BULL Magazine 2013 Issue 5

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ONE YEAR ON FILM BULL’S GUIDE TO DOMESTICITY WE WALK THE SLUTWALK TAKING THE REAL OUT OF REALITY TV

DON’T LOSE YOUR HEAD LIFTING THE LID ON HELMET LAWS ISSUE 05, 2011

ALONE ALONEWE WE MAKE MAKE AA

DIFFERENCE DIFFERENCE TOGETHER MAKE TOGETHER WE WE MAKE

CHANGE CHANGE

CHANGE HUMANITARIAN WEEK 2011

ay age by Ga e aVo eed.

TOGETHER WE MAKE

DIFFERENCE ALONE WE MAKE A

FOR MORE INFORMATION humanitarianweek@usu.usyd.edu.au or 9563 6000

Cove

15-19 AUGUST

ISSUE 05 CONTENTS

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News Columns Competitions What’s On Interview Campus Chatter Student Lifestyle Travel Fashion Food & Booze Sport Science & Tech Entertainment Reviews Mindgames The Bull Pen Caught on Campus

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LIFTING THE LID ON HELMET LAWS

13 EDITORS

Paul Karp Alex McKinnon Kira Spucys-Tahar Anne Widjaja Lewis d'Avigdor usubullmag@gmail.com

525,600 MINUTES

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DO WE REALLY NEED HELMETS?

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CONTRIBUTORS

Emily Cullen, Natalie Sareff, Sy Woon, Ellen Smith, Dominic McNeil, Paul Ellis, Fayzan Bakhtiar, Grace O’Neill, Brendan Day, Casey Cunningham, Robert North, Laura Hanlon DESIGN

Carl Ahearn Steven Ung PUBLICATIONS MANAGER

Chris Beaumont WWW.USUONLINE.COM LIKE US FACEBOOK.COM/USUBULLMAGAZINE

Cover X-ray image by Galleria Voxeed.

The views in this publication are not necessarily the views of USU. The information contained within this edition of Bull Magazine was correct at the time of printing.

This publication is brought to you by the University of Sydney Union and The University of Sydney.

ISSUE 05, 2011

WELCOME YOUR NEW USU BOARD

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HELP! I’M AN ADULT NOW!

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THE ‘S’ WORD

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REALITY BITES

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CONTENTS

BULL USUONLINE.COM NEWS

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1 Australs Best Speaker, Eleanor Jones in action in Seoul.

2 Your shipment of Verge is on its way.

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drama, something for everyone) throughout Verge. And that’s just our first glimpse of what is set to be a killer program.

Opportunities to get involved behind the scenes are open to those who find just looking isn’t enough; hurry and contact volunteer@usu.usyd.edu.au to get amongst it.

USU TOPS SPEAKER RANKS AT AUSTRALS

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NEWS WELCOME THE NEW USU BOARD While the rest of us were sitting in front of heaters sipping hot chocolates, the USU’s new Student Board of Directors officially began work over the winter break. Sibella Matthews took over the reins of President from David Mann, while Alistair Stephenson (VicePresident), Ben Tang (Honorary Treasurer) and Jacqui Munro (Honorary Secretary) joined Matthews in the Executive.

Newly elected Board members, Mina Nada, Rhys Pogonoski, Brigid Dixon, Zac Thompson and Astha Rajvanshi joined the remaining second-termers – James Flynn and Vivienne Moxham-Hall to complete the 2011/2012 Board.

The team headed across the Bridge to Manly for their official Board induction, where they were joined by several senior USU staff, including CEO Andrew Woodward, to learn the intimate ins and outs of the organisation and lay down some plans for their term.

Turn to page 16 for more information on the new Board, and read the first instalment of Sibella Matthew’s regular Bull column on the next page.

VERGE BEGINS TO UNPACK It was a busy semester break for Verge directors Harriet Gilles and Tom Walker, who mounted their pogo sticks and began assembling this year’s Verge Festival. From 31 August to 9 September, the USU

will bring campus to life with emerging and professional artists, musicians and comedians.

New for 2011, 10 massive shipping containers filled with installation art will be plonked down along Eastern Avenue, livening up the stroll from Fisher to Hermann’s.

The Verge Tent meanwhile will return atop Manning squash courts to once again host the buzzing opening and closing parties, daily film screenings and provocative panel discussions.

Look out for a collaborative opening night party with social change dynamos Major Raiser featuring Louis London, an awesome night of comedy with internationally-renowned comedians Greg Fleet and Jon Dore (Canada), talks with the cream of Sydney’s theatre crop and music from Megastick Fanfare, Fishing, and New Navy.

Also worth celebrating is the return of indulgent high tea (read: unlimited cupcakes) and the introduction of the Wine Cellar, a new venue that transforms the traditional SUDS Cellar Theatre into a special festival venue with two shows a day (comedy, cabaret,

The University of Sydney Union’s debating team returned from their 2011 Australasian Debating Championships (Australs) campaign in Korea upbeat from a strong showing, despite missing out on the Grand Final.

The USU’s Eleanor Jones produced a brilliant individual performance to take out Best Speaker honours of the tournament, which was ultimately won by the defending champions from New Zealand, Victoria University of Wellington.

It was a highly competitive tournament held in the South Korean capital of Seoul from 7 to 14 July.

The USU sent a total of seven teams and six adjudicators and while all teams qualified for the finals, an institutional cap meant only four could progress.

USU 1 was the most successful, progressing to the semi-finals, before being narrowly defeated by the National University of Singapore. USU 2 were eliminated in the quarter-finals by eventual winners Victoria University.

Meanwhile, fellow USU team members and former editors of Bull Magazine, Daniel Swain and Robert Chiarella joined Jones in the top 10 speaker rankings, in third and sixth respectively.

Although Grand Final success eluded the team, the USU Director of Debates Julia Baine applauded the team’s efforts in the face of a brilliant showing from the international teams.

ISSUE 05 COLUMNS

COLUMNS

PRESIDENT’S DESK SIBELLA MATTHEWS

EDITOR’S NOTE PAUL, ALEX, KIRA, ANNE & LEWIS

A

nd we’re back!

Greetings all, for the second half, and I say, it looks set to be a blockbuster – so stay tuned! How was everyone’s break? Never mind telling us as we’ve hacked everyone’s phones… let’s just say, what happened down at the snow, will stay down at the snow. No icy romps for us though; we’ve been prudently piecing together this here magazine you hold in your hot little hands (or claws for our valued crustacean readers out there).

And what a great issue with which to kick off Semester 2! We’ve got helmet laws, photo-journals, instructions for being all grown up, reality TV and that tricky issue of sexual harassment on campus. We also meet the new USU Board, chat to Lawrence Leung and… well, just read on, and enjoy responsibly.

Love, The Editors OVER CAPACITY We’ve received a few letters informing us that contrary to Alex McKinnon’s ‘All Wired Up’ (Issue 4) the University does, in fact, offer free unlimited internet usage to students, up from the 6mb stated in the article, which was the case a year ago. According to Switch (the Uni’s ICT portal thing) the increase is intended for students “to access University resources and a reasonable amount of personal activity.” So, for all unreasonable amounts of personal activity, please still refer to Alex’s article.

ISSUE 04 SCIENCE & TECH

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SCIENCE & TECH

S

ydney Uni takes the interwebs seriously, rightly recognising it as an invaluable tool in the pursuit of academic enlightenment. In that spirit, the powers that be have seen fit to bestow upon you, O worthy student, the princely total of six free megabytes a day to use however you see fit. Six megabytes.Yippee. That’s about enough for a thirty-second video, maybe. Compare that to the unlimited free internet UTS kids get, and it’s pretty clear you need your own damn internet. So here’s the lowdown on getting yourself online: which connection types are the fastest, the cheapest, the safest, the most portable and the most convenient.

All Wired Up ALEX MCKINNON EXPLORES THE BEST BROADBAND OPTIONS FOR UNI.

ADSL2+

MOBILE BROADBAND

PROS - PRICE, SPEED, COVERAGE. CONS - CONVENIENCE. The most popular choice in Australia right now, especially in family homes. This has everything to recommend: it’s fast, it’s cheap, it’s reliable, and it lets you download a whole mess of stuff.

One problem, though; you need a phone line.

Not an issue if you live at home, but try setting it up in a sharehouse or a college and you’re basically stuffed. No-one’s going to volunteer to undergo the hassle of getting one installed, and ADSL2+ is almost impossible to get without a 24-month contract, making it a nightmare if you’re moving about.

PROS- CONVENIENCE, SECURITY. CONS- PRICE, COVERAGE. Popular with uni students for one good reason: it’s portable.You plug in that little magic stick and you’re on, and if you sign up to a decent provider, you’re covered anywhere in Sydney.

Speed’s not too bad; it’s not the fastest in the world, but it should suffice for downloading music and watching Youtube. It’s also relatively safe; no-one can steal your bandwidth even if they nick the stick, because you need the accompanying software installed on your laptop. Be aware of the downsides, though: it’s notoriously unreliable. Signal strength is affected by everything from location to time of day to cloud cover, although this is slowly getting better.

It’s also pretty bloody expensive: for upwards of six gigs or so you’ll be lucky to get change out of $50 a month, although you can find cheaper if you’re willing to sign a long-term contract.

Spending less than $20 a month will get you some piddling amount of data, and excess usage fees are by the megabyte and universally harsh. One way to avoid this is to go prepaid, only buying your credit when you need it. This has the added advantage of letting you shop around, as sticks often take SIM cards from various providers. Beware, though; prepaid is so horrendously expensive that it’s definitely not a viable long-term option.

SATELLITE BROADBAND PROS- COVERAGE. CONS- SPEED. Telstra’s satellite network covers all of Australia, a pretty remarkable thing when you think about it. It’s your best and only choice if you live out in the boonies and have to train it in to uni every day, as you can get online no matter where you are. Except if you’re in a tunnel. Or if it’s raining... or cloudy… or a mild breeze is blowing. Satellite broadband is the ugly duckling of Australian telecom. It’s unreliable, it’s slow, and there’s no alternative to Telstra. As consolation, it’s no longer crushingly expensive thanks to generous government subsidies, but it’s still something to avoid unless you have no other option.

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25/05/11 4:42 PM

Welcome back to Semester Two! During the break, the Union inducted a new Board of Directors as elected by 6,475 voters. These 11 students will be governing the future direction of your Union and you can meet them on page 16.Your elected Board is committed to maintaining the independence of your student life, and first things first, I’d like to take this opportunity to clarify a myth floating around campus challenging the actual independence of the Union.

The truth is that the USU is a de facto independent entity. This is because the Union receives approximately $3.4 million of indirect funding per year from the University Administration for the repair and maintenance of the Union’s buildings - Holme, Wentworth and Manning.

This was the result of a mutually-beneficial agreement put in place in 2007 after Voluntary Student Unionism was enacted and the Union lost a crippling $8.4 million in compulsory annual fees. However, by virtue of the strength of our organisation, the support from our members and the revenue generated by our commercial operations, we have continued to thrive as Australia’s largest student union and the provider of the best student experience in the country.

Therefore, despite the indirect funding of $3.4 million, our de facto independence from the University is derived from the unimpeded source of revenue we generate from certain services, such as Fisher Coffee Cart, Engineering Café and Manning Bar. The funds from these Union-run operations allow us to plan a sustainable future with certainty, which would not be the case if we were completely dependent upon ongoing annual funding from the University.

In addition, our 11 Board Directors elected by the student population ensure that those who understand the needs and wants of student life are leading the USU as an autonomous entity, unhindered by the wishes of a third party. In the survey conducted alongside the election last semester, an overwhelming majority (95 per cent) of those who participated agreed that the USU should retain full control over its commercial operations, student experience and buildings.Your Union believes in an independent student life that is student-run. Are you with us?

STUDENT PROGRAMS ALISTAIR COWIE While you were all away I spent some time at a conference that looked at the student satisfaction levels at Australian universities. Happily, Sydney rates pretty well across the board and, as we all know, is ranked number one in general student experience, by the NUS. Closer to home (Holme?) the new USU CEO, Andrew Woodward, has made it very clear that customer service must be at the forefront of what we do for you. This aligns with one of the themes at the conference: the person delivering the service is the service. Over the coming months you’ll find more opportunities to give us your feedback on our services.

Please be frank and let us know how you think we can make the place better.

Semester 2 is an action-packed bumper volume collectors’ edition to the max! Hopefully you’ve all enjoyed Re-O Day and joined a few Clubs.

Next is our Semester 2 kick-off party, Snowball (see What’s On) and then… it’s a busy Revue Season, with 10 groups strutting their stuff this year. The Verge Festival is shaping up, so keep your eyes and ears open in September.

Semester 2 is also the time when we recognise those who have made an outstanding contribution to the University community. The Union Blue is the highest form of recognition we can confer upon an individual member of the student body. Nominations are now open, so if you think you, or one of your friends, has worked tirelessly for the betterment of the University community, please fill out a nomination form (available at usuonline.com). Blues are awarded at the annual State of the Union Dinner.

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BULL USUONLINE.COM COMPETITIONS

WIN A HOYTS DOUBLE-PASS! Thanks to the super heroic people at Hoyts Cinema, we’ve got FIVE DOUBLE-PASSES to see any movie of your choice at Hoyts Broadway!* To enter the draw to win one of the double-passes, send us your wittiest of witty captions to the image on the left. Our top five will receive a double-pass and the caption deemed most super will be printed in the next issue!

Captain America - ONLY AT THE MOVIES JULY 28 After being deemed unfit for military service, Steve Rogers volunteers for a top secret research project that turns him into !

WATCH Captain America, a superhero dedicated to defending America’s ideals. Present your Usyd Student Card before 5pm, Mon – Fri, to receive $10.50 tickets at Hoyts Eastgardens and The Entertainment Quarter Moore Park.

JUST SEND IN YOUR CAPTION COURAGEOUS (SEE WHAT WE DID THERE) TO THIS IMAGE HERE FOR YOUR CHANCE TO WIN! WITTY AVENGER, AWAY!!

Email your caption and details to usubullmag@gmail.com *valid for six months.

ISSUE 4 WINNER! “Great Whites and Tiger Sharks were a danger, but the beachgoers were especially scared of the creepy Abbott Reef Shark“

Congratulations to DAVID SCOTT (and four others!), winner of the tickets to the Hangover Part II.

WIN TICKETS TO SEE PINBACK! All the way from the golden streets of California, indie rockers Pinback are ready to grace the stage of Manning Bar on their first-ever Australian tour.

The duo have made a name for themselves with their unusual time signatures and mesmerising sound. Pitchfork says: “...drums, guitars, and bass lock together like cogs turning against each other: one moving the next moving the next moving until they form a Mobius strip…”

To welcome our American musical maestros, we are giving away TWO DOUBLE-PASSES to see Pinback live at Manning Bar on Saturday 20 August!

WIN!

Tickets available online (manningbar.com) or at the ACCESS Desk now.

Simply send your name and details to usubullmag@gmail.com to go into the draw.

Entries for all competitions close 12 August 2011.

COMPETITIONS

NSW Permit no. LTPM-11-00367

CAPTION COMPETITION

1.

July 3 il t n u le b a il a v er only a

Off

U O Y W A NE !

2 R E T S E M E S IN LL OF OUR A R O E N O T A T 'ET Ăž cilities with a fa m y g s u p on-cam ter 2 pass. s e m e S d re o tail

ve!

nd sa a y a d o t p u Sign

Drop in to one of our facilities, visit www.susf.com.au or call: Sports & Aquatic Centre: 9351 4978 The Arena: 9351 8111

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BULL USUONLINE.COM WHAT’S ON

WHAT’S ON YOUR GUIDE TO THE PLACES TO BE ON CAMPUS. WE’LL GIVE YOU THE WHEN AND WHERE – YOU SHOW UP AND ENJOY. TO SEE EVERYTHING THAT’S GOING ON (AND THERE’S A LOT) VISIT WWW.USUONLINE.COM AND CLICK THE CALENDAR.

WEEK 1 MONDAY 25 JULY

THURSDAY 28 JULY

KOREAN LAW SOCIETY ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING

4-6pm, Level 4 Wentworth Building

6-7pm, Holme Reading Room

WEEKLY POOL COMPETITION

FREE FILM SCREENING 5:30-7:30pm, International Student Lounge

TUESDAY 2 AUGUST TUESDAY TALKS

A BILLION LITTLE STONES IGM

TUESDAY 26 JULY

5-7pm, Holme Meeting Room 1 1-2pm, Manning Bar

DEFENCE OF THE ANCIENTS SOCIETY GENERAL MEETING

WARPAINT WITH JACK LADDER & DONNY BENET

AUSTRALIAN DISCUSSION GROUP

1-3pm, City Hunter, 1 Sussex Street

8-11:55pm, Manning Bar

3-5pm, International Student Lounge

MARKSOC INAUGURAL GENERAL MEETING 3-4pm, Common Room, Holme Building

WEDNESDAY 27 JULY

FRIDAY 29 JULY WEEKEND WARM-UP AT HERMANN’S 4-7pm, Hermann’s Bar

WEEKEND WARM-UP AT MANNING

RE-O DAY AND INTERNATIONAL 5-8pm, Manning Bar FOOD FAIR 10-4pm, Eastern Avenue

SATURDAY 30 JULY

MANNING TRIVIA

CATHERINE TRAICOS AND THE STARRY NIGHT

5-6pm, Manning Bar

FREE FILM SCREENING 5:30-7:30pm, International Student Lounge

PROJECT 52 COMEDY 7:30-10:30pm, Hermann’s Bar

8-11:55pm, Hermann’s Bar

WEEK 2 MONDAY 1 AUGUST MNML MNDAYS (DJ SESSION) 1-2pm, Manning Bar

WEDNESDAY 3 AUGUST HERMANN’S TRIVIA 1-2pm, Hermann’s Bar

NEON TREES 8-11:55pm, Manning Bar

THURSDAY 4 AUGUST WHITE RIBBON FOUNDATION IGM 1-2pm, Isabel Fidler Room, Level 2 Manning House

WEEKLY POOL COMPETITION 4-6pm, Level 4 Wentworth Building

SNOWBALL 2011 7pm, Manning Bar

UNDERSTANDING MODERN INSURGENCY SOCIETY IGM 5-7pm, Isabel Fidler Room, Level 2 Manning House

TUESDAY 9 AUGUST SURFSOC AGM 3-4pm, Isabel Fidler Room, Level 2 Manning House

WEDNESDAY 10 AUGUST PROJECT 52 COMEDY 7:30-10:30pm, Hermann’s Bar

THURSDAY 11 AUGUST

TUESDAY 16 AUGUST SHAVED GORILLA & A CLOSE SHAVE: SHORT FILM COMP SCREENING 6pm, Manning Bar

THURSDAY 18 AUGUST BAND COMP SEMI FINAL 1

THEATRESPORTS 1-2pm, Manning Bar

BEAT THE SYSTEM 5-9pm, Hermann’s Bar

SOULXPRESS SYNERGY VOL 6 5-10pm, Manning Bar

WEEKLY POOL COMPETITION 4-6pm, Level 4 Wentworth Building

FRIDAY 12 AUGUST FRIDAY NIGHT LIVE 8pm, Hermann’s Bar

Photo by Sher Ali Khan

CHILDREN COLLIDE WITH DZ DEATHRAYS & DAMN TERRAN

SYDNEY UNI PHARMACY ASSOCIATION AGM

SATURDAY 13 AUGUST

2-3pm, SUPA Office, Level 2 Pharmacy Building

REGURGITATOR WITH DISASTERADIO (NZ)

WEEK 3 MONDAY 8 AUGUST

8-11:55pm, Manning Bar

11-11:30am, Loggia Room, Level 1 Manning House

HUMANITARIAN WEEK BEGINS See website for details.

Manning Bar

FRIDAY 5 AUGUST

UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY CROQUET CLUB

SYDNEY UNI DJ COMP HEATS 7pm, Hermann’s Bar

8-11:55pm, Manning Bar

WEEK 4 MONDAY 15 AUGUST FREE FILM SCREENING 5:30-7:30pm, International Student Lounge

FRIDAY 19 AUGUST DEAD LETTER CIRCUS 8-11:55pm, Manning Bar

ISSUE 05 WHAT’S ON

TOP PICKS SOULXPRESS SYNERGY VOL. 6 Thursday 11 August Manning Bar, 5pm – 10pm To encourage, develop and promote hip hop culture, Sydney Uni’s own Hip Hop Society SoulXpress will be hosting an all style inter-university dance competition!

Students from universities around Sydney will be battling it out in all styles, with showcase performances in several categories such as hip hop, locking, popping, breaking, and much more! Don’t miss out!

COMPETITION & APPLICATION DATES Show off some mad skillz and win some great prizes!

VERGE VOLLIES APPLICATIONS Open: 25 Jul

SYDNEY UNI DJ COMP Close: 12 Aug

KICK START GRANTS APPLICATION

Campus Culture Directors Verge Festival Directors Woman's Student Events Coordinator Queer Student Events Coordinator Art Collection Officers Open: 22 Aug/Close: 10 Oct

INTERNATIONAL STUDENT POINT OF CONTACT ISPOC 2012 Open: 4 Oct/Close: 12 Nov

Close: 05 Aug/02 Sep/07 Oct/04 Nov

SHAVED GORILLA PALM AWARDS

Close: 15 Aug

Close: 12 Aug

A CLOSE SHAVE SHORT FILM COMP USU LEADERSHIP POSITIONS Bull Editors Tuesday Talks Coordinators Postgraduate Students Internship International Students Internship Debates Director

Close: 15 Aug (Theme announced 14 Aug)

NEW STUDENT POINT OF CONTACT SPOCS 2012 Close: 30 Sep

PROJECT 52 COMEDY Every Wednesday, Hermann’s Bar, 7:30pm – 10:30pm On Wednesday nights, Sydney University’s best comedy people gather to bring you the evening of entertainment, shouting and borderline-unprintable shenanigans that is Project 52. The USU-backed student comedy troupe host the weekly night of laughs, offering up tasty servings of stand-up, improv, storytelling and sketches to packed audiences within the cosy walls of Hermann’s Bar. Time Out Magazine’s Annual Comedy Awards recently named Project 52 Sydney’s Best Comedy Night, saying: “They mix it up at Project 52, with stand-up, improv, sketches and things that don;’t technically count as comedy. In any case, you should totally go.” Come along and watch it. It’s pretty funny.

SNOWBALL Thursday 4 August Manning Bar, 7pm – 11:55pm Sydney Uni’s back-to-semester winter party will bring some warmth to the scene with a great line up and no less than three different stages of entertainment. The action kicks off at 7pm on the balcony with Tin Sparrow, with indie darlings Jinja Safari headlining this year. They’re supported by Mitzi, Rufus and Tom Loud, with Naysayer and Gilsun closing out the party.

The Beat the System stage will feature some up-andcoming local acts including Super Florence Jam, Rockets, The Walking Who, Conics, while Will Styles and MC Haley Boa, Gabriel Clouston, Nic Scali, Slow Blow DJ’s and George Reed will be spinning on the disco and dubstep stage.

Tickets are nice and cheap at $15 presale, or $10 with access (plus BF), so jump in quickly, and get amongst Snowball 2011. See you there! 18+ For more information contact the ACCESS Desk at 9563 6000.

Details correct at time of printing but may be subject to change. Please check www.usuonline.com for current details.

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BULL USUONLINE.COM FEATURE

S e lf

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rait

Day 287

525,600 MINUTES KADE DENTON FOUND A NEW WAY TO MEASURE A YEAR. PAUL KARP DISCOVERS WHY HE TOOK A PHOTO A DAY FOR THE DURATION.

I

n periods of transition, life changes quickly around us.

Few take the time to document and capture that change in artistic representations. But Kade Denton, a first-year agriculture student and aspiring photographer, did just that.

With a camera constantly by his side, he took a photo a day for the past year of his life, capturing his life transition from school into tertiary study.

ISSUE 05 FEATURE

D ay

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“Some people write the events of their life, but I rd decided to record them this way instead.”

Day 356

Day 204

“Day 204 was taken at Equitana in Melbourne, which is the largest Horse Industry event in the southern hemisphere. I took that shot of the competitors in the Campdraft Competition Grand Final which was being held there, and I think it really sums up that day.”

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BULL USUONLINE.COM FEATURE

“Day 291 was a few days beforee I left to move to Sydney, and my Dad took me all around Forster and the surrounding areas. The photo is of the tank traps in Smiths Lake. The lines of the photo are symbolic of the path away from the town I had lived in for my whole life.”

Day 291

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Day 327

Kade was inspired by Oliver Forbes, a young Australian photographer from Melbourne, who embarked on his own artistic year-long journey with the simple mission of showing us what life looks like through his eyes. Kade was struck by the concept and decided to embark upon it himself. On 2 May 2010, he took his first snap with the Olympus e-520 that would become almost literally attached to him for the next 365 days. He says he particularly admired the purpose of Forbes’ project, “to tell a story and convey emotion from that day; the story or emotion may have changed but the theory behind the project didn’t”. Recording a whole year of life on film requires far more dedication that you may think, but Kade remained true to his assignment. “Some people write the events of their life, but I decided to record them this way instead.”

Kade was still in year 12 when he started work on his own 365-day photo journal, and he set down some ground rules. Photos could be shots of everyday life or posed, but each must represent some aspect of life through the year. “I was constantly taking photos during the

Day 342

day, then would choose by going through each collection of the day and picking the shot that best represented it,” explains Kade. Emotions varied from the inevitable stress and boredom of the HSC year, to the freedom of Kade’s life with his car and friends in the quiet seaside town of Forster in central coast NSW. Snapshots such as these served an effective documentary purpose.

Kade himself says he is fascinated by photos of decades gone by, and he hopes that when people look back at these photographs they get a sense of a teenager’s life in the twenty-tens.

With the move to university came new subject matter - same theory, different environment. Kade admits the main difficulty in representing the university was the size of the university itself, both physically and in the student population. “It was a difficulty to me as it was a shock to the system,” he says. “Going from my school year in which I knew everybody, to the feeling of being a drop in the ocean of the huge number of people at the uni.”

Da y

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24 3

Kade’s approach with a camera is extremely positive. “Take photos all the time, it’s super fun and with every photo you take, you’re improving,” he says. “It always pays to have your camera on you, you never know when something that makes up a perfect shot will raise its head.” Like all hobbies, practice makes perfect. With the experience of a whole year spent looking down the lens, Kade says he can actually see the marked improvement in the quality of his work.

Photography buff or not, there’s a lesson for everyone in the 365 project. There’s an invigorating keenness about the way Kade describes his memories of the year represented in his photographs. The simple act of capturing everyday life itself genuinely seems to have enhanced his appreciation of it. Inscribed in the photos is perhaps the secret of the art of living well. Smile for the camera!

ISSUE 05 FEATURE

DO WE REALLY NEED HELMETS?

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LEWIS D’AVIGDOR EXPLORES THE FIERCE DEBATE ON MANDATORY HELMET LAWS.

“P

ut a helmet on!” I shouted at a passing cyclist as he pedalled along casually without protective headgear. “I don’t want my taxes paying to care for a vegetable!” I blurted angrily. The hipster mounted on his fixed-gear steed merely shot me a withering look. Then, completely out of the cyclist’s earshot, I trailed off, as other pedestrians milled about uncomfortably.

My outburst was not prompted by a dislike of cyclists, although they are a commonly hated species in the concrete jungle. I am a cyclist myself and I wish more people would ride bikes for environmental and health reasons. But, like many, I’ve always thought it sheer lunacy for a cyclist to not to wear a helmet, as required by law, to the point that it aggravates me, hence the vegetable sneer.

Yet, the decision by some to ride without a helmet is far more complex than simply refusing for fashion or convenience’s sake. Rather, there is a growing chorus of voices, both cyclists and experts, who believe that helmets are not the life-savers they’re hyped up to be and are

actually keeping people away from riding bikes.

They argue that the mandatory laws on wearing a helmet should be scrapped.

THE LAW In 1991, Australia became the first country in the world to introduce mandatory helmet laws. Under the NSW Road Transport (Safety and Traffic Management) Act 1999, it is an offence to ride a bicycle without a helmet and the fine is generally $57. The same goes for riding a horse or a camel.

In terms of getting people to strap on a lid, mandatory helmet laws appear to be successful.

The edict has increased helmet use from about

30 to 80 per cent according to one study. Safety advocates say that the mandatory helmet laws are as sensible and necessary as the introduction of seatbelt laws in the 1970s, and the firearm buyback scheme in the 1990s. They point out that a small, relatively hassle-free curtailment to our individual liberties is more than worth the lives saved.

THE ACTIVISTS However, mandatory helmet laws have been subject to fierce criticism. This passionate and polarised debate has occurred most stridently amongst cyclists in cyberspace. Groups such as Helmet Freedom and Cyclist Rights Action

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BULL USUONLINE.COM FEATURE

Group oppose the mandatory helmet law on the grounds that it discourages cycling. They say it contributes to larger health issues such as diabetes and obesity, while only minimally improving cyclist safety. Their key argument is that more cyclists on the road leads to greater awareness on the behalf of motorists, and greater safety for cyclists as a whole. It’s your basic safety in numbers principle. They see helmet laws as a major hurdle to a wholly safe, cycling utopia.

One persistent voice is that of Sue Abbott, a 50-year-old mother of four from Scone in NSW’s northwest. Abbott is both a passionate cyclist and a strident campaigner against mandatory helmet laws. Her blog, ‘Freedom Cyclist vs Helmet Laws’, vehemently declares helmets to actually be dangerous, and helmet laws to be a breach of civil rights. She herself was fined in 2010.

Abbott challenged the fine in Scone Local Court and argued that being forced to wear a helmet was a breach of her civil liberties.

She said wearing a helmet not only fails to reduce injury, but actually increases the risk of certain types of brain injury. She cited various declarations that helmets ‘increase angular acceleration which an oblique impulse imparts to the head, increasing the risk of damage to the brain, especially diffuse axonal injury’. Or, in other words, helmets can grip the road on impact and can twist the head more quickly and severely than if uncovered. Her toughest defense though, was that the law was not supported by strong enough evidence. Judge Roy Ellis of the District Court agreed and quashed the conviction.

Not all cyclists are against the law. Ian Conway Lamb, the President of Sydney University Bicycle Society, sees continuing merit in mandatory head protection. “Although I have no doubt that the law has decreased the number of people riding, overturning the laws would not increase the number of riders enough to reduce the risks of riding in traffic,” Conway Lamb said.

“While I would love to encourage more and more people to cycle, I don’t believe this is the best way to increase the number of cyclists,” he said. “There are many better ways to encourage cycling as both a sport and a means for commuting.”

Conway Lamb observes that people who don’t wear helmets are more likely to ride on the footpath. He says any repeal of mandatory helmet law would simply encourage the breaking of another law, which only puts pedestrians in danger.

“Until our cycleways or general road safety can match European countries, banning mandatory helmet laws is not really an option” argues Conway Lamb. “Although it may increase the number of people cycling, it could always lead to an increase in head injuries.” This also happens to be the official stance of Bicycle NSW, the state’s peak cycling body.

THE EXPERTS The laws are also causing some sizable ripples among academics in the field of road

“Some cyclists see helmet laws as a major hurdle to a wholly safe, cycling utopia.”

safety. Their attention revolves entirely around questions of health and safety, rather than civil liberties. Until recently, it was generally assumed that mandatory helmet laws were a necessary edict for public safety that offset the potential discouragement of cycling that may result.

In August 2010, Associate Professor Chris Rissel, from the University of Sydney’s School of Public Health, and colleague Dr Alex Voukelatos published a key study in the Journal of the Australasian College of Road Safety. It examined the effect of mandatory helmet laws by comparing the ratios of arm and head injuries during the 18-month period before and after the law’s introduction in 1991. The underlying methodology was that the ratio of head injuries with respect to arm injuries would decline if helmets did, in fact, reduce head injuries.

Interestingly though, Prof Rissel and Dr Voukelatos found that most of the decline in head injuries occurred before 1991. They attributed the decline to other road safety measures of that period, such as lower speed limits, media campaigns and random breath testing.

Writing for Crikey, Rissel concluded, in agreement with the activist Sue Abbott, that mandatory helmet laws are ‘failed public policy’.

These findings quickly came under scrutiny from medical epidemiologist, Tim Churches, who uncovered serious data and arithmetic errors. The journal retracted the paper, but the authors maintained that their conclusion is sound, notwithstanding the errors.

Recently, researchers led by Dr Jake Oliver from the University of New South Wales, further analysed the same data as the Rissel study. In June 2011, they published their own findings in the journal Accident Analysis and Prevention.

They found a 29 per cent reduction in cycling related head injuries in this period. The data was cross-checked this by comparing leg and head ratios with similar results. The same analysis was then applied to pedestrians, who obviously don’t wear helmets. No comparable drop in pedestrian head injuries was found.

“We endeavoured to identify the effect of the legislation on head injury rates as distinct from other road safety interventions and we’ve shown that the improvements could only have come from the helmet legislation,” said Dr Oliver on the UNSW website. The University’s Chair of Road Safety and study co-author Professor Raphael Grzebieta concurred. “[The study] shows what we’ve suspected for a long time - that you would be unwise to ‘hit the road’ without a helmet,” he said.

The positive effects of helmets were also observed by Dr Michael Dinh, co-director of trauma services at Royal Prince Alfred. Dr Dinh found in his own 2010 study published in the Medical Journal of Australia, that while more cyclists were being admitted for emergency treatment, fewer were carrying serious head

ISSUE 05 FEATURE

injuries. He also pointed out that direct medical cost burdens should be considered in the debate. He told the Sydney Morning Herald that the lifetime cost of treatment for severe traumatic brain injury is estimated to be around $4.8 million per incident per case. Considerably higher than the $25-odd you’d fork out for a stack hat.

Although helmets may reduce the incidence of head injuries, there are other factors to consider when analysing the efficacy of the law. Professor Rissel contends that the law discourages cycling to such an extent that repealing the law would have a net societal benefit. Boiled down, there may be a few sore heads, but we’d all be fitter and the air would be cleaner. The economy is then, theoretically, spared certain expenses with a healthier populace and environment.

This, though, is speculative and very hard to measure. Someone is yet to concoct a satisfactory methodology to answer this question. There are simply too many uncontrollable variables to take into account. A policy experiment, rather than simply crunching numbers, might be the best route. Professor Rissel recommended dropping the law in a small locality, such as Wollongong, and closely analysing the effect over time. Though, this too is controversial for safety advocates who believe this would be irresponsibly putting people at risk.

TO REPEAL OR NOT TO REPEAL? So, the jury is still out on mandatory helmet laws. A lid has not been put on the debate as some have suggested. Both sides make valuable points. Save for the odd contentious study, few dispute it is actually safer to

wear a helmet. But on the other hand, mandatory helmet laws reduce the number of people on bikes, making those who do saddle-up a vulnerable minority on the roadways.

But at the end of the day, what is so fundamentally wrong with wearing a helmet?

A police officer involved in Sue Abbott’s case was quoted quipping, ‘It’s a hair thing’. That’s a superficial judgement, but then is taking a moral stance on the grounds of relatively futile example of civil freedom worth the risk? This battle seems to be a distraction indulged in by cyclists.

“A BICYCLE HELMET SAVED MY LIFE.” UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY ARTS/ LAW STUDENT AND CYCLIST JAMES O’DOHERTY WAS HIT BY CAR AND LIVED TO TELL THE TALE. HE THANKS THE CAGE OF FOAM ON HIS HEAD. “Quite simply, a bicycle helmet saved my life. When I was hit side-on at a T-intersection by a car just outside my house, I rolled over the bonnet, roof and boot of the car. I landed on the pavement, snapping my neck and giving my brain a haemorrhage. Without my helmet to protect my brain, I would not have survived.

“That being said, incredible as it may sound, there are times when I don’t wear a helmet. For various reasons, safety sometimes isn’t the first thing I think of when going for a quick ride. I know I’m endangering myself, but in the end I also know that I will be more aware because of it.

“Compulsory helmet laws are complex because they try to compare something everyone knows is good for them and the concept of a person’s right to choose how they live their life. Ultimately, though, they still work to protect those who aren’t active in making that decision, and helmets do save lives. There’s nothing stopping those that don’t want to wear helmets from going bare-headed, but the coercion for wearing a helmet could save a life.”

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It does little to promote cycling in the wider community.

Would the two-wheeled cause be better served if cyclists diverted their time and energy into other battles, such as campaigning to better accommodate cyclists in Australian cities with more bike paths?

One thing is clear however, mandatory or not – from the perspective of an individual cyclist, as almost all experts agree, personally choosing to wear a helmet is a wise move. Critics have a valid argument that helmets are not a panacea – they are not the be all and end all to cycling safety, not by any means. As our profile of James O’Doherty (below) indicates, when you become the statistic, cars, buses and tarmac will still hurt. The debate still rages, but the law, right now, remains. It’s up to individual cyclists to decide whether a bad case of helmet hair really is the worst thing that could happen to your head.

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BULL USUONLINE.COM FEATURE

WELCOME YOUR NEW USU BOARD

W

elcome, everyone, to the new University of Sydney Student Board of Directors!

These 11 bright young things will be your student leaders for the next 12 months. They will live and breathe student matters and endeavour to help the USU deliver on its sworn purpose to create a vibrant, rich and rewarding experience for all on campus. Get to know their faces and don’t hesitate to have a chat when you see them walking around. They won’t bite, or even nibble, but they will listen - it’s your Union after all!

STAY IN TOUCH Keep up to date and have your say on what you think matters on the official Board Blog (yourunionboard.blogspot.com), or email them directly as listed, or hit them up on twitter (coming soon)!

SIBELLA MATTHEWS – president@usu.usyd.edu.au Sibella is a fourth-year Economic and Social Sciences/Law student.

Sibella's love for all things USU began with her involvement in the Sydney Law Revue and the Fine Art Society. Her favourite things about the USU are the amazing music acts that come through Hermann's and Manning and the annual Verge Festival.

ALISTAIR STEPHENSON – vicepresident@usu.usyd.edu.au Alistair is a fourth-year Arts student majoring in Philosophy. His introduction to the USU was borne from his reporting involvement in Bull Magazine and his success in winning a PS3 during the 2008 Verge Festival.

He has clocked more hours at Manning than at any other location since high school, securing it as his favourite thing about the USU. BEN TANG – treasurer@usu.usyd.edu.au Currently studying a Master of Teaching (Secondary Education), Ben enjoys the offerings of Clubs and Societies through Revues, parties and social justice causes. He enjoys the non-threatening and selfless aspect of volunteering and hopes to do more in the future.

JACQUI MUNRO – secretary@usu.usyd.edu.au Jacqui is studying a Bachelor of International Studies, majoring in Government and International Relations and Political Economy. Her love for the USU can be measured in the amount of paraphernalia she has accrued, from owning over 20 Clubs and Societies t-shirts, to designing an O-Week drink bottle, an event she directed in 2010. Ultimately, she hopes to keep our USU student-run, independent and flourishing.

BRIGID DIXON – b.dixon@usu.usyd.edu.au In and around baking ridiculously-themed birthday cakes, drinking copious amounts of tea and dancing badly at every available moment Brigid is completing her combined Arts/ Law degree, with a major in Government and International Relations. Following on from her involvement in SUDS, SULS and Young UN Women Australia Sydney Chapter, running for Board in 2011 reflected a desire to engage more students in the Union and open up communication between the Board and the community.

MINA NADA – m.nada@usu.usyd.edu.au Mina is an Arts/Law student with a German major. He has had roles with Young Vinnies, FOCUS, SULS and other student organisations. Mina also has experience with the Australian Defence Force and international law firms in Australia and Europe. He wants to improve food prices and quality on campus.

RHYS POGONOSKI – r.pogonoski@usu.usyd.edu.au Rhys is a fourth-year Bachelor of Economics Honours student, majoring in International Business and Economics. His unofficial major, the USU, has been cultivated through a deep and broad involvement predominately through the C&S program, debating and the Revues. Rhys also has a strong passion for SUDS, MUSE, Theatresports and Project 52.

Beyond the USU Rhys is very interested in promoting the capability of youth, which he does through his involvement with various youth leadership charities.

JAMES FLYNN – j.flynn@usu.usyd.edu.au James is a fifth-year Commerce (Liberal Studies) student who intends to pursue Postgraduate Medicine. His experience with the USU extends to executive roles in the Economics Society, the Evangelical Union, 180 Degrees Consulting and more. James is deeply invested in the Clubs and Societies program, and will sit on the Finance Committee during the 2011-2012 term.

ASTHA RAJVANSHI – a.rajvanshi@usu.usyd.edu.au Astha Rajvanshi is in her second year studying Arts (Media and Communications) with a second major in Asian Studies. She ran for Union Board with a strong urge to get more involved in student life and make a difference, and found her calling after reading an advertisement for the student elections on the back of a Bull Magazine. Her favourite things about the USU include her daily cup of coffee accompanied by a good read of the student publications.

VIVIENNE MOXHAM-HALL – v.moxhamhall@usu.usyd.edu.au Vivienne is a fifth-year Science and Arts student, majoring in Immunobiology and Philosophy. She began her involvement in the Union by co-running O-Week in 2009’s 'Flashback Fastforward' and has been a member of many Clubs and Societies, including SciSoc, SUWO, Labor Club and Science Revue. Outside of the Union, she is heavily involved in swimming and the National Union of Students.

ZAC THOMPSON – z.thompson@usu.usyd.edu.au Zac is a proud Arts student in his second year. His studies focus on International Relations and diplomatic history. Zac is also an Australian representative in slalom kayaking as a SUSF scholarship holder. A USU devotee, Zac is committed to unlocking its full potential in order to secure its future and bragging rights as Australia’s best student experience.

ISSUE 05 INTERVIEW

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n the eve of the premiere of his new show, Lawrence Leung’s Unbelievable, Kira Spucys-Tahar chats to stand-up comedian and television performer Lawrence Leung.

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WERE YOU SURPRISED BY THE SUCCESS OF YOUR PREVIOUS SERIES, LAWRENCE LEUNG’S CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE? I was. I don’t go into a project expecting it to be a success; I do it because I like doing it. When it came to working on television, I was nervous because I’d never done it before and because it was personal. It was the end of my 20s, my quarter-life crisis and I wanted to reconnect with things I found fun as a kid. I wondered what the comedy would be like doing those things as an adult. It only took two sentences for me to explain my idea to the people at the ABC and when people got it, I knew I was onto a good thing.

THE THEMES OF YOUR LIVE SHOWS SEEM TO BE RELATED TO QUIRKY OBSESSIONS. WHEN DID YOU FIRST DISCOVER AN INTEREST IN THESE AREAS? I guess the same way anyone has an obsession or hobby when they’re young. I remember one summer I bought all these locks because I wanted to train myself to be a lock-picker and another summer I just wanted to conquer a Rubik’s Cube. I suppose I’m restless, a little ADD and things just capture my fancy all the time. I’ve always been interested in things I can’t understand, the mysterious side of life.

WHERE DID THE IDEA FOR YOUR LATEST LIVE SHOW, LAWRENCE LEUNG WANTS A JETPACK COME FROM? There was a kid on a plane when I was flying home to Melbourne. He was travelling by himself and he was so irritating, boasting about being a web developer and handing me his business card. He was just so boastful and it made me think: ‘Here I am as an adult but I

didn’t do any of this stuff as a kid’. I wanted a goal to achieve, a difficult task. Also, I found these pictures of my dad at my age, coming to Australia. He achieved this monumentally difficult task of moving here and having a family so I wanted something monumental – who doesn’t want to fly with a jetpack?

WHERE HAS BEEN YOUR FAVOURITE PLACE TO PERFORM AND WHY? Golly. I think there are three places. My first stand-up gig in Melbourne… and my first Edinburgh show. I always wanted to go over. It’s a kind of pilgrimage for comedians.

And third is probably travelling through Scotland after Edinburgh. I was in Fort William, absolutely shitty in summer, a very bleak town. The people at the backpackers told me they had the highest rate of incest – it was very creepy. The owners found out I’d done a show in Edinburgh and asked me to do one… so I did this show in a room packed with backpackers from around the world.

Most didn’t know English or were drunk, and it wasn’t really stand-up, but storytelling… it opened my eyes to this new form of stand-up, which just blew me away.

TELL ME A BIT ABOUT YOUR NEW SERIES, UNBELIEVABLE. WHAT WAS YOUR BEST EXPERIENCE FROM THE SERIES? Looking at the whole thing, it’s very different from the first series; that was about reliving childhood – a personal quest, this is a set of cool science adventures. You meet these really interesting, fascinating people. The people who you think will be really wacky turn out to be really ordinary, and the people who you

LAWRENCE LEUNG

INTERVIEW

think will be average turn out to be some of the most amazing people you meet. We did this interview with a guy who was driving in a car to Las Vegas, and he had these coins taped to his eyes and was blindfolded. And I lived to tell the tale!

HOW DOES THE INTERACTIVE CARD GAME, FEATURED ON YOUR WEBSITE, WORK? That’s this mind-reading thing I’ve been testing out. Different people have different ideas about how it works. Someone thought I was doing it by reading their eye movements using a webcam.

What’s weird is people thinking the ABC would break privacy laws to let me do that. It won’t work for everyone though. A mathematician looked at it and couldn’t work it out, but his four-year-old daughter worked it out in a snap.

There’s this large proportion of people that can’t and a small percentage that can. Anyone can do it, that’s the logic. That’s the whole series… looking at why we believe the things we do, games of deception. Why is it that seeing is not always believing? I’ve always been obsessed by the psychology behind why people believe the things they do.

WHAT WAS IT LIKE TO BE NAMED GQ MAGAZINE’S MAN OF THE YEAR FOR COMEDIC TALENT IN 2009? DID IT CHANGE PEOPLE’S EXPECTATIONS OF YOU? Pretty good (Laughs). People expected I would wear suits more, like out of Mad Men. It was fun, I wasn’t expecting it. It was better than being nominated for Cleo Bachelor the same year.

That’s something I’ve left off my wiki bio!

“I’ve always been interested in things I can’t understand, the mysterious side of life.”

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BULL USUONLINE.COM FEATURE

HELP! I’M AN ADULT NOW! KIRA SPUCYS-TAHAR GIVES YOU THE FINER POINTS ON THE THINGS YOU’RE OLD ENOUGH TO KNOW BY NOW.

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asic survival skills in modern Australia consist of more than how to find food when stranded in the bush, tourniquet a snakebite or build a fire using only twigs and your bare hands. The following are fundamental hints and tips on all the skills you need as a student to survive living in metropolitan Sydney.

Bear Grylls eat your heart out. (Please don’t take that literally Mr Grylls…)

DO YOUR OWN WASHING Whether you’re still living at home, rooming in a share house or holed up in college, it’s important to be able to wash your own clothes for the simple fact that body odour and dirt doesn’t give a good impression. Unless you’ve got the money to buy a new wardrobe every time something gets soiled, chances are you’re going to have to tackle this task at some point. Don’t think that simply standing under the shower fully clothed and sprinkling yourself with washing powder is going to cut it. Find a washing machine either in a laundry room or Laundromat and grab some laundry detergent or soap power. Now, the washing.

1. Separate clothes into light and dark coloured piles. Wash each group separately in order to prevent the dye running and turning all your white clothes pink. Check all pockets; no-one wants to end up with shreds of tissues all over their clean laundry.

For particularly heavy stains (think the red wine and spaghetti sauce stains from your friend’s latest dinner party/drunken food fight), it’s recommended to pre-treat using a stain remover. And always check washing instructions on clothing labels.

2. Load the clothes into the washing machine. Choose the most suitable wash program (cold is generally best as hot washes are hardcore and can deform clothes), pour the detergent, push the button and off you go!

3. When the wash cycle is finished, remove clothes out as soon as possible. Use pegs to hang them on the clothesline in the energy-efficient sunshine, or a dryer if you’re pressed for time. Once the clothes are completely dry, fold your nice, clean laundry. If all else fails, do what most people do and leave it all for mum.

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CLEAN A BATHROOM (INCLUDING THE TOILET)

COOK A BASIC MEAL When you were little, it was cute when you made a mess in the kitchen being ‘creative’ and ‘cooking’ meals.

Unless you are a Masterchef wannabe however, chances are you never really had to fend for yourself before and came home to an evening meal prepared by someone else. Anyone will fall over themselves with gratitude if you feed them something tasty. Cereal and toast do not count as meals and BBQs are not always practical. There are simple things to remember: follow measurements, pre-heat ovens and pans, clean as you go and always use separate cutlery and boards when preparing raw meats (ie. don’t use the same knife you cut the raw chicken to slice up some veggies… unless you enjoy crippling stomach cramps and extended periods on the toilet). Always choose a recipe within your skill level – so beginners, here’s a basic and nutritious recipe for an omelette from taste.com.au to help you onto the path of culinary aptitude.

Everyone likes to use one that’s nice and sparkling clean, but no-one wants to put n’t in the hard work to get it there. If you don’t clean your bathroom on a regular basis itt will end up wet and dirty and gross. n 1. Pull on the rubber gloves. Choose an appropriate cleaning product and with a damp sponge and a bit of elbow grease, scrub down all the surfaces of the vanity, bath and shower.

Wipe clean.

2. Wipe down the mirror. There’s nothing worse than having a foggy vision of yourself, unless you like soft focus.

3. You may have thought: ‘What’s that big brush doing in my bathroom?’

That is used to scrub the toilet bowl. If a few people use the toilet and you don’t clean, it’ll look (and smell) disgusting. Pour in the disinfectant, scrub and flush.

(Bonus Tip): Just before a guest arrives, spray Mr Sheen near the front door and it will smell as though you’ve just completed a full top-down clean of your place. Make sure to maintain the illusion by not letting them actually enter your filthy abode.

Om Nom Nomlette Preparation Time: 5 minutes Cooking Time: 6 minutes Ingredients (serves 1) • 2 eggs • 1 tablespoon milk • Salt & freshly ground pepper • 2 tabespoons olive oil • 50g mushrooms, thinly sliced • 1 rasher bacon, finely chopped • 1/2 tomato, finely chopped • 5g butter • 1/4 cup grated cheddar cheese Method: 1. Whisk eggs and milk together with a fork. Season well with salt and pepper. Set aside.

2. Heat oil in a small (16cm base) non-stick frying pan over medium/high heat. Add mushrooms and bacon.

Cook for 3 mins or until mushrooms soften. Stir in tomato. Cook 1 min. Remove from pan and set aside. Wipe pan with paper towel.

3. Melt 5g butter in the frying pan over medium/high heat. Add eggs to the pan (crack first and dispose of shells). Use a fork to quickly draw the cooked egg back from edge of pan to allow uncooked egg to run to the edge. Continue until egg is almost set. Cook for a further 30-45 seconds or until egg is just set.

4. Spoon mushroom mixture over half the omelette.

Sprinkle over cheese. Use a fork to fold one side of the omelette over to enclose filling. Carefully slide onto serving plate. Serve with a fresh side salad and toast for a complete meal. Yum!

CHANGE A L LIGHTBULB How many students does it take to change a lightbulb?! A 2007 survey by the Daily Mail in the UK found that 25 per cent of people under 35 don’t know how to change a lightbulb. Really. Moody as it is, sometimes living in a bat cave just won’t do and there will be times when you need to see the light.

1. Make sure the power switch is turned off and your hands are dry – changing a lightbulb needn’t result in electrocution. (If you’re super-paranoid, don some rubber gloves).

2. Remove the bulb from its fixture, known as the socket, by gently pushing the bulb in and turning anticlockwise until it is released.

3. Replace the bulb with a new one (ensure it is the same Wattage) by gently pushing in the bulb and turning it clockwise until it locks into place. And so, let there be light!

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PULL AN ALL-NIGHTER We’ve all been there. It’s the night before a major assignment is due and you’re yet to even write the introduction. Panic. For some the adrenaline is enough to push through the fog of tiredness and make it to morning. For others, they’ll simply cop the late penalty, roll over and go to sleep. But for those of you who want to make it through the night without waking up at 4am with highlighter all over your face and ‘agjljlhkjh’ typed on the screen, there are ways to get through terror time. Constant caffeine is one option, though once it’s all worn off, you may sleep into a new decade. Our tip is to harness the awesome powernap every so often to keep your energy levels high.

1. Grab a cup of coffee - the caffeine will kick in about 20 minutes after first sip. Set your alarm for 30 minutes from now.

2. Sleep. The most obvious step. Don’t change into pyjamas though; stay fully dressed so when you wake you’ll be ready to keep working.

3. When the alarm goes off, get up - You’ve powernapped!

CHANGE A CAR TYRE Some people will be lucky enough to never experience a flat, but unless you’re a paid-er up member of roadside assistance or want to try your luck hailing down a fellow driver or hitchhiking, you’ll need to know how to change a tyre.

1. Ensure you’re on level ground and switch the car off. You don’t want the car rolling down the highway without you.

2. Locate car jack, tyre-iron and spare tyre, usually under the boot lining.

3. Loosen the lug nuts on the wheel while the car’s still on the ground.

Place the car jack firmly under the car’s frame nearest the tyre – there’s a thin lip where the jack will fit, usually 15-20cm from the tyre in towards the centre of the car.

4. Use the handle to ratchet up the jack, carefully so it doesn’t slip.

5. Remove the lug nuts with the tyre iron and pull off the tyre. This should give you a hulking workout. If you’re a passenger, get out and watch the driver – don’t offer to help or you’ll both end up exhausted.

6. Put the new tyre on and replace the lug nuts and tighten in a star pattern. Ta-da! New tyre.

USE WIKIPEDIA Almost as ubiquitous as the phrase ‘Google it’, Wikipedia has become an invaluable online student resource. Except when you cite it as an academic reference, then you’re an idiot. Tutors and lecturers will know you’re lazy and will most definitely mark you down. That doesn’t mean it’s not a useful tool in writing an essay though. You can use Wikipedia to focus your learning and cut down the time you spend whiling away mindless hours in the library.

1. Context. It’s much easier to make sense of a topic when you understand the background information.You’ll be able to get started much easier knowing the fundamental difference between Proletariat and Protestants… and Pudding.

2. Use the references. At the bottom of each article is a list of external links, books and articles used to compile the main page. These are things you can read and later cite.

3. Harvest the keywords. A Wikipedia article can give you suggestions about the most useful keywords and combinations for a library search to garner the best results.

ISSUE 05 FEATURE

21

THE

‘S’ WORD ALEX MCKINNON WALKS THE CONTROVERSIAL ‘SLUTWALK’ AND EXPLORES THE DIFFICULT TOPIC OF SEXUAL HARASSMENT AT UNIVERSITY.

he crowd seems to come from nowhere. In minutes, a quiet Sunday becomes an arena, heavy with spectacle and novelty. Hundreds of people wind through the CBD in a great migrating ribbon, bringing traffic to a standstill and closing off side-streets.

Cops march before, beside, behind them, keeping an eye out. A news helicopter circles overhead. Bystanders stop and stare. Locals come out of pubs and office buildings to take photos and watch quietly as the procession snakes by. Sydney’s Town Hall is a common starting point for many protests, but few quite like this.

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I’m at the Sydney Slutwalk, among the thousand or so people who’ve turned up to protest against victim-shaming of rape and sexual assault survivors. The marchers themselves can be roughly divided into two different groups. First there are the usual suspects - feminist veterans who’ve been marching for decades, and those for whom any vaguely left-of-centre cause is excuse enough to lace up the marching boots. The organisers and speakers, with names like Audrey Autonomy and Zara Stardust, come largely from the organised queer movements of the Inner West, in fact the Slutwalk was originally meant to run through Newtown. Copies of the latest Green LeftWeekly are duly circulated amongst the various socialist microparties, and the most garish costumes and militant chants belong to those diehards who’ve done it all before.

The other group is much harder to spot. Being a chilly overcast day, they come in distinctly un-sluttish clothing jeans and pullovers mostly. They are young, far younger than most of the organisers. Many of them carry signs and are happy to pose for photos, but the swarms of photographers, eager for any excuse to get some more salacious shots, inevitably go for the scantily-clad and the eye-catching. The atmosphere among them is unusually relaxed, almost jovial.

They don’t give off a militant vibe. Instead of chanting and flag-waving, they pass cameras around, getting shots of each other’s outfits, and the MCs attempt to strike up a ‘workers unite’-style chant is met with silence and embarrassed laughter. They drift away after the march comes to a halt in Surry Hills’ Harmony Park, leaving only the old faithful to hear the speeches as the rain starts coming down.

A young man by the name of Matt is here with some mates. “I didn’t know about it until a friend invited me, but it got me thinking,” he says. “I don’t usually go to protests, but if my girlfriend was assaulted or something I’d freak. There’s a lot of stuff here I agree with.” Matt’s one of a surprising number of men who have shown up. He’s also pretty typical of the silent majority of people here. They’re not normally politically active, but for whatever reason, the Slutwalk is something they’ve responded to.

The Walk’s original purpose was to call attention to what the 7,500-member strong Facebook page calls ‘an environment in which it’s okay to blame the victim’. But as it went through the media wash, it was all but ignored in the debate over the appropriateness or otherwise of using the word ‘slut’, and the ensuing photos of T&A. There were no waving banners or exposed bras at the National Union of Students’ public release of their Talk About It survey, which looked to determine rates of sexual violence against female university students. The NUS timed the launch of the report with hopes of garnering some serious mainstream attention on the back of the media was hype surrounding Slutwalk.

The launch was held two days later at Sydney Town Hall, the same venue as the Slutwalk. A fiveperson panel, including the University of Sydney Students’ Representative Council President Donherra Walmsley and prominent womens’ rights campaigners Eva Cox and Nina Funnell, discussed the survey’s findings and its 30 recommendations on how to make universities safer for female students. No media turned up. Beyond the panel and the barman, there were but 26 people in the cavernous reception hall, most of them NUS volunteers or affiliates. Seven of them were blokes.

It’s a shame, because sexual violence is anything but a fringe issue for Sydney Uni students. Talk About It’s findings are disturbing. In the sample of more than 1,500 students who completed the survey, an astonishing 67 per cent had had ‘an unwanted sexual experience’. Seventeen per cent almost one in five - said they had been raped. The figures are shocking, but the report itself is far from perfect. In an article for the National Times, Funnell, a member of the Premier’s Council on the Prevention of Violence Against Women, criticised the survey for being “too easily dismissed due to its rather questionable methodology”. The survey was opt-in rather than random, as a result, it was much more likely to be completed by students who according to Funnell, “have a strong personal involvement in the issue and a desire to voice their grievances”. A survey of 1,500 random students could have produced far different, and far more accurate, findings.

Statistics 101.

But Talk About It should not be written off. While it is not accurate enough to draw concise conclusions about sexual violence at universities, it does give eye-opening insight into the experiences of those who have been assaulted.

The majority of respondents said they knew their attacker as an acquaintance, friend or partner - only 27 per cent said they did not know their assailant prior to the incident.

Of those who had been sexually assaulted, only three per cent had reported it to their university and only two per cent reported it to the police. Around 68 per cent of those assaulted did not tell anyone because they did not think it was serious enough to report. Of those who did, ‘more were unhappy with how it was dealt than were happy’.

Unfortunately, the report’s conclusions seem to hold up in our backyard.

According to the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research, not one incident of sexual assault, rape or any kind of sexual offence at Sydney University has been reported to police in the last two years. Bureau worker Katrina Grech concedes that “sexual assault and other sexual offences may have occurred at the uni,

ISSUE 05 FEATURE

Elly Howse criticised the intense media spotlight on the colleges in the wake of the Facebook controversy, arguing that “perhaps pointing the finger and blaming one area of the university is covering up the bigger issues. I’m not denying that there are problems in colleges at Sydney Uni, but there are problems in the rest of our uni too”. Her point was valid.

The colleges are small, easily identifiable and exclusive, making it easy to hold them to blame for a culture of which they are only a small part. There are only around 1,500 students in the six residential colleges, a tiny proportion of Sydney University’s population.

The Slutwalk succeeded in one sense- it got people talking. It made headlines and gained attention where Talk About It largely didn’t. But after the protestors went home and the media moved on to the next big distraction, we were left with little. Whether it’s skin-baring activists or college antics, it seems the horrifying reality of sexual assault at university is only newsworthy when it’s accompanied by something sensational or titillating - and even then, the real message is glossed over. Until we truly know the extent of the problem, it’s likely to stay that way. A well-meaning but flawed report, Talk About It’s methodology means that we are still ignorant of the real rate of sexual assault against uni students. No doubt the NUS, the SRC and others will keep plugging away. But the valuable work they do- the students they help, the outdated attitudes they combat, the education they provide- still goes largely unnoticed. The Slutwalk was a step in the right direction, but we’ve got a long way to go.

THE WHITE RIBBON FOUNDATION The White Ribbon Foundation aims to help create a community where women can live free from the threat of violence. White Ribbon focuses on challenging entrenched attitudes and ‘norms’ which are degrading or supportive of violence against women.

Whilst a silent majority of people disapprove of any abuse, this silence can be misinterpreted by some as indifference.

Awareness and information is needed to not only denounce derogatory attitudes but also draw attention to the level of widespread disapproval of the mistreatment of women, as well as dispelling some of the many myths surrounding this form of violence.

Men and women are encouraged to express support for a non-violent, mutually-supportive and gender-equal society and White Ribbon provides an opportunity towards making this happen.

Around campus this semester, look out for our ‘Swearing’ campaign asking you all to swear not to commit, excuse or remain silent about abuse. And be around for ‘White Ribbon Day’ during semester when students are encouraged to don ribbons, wristbands or t-shirts to openly show their commitment to help make campuses (and beyond) safer for everyone. www.whiteribbon.org.au

Photos by Cassandra Harris and Alex McKinnon

but the victim did not report these to the police”. The SRC's Donherra Walmsley is not surprised. “There is no incentive whatsoever to report,” she said at the survey launch.

“Victims don’t come forward if it’s going to traumatise them.”

The role of residential colleges comes up numerous times in Talk About It, usually in guarded terms. In recent years, there has been an increase in the loose perception that colleges are allegedly a hotbed of unreported sexual assault and a protective, boys-own mentality. Elle Mackintosh, a journalism-law student at the Australian National University, wrote a March article for online news outlet Crikey, claiming a pervasive culture of sexual assault exists at the nation’s highest-rated university. In her article, Mackintosh described John XXIII College, known as ‘John’s,’ as “a college that harbours a very misogynistic culture and one in which sexual assaults are allegedly commonplace”. She quotes a female ANU student describing an alleged practice known at John’s as ‘rock-spidering’, which she described as “an appalling ‘game’ that sees male students knocking on women resident’s doors during orientation week. If the girl answers the door, it is considered consent”. The head of John’s College, Sean Brito-Babapulle, said that such claims were ludicrous. “Anything of this nature that gets put onto my desk is dealt with immediately…We have to take many things into consideration when dealing with these issues, including confidentiality, the safety and feelings of the victim as well as the person being accused and the reputation of the college,” he is quoted to say in the article.

Sydney Uni’s colleges aren’t strangers to controversy either. In an interview with the Sydney Morning Herald in June, recent USU Board candidate Naomi Brooks spoke of being forced to rescue a girl allegedly being dragged into a man’s room on campus.

An allegedly ‘pro-rape’ Facebook page set up by an ex-resident of St Paul’s College in 2009 sparked a media storm and prompted the university to make all colleges subject to a campus-wide sexual harassment policy, rather than their own in-house policies as was the case before. Nina Funnell herself claims to have received reports of “sexism, sexual harassment and various chauvinistic rituals embedded in maledominated institutions on campus,” including an alleged proposed musical number that never made it to the joint Women’s College and Paul’s 2010 Revue, entitled: ‘Always Look on the Bright Side of Rape’. St Paul’s Warden, the Rev Dr Ivan Head, did not reply to email questions sent by this reporter, although he did provide a copy of the college’s sexual harassment and discrimination policy.

Of course, this is hardly the full story. In last year’s Women’s Honi, then-SRC President

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BULL USUONLINE.COM.AU CAMPUS CHATTER

CAMPUS CHATTER I’M NOT A STALKER, BUT...

TO THE GIRL IN A LONG WHITE COAT, Was it just me, or was there a glint in your eyes behind your tinted safety glasses in chemistry last Thursday? Your subtle caress of the slender test-tube drove me to distraction. As a chemist I cannot fathom studying anatomy with you, however would you be free to catalyse a vigorous exothermic reaction with me next week?

Methodical

TO THE GOVERNMENT LECTURER WITH A CHARMING BRITISH ACCENT, Your voice soars above the crackling static of a bad lectopia recording as I sit listening to you in my jim-jams from the comfort of my home. To think that three weeks ago I selfishly slept-in while you poured your heart out to an empty room. Fear not, your colonial subjects devotedly listen to you albeit two days before the exam!

The Real McCoy TO ANTHONY WEINER, Maybe time to get a new name?

Common Sense TO THE BIG APPLE, Congratulations on legalising that thing which is legal in many but not enough places. As Sinatra and Jay-Z have both noted, however, everything is cooler when you do it.

Bride to be TO THE YOUNG TUTOR TAKING THE BROADSHEET INTO THE BATHROOM, Were you improving your mind or being resourceful in the face of ruthless faculty budget cuts?

Fairfax lover TO THE NEW BOY IN MY ENGLISH TUTE, I’ve been through all your Facebook photos but still can’t figure out if you’re gay or just a hipster. Wear skinny jeans all next week if the former.

Gentleman and scholar TO THE SHORT DEBATER WITH AN IMPISH GRIN, Truly, heaven is missing a first affirmative. My love for you is unrebuttable. When can I see how large your palm cards are?

I’ll in your end oh TO THE GIRL IN THE HAIR SHIRT, The Moon in Capricorn opposes Venus in Leo out of sign. Mars squares Mercury. These omens, like

the Age of Aquarius, demonstrate we should be together.

Sudden fan of fatalism TO THE ENTHUSIASTIC CHRISTIAN CHALKERS, Does Jesus hate religion? I never made it to the lecture.

Confused TO THE GIRL BRINGING UP A LUNG IN THE ENGO EXAM, Is it three coughs for C or am I imagining things?

Wants to be a Millionaire TO ALL NATION-BUILDERS, I may not have spent my parents’ money on a whirlwind tour of disadvantaged countries these holidays, but I also didn’t patronise the bejesus out of anyone.

Thankfully the schools you ‘build’ are all fixed by local workers the second your white asses are airlifted out of there.

Bitter developmental economist TO J.K ROWLING, I for one was deeply troubled by the extra-judicial murder of Voldemort. Nobody believes the killing curse rebounded off the navy seals.

Mudblood conspiracy theorist

SOMEONE CATCH YOUR WANDERING EYE? SOMEONE ANNOY THE HELL OUT OF YOU? SOMEONE MAKE YOU LAUGH DERISIVELY? LET US KNOW AND SEND YOUR MESSAGES TO:

usubullmag@gmail.com

ISSUE 05 CAMPUS CHATTER

NATALIE SAREFF IS CREEPED OUT BY THE CHANGING FACE OF INTERNET IDENTITY.

GOT BEEF WITH SOMETHING? SPILL YOUR GUTS IN 400 WORDS OR LESS TO USUBULLMAG@ GMAIL.COM

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PLEASE, HAVE A COW While people have used the internet for communication since its advent, the amount of personal information we share about ourselves has increased exponentially.

Originally, internet communication was a private thing.Your likes, dislikes, aavailabilities, your life, were all sent aalong the same tiny wires as today, b but only to your carefully-selected n nearest and dearest. The most te telling personal information sent (w (whether you liked it or not) was th the 26-character phrase that sat b before an at symbol. This could be aas personal as wheresmyprozac@ h hotmail.com, but it was more likely to be something along the lines of ti tizzy25@hotmail.com. Succinct, n nondescript, impersonal. To be sh shared with the administrator of aany email list you cared to join

W

elcome to Bull’s Variations on a Scene, where we encourage YOU to get your creative writing skills out and help evolve our story.

It’s simple; read the current edition’s story and take one element of it – be it an object, setting, character, theme etc - and submit your own creative piece. Here is this issue's instalment – you take it from here!

EMAIL YOUR STORY VARIATIONS TO USUBULLMAG@GMAIL.COM STORIES CAN BE NO LONGER THAN 300 WORDS...

Over the years, ‘identity’ on the internet has taken a dramatic turn. With the surge in popularity of social networking, the exposure of personal insights is not just optional, but almost mandated.

With flimsy privacy settings and the new tradition of friending ‘that guy... at Katie’s party… yeah, the one with the stupid hair!’, the idea of a private circle of nearest and dearest, (even for the practical privacy Nazi) has become as loose as a pair of pants on a Jenny Craig ‘after’ shot.

Emails require specificity.

A neat, clean list of who was to get the message, when, and how.

However, it is ludicrous to say that this means that your whole identity is available on a completed Facebook profile. In some ways, rad_shiv@hotmail.com could be much more of an insight into one’s

identity than the carefully curated, erudite individual presented to the users of Facebook, those 200 per cent more attractive, possibly airbrushed almost out of existence, a lover of photography, SXSW, and that incredible band that YOU (in that slightly pitying tone) have never heard of. The real individual could be typing this out between sips of VB on a tattered couch in his parents' place, but the Facebook identity remains impeccably cultured, effortlessly alternative, or with a carefully perfected Jersey Shore-style disregard for the rules of grammar (loll watchu talkin bout dis isd mad kl! xx). Despite a veritable river of information at our fingertips available anywhere and anywhen, are we really any more informed?

VARIATIONS ON A SCENE EMILY CULLEN I was born with the ability to see, at first glance, the worst thing that a human has ever done. It hovers above their head like a mock halo.

That old lady down the street poisoned her first husband. The innocent paperboy tortured and killed a kitten for laughs. It’s surprising really, the only difference between criminals and everyone else is that they were caught. No human can hide their darkest secrets from me. I was always alone in my innocence, wishing that I couldn’t see the horrors those who should have been my role models had committed.

But then… He appeared.

I noticed him during my first semester of university; I figured he was a phantom, just a vision concocted by my shattered mind. Then he appeared again, this time relaxing with some others, surely if he could speak with them then he was not a figment of my imagination. From that moment I became obsessed with him, tall

with short black hair but more importantly, he had no words above his head, no horrors, to me he was an angel incarnate. Through careful following I worked out his timetable, I didn’t care that my own lectures were passing me by or that my exams were nearing. Nothing mattered except him.

I don’t know how long he knew I was watching him for.

“I’ve seen you around a lot.” He called out to me, “Almost… too much.”

My breath caught, my back was to a wall that I couldn’t remember being there before.

He moved in closer, one hand pressing against the wall, trapping me just inches from him. A smile twitched across his lips “I can see your sins.” He whispered, “They hover like a devil’s halo…” That smile broadened, showing teeth like daggers, “You have so many sins…”

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ANNE WIDJAJA GETS REAL ABOUT REALITY TV

ISSUE 05 FEATURE

I

f you asked me to explain why I will always choose to watch Keeping Up With The Kardashians over any other coinciding event, TV-based or otherwise, I would not have any sensible or intellectual defence to offer you. It’s almost embarrassing to admit – ‘reality TV’ carries a certain anti-cerebral stigma - but there must be some sort of case for the integrity of reality television. The fact is ‘reality’ is responsible for some of the hottest shows on television in the past few decades. How did the phenomenon of ordinary people watching other ordinary people be ‘real’ continue to be so unashamedly entertaining?

The truth is, reality sucks and television producers know it.

1

2

1 Watching you: Big Brother televised a human zoo exhibit.

2 The tribe has spoken: Survivor was one big game.

3 Pauly D: Reality TV needs real people…

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4 Gotcha: Ashton Kutcher took to pranking celebrities… and wearing caps stupidly 5

Reality entertainment can actually be traced back to a 1947 radio show, Candid Microphone.

American comedian, Allen Funt set up practical jokes in his office and used a subtle 12kg tape recorder to capture and air his co-worker’s reactions to the numerous odd scenarios he concocted. Funt took the segment to television in the 1960s with Candid Camera and spawned a bountiful genre of prank-reality, leading to the likes of The Tom Green Show, The Jamie Kennedy Experiment, Jackass and Punk’d. Variety-hour talent shows were also pioneered in the 1960s and 1970s and programs such as Ted Mack’s Original Amateur Hour would unearth superstars like Gladys Knight and Frank Sinatra. But this was simply matinee entertainment on camera, it wasn’t until 1973 when a groundbreaking series

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changed the face of television forever. In January 1973, PBS aired the 12-part documentary/ social experiment An American Family. It featured the first-ever reality TV family, and took the unprecedented step of sitting back and observing, allowing the actions of individual characters to drive the plot of the show. Bill and Pat Loud and their five children (aged between 14 and 20 years) welcomed cameras into their Santa Barbara home for seven months. The highs and lows of this ‘real’ American nuclear family attracted nearly 10 million viewers.

Audiences were captivated by the unfolding life drama of the family’s breakdown after Pat famously asked Bill for a separation on camera, and were also fascinated by the controversial portrayal of the Loud’s outwardly gay son,

5 A turn for the real: An American Family let life write the script

20-year-old Lance, who sometimes appeared in drag.

The series, despite its critics, opened the gates to an entirely new genre of television drama. Mary-Ellis Bunim and Jonathan Murray, the creators of MTV’s first dip into the reality sea, The RealWorld, cite An American Family as a key inspiration. The RealWorld itself is often credited to have set the benchmark for reality television today. The formula was simple: throw a group of strangers together in a new city and a new house, add alcohol, compulsory jacuzzi time, a few prejudiced slurs and there you have it - instant ‘raw, edgy’ drama. Although the show’s premise was artificial, there were genuinely compelling moments in the series. In the third season, the ‘housemates’ and viewers all shared

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BULL USUONLINE.COM FEATURE

in the pain of 22-year-old Pedro Zamora’s fight with the AIDS virus, all the way to the final episode when Zamora tragically passed away.

There was nothing scripted about that.

The RealWorld was just the beginning of the boom. From the late 90s onwards we would see the best and worst of reality television take over the box. Soon, enormous million-dollar prize money carrots were dangled in front of contestants and audiences alike. An explosion of concepts and formats emerged and terms like challenges, voting, alliances, eliminations and immunity took on new meanings. The world was entranced by the likes of Survivor, Big Brother, The X Factor, American Idol, The Amazing Race and the fame-seeking contestants who endured the increasingly ridiculous and humiliating tasks put before them for our amusement. What was once dismissed as a passing fad is still today’s easiest route to big ratings. Whether you love it or hate it, reality TV is here to stay.

So why has reality TV remained so popular?

Producers are all too aware of the danger of going stale. So, reality television has mirrored nature in some way and evolved to keep viewers coming back. Logically, the allure of reality television is the way that shows portray an authentic ‘reality’; however, it’s no secret that many of these shows are heavily edited to create added drama. The ‘reality’ in reality TV is both its strongest suit and weakest link.

University of Sydney Cultural and Gender Studies lecturer Dr Guy Redden, who has authored chapters in books such as TV Transformations: Revealing the Makeover Show and Exposing Lifestyle Television:The Big Reveal, explains the unreal nature of reality TV production. “Reality TV shouldn’t be confused with the ‘fly on the wall’ documentary that captures anything random… it’s a highly edited and highly purposeful form of television,” says Dr Redden. “Producers have chosen a certain kind of person that will interact in a certain kind of way to certain situations. They know that that’s almost as good as having a script.” It certainly doesn’t end at casting, either.

Todd Sharpe, the program consultant for an American reality dating show, explained to Time magazine that editors will even go to the extent of splicing out a character’s audio and replacing it with other soundbites to make a scene more exciting. This is what the industry terms as ‘Frankenbites’. Another trick of the trade is to edit footage out of context and out of order to create more cohesive storyboard-like plots. MTV reality hit Laguna Beach, which portrayed all the bitchy ‘drama, drama, drama’ of a privileged clique of teenagers living in Orange County, went as far to use editing and staging to fabricate the main love triangle of the show between characters LC, Stephen Colletti and Kristin Cavallari. An anonymous story editor revealed that LC “would say things about Stephen as a friend like…’I just love this guy’… all you have to do is cut to a shot of Kristin, and suddenly she’s jealous and grimacing”. Kristin also revealed that producers would give Stephen, who was her boyfriend at the time, flowers to

“Editors will even go to the extent of splicing out a character’s audio and replacing it with other soundbites to make a scene more exciting.” present to LC when going to visit her. Even the Louds from An American Family openly criticised their own producers for editing and stereotyping their personalities.

However, any publicity is still good publicity.

The supposedly-villainous Wendy Pepper, a former contestant on Project Runway, told The Washington Post, “I agreed to allow them to manipulate my image, and in return I received exposure I could never have dreamed of.” Kim Kardashian meanwhile told CNN that the Kardashians are allowed to edit their own show if necessary, but have avoided doing so because the show is out there to “tell our story through our own eyes”.

Ultimately, the pressure on producers to confabulate footage comes from audience demand. In a study conducted by the Journal of Consumer Research on why people watched reality TV, one viewer mentioned that she did not like shows that were ‘too real’. According to viewers in the study, Big Brother’s bored contestants were too mundane to watch on television, and entertainment value lay in the creation of situations that are beyond ‘real life’. The main attraction to reality TV was its ‘hyper-authenticity’ – the unique balance between placing ordinary people in unfamiliar surroundings and allowing viewers to compare their regular lives to those portrayed on television. The most successful reality shows are those that achieve this balance by portraying a fantastical, sometimes vulgar, presentation of life, but still make it relatable. Aren’t we a little impressed by the bravado with which the cast of Jersey Shore slug each other, overdose on fake tan and flaunt their abs? Wouldn’t we all like to bitch and moan as ferociously as we could use our credit cards like the Real Housewives? Reality TV puts these dreams on screen.

However, there are several issues inherent in our consumption of these fantasies packaged in reality. Dr Redden is particularly critical of transformational shows like The Biggest Loser and

What Not to Wear. “I’d call those shows social engineering,” he says. “It’s about rebuilding these people’s life narratives to conform to ideals in society.” He argues that as these shows have the ability to tap into real social issues, the producer’s focus on creating spectacle drowns out any positive, meaningful messages. “I’m not denying that there are people who watch the Biggest Loser who want to know how to lose weight, but you mustn’t forget the way they do it is against the advice that any doctor would give,” says Dr Redden. “When you look at the values underlying these shows it reveals the values of consumer society. We want to be able to click our fingers and the fantasy is I can have a new self, I can make myself over and I’m a happy person.”

Another major criticism levelled at reality TV is that it distracts viewers away from more important or intellectual mediums of social commentary, such as documentaries or news programs. But, increasingly these formats are taking cues from reality TV and using techniques just as geared to incite emotional response. The ABC’s coverage of the natural disasters in Japan for instance, included an arguably erroneous interview with a child psychologist, who was asked to comment on the effect of trauma on the lives of Japanese children.

Human interest stories in times of tragedy are ratings gold.

So, maybe we should stop feeling so guilty about our weekly reality fix and focus on the bigger picture. Reality TV may not be so real, but these days nor is anything on television.

Only the genuinely naive will take reality TV as gospel, we choose to suspend belief for entertainment’s sake. What’s worrying is when it spills into mainstream media. We should be worried about a deterioration of objective representation and ethical standards, where tricks and techniques are devised to deliberately manipulate our emotions and boost ratings.

Now that’s a problem. For real.

ISSUE 05 STUDENT LIFESTYLE

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STUDENT LIFESTYLE Animal Magnitude SY WOON FROM THE ANIMAL WELFARE SOCIETY DETAILS STUDENT EFFORTS TO SUPPORT A BAN ON LIVE ANIMAL EXPORTS.

M

ore than a month before Four Corners’ explosive exposé on Australia’s live cattle exports screened on the ABC, the University of Sydney’s Animal Welfare Society had signed up to represent the University in the Humane Campus Challenge. The competition was run by the World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA) and universities from across Australia competed to send the most letters to Parliament calling for an end to the inhumane live animal export trade, in particular the millions of sheep exported annually for slaughter in the Middle East.

For WSPA’s Challenge, we were allocated a weblink through which people could send an automatic letter to their local MP and each letter sent contributed to the respective university’s tally. The winning group would potentially achieve glory, fame, and a $500 reward to hold a party on campus!

However, the entire aim was to convey the important message about a live export ban to the community. To spread the word, we distributed more than a thousand personalised postcards, created a Facebook event, held sign-up stalls on campus, made a Twitter account, lecture-bashed, advertised via the USU website, spammed many a Society’s Facebook wall, and even visited residential colleges to speak! We discovered a large majority of the university body had never before heard of the live export trade, we also found many

willing to lend a compassionate ear, learn, question, and contribute to the cause.

The WSPA competition was originally intended to last for the month of May, but the deadline was extended for a week due to the impending release of shocking footage documenting Australia’s cattle exports.

Indeed after Australia sat down to Four Corners on 30 May, and saw Animals Australia’s revealing footage of the barbaric torture inflicted upon Australian cattle in Indonesian abattoirs (tied by their legs, fingers in their eye sockets, tails broken to induce standing on broken legs, pinned to the wet floor, then throats sawn open whilst fully conscious), online forums, petition sites, Facebook pages and animal welfare sites were alight with public outrage and debate.

Animals Australia and RSPCA

Australia had joined forces to expose the cruelty, and hours after the nationwide broadcast their website - as well as others - crashed under the demand of viewers wishing to express their shock and sign petition letters. In less than three days, GetUp’s petition to ban live exports gathered more than 160,000 signatures.

Over the following weeks, amid butchers lamenting a drop in sales and endless news reports about live export, the University of Sydney’s Vet Faculty was fired up by mass email chains with many divided over the issue.

Finally, under immense public pressure and campaigning by animal welfare groups, the government announced a temporary suspension of the live cattle trade to Indonesia on 8 June.

While this was an unexpected relief, it did nothing to address the millions of sheep and cattle continuing to be sent to slaughter in other countries devoid of animal welfare protection.

We believe efforts to improve the standards in overseas countries will be insufficient to safeguard the welfare of our animals. The current temporary suspension was initiated due to independent investigations by animal welfare

organisations which generated subsequent pressure from the public. Why is it now feasible to place trust in the live export industry and government which allowed this situation to continue unaddressed for more than a decade?

Despite our best efforts, we didn’t win the WSPA competition, placing a hearty second to Southern Cross University whose small-town underdog charm won through. However, we hope our work to spread the word about the issue and our involvement in the campaign contributed to the debate that has arisen, and that our campaign to enforce a permanent ban falls on receptive ears of those who can improve the welfare standards of our livestock.

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ISSUE 05 TRAVEL

COUNTRY SYRIA

Desert Dandy

33

TRAVEL

LEWIS D’AVIGDOR EXPLORES A LAND SOAKED IN HISTORY.

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simple disclaimer: Bull Magazine does not encourage you to travel to Syria right now.

Yet, if holidaying in the Axis of Evil appeals to you, I can point you in the right direction to get amongst the Arab Spring. First things first: keep your passport on you at all times.

The wonderfully friendly government of the Syrian Arab Republic likes to keep an eye on everybody and being up front and providing your documentation can save you a lot of trouble.

Once past the bureaucratic hurdles, you’ll be relieved to find that Syria is a vibrant and exciting destination, crammed with history and culture. Over the course of Western civilization it seems that everyone who was anyone invaded Syria. As if a right of passage, from the Phoenicians to the French, rampaging through the desert was the coolest thing a fledgling power could do.

Luckily for you (perhaps not so much for past Syrians), in between pillaging and persecution, each culture left a wealth of architectural and artistic relics for avid travellers.

Avoid the main museums – the impenetrable English translations and dust detract from the exhibits. Simply walking down the main avenue of the major Damascene market demonstrates the inexorable eclipse of

“Simply walking down the main avenue of the major Damascene market demonstrates the inexorable eclipse of succeeding civilizations.” succeeding civilizations, crowned by a Roman/Byzantine/Arab/French square leading into the Umayyad Mosque.

The world-famous archaeological sites of Palmyra, Apamea and the classic Arab citadel of Aleppo only add to the historical appeal. The Crusader castles, ruined Byzantine cities around St Simeon and the Roman centre of Dura-Europos should seal the deal for cultural appeal.

Did I mention fresh felafel rolls are 10c? (As of writing the Syrian Pound converts into a mere AU$0.019). Purchasing power has never been so good under President Assad and all that spare change will come in handy for haggling with the consummate professional that every Syrian admires: the taxi driver.

In my own Axis of Evil adventure I covered the length of Syria in a rental car. This is not to be recommended. Road signs are an optional extra on most Syrian highways, more decoration than direction. And straying too far east towards the border, the ominous sign ‘Baghdad’ began appearing far too regularly for my own comfort. To my knowledge Bull Magazine has never reviewed Iraq, and I was not about to change this.

Hence the importance of the taxi driver. Their willingness to break any road rule and fiercely competitive spirit means they will promptly deliver you to wherever you need. When travelling in Syria you can rely on the locals.

Despite this, tourism in Syria is still a haphazard industry. Expect to get ripped off and prepare for exuberant, but uninformative tour guides.

Even so, the disjointed attempts to impress Western visitors make it all worth it. Far from the anti-Westerner sentiment you might expect, there are some memorable characters waiting to be met. Just ask the grown men in markets proudly announcing that they are the ‘the only gays in the village’.

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BULL USUONLINE.COM FASHION

Fashion for the masses ELLEN SMITH EXPLORES THE TARGET MARKET FOR DESIGNER DRESSES.

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recently bought a dress for $29. For that kind of price you’re probably imagining some sort of fluorescent lycra monstrosity, perhaps a poorly-made sack with loose threads and missing buttons, or maybe a quaint little vintage frock.Yet my dress is none of these things. It’s a sharply-tailored black cocktail dress, made of a rich cotton-silk blend with sumptuous brocade detail. It’s decidedly modern and infinitely wearable, a classic LBD. Furthermore, it’s the creation of British designer de jour Stella McCartney. A dress of comparable dimensions from the designer’s 2010 spring collection retails for about £2,500 (or around AU$3,750), but this little baby came from, wait for it… Target. Only aisles away from plastic footballs and Tupperware containers.

The dress was part of what’s called a diffusion collection. A diffusion collection is a range of clothing that is created by a prominent fashion designer but manufactured and sold by clothing chains and department stores. The diffusion collection has proved to be a powerful force within clothing retail in recent years. It allows the luxury denoted by a designer label to be available to plebs like me.

The diffusion line first made its mark in the UK when Kate Moss collaborated with chain store Topshop. The launch received extensive media coverage as Moss posed in the window of the Oxford Circus store before a swarming crowd of excited shoppers. In Australia, the same initiative was adopted by several clothing chains. In October 2006, the ‘Designers for Target: Style by Design’ campaign kicked off with a handful of Australian designers each producing a small collection for sale at selected Target stores. The clothes were tremendously popular and Target wasted no time in contracting a bevy of prestigious designers to build on this success.

Stella McCartney brought in 2007 with Australians Josh Goot, Yeojin Bae and Gail Sorronda following suit, so to speak. The collections were tremendously

FASHION

successful, selling out within minutes.

These diffusion lines represented not only a nice pair of shoes for the working woman, but a method of selling clothing of premium quality at regular prices, quickly. Marketing expert Claire Beale suggests that these collections are, contrary to what we’re made to believe, “not about supplementary designer talent”. Rather, Beale says, they exemplify a “shrewd, multi-layered marketing strategy that works seamlessly from initial product concept through to advertising, PR, and the bottom line”.

Fortified by the success of their 2007 diffusion lines, Target became increasingly brazen with their selection of designers and the quantity of stock they produced in these lines. In 2008, American designer Zac Posen launched a sultry winter range in co-operation with the chain. As management looked on, with champagne flutes in hand, Posen’s collection stood still on the shop floor. After a few weeks, as the clothes fell miserably off their hangers, the collection was heavily discounted. Even at half their original cost, Posen’s clothes didn’t sell.

What had gone wrong?

Perhaps Zac Posen lacked sufficient cultural recognition in Australia or maybe his designs were just unappealing. A more likely explanation is that the consumer had tired of this particular marketing pitch. As garments from the previous diffusion collections saturated the market, their cache wore thin. With Zac Posen, Target stumbled embarrassingly in a commercial arena they had forged.

It is therefore unsurprising that the following ‘Designer for Target’ collection came almost three years later. Careful to avoid the Posen problem, management approached veteran diffusion designer McCartney for their 2011 summer range. Instead of promoting the new collection in the form of their red and white branded advertisements, Target engaged Australia’s most established fashion bloggers.

By inviting the six ladies to the launch, an elegant garden party overlooking Sydney harbour, Target ensured that the importance of the ‘supplementary designer talent’ was communicated by those with an authority on the subject and a captive audience.Yet, despite the improved marketing strategy, the collection moved slowly and was eventually discounted by 90 per cent. And that’s how I walked away with a $29 Stella McCartney dress.

ISSUE 05 FOOD & BOOZE

A Tale of Two Breweries

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FOOD & BOOZE

ALEX MCKINNON TAKES YOU ON A BEER-SOAKED ODYSSEY.

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ou’re probably wondering what the deal is with the squirrel. That’s understandable. We’ll get to that soon, but in the meantime, ask yourself: do you like beer? Maybe even fancy yourself a bit of an expert on the subject? Think again, amigo: big things have been happening in the world of beer, and your appreciation of a nice White Rabbit or Pabst Blue Ribbon is about to seem trés passé.

Back in 2007, two Scottish lads named Martin Watt and James Dickie started Brewdog, their own brewery. Their stated aim: to be ‘a beacon of non-conformity in an increasingly monotone corporate desert of bland, tasteless and apathetic’ beer.

Bold words, but they saw a chance to walk the walk when word came out of that a German by the name of Georg Tscheuschner with his own boutique brewery, Schorschbräu, had just concocted the world’s strongest beer. With a 31 per cent alcohol-by-volume (ABV) content, the Schorschbock 31 was the ultimate in pure beer snobbery.

With some seriously good PR - and national pride - on the line, the media-savvy Scots vowed to take back the mantle of world’s strongest beer from the Hun. Pure silliness ensued. Brewdog’s opening salvo was the excellently-named Tactical Nuclear Penguin, a 32 per cent ABV beer retailing at a princely £35 a bottle. It was accompanied with a ridiculous online video featuring two grown men in penguin costumes drinking beer and taunting their rival brewster from the Fatherland as a ‘sausage muncher’.

With that, it was game on. Schorschbräu’s Tscheuschner (say that three times, go on) upped the ante in December 2009 with a monstrous 40 per cent ABV brew – the Schorschbock 40. Merely three months later, Brewdog launched the provocatively-titled Sink the Bismarck, along with another video featuring copious amounts of lederhosen and friendly race-baiting. At a mind-boggling 41 per cent ABV, Sink the Bismarck

“Infused with juniper berries, wild Scottish nettles, mead and pure kilted patriotism, History is the Kanye West of beers.”

Main image taken from Brewdog.com

runs higher than a bottle of Jack Daniels. One bottle will set you back £40, which sounds damned expensive until you consider you’d probably die if you drank it in one go. It was only another three months before Schorschbräu retook the title again, coming up with a 43 per cent brew.

Before we go further, let’s explore what manner of alchemy makes this is even possible. Homebrewers are all too aware how difficult it is to make even regular beer without something exploding. Our feuding brewers used the Eisbock method to achieve their super-high content beers. A huge amount of regular-strength beer is cooled to a temperature that freezes

water but not alcohol, leaving a concentrated mix behind once the ice is removed. Both sides repeated the process several times over, often for months at a time, to achieve the desired, potent result.

Some wowser types might say it should’ve ended at 43 per cent, but if it had we wouldn’t have the glorious insanity that is Brewdog’s The End of History. Infused with juniper berries, wild Scottish nettles, mead and pure kilted patriotism, History is the Kanye West of beers.

Ludicrously snobbish, with only 11 bottles ever made; stupidly decadent, selling at around £750 each; and, at an amazing 55 per cent ABV, freaking awesome.

The contest is not over yet. Far from heralding the end of beer, History has triggered a new round of confrontation. Tscheuschner has sworn to continue the fight, and now other breweries are looking to raise their profiles by entering the fray. But it’s hard to see how anyone can possibly top the ostentatious apex reached by Brewdog - for each bottle of History comes lovingly stuffed inside a small woodland creature dressed in a delightful outfit by a professional taxidermist. And before you get your animal activist face on, it’s okay; all the beasts perished on Britain’s roads, and as The Schorschbock 31: the Brewdog lads themselves say, ‘if you are the beer that launched a slightly offended, we don’t care’. thousand headaches.

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BULL USUONLINE.COM SPORT

SPORT Quiet Riot NOW THAT VANCOUVER HAS SETTLED DOWN A LITTLE, DOMINIC MCNEIL LOOKS BACK AT ICE HOCKEY’S STANLEY CUP AND LEARNS A THING OR TWO FROM CANADIANS.

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ce hockey is rarely profiled in Australia, strange considering our insatiable appetite for rough and tumble sports. Sportscentric channel OneHD televises baseball, NFL, the Bundesliga and netball over ice hockey, testimony to its lack of popularity in this country. Even more telling is the fact the only Australian airtime this sport did receive, contained no scenes of the game itself, but rather the riots that ensued in Vancouver in the aftermath of the Canucks’ undignified 4-nil loss to the Boston Bruins in game seven of the National Hockey League’s Stanley Cup final.

This was unfortunate because in many ways it was a truly fitting Stanley Cup final. The match reinvoked an age-old national rivalry, pitting an American team against a Canadian team.

Canadian hockey fans already bear something of an enmity with the Boston team, who play in the Canadian dominated north-east division.

The place to watch the game in Sydney was the Brewhouse in Darling Harbour. In front of a cinema-sized screen, over a hundred Canucks and four Bruins fans, seedily drank their Canadian Club at the wee hour of 10am.

Partisan rivalry aside, the battle was truly between the two goalies. Both Boston’s Tim Thomas and Vancouver’s Roberto Luongo were nominees for the Vezina trophy – the National

Hockey League’s award to the season’s best goaltender. But an uncharacteristically poor performance from Luongo meant the only battle Vancouver’s custodian fought, was with his own slip-ups. The Canadian national goalie, an Olympic gold medallist from the 2008 Winter Olympics, struggled to find form. He let in a whopping 21 goals throughout the series, including an unprecedented eight in game four.

Thomas on the other hand had two shut-outs (saves), and let in only eight goals throughout the whole series. Vancouver’s Stanley Cup wins were marginal. Two of the Canucks victories came by one goal, while the other was snatched in overtime. Boston’s wins on the other hand, were by large differentials. While the series did go all the way to game seven, this final stage truly showed the difference in calibre between the two teams.

In complete contrast to the post-game scenes of upturned cars on fire and feral loons in hockey jerseys in Vancouver, the Brewhouse witnessed a display of the very best of the Canadian spirit and sportsmanship. Upon the end of the third period, the Canucks supporters presented a home-made Stanley Cup to the quartet of Bruins supporters present. Afterwards the entire enclave of Vancouverites individually congratulated and shook hands with the Bruins supporters. On a personal note, as a Bruins fan I was proud to win the cup, but after witnessing such honour and dignity shown by the supporters of a great sport with a now-tarnished image in an ice hockey-oblivious country, I’d be even prouder to be Canadian.

STANLEY CUP FOR DUMMIES The Stanley Cup is the National Hockey League’s ultimate prize – a ridiculously oversized trophy awarded to the winning team at the conclusion of a three-month long finals series. Australians are used to the ‘big day in September’ - single-game grand finals, but in ice hockey, like most North American sports, each finals stage – quarters, semis, conference, and Stanley Cup – is a best-of-seven series. The result is that this year, both the Boston Bruins and Vancouver Canucks played an exhaustive 25 games in the playoffs – around the same number as many Australian sports play in their regular seasons.

ISSUE 05 SCIENCE & TECH

37

SCIENCE & TECH Welcome Web 3.0

ENTERTAINMENT COMES IN THREES PAUL ELLIS LETS US IN ON BIG ANNOUNCEMENTS IN GAMING.

KIRA SPUCYS-TAHAR PLUGS INTO THE VIRTUAL WORLD.

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et ready to welcome the future as you’ve never imagined; a smarter system that’ll know you better than you know yourself. Welcome Web 3.0.

The Internet, as a system of information exchange, was founded in the late 1960s, but it was only in the early 90s that the concept of the ‘world wide web’ actually began to function as a system of data exchange. Referred to as Web 1.0, those early connections promoted the idea that anything could be linked to anything else using web browsers. It took about a decade for technology to progress to the point of Web 2.0, which encouraged user participation in the form of blogs, chat and comment; and the age of search engines and later, social media forged our technological direction.

This technological progress is rapid, of course, and it now brings us to a new age. Web 3.0 - the semantic web - is the latest evolution, where users employ existing data and re-connect it for other, ‘smarter’ uses. It’s an increasingly intelligent web that reads and understands you and your personal choices, as a human would.

We’ve moved to a point where the Internet is personified and online technologies understand online interaction beyond binaries to actual people. Web 3.0 includes all the terms that have been bandied about by computer geeks for years: cloud computing, geosynchronous data, collaborative intelligent filtering, 3D visuals, cross-platforming and interaction.

We’re only beginning to see early iterations of this new form of web. A good example is recommendation systems. This is where a program is able to detect your connection with another person who uses the same program

and advises you of their choices; a website telling you that your friend already ‘likes’ their page on Facebook, for example. Mark Zuckerberg’s gang have also created Facebook Open Graph, a platform that allows sites you access while simultaneously logged onto Facebook to share information about users in order to tailor advertisements and special offers.

Similar movements gaining steam include the SIOC Project, or Semantically-Interlinked Online Communities, and Friend-Of-A-Friend (FOAF), which use different data protocols to share personal profiles and social networking information to make your browsing life easier.

Now, meet your new personal online assistant, Siri, the latest in a line of Virtual Personal Assistants (VPAs). According to his (it’s a he apparently) website: ‘Siri understands what you say, accomplishes tasks for you and adapts to your preferences over time.’ Siri is a program designed to learn and manage your personal details through back-andforth conversational interactions.You can converse with Siri through spoken requests over your smartphone or computer, typed keywords and phrases or graphic requests. Siri then applies an algorithm to search through possible interpretations, applying its knowledge of your location and preferences to understand your most probable intention. He can also choose which specific sets of services will be most useful to you in accomplishing a particular task. He can, for example, give you a restaurant recommendation for your given location based on cuisine preferences, friend recommendations and preferences and what you’ve said about previous dining experiences. He knows what you want before you’ve even asked.

The World Wide Web is getting smarter. No longer is it about you, it’s about us. We’re moving beyond the self to an era of permanent, seamless interconnection. Going offline is already difficult enough but soon, there won’t even be an offline.

The Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) is the trade event for the computer and videogame industry where new games and hardware get revealed to the world. For gamers, it’s an exciting time of year.

This year’s E3, however, was relatively lacklustre. Despite some big announcements, critical consensus says the ‘big three’ of the industry - Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo, failed to live up to expectations. Microsoft’s most significant announcement was the that Halo 4 is in production and appears to be a ‘remake’ of the original Halo: Combat Evolved.

News that Bungie, the developers responsible for the Halo games so far, will not be involved received an unenthusiastic response. The rest of Microsoft’s E3 was all about Kinect, their motion-sensing Xbox 360 hardware add-on. Think Nintendo’s Wii, but replace the controller with your whole body. Among the reveals was a new Ghost Recon that will let players use Kinect to shuffle through weapons. It sounded cool but looked clunky.

The platform hasn’t offered much more than novel distraction so far and it looks like it’ll be staying that way.

Nintendo meanwhile, announced their next console to succeed the Wii - the Wii U. It features a new, interactive, touch-screen controller among other nifty gimmicks. The disappointing part is that while the Wii U itself looks promising, so far it appears to be singleplayer orientated. Given Nintendo’s strongest franchises are often multiplayer-based (i.e.

Super Smash Bros, Mario Kart, Mario Party etc), this decision seems strange. As with the successful Wii, Nintendo again seem to be pushing the ‘casual’ gaming angle, which will leave Sony and Microsoft to duke it out for the hardcore gaming market.

Finally, Sony announced their new portable device (after the PSP-Go flop) the dual analog-sticked PS Vita, as well as a surprisingly large amount of 3D games and a new, affordable 3D gaming television. While the Vita looks cool, battery-life looks to be a major worry. For the PS3 and 360 gamers out there, E3 showcased an exciting year ahead - Bioshock: Infinite, Elder ScrollV: Skyrim, Mass Effect 3, Gears ofWar 3, Battlefield 3 and Batman: Arkham City should all be worthwhile gaming experiences.

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BULL USUONLINE.COM ENTERTAINMENT

ENTERTAINMENT One of a Kind TV TURNED FILM DIRECTOR JJ ABRAMS IS MAKING A NAME FOR HIMSELF IN HOLLYWOOD. FAYZAN BAKHTIAR EXPLORES THE SECRET OF HIS UNIQUE SUCCESS STORY.

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raditionally, television and film are two worlds in the same universe. There are film people and there are TV people. Few have crossed the dimensional divide and succeeded on both silver and small screen.

Directors, especially, find the difference in form, style and delivery too difficult to adapt. Most shy from the risk and stay safe and cloistered from potentially career-ending criticism. But in past few years one man in particular is showing that the transition can be done, and can be done well.

That man is TV auteur JJ Abrams, who mastered the small screen with Alias and Lost, and has recently been making sizable ripples in Hollywood.

Mission: Impossible III is one of the most underwatched and under-appreciated mainstream action films of the past decade. It suffered the humiliating misfortune of becoming associated as that Tom Cruise movie which was released the year after he infamously stomped all over Oprah Winfrey's furniture. The film itself, though, continued the franchise’s unique trademark as a big-budget directorial showcase.

Mission: Impossible (1996) allowed Brian

DePalma to indulge his love for high-suspense, and Hitchcockian plotlines; and its 2000 sequel, M:I-2, was a playground for John Woo to stamp his brand of overwrought gun-violence opera.

The third instalment brought on TV auteur, and film rookie JJ Abrams. The result was a film that rebooted the series as cleanly as any episode of the old Mission: Impossible TV series from the 60s.

Abrams harked back to its television origins to construct a discrete instalment of the Mission: Impossible franchise. Even beyond limited callbacks to previous movies (including one cheeky reference to the first film's impossible mission), Abrams efficiently reconstructed the spine of the TV spy genre. He built an effective and selfcontained piece of entertainment, complete with the staple exciting, coherent action sequences, which of course included self-destructing messages and face-masks.

For what was only his second feature, Abrams entered the daunting and expansive Star Trek universe. While Abrams ensured M:I III was self-contained and kept with the dominant tropes of the spy shows and films (just witness James Bond, for example: he just exists, as does M and Q and everything else), in Star Trek he faced a sprawling mess of source material - a jumble of canonical TV series, novels, comics, movies, fan fiction and conventions. Being true to the Trekkie world required Abrams to acknowledge everything that came before, and distil it into a 120-minute popcorn flick.

The resulting 2009 film was an impressively parsimonious effort, which managed to introduce Captain Kirk, Spock, Scotty, Uhura, Vulcans, Romulans, the Enterprise and squeezed it neatly into a multi-verse. He kept true to the TV show's history (Shatnerisms and all) and brought geek-deity Leonard Nimoy in to play Spock for the last time (or is it?). This done, Abrams still delivered a story about real characters with real motivations. Sure, they may be a bit high-school, but there’s more character relatability than Michael Bay has managed in all of his movies put together.

Which brings us to Abrams' latest

chameleon act, Super 8. On the back of his proven ability to fuse enjoyable, human and efficient story-telling into the templates of the pre-existing Mission: Impossible and Star Trek franchises, Abrams used his first ostensibly 'all-original' film to add to the ever-growing list of 'Spielberg movies' (which includes the first Transformers movie).

Super 8 follows a group of pre-teen friends in 1970s America as they try to film a monster movie to submit to a local film festival. Before long, they end up in the middle of a mysterious government cover-up of alien activity. If that sounds like Close Encounters of the Third Kind, well then the protagonist Joe (ably played by Joel Courtney) also has a unique ET-like 'connection' with the alien, and the great adventure embarked upon by this band of friends is not unlike The Goonies.

Look critically at the underlying methodology of Abrams' films together and it’s almost if he’s simply checking boxes of the tried and the true. Face mask… check, ‘Beam me up Scotty’… check, absent father-figure… check.

But that would overlook how successfully he makes a movie. Super 8 genuinely feels like an enjoyable 'lost gem', a movie you would have loved if you watched it when you were 13 and one that evokes that memory of the America that only exists movies. It reminds you of a time when everything was better, even if that time has an evil government and an abundance of casual alien violence.

Abrams is fast becoming one of the most interesting big-budget directors around. He possesses that increasingly rare, classic ability to construct an affecting, human story which is true to its source. His years spent constructing character-plots to keep viewers tuning in weekly is a TV-honed directorial skill that certainly has a place in cinema. Time will tell if others will follow the path he’s blazed, but in the meantime, we’ll look forward his next contribution to the film world.

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BULL USUONLINE.COM REVIEWS

REVIEWS DVD COMMUNITY SEASON 2 NBC

FILM SNOWTOWN SCREEN AUSTRALIA

CD CODES AND KEYS DEATH CAB FOR CUTIE

GAME DUKE NUKEM FOREVER 3D REALMS

For something a bland-sounding as following the lives of a community college study group, Community is one of the best American sitcoms of our time. Some might not find it as consistently funny as 30 Rock, as homespun as Parks and Recreation, or as engrossing as Ron Swanson’s moustache; but Community is unequivocally one of the most innovative and adventurous comedies on TV. Its first season gave us a taste with its relentless satire of pop culture - episodes spoofing blockbuster action films and classics such as Goodfellas proved immensely popular. Season 2 expands the pop culture palette, with homage extending out to Apollo 13, Sergio Leone westerns, Pulp Fiction and beyond.

Season 2 pushes sitcom convention boundaries further; there’s an episode shot entirely in claymation; a satirical ‘clip show’ with callbacks to hilarious, nonexistent previous episodes, and a marathon game of Dungeons and Dragons.

That’s not to say the set-pieces and conceits of Community are its only attraction – the show manages some considerable character development and still squeezes in dozens of snappy one-liners per episode. Community’s second season is supremely entertaining, and as my Mum would say, it really puts the ‘fun’ back in ‘funny’.

When the news broke of the infamous ‘bodies in a barrel’ murders in 1996, few would have believed that a case that so frighteningly revealed the worst in human nature could be inspiration for cinematic art. However, Australian director Justin Kurzel has done just that in his directorial debut Snowtown. Kurzel draws viewers into a dark world we’d all rather be ignorant of - povertystricken suburban Australia. The entry of notorious John Bunting, played with chillingly authentic conviction by Daniel Henshall, paves the way for scenes of animal mutilation, rape, torture and murder.

Kurzel’s refusal to shy away from shocking reality means this film is not for the feint-hearted.

Beyond the shock factor however, lead actors Henshall and 18-yearold Lucas Pittaway are superb.

Considering this is Pittaway’s first major acting break, his performance as the emotionallyplagued Jamie Vlassakis is a standout, and stakes a good claim towards becoming the ‘next big thing’ in Australian cinema.

Some might say this is a story best kept off the big screen, but writers Shaun Grant and Kurzel handle the narrative with such subtlety and refinement that beyond the horrific scenes, viewers can still appreciate Snowtown for what it is: a brilliantly-made Aussie film.

For a band that has released seven studio albums, five EPs, and one demo, Codes and Keys is an album that proves that Death Cab for Cutie are true masters of the indiepop genre.

Codes and Keys invokes the band’s signature eerie, eclectic sound, but at times comes out more experimental than alternative rock. The first single, ‘You are a Tourist’ is not what you would expect from a standard single release. The song has a memorable guitar riff and a strong tempo, but lacks any momentous climax. It seems to plateau before the track even reaches halfway. Rather, ‘Portable Television’ is the high point of the album with a fast, catchy beat, intriguing lyrics and strong sing-along potential.

With nearly no guitar present in most of the tracks, the fastpaced percussion and the odd string section in the bridge keep the tracks afloat and resonate throughout the entire album.

Exceptions include standouts such as the bass-driven and nostalgic ‘Underneath the Sycamore’ and the acoustic strum of ‘Stay Young, Go Dancing’. The band’s experimentation with orchestral and electronic styles in Codes suggests that despite their 14th year of making music together, the band is far from settling down.

After spending fifteen years in development hell, repeatedly shelved and restarted from scratch, Duke Nukem Forever has finally seen the light of day.

As with the previous iteration, the story is simple: Duke must once again save America and its babes from an alien threat, downing countless beers along the way.

The early levels of the game are enjoyable and humorous – albeit a tad juvenile, as Duke attempts to escape his personal skyscraper and casino. These early levels channel the essence of late-90s videogames, with simple combat, first-person platforming - a la Half-Life (1998), and a heightened focus on player involvement. It’s a nice change from the scripted sequences that now dominate modern shooter titles.

However the game soon becomes repetitive. The latter half is dominated by ill-advised fixed turret and vehicular sequences.

Excessively long load times and linear levels (in contrast to Duke Nukem 3D’s (1996) maze-like settings) will also disappoint fans.

Fifteen years ago, Duke’s misogyny and hyperbolic machismo was a fitting parody of 80s and 90s action-cinema, but now it feels somewhat dated and irrelevant. All in all, the repetitive gameplay, technical issues, and Duke’s stale characterisation leave Duke Nukem Forever to be remembered as more tarnished relic than epic revival.

BRENDAN DAY

CASEY CUNNINGHAM

GRACE O’NEILL HARRIET MCINERNEY

ISSUE 05 REVIEWS

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TV

Go Back to Where You Came From SBS

LAURA HANLON Refugees, boat people, asylum seekers… with every different label there’s a different opinion.

Aligning with Refugee Week, SBS screened the three-part reality series Go Back toWhere You Came From in an attempt to address the contentious issue head-on, away from the politicking. Bringing together six opinionated Australians from various backgrounds, the series followed their stories as they retraced the journey of refugee groups to Australia.

The ‘what would you do?’ premise of the show manages to balance the drama of leaky boats and heroic rescues with an insight into the participant’s varied backgrounds and viewpoints. Brisbane participant, Roderick Schneider (Vice-President of the Australian Young Liberals) regularly sports an anti-Julia Gillard t-shirt on the show, fearing that he may be portrayed as a ‘bleeding heart lefty’. On the other hand, Sydneysider Raquel Moore’s greatest fear is befriending Africans. In spite of her blatantly racist views, Moore is at least entertaining to watch and her opinions are shared by more Australians than you’d think.

CD

Suck it and See

Arctic Monkeys ANNE WIDJAJA

SBS Television

Kudos to SBS for exposing the participant’s racially-motivated slurs, which we’ve all quietly heard many times before in our own circles.

Also in the mix is refugee supporter Gleny Rae from Newcastle, who skilfully challenges the others’ flawed criticisms of refugees.

Despite what you may think of the often brash participants, some of them display real guts, eventually acknowledging that their long-held views were wrong and illinformed. Refugee expert and show host, Dr David Corlett allows the reflections of the six

volunteers to tell the story, and the show avoids over-editorialising an already emotional and dramatic journey. The program also reveals how difficult it is to understand the enormity and complexity of the refugee experience.

No matter your stance, Go Back toWhereYou Came From is a consciousness-raising, groundbreaking Australian series. More importantly, it is a good step in depoliticising the issue by framing refugees not as ‘aliens’, but as fellow human beings that can be better understood with a bit of compassion.

With three successful, yet progressive and starkly different albums under their belts, adored by critics and armies of fans alike, it was expected that the Arctic Monkeys would do what every band in their position has done… retire. Instead, the band has shown no sign of slowing down, with a round of European tours and a new, mysteriously-titled album: Suck it and See. In true Arctic Monkeys style, singles ‘Brick

by Brick’ and ‘Don’t Sit Down ‘Cause I’ve moved Your Chair’ cleverly threw listeners well off the trail. Whether these tracks were Americana garage-rock parodies or a nod to the band’s transatlantic influences, it was at least satisfying to see that the band was taking some inspiration from the dry wit of their first album.

But Suck it and See has not been made in jest.

The band has abandoned its jungle drumming and reverb-heavy guitar rock, for sugary ballads.

Opener ‘She’s Thunderstorms’ may begin with a promising enough eerie guitar riff, but as soon as Turner’s sweeter-than-ever vocals come crooning in, it’s clear the Monkeys’ particular style of snappy indie-rock has taken a back seat on this album. Unfortunately however, unlike their last attempts to experiment with style,

this is their first album to sound disjointed and not very musically challenging. We’re taken on an odd journey through slow-paced heavier tracks (‘Library Pictures’,’ All My Own Stunts’), where familiar guitar riffs and rhythms spatter through, but still don’t quite thrash as cohesively as we’re used to; and just as suddenly, we’re romanced by swooning love songs. The standout ballads include the retro charm of ‘The Hellcat Spangled Shalalala’, and the short-n- sweet ‘Reckless Serenade’. Although there are hints of more complex guitar work in these tracks and another fine display of Turner’s sharp lyrics (‘Her steady hands may well have done the devil’s pedicure’), there’s a touch of uncertainty about the songs that can be heard throughout the entire album.

The band does manage to come together on the melancholic and heartfelt ‘Piledriver Waltz’, but ultimately, the album’s strengths are also its weaknesses. The slower tracks become more of the same as the album progresses through the 12-track listing. By the end, the entire album just washes over you with a blurry impression of its charming sentiment, but not much else.

ISSUE 05 MINDGAMES

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CROSSWORD 1

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SUDOKU

1 4

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ACROSS

DOWN

07 08 09 10 12 14 16 19 20 22

01 02 03 04 05 06 11 13 15 17 18 21

Looking at something once more (13) Someone who commits capital (8) Hens lay these (4) Smears (7) Gold block (5) Chalice (5) Least tame (7) Gains (4) Maturity (8) Jumbled collection (13)

8 5

1

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Capital of Switzerland (4) Widen (6) Gave out (7) Inactive (5) Thrown about (6) Beautiful (8) Wedding (8) Flight hub (7) Instep (6) Indicate (6) Picture border (5) Footwear (4)

8

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4 2 1 2

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CALCUDOKU 12+

WORD PYRAMID

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Consume

6x

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3รท

Trim and tidy

10+

12+

Intended Pollen-bearing organ of a flower Covers

44+

6+

3-

10x

Illnesses Connective tissues

MINDGAMES

UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY UNION

AWARDS 2011 F^eje]hWf^o 7hj B_j[hWjkh[ Cki_Y

$13,000+ _d fh_p[i je X[ med Applications OPEN NOW and CLOSE Friday 12 August Register online NOW at www.usuonline.com For more information contact the ACCESS Desk, Manning House E: info@usu.usyd.edu.au T: 9563 6000

ISSUE 05 THE BULL PEN

THE BULL PEN

My Wacky Socialist Adventure ALEX MCKINNON SPEAKS OF HIS HARROWING ENCOUNTER WITH THE SOCIALIST ALTERNATIVE.

I

t started with a poster on a streetlight, three long years ago. ‘COMMUNITY DEBATE ON RACISM’, it promised. I was intrigued; slightly more foreign people than usual were getting bashed at the time, and I felt a need to understand the problem. I noted the time and place and went blithely on my way. I failed to heed an important small note at the poster’s bottom: a ‘Socialist Alternative meeting’.

Oblivious, I found myself a few days later in a large conference room. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary a long table at the front, rows of chairs, stacks of Marxist literature, you know, a meeting. I spent my first few minutes flipping through various pamphlets featuring lots of raised fists and photos of people burning before being blindsided by an Earnest Young Marxist, crushing my hand in the infamous Bolshevik death-grip. ‘I haven’t seen you here before nice to meet you do you know about Karl Marx,’ he greeted me.

Thoroughly shaken, I made my escape to a seat near the front. A senior-looking type stepped up to the microphone, called the meeting to order and began to speak. From then on, I was entranced. My original scepticism was forgotten.

For 40 minutes or so, I fell under socialism’s siren song, like so many impressionable young men before me. I heard my opinions echoed on gay marriage, multiculturalism and the environment. Sure, there was little actual discussion about racism, and the amount of indignation in the room could power a space shuttle, but these guys knew what it was about.

These guys were real.

Please let me explain. I was young, naive. I had just moved to the city, and was infatuated with everything Newtown. I was swept away by these strange, passionate individuals. My newfound love, however, lasted only until the next morning when, hungover and remorseful, I took stock. I don’t know what it was - the woman declaring terms like ’Black Friday’ to be racist instruments of oppression; the young guy asking when violence was an acceptable form of resistance; or the fact that they didn’t even buy me a drink, but in the cold light of day it was blindingly obvious that the Socialist Alternative went well and truly beyond my extremes of rationality. At that moment, I vowed off socialism and general insanity forever.

But then I remembered I’d put down both my phone number and email address in the heat of the moment. Sure enough, the phone rang.

“Hi Alex, it’s me, from the meeting. I had a really good time last night talking about socialism with you! There’s a rally in Martin Place this Saturday if you’d like to come!”

I spent the next two weeks bumping into Earnest Young Marxist and making excuses as to why I couldn’t join him in throwing paint on Julia Gillard. I could feel his Marxist, Marxist eyes on me as I fled, sensing my disloyalty. I finally cut loose with a crushingly-awkward phone conversation before curling up in the foetal position and weeping softly.

Looking back, I’ve learnt a few things. One is that socialists don’t know how to take people off their email lists. It was also a shock to learn that left-wing people can be stupid too. But at the end of the day, I still agree with a lot of their stuff. There’s nothing wrong with wanting a less money-oriented society, or for pushing for gay marriage or Aboriginal rights or whatever. But crazy socialists can end up making these ideas and beliefs look crazy too, and if most people think they’re crazy, they’ll never happen.

I guess my point is: screw those guys.

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BULL USUONLINE.COM CAUGHT ON CAMPUS

LET’S HEAR IT FOR…

HANDS UP, LANDLUBBER

SHARP-DRESSED CATS NICE WORK, CAP’NS

EGAD! A CLUE!

PHOTOS BY IONA TJEONG

18 MAY 2011 USU SCAVENGER HUNT

T

he USU’s Scavenger Hunt went down a treat, with teams of intrepid swashbucklers tearing around campus in search of hidden clues, completing challenging tasks and scoring some sweet goodies. Post-Hunt, the teams retired to Hermann’s, where the drinks flowed, the costumes were fly and many a good time was had. Kudos to Ashleigh Moore and Milla McPhee, our fearless Campus Culture Directors.

CAUGHT ON CAMPUS PILES OF LOOT. YARR!

OH NOOOOOO BAG LADIES

GROOOOUP HUUUUUUUGS

Clubs & cieties o SAWA AAWARDS WARDS W WARD AARDS RRDS DDSS NOMINAT NOMINATI NOMINATIO NOMINA NOMINATIONS NOMIN NOMI OMINAT ATIONSS

SUBMIT YOUR APPLICATION TO THE C&S OFFICE NO LATER THAN 5PM, FRIDAY 16TH SEPTEMBER 2011

NOMINATION FORMS AVAILABLE AT C&S OFFICE OR VIA ORION ONLINE

For more information please contact clubsandsocs@usu.usyd.edu.au or visit usuonline.com

w

ake up! Abandon yourself to passion, take up your lyre or bow, sharpen your wits!

For these times are our own, it is our task to write them.

Submissions are now open for

Hermes Literary Journal 2011.

Send your stories, poems, photographs, illustrations, lyrics, tweets, imagined monologues and literary essays to hermes@usu.usyd.edu.au by

August 5 2011.