Farming looked cock-a-hoop as he finally got out of the clinic on Saturday.

‘I’m a new me,’ he declared to the world. ‘I’m feeling healthy and alive, now that I’ve stopped ignoring all evolutionary rationalism/scientific indicators that support biodiversity.

Justin McArthur is the anti-Jedward.

Recognising the importance of ecological biodiversity, and more broadly, the efficiency of integrating a range of systems, the permaculture movement draws its strength not only from its dependence on observable scientific phenomena, but also from its role in reviving community networks and rejuvenating traditional community infrastructure, such as farmer’s markets – since permaculture is specifically tailored to smaller scales, its techniques can easily be co-opted into home and community gardening. Though some elements of the movement have come into question in the past (for example, its occasional connection to sometimes-spurious ‘holistic’ approaches in fields like medicine), permaculture offers a refreshing change to some of the more ecologically damaging mainstays of the broader farming industry.

Researchers from the National Drug and Alcohol Research would like to speakto people who use drugs when they go out.

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Face to face interviews will be conducted between April and May. The interview takes around one hour and is held at a location convenient for you. Interviews are anonymous and confidential. You will be reimbursed $40 for your time.

Call or SMS Rachel on 0410 847 033 or email saedrs@unsw.edu.au (you do not have to use your real name).

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featured artist

nicky mellonie ‘Tangle’ (ink and watercolour)

‘Queen Bee’ (ink)

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Nicky Mellonie is currently undertaking her first year of a Bachelor of Media at the University of Adelaide.

Her work mainly focuses around taking photos of people who inspire her or who look interesting and drawing them.

Surround yourself with people who inspire you.

‘I guess this is a philosophy for my art; I create works of people who are visually or personally inspiring and create works for people who inspire me. My influences are often subconscious where I may have seen a picture, a design in my environment, other artists’ work, or had a unique thought about something; everyone looks at things differently.

Untitled (white pencil and acrylic)

You often don’t or can’t see beauty in the world or yourself until someone shows it to you.

‘To me, the most predominant facial features on a human are the eyes and smile. I like capturing photographs of people when they are not looking at anything in particular, a short space of time when they are unaware. I know that when I look at a person I immediately take note of eyes and smiles, but taking away those elements creates a very still, serene presence, a state of calm.

My main mediums are white pencil, charcoal and ink work with “retro” fountain pens, and occasionally watercolours. I don’t know if I have a style yet, I don’t think I could tie myself down to one form of art – not yet anyway!’

Two of Nicky’s artworks are also featured on the front and back covers of this magazine. You can contact her regarding her artworks and commissioning at nicky.mellonie@gmail.com.

‘Samba’ (white pencil and acrylic)

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I f brandis says okay our right to bigotry? words by Idris martin

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enator the Hon George Brandis QC declared that people have a right to be bigots; the internet lost its shit.

I wouldn’t say it was from shock we’re talking about the Attorney General of a government that has displayed a belief that freedom is the basis of good governance, that a society that is liberated from government is utopia.

No; instead, it felt more like people’s sensibilities had been offended. It was a classic example of the way we allow a thing to happen day in and day out, but the second someone points at it and declares it to be scandalous, we are scandalised.

The thing is, our Attorney General is correct: people do have a right to be bigots. To date, I haven’t heard of a law that makes it a crime to think racist thoughts. Acting on one’s bigotry, now there’s where it gets a little bit tricky.

The realisation that our freedom of speech was apparently restricted came about in 2010, when nine individuals commenced legal proceedings against Andrew Bolt over two articles he wrote about ‘white

aborigines’ (his words, not mine).

In September 2011, the Federal Court found that Bolt had indeed breached Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act, and did not have an exemption under Section 18D of the same Act. This wasn’t the first time Bolt had come into trouble with the Courts.

He’d been found guilty of defamation by the Supreme Court of Victoria in 2002, and ordered to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages for an article he wrote in December 2000.

‘We should never do anything in this country which restricts the sacred principle of free speech and free speech means the right of people to say what you don’t like, not just the right of people to say what you do like,’ declared then Leader of the Opposition and now Prime Minister the Hon Tony Abbott MP in response to the 2011 ruling by the Federal Court.

The Letter of the Law Sections 18C and 18D of the Racial Discrimination Act were introduced into law in 1995 during the Keating Government, as it implemented recommendations from

the National Inquiry into Racist Violence and the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody.

The inquiry found that racial vilification can cause extreme emotional and psychological harm to victims, reinforce discrimination, and can lead to serious harassment, intimidation and violence.

Section 18C makes it unlawful to ‘offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate’ someone because of their ethnicity or race. Justice Kiefel in Creek v Cairns Post Pty Ltd found that such an action under Section 18C must have ‘profound and serious effects, not to be likened to mere slights.’ Justice Branson of the Federal Court, who went on to become the President of the Human Rights Commission, took issue with the ‘gloss’ applied to the language of the legislation in Jones v Toben, but understood that this was the intent of Parliament and drew a distinction between ‘technical, but not real, offence or insult.’

What we can piece together here is that the Courts have and want to define the scope of Section 18C to apply to racial vilification that causes ‘profound and serious effects’, but maybe it

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wouldn’t hurt to do what Race Discrimination Commissioner Tim Soutphommasane suggests and clarify this in the legislation itself.

Some people argue that this still isn’t good enough, as it begs the question of who will determine what ‘profound and serious effects’ are. But seriously, we trust judges to make calls on all sorts of things - is this really where you want to start with your concern that judges can’t be trusted to make decisions?

A Bolt By Any Other Name

Andrew Bolt, with his description of eighteen well known ‘white aborigines’, was found to have contravened Section 18C, but one of the things his lawyers attempted to do was use Section 18D of the same Act to get him off the hook.

If you were paying attention earlier, you would have noticed that Bolt didn’t get an exemption under Section 18D, which begs the question: how can you receive an exemption from what has effectively been ruled to be hate speech?

writing is done ‘reasonably and in good faith.’

In Andrew Bolt’s case, Justice Bromberg found that ‘the manner in which the articles were written, including that they contained errors of fact, distortions of the truth and inflammatory and provocative language,’ meant that Bolt could not get an exemption under Section 18D. It seems that Justice Bromberg took exception to Bolt asserting that the 18 individuals he named in his article were only claiming to be Aboriginal in order to further their own careers; not only was this assertion inaccurate, but the way that Bolt went about writing his two columns indicated that he wasn’t interested in being balanced or reasonable – he seemed only interested in proclaiming that these people weren’t Aboriginal enough to meet his personal criteria. Handy hint: if you ever decide to write an opinion piece about the careers of individuals and their race, it might not be a bad idea to seek a comment from them. Or establish if everything you’re writing is factually correct.

When Part IIA (the bit of the Racial Discrimination Act that Sections 18C and 18D appear in) was incorporated into the legislation, it was done so as to ensure that free speech wasn’t actually inhibited.

Regardless of what one thinks of the case and the result, Andrew Bolt declared it to be ‘a terrible day for freedom of speech in this country.’

To that effect, ‘Section 18C does not render unlawful anything said or done reasonably and in good faith.’ To give Section 18D even more weight, a number of scenarios that basically make Section 18C pointless are then given, including art, academic discourse, and even commentary on issue relevant to the public interest – in other words, commentators in newspapers are allowed to do as they please.

They just have to ensure that thier

Today, Senator the Hon George Brandis QC has decided the time has come to abolish this blatant attack on the rights of bigots and the free expression of bigotry (his language, not mine).

Time For A Change?

The exposure-draft put out of his office looks to abolish Sections 18B (that basically says that if an act is committed and one of the reasons for the act is the race or ethnicity of a person,

then the reasoning for the act shall be taken to be because of race), 18C, 18D and 18F (a quick line about State and Territory law), and replaced them instead with a brand new section.

The replacement our Attorney General proposes makes it unlawful to do something that is ‘reasonable likely’ to ‘vilify another person or a group of persons’ or to ‘intimidate’ them if you do it because of their race.

So far it seems like much of a muchness - what’s the difference here?

The proposed new language then goes on to define ‘vilify’ as to ‘incite hatred against a person or group of persons’ and ‘intimidate’ as to ‘cause fear of physical harm.’

Already, commentators who have managed to make it past the elimination of Section 18C and 18D to this part of the exposure-draft have pointed out that this change means that if someone is racist and bigoted towards an individuals or ethnic group but doesn’t frame it in a way that invites others to

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ethnic organisations in Australia have articulated.

No matter what your thoughts on what vilification actually is, the last bit is perhaps what has people up in arms the most:

The National Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation (NACCHO) argue that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians could face an impact on their health under the proposed changes.

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participate in their racism, it looks like they’ll be all good.

This section does not apply to words, sounds, images or writing spoken, broadcast, published or otherwise communicated in the course of participating in the public discussion of any political, social, cultural, religious, artistic, academic or scientific matter.

In other words, short of standing in the middle of Rundle Mall with a megaphone calling for the elimination of brown people whilst declaring that this is nothing to do with anything except your bigotry, you should be good to go. Nobody can accuse you of committing a crime.

In all seriousness though, this announcement has since proven to be unpopular. A Nielsen poll found that 88% of voters oppose the changes Senator Brandis has proposed. Cultural and ethnic groups from across the country have come out in opposition to the changes. Even members of Senator Brandis’ own party are expressing their concerns, and the possibility of these MPs crossing them floor is still on the table.

what’s under threat?

The concerns these Liberal MPs have are probably fairly similar to what the majority of cultural and

‘Medical research clearly links experiences of racism with reduced health outcomes,’ they said in a statement.

Jeremy Jones of the AustralianIsrael Jewish Affairs Council expressed concern at the possible lifting of restrictions on Holocaust denial in Australia.

Even a research fellow from the right-wing think tank Institute of Public Affairs Chris Berg, who supports the Senator Brandis’ proposal, admitted, ‘Under the draft legislation it’s pretty clear the material Frederick Toben wrote would be legal.’

If it doesn’t though and becomes law, take solace in the fact that it could have been ‘much worse’ according to the Sydney Morning Herald. They reported a government Minister saying that the original proposal was ‘terrible’ and that ‘George has really drunk the rightwing Kool-Aid.’ Whatever happens with Sections 18C and 18D of the Racial Discrimination Act, at least race politics is occupying a part of the mainstream political discourse today. Considering things like the White Australia Policy are still within the living memory of Australians, it’s remarkable how little we actually talk about racism.

You never know: if people are allowed to be more racist, maybe we’ll be able to fight racism better.

Maybe.

Frederick Toben was the defendant in Jones v Toben where he was prosecuted for denial of the holocaust.

What happens now?

Even without the possibility of Coalition members crossing the floor, it seems unlikely that the proposed changes would make it through the current Senate, and with the mounting pressure on the Coalition around this issue it’s not hard to see the exposure draft getting killed.

Idris has eaten five roti canais today, and he will probably eat at least seven more before sunset.

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red bull gives you wings... and other more disastrous side effects?

an investigation into red bull’s health claims words by max cooper art by JACQUELINE EDWARDS

E

arlier this year, On Dit was approached by the Red Bull Student Brand Manager for the University of Adelaide with some promotional opportunities. Due to personal reasons, the editors respectfully declined. In response, Red Bull’s representative expressed that if their concern was that Red Bull is an unhealthy drink, they could be assured that this is not the case, and that the company are currently trying to address the matter. He also invited the editors to do a bit of investigative journalism into the healthiness of the drink. The

editors accepted his invitation, and tasked me with looking into the effects of Red Bull.

I don’t think I need to go too far into why people drink Red Bull.

For the student population, its name is synonymous with all-nighters and exam revision (or, realistically, cramming). It’s also popular as a mixer for drinks. In addition to this, the actual marketing for the drink is all about athletic prowess and extreme sports. Given this, there are a few things to look at in terms of whether or not Red Bull

is ‘unhealthy’ or not: how much it helps something like study, how much it helps sporting activity, and most importantly what impact its ingredients have on drinkers’ health.

Seeing Red Bull

So, what is actually in Red Bull?

Caffeine, taurine, B-vitamins, sugar, and water. In a 250mL can, there are about: 80mg of caffeine, 1g of taurine, and just shy of 30g (27.5g, to be exact) of sugar. Their website helpfully provides relative examples to contextualise these figures: 80mg

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of caffeine is about a cup of coffee’s worth, a 70kg adult will have around 70g of taurine in their body, and the 11g/100mL of sugars in Red Bull is ‘comparable’ to apple or orange juice.

The justification (where it exists) for these ingredients is pretty much the same: they keep you going. Caffeine has ‘stimulating effects on the human body and mind’, and sugars ‘provide energy to body and mind’. Red Bull’s website, suggested to me by aformentioned Student Brand Manager and his colleagues, just offers very cursory descriptions of what taurine and various vitamins are.

The ingredients are fairly straightforward. Not a shock: the drink people keep to give themselves a rush of energy and focus is full of sugar and caffeine. B-vitamins are generally seen as pretty good things: I know my doctor’s told me eggs and their B-12 are good for me (she, unsurprisingly perhaps, hasn’t recommended Red Bull as an alternative). But what of taurine?

Taurine of Duty

The Red Bull website describes taurine as ‘an amino acid, naturally occuring in the human body and present in the daily diet’. They clearly don’t want consumers to be too worried about what it is, and have even suggested in some advertising that it adds to the energy giving effects of caffeine and sugar.

They do have fair reason to worry about public perception: until 2008 (keeping in mind Red Bull first became available in 1984), concerns over taurine kept Red Bull from being sold in France. Eventually the French authorities relented, given they had not discovered any dire health concerns in Red Bull, taurine-related or otherwise. On that level, Red Bull’s Student Brand Manager is right: Red Bull isn’t dangerous enough for a country to ban it (just to investigate it for a while). And of course, standard disclaimers apply about the consumption of caffeine and sugar: at this point, we all know too much of either isn’t great.

In case you don’t know, some of the potential side-effects of caffeine overdose: anxiety, nausea, heart palpitations or an increased heartbeat, insomnia, sweating, excessive urination or diarrhoea, dizziness, and probably (definitely) the worst – cardiac arrest. Not super fun. I’m not trying to say Red Bull is unique in this respect, but a Red Bull overdose is a caffeine overdose. There’s also the dangers of dehydration: headaches, fatigue, moodiness and so on.

It’s (relatively) health-neutral in moderation though. But is there anything to actually recommend Red Bull?

Red Bullheaded

So Red Bull has about the impact

on health you’d expect from a can of mostly caffeine and sugar: it’s not great, but in moderation is pretty negligible. What of the claims of sporting excellence enabled by Red Bull, or the cult of the energy drink that emerges amongst university students (at least) every six months?

Looking to sporting performance first, it’s (again perhaps as you’d expect) contested ground. Red Bull’s marketing is very much focused on the purported benefits to sporting ability offered by the drink. Their website helpfully offers that it ‘can be consumed before, during and after sporting activities’. They also disclaim that they offer ‘a functional product and not a thirst quencher’ – no one is claiming, then, that Red Bull is an appropriate substitute for water in sports. Having said that, they offer a quote from triathelete Courtney Atkinson about how she likes to ‘mix [her Red Bull] with some water in my bike drink bottle to dilute the drink a little’. This quote is fairly typical of the websites offerings, with athletes of different codes offering pithy descriptions of the assistance Red Bull offers.

There is less support in the form of scientific research than there is in sporting sound bites. The effects of caffeine and sugar are, as in the court of popular opinion, fairly agreed upon in their impact on performance. But there are those claims that taurine offers

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an extra kick, or interacts with caffeine in a special way. After all, it’s involved in muscular contraction, so more would help.

Unsurprisingly, though, there haven’t been any studies suggesting that the extra intake of taurine would offer anything extra to muscular activity.

Indeed, the critical regulation of its presence in muscles suggests that diet would have little-to-no impact on how much of it the muscles see.

On a Wing and a Prayer

Sports wise, the drink is nothing special. It’s fair enough they’d brand themselves with sports stars though: lots of products with even less of a claim to sporting performance do the same. What about the all-nighter, that noble hallmark of the University experience?

Here, there is actually some supporting evidence. While studies of physical performance have shown very little of note, especially with respect to impacts beyond caffeine intake, one study offers a some justification for those of us who want to cram our studies as close to assessment deadlines as possible.

In studying the impacts on long-haul drivers in 2010, researchers from the Utrecht Institiute for Pharmaceutical Sciences found that little was seen in terms of difference for the first two hours, but after three or four

some significant improvements were seen in driving ability for those that drank Red Bull (it was measured with metrics like speed regulation and ability to drive without swerving or drifting from lanes).

I can’t, and the study (which, cards on the table, was financially supported

by Red Bull) didn’t, actually extrapolate the ability of highway drivers to stay attentive to students, but in terms of conjecture this study is some fertile ground. After all, they were looking at focus over a long period of a monotonous activity that lowered focus. Sounds familiar.

A final disclaimer on this, though: like other studies offering some evidence of impact from Red Bull, there was no effort made to show that the impact could be differentiated from the caffeine itself (by Red Bull’s own standard, the same as cup of coffee).

Red Bullshit?

So, what’s to be said for Red Bull, aside from that it is relatively safe in moderation? Branding may be the answer. Though the objective chemical impacts of Red Bull aren’t especially unique, a study from Boston College’s Carroll School of Management, published in 2011, involving branded cars in a driving simulation game show that all that marketing focused on extreme sports has something to be said for it. Even

though the cars on offer were objectively identical and the players knew that, they felt the Red Bull car was the fastest – and it actually was. Far from being a simple issue of perception, they genuinely raced the placebo car faster.

Before Red Bull takes this and runs with it, there’s a bittersweet angle: they also drove more recklessly. Shockingly, a brand hinging on risk-taking gets results that are either much faster than normal (due to such risks panning out) or slower than normal (due to those same risks backfiring, say by hitting another car).

There was nowhere near the middle ground seen in other cars’ results.

Winging It

From a certain angle, Red Bull isn’t unhealthy. They’re not offering an excess of caffeine or sugar compared to other products, and moderate consumption doesn’t have any especially adverse impact on people. But what you’re mostly getting from them is the brand.

Which is, I guess, a win for their marketing team? That is, as long as they’re willing to wear the good with the bad in terms of the consequences of their well-cultivated connection with extreme athletes and risk-takers, because whether they want it to or not, that association goes beyond their ads or even their product to anything that carries their name.

Max Cooper’s head’s in the game, but his heart’s in the song.

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health anxiety

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the dark side of hypochondria words by sophie byrne art by aisyah ibrahim

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adies and Gentlemen, I am a hypochondriac, but I am not proud. This is not an article that is meant to make Lauren feel bad in any way. Her experiences being sick as a little kid sound genuinely scary, and no wonder she developed such a keen interest in all things symptom-y and medical. I’m super grateful she could tell me if I had a liver disease too because I would want to know!

But, hypochondria that is not.

Hypochondria is having a full blown panic attack at the age of seven because your legs were aching so you convinced yourself have leukaemia.

It’s having to leave a lecture suddenly because your heart skipped a beat (totally normal) but now you’re hyperventilating, the room is spinning and your chest is tightening. Hypochondria means thinking, at least once a day, ‘I hope I don’t die today from the hidden illness within me that is surely killing me hour by hour’ even though you are perfectly healthy. It’s feeling guilty for worrying about being sick when you are not. It’s also having to visit your GP more times a year than is reasonable just to be told ‘you are fine’.

I know that all sounds a little crazy, and I won’t lie to you, it kind of is.

Hypochondria is more commonly called Health Anxiety now. It’s an anxiety disorder where your worries manifest themselves in an obsessive delusion that you have a serious illness. I have a lot of insight into my own health anxiety because my Dad is a GP and my Mum is a Palliative Care Consultant (she looks after people when they are dying). My entire childhood was filled with stories of this patient dying from a cancer that was only detected two weeks ago, or this patient who came in with a headache and has to have brain surgery now. (To be completely clear, doctor patient confidentiality was never broken! Doctors just like to talk about cases in the abstract because they’re Doctors. Obviously this had an impact on me, and as my family tends to be the worrying kind anyway, all my anxieties fed into my own fears of being sick.)

The type of illness I worry about tends to change from month to month. Late last year I was worried I had a heart condition because I would get heart palpitations after having a coffee (duh, caffeine). That has kept up and I still regularly check my pulse throughout the day, just to make sure my heart is still beating normally. A few years ago I was

terrified of having a spinal condition that would leave me paralysed and I would constantly wriggle my toes to make sure they still moved until they cramped. And after seeing a careless Doctor (who knew about my health anxiety but still thought it would be reasonable to suggest an ultrasound on my breasts because they thought there was a 0.01% chance there might be a lump) I would check my breasts every morning and night (even after getting a second opinion from my normal GP who told me my boobs were just different sizes and I was 100% fine).

I don’t enjoy having this ridiculous, irrational worry follow me around every day. I might joke about it with fellow hypochondriacs as we discuss the latest illness delusion that bears absolutely no grounding in reality for one friend glandular fever was her main concern, for another it was bowel cancer. But I know that when we go home, and it’s late at night, and we can’t sleep because our minds are racing and we have to keep checking our bodies for irregularities or look up more symptoms that confirm our worst fears, it isn’t funny. At all.

One of the nastiest things about this kind of anxiety is that people have

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to actually go through life threatening illnesses all the time. I recognise that to be told you are sick must be harder than I can ever know, and that I can never fully experience what it would be like. But I still trick myself into thinking I know that feeling whenever I get worried.

My family, like all families, has seen people go through cancer, surgery, illness. It’s an inescapable part of human existence, and it is awful. The fear that I’m next, and the subsequent ways in which that fear derails me, makes me feel almost guilty because I know I shouldn’t be feeling those things, that it’s not real. I hate that there’s the potential that I inadvertently trivialise the experiences of people who are genuinely unwell.

There have been a lot of amazing resources for me to deal with my anxiety. My Mum - my biggest supporter in getting control of it – suggested I write a worry diary, where I jot down what illness I’m worried about, then next to it write why it’s irrational for me to worry about it. That helped me to no end, the weekly panic attacks subsided and I’ve kept my Hypochondria Diary up for almost 6 months now.

Another thing that really helped was learning as much as I could about

Health Anxiety: the disorder. Being educated about anxiety is one of the best ways to tackle it in your own mind. I have breathing techniques to calm the panic (the best one I use is holding your breath and counting to ten, before releasing slowly) and I write down on a piece of paper ‘this will pass’ whenever I feel any sort of worry creeping up on me.

Anxiety will probably be something I will deal with for the rest of my life, in some way. But I’m functional which I am very grateful for. I can go to classes and hand up assignments despite my worry, which is not the case for everyone (although it’s nothing to be ashamed of). But when I read things about ‘hypochondriacs’ and how it’s a funny quirk, I can’t help but think what I would give to never worry again about some stupid disease that I’ll convince myself I have. How, in my worst moments of panic, when I find myself gasping for air because I can’t talk myself out of the fear, I couldn’t be less proud of myself.

Have I got health anxiety? From Anxiety UK If you can answer YES to most of these questions, it’s likely you are affected by health anxiety.

During the past six months: • Have you been preoccupied with having a serious illness because of body symptoms, which has lasted at least six months?

• Have you felt distressed because of this preoccupation?

• Have you found this preoccupation impacts negatively on all areas of life including family life, social life and work?

• Have you felt you have needed to carry out constant self-examination and self-diagnosis?

• Have you experienced disbelief over a diagnosis from a doctor, or felt you are unconvinced by your doctor’s reassurances that you are fine?

• Do you constantly need reassurance from doctors, family and friends that you are fine, even if you don’t really believe what you are being told?

Some useful resources: Sophie Byrne is a law/arts student who loves writers festivals more than anything.

• http://www.beyondblue.org.au/ the-facts/anxiety • http://www.nhs.uk/conditions/hypochondria/Pages/Introduction.aspx

science

ancient predator with killer vision

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Lauren Fuge investigates Anomalocaris the badass

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Art by anthony nocera

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t’s easy to think of science as a distant endeavour — particles smashing at CERN in Switzerland, prehistoric fossils dug up in China, the Curiosity rover examining the sands of Mars… But some great discoveries hit closer to home than you think.

In 2011, an international team of researchers — including Dr Michael Lee and Dr Diego García-Bellido of our own uni — excavated a section of a farm near Emu Bay on Kangaroo Island, sifting through dark grey shale that used to be mud at the bottom of the ancient sea floor.

‘It’s a very diverse and well-preserved fossil deposit, similar in age and nature to the famous Burgess Shale of Canada,’ says Dr Michael Lee. ‘So we expected to find exciting things, though obviously weren’t sure exactly what.’

Localities like the Burgess Shale and Emu Bay are known as lagerstätten: sedimentary deposits that boast extraordinarily preserved fossils. But what was found in the Emu Bay Shale was remarkable, and so far unique.

Aside from unearthing over 40 new species and 5,000 individual specimens, the team found several specimens of remarkably complex eyes.

‘I found the first complete eye,’ says Dr Diego GarcíaBellido, a specialist in Cambrian soft-bodied fauna. ‘As soon as I saw it, I realised how important it was.’

‘We’ve found two main types of compound eyes,’ says Dr Lee. ‘We’re not sure of the owner of the smaller eyes, but the shape and size of the larger eyes exclude everything except the largest animal found there, Anomalocaris.’

Anomalocaris literally means “abnormal shrimp”, and there’s no doubt that it would look decidedly odd to

us. Anomalocaris was up to two metres long with an odd-shaped head, stalked eyes, head-claws, and flaps that it used to propel itself through the water. It is thought that the two claws on its head were used to snap open its preys’ exoskeletons. It is believed to have been the top predator of the Cambrian seas; faeces found in the shale show that the creature gobbled up the giant trilobite Redlichia takooensis, a tough, longlived marine arthropod.

Anomalocaris was an arthropod: an invertebrate with an exoskeleton, such as crustaceans, spiders, and insects.

Because arthropods are entirely made up of soft parts (aside from their hard shell), the fossil record of them is sparse, as their soft tissue just disintegrates over time.

This makes the specimens found in Emu Bay even more special. They date back 515 million years, to the Early Cambrian Period when life hadn’t even crawled up out of the ocean yet. For their age, they’re incredibly well preserved.

‘The Burgess Shale is the original locality of Anomalocaris and the site of probably the best preserved Cambrian fossils,’ says Dr García-Bellido.

‘But although our taxonomic diversity is smaller at this stage of our studies — we only started in 2007, whereas Burgess Shale has more than a century of research — some of our fossils surpass the quality of any of the other Cambrian lagerstätten.’

The soft tissue of the Emu Bay specimens has been fossilised through a process called mineralisation, where organic parts are chemically altered to become non-organic. This exquisite preservation captures details of their guts, appendages and even eyes, which reveal that

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Anomalocaris’s eyes are the oldest and most sophisticated in the fossil record.

Before this find, what we knew about early Cambrian optical design came from fossils of the iconic trilobite, a species that sprung up 535 million years ago. They survived for a ridiculously long time, enduring ice ages and continental shifts before disappearing in a mega-extinction 300 million years later. Their compound eyes were composed of hard calcium carbonate lenses, which are far different to our own soft eyes, because calcite is a form of limestone. Essentially trilobite eyes were made of mineralised rock.

‘Arthropod eyes — such as fly eyes — are made up of tiny little visual units called ommatidia,’ explains Dr Lee. ‘Each ommatidium results in a “pixel” of vision – the more ommatidia, the sharper the image. Typical trilobite eyes only had up to about 100 ommatidia, which would only have been able to resolve vague shapes.’

This was a step up from the primitive eyes of other earlier organisms, which could just sense light and dark.

But these new fossils have shown that trilobites weren’t keeping the gift of sight for themselves. In fact, they were being outstripped — the Anomalocaris eye might have had up to 30,000 ommatidia.

‘It can be compared to looking at two identical images, but one with 100 pixels and the other with 25,000 pixels: a huge difference in resolution!’ Dr. GarcíaBellido explains.

‘The Anomalocaris eye would have been as powerful as the eye of a modern dragonfly,’ says Dr Lee, ‘able to resolve details of the landscape and tiny creatures

hiding in it – very important for a predator.’

As Dr García-Bellido notes, an increase in the number of lenses in a compound eye would have been enormously beneficial to any organism, and evolutionarily speaking, this could have had a runaway effect.

There would have been continual pressure on Anomalocaris to develop and refine its eyes so it could hunt more efficiently. In turn, this would have put pressure on its prey to develop more complex visual systems in order to avoid predators, so each side constantly had to evolve new mechanisms to survive.

These specimens therefore support the theory that powerful vision evolved very rapidly, and acted as one of the most important driving factors of the Cambrian explosion: the evolutionary event that gave rise to all modern organisms.

‘Acute vision is an integral part of most the evolutionary advances we see in the Cambrian explosion,’ says Dr Lee. ‘For instance, locomotion (swimming, walking on the seabed, and burrowing), and predation, both appear at this time — but both require or at least are greatly facilitated by vision.

‘These discoveries strongly imply, of course, that the necessary brain and nervous systems required to process and act on these detailed visual stimuli were also present.’

That’s what makes Emu Bay one of the most important Cambrian fossil deposits in the southern hemisphere.

By preserving the past so exquisitely, it allows us to see how we became who we are today.

Lauren thinks ancient killer mega-shrimp are incredibly cool.

Decide for yourself what that says about her personality.

creative

38 PAGE

Phil’s Head Revisited words by Toby Barnfield art by Jack Lowe

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eated comfortably, Mr Phil E. Stine was reading a most felicitous passage: My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk, Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains, One minute past –

‘Fucking gibberish,’ he sighed, shaking his head, before tearing out the entire page forty-nine of the Collected Poems of John Keats and using it, in the absence of toilet paper, as a torchecul.

it best to flush a second time, for good measure, and, sure enough, the miniscule shred could not for a second time outlast the half-minute assault of water.

Washing his hands of the whole base and primal business, and also for the general sanitary reason, Phil reflected upon a time when torcheculs had not so abused his anus. He recalled infinite rolls of toilet paper of a softness most cloudlike, tissue paper eucalyptus-scented, a wayward leaf that he had once used as a younger man.

Indeed so coarse was the paper that Phil, his eyes watering, could not with accuracy be said to be wiping at all: he scraped.

But the lingering sting of the Collected Poems cut short this warm reminiscence, and reminded him that these privileges were, alas, in the past. A low income and the eminently thoughtful wills of former family members meant that he had many books and not much money.

And Phil, though not illiterate, as he could read, was certainly illiterary, as he could not read well, so finding a substitute for the unreasonably expensive product that is toilet paper was a task of minimal difficulty.

The page did however fulfil its newfound function, and, satisfied, Phil dropped it, white no longer, into the murky waters below. He then tossed aside the Collected Poems, which was left irreparably dog-eared upon impact with the floor, and trousered himself.

As for the present, Phil was still washing his hands. He had spent half an hour too long doing so by that stage, and was duty-bound by the various pressures of life to turn off the taps, exit the bathroom, and make for the post office post haste prior to work.

That there was no toilet paper was regrettable. The Collected Poems was a first edition, printed in 1820, and its nineteenth-century paper was not designed for contact with the sensitive modern orifice.

He contemplated a half flush, finger hovering over the button, but decided that a full one was necessary.

The full flush lasted for the economical time of thirty seconds, and when the water had settled, nothing remained of page forty-nine but for a shred of smeared paper. Phil, though a conservationist at heart, thought

Post post office (post work as well), Phil returned to the bathroom to find that the toilet was o’erbrimming like the autumn cider press. Smelling rather not like cider, not, probably, tasting like it either, excremental water oozed toward Phil’s feet. He shuffled away and tried to

creative

make contact with a plumber, but discovered that they for some reason chose not to work after eleven o’clock at night.

and neither, I am sure, can your nether orifice. Thus I am afraid I must insist that you return to toilet paper without delay.’

Having to improvise, Phil withdrew from the nearest bookcase the first three volumes of the Oxford Concise English Dictionary, and placed them against the lower sill of the bathroom door, so that they might soak-up and contain the overflowing sewage. The smell that was not cider could not at that moment be helped, so Phil, though tired, tried one last time to phone a plumber, perhaps one with insomnia; but Phil, not suffering from that particular condition himself, fell asleep next to the receiver.

Phil, in bed, still sleepy, beleaguered by a full bladder, was in no mind to argue, so the plumber, having plumbed, left an account on the desk, bowed, and bid him adieu.

He woke up to a knocking at his front door, poorly-slept and with aching bladder. He had dreamt, frighteningly, that a doctor had misspoken and diagnosed him with a urine retraction infection.

Being awake, or thereabouts, tempered his fright, and discovering, upon opening the door, that a plumber had arrived, largely rid him of it.

‘Is this,’ asked the plumber, ‘the residence of one Phil E. Stine?’

Apparently the plumber had answered Phil’s phone call in the early hours of the morning, and Phil had, in his sleep, explained that his plumbing was infected.

Phil, in answer, nodded his head sleepily.

‘In that case would you kindly permit me entrance to your infected bathroom? I am here, as you may have guessed, to plumb.’

And plumb, or plumbed, he did, until, after several hours of arduous work, he lumbered into Phil’s bedroom, and delivered his judgment: ‘Unfortunately, Mr Stine – as you, a man of thirty, should probably have known – first editions,’ and he held up the clogged and dripping wreckage of the Collected Poems, ‘are not appropriate torcheculs. The pipes cannot accommodate them,

With his bathroom functional once more, Phil was at last able to relieve himself.

As the amber liquid flowed, he hoped that urine retraction was merely the stuff of dreams.

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reviews book

fitness

art

catcher in the rye

bikram yoga lululemon, adelaide Reviewed by Taylah Minchington

dark hearts art gallery of SA Reviewed by nicola dowland

From the serious yogi’s decked out in the brand’s luxurious gear, to the nervous first timers, Lululemon’s yoga classes accommodate all. Situated in the Adelaide store, the hour-long class is jam-packed.

My advice: get there ten minutes early to ensure a cosy spot at the back.

From the askew house that only lacks the remains of a ruby shoed witch, to the confrontational banners running the breadth of North Terrace, the Art Gallery of South Australia’s new exhibition Dark Hearts imposes itself upon all city goers.

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by j.d. salinger Reviewed by dhania sarahtika The first few chapters of this controversial coming-ofage story made me wonder why I even bothered to read it in the first place. It’s skittish narration is about the random acts and thoughts of a rebel-without-a-cause, Holden Caulfield, who has just dropped out of school.

Halfway through the book, I had an epiphany and decided to join the countless others who regarded this book as praiseworthy. All because of a simple, yet subtle finding.

Through Holden’s impulsive nature, J. D. Salinger successfully portrays the consequences of following every little voice in one’s head. At a glance, he may seem rash and indecisive, but he’s actually a boy who holds onto nothing else but his reasoning.

Whether or not this alternative concept of honesty will work wonders for Holden is not mine to reveal. All I know is that it brought me to justify the randomness and made the plot much more appealing.

When the instructor led the class in a series of ‘Ohm’ chants, I had to restrain myself from adding ‘nom nom’ to the end.

Don’t judge I was hungry. I’ve attended Body Balance classes for the past few years and enjoy the elements of tai-chi, Pilates (not so much) and yoga all infused together, but it is nice to solely focus on the stretching and relaxation benefits of yoga, and better yet, it’s free.

For me, the best part of the class was the relaxation at the end.

So get those leggings on and get on down to James Place for a free yoga class. They are offered Tuesday and Thursday nights, 6:30pm-7:30pm and Sunday mornings, and 9:30am-10:30am. You will leave feeling calm and can say hello to a toned and flexible body.

Namaste!

Photo by Alex Cockayne

The house is an installation piece. Landed by artist Ian Strange, it was commissioned by the Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art. The life-size replica of Strange’s childhood house insinuates itself into our historical North Terrace, reminding us that looks can be deceiving.

The exhibition boasts contributions from 28 contemporary Australian artists. Their works are anything but shy… Ah Xian’s haunting sculptures of golden torsos, Evolutionaura, probe culture and self-identity. Tony Garifalakis’s portrait series Mob Rule, making political figures anonymous behind enamel masks, contests the accumulation of power.

This exhibition is not for the faint of heart, but those seeking uncensored artistic interpretations of politics and culture. Prepare to be moved.

Photo by Alex Cockayne

reviews nightclub

pub food

music

45 PAGE

bye bye birdie hindley street, adelaide Reviewed by tori hyland

Unibar adelaide university Reviewed by maxwell cooper

You’ve made it to Saturday night after a busy uni week.

You want to hit the town but Red Square and HQ just aren’t doing it for you anymore. I feel your pain.

Does UniBar even need an introduction?

Could new club, Bye Bye Birdie, be everything we’ve been searching for, and more?

Maybe, maybe not?

Tucked away down the quieter end of Hindley Street, Bye Bye Birdie is, quite frankly, the smallest club I have ever been to. It’s a single room with a bar, a small dance floor and a DJ booth.

Upon arriving at the peak time of 1am (and paying a $10 - $15 entrance fee), I was unenthused to find a total of 15 people in the club. Despite the small area, dead atmosphere and pricey drinks, the DJ played a good selection of current dance hits.

The artistically decorated room screams potential, and I have a feeling that with more promotion and slightly cheaper everything, people will some day soon appreciate Bye Bye Birdie’s niche market charm.

If you haven’t been there, Hi, welcome to campus. They’ve got decent bevvies at a student-grade price, and their food is honestly much the same. It’s not as though they have the best parmie you’ll ever have, but it’s good. And, it’s $10 for Union members, plus you get a free drink.

Though honestly the prices are pretty damned affordable regardless of Union affiliation.

You get pretty much what you expect: schnitzels, burgers, wedges, chips, etc. They even extend beyond the absolute classic pub standards into stuff like calamari rings and garden salads.

The other thing worth mentioning is that: it’s the UniBar. The UniBar. You know it, you probably like it, even if you don’t you still probably go there. It’s an Adelaide Uni Institution.

After a nice pub lunch with a good price/quality ratio? You’ll walk away pretty pleased.

Or, depending on how liquid you take your lunches, stumble.

in the dark by mountbatten reviewed by sarah tynan

Mountbatten’s In The Dark was launched on March 25th. Described on facebook as ‘gloom you can hum to’, the band definitely lives up to its promise.

In The Dark is made up of catchy tunes like Daydreams Of A Drunk Romantic, interrupted with slower, sadder melodies like City Limits, but all of the songs seem to have a bit of a light, whimsy feel.

In The Dark’s indie pop and folk vibes are great for a cold night‘s drive- something we’ll all be getting a bit of as the year continues.

As their second album, In The Dark is a lot lighter in feel than debut The Night Is A Dream — their lyrics are developing, singer Anthony Golding’s vocals are more polished, and they seem to be transitioning solidly into the indie pop genre.

regulars

diversions what food are you?

46 PAGE

Pick a baby animal: a) Polar Bear b) Pig c) Goat d) Sloth

What is worse? a) No frills b) So hungry c) Slow internet d) PDA

Mostly As: Cafe Grande Connoisseur Ice Cream

Pick a celebrity: a) Drake b) Jennifer Lawrence c) Miley Cyrus d) Benedict Cumberbatch

Pick a bed time: a) 1am b) 9pm c) 7am d) 11pm

You love being comfortable, you love being yourself and you ain’t ashamed. Go you!

Your personal style is: Pick a movie: a) Ali G Indahouse a) Damn stylish b) Non existent b) The Hunger Games c) Pulp Fiction c) Sexual d) Live and Let Die d) Classic

You live by the three Es: Exlusive, expensive & educated. But really you’re a sweetie at heart.

Mostly Bs: pizza

Mostly cs: 2 minute beef noodles You’re a creature of the night. There is not use for daylight or nutrition. Love, money, party.

Mostly ds: roasted carrots Rules aren’t made to be broken. But you’re above the law, so that doesn’t apply to you.

emma’s dilemmas

Life advice from someone who probably needs to see a therapist Uh, hi there Emma. There is this cute girl in one of my tutes and I have no idea how to start up a conversation with her. What should I do??- Cecil, 22.

Well Cecil, first off I think that I and all the readers should share a minute of silence. It must be hard being the only man under a hundred called Cecil- you’re already a social outcast. I’m almost disinclined to give you advice; things that work for other people just might not work for you Cecil. Please keep that in mind.

Second off, have you heard of this crazy thing called the weather? It is a fail-safe conversation starter, every time.

Being subjected to that fickle mistress is the only thing that truly binds us together as human beings. Even if you spend 99.99% of your time indoors (which I suspect you might, Cecil), a cursory glance at such reputable sites as http://www.bom.gov.au/ will give you a general impression of the day’s weather. You can even look up predicted rainfall for each day if you really want to impress her.

Though, Cecil let’s be real here- if you don’t even have enough initiative to start up a conversation about the weather with this woman with my help, there is little to no chance you will ever get to awkwardly fondle her left boob in a movie theatre.

Hi Emma, I’ve been studying law for a year now but I feel like my true calling is acting. I did a couple of plays in high school and I know I was good but Mum was always like ‘you need to do something practical’ so now I’m doing law and basically I hate my mum, she ruined my life.- Undiscovered, 18.

Here is what you need to do: firstly, write up a list of all the reasons why you think your mum has ruined your life. Keep those as they are probably true.

Then, write a separate list of reasons why you would be better off as an actor. Really get into detail. Consider at length and the pros and cons of an actor’s life. Examine the innermost workings of your soul.

Then, take this list and burn it. Burn it into a million little flakes of ash until the paper thinness of your dreams has disintegrated into the blackened, bleak soot of reality (sorry for the melodromatics, it’s your fault for mentioning acting). Let’s be real here, you probably don’t want to be an actor. If you did, you would be acting in terrible student plays already. What you probably need is some form of excitement other than law. Have a gap year. Hell, have a pregnancy scare! Life is for the living.

Never pester me with your juvenile first-year identity crises again, Emma

regulars

Faux-diacs

with Mystic Marge

Aries You will develop a lucrative sidelining in dinner-hopping; the fine art of turning up at friends’ parents’ houses at conveniently meal-related times and scoring free food.

Their families will think you are homeless, but your diet has never been more nutritionally balanced.

Leo After failing to do any work on your major oral presentation thanks to an evening spent giving yourself cornrows, you will make a judgment call to pull the fire alarm five minutes before class. This will be a masterstroke and you’ll lose a mere 35% of your overall grade. Well done.

Taurus In a bid to spice up your home life, you will switch from skim milk to full cream. Your housemates will have greater respect for you, but in an ironic twist, the increased fat quota will do nothing to fill the empty hole inside of you.

Virgo You will take a tumble after a particularly ambitious grab during an evening’s dumpster-diving. Despite having to shout for help whilst being submerged to the shoulders in refuge, you will score a superficially damaged frame and half a bag of oranges. Nice!

Gemini You will find fleeting clarity and meaning in life in the midst of a mixed netball match. This euphoria will be dispelled by a swift elbow to the groin during a well-timed tackle. You’ll find solace in a post-match kitkat chunky.

Cancer You will receive negative feedback for the deluge of snapchats you send to friends and acquaintances. It’s true, your cup of tea/ face close up are conceptually shit. Delete the app and think about the consequences of your actions.

targedoku Find as many words as you can using the letters on the Sudoku grid. Words must be four letters or more and include the highlighted letter. Use the letters to solve the Sudoku (normal Sudoku rules apply). There are no repeated letters.

s4

e 9 6l

t5 h2

i7 o 3

t5 K8

h2 g 1 t5 e 4 o 3

t5 o 3

g 1

i7

e9

K 8

Daily Sudoku: Tue 18-Mar-2014

o 3 e9

e9

(c) Daily Sudoku Ltd 2014. All rights reserved.

i7 g 1

Scorpio You will understand the cold, hard truths of humanity after your hot part-time firefighter date from Tinder turns out to be an overweight tax consultant with sweaty palms.

Letting them hold your hand will pay for itself come the end of the financial year.

Sagittarius You will suffer embarrassment after accidently responding to the woman in the lift with you who took a call using a hands-free device. She’ll give you a scathing look, but you’ll have the moral victory of knowing only wankers use hands-free.

Capricorn After contracting a particularly robust common cold, you will attempt to self-medicate with a heady cocktail of expired decongestion medication, children’s cough syrup, and Tiger Balm. You’ll be off your chops in resulting delirium, but the birthday party you felt well enough to attend will be off the hook.

Clue: Phantasmogorical. Ethereal. Similar to a spirit.

i7

Libra You will find love in a hopeless place after accidently making eye contact for too long with a stranger in the ATM queue and bonding over a shared love of froyo and high-interest savings accounts.

Aquarius In an attempt to get more in tune with your star sign, you will take out a membership at your local community pool.

You will cancel this after seeing three different people urinate in the outside lanes.

Pisces You will be inspired by an exorbitant electricity bill to embark on a stint as a domestic eco-warrior. Yes, a shorter wash WILL save water and energy, but it will also fail to strip away the filth from your fleecy tracksuit bottoms. It’s a Sophie’s Choice.

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gastronomies

eleanor’s kitchen! yummy banana and coconut cake words by eleanor ludington art by daisy freeburn

48 PAGE

A

ll good things must come to an end. I just learnt this lesson again as I finished an incredible three week neurosurgical rotation at the Royal Adelaide Hospital. It was an exhilarating experience involving a lot of sad, but very interesting cases (from tumours to haemorrhages to motor vehicle accident multi-traumas), some terrific operations, and a great team of doctors. Despite my wretched 6:10am alarm and 6:35am train trip each day I found myself feeling excited about what I’d encounter on the ward rounds and in theatre that day as I undertook my daily 7am power-walk down North Terrace.

Hopefully you’ve all had similar experiences in the things you do in life and at university. The positive feelings associated with doing something you love and care a lot about are second to none! While you’re still young I think it’s important that you make sure you find something that you enjoy and get excited about every day, because realistically (especially with this government considering changes to the aged pension) you’re going to be working a long time (about 50 years!!).

For my last day of placement I thought I’d do something special for my team and baked one of my favourite cakes – a banana and coconut cake. It’s easy to make and deliciously moist. This is perfect if you want to impress your friends, and is equally great if you are looking for an arguably healthy breakfast treat (but maybe cut back on the sugar).

• 1 ¾ cups plain flour • 1 tsp baking powder • ½ tsp baking soda • ½ tsp salt • ½ - 2/3 cup of brown sugar (depends how sweet you want it) • 3 ripe bananas, mashed until liquid-y • ½ cup of coconut cream or milk • 2 tbsp of melted coconut oil (if you don’t have coconut oil you could probably try another vegetable oil, the coconut flavour just won’t be as strong) • 2 eggs • 1tsp vanilla essence • ½ to 1 cup of shredded coconut (optional) 1. Preheat oven to 180˚C. Mix all dry ingredients together in a large bowl.

2. In a separate, smaller bowl whisk together mashed banana, coconut cream, coconut oil, eggs and vanilla essence.

3. Pour wet mix into dry mix and stir until just combined.

Mix in the shredded coconut.

4. Pour into greased cake tin and bake for 40 minutes to 1 hour until golden on top (this will depend on the tray you used and your oven – a shallow tray like the one I used will only take around 40 minutes, but a deep loaf tray may take up to 1 hour). To test if your cake is done insert a skewer in several spots. If the skewer comes out clean it’s done!

5. Transfer to a cooling rack and enjoy once cooled. If you’re feeling extra indulgent you can ice this cake with a cream cheese icing (look online for recipes).