Farrago Magazine, Edition Eight, 2015

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The Fodder is the University of Melbourne's new online student radio station.

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/ thefodder.org / www.facebook.com/thefodderunimelb / @the_fodder / @the_fodder / thefodderunimelb@gmail.com

farrago /

contents 34 23

44 30 science / 52 campus / 8 9 10 11 12 14 15 16

/ / / / / / / /

News in Brief Mudfest, Not a Dudfest Lerb Sperl MOOCing Potential and Pitfalls Uni Council: Conflict of Interest Free?

Mythbusting: AGRI10039 Dahl-ings UMSU Office Bearer Reports

culture / / Johnny Mnemonic: In Retrospect / Artist Profile / The Book / Fantastic Books and Where to Find Them / Gold Nuggets / Wee Bit of Scottish / Nostalgic November 29 / Agony Agatha 30 / Neighbourhood Watch 22 23 24 25 26 28

Cover artwork by reimena yee

32 / / 33 / 34 / 36 / 37 / 38 /

Your Brain and Video Games Science Lab Drawn to Science The Lunar Effect: Fact or Fiction?

Earth’s Lungs Shih Tzu The DIY Killer Robot

society / 40 42 43 44 46 48 49 50 52 54 55 64

/ / / / / / / / / / / /

Lesbian, Gay, Bicycle?... Trains?

Everything is Political The Trouble with Broga So Your Fave is Problematic Getting it Right?

Cyclord Playing the Field Time to Ban the Bomb Reefer Madness Nasty, Nazi Business The Traveller For and Against: Dogs

creative / 58 / Miss Morris 60 / A Look 62 / L’Enfer, C’est les Autres

farrago 2015 / edition eight / 1

editorial / farrago

MADDY

T

he other day I bumped into a friend who manages a café. We chatted about work and I told him that as of December 1st I would officially be unemployed. He promptly asked me what my skillset was. While I’m sure this question was meant to kindly assess whether he could offer me a job, it sent me into a spiral of self-reflection. He wanted to know what my skills were. But what were they? I should know this, I thought. What did I actually do at Farrago?

People have a lot of preconceived notions about what it means to be an editor, especially an editor of a student magazine like Farrago. Ultimately, what this year has taught me is that it’s not about me.

As editors, the four of us are here to encourage students to express themselves. We’re here to provide an accessible platform for students to be published, a platform for their voices to be heard. The ability to help other students organise and curate their work is the key skill I have developed over my years at Farrago.

This year has also taught me that I am surrounded by loving, supportive people. Thanks to my kind, patient friends and family who have allowed me to indulge in the highs and lows of this year while providing me with unrelenting love and encouragement. Thanks to Danielle, Baya, Caleb and Sebastian for being the best people to lead the Media Office next year. Finally, thanks to Martin, Lynley and Simon. I could not be more grateful to have shared this experience with you legends. Also, I’ve forgotten what it’s like not to see you more than my biological family.

A

s I write this, there’s about 100 unread messages still in my Facebook inbox, and the counter on our email reads 4,493 conversations. Wait, no, 4,494.

Thousands of messages, hundreds of pieces and tens of hours a week later, I can’t believe it’s been a year. Being Farrago editor is something I’ve wanted to do since I was (comparatively) little, and it feels weird to be nearly at the end. Sometimes it feels like you’re swimming in a pool of content and people and ideas and writing, but that’s the best part of being an editor, isn’t it? I’m really not sure what I’m going to do next, and it feels weird to think this could be the last media job I do.

But, it’s been an amazing year. To the entire Media Collective this year – from my reporters to writers, graphics contributors, team members and broadcasters – thank you. Working with you has literally, unambiguously been the best part of my job. It was a pleasure breaking news with you, creating a new radio station together, planning ideas and writing for the magazine together. To Maddy, Lynley and Simon, thank you for being the bestest co-editors in the world. You’re the most amazing co-editors I could have wished for – <3. To my parents and family, thank you for being so supportive, loving and amazing. To my previous media teams – at Ripples, SYN and Macss – thank you for everything and all the help along the way. And to Danielle, Sebastian, Baya and Caleb, good luck next year! You’re so super awesome and it’s been an absolute pleasure working so closely with you this year. I’m so excited for next year’s Farrago! Onwards and upwards.

MARTIN

@martinditmann

M @lynleyclare

LYNLEY

uch like my love for So Fresh Autumn 2003, Farrago will always be in my heart, on my mind and presented in a prime position on my bookshelf. This wonderful magazine has been a part of my life since 2012 and, at the end of the day, the joy of editing Farrago comes from giving this same community what it very kindly gave to me: a sense of belonging, confidence and the opportunity to be heard. It’s kinda like a dorky circle of life.

With this in mind, it’s been an absolute honour to publish the work of many talented people over eight glorious editions. So to our contributors, you’re the people who make Farrago spectacular.

Thank you.

To Mads, Mart and Simmo, I have been so unbelievably fortunate to share an office with you all year. You’re like the wish stones at the base of my Zayn shrine – you hold everything together and also glitter in the sun. We’ll get a gold-plated edition next time.

Thank you to my family, friends and housemates (The Coven), this year wouldn’t have been possible without your support. To the Bham Babes on Harper Sucking Ass, this shout-out is my apology for never mailing these bad boys overseas / interstate. To The Literati and the wider writing community, thanks for making the world outside student media a little less scary. To Danielle, Sebastian, Baya and Caleb, Farrago 2k16 is waiting for your talent. And finally, thank you to every single person who picked up a copy of Farrago. You’re the reason we’ve reached 90 years – keep reading, questioning, contributing and being perfect. The ride is over, space buddies. We made it.

T

he past year – the past sixteen months, really, since we won the Independent Media pre-selection – has been... Um. It’s all… One thing I learnt was... Huh. I can’t step back and tell you what this has been like. There have been good times. There have been bad times. I know we made eight kick-arse magazines and laid the foundations for a kick-arse radio station. Other than that, I’m not sure what to say.

So perhaps I’ll just say thank you. To my five parents – Mum, Dad, Sean, Chris and Emily – for the endless support, emotional and financial both. To my girlfriend Susannah, who I can say without hyperbole is the best person, for all of the love and for never failing to take good care of me. And of course, to my comrades-in-Farrago – Lynlord, Mart and my second dad, Laddy – for putting up with me. It was emotional.

In her final editorial last year, my predecessor (and second mum) Zoe Efron wrote, “While we [the editors] put together the content lists and commission the illustrations, at the end of the day we don’t write the articles and we don’t make the artwork. All we do is curate the work of other students that are far more talented than us.” This resonates with me so strongly. If you liked Farrago or anything in it this year, I can honestly say it had very little to do with me at all. The contributors are what make this magazine the consistently magnificent publication it is. So if you were one of them, thank you too.

Let me shout you a drink sometime.

PS I am still a wolverine.

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SIMON

@Snaxophone

farrago 2015 circle jerk /

THANK YOUS Brian ‘Ultimate’ Allen – You are one of the friendliest people we’ve ever met. Jacob ‘At it’ Atkins – Your perseverance is incredible. Danielle ‘D-Bags McGee’ Bagnato – Thanks for sitting through all those interminable Students’ Councils.

Alistair ‘Agatha Christie’ Baldwin – You’ve answered all our questions. Melanie ‘Hustler’ Basta – We love bad jokes and good writing too. Ruby ‘Sports’ Bell – We’re sorry for the waterboarding. Daniel ‘Student Theatre’ Beratis – You’ll always be our American correspondent. Emma ‘Editor’ Breheny – Detail driven but humour-loving, perf subbing. Jim ‘Burger Mystery’ Burgemeestre – You’re Simon’s favourite bus buddy. Alex ‘Capper’ Capper – good luck with the Devil’s Monocle! Bren ‘Old Cunt’ Carruthers – We made a radio station! Carly ‘National Geographic’ Cassella – You made our science section not just existent, but awesome! Nina ‘Why so talented’ Cheles – *sparkle emoji* *heart-eyed emoji* *pen emoji*. Kitty ‘Kitty’ Chrystal – A woman of so many skills. Ben ‘Breaking’ Clark – You beat the entire union to the pub. Patrick ‘Comes Everywhere’ Clearwater – You are a technical wizard, or tizard. Jess ‘Comer’ Comer – we are pleased by how few jokes we have made based on your last name. Gareth ‘My girlfriend’s a 9’ Cox-Martin – We would do meth with you. Ellen ‘Alan?’

Cregan – Thanks for indulging our use of gmail emojis. Justin ‘J-DART’ Davies – Petition for more nudity in Farrago 2k16.

Ruth ‘Brainiac’ De Jager – We learnt so much. Sebastian ‘Seb’ Dodds – We’re really happy your middle name is Aloysius.

Harvey ‘Revs’ Duckett – Your accent is alluring. Camilla ‘Canada’ Eustance – Farrago needs your art forever. Georgia ‘Personal photographer’ Evert – Thanks for putting up with our awkward family. Gabriel ‘Future Islands’ Filippa – You are very, very, very, very good at writing. Nathan ‘Fio’ Fioritti – You truly are a Farrago mainstay. Laura ‘Baked Goods’ Foo – You are too good for Commerce! Jack ‘General’ Fryer – No wonder we get enquiries. Eric ‘Charley Chutney’ Gardiner – You truly are Australia’s buffest playwright. Tom ‘Volunteer’ Hayes – Finally a Farragoer! Andy ‘Actual journalist’ Hazel – We look forward to seeing you at the movies. Paloma ‘Tough assignments’ Herrera – Thanks for dealing with all the dickheads. Anwyn ‘Magical’ Hocking – We hope you didn’t have to buy that Scientology book.

Tyson ‘Office Pest’ Holloway-Clarke – The horn of corruption awaits. Lucy ‘Bordered page’ Hunter – We’re so lucky to have you! Markus ‘Jocelyn Deane’ Janacek – We’re onto your pseudonym game. Dominic Shi ‘Dominique’ Jie On – Above Water looks so fucking good. Scout ‘Already has a nickname’ Kain-Bryan – See you in the Co-Op! Or at an environmentalist rally of some kind! Emily ‘Kepsi-Max’ Keppel – Those days of marbling paid off #SlottoCrew4Lyfe. Jack ‘Gigs’ Kilbride – Your column was excellent/Sorry we didn’t just outright make you a columnist from the start. Stephanie ‘Skilpatrick’ Kilpatrick – You’re skillful at all you do. Hill ‘Kills kids’ Kuttner – Thanks for making the office weirder. Elena ‘Lovely’ Larkin – We’ll miss our beautiful email correspondences. Kate ‘K-Law’ Lawrence – So are you running for editor next year or what? Sarah ‘Slayton’ Layton – You slay political cartoons. Charlie ‘Chas’ Lempriere – Thanks for being The Fodder’s whipping boy. Rebecca ‘(and

her Macbook)’ Liew – Science Lab never looked so beautiful.

Tori ‘Negative space’ Lill – You are a bokeh and beach-infused blessing. Ken ‘Nutella Donut” Lim – Sorry everyone has crushes on you. Sheri ‘Prefer cats’ Lohardjo – We do too. Sean ‘Bro’ Mantesso – Your feature saved an edition! Sarah ‘Didn’t stick around long enough to get a nickname’ Martin – We hope you’re loving whatever non-Farrago things you’re doing! Sarah ‘Glitter Queen’ McDonald – Zayn’s shrine will never leave our office (or our hearts). Jaccob ‘Self portrait’ McKay – We got the right CMYK format in the end. Alistair ‘Graphs’ McLean – So many graphs. Helena ‘Victory sign’ Melton – Glad we lured you from Tasmania. Ryan ‘Ry An’ Mitchell – Can you wear your carrot costume to the Fitzpatricks? Joseph ‘Intellectual’ Moore – Nothing beats a brew. Rachael ‘Hippy’ Morris – Thanks for your glorious editorial skills. Kat Muscat – We miss you.

Jeremy ‘Investigator’ Nadel – Farrago’s No. 1 investigative reporter. Mary ‘Nitalian’ Ntalianis – Farrago’s keenest first year.

Francesca ‘Cesca’ Ohlert – You were our short fiction goddess.

Yuzuha ‘On it’ Oka – You’re so bloody reliable. Christian ‘In the running’ Orkibi – Good luck in digital media! Baya ‘Bruce Ouyangopolis’ Ou Yang – You’re gonna kill it next year! Jesse ‘Longform’ Paris-Jourdan – Fuck, you’re talented. Ashleigh ‘Skye’ Penhall – So many interviews. Ed ‘Master Troll’ Pitt – We do love you. Putu Dea K. ‘Perspektif’ Putra – Anda hebat!

Ash ‘Audiovisual Wizard’ Qama – Thanks for dealing with it all. Bracha ‘Code R’ Rafael – A jack of all trades, and good at all. Mireille ‘Lives far’ Ryan-Nicholls – We also like baking and wearing weird socks. Jacob ‘House Elves sucking each other off in the Room of Requirement’ Sacher – Keep being funny please. Claudia ‘Ormond’ Schoreder – You are a shepherd.

Monica ‘Mosquito’ Sestito – How do you even be so good.

Sasha ‘Cyclord’ Sheko – Keep on bikin’! Ella ‘Shi’s great’ Shi – Good luck on Scouncil next year! Ellen Y.G. ‘Pink background’ Son – You watercoloured your way into our hearts. Thea ‘Peta in a good way’ Stephenson – You’ll run it all one day. Gajan ‘Gajantina’ Thiyagarajah – London is rubbish, don’t leave us.

Aisha ‘Plant lover’ Trambas – Thank you for dealing with our last-minute messages. Hannah ‘Feminist’ Tricker – Sorry that Simon gave you all the femmo stuff, we know you have other interests. Caleb ‘Marlon Tromboni’ Triscari – You’re so much better than Kafka. Ben ‘Comedy Legend’ Volchok – At one point, you were most of The Fodder’s programming. Jakob ‘Bonglord’ Von Der Lippe – You’re a top bloke, just lay off those bongs a bit ay. Georgia ‘Rarest of Pepes’ Waite-Gertner – Cubist memes never looked so sophisticated. Sean ‘Seanza’ Watson – Thanks for sticking around. Clare ‘Sports collage’ Weber – You make sports pretty. Emily ‘Parkville Pigeon’ Weir – Thanks for letting us leech off your bird-related comedy stylings. Will ‘Wanderlust’ Whiten – You travelled all over the world and into our hearts.

Duncan ‘Prime Minister’ Willis – Remember us when you’re at the top. Reimena ‘Too professional for us’ Yee – We weep (with joy) every time you send an illustration through. Adrian ‘Centrethought’ Yeung – Thank you for deigning to submit to us. Yan ‘Somewhat Reluctant Stupol’ Zhuang – Thanks for all the hours of philosophical discussions.

on opposite page: artwork by emily keppel, photography by georgia evert

/ farrago 2015 circle jerk

more thank yous T

o all our contributors and volunteers – all those who wrote, drew, painted, photographed, made collages, reported news, presented radio shows, coded, administrated, sub-edited, proofread, posted on social media, carried boxes of magazines, yelled at strangers, drank at launch parties, read at Wordplays and were generally present. Thank you for your enthusiasm, dedication and for helping make this collective a capital-T Thing.

To Nigel Quirk and Printgraphics – you get the perpetual title of “ever patient” for good reason. Thank you for dealing with us in our close-to-deadline stresses and for going so willingly above and beyond the call of duty. Capitalism needs more people (and lemurs) like you.

To Patrick Clearwater and Bren Carruthers – thank you for helping create two of the things that have eluded this Office for all two long: an independent website and a radio station. To Ken Lim – thank you for your indefatigable work running The Fodder in the second half of the year.

To Danielle Bagnato and Jakob Von Der Lippe – thank you for serving through a whole year of Students’ Council for us. We owe you as many beers as we had inquorate meetings.

To our Office Bearer predecessors – particularly those of 2012, 2013 and 2014 – thank you. You were what got us into Farrago in the first place. Thank you for running the best damn student magazine in the country for the last decade. We hope we’ve done you proud!

And to our successors – Danielle Bagnato, Sebastian Dodds, Baya Ou Yang and Caleb Triscari – good luck! You’re going to be amazing. We literally couldn’t have picked a better group of people.

To our fellow Office Bearers – thank you for being the best team of office bearers UMSU has ever had. You have shown the way for what UMSU could and should be. Thank you for your perpetual support, while letting us remain free, fair and independent.

To all the UMSU staff – thank you. In particular our office mum, Goldie Pergl, thank you for always being there to support us and wrangle Tyson when needed. We’ll miss the warm and compassionate way you got us out of messes of our own making.

To our fellow student magazine editors around Australia – thank you for your camaraderie. It has been a pleasure editing alongside you.

And finally, to our readers and listeners – thank you. This has all been for you! Hopefully it wasn’t shit.

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things we wanted to include in the magazine but never did cover taglines Dads/Porn/Vietnam War Nuggets/Nature/Nazis Rare books/Rare Pepes/Rare electricity

for and against topics Incest Methamphetamines Farrago Butt stuff Men Killing kids Tuberculosis Multiple drug-resistant tuberculosis Totally drug-resistant tuberculosis Jet fuel’s capacity for melting steel beams

the simpsons quotes “When it happens, you’ll know.”

“It’s a perfectly cromulent word.”

“Quit jiving me, turkey.”

“That’s it, back to Winnipeg!”

“The most rewarding part was when he gave me my money.”

“Oh, I’m not gonna lie to you... So long!”

“Dad, I love you, but you’re a weird, sore-headed old crank and nobody likes you!”

“So one of those Egg Council creeps got to you too, huh?”

“You are winner, ha ha ha! You are winner, ha ha ha!”

“Laughing time is over.”

“Now we can play the forbidden music!”

“I’m sorry, I can’t hear you, son: I’m wearing a jacuzzi suit.”

“Mrs. Pommelhorse... I’d like to get down now...”

“Everything’s coming up Milhouse.”

awkward family photo by georgia evert

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LETTERS FARRAGOMAGAZINE2015@gmail.com / W FARRAGOMAGAZINE.COM / @FARRAGOMAGAZINE / @FARRAGOMAG ABUSIVE ACROSTIC.

F

or unwanted comes knowledge your odious undertakings Traumatised our naive youth And bravely brought only terrible things.

- ANONYMOUS

GOURMET BURGERS.

J

oseph Moore’s piece on gourmet burgers is spot on. It got me thinking about the gourmet burger’s arguably more offensive cousin: the chopping board.

I recently went to the Northcote Social Club, what was once, a time gone by, a humble pub. What a rude shock I received when I paid $22 for a gourmet burger that was served on a chopping board.What has the world come to? Are we savages? Can restaurants not afford crockery? Plates are a marvellous invention. Don’t even get me started on serving chips in a novelty fry basket. I know the chips weren’t fried in there. The chef knows that I know the chips weren’t fried in there.

The basket isn’t even big enough for an adequate portion of chips. To add insult to injury, it is not even possible to salt your fries properly, as all the salt spills out of the fry basket and all over the chopping board. What could have been an enjoyable dining experience is ruined. I am conducting my own rebellion against this despicable culinary trend and making a point of asking for my food to be served on a plate. I implore you all to join me.?

- MORALISER

TITLE.

D

ear Farrago, What a year it has been. Let’s start with thank you. Thank you for filling the time it takes to get from A to B. Thank you for making me laugh with your raptor jokes and failed attempts at being mean to people. Thank you for lighting up the back of my deep brown eyes with the art of our talented students. Thank you for poring over every word and making sure that it is just right. Thank you for working yourselves to the bone week in and week out for our enjoyment. You did not owe us anything but you gave us everything you had.

Now let’s move onto the fuck you. Fuck you for only doing eight. We want more dammit. Fuck you for not featuring my face on the front cover. I thought I meant something to you but I clearly don’t. Fuck you for making me pitch articles like some nobody. Do you know who I am?

Now that we got all that out of the way I can say without hesitation that things will not be the same without you. The office will be a few shades duller, the pages of Farrago will no longer feel familiar and I won’t have anyone to swear at. I’m going to miss you all and the unique flavour you all brought to Farrago. Leave and don’t come back.

Forever together, Au revoir, My heart (and balls),

- Tyson Holloway-Clarke (please call me back soon)

EDITORS Maddy Cleeve Gerkens, Martin Ditmann, Lynley Eavis, Simon Farley.

SUB-EDITORS Danielle Bagnato, Melanie Basta, Emma Breheny, Jim Burgemeestre, Alex Capper, Kitty Chrystal, Jess Comer, Ellen Cregan, Sebastian A. Dodds, Harvey Duckett, Nathan Fioritti, Laura Foo, Morgan Kain-Bryan, Stephanie Kilpatrick, Elena Larkin, Kate Lawrence, Sheri Lohardjo, Helena Melton, Ryan Mitchell, Rachael Morris, Francesca Ohlert, Yuzuha Oka, Baya Ou Yang, Putu Dea K. Putra, Bracha Rafael, Mireille Ryan-Nicholls, Claudia Schroeder, Monica Sestito, Sasha Sheko, Gajan Thiyagarajah, Hannah Tricker, Jakob von der Lippe, Will Whiten.

CONTRIBUTORS FOR THIS EDITION Alistair Baldwin, Jennifer Balcomb, Melanie Basta, Daniel Beratis, Sophie Berrill, Carly Cassella, Nina Cheles, Angela Christian-Wilkes, Kitty Chrystal, Amy Clements, Gareth Cox-Martin, Kate Cranney, Ellen Cregan, Samuel Dariol, Ruth de Jager, Ghill de Rozario, Camilla Eustance, Georgia Evert , Gabriel Filippa, Dexter Gillman, Anwyn Hocking, Lucy Hunter, J-Dart, Matt Kelly, Emily Keppel, Jack Kilbride,

6 / Farrago 2015 / edition EIGHT eight

/farragomag

social media IN RESPONSE TO OUR APPEARANCE IN VICE, COMMENTING ON FEE DEREGULATION. “#DitmaniaTakesVice2015”

– Sean Watson ON FACEBOOK “apparently I’m a Farrago Ed now??? thnx Vice”

– Lucy Curtis ON FACEBOOK “I’ve had enough of farrago advocating sinful lifestyles”

– RICHIE CASE ON FACEBOOK IN RESPONSE TO OUR MASTURBATION ARTICLE

FROM PARKVILLE PIGEON “i love the frase “risk it 4 the biskit”. becos i would. i would risk it all 4 a biskit”

– 9 OCTOBER 2015 ON FACEBOOK “pp is tweeting about the A(w) F(u)L grandfinale! but i have no tv so i just guess what happens? #ballshappen #runninghappen #nobodygivesmeanyfoodhappens”

– 3 October 2015 ON FACEBOOK

Sarah Layton, Bonnie Leigh-Dodds, Charlie Lempriere, Eliza Lennon, Nini Li, Rebecca Liew, Wilson Liew, Tori Lill, Alexander Linger, Corey McCabe, Sarah McDonald, Jaccob McKay, Justin McLean, Neevon Mohtaji, Jeremy Nadel, Mary Ntalianis, Emily Paesler, Adriana Psaltis, Samantha Riegl, Frances Rowlands, Meg Sheehan, Alexander Sheko, Ella Shi, Dominc Shi Jie On, Amar Singh, Bonnie Smith, Aisha Trambas, Jakob von der Lippe, Georgia Waite-Gertner, Sean Watson, Will Whiten, Linah Winoto, Jason Wong, Vicky Xu, Jenny Yan, Adrian Yeung

APOLOGIES We apologise for NOTHING! BURN THE BRIDGES!

FINE PRINT Farrago is the student magazine of the University of Melbourne Student Union (UMSU), produced by the Media Department. Farrago is published by the General Secretary of UMSU, Hana Dalton. The views expressed herein are not necessarily the views of UMSU, printers or editors. Farrago is printed by Printgraphics, care of the ever-patient Nigel Quirk. All writing and artwork remains the property of the creators. This collection is © Farrago and Farrago reserves the right to republish material in any format.

campus /

campus /

photography by jaccob mckay

farrago 2015 / edition eight / 7

/ campus

NEWS IN BRIEF PURSUIT The University has launched its new online magazine, Pursuit.

It’s claiming to be a “multi-media platform, showcasing the latest research and opinion from world-leading experts”.

FOSSIL FREE Fossil Free MU are continuing to protest over fossil fuel divestment at the University of Melbourne.

A series of rolling protests and press releases have aimed to get the Uni to divest from fossil fuels.

Fossil Free advocates argue that divestment is the right environmental and ethical choice. Opponents argue that the move is at best unecessary and at worse a problematic approach to the environment and economy. The debate is continuing around Australian universities.

PROSH WEEK Prosh Week, the annual week of events, games and activities – some more quiet and some more wild – has once again wrapped up. The event stretches from the song and dance opening, to the annual Scav hunt, to the Bachelor of Inebriation (a pub crawl), to Nude Olympics to a billy kart race.

The Eng Donkeys team took out top place, followed by Psi-ence and Bandcamp. In the small teams category, the Heavy Metal Warriors took out the top spot.

COMEDY FESTIVAL

TRADE DEAL

BOARD ELECTIONS

The inaugural UMSU Comedy Festival happened in mid-October, with a range of shows and performances. The first and third nights saw performances by several prominent comedians, including both Sammy J and Randy. Student shows from a range of individuals and groups ran for the last few days of the festival.

The hotly debated TransPacific Partnership has been signed. The deal involves twelve Pacific Rim countries, including Australia, New Zealand the United States, Vietnam and Mexico. It now needs to be passed by those countries’ various parliaments.

Elections have opened for the two professional staff member positions on Academic Board. They’ll serve on the powerful body which oversees the University’s academic policies in 2016 and 2017.

The future of the Festival in the university landscape, which was somewhat controversial and elicited some scepticism, remains to be seen.

The deal has been eagerly embraced by free trade groups as promoting business, but various left wing groups have attacked it as weakening environmental, health labor and transparency safeguards.

PRINTERGATE

UNIBAR

The VCA Student Association printing scandal has gone to the Electoral Tribunal. The Socialist Alternativebacked Left Focus ticket copped a campaign ban for part of election week, following revelations that their electoral material had been printed on the VCASA printer. Left Focus said that the printing was the actions of a lone individual.

While some rival tickets argued that Left Focus candidates should face disqualification, the Electoral Tribunal did not issue further penalty.

Work on the new Unibar at Union House is continuing.

As we discussed in the last edition, HJC Bar forfeited its lease following years of difficulties, and the bar was temporarily opened as a student lounge which also served coffee.

UMSU, which is set to run the new bar, is now doing the various preparatory work needed for it, in collaboration with Union House landlord MUSUL. UMSU has also released a student survey around the bar, and is considering various name options.

Student Centres The University’s Student Centre change plan is continuing, with 757 Swanston Street building renovations coming to an end. The University’s plan is to merge all Student Centres into one hub at 757. The hub aims to have all services “side-by-side”, including administrative and information services, enrolment services, skills and development services and support services.

The University is now letting students vote on four possible names for the centre: “Melbourne 757”, “The Nest”, “The Corner” and “Stop 1”.

757 Swanston Street will also house the Co-Op Bookstore (moved from its current location near the Baillieu), and potentially parts of the Union in the future. The latter is the most debated bit.

SES

STATUTES

SRN ApplicationS

Subject Experience Surveys have opened. The SES is used to inform various parts of the University, including subject coordinators and faculties.

Response rates tend to be around 50%.

The University has unveiled a major change to its various statutes, regulations and policies.

Student representation changes has caused concerns in UMSU, with discussions continuing.

Student Representative Network applications for UMSU and the GSA have opened. The SRN seats students on various University bodies, boards and committees, academic and general.

8 / Farrago 2015 / edition eight

campus /

mudfest, not a dudfest by vicky xu

“I

t’s still hard to believe that all this actually happened,” Declan Mulcahy, says of Mudfest 2015, the biannual arts festival that showcases student creativity at the University of Melbourne. “The 10 days of the festival were all about bringing the show onto the stage, watching the art work of others, and going into the big tent in the evening, laughing, dancing and drinking with everyone.”

Declan directed ___Day Night’s Dream, one of the shows presented at Mudfest. The piece was an audience favorite, attracting 40 people to the 30-seat venue on closing night. ___Day Night’s Dream consists of seven different dreams, covering subjects as diverse as the interrogation of the innocent and the existence of tame foxes.

Declan came up with the initial idea when he was traveling in New Zealand earlier this year. Soon after, he started asking his friends to write down their dreams. He chose people with distinct backgrounds, ideologies and personalities, who he thought would have interesting ideas and would know how to present these ideas.

“And they proved me right,” Declan said.

Melbourne physical theatre group DIG Collective came on as creative partners, providing invaluable industry insights and feedback on Declan’s initial concept.

The final product perfectly reflected this year’s festival themes of accessibility, sustainability, education and community.

The play invited the audience into the set and, by extension, right into the dreams of the play’s characters. The venue, a big lounge with microwaves and couches, was cleared of furniture to make room for each of the seven dreams to set up separately in different corners. When the audience entered, they gathered where the first

Photography by Justin Mclean, AEVOE

performance was being staged and then moved on to the next one.

By the end of the show they’d completed a big loop of the room and were shown out of the lounge.

To achieve sustainability, Declan and his crew renounced elaborate technical set-ups; instead, they simply foraged for everything they could get their hands on, using Facebook to ask friends for their help.

Take the first lamp used in the show – a beautiful, big standing type that probably came from IKEA originally, which was lit by the first performer to start the first dream. The audience followed the light to the scene and when the dream was finished, the lamp was switched on by another actor and everyone moved to the next lamp.

Everything was simple and homemade.

The entire crew for __Day Night’s Dream consisted of only Declan and the seven dreamers, with significant assistance from the festival directors, officers and volunteers.

Those involved in Mudfest feel strongly that they are part of a community. “By the end of the festival, almost everyone involved has come to know everyone else,” Declan said, “When it came to the closing party, it was a night with a lot of glitter, a lot of dancing, and a lot of singing along loudly. It was a sense of everybody in the community having achieved something and having just had a good time together.”

The play was one of the most frequently reviewed shows in the festival. Declan and his collaborators were also awarded the Fringe Prize, which provided them with the necessary fee to register in the Melbourne and Adelaide Fringe, the two largest annual independent arts festivals in Australia.

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lerb sperl by corey mccabe

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xactly one week after the milestone of two years of Liberal government, growing tension in the Liberal party has finally come to the surface in the form of a leadership ballot.

Malcolm Turnbull announced to the media he would run for party leadership on September 14 after meeting with Tony Abbott to request a ballot. While citing a number of reasons for his decisive move, Mr Turnbull listed key issues such as “economic leadership”, “advocacy”, and “respect [for] the intelligence of the Australian people”. Mr Turnbull further detailed the pejorative public image of the Liberal party, having “lost 30 Newspolls in a row”.

That night, the party met and cast their votes, with Malcolm Turnbull being elected as the new Prime Minister of Australia, gaining 54 votes to Mr Abbott’s 44. This marks the fifth Prime Minister of Australia in the breadth of five years.

When asked about the change in leadership, Nathaniel SeddonSmith, out-going president of the ALP Club said the following: “While I am very happy to see the back of Tony Abbott, I don’t think a change of leadership is much cause for celebration ...

Turnbull openly supports $100,000 degrees, cuts to our weekend wages and government handouts to the mining industry. He comes from a background of enormous wealth, and he will run the government in a way that still benefits big business and big money, not workers and the disadvantaged ... frankly, it scares me when I hear people say that they think he’s progressive because he sometimes supports marriage equality. If we want a fairer country, we need to change the government, not just the PM” This sentiment was echoed by Stephen Mitas, President of the Labor Club: “The change of leader to Malcolm Turnbull has brought a lot of hope to progressives that he will lead on the important issues like climate change and marriage equality. On these specific issues however, we have already seen that Mr Turnbull is willing to sell out on his beliefs, in order to become Prime Minister. And so it seems he will do anything for power’s sake.

I do believe Mr Turnbull will be different to Mr Abbott, and I hope the level of debate rises above the personality politics that Mr

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Abbott loved to play. However, I wonder just how different the new leader will be if a majority of his party room still holds the same, conservative and outdated beliefs.”

George Newman, co-convener of the Greens on Campus Club said the following: “What to make of Malcolm? It seems that Turnbull at heart is a well-polished market-fundamentalist, who since his last bout as leader has mastered the game of political pragmatism. To that end, he will likely seek to uphold most of Abbott’s policies in the name of keeping the Liberal Party unified. However, it’s unclear what policies Turnbull will discard. When the Abbott regime sought a policy platform which would deeply aggravate and entrench existing inequalities, Australia was shocked: ‘Our prime minister is on a permanent moral holiday’. Over the last two years, majority sentiment was expressed in the nation-wide negative polling and public outrage, culminating in this leadership spill. If Turnbull sticks to the ultra-right wing, bigoted policies of his predecessor, I believe Australia will react as it should and show Malcolm the door.”

Mr Turnbull has produced mixed feelings within the Liberal party. Viewed by some conservative branches of the party as too progressive, he faces a key challenge of uniting a deeply divided party. Matthew Lesh of the Liberal Club argued: “Malcolm Turnbull came from truly humble beginnings, a broken family forced to move out of their home, to one of our country’s most successful early tech entrepreneurs.

Turnbull has the vision, the background, and the skillset to provide visionary leadership for our nation.

From here Turnbull’s task is immense. He needs to unite the Liberal Party, develop innovate policy solutions, and ready us for the next election. He is no-doubt the best placed person to undertake these tasks.”

Malcolm Turnbull faces a difficult journey ahead, and many commentators are keenly awaiting for the trajectory of this new government.

artwork by sarah mcdonald

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MOOCING POTENTIAL AND PITFALLS

BY AMAR SINGH

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he last few years has seen huge discussion in education of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) – with the University of Melbourne offering some of its own. So, what are they?

MOOCs are entirely online courses, and thus offer potentially unlimited participation by students all around the world. Theoretically, MOOCs provide institutions with the ability to offer affordable, full and intensive courses with real time interaction and support. The aim for most universities, at least for now, is for them to be offered alongside traditional teaching methods like the lectures and tutorials we are all accustomed to.

The University of Melbourne has been more than just dabbling its feet in MOOCs, having run courses since 2013, the majority of its courses running for between five and eight weeks. This is a format similar to that provided by its US counterparts: Stanford, Pennsylvania State, Princeton and the University of California.

The University’s first MOOC, the Bachelor of Commerce mainstay “Principles of Macroeconomics” received 66,000 enrolments, a huge and predominantly international market the University feels is otherwise unreachable. Despite over 305,000 videos being streamed, only half those students actually commenced the course and an even smaller fraction (2%) successfully completed.

These statistics are an example of the power universities now wield, enabling them to analyse massive data sets and identify patterns in student academic behaviours that, in turn, will provide a wealth of information and understanding about productivity and the effectiveness of different learning strategies. This, according to the University, can be used as a basis for real-time interventions for the benefit of the student, and to enhance the effectiveness of the courses themselves.

“The benefits of MOOCs are not simply in the MOOCs themselves, but in how they are informing what we are doing in mainstream campus-based online education,” said Gregor Kennedy, the University’s Pro Vice-Chancellor (Educational Innovation).

The appeal from a financial standpoint is great.

Students no longer have to pay thousands for a single 12 week subject in genetics when they can enrol into the online version for a fraction of the cost.

The University saves what it loses in enrolments by cutting the costs of providing a physical learning space and other facilities.

However, as with any new advancement, there is a trade-off. This may be a significantly more affordable

artwork by emily keppel

way to reach thousands of more students, but what will happen to the quality of education and to attrition rates? The online MOOC Guide acknowledges the reliance on user generated content, the need for digital literacy, time and effort invested by the participant, student self-regulation and the sheer number of people involved in a course as five of the greatest threats to the system. From a student perspective, these challenges do not seem too different from a traditional university set up, with tools like the LMS and Echo Lecture Recordings. Digital literacy is already a pre-requisite, not to mention the time and effort needed to get through the 12 weeks of physical lectures, tutorials, practicals and labs. Nonetheless, the challenges are there.

The real threat is the mass production of videos, which is the dominant medium used in a MOOC. By producing these in isolation, the lecturer loses the most valuable tool available to them in not being able to adjust and adapt to a class’ immediate feedback.

Students look confused? Use an anecdote. Class is starting to fade? Throw in a joke. None of this is possible when you separate the student from the teacher. In doing so, you cannot help but reduce the quality of instruction and it could be argued all that has been achieved is the creation of a slightly more academic YouTube.

This is not to say the academics behind the courses are not putting in the work. The Chronicle of Higher Education conducted an extensive survey that attempted to reach every professor to have taught a MOOC (with 104/184 responses) and the results were staggering. According to the study, the average professor spent more than 100 hours on preparation for each course prior to the first lesson and a further 8-10 hours per week through the duration of the course. In spite of this however, 72% of the professors indicated that they believed completion of the course to be inadequate in terms of earning credit towards a degree. For now, anyway.

The jury is still out on whether MOOCs will be the future of education but it is certainly difficult to deny their potential. Even if they evolve to become just a supplement to the current system, surely taking the knowledge held by leading academics from elite universities around the globe, condensing it into a short, affordable subject and providing it to anyone with an internet connection can only be a positive thing. Where they will evolve in the future will have a huge impact on the future of education.

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UNI Council: Conflict of Interest Free?

by JEREMY NADEL

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n the past few months, the University of Melbourne Council has entered long-anticipated discussions on the new Charter of Sustainability, which is part of the 2015-2020 strategic plan Growing Esteem. A significant choice looms for them, following a showdown of over a year. Fossil Free Melbourne University (FFMU), a campus activist collective, have run over a year’s worth of protests, petitions, face-to-face confrontations and other forms of lobbying. They want the Council to declare in the new Charter that the University will divest the $588 million in its Endowment Fund from the top 200 fossil fuel companies. The Council has a key decision to make, but are all members of the Council interest free?

Farrago has undertaken an investigation into Council members’ ties to the fossil fuel industry, and what effect those ties might have. Farrago has learnt that Council member Robin Batterham, a chemical engineering professor and former Chief Scientist under the Howard Government, was previously the Chief Technician of Rio Tinto. Farrago has also learnt that as of July 2015, Batterham held slightly less than $200,000 worth of shares in Rio Tinto.

Farrago’s inquiry into Council members’ ties to the fossil fuel industry was prompted by more than the ongoing debate and actions around fossil fuel divestment. There’s no doubt FFMU have had a significant presence in campus events, having deemed the drafting of the new Charter of Sustainability as the pinnacle opportunity for the success of their campaign. But, broader questions are at play.

The issue of whether or not it is fair or in accordance with University policy for Council members to both have connections to the fossil fuel industry has been hotly contested.

The issue of conflicts of interest on the topic have been a hot topic since the Vice-Chancellor of Australian National University (ANU), Ian Young, excluded himself from discussions on the matter in October 2013. Ian Young declared that because at the same time as holding the position of Vice-Chancellor, he was simultaneously conducting oceanographic research for some of the largest oil and gas companies in Australia. He said he could not provide neutral judgment on ANU’s financial relationship to the fossil fuel industry.

That same month, ANU became the first university to yield to the national divestment campaign. Reactions were mixed.

The campaign across university campuses is being orchestrated by the international environmental organisation 350.org, and right wing commentators have attacked it. ANU’s move to divest sparked outrage from the affected companies and other groups within the mining and financial sector, with Greg Evans from the Australian

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Mineral Councils accusing ANU of “joining an activist campaign, an anti-mining campaign, an anti-business campaign” and former Treasurer Joe Hockey alleging that ANU’s divestment was “removed from the reality of what is helping to drive the Australian economy and create more employment”.

There’s no doubt tensions are high, which brings us to the call Robin Battherham has to make. Are Robin Batterham’s connections to the fossil fuel industry on par with Ian Young’s? If so, has Batterham chosen to emulate the standard that Ian Young has set for the neutrality of university councils?

Batterham’s involvement with Rio Tinto spanned 21 years. He first joined as the Group Consultant in 1988, when the organisation was still CRA (it would later merge with Rio Tinto) and departed as Group Chief Scientist in 2009. It is worth noting that in 1999 Batterham was controversially appointed as Chief Scientist by the Howard Government. This generated vast criticism from both environmental campaigners and politicians, who alleged that Batterham’s dual position constituted a blatant conflict of interest.

Of particular concern to many environmentalists was that Batterham’s policy advice and influence over research councils would be used to push his preference for Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) technology over investment into renewable energy.

CCS involves capturing carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from power stations and storing them underground. The current scientific consensus is that CCS can only lower and not prevent CO2 emissions.

In response to his opponents, the most influential of whom was then-Greens President, Senator Bob Brown, Batterham firmly dismissed any suggestion of a conflict of interest or any other inappropriate behaviour as “absolute nonsense”.

“I am very careful to separate the jobs there, and the two interests. I never make any recommendation which is specific to Rio Tinto, nor for that matter specific to the industries in which Rio Tinto is in,” he stated. Despite these claims, in August 2004 a Senate inquiry declared that Robin Batterham had a conflict of interest and subsequently in 2005 he stepped down as Chief Scientist.

“It is hard to see how Councillor Robin Batterham will be able to make an impartial choice about the University’s investment in the industry given his links to Rio Tinto, one of the world’s biggest miners,” said Vicky Fysh, the FFMU coordinator and 350.org National Campus Divestment Coordinator, when Farrago asked her to comment on the issue. Fysh, a former UMSU Environment Officer, has been driving the campaign.

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Farrago asked Robin Batterham if he could provide a reply to our findings and Vicky Fysh’s suggestion that he could not make an impartial judgement. Batterham told us he only had time to provide a “general” response: “[T]here are always perceptions of conflicts of interest. This is inevitable and is handled of course by declaration of interests and then due conduct and procedures by whoever is chairing a particular meeting. I recall that the Council meeting that considered a first pass on the sustainability strategy was not a meeting I attended. As Chair of various endeavours I am forever having to manage conflicts and see nothing extraordinary on this.

Finally, on the topic of Uni Fossil Free, I think some deep and nonemotive thinking is needed. There is a fundamental point as to why ‘fossil free’ rather than ‘low emission’.”

There are three questions lying over Batterham’s continuing involvement. Firstly, in his response, Batterham informed Farrago that he does not recall being present at the Council meeting “that considered a first pass on the sustainability strategy”. However, whether or not this means he has been present at other council meetings where the drafting of the sustainability charter and divestment has been discussed is unclear. The details of council meetings are kept opaque. Farrago requested the minutes of all 2015 meetings and was refused access by the University Secretary. The Secretary did not allow us to know if the “sustainability strategy” has been discussed at only one or several meetings or to confirm when Batterham has been absent. It is also worth pointing out that Batterham has provided Farrago with no assurance that he intends on excluding himself from future discussions on the Sustainability Charter. He has simply said he did not attend the meeting where it was first discussed.

Secondly, if Batterham only has a little under $200,000 worth of shares in Rio Tinto and the University’s endowment fund is only around $5 million, then will divestment from various fossil fuel companies really have a significant effect on Batterham’s personal financial situation? However, it’s worth noting that the aim of divestment movements is that they target prestigious institutions that are widely perceived as setting the standards and market norms that organisations conform to. Obviously, the University’s investments are not the biggest determinant of the profitability of Rio Tinto shares, as FFMU are well aware. Yet pressuring universities to divest from fossil fuel companies is likely to result in more influential financial organisations following suit. These could include banks or industry super funds for example. In the full scheme of

PHOTOGRAPHy credit: FOSSIL FREE MU

things a domino effect of institutions divesting from fossil fuels could have an enormous effect on companies like Rio Tinto and in turn the personal financial situation of Robin Batterham.

Thirdly, it’s up for debate whether Robin Batterham has really done anything wrong outside the eyes of environmental activists.

Has he actually committed a conflict of interest in relation to the University’s Conflict of Interest Policy? This is not a question that Farrago has the authority to answer. However, we have examined the extent to which the university’s conflict of interest policy is relevant to Batterham’s situation. According to the policy, the definition of a financial interest is “Any right, claim, title or legal share in something having a monetary or equivalent value. Examples of financial interest include, but are not limited to, shares, share options, and the right to receive remuneration, such as salary, consulting fees, allowances, discounts and the like”. 1.1 of the Policy states that “Where any actual or potential conflict of interest exists for a staff member and cannot be avoided, the staff member will disclose it to their supervisor as soon as is reasonably practicable after becoming aware of it.” Another perspective that some may take is that whether or not Batterham has committed a conflict of interest in accordance with the university’s policy is beside the point. Universities should strive to not only do the right thing in accordance with their own internal rules and procedures but to act in a socially and environmentally responsible way as defined by the values of the wider society around them.

Between Ian Young removing himself from discussions on divestment and the ambiguity of Batterham’s response to Farrago’s queries on his potential future involvement in divestmentdiscussions, it appears a line in the sand is yet to be drawn on what actually constitutes a conflict of interest within the culture of tertiary education governance. How Batterham chooses to respond in the coming months may set a precedent for the extent to which individuals of influence within universities who have connections to the fossil fuel industry are able to partake in sustainability-related decisions. This has the potential to either form or overcome a barrier to the success of both FFMU and the national university divestment campaign as a whole.

Robin Batterham was approached for comment on this article, but declined to comment in full by the deadline for the moment due to other engagements. Farrago will continue to follow this story.

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mythbusting: AGri10039 by eliza lennon

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GRI10039, aka Australia in the Wine World, is the infamous breadth that everyone during their time at Melbourne Uni thinks about doing. With so many misconceptions about the subject, it’s high time to clarify these myths, using my own experience from the week-long intensive course.

Myths: 1. You have to apply for an overload BUSTED! This subject runs in the June or July timetable slot. It counts as a Semester 2 subject technically, but due to it being run in the winter holidays, you can put it as your Semester 1 breadth, meaning you still have space for a Semester 2 breadth (or vice versa). When applying for Semester 2 subjects, the online program often thinks you will be overloading, because it doesn’t know what to do with those points. This is a common problem encountered by students, but is easily resolved – just fill out the Subject Variation Form. This is different to overloading; it simply means that the university enrolls you into your subjects manually rather than you pressing the buttons. It only takes a few days for them to complete and it is a problem they are working on fixing.

will barely have energy left to study! Paying attention in the lectures and asking questions and being involved in the practicals (tasting classes) means that you are actively learning everything. Try to keep good notes so that the night before the exam you’re not frantically trying to look things up! This is not to say that the subject isn’t fun; this has been one of my favourite subjects so far. Not only do you learn actual information that you can impress your friends or family with at dinner, but you meet a range of other aspiring wine-tossers.

3. It’s the most failed subject BUSTED! Just like any other subject at the University, the subject requires an even spread between H1s and fails. If you don’t pay attention or purposely skip the lectures, of course you’re not going to do well. But this leads me to my next point…

Other tips: • Pack for the weather! I brought an electric heater with me and I was so glad I did!

• If you drive yourself, don’t go through Violet Town like the mysterious JWay suggests, just follow Google Maps to the address of the Dookie campus – Nalinga Road, Dookie. Avoiding Violet Town means you can travel at up to 110km p/h and you actually go a shorter, more direct route.

• If you can’t live without your daily coffee and despise the instant stuff, consider bringing up a pod coffee machine. Waking up to creamy coffee will make the chilly mornings a bit more enjoyable.

• In one of the thousands of emails you get from the mysterious JWay leading up to the week, he/she mentions the loudness of the dorms. Do not dismiss this email as I did. The dorms are noisy. Bring ear plugs, and maybe an eye mask because they doesn’t get very dark at night.

• Bring snacks.

• Try to choose a room in the middle of the floor, away from the noisy toilets!

• Organise to go with a friend, or else be prepared to make friends! There will be a really wide mix of different students from all degrees and year levels!

• There’s not much to do in your spare time so you really have to make your own fun! With 20,000 acres to explore, take a walk around the campus and admire the scenery. There’s also a gym and a squash court with all the necessary equipment available for you to borrow for free. Or, bring a deck of cards or a bottle of vodka, or both, and you’re on your way to instant friends and a good time!

4. It’s a super easy subject BUSTED! This is an intensive subject, so not surprisingly, the days are long and the content is heavy. Be prepared to be overwhelmed on the first day. With only a couple of hours of spare time each day you

Overall, I would highly recommend this subject! Don’t listen to people that haven’t actually done the subject themselves. I would rate it a 10/10 and I know that the people I did it with only have good things to say about it too.

2. Everyone gets drunk BUSTED! You are supposed to spit out your wine into a ‘spitting’ cup, similar to coffee cupping classes, so in actual fact, you do not get drunk at all. You stay so sober that you are able to drive home after the tasting exam! They reiterate the fact that professional judges can taste up to 80 glasses of wine a day and stay sober throughout – we only do about eight in one class per day! But hey, that’s not to say that you’re not allowed to drink the wine… Three hours of in-class pre’s with great wines is perfect before an evening of vodka and fivestar goon drinking games with your new friends…

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illustration by kitty chrystal

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dahl-ings A Cooperative piece on the Co-Op

by Linah Winoto and Charlie Lempriere

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ntering Union House, you are provided with distinct scents.

First, there is raw fish and rice: it carries through the ground floor hallways. The food court brings pungent burrito that glides up the staircase. On the landing, chai tea takes over, emanating from the Food Co-Op. Once past that odd and expansive crepe place, there begins a super cool strip, starting with a bathroom that I only realised was there recently. It doesn’t contaminate the chai scent, which is this bathroom’s strongest quality.

The world is a very strange place, and one of the strangest things I have come across in life so far is the Food Co-Op in Union House.

This curious little room, filled with huge containers of rice puffs and rooftop honey, the smell of organic soap mixed with curry spices bubbling in a pot, and people rushing around, humming to some Macedonian folk music while serving chai and rolls, is the single most bizarre, heavenly vision the earth has bestowed on me.

I usually carry a pencil case with me, but one day I forgot it and needed a pen to finish an assignment. Scaling the Union House staircase, I went to the Environments Office for help, supplied there with a blue pen and friendly company. Across the way is the Food Co-Op, and I realised then that the scent was coming from a giant pot knocking out mean chai for all the world.

There’s a weird feeling of belonging, homecoming and comfort that floats in the air. It has permeated the old couch, and it settles into your clothes as you awkwardly stand in the doorway. Someone will catch your eye though, and help you out with enthusiasm. A hot plate? Some chai? Maybe a slice of cake? Just a chat? A hug!

Potentially overwhelmed at this point, you might find yourself walking over to check out the in-house baked goods, or investigate the bulk herbs that are for sale. But it’s too much, you can already sense there is more to this enigmatic place and it’ll require repeat visits to unravel the mystery. So you pick up some chocolate cake, or maybe a slice of pizza, and wander back out just as the line starts to form out the door.

The Co-Op is probably the closest thing I’ll get to the wild times of 1970s university life, having remained proudly ‘under no

Illustration by Frances Rowlands

management’ since 1976. It is reassuring to know that post-Gough Melbourne retains a sense of community in certain pockets, with a globally aware ideal unrestrained by economic fetishisation. Being a not-for-profit organisation, donations to the Co-Op are injected into a sustainable and alternative way of life. Their food and products are entirely vegan, and are cluttered endearingly on the shelves. Sitting on a loved old-world couch, with a staple hot plate, I’m taken away from my usual consumptive self; a cavaliering lifestyle that is so difficult to leave behind.

There are people chatting outside, talking politics like it’s a normal thing to do, discussing camping trips, or trading travel tales. Who are all these people, you wonder? Why do they all seem so happy and safe here? If you sit down, you won’t be moving for a number of hours, arrested by the intriguing company, the bountiful opinions on all topics, the laughter, and the way everyone seems to simply be. No judgement, no assumptions, no expectations except for mutual respect. But you have places to be, so you smile and wave to the person who helped you out earlier and trundle past all the people; cool individuals among a community you’re starting to feel drawn to.

If only for 30 minutes, eating dhal while listening to Alice Coltrane’s Universal Consciousness can truly instil in me a positive wellbeing that could never be achieved by a plastic bowl of processed grease elsewhere. The Co-Op exhibits the potential of ecofriendliness that could and should have widespread realisation in society, lessening the desire for people like me to fall back on grease bowls for their daily meals.

I am distracted the rest of the day, trying to process this experience, and eventually I find myself wandering back up that staircase and past the odd crepe place, only to realise the Co-Op is closed, the couch is gone and there is just one lone figure measuring out flour in the back.

I want to believe, and the cool people at the Co-Op, flying in the face of monumental external bullshit with such dedication, inspire me to do so.

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UMSU OFFICE BEARER REPORTS PRESIDENT rachel withers email: President@union. unimelb.edu.au instagram: @umsu_president

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s it really Edition 8 already?!

Here’s my final low down: Student Market: The second UMSU Student Market is 11am-2pm, Tuesday Week 11 (which also happens to be Anti-Poverty Week). Come along to Concrete Lawns- or the Grand Buffet Hall if it’s raining- and buy yourself something nice and/or cheap!

UMSU Bar/The Bar formerly known as HJC/The Lounge: We’ve been putting great planning and care into the creation of your all new, actual-student student-bar, which I’m so proud to say will be up and running when you come back in 2016.

The Bar Steering Committee has put together a survey, to find out better what you think the bar should be about.

If you’ve got any interest in shaping the UMSU Bar (or you have a better idea for a name), please fill it out: http://goo. gl/forms/2vzLlOEGd9 For these last few sunny weeks of semester (and SWOTVAC), please stop by the lounge and grab a coffee, lovingly made by our new UMSU coffee casuals, and chill out on the second hand couches we put in. H1 study spot.

general secretary hana dalton

email: secretary@union. unimelb.edu.au

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his time of year is stressful for many students. It’s important to take care of yourself by making use of support services available to you, such as UMSU’s Advocacy & Legal Service and Exam Support Stall. Additionally, services such as Academic Skills, counselling and other health services are available through the University, and I’ve been working to ensure that students are made aware of these services and know how to access them if necessary.

The UMSU Bar Steering Committee has been meeting

EDUCATION (academic) nellie montague & shanley price email: educationacademic @union.unimelb.edu.au facebook: www.facebook.com /umsueducation

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ow, last one ever!! It’s been a blast, from BIG Bazaar to SRN meetings and all the UMSU OB shenanigans in between. But we are still open for business! Ed Dept has been mainly focusing on University Statute and Regulation Changes this month as the Uni has drafted major changes to where Student Organisations sit in these guiding documents that influence how the University

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Student Precinct: The Student Precinct project has come so far yet has decided so little this year. We’re still no closer to knowing where UMSU will be situated within the south east corner of campus to be known as the Student Precinct, but we’ve got a firm commitment from the University to the process of co-creating the space with students – and $2 million set aside for establishing a cocreation model and implementing it. I think we’ve done a great job this year of putting pressure on the University to recognise our needs and our demands.

For a full summary, head to the President News section of the UMSU Website: http://umsu.unimelb.edu.au/studentprecinct-update-ii/ Goodbye! It’s been an absolute honour serving as your 2015 President, whether that’s been representing students to the University, organising events, running forums, creating volunteering programs or just helping YOU get more involved in UMSU. I would like to give an enormous thank you to my volunteer “Chief of Staff” Patrick Clearwater. UMSU and I have been immeasurably lucky to have you.

Thanks also to Goldie and Justin for everything you do for this organisation and to Ben for sometimes coming to Students’ Council.

Good luck to James Baker and the 2016 team!

And please remember that even if you didn’t get involved in UMSU this year, make sure you do next year: you won’t regret it <3 <3 <3

regularly to facilitate student consultation to create the best model for a student bar. It’s been great to be part of this initiative and I look forward to end the results.

Lastly, I hope that every one of you feels that you’ve got something valuable from your student union this year, whether that was advocacy or welfare support, funding for your favourite club, the opportunity to meet people through an event, collective or volunteering program, progress made on fixing a university issue you care about, or even this edition of Farrago in your hands. To find out in more detail what UMSU has done for students this year, you can view minutes of each Students’ Council and Committee meeting on the UMSU website. We’re always open to suggestions and new ideas, so please get in touch if you feel there’s something we’ve missed!

Thanks for reading, and all the best for the remainder of 2015! recognises and funds bodies like UMSU. GSA and UMSU met with University Secretary Gioconda Di Lorenzo and Julie Wells to discuss our concerns and propose some amendments, these were taken on board and we have been assured we will be consulted at every step of the way from now on.

The Student Representative Network (SRN) 2016 recruiting round has opened and will close on the last day of SWOTVAC on Friday the 30th October. This is your chance to be a student representative on a board or committee that makes decisions that influence YOUR education. Check out thttp://umsu.unimelb.edu.au/need-help/educationacademic/srn/ for more info. Training will take place on the 23rd November to prepare selected representatives to start 2016 attending the first meetings.

Here is to another great year of strong, intelligent, useful student representation!

photography by bonnie leigh-dodds

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EDUCATION (public)

conor serong

email: Educationpublic @union.unimelb.edu.au facebook: www.facebook.com /umsueducation

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hoy! This is the last one of these you’ll read from me.

Treasure it. Treasure it forever.

On a serious note, we’ve had some pretty exciting news: fee deregulation has finally been dropped (for now), which means that the threat of $100,000 degrees is off the radar for the time being. Having said that, the new Turnbull Government has shown no indication that it would like to improve public funding of education, so it’s critical that we continue to campaign against any government that doesn’t have the best interests of students at heart.

welfare james bashford

email: welfare @union.unimelb.edu.au facebook: www.facebook.com /UMSUwelfare

O

ver 7,000 breakfasts served across 24 weeks, 56 yoga classes, 12 Zumba classes, dozens of volunteers, a petting zoo, puppies, 2 bean bag cinemas and 1500 cans of free ice tea. A massive year is coming to an end, it’s time, yes it’s time, oh yes it’s time. Although not quite yet because there’s still a few weeks of classes left and plenty more to do!

A really important thing I’ll be doing will be reviewing

In other news, I’ve been doing the usual – lots of committees, meeting with the University over a bunch of issues, from exams (there’ll be no more wearing watches in exams from now on, heads up!), to academic misconduct (I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, please seek help if you need it but don’t cheat or plagiarise!), to ensuring that students are in the best possible position during a review of the University’s statutes and regulations.

It’s been an extraordinarily busy year, and I’ve been stoked to dedicate all my time and energy into representing you – the students of the University of Melbourne. If student representation is something you’re passionate about too, please consider getting involved in UMSU – our Student Representative Network is a great place to have a student voice heard in University governance, keep an eye on the UMSU Education Facebook page and website for information on how to apply.

Catch ya on the flip side, Conor

the department’s work this year, seeing what could be improved and handing over the reins to next year’s welfare officers Yan and Sarah. This is a great chance for you to give your feedback too! If you have any ideas for improvements, general gripes or grievances or even just a lot of feelings you feel like sharing, your feedback is really valuable! Please, email me at welfare@union.unimelb.edu.au!

A massive thanks to all the students who volunteered their time with the department this year, especially the absolute superstars who have come out early every single Thursday for the free breakfast! Thanks also to all the staff at UMSU who we rely on so much, the security guards at Union House who have regularly saved the breakfast and other events from disaster and the staff across various departments of the University who have been a pleasure to work with. Until next year!

“i really hope you die soon, conor.”

– martin ditmann, farrago co-editor

Wom*n’s allison ballantyne & lucy curtis email: womyns @union.unimelb.edu.au facebook: www.facebook.com /umsuwomyns

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hat a wonderful year it’s been. We’re sad to be saying goodbye! The past month has been filled with working with fantastic women writers, artists and editors on Judy’s Punch, the annual Wom*n’s Department publication – it’s due to be released in week 12, so make

sure you grab a copy and come along to our launch party!

Our final women’s networking event for the year featured two excellent speakers who had plenty of insights to share with our attendees, and Wom*n of Colour Collective’s anti-racism workshops have been a great success over the last six weeks. We’ve spent some time promoting the NUS ‘Talk About It’ survey and looking into policy issues around sexual harassment and assault on campus. Pretty soon we’ll be reviewing the year and collating feedback about our events in preparation for handing over to next year’s Wom*n’s Officers. It’s been such a privilege to meet so many amazing women as your Wom*n’s Officers, and we hope that the Wom*n’s Department has served you well this year.

Keep smashing the patriarchy!

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creative arts Bonnie leigh-dodds & isabella vadiveloo email: arts @union.unimelb.edu.au facebook: www.facebook.com /umsuartsdepartment

Activities Hayden michaelides & James Baker email: Activities@union. unimelb.edu.au facebook: www.facebook.com /umsuactivities

H

i everyone!!

First of all we would like to thank you for allowing us to host such amazing events this year, it’s been an absolute blast.

Between SoUP, Cocktail Parties, Trivia nights, Oktoberfest and Luna Park, we have had a ball being your Activities Officers this year.

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t has been such a huge year, as we’re sure anyone who was engaged with our department knows all too well! We want to give a huge thank you to everyone at UMSU who worked tirelessly with us to deliver such a great festival. We would also love to thank all the ‘creative artists’ on campus who worked ridiculously hard to make this year amazing, and who presented work that totally blew us away and made us feel so lucky to be a part of this community. We can’t wait to see where this department goes next year, and to watch the vibrant, diverse art on campus develop and flourish even further. We love you, thank you!

Even though, at the time of writing, Oktoberfest is yet to have happened, we are expecting this year to be bigger and better than any previous UMSU event has been, holding an event with 600 people out on Concrete Lawns in spectacular German fashion.

Running the bar and the trivia event for Prosh week went amazingly well, and everybody had loads of fun, between judges, captains and proshers.

We hope into the future that the Activities Office proceeds to come up with brilliant ideas on ways to spend your SSAF on you, and we hope that we have achieved this goal this year.

Signing off for this year, (we will still be around next year a bit) James Baker and Hayden Michaelides

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Clubs & Societies claire pollock & stephen smith

email: clubs @union.unimelb.edu.au facebook: www.facebook.com /UMSUClubs

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t has been a successful 2015 seeing more funding, more clubs, and more activities run by the C&S Department than ever before! It has been both exhausting and exhilarating, but we are thankful to have had the opportunity to serve you this year.

Clubs Online: We have received our login to Clubs Online and are in the process of populating it with data on clubs. For the rest of the year we will be developing training for Clubs Online, and will commence training for all club executives as we transition from our paper based administrative systems.

Safety in Clubs: We presented our Safety in Clubs project to the Students’ Council. Council had a few questions and concerns about some of the rules and have asked us to make a few amendments. It is important that we get this right, so are working with Council to redraft this and have it ready for 2016.

New Clubs: We are in the process of affiliating our new clubs and societies following the Semester 2 application.

This means holding IGMs for the 19 applicants who successfully drafted constitutions with our department and attended IGM training. Keep an eye out on our Facebook and in the 2016 Clubs Guide for information about these clubs and how you can join them!

Thank-you! Our successes would not have been possible without the help of many people. Firstly to all of the club executives – your hard work is what makes our clubs program so fantastic!

To Patrick and the rest of the More Ac! family: thank-you for giving us this opportunity and your support at every step of the way this year. We know that MA! is stronger now than ever before due to the passion, dedication, and love that each and every one of you has for C&S. To our Committee – you have all worked so hard this year; we owe so much to you. Thank you Gulsara, Steven, Philip, Eilish, and Lauren.

To Fiona, it has been a delight working with you; we will miss the banter, the cheese, and fighting socialists together.

Lastly, to Yasmine and Ryan – thank-you both for all of your help this year and congratulations on your election as the Clubs & Societies Officers – we wish you every success for 2016!

Signing off, Claire and Stephen (C&S)

“this is the one area of facebook where i can make the events as dank as possible.”

– martin ditmann, farrago co-editor

indigenous

tyson holloway-clarke

email: Indigenous@union. unimelb.edu.au phone: 0488506881

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hile many of the Office Bearers will be looking back on 2015 fondly and preparing to move on from UMSU I will be just reaching the middle of my tenure as the Indigenous Office Bearer. Albeit I will not be alone this time around.

Our department has been through a great deal in the last few years but I feel as though 2015 has been one of our best years as a collective. When I count of my hands the number of projects and initiatives we have started and completed together I cannot help but feel incredibly proud of my fellow Indigenous students. We had a lot of firsts and biggests this year. We published our first magazine, Under Bunjil to fantastic reviews. We had the largest number of Indigenous artists in Mudfest and the biggest Indigenous Games team in Melbourne’s history. We provided the most artist and athlete grants ever and had the highest attendance for social events we have ever had. For the first time we actually managed to attract sponsor of the department, more than doubling our

allocated operating budget.

Amongst all this and more there I am most proud of two things. First was repairing our fragmented social groups and properly integrating our incoming first years into not only the Indigenous collective but the wider University as a whole. If I were to guess who among the collective had the best year, I would guess the first years. Lastly I feel as though the collective and Department’s relationship with Murrup Barak is the strongest it has been in years. The centre is busier than it has been since any of us can remember and trust between all the parties involved is at an all time high.

While none of us can claim to be perfect, we have certainly come a very long way. The work Charles O’Leary and the staff of Murrup Barak have done over the last 12 months has done a great deal of good for the collective and I look forward to working closely with them through 2016.

This year would not have been half as personally rewarding for me as an Office Bearer without my fellow Officers and the staff across UMSU. For those unfamiliar with the inner-workings of the great leviathan you have been missing out. I couldn’t ask for a more capable or patient guide in Goldie Pergl or a more happy go-lucky manager in Justin Baré. Without their responsible guiding hand this Monopoly board would have been flipped and stomped into the mud a long time ago. Thanks for steering the ship away from the rocks, we are all incredibly grateful.

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disabilities sasha cheryllyn chong & susannah gordon

email: disabilities @union.unimelb.edu.au facebook: www.facebook.com /umsu.disabilities

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ast OB report of the year?! What?! This year has both flown by and gone slow, and been both wonderful and challenging. We’ve worked hard on our beloved Disabilities Department, and have done some stuff we’re really proud of. Even if some projects fell by the wayside, we ran several successful free Auslan classes, helped out with Mudfest and arts access grants, and provided support to

individual students when it was needed. What we’re most proud of is the community building we’ve worked on. It’s hard being part of a community that is so often ignored.

Stigma, erasure, and invisible disabilities all contribute to how difficult it can be for people with disabilities to make connections with each other. But in keeping this department running, with our weekly events as well as bigger ones, there are regular faces that keep showing up and it is an honour and a pleasure to keep seeing them. We have every intention of staying involved with the department when we hand it over to the marvellous Jess and Christian next year, and hope that those faces stay a part of our lives.

Thank you to all the students who’ve supported this department, and thank you to UMSU for giving us the chance to be part of something so cool and important.

Signing out with much love and affection, Susannah and Sasha.

“god, i hate freedom.”

– martin ditmann, farrago co-editor

“we put jews first at farrago.”

– martin ditmann, farrago co-editor

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/ culture

artwork by bonnie smith

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Johnny Mnemonic: in retrospect

by Neevon Mohtaji

1

995 saw the release of many great films: Se7en, The Usual Suspects, Before Sunrise, La Haine, Batman Forever and Die Hard: With a Vengeance, just to name a few. But most of you have probably already seen these cinematic classics; so, even though they all are great films (well, aside from Batman Forever) and should be on your to-watch list if you have not already seen them, I’ll instead be writing about a lesser-known 1995 flick: Johnny Mnemonic.

Johnny Mnemonic is the directorial debut of Robert Longo, and is based on a short story by William Gibson. It’s set in 2021, a not-too-distant future where information is incredibly valuable and can therefore only be transported by mnemonic couriers who have special implants in their brains, implants onto which this information is uploaded. Johnny Mnemonic (Keanu Reeves) is ready to have his implant removed, meaning that he can get his own memories back. However, he is given one last operation – a mission that could possibly cost him his life.

Johnny Mnemonic is considered by many to be one of the first films to ignite the cyberpunk film movement of the mid to late-90s; thus, it had a large impact on cinema and television, especially that of the sci-fi genre. Its influence can be seen in films like The Matrix and TV shows such as Cowboy Bebop. Keanu Reeves went on to star in The Matrix only a few years later, a film in which he played a very similarly reluctant hero, Neo, with the ability to be plugged into computers through the back of his head. Through its story’s use of the fictional Nerve Attenuation Syndrome (also known as ‘the black shakes’) caused from overexposure to technology, Johnny Mnemonic also played upon ideas of technophobia that continue to figure in contemporary cinema.

In spite of its legacy, Johnny Mnemonic swiftly fell into obscurity, and to the majority of film-watchers has become either forgotten, scorned, or both. The film currently sits on 14% on Rotten Tomatoes, was considered a financial failure in the US, and Keanu Reeves was nominated a Razzie Award for his performance as Johnny Mnemonic.

So why the hell am I writing about it, and, to an extent, trying to convince you to watch it? Because I believe that it is an underrated film with plenty of enjoyably bad bits. Herein lie recounts of some of these bad bits, which will hopefully convince you to give Johnny Mnemonic a go.

1. Karl, the Street Preacher.

Swedish action star and chemical engineer Dolph Lundgren plays a crazy, bearded assassin priest who has been paid to hunt down Johnny Mnemonic – or rather, the information in his head. Karl has some of the best lines of the film, including “It’s Jesus time”, and his

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overacting while dressed in his religious robes makes for a weird sight.

2. Keanu Reeves.

With the blank-but-serious facial expression he is so famous for figuring prominently in Johnny Mnemonic, Reeves is pretty much his stock-standard self throughout most of the film. Like Lundgren, he has some great lines, most of which occur during his rant towards the end of the second act, the rant where he stands on a small mound and yells “I want my room service!”.

3. Fingernail Laser.

Imagine a lightsabre-whip hybrid coming out of a yakuza leader’s thumb. This fingernail laser is just one of the many ‘futuristic’ gadgets of this fictional world, and trust me when I say that it is probably the weirdest weapons I have seen onscreen. And I’ve seen a penis-and-testicles revolver.

4. The Internet of the future.

In this film, Johnny Mnemonic enters the World Wide Web of bad CGI by donning an Oculus Rift and a pair of Power Gloves. It does look high-tech, but it’s nevertheless hilarious watching Reeves navigate the Internet using hand gestures.

5. Jones the psychic dolphin.

In order to remove the data from his head, Johnny requires the help of the Navy’s former code cracking dolphin. But, in case you haven’t already guessed, it’s no ordinary dolphin. Jones is a drug-addicted, cyborg dolphin with the ability to shoot paralysing beams of sounds.

I have to admit, this film is no masterpiece; in fact, it’s a bit of a mess, the acting is pretty awful, and the special effects can often be distracting. But these shortcomings should not stop you from watching it. Johnny Mnemonic occupies that niche category of film, the sort of film that should be enjoyed with a bunch of friends, and maybe with a couple of drinks (I would highly recommend a drinking game). But, predominantly, Johnny Mnemonic should be watched because it is an underrated film that deserves much more appreciation, especially for its role in galvanising the cyberpunk movement of the 1990s.

Johnny Mnemonic is currently available to be borrowed at the Rowden White Library.

artwork by samantha riegl

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Angie McMahon artist profile by eliza lennon

S

he says she has been singing as long as she can remember, but has only taken it seriously since around the age of fifteen. After a quick google of her name, you may be astonished by what she has achieved at her young age of just 21. Angie McMahon is a marvel.

On stage, this Melburnian singer-songwriter sways to the beat, interacts with the audience and smooths over any technical difficulties like any other seasoned professional. And with the experiences she’s had, it’s easy to understand how she is so confident. In addition to being the vocalist of jazzy nine-piece The Fabric, her solo career has seen her supporting the likes of Matt Corby and Bon Jovi.

As the only girl in The Fabric, she is affectionately viewed as a “motherly figure” by her bandmates, aged between 19-23. She admits that she does worry about coming across as “a diva or too bossy”; rather, with time she has learnt to simply “ignore that shit”.

With a similar assuredness, her message for those trying to find their way in the industry is to just “stop caring what people think”.

In August this year, the band had a residency at The Toff in Town.

Each Friday, the tiny bar space was packed to the brim as the crowd revelled in the beautiful vocals of Angie and the dance-inducing rhythms of the band. It would seem that not caring what people think is a viable strategy.

artwork by camilla eustance

Off stage, Angie’s rockstar qualities radiate into a quiet confidence as she is happy to have a chat to anyone who will listen.

Her happiness is infectious and something that remains evident over our crackly long-distance phone call. Angie describes her dad as being her “biggest supporter”, saying that he has made it clear that she need never sacrifice her passion for music in exchange for a stable career – laughing, she adds, “As long as I’m working hard and enjoying myself”. Her father has also contributed to her own music taste; she shares memories of singing along to Meatloaf, Bruce Springsteen and indeed Bon Jovi during road trips. She’s also inspired by the likes of Banks, Lianne La Havas and fellow Aussie, Meg Mac, describing them as “epic girls”. She pauses for a moment to think, the crackle of our international call filling in sound before she goes to explain: “They are poetic and brave lyricists who write unique and original pop songs.”

Angie has her sights set far and wide. Currently in London completing a semester of her Arts degree, she is immersing herself in the music scene of the “vibrant city”. Yes, she has managed to balance this music career with a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Melbourne.

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the book sean watson talks purity

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t this point in time, you’d be hard pressed to find a more unfashionable novelist than Jonathan Franzen. Not only is he a wealthy straight white man, he also writes the kinds of novels many now consider relics: long, sprawling suburban epics that aim to diagnose the various social ills and sadnesses that plague our late capitalist culture. Media outlets like Gawker regularly tear him to shreds for his clumsy, tone deaf interview persona (like the time he said he wanted to adopt an Iraqi war orphan to better understand the youth of today), and for his stridently contrarian positions regarding the internet. Despite this, he still manages to sell a lot of books, and on the odd occasion when he does release a new one, it’s often dressed up as an event.

When Franzen released The Corrections in 2001, he became the golden child of the literary world, receiving the National Book Award for fiction, and near-universal critical acclaim. Despite arriving just under ten years later, his next novel Freedom received similar accolades, and even earned him a spot on the front cover of TIME under the heading ‘Great American Novelist’. He has appeared on The Simpsons alongside Michael Chabon and Tom Wolfe, and famously got into a decade-long spat with Oprah Winfrey after publicly disparaging her literary tastes.

His latest novel Purity has received fanfare and vitriol in equal measure: praise for its portrayal of

“...Purity is long-winded and insufferably condescending...”

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the modern human condition as one fraught with anxieties, distractions, and economic instability, and criticism for pretty much the same thing. Purity follows Pip Tyler, a university graduate saddled with $130k in student debt, a crappy telemarketing job and an absent father. Looking for an opportunity to break out of the rut she’s in, she accepts an internship with Andreas Wolf, the head of a Wikileaks-esque hacking agency who promises to help her find her dad. Sounds kind of shitty? Well yeah, it is.

But contrary to what Gawker’s ‘review’ (titled ‘Jonathan Franzen’s Purity Is An Irrelevant Piece Of Shit’) might suggest, Purity isn’t bad because Franzen is a jerk. Franzen was still a jerk when he wrote The Corrections and, frankly, that book rules.

Purity is a bad book because it attempts to place an entire generational experience onto one character’s shoulders, and still manages to make that character cartoonish and paper thin. On the first page, we learn that she has “a job that nobody could be suited for… that she was a person unsuited for any kind of job”, and the rest of the book reads as if Franzen just thought: yep, nailed it, I can cruise through the rest of these 600-odd pages.

It often seems like Franzen would have been way more at home in the American literary culture of the ‘70s and ‘80s, where Philip Roth and John Updike were endlessly fellated by the literary press, and where the myth of the Great American Novel still prevailed. His impulse towards capturing the cultural zeitgeist in Dickensian, multi-character meganovels worked for him when he was attempting to capture a pre-9/11, end-of-the-century type malaise, but his attempt to apply it to a generation he is unbridgably distant from comes off as unbearably inauthentic. A book no doubt destined for the Literary Review’s Worst Sex In Fiction Award, Purity is long-winded and insufferably condescending, and still destined to be the literary talking point of 2015.

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fantastic books and where to find them young adult fiction with melanie basta

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he first page gets me every time: “Panic was my first reaction to the multiple choice options which lay on my desk in front of me.” The scene is set immediately and you expect a generic classroom situation, but it turns out Josephine Alibrandi is completing the “What kind of a friend are you?” quiz in Hot Pants magazine.

Hot Pants. If that’s not the best way to satirise women’s magazines, then I don’t know what is.

For those of you who are not familiar with Looking for Alibrandi, it is one of Australia’s most iconic stories about being a teenage wog girl in Australia, struggling with class, and dealing with death and family secrecy.

It’s about emancipation.

I loved this book so much when I first read it at 15 that I may have stolen a line from the book and used it in one of my Year 11 creative writing assessments.

Josephine was desperate to “run to be emancipated”.

Apparently, so was Andy from The Shawshank Redemption, when he miraculously escaped jail through the sewers and bolted through the pouring rain.

So why is this book iconic? It comes down to a few things. First of all, Melina Marchetta has an excellent turn of phrase. I don’t think I’ve ever come across a writer who surpasses so many others in conveying such casual, funny, yet eloquent dialogue and narrative.

“My first house,” she said, pointing to a shack.

“No matter how much I would clean it, it would always be dirty.”

Don’t believe that. My grandmother, like most Europeans, has this obsession about dirt. She cleans her house at least 5 times a week.

“Sometimes the snakes would come in, Jozzie. Oh, Jozzie, Jozzie, Jozzie, do you know what it is like to have a snake in your house?”

“No, we have a heap of cockroaches though.”

She closed her eyes and put her hands together as if she was praying.

“If we keep compartmentalising teenagers and writing ‘Young Adult’ stories, we somehow end up trivialising them and their issues.”

It also comes down to Josephine, the protagonist. She’s feisty, argumentative, intelligent, funny, and gets along well with the guys and the girls. The characters are not all necessarily likeable, but memorable, and the book is full of conflict, but the banter is rife.

Lastly, it doesn’t wholly come across as a Young Adult novel. It doesn’t disparage teenagers or their issues, and, unlike many other YA books, I can read it again and not tire of it. If we keep compartmentalising teenagers and writing ‘Young Adult’ stories, we somehow end up trivialising them and their issues.

Marchetta wrote this for teenagers, but she treated them as people.

It’s really not that hard to just speak to teenagers as you would to an adult, and far too many YA writers belittle their audience. What I’m trying to say, after all of these columns, is this: fuck ‘Young Adult’ lit.

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gold nuggets by gareth cox-martin

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n rare occasions, Truth strikes the heart all of a sudden; its searing heat makes the soul buckle and rends asunder the shackles of iniquity, and its light leads the way forward to divine emancipation. To be graced by revelation is to be reborn. I know this now because, like the apostle Paul, I too have experienced this power – though for me it was not the angel Gabriel delivering a vision of Jesus on the road to Damascus, but rather it was a visitation

by Colonel Sanders on the Eastlink, heralding a promise of twentyfour chicken nuggets for only ten dollars to any who turned off the freeway and into the drive-thru. What I tasted that day revealed a glory so great that I nearly crashed my car twenty four separate times, for want of an extra pair of arms to hold the steering wheel while I dipped and savoured each of those parcels from heaven. I am fully cognizant of the gravity in what I am about to declare; but the Truth should be known to all who are ready to hear it. That Truth is: KFC make better chicken nuggets than McDonald’s.

Many times before I had made that exact same turn off on my daily commute, hungry for nuggets, only to drive right past KFC and pull into the McDonald’s next door. I rue each of those wasted opportunities. But what is worse, so much worse, is the habit I had of making rhapsodical proclamations to any who would listen that the McNugget was the finest expression of chicken-ness; the fulfillment of chicken-ness; the reason for chicken. Forgive me, Colonel! I knew not what I was doing!

Of course, it is easy to see why I would have overlooked KFC’s nuggets for so long. The problem with KFC is that their fried chicken is vile. Their advertising promises a finger lickin’ good time, and does it so well that once, at most twice a year, you think to yourself, “What I really need right now is a bucket of greasy fried chicken.”

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But when you enter one of their outlets you immediately sense that something is wrong. Maybe it’s the sliminess of the tiles and the way you end up skating to the counter, or the fact that you can see your own unnerved reflection looking out from the forehead-sheen of the greasy teenaged workforce. Whatever it is, there is no mistaking that you are in the belly of a very dirty bird, readying to order some fresh regret in the form of a less-than-fresh two-piece feed. Looking up at that menu, you couldn’t feel more shame if you found yourself perusing a line-up of prostitutes at a brothel on Christmas morning, having told your wife and children you were just popping out to buy some extra cranberry sauce. Much like the lipstick on the collar and the herpes on the penis that one might bring home from that brothel, the oil stains on your shirt, the thick stench that lingers in your car, and the churning in your stomach are the just deserts of such a debasing venture as a KFC luncheon. Somewhere within the ruin of the box, beneath the soiled moist towelettes, the festering chicken carcasses, and the half-eaten potato and gravy, now hoisting an extinguished cigarette like a not-so-Jolly Roger, lies your dignity.

This is in stark contrast to the McDonald’s experience. There, the illusion is complete. To walk beneath those golden arches is to be transported back to childhood. A little motor starts in your heart and hums with anticipation, as the doors open and that sweet, cool air extends its saccharine welcome. We don’t judge here, it says. Besides, what’s to judge? You’re doing nothing wrong. Everybody eats McDonald’s. Look – we sell apples! We can’t be that bad if we have apples, now can we? What evil ever came from eating an apple?

You can order your value meal, and maybe even get them to throw in an extra cheeky cheeseburger for a ‘friend’, wink wink, without a single pang of conscience. Then, once upon your lips it

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dissolves into pure pleasure and enters the bloodstream, completely bypassing the stomach. You can eat three Big Macs and barely feel it – it’s like it never happened! You could eat McDonald’s all day, every day, until you were too fat to walk, and not remember having eaten a single burger. As for the McNugget – there’s no way they could make something so good using plain old chicken. That meat is either unicorn, or fillet de Jesus Christ. And the sauces! Oh, the sauces! I would eat dog food if it had McDonald’s barbecue sauce stirred into it. The other chains just can’t compete. Red Rooster’s chicken nuggets are so dry and awful that it’s like they’ve battered the chicken with bulletproof armor – you’ll crack a tooth trying to tackle one of those! Worse still is Hungry Jack’s – the one time I chanced a six-pack of their garbage nuggets I wanted to return to the store, vomit them back into the deep fryer, and sue for damages.

With all this in mind, you will understand why it took such deep discounting to find the price point at which I would turn to the Colonel when there was a perfectly good McDonald’s right next door. I wasn’t expecting big things when they handed me the plastic bag containing my giant box of nuggets. As I pulled back onto the freeway and inspected the contents of the bag, my expectations sank even lower when I noticed that the gaudily inscribed sauce packets said ‘plum barbecue’ – if it ain’t broke, don’t add plum, as I always say. My first clue that these were no ordinary nuggets was when I reached into the box that was riding shotgun on the seat next to me, and groped around, trying to lock in on a target. They were soft, and had a bounce to them, unlike the oven-baked chicken briquettes that are clattered onto children’s plates by chefs and parents alike across the land. The second clue was the visual. The batter was not the ruddy brown of an inferior nugget, nor even the gold-standard of

artwork by dominic shi jie on

the McNugget, but rather a gentle salt-and-pepper grey, like the sand of a remote beach, cradling a pristine lagoon on a faraway island. As I fell deeper under its spell, each individual herb and spice seemed to announce itself with a leitmotif, stirring delectable associations within me. When I took that first bite I felt the seat disappear from beneath me, and I sank for eternity into the warmth at the centre of the earth. It was more than baptism; it was metamorphosis. As the last morsel slid down my throat, I felt I had grown wings. The honking drivers behind me may have thought they were giving the finger to the same swerving idiot as before, but they weren’t; that worm was now just a carapace, from which the new me had burst forth and ascended! What’s more, it had only cost me ten dollars!

I am sharing this with you all because it has come to my attention that McDonald’s has responded to KFC in the most petulant fashion, changing its pricing to now offer twenty four McNuggets for $9.95, in an effort to steal the show from its rival. But they are too late; the cat is out of the bag. KFC are the best at chicken nuggets, and it is time they were recognized as such. Please choose KFC as your nugget provider from now on. I know it will be hard to forgive them for their abuses of chicken in the past – I too have cursed the name of the Colonel after cautiously examining a piece of original recipe, searching for a way in, only to realise I had been stuck with the piece that has almost no meat on it, and is essentially just battered rib cage. But please – have a heart! The sun will always shine on the golden arches; don’t let it go down on the dirty bird just when it might finally have reason to crow.

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/ culture

wee bit of Scottish

etymology with adriana psaltis

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wo weeks ago, I left Melbourne to set off for my exchange program at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. I had two connecting flights: the first from Melbourne to Dubai and the other from Dubai to Glasgow. All was going well until halfway through my second flight, I realised that something felt quite different. No longer did I have young Australian tourists talking to me about travelling to Budapest or a group of Kiwi school principals rambling about an educational trip to Spain. Instead I was surrounded by a whole bunch of people speaking in a language that I couldn’t understand: flight attendants included.

The Scottish accent is notoriously known for being the hardest accent for non-Scottish English speakers to grasp – and each of Scotland’s four main dialects progressively gets worse than the last.

The Insular dialect is spoken in the archipelagos to the north of Scotland – Shetland and Orkney. In this region, speakers replace the auxiliary verb ‘to have’ with the verb ‘to be’. In other words, where we would say, “I have just done the washing,” Insular speakers would say, “I am just done the washing”. The Orcadians of the Orkney Islands also invented their own word, ‘whar’, which can be used simultaneously for both the words ‘where’ and ‘who’, because it’s probably so cold up there that they can’t afford to waste breath!

Moving down to the mainland, we have the Northerners who say ‘mune’, ‘spune’ and ‘gude’ instead of ‘moon’, ‘spoon’ and ‘good’.

Further south, speakers of Central Scots are very fond of the word ‘coonciljuice’, or as we know it ‘council juice’, which means tap water.

The term arose from the fact that the Scottish don’t pay for tap water in their homes. Lucky bastards!

Finally, there’s Southern Scots, the strangest dialect of them all.

In the southern town of Hawick, a dialect called Teri Talk is used, whit div ee think? I can only just understand it when I put on my best Scottish accent. Have a go at this sentence: ‘R e gan doon the street?’

Thanks for reading, me lads and lasses!

Nostalgic November music previews with jack kilbride

Exams are starting again, heart rates are rising and you’re probably wishing you could rewind to the days when you were too young for exams. Unfortunately not all blue phone boxes and Deloreans are time machines and the impeding doom of your exam worth 50 per cent of your grade is unavoidable. On the bright side, Melbourne’s music Gods are giving you a taste of the past in November with two gigs that will bring back some good memories to lift your spirits.

Fleetwood Mac

The Darkness

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I

Rod Laver Arena, November 4th, 5th and 6th, tickets: $90+

The Forum, November 11th , tickets: $80

he Mac is back. John McVie’s funkadelic basslines and Mick Fleetwood’s unique drumming form the biscuity base. The interchanging melodies, haunting harmonies and innovative instrumentation of Lindsey Buckingham, Christie Mcvie and Peter Green fill out the deliciously creamy middle. Stevie Nix is the tambourine playing cherry on top. After 16 years of messing with the ingredients, they have finally returned to the original recipe that has made them a tasty treat for the senses since 1967. Returning to Oz for the first time since 2009, I for one cannot wait to get a piece of this Fleetwood Mac cake.

If, like me, you have trouble trying to squeeze your whole wardrobe into a suitcase or sweat over cutting down an essay to meet a frustratingly small word limit, then just imagine this: Fleetwood Mac have an eclectic back catalogue of 17 albums over 50 years. At their three Rod Laver Arena shows, they will be on stage for around 2 and a half hours. That’s like fitting Ulysses into a couple of tweets… madness! Yet with hits like ‘The Chain’, ‘Dreams’, ‘Rhiannon’, ‘Landslide and ‘Go Your Own Way’ to choose from, the show is sure to be one you’ll remember!

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n 2003, equipped with a flamboyant front man with a ball-bursting vocal range, The Darkness released what has become one of the most epic karaoke tracks since Queen’s ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’. I am of course talking about the band’s mega hit ‘I Believe In A Thing Called Love’. Many a group of drunk lads and ladies have taken on the glorious challenge of hitting those high notes, usually ending badly with a pair of split jeans after a poorly executed air-guitar solo knee slide.

Known for live shows that bring back memories of the makeupwearing rock gods of the ‘70s and ‘80s, The Darkness boast a live show that will blow your mind off the books in a glittery gust of high voltage sex-rock. As well as their old hits, the band will be touring songs from their newest album, Last of Our Kind, a fitting title for a band stretching the life out of their tight white pants and diamond encrusted guitars. In a change to their line-up the band has recruited Rufus Taylor, son of Queen’s legendary drummer Roger Taylor, to smash cymbals on their Australian tour. Playing Melbourne’s Forum for one night only, this could be your last chance to get your one way ticket to hell and back, so don’t miss out.

illustration by ella shi

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agony agatha Alistair baldwin solves your relationship woes with the help of the mistress of mystery herself Dear Agatha, why do you love reading about murder? Isn’t life sad enough already?

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ou’re right about that. Life is bloody sad. It’s definitely sad enough. And, at face value, it would look like inviting death, murder and vengeance into my life, even through books, would add to that.

In fact, screw face value – you’re absolutely right.

In any murder mystery, you’re zeroing in on two key events: the worst thing that’s ever happened to someone, and the worst thing someone has done to another person.

It’s an examination into one person losing their life, and another losing part of their soul. When you kill, you corrupt a part of yourself that can never be regained. When you kill, you live a kind of half-life… okay, that’s from Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. But you get the idea. Agatha Christie serves up human scum, on a platter, for entertainment. She serves up death.

But you can’t have death without life. You can’t have victims without survivors. And, in the perfect world of Agatha Christie, you can’t have crime without justice. Oncesuspects have their slates cleaned at the end of every mystery. They’re empowered to move forward, to claw their way out of tragedy.

There’s something romantic in the way Christie writes mysteries. So often, once order is restored and unknowns are known, characters fall in love, get married, or announce their plans for the future. Death reminds them of how short life is – and it reminds us of that too.

I love murder mysteries because I like to be reminded of death. I like to invite sadness, and suffering, and trauma into my life – only because those things shape our experience of happiness, joy and love. If I want pure frivolity, I’d read a comedic novel.

If I wanted nothing but despair, I’d read a Greek tragedy. But what I really want is life; I want misfortune and fortune, injustice and justice metred out in even handfuls. I want people to lose the love of their life – and I want new love to be borne out of shared pain.

There’s one quote, from the Queen of Crime herself, which I’ve often looked to in… tough times. “I like living. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow, but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing”.

Here’s to you, Agatha.

artwork by sarah layton farrago three / 29 farrago 2015 2015 // edition edition eight

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neighbourhood watch / Latrobe Valley

by Samuel Dariol

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ooking for an escape to Victoria’s beautiful countryside? Welcome to the Latrobe Valley, only 90 minutes from Melbourne. Nestled between two beautiful mountain ranges, it’s a place full of cute country cafés, wineries and an old gold town equipped with ye olde train rides. Having spent the past nine months doing research around the Latrobe Valley, I’ve come to see that ideas of the Valley as parochial, ‘dirty’ and ‘bogan’ fail to see the beauty and adventure that one can find there. There is much more to this region than coal plants and mine fires.

The Latrobe Valley sits between the Strezlecki Ranges and the Baw Baw Ranges, consisting of three major urban areas – Moe, Morwell and Traralgon – plus a large number of small country towns. Walhalla, an old gold mining town in the Baw Baw Ranges, is a highlight with quality cafés, a scenic tourist train and one of Victoria’s steepest cemeteries. Easily accessible by V/Line regional train services, the Latrobe Valley is a great day trip or weekend away for your spring and summer.

For those keen for an escape to the bush, the Valley offers a range of walks and cycle tracks to get away from the big smoke. The Strezlecki Trail runs along the ridge of the Strezlecki Ranges, offering stunning views over the Valley and passing through the Tarra Bulga National Park which is known for its fern gullies and temperate rainforest. If cycling is more your thing, try the Gippsland Plains Rail Trail which runs through prime dairy country and provides views of the Great Dividing Ranges all the way from Traralgon to Stratford. Both towns are serviced by V/Line services so you won’t get stuck having to trek back the 67km route. If you are up for a bigger adventure, you can begin the 650km Australian Alps walking track from Walhalla, along the ridges and plains of the Great Dividing Ranges, all the way to Canberra. You will need about ten weeks to do the whole trek one way, so many people just choose to do sections.

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Back in the towns there are some great places to eat, drink and hang out. Three Little Birds café in the centre of Traralgon offers a nice vibe and quality fair-trade coffee, while Saltbush in Morwell offers some hearty lunches and happy hour drinks. If you are looking to splurge, the Little Prince Eating House & Bar in Traralgon has some great food with adequate vego offerings. Foodies should also get along to the 50 Mile Farmers Market held in Traralgon on the first Saturday of the month or Morwell on the second, with local farmers and producers offering delicious seasonal products. If you are seeking some culture, the Latrobe Regional Gallery in Morwell is a great place to check out local artists and touring exhibitions.

Perhaps the best thing to do in the Valley is meet some of the locals. They’re resilient, friendly, and welcoming folk. We also have a lot to thank them for. Victoria has relied on the Latrobe Valley for almost a century for our power generation from coal. This is clearly changing as we transition to a low carbon economy, yet we should remember that it has been the sacrifice to health and environment by those in the Valley that has allowed Victoria to thrive for many decades. We may not like brown coal or the fact that the nation’s four dirtiest power stations are Victorian. But beyond just hoping the industry will shut down to ease our feeling of powerlessness in the face of global climate change, we have the opportunity to reach out to the community and ask how we can help. In visiting the Valley, injecting some funds into the economy and getting to know the area, we can start to show some solidarity with the community down there.

Not only is the Latrobe Valley a beautiful place with lots to see and do, but we have a chance to help out our neighbours by going for a visit and starting to see them as our equals, rather than a dirty problem.

illustration by nina cheles

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/ science photography by j-dart

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your brain and video games with ruth de jager

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ince video games have become a widespread pastime, there have been many studies trying to find their psychological impacts, with a few findings coming into public awareness. One exciting finding is that there are cognitive benefits to playing video games.

I mean, how enticing is that? Playing games, getting smarter while you procrastinate, and potentially being able to get through work faster once you’re done with the game. Okay, so that may be wishful thinking, but many studies have found that gamers typically outperform non-gamers on cognitive tasks.

Numerous studies have found that people who played shooter video games (compared with games of a different genre) showed faster and more accurate attention allocation, improved mental rotation abilities and their visual processing was of higher quality.

These effects seemed to be long lasting, and the skills could be generalised to situations other than the video game world. How incredible! To top it off, these spatial skills have been linked to success in STEM fields. Video games also appear to be associated with enhanced creativity and problem solving, particularly with role playing games.

However, I do want to mention that not all games have such positive results. Ignoring for the moment the possible link between violent games and aggression, an example of this is the cognitive

training (i.e. ‘brain training’) field, and its literature is possibly the most patchy I’ve ever seen. To attempt to sum up: sometimes cognitive training works and sometimes with long term effects but we don’t really know what mediates any of these things (looking at you, Lumosity).

But why is it that the training that video games can achieve in a matter of hours could take an entire university course to accomplish? My thinking: capitalism. No, for real though. For games to be widely popular, creators need people to be challenged, but not enough that they won’t play the game. They need to have the player learn a myriad of rules, actions, gameplay and complex stories without the player getting bored or frustrated. And so, thanks to capitalism, successful game developers become the ultimate teachers. They keep people feeling a sense of intense achievement, creating more motivation to keep engaging with the content.

And motivation is undoubtedly the best way for people to absorb enormous amounts of information and gain skills. Interestingly, looking at how game creators teach skills in a game environment could revolutionize teaching and learning as we know it.

So hey, video games. Be manipulated into learning cognitive skills, gain confidence and become a revolutionary. Not a bad mix if I do say so myself.

science lab / Bandura’s Bobo Doll Experiment with Daniel Beratis

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e get it. It’s so close to the end of the university year. You need a stress reliever before the crushing onslaught of exams drives you to despair or, even worse, not reading Farrago. Spice up your life with this handy, customizable version of the Bobo doll experiment, conducted first by Albert ‘my last name is sicker than pneumonia’ Bandura, and now conducted by you!

METHOD:

Step 1. Record two videos of yourself. In one video, play with the toys for two minutes in one corner of a room. Then, absolutely go to fucking town on the Bobo doll. Just fucking go for it. In the other video, worship the doll. Feel the doll. Be the doll. Also, ignore the doll, since that’s what happened in the actual experiment, but you can have a free pass if it’s Taylor Swift or something.

Step 2. Split your Unsuspecting Children into three groups: a “control group”, that gets to watch nothing, and two groups that watch one of your videos. If you have the time, or you really don’t want to study for that exam, try sorting the groups so that the children have relatively similarly aggressive instincts.

Step 3. Let the Unsuspecting Children loose in a room with some toys of various fun and excitement (but no Bobo doll!), and then TAKE THEM AWAY after a couple of minutes. Get them mad.

Step 4. Take the Unsuspecting Children to the experimental room.

There should be toys in one corner, and the Bobo doll in the other.

Sit back. Learn.

Step 5. If the children are especially aggressive upon introducing the doll, run. Don’t look back.

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If all goes well, the go-to-fucking-town group of UCs will go to fudging town on that doll. The others won’t! Science is incredible.

This original experiment formed part of the basis for Bandura’s social learning theory, which posited that children learn social behaviour through observation – such as watching media. Bobo dolls have been living in fear ever since. *If you do not have a ready supply of children, you can easily substitute some honours students; they’re probably regressing to a childlike state in the face of their thesis deadlines.

illustration by rebecca liew

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drawn to science

Searching for mammals in the Otways with Kate Cranney

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eet Matt Swan, post-doctoral researcher with the School of Ecosystem and Forest Sciences at the University of Melbourne’s Creswick Campus. Matthew’s PhD asked: how does fire affect grounddwelling mammals in the Otway Ranges?

Drive two hours southwest of Melbourne, and you’ll be in the heart of the Otway Ranges. The Otways span 140,000 hectares, and include the Great Otway National Park and the Otway Forest Park.

Matt Swan researched the mammals that call the Otway Ranges home for three years. He says, “I remember foolishly thinking at the start of my [PhD] project that I would learn to surf while doing field work.”

Surfing turned out to be a pipe dream – Matt’s field work was “physically and mentally exhausting” with early mornings and long days. Nonetheless, field work remains his favourite part of his PhD. Matt says, “What’s not to like about the Otways? You’ve got great coastline abutting some of the best forests in the country.

Ecologically it’s so diverse; in a short distance you go from low rainfall areas near Anglesea to the wettest area in Victoria further south.”

Matt’s PhD research Fire changes a landscape. A forest that was burnt last year will be vastly different to a forest that has not been burnt for 100 years. In ecology this is known as fire-mediated environmental heterogeneity or pyrodiversity for short.

Matt’s research asked whether there is a greater diversity of mammals where the landscape is more heterogeneous. He looked at how fire influences the distribution (spread) and abundance (number) of mammals in the Otway Ranges.

Matt’s research was part of a collaboration between Parks Victoria and the Victorian Department of Environment and Primary Industries (DEPI). A bevvy of academics and post-graduates are researching different aspects of the effects of fire regimes on biodiversity in the Otways. Other students are looking at plants, invertebrates, birds and feral predators.

Matt surveyed the mammals of the Otway Ranges each spring and summer for three years. “This involved physically trapping small species with Elliott traps and using wildlife cameras for larger species,” he explains. Matt sampled across places with different ‘fire histories’ – from very recent fires to areas that hadn’t been burnt for decades.

Fiery field work and feisty Antechinus From antechinuses to kangaroos, Matt researched the entire ground-dwelling mammal community of the Otways. He recorded 17 native mammal species throughout his PhD including kangaroos, long-nosed potoroos and southern brown bandicoots. He says, “Many people don’t know it but the Otways has a really rich diversity of mammals.”

While some mammals are abundant (he caught more than a thousand bush rats during his PhD), other species are declining.

Two species have become locally extinct in last couple of decades.

Whether abundant or rare, Matt says, “It’s a privilege to work with creatures that almost no one gets to see up close.”

The Dusky Antechinus (pictured) is one of his favourite mammals. Matt describes them as a miniature grizzly bear. He jokes, “They definitely suffer from little animal syndrome. Whenever you caught one and they were in a bad mood they would hiss at you really loudly before trying to bite your finger off.” But part of

illustration by kate cranney

their appeal was that they were uncommon. “It was nice to catch something that you didn’t run into every day.”

Matt also helped out with DEPI’s planned burns. He watched the “military sized” operation play out, and stepped in with a drip-torch to help. Matthew laughs that as a fire ecologist, he enjoyed being part of a planned burn – and that a drip torch is “good for bringing out your inner pyromaniac”.

So does pyrodiversity lead to biodiversity?

Different mammal species thrive in different stages of post-fire habitat. In ecological terms, heterogeneous environments provide a wide variety of resources for different species to exploit. So does this ‘patchiness’ lead to greater diversity of mammals?

Matt’s research found that patchy burns are beneficial for mammal diversity and survival. When a fire burns through an area, some mammals will flee to ‘refugia’ – unburnt patches of the landscape or areas, like damp gullies, that are unlikely to burn. Then eventually they disperse to the burnt areas once more.

The university’s ‘well-kept secret’ Since handing in his PhD early this year, Matt has been working as a post-doctoral researcher. Based at Creswick Campus, he is once again looking at the relationship between fire and biodiversity.

Creswick is set among experimental forests of California Redwoods and English Oaks planted decades ago by the forestry school. It’s no Great Otways National Park but Matt says Creswick is a “well-kept secret” and well worth a visit.

Visit http://www.fireecologyandbiodiversity.com/ for more on Matthew’s research.

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/ Society

The Lunar Effect: Fact or Fiction?

by Ghill de Rozario

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longside various other spiritual and religious beliefs, the lunar effect is perennially lumped into the category of ‘magical thinking’ by sceptics, atheists, and scientists alike. However, one doesn’t have to look far to find anecdotal stories about strange events and heightened crime occurring on the monthly full moon. But do these claims stand up to scrutiny? Is there really any correlation between the planetary system and the outcomes or experiences for humans living on Earth?

As a teen, I found star signs fascinating, and once, whilst at a used bookstore, stumbled across a book on auras. For those unaware, an aura is supposedly a band of light (energy) around your body, which takes on various colours depending on personality traits. The colour outlines such traits as an individual’s talents, possible career pathways, likes, dislikes, financial capability, what they were like as children, what they will be like as parents, and so on. To find your aura, you just answer a series of questions and see which category you best fit into. Sounds a bit hippydippy suss, right? Right. I never believed that there was a band of coloured energy around my body, but, admittedly, I’m still baffled at the accuracy of aura mythology in detailing an individual’s personality in such accurate ways. Is it possible that there are only a small handful of distinct types of personalities into which we all fit?

While star signs are often vague and ambiguous, the aura descriptions appeared to match each person, in great depth, with almost perfect accuracy. However, I have always thought of them as little more than very pithy personality types.

Those of you who have ever read a description of your star sign characteristics may have noticed that the description will often match up with some of your traits, yet not others – essentially, they are just vague enough for some individuals to be convinced. Star sign characteristics therefore exemplify the Barnum effect, where people will give high accuracy ratings to descriptions which they believe to be tailored specifically for them, but that are in actual fact general enough to apply to anyone. The effect has been demonstrated time and time again, with large groups of people all being given the same, ambiguous personality descriptor, and on average rating its accuracy very high.

Interestingly enough, there have been studies that have found that the level of testosterone a woman produces during pregnancy can affect the personality traits of her child. One specifically found that testosterone during pregnancy can affect an individual’s internal vs external ‘locus of control’, which is the extent to which a person believes (or does not believe) that things which happen to them are controlled by external forces. These forces include things such as religious or astrological beliefs – funny! Clearly though, this does not explain character traits being linked to birth dates, as testosterone production has not been linked to

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seasons. Other studies, however, have linked which season babies are born in to certain personality traits and even the development of mental illnesses later in life.

Whilst there are various theories speculating as to why this may be the case – such as diet differing throughout the year due to variations in available produce, vitamin D exposure, or even variations in temperature – no cross-cultural studies have yet been undertaken to causally evaluate these findings on a global scale.

Well, what about the full moon effect? Is there any truth to the planetary system affecting things such as homicide rates, mood swings, suicides, major disasters, and other types of violence? The average woman gets about 13 menstrual periods a year, meaning that women’s cycles follow the lunar calendar more closely than our current Gregorian calendar. While I have known nurses, child protection practitioners, and sex workers, who have all maintained that emergencies and violent events occur more frequently on the full moon, this suggestion remains unproven. After all, confirmation bias allows us to reinforce existing beliefs to the detriment of objective reality. To date, every analysis of historical data seeking evidence of the full moon effect has come up short.

So what does this all mean? Aren’t beliefs in things such as the full moon effect and astrology just harmless fun? Some would argue not. Many atheists and sceptics, among others, vehemently deride things that promote or lead to ‘magical thinking’: the attribution of causality to things which cannot be justified by reason or observation, such as praying in order to affect outcomes. Many argue that being open to ideas without grounding in science can lead to harm, such as using homeopathic products to treat serious illnesses, or not immunising children.

However, this claim may be exaggerated – after all, many of us played with Ouija boards as children, and surely we’ll go on to make rational health choices as adults (hopefully…).

Cultural mythology can be mesmerising and fascinating, so finding out that there is little merit to the stories is pretty disappointing. However, whilst discovering that the full moon is just another day on the calendar might not seem quite as exciting as Minority-Report-style crime prediction, there are many other spacey things happening right now, many of which are worth getting excited about.

As a teenager I would read my horoscope; these days, when I wear my top with the planetary system on it, or my galaxy print leggings, I think instead of technological accomplishments, like the Hadron Collider, or future scientific endeavours, such as the Mars One project, which humanity is striving towards. There’s nothing wrong with imagination, but rather than blindly letting our beliefs guide us, let’s instead use them to discover, innovate, and so guide our own future.

illustration by nini li

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Earth’s Lungs by carly cassella

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very second of every day the world loses more than two football fields of rainforest. The Amazon, the largest rainforest in the world, is under the greatest threat. Rainforests have substantial control over Earth’s climate, giving us 60% of all fresh water and 20% of the oxygen we breathe every day. Yet nearly one fifth of the Amazon has been deforested. The Amazon is often described as the lungs of Earth. And, like a chain smoker, we are slowly destroying it.

From 1990 to 2010, tropical rainforest clearing increased by 62% worldwide. At the United Nations Climate Summit in September 2014, dozens of countries and companies vowed to halve deforestation by 2020 and halt it completely by 2030. However, one critical country was missing from the agreement – Brazil. While clearing may have plummeted during the past decade in Brazil, its yearly rate of deforestation has more than doubled since August 2014. With deforestation contributing to 8% of the world’s carbon emissions, this increase threatens the future of the entire planet.

Despite the global ramifications of deforestation, the president of Brazil, Dilma Roussef, has called for the construction of new hydroelectric dams and a highway that will travel directly through the heart of the Amazon. With the economy shrinking, Brazil has become desperate to reinstate itself as one of the five largest economies in the world. With Roussef’s approval ratings dropping into the single digits, she is even more driven to keep her promise to end poverty in one of the world’s largest economies. As a result, 70% of Brazil’s deforestation has occurred to create new cattle ranches as a response to the growing price of beef globally. Roussef’s administration also supports legislation that undermines environmental protections and even offers amnesty to those undertaking illegal deforestation – all in the name of economic growth.

So what impact does Brazil’s decision to continue deforestation have on the rest of the world?

Currently the Amazon releases nearly 20 billion tons of water vapour into the atmosphere on a daily basis. However, a study conducted last year by Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research found that deforestation has decreased atmospheric moisture movement to the south. Scientists believe this has been a major factor in the series of droughts experienced in the southern parts of Brazil and throughout Argentina. Brazil’s Amazon Research Institute, the INPA, warns that if the current rate of deforestation continues, these droughts will likely become permanent.

The impact of deforestation also reaches far beyond Brazil.

Amazon researcher, Thomas Lovejoy, fears that the Amazon is

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close to its tipping point. Deforestation and climate change may transform the Amazon into a savanna and it may not be able to maintain current weather systems in the Western Hemisphere for much longer. The dry air over the basin could cause a ripple effect from Argentina all the way to the Pacific Northwest. A study conducted at Princeton in 2013 predicts that a fully deforested Amazon would result in a 20% decrease in the Pacific Northwest’s rainfall and a 50% decrease in snowfall in Sierra Nevada, California.

This would result in a significant loss of water that agriculture in the United States depends on. David Medvigy, an assistant professor of geosciences at Princeton explains, “The big point is that Amazon deforestation will not only affect the Amazon – it will not be contained. It will hit the atmosphere and the atmosphere will carry those responses.”

This threat to the Amazon is not just imminent for humans either. The Amazon is home to at least 40,000 different plant species, approximately 3,000 fish, 1,300 birds, 427 mammals, over 400 amphibians, 378 reptiles and nearly 2.5 million insect species. They are all under threat owing to deforestation.

Surely the country that encompasses the largest percentage of the Amazon should be most responsible for its protection? Yet Brazilian law allows for limited legal deforestation, meaning it can’t sign the UN agreement to end deforestation of the Amazon. And even worse, illegal deforestation is on the rise. Land speculators are forming an army of informants that track environmental police movement, leading to an increase in unregulated deforestation.

Unfortunately the Brazilian environmental police and government are not adapting to these new threats fast enough. Brazilian priorities remain economic and are skewed at local benefit rather than global conservation.

Giving your signature to Greenpeace petitions appealing to the Brazilian Congress and Senate to halt deforestation can only do so much. And it doesn’t help that leading countries like China and the United States are hedging on carbon reduction plans. Ultimately, there needs to be a far greater global pressure on countries that refuse to acknowledge the global impacts of their economic decisions. However, there are some countries doing their part. For example, Norway has committed to paying Brazil $1 billion between 2008 and 2015 in exchange for slowing severe deforestation rates.

We can only hope that more international collaboration like this in the future will help to safeguard the sustainability of our planet.

illustration by lucy hunter

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shih tzu

by Amy Clements

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growling leopard in its confined cage, pacing up and down in anger. Elephants hastily running to the front of their enclosure at the sight of tourists and potential food. Bird cages that show no resemblance to natural habitats. Two lethargic lions sitting behind bars, yet close enough to touch if you dared. These are some of the animals found at Teuk Chhou Zoo in the quaint town of Kampot, Cambodia.

Despite the good intention to create a joyful place where locals and tourists can get up close to the animals, the zoo is a sad reminder that there is a severe lack of funding. Overgrown grass surrounds an inoperative merry-go-round, giving the zoo a ghostlike feeling. Additionally, the animals have little space and appear to be either bored or stressed. In its prime, the zoo would have been the perfect place for Cambodian families to spend their Sunday afternoons and for tourists to see some of Cambodia’s native species.

Now, it is a derelict attraction.

The zoo has caught the attention of many non-government organisations (NGOs) and wildlife activists for its poor conditions and underfed animals. In 2011, the Phnom Penh Post reported on “The Zoo of Horrors”, sparking public attention and interest. Consequently, the owner of the zoo became open to outside help and funding.

In 2012, the Elephant Asia Rescue Survival Foundation (EARS) assisted with the care of the zoo’s two elephants, Kiri and Seila. The foundation built a new enclosure for the pair and ensures that they have adequate food and medical care. Unlike many other elephants in the region, Kiri and Seila are not forced to work or wear chains – instead they roam freely in their enclosure.

Another NGO, Wildlife Alliance, launched its project Footprints in 2012, which intended to develop the zoo into a wildlife sanctuary.

Footprints provided the zoo with the baseline costs of $6,000$7,000 per month for over a year. The zoo was making progress, with the Phnom Penh Post reporting that the zoo was “fighting back from [the] brink”.

Although external funding can help in the short term, it does not necessarily lead to sustainable change. In 2013, the zoo’s main supporter, Wildlife Alliance, discontinued funding after a disagreement with the zoo. The headlines soon changed to “Kampot Zoo Back in Trouble” and today, the hungry tigers, leopards and lions still remain.

photography by Wilson Liew

Another concern is the care of the zoo’s two elephants, as there is a discrepancy with EARS over the adequate treatment of the pair. EARS believes that the elephants should be living in a more natural forest habitat. However, there are now plans to exchange the elephants for two white tigers and two zebras with a zoo in Japan.

New elephants would be purchased as a replacement. Without adequate funds to care for the existing animals, there is concern over how the new animals will be cared for sufficiently. In protest, EARS has created a petition to free Kiri and Seila. The petition states that the transfer of the elephants is inappropriate due to cold climate, welfare issues, and stress through overseas transportation. The foundation asks that Kiri and Seila be moved to a Wildlife Sanctuary in Siem Reap instead, where they can stay in their home country and live as free animals.

These issues beg the question of how the international community can help a privately owned zoo. The Western notion of the ‘ideal zoo’ is often very different to an Eastern perspective, where animal rights are not always given the same attention or priority. This is especially the case in a country like Cambodia where a quarter of the population still lives below the poverty line.

Cambodians do not have access to the same luxuries that we often take for granted in Western countries, like healthcare, education and job security. Additionally, the zoo does not receive any funding from the government and so does not enjoy the same benefits as many other zoos located around the world. It’s easy to argue that all animals deserve to have their rights upheld, but when it’s a question of money, things are not so simple. International intervention may be needed but it is not always easily implemented.

At Teuk Chhou Zoo there is a wide array of animals for locals and tourists to see. As such, there is a huge opportunity to create a thriving zoo that can generate sufficient funds. With the right marketing and a solid partnership between the owner and NGOs, the zoo could one day be restored to its former glory.

You can sign EARS’ petition ‘FREE KIRI AND SEILA’ and help keep the elephants in Cambodia at change.org.

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/ science

The DIY Killer Robot

by Gabriel Filippa

C

urrent laws to prevent terrorists or rogue states getting hold of dangerous artificial intelligence technologies are outdated, according to a leading law expert.

Professor Rain Liivoja, a senior lecturer at Melbourne Law School, says that international export laws are becoming irrelevant with the proliferation of dual-use technologies.

He cites a YouTube video where a man installs a submachine gun on a drone.

“It’s pretty scary. Technologies used for dual-use purposes are rapidly expanding. The drone can be used for so many lawful purposes that it can be difficult to restrict its use. Nearly everything now can be used for military purposes.”

Professor Liivoja mentions the use of drones for landscape photography and farm surveillance. He says that restricting the particular transfer of military components is becoming less useful with the advent of 3D printing.

In July, over 1,000 artificial intelligence experts signed an open letter warning of the development of autonomous weapons. The letter was presented during the opening of the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and was signed by the likes of professor Stephen Hawking, Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak, and Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk.

The letter states that the materials for manufacturing autonomous weapons will be cheap and easy to mass-produce, and will meet all the conditions necessary for a thriving black market.

The drone featured in the YouTube video is controlled by human hands, But Professor Liivoja says that autonomous weapons technology will soon be easily obtainable.

“We are already at the stage where you can source components for chemical and biological weapons on the open market. Why should autonomous weapons technology be any different?”

He suggests that any ban on autonomous artificial intelligence will be ineffective, adding that there is no way of effectively controlling the underlying technology.

Tim McFarland, a PhD student specialising in law and engineering at Melbourne University, agrees: “A lot of the systems

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used to build autonomous weapons are the same parts used to build an ordinary computer. I think regulating this field will be extremely difficult.”

But Mr McFarland is also concerned about accountability. He says that there is an assumption in criminal law that requires a perpetrator – “one that selects a target and pulls a trigger”. With the use of autonomous weapons, it becomes difficult to apply the same set of criminal codes. It’s a legal area that does not yet exist: What happens when an autonomous weapon is responsible for a human death?

With the rapid development of artificial intelligence, both researchers hope that the legal onus will shift from the individual operator of a system to the programmers and engineers that design it.

“It comes down to product liability,” says Professor Liivoja, “as with cars, elevators or microwaves, manufacturing defects or technical oversights will lead to abnormal performance. I think product liability laws are becoming increasingly relevant in the military sphere. It comes down to whether or not criminal law can accommodate this shift.”

The stakes are high. The open letter describes autonomous weapons as the “third revolution in warfare”, and claims that they will become the “Kalashnikovs of tomorrow” if any military power provokes an artificial intelligence arms race.

But the news is not all bad. Both men agree that autonomous artificial intelligence is at a stage much more technologically primitive than the media would lead us to believe.

Denny Oetomo, a senior lecturer in Mechanical Engineering at Melbourne University, concurs: “I think the apocalyptic fear is exaggerated. When technology is not managed appropriately, it is possible that damages will result from it – and that is not a new point.”

He says we should always be concerned about humans carrying out irresponsible acts, regardless of the development of new technologies.

“I should be as worried about an irresponsible company or robot designer who intentionally creates a machine to harm a human being as I would about getting robbed and attacked in the middle of the street.”

photography by anwyn hocking

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/ society artwork by nini li

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/ Society

Lesbian, Gay, Bicycle?… Trains?

by Mary Ntalianis

“B

isexual girls are attention seekers, bisexual boys are just in the closet.” “Pansexuals are sluts.” “Asexuals are prudes.” “You’re trans? Well, you’re probably just like Caitlyn Jenner.” The list goes on.

Erasure is a serious issue within the queer community. It involves individuals or groups ignoring or removing a sexual orientation or gender alignment and attempting to discredit it and the people who identify with it. While the gay rights movement has been imperative in gaining visibility for gay and lesbian people, bisexual, transgender and asexual people are being left far behind in gaining both social and legal status.

Recently I participated in a ‘Queer Reality’ project identifying myself as a bisexual woman in a relationship with a man. As the photo circulated around the university and on social media, I received variations of the same comment: “But if you’re in a relationship with a man, then you’re benefiting from hetero-privilege.”

Hetero-privilege is the idea that people in a heterosexual relationship receive privileges that same-sex couples cannot attain.

These privileges include not having to ‘come out’, being in a socially accepted relationship, seeing relationships similar to yours in movies and TV shows, and being able to get married legally.

I wasn’t quite sure how to respond to the idea that I was benefitting from heterosexuality when I had blatantly stated that I was bisexual. Do I tell them that bisexual people have consistently shown higher rates of depression than gay and lesbian people? That bisexual women are almost twice as likely to experience sexual violence than straight women? That bisexual women are fetishised by straight men but erased by the queer community?

This was not the first experience I’d had with people discrediting bisexuality as a valid sexual orientation. When I first came out as bisexual at fourteen, many of my friends agreed that I was probably just a lesbian. Later on in high school, I was told by a school

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counsellor that I probably just liked kissing girls for the attention it gave me from straight boys.

The response to my Queer Reality project however, made me think more deeply about the issue of bisexual erasure, and erasure within the queer community as a whole. Bisexual people aren’t the only ones who have experienced having a significant aspect of their identity erased and ignored. Similarly, many of the transgender students have experienced erasure, even here on campus.

Transgender people are those who don’t identify with the gender assigned to them at birth. Non-binary people are often included under the umbrella term ‘transgender’ and they are people whose gender does not fit into the binary of male or female.

Several transgender first year students take gender studies, also known as the first year subject ‘Sex, Gender, and Culture: An Introduction’ and known by the students in the Queer Space as ‘gender hell.’ The subject can be inclusive and intersectional at times.

But often you’re forced to wonder how many times the lecturer can mention ‘male and female bodies’ before the trans kids give up and shrink into their seats forever.

In the recent UMSU student elections, many transgender women were prevented from voting for Women’s Officers, as most are not registered with a feminine honorific title at the start of their names.

For transgender people who risk violence and verbal abuse when using the bathroom of their choice, and for non-binary people who do not identify as either male or female, there are still no gender-neutral bathrooms in Union House and many other buildings on campus, putting them at risk of harassment in the gendered bathrooms.

But trans erasure extends far further than this. Trans people are commonly erased from history and importance. Historically, trans people of significance have been consistently re-written out

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of important events. Recently, the trailer has been released of a film called Stonewall, which depicts the 1969 Stonewall Riots, an event that is credited with starting the contemporary queer rights movement. These riots are known to have been spearheaded by transgender women of colour. However, in the Stonewall movie, a cisgender (someone who identifies with the gender they were assigned at birth) white male is credited with starting the riots, in an all too common case of whitewashing and trans erasure.

“Even in movies about transgender people, trans characters are so often played by cisgender people,” said one transgender student.

When asking around the Melbourne University Queer Space about the issue of non-binary erasure, one non-binary student summed up the general consensus saying, “when isn’t non-binary erasure a thing?”

“When I fill out forms, they [ask]: male or female. Then when I go to the bathroom, again they demand to know if I am girl or a boy. But I like it when people say ‘ladies and gentlemen’ because then I don’t have to listen anymore,” they joked.

Similarly, asexual people also experience erasure: “Being asexual is just like wearing an invisibility cloak – no one thinks you really exist,” said an asexual student. “Asexual people don’t experience sexual attraction or experience it to a limited extent,” they explained. However, many asexual students were positive about their experiences in the queer community and were even happy to make some jokes.

“Asexuals make the worst pirates,” another asexual student told me, “We do not want the booty.” “And we’re absolutely no use to sirens because we’re not attracted to their singing at all”.

All jokes aside, it’s important to be aware that both the queer and straight communities can be dangerous and uncomfortable places for asexual people. Living in a society that so often has sex-

photography by tori lill

focused media and advertising, as well as dealing with the constant pressure to be sexual in schools, universities and workplaces can be exhausting. It can even be traumatic for asexual people who experience sex-repulsion. The queer community can be even worse as it is often a place where sex is discussed openly and the focus on sex and sexuality is intense.

The importance of awareness cannot go unacknowledged.

It might seem like a simplistic notion, but having widespread awareness of the existence of a marginalised group is key to enforcing and creating policies that can protect that group.

Recently, the Queer Department has launched the campaign ‘Queer Reality’ where queer students are able to share their unique experiences. Posters of the campaign can be seen all over the university. Additionally, collectives for transgender and asexual students have been organised this year by the Queer Officers in order to give these students a voice in the queer community.

When the contemporary gay rights movement raised awareness for their cause, same-sex marriage was legislated in the United States and many other countries, resulting in many same-sex couples gaining a social and legal status that they previously could not attain.

It is equally important that now, other marginalised sexualities and gender alignments be acknowledged around the university and in the wider community.

By erasing bisexuals, transgender people, asexuals and a range of other queer minority groups from society, we are silencing the voices of a prevalent and important part of the queer community.

By staying aware of these groups and the issues that affect them, we can take important steps to creating a society that is safe and equal.

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/ Society

Everything is Political by jason wong

I

’m the weird kid who rattles on about the contradictions of society with complete disregard for your innocence. You wonder if I’ll ever shut up about politics. I use the word ‘capitalism’. When student elections roll around, you either blame me for all the leafleters, or beg me to make it stop. It’s time I explain why I persist.

We political types have a name for the “why should I care” mentality. It’s called being apolitical. Thing is, being apolitical is itself political. Perhaps you’d like to steer clear of politics by burying your head in your studies? Too bad it influences tuition fees and how many tutors are available to help you out. What about the fabled ‘student life’ that we’re all marketed? The student union has to fight yearly for club funding to keep that going. I don’t have to tell you that your work rights and (possibly below minimum) wages are a political issue, which by extension makes the production and consumption of every good and service in modern society political.

Music, scientific research, religion, serial dramas, the meaning of love, the list goes on. From birth to death, we live in a society invented by people. Like it or not, there’s no escaping politics.

Maybe you think you don’t care. I don’t buy that. The same people that complain about my rants come to me for answers when the government does something stupid. You don’t have to be familiar with the metabolic rift or Gramscian hegemony to be angry about cruel policy or curious about the news. Even if you have a total aversion to current affairs, if you’ve ever had to decide on a question of fairness or responsibility or power, you’ve made use of a political worldview. Your politics decides how you forgive, your opinion on who deserves what, your conceptions of value and your loyalties.

Your politics decides what you care about.

People tell me I shouldn’t waste my energy. Not like those suits are gonna listen to me, right? If you think politics is just old people arguing about bills, think again. Our parents made up that myth to keep us from getting arrested. Turns out it’s also a great way for bureaucrats to make you think that your solemn duty as a citizen of a democratic nation is to uphold the fair-dinkum Australian Way™ and

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mark some boxes (or pay a $20 fine) every 3 years. Us political types disrupt the illusory tranquility of your existence on a daily basis for a reason. If you want to see a politician scared and listening, ‘proper channels’ don’t work so well. Every time blind faith, ignorance or cynicism convinces you to leave our ‘leaders’ unscrutinised is another chance for them to act like regular political dickheads.

Surely you’ve wondered if some politicians actually depend on an apolitical public to advance their own political schemes?

Perhaps you think “that’s just how it is”. Don’t get me started on how many pay cuts and crackdowns and massacres have been justified by that sentence. Is it not an irony that we as a society worship the mentality of disruptive entrepreneurship with the same fervour that we denounce disruptive activism? As if shutting up and pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps in a rigged game that leaves everyone else behind is somehow the honourable thing to do. We’ve been fed so much garbage about ‘resilience’ and ‘believing in ourselves’ that we forget circumstances matter, and how changing your situation and changing the situation can mean very different things.

We’ve all lived enough of our lives thinking that politics is something best left to the experts, so much so that it is in fact now dominated by experts (read: bureaucrats) that often don’t even care about us. I’ve only been at this for 2 years and I can tell you there’s so much more to it. I’ve watched politicians losing their nerve at an approaching demonstration. I’ve watched a movement give hope to people who have been left to rot for seeking a better life. I’ve seen how clever civil disobedience can force officials and police to make hilariously repulsive gaffes in public. The myth is holding you back and you deserve better.

So the next time you see me around, if you’re at all curious about what I’m wailing about this week, walk up to me and ask. I can’t promise that every person on every stall will be as nice, but I think I speak for most of us when I say I’m only an attention-seeking pessimistic killjoy because I care about your sanity.

illustration by sarah layton

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THE TROUBLE WITH BROGA

by Sophie Berrill

W

hile pacing slowly around the room and making sure our knees were locked and butts high in the air, my yoga instructor gave us a friendly reminder: “Don’t forget there’s a free broga class for men this Father’s Day.” Thank God I was in downward dog so no one could see my violent eye-roll. There went my steady breathing and my focus for this yoga class. Now, all I could think about was how yoga (the very meaning of which is ‘union’) had its own contribution to the list of segregating, man-pandering buzzwords.

Man bun, man bag, mantyhose, bromance, man dates, manscaping, guyliner, mankinis. The list of heterosexual, manfriendly terms for typically female styles goes on.

I have no problem with the actual phenomena themselves. Men can wear buns. Men can do yoga. Men can enjoy wearing pantyhose.

I think at this point it’s safe to conclude that men and women have a lot of – gasp – similar interests. It’s these ‘man’ prefixes that drag us back to times when our grandparents used gender qualifiers like ‘lady doctor’ or ‘male nurse’ to depict certain genders as potentially unequipped for particular roles.

Except this time, these terms arise almost exclusively in relation to men. Some people brush off the ‘man bun’ as a harmless buzzword, but it actually creates a culture of self-consciousness and fear of emasculation among men. Words like ‘broga’ belittle guys because they reinforce the idea that a man’s masculinity is so fragile that it has to be reaffirmed every time he enters a typically female context.

It is this typically female context that underlies the whole problem. These terms serve as modern reiterations of the myth that femininity is linked to weakness. So many men don’t take yoga as a serious form of exercise because the modern face of yoga is a young woman, despite flexibility being a quality beneficial to all genders. To me, ‘broga’ screams, “It’s okay, you’re doing a superior, man’s version of yoga”, reinforcing it as a typically feminine practice and a pursuit for the weak.

Yet, contrary to this perspective, yoga is the most brutal and strengthening form of exercise I’ve ever done. In fact, most typically ‘feminine’ pursuits I’ve tried have been brutal: pouring hot wax on my legs and ripping hairs out at their roots; spending long, sore hours in heels (although the harm behind these rituals is another issue for another article). Femininity clearly requires strength. Why do we belittle men who display any grain of it?

Interestingly, women pretty much never feel the need to reaffirm their femininity in a typically male context. If you look at the Broga

artwork by Sarah McDonald

Melbourne website, you’ll find an asterix that reveals the caveat, “For guys and gals!”. Similarly, on Mantyhose.net, the tagline reads “Hosiery fashion for women and men”. Tellingly, women are pretty comfortable being associated with men. In fact, we persevere in this man-world daily (am I right, ladies?). It’s clear here that in the case of ‘broga’ or ‘mantyhose’ it is less about catering to men’s needs and more about immediately branding the product as non-threatening to a man’s masculinity.

I was recently helping out at my sister’s recycled clothing store when a guy, embarrassed, asked her, “Uh sorry, but I’m not too good at figuring out which are men’s clothes and which are women’s clothes here.”

There’s only one obvious women’s rack at my sister’s store with dresses and the like. The rest of the stock is traditionally guys’ stuff: flannelette shirts, baggy tees, sports jackets and so on. I half expected a female customer to be the first to ask if they were actually in a men’s store. Yet flocks of young women come in and comfortably peruse the racks of unisex jumpers and jackets that have men’s clothing brands on the tags. My sister wanted to market her store as unisex and constantly moans to me about how she wishes one day a dude would come in and try on the floral skivvy.

As Charlotte Gainsbourg’s character says in the 1993 film The Cement Garden (and as Madonna sampled at the start of ‘What It Feels Like For A Girl’): “Girls can wear jeans and cut their hair short, wear shirts and boots, ‘cause it’s okay to be a boy. But for a boy to look like a girl is degrading, because you think that being a girl is degrading.”

The 2015 version of this speech might go something more like: “Guys can wear tights, and tie their long hair in buns, carry handbags and yoga mats, but only if we add reassuring manly prefixes because hey, looking like a girl is still degrading.”

Maybe the man bag, mantyhose and brogi are in some ways a step away from harmful hyper-masculine ideals. They have created this buffer zone in which gender lines are slowly being blurred for certain traditionally feminine things.

But come on people: this is a plushy-arse buffer zone. We don’t need to give a guy a pat on the head and reassure him we still believe he’s a man every time he dabbles in what is usually considered a feminine pursuit. It’s insulting to all men, women and genderqueer people. We are better than that.

If we did away with antiquated gender qualifiers, we’d all inhabit the world that little bit more freely – adorning buns and pantyhose and joining yoga without the spectre of the gender police.

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artwork by georgia waite-gertner

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so your fave is problematic

by Jennifer Balcomb

W

hat do you do when a singer, actor, or sports person that you like – let’s say fave from here on in – says or does something ‘problematic’?

The answer to this question from certain enclaves of the internet (*cough* Tumblr *cough*) seems to be something along the lines of: Step 1. Cry. Step 2. Scream.

Step 3. Burn your laptop, phone, iPad or iPod – anything and everything that may have held any information at all about that person who is now all of a sudden problematic.

And then you sit there, with your entire house now just a pile of ashes, and you give yourself a pat on the back because you are no longer associated with them and their problematic-ness.

Sure, now there is a draught, and you are cold and lonely, but still, job well done.

Then begins your life-long mission of informing every single human (or really, anything with ears that appears to be listening) about the ways in which this former-fave (YES FORMER NOT NOW I SWEAR) is problematic. And so off you set, with the fave-shaped hole in your heart now being warmed instead by hate!fire.

The notion of a problematic fave has become riddled with irony these days – my sister even once referred to our mother as her problematic fave. But at the crux of the issue is this: if you aren’t going to undertake the boycott/rioting tract as outlined above, what do you do when someone in the public sphere whom you admire says or does something hurtful, offensive, or just plain wrong? Do you dismiss their problematic-ness and continue worshipping them because you are a ‘real true fan’ and because that kind of loyalty is exactly what they look for in a potential new addition to their entourage and/or marital bed?

It’s a toughie. But perhaps there is a middle ground. We all at some point have to face the fact that someone we like/admire/ are a fan of has said something dumb/rude/offensive. I faced this devastating truth recently with comedian Amy Schumer. I became a fan of Amy after a friend linked me some of her stand-up comedy on YouTube during an intense session of procrastinating. I grew even more enamoured when I watched some clips from her sketch show, Inside Amy Schumer, in which she artfully dissects social issues by using her parody sword, not to take a stab at the victims, but rather to skewer the perpetrators of discrimination in a way that is particularly refreshing. For example, her Friday Night Lights parody points out how intertwined sporting and rape culture are, and uses comedy to draw attention to the absurdity of blaming the victim – go and search ‘Football Town Nights’ on Youtube; you

won’t be disappointed. Or her wonderful sketch, ‘Last Fuckable Day’, where she and a host of other famous ladies critique ageism and sexism in Hollywood. I was hooked, and it was awesome! She made feminism fun! But I then stumbled across a twitter response she wrote to people calling out some of her other sketches/comedy acts as racist. Her reply was basically along the lines of ”it’s not racist because it’s funny”. Dammit, Amy. I was rooting for you. We were all rooting for you!

So this seemed to put me on the horns of a dilemma: did I have to declare that my problematic fave was dead to me, or could I just use my powers of denial to pretend nothing bad had happened? In the end I managed not to cry, scream, or set anything on fire while attempting to burn an Amy-effigy. But, as much as it might make for nice song lyrics, to just go on loving her blindly and unconditionally would have been really dumb as well. Thankfully the dilemma disappears once you accept that you can acknowledge that a person did or said something a bit shit without discounting all the good they may have done as well. In fact, by recognising that the thing was problematic, we as fans can encourage our faves to learn and use their publicness in ways that are better for everyone. Taylor Swift (one of the most popular faves to ever problematic) has said that it was her fans on tumblr.com that brought it to her attention that she needed to educate herself on feminism. And that is so cool!

With the channels of communication afforded by the internet, fan/ fave relationships can be mutually beneficial in ways beyond us just paying their bills and them filling the dark void in our lives giving us something to watch/listen to when we are bored. After all, a fave without fans is no fave at all!

So, when you are faced with an inconvenient truth about your own fave, look at why it is you liked that person in the first place.

Consider whether their art or whatever it is they are putting out there is still something you honestly enjoy and appreciate. When people in the public sphere use their voices in ways that denigrate others, it can do a lot of damage. But we as fans have voices too! And using them, not to slander and hate on people – either those who love your fave or those who don’t – but rather to inform and educate, has proven time and time again to have the most positive effect in making change. And even if the person doesn’t hear your voice, other fans will. But hey, if you have a rage inside that you just can’t quench, maybe, just maybe, yours might be the internet forum crusade that sparks world peace. Or, on the other hand, maybe you mount such a brave defence against the haters on twitter that your beloved famous person will invite you onto their yacht and then propose marriage.

Each to their own.

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/ Society

Getting it right?

By Meg Sheehan

I

n the opening scene of I Am Cait, Caitlyn Jenner’s docu-series, the heroine sits up in bed in the middle of the night and addresses the camera: “What a responsibility I have to this community. Am I gonna do everything right? Am I gonna say the right things? Do I project the right image? I just hope I get it right.”

Now that the first season of I Am Cait has concluded, and the initial reactions to Jenner’s public coming out have dissipated, we can begin to ask – is she getting it right?

One half of the series is a reality show – Caitlyn rifles through her new wardrobe with Kim, and bickers with Khloe.. The other half is education – Caitlyn meets with GLAAD’s CEO (an organisation that monitors the representation of LGBT people in media), attends support groups for trans youth, and speaks with volunteers at the Human Rights Campaign (HRC).

The first episode focuses on Caitlyn’s first meeting with her mother and sisters since her transition. It takes place almost entirely in Caitlyn’s Malibu home and explores the Jenner family dynamics (with appearances by Kim, Kanye, and Kylie). Part way through the episode the family gets a visit from Susan Landon from the Los Angeles Gender Center. The discussion that follows is an opportunity for Jenner’s mother and sisters to ask all their burning questions.

It functions as a three-minute crash course in trans identity for the punters at home.

The subsequent episodes follow Jenner as she becomes a part of her newfound community. In attempting to effectively advocate for this community, Jenner’s main obstacle is her extraordinary

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privilege. Here is a woman who can access and pay for all the medical care she needs, charter private planes to New York, use an endless chain of black-windowed SUVs to ferry her away from the paparazzi, and have other people carefully protect her personal safety whenever she leaves the house. Her experiences are so far removed from those of most trans people (and indeed, most cis people) it begs the question: can she effectively advocate as a representative of the trans community? The producers of I Am Cait – Jenner included – are all too aware of this.

Caitlyn surrounds herself with trans women activists, entertainers, writers, and academics who act as a foil to her naivety about the lives of her trans siblings. At one point Caitlyn asks this group of women if poor trans people can make more money on welfare payments than in an entry level job. “You don’t want people to get totally dependent on it,” she tells the group. After Caitlyn has stated her almost too-stereotypical-to-be-true Republican politics, there are cuts throughout the episode to the other women addressing the camera and pointing out Caitlyn’s privilege and lack of awareness. Writer Jen Richards explains, “We can support an individual trans person and celebrate their authenticity …and what they do with their privilege whilst calling into question a system that ignores the stories of Black and Latina trans women and poor trans women.” The show attempts to include a variety of trans women’s voices. Episodes two and three includes a visit Caitlyn and some of her new activist friends make to the HRC offices in San Francisco to meet with a group of trans women volunteers. The group discusses

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employment rights, violence, and sex work in an attempt to educate Caitlyn and the audience about these issues. One of these women, Angelica Ross, is the CEO of the company she started, Transtech Enterprises, which works to improve the economic landscape and wellbeing of the trans community. In a post on her blog following the airing of the episodes she is featured in, Ross describes her disappointment in the way she was presented on the show. She was given the impression that she was invited on the show in her capacity as the CEO of Transtech Enterprises, yet the editing framed the conversation around her history of sex work. “I felt silenced – a feeling all too common for trans women of colour,” Ross wrote.

The producers and participants of the show are at great pains to point out Caitlyn’s privilege, and almost every person featured on the show gets their fifteen seconds to explain that privilege in their own terms. It would make a great drinking game: take a shot every time someone calls out Caitlyn’s privilege, take a shot every time there is a conversation in Caitlyn’s wardrobe, every time someone uses the phrase “authentic self”, every time someone has to explain that gender and sexuality are different. This is not to be dismissive of the importance of acknowledging Jenner’s position, but rather to say that doing so is still making the story about Caitlyn Jenner. The amount of time devoted to addressing Caitlyn’s privilege could be better used giving voice to more marginalised people.

The editing has privileged Caitlyn’s story over Angelica’s, the very phenomena that the incredible activists on the show continuously decry. The show attempts a tricky balance between

artwork by camilla eustance

highlighting the very real and serious problems faced by trans people, and highlighting their successes and triumphs – as well as their every day lives. In this case they got the balance wrong.

The series successfully humanises Caitlyn, but not necessarily other trans people.

However, Jenner’s celebrity and the amount of media coverage surrounding her coming out have raised the profile of the trans community. Journalists no longer have to start articles with an explanation of what transgender is. Activists can address a wider audience with issues they have been trying to get traction on for years. And arguably Jenner is able to reach that wider audience. An advocate who is white, Republican, Christian, and conventionally feminine will, sadly, speak to an audience that might resist hearing a gender-nonconforming, Jewish intellectual like Kate Bornstein, or women of colour like Janet Mock, Laverne Cox, or CeCe MacDonald.

The producers have specifically stated that the audience they hope to capture are those who followed Jenner’s Olympic career and her time on the Kardashians. They want to speak to middle America.

Jenner’s privilege is the obstacle to her effective advocacy, but it is also the reason she has become a de facto advocate in the first place. She is not necessarily the ideal advocate, but for the moment she is the one with the microphone. “I feel a tremendous responsibility because I have a voice and there’s so many trans people out there who do not,” Jenner says.

Part of this responsibility includes ceding the mic to those she seeks to represent.

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Above Water is the annual creative writing anthology published by the Media and Creative Arts departments of the University of Melbourne Student Union.

Pick up a copy now!

Artwork by Dominic Shi Jie On

cyclord / Gender and Cycling with alexander sheko

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n many places around the world, Australia included, the majority of people on bikes are male. Is this a problem? I reckon so. As I’ve outlined a number of times over the course of the year in this column, cycling is great both for people who cycle, and for society as a whole. So if women (and other non-male people) would like to cycle but aren’t able to, they’re missing out on cheaper transport, the freedom that cycling can bring, a range of health benefits and just pure fun. On a broader scale, that’s about half the population who are grossly under-represented in cycling, which is a huge lost opportunity to reduce pollution and congestion, spend less on transport infrastructure, and save on public health costs.

So why is this the case? It’s a complex question with many answers, as each individual’s reasons for cycling or not cycling are different. But there are some broad trends that could be useful in closing this gender gap and making cycling more inclusive. One major factor, and one that I discussed last month, is perceptions of safety. This is something that puts people of all genders off cycling, but particularly affects whether or not women cycle (and potentially people who don’t identify as male or female, but I haven’t seen any research on this topic that goes beyond the gender binary).

Of course, this doesn’t mean that all male cyclists are fearless and all females timid. I interviewed a woman for my Masters thesis on this very topic the other day who was one of the most confident cyclists I’ve ever met. She told me she rode anywhere and everywhere, even on busy highways without bike lanes, with the exception of when she was riding with her less confident male partner! However, research – including my current research on cyclists in Melbourne – seems to suggest that women are, on the whole, more likely to feel unsafe while cycling than men, or at least that it affects whether, where, and how often they cycle to a greater extent.

Research also suggests this trend comes down to gender differences in risk tolerance or aversion, which is socialised and part of ingrained gender roles, rather than being anything innate to being biologically male or female. Men seem to be taught to take risks, while women are taught to stay away from them (and that it is their fault if something bad happens to them). My housemate offers an alternative explanation: “Women are just smarter than men.’

A solution to this issue would be to deal with gender norms, but there are also solutions in how we design the places and routes we travel around. Interestingly, there’s a good correlation between proportion of people cycling and a more even gender split, including in Melbourne, such as in the cycle-friendly inner north. In fact, on Canning Street in (North) Carlton, it’s about 50:50, which is very different to men outnumbering women three to one across the city.

This is similar to the case in famously cycle-friendly countries in Europe; 45%, 49% and 55% of all cycle trips are taken by women

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in Denmark, the Netherlands and Germany respectively. Basically, where cycling conditions are better, there are more women on their bikes, along with other under-represented groups such as children and the elderly.

So what do we need to do to fix this? Well, basically the kinds of things I described in my last column – either creating separation between bikes and cars on busy roads or providing convenient routes through quieter side streets. We also need education around sharing the road and acting respectfully to stop road rage and harassment. I saw these ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ measures working hand in hand when I was in Munich last year. There was a good network of safe bike routes, complemented by promotional campaigns that sold cycling as an everyday activity for a diverse range of people, not just Lycra-clad dudes with rock-hard calves on carbon fibre bikes.

Women and other non-males comprise over half the population.

Making cycling more inclusive, whether it’s through improving infrastructure, calling out harassment and other behaviour that excludes, or working on cycling’s image as a male activity is not only the right thing to do, but a smart move towards getting more people cycling.

illustration by lynley eavis

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playing the field / Ronda Rousey with dexter gillman

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his article was always going to be about the Spring Racing Carnival. What better way to conclude a column that chronicles the events which make up Melbourne’s claim to being the sport capital of the country? Better known for the drunken rabble it attracts and showcasing the high end of town’s extravagant fashion trends, the Carnival nonetheless culminates in the race that stops the nation. It’s a long and storied sporting tradition, a cultural emblem for the city of Melbourne, and a river of gold breaking its banks for betting agencies. As I sat down to commence the often rigorous and invariably bland process that ends in a Farrago column, I happened upon a different sporting event occurring around the same time. The temptation to change horse mid-race, and use the pun in the first half of this sentence, was too great.

On November 15 this year, Melbourne will host UFC 193 at Etihad Stadium. The main event? Ronda Rousey, the bantamweight champion who has enjoyed a sustained period of omnipresence since early August when she beat her opponent in 34 seconds in a much anticipated fight in Rio de Janeiro.

For those not in the know (i.e. Farrago readers) MMA stands for mixed martial arts. It’s a brutal blend of Karate, Boxing, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and Muay Thai (among other things most likely), and bouts are fought inside a cage. Rousey, who made her name as an American Olympian when she won Bronze at Beijing in 2008, is now undefeated from 12 fights, having won 11 of them in the first round.

Rousey is the biggest thing in MMA right now, and she knows it. Her bravado gives the so-called fastest growing sport in the world a public face and an endearing identity. She says she could kick Floyd Mayweather Jr’s ass. Mike Tyson says she could kick his ass. And she could certainly kick your ass.

At a press conference promoting her fight at Etihad Stadium she said, “After I beat Holly [Holm, her opponent] in Melbourne, it’s going to be the most surreal and overstimulating moment of my entire life”, as if the prospect she might lose is not a prospect at all.

UFC pundits back her confidence, giving Holm – who is herself undefeated from nine fights – little chance.

Beyond Rousey’s dominance in the art of trashtalk, she is a shining example of a female athlete

artwork by emily keppel

exceeding in a predominantly male domain. Rousey is the highest paid UFC fighter, male or female. She recently came first in Business Insider’s list of the 50 most dominant athletes alive 2015, and narrowly beat Serena Williams in an ESPN poll of the best female athletes of all time. And like many athletes who dominate their respective sports, she is transitioning into the realm of Hollywood. Her credits to date include Entourage (the film), Furious 7, and The Expendables 3.

Hosting UFC 193 in Melbourne is significant for a number of reasons. A ban on cage fighting in Victoria – which was ironically put in place by Labor last time they were in power – was only lifted by Sports Minister John Eren earlier this year. The Napthine Government had previously rejected attempts by the UFC to bring events to Melbourne, despite assurances from the UFC it could bring up to $50 million in tourism revenue. Lifting the ban prompted the UFC to reschedule Rousey v. Holm from its original location at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas to Etihad Stadium, with the organisation’s president Dana White anticipating the fight will attract the largest crowd in UFC history. The current record stands at 55,724, and it is predicted that the crowd in Melbourne will surpass 60,000.

Regular readers of my column (and I’m fairly certain there are no regular readers of my column) might recall that this has been something of a special year for sporting spectacles in Melbourne. In March the city hosted the Cricket World Cup final, a few months later a State of Origin match broke attendance records at the MCG, and more recently the success of the International Champions Cup guaranteed Melbourne will receive annual visits from some of Europe’s best football teams for years to come. Each of these events saw attendance figures of over 90,000, as well as large numbers of spectators coming from outside Victoria. Melbourne is not only the nation’s sporting capital, it is basking in this reputation, actively courting major events from interstate and overseas with a high success rate, all while maintaining the abundance of traditional events that established its reputation in the first place. In doing so, Melbourne has bloomed into one of the world’s greatest sporting cities.

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Time to Ban the Bomb by mat kelly

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his year marks the 70th anniversary of the devastating nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Over 200,000 innocent civilians died by the end of 1945 as a result of the attacks. Those who survived have suffered from increased rates of leukaemia and other cancers in the years after the bombings. Even to this day, 70 years later, survivors still suffer from the long-term health effects of radiation exposure.

15,000 nuclear weapons exist in the world today. Between the United States and Russia, roughly 1,800 nuclear weapons remain on high-alert status, meaning they can be launched within minutes. An exchange of just 500 of those warheads would hit major US and Russian cities and would cause the deaths of 100 million people in the first half hour alone.

Despite the potential for devastation and its long-lasting impacts, nuclear weapons are the only weapons of mass destruction that are not prohibited by international convention. Established in 2007, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) is working to change this. With partners in over 90 countries, ICAN has mobilised people around the world to encourage their governments to begin negotiations on a treaty to ban nuclear weapons.

In 2013 and 2014 conferences were held in Norway, Mexico and Austria focusing on the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons. The most recent conference in Vienna was attended by 158 governments and concluded with a landmark pledge to ‘fill the legal gap’ and pursue negotiations on a treaty banning nuclear weapons. This call to action has become known as the ‘Humanitarian Pledge’ and is now officially endorsed by 119 countries around the world.

Sadly though, Australia is yet to endorse the pledge. Despite possessing no nuclear weapons, its status as a party to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) and belonging to a nuclear-weapons-free zone, Australia refuses to support a ban treaty.

In fact, Australian governments have actively obstructed disarmament initiatives in recent years. The Rudd government abstained from all votes on UN General Assembly resolutions regarding negotiations on the prohibition and elimination of nuclear weapons. The Gillard government refused to endorse a joint statement regarding the humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons at a meeting of parties to the NPT. The Abbott government grew resistant to the galvanising impact of the Humanitarian Pledge. These are just a few of the highlights.

Australia’s determination to undermine efforts towards a ban has been due to the misguided belief that the nuclear weapons of the United States are somehow vital to our security. Known as ‘extended nuclear deterrence’, the idea of a shelter of a US nuclear umbrella first made an appearance in the 1994 Defence White Paper and has made appearances in the Defence White Papers in 1997, 2000, 2009 and 2013.

Despite Australia’s assertions, it’s not clear that the US would be willing to use its nuclear weapons in defence of Australia. There exists no known policy statement from the US on this issue, unlike the explicit assurances that have been afforded to NATO and Japan, nor are nuclear weapons referred to at any point in the ANZUS Treaty.

As former Deputy Prime Minister Kim Beazley wrote in 2003, “Two decades of struggle to get the US to clarify its extended deterrence guarantee to Australia was replaced with the cheerful Australian assumption that

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no enemy of Australia’s could not guarantee the US would not aid its Antipodean ally, and that would do”. The late former Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser was more forthright, arguing in 2013 that the idea that the US would use its nuclear weapons to defend Australia is “a total and absolute fantasy”.

However, change could be on the agenda. At its National Conference in July this year, Labor adopted a new national platform that acknowledges the “catastrophic humanitarian consequences of any use of nuclear weapons” and, most importantly, committed itself to act “with urgency and determination to rid the world of nuclear weapons” through “a global treaty banning such weapons”. This undeniably marks a substantial shift from Labor’s recent obstructionist history on the issue. The party that could very well form government next year now unequivocally supports the negotiation of a treaty to ban nuclear weapons.

In August, a motion was introduced by Labor Senator Lisa Singh that noted “the Humanitarian Pledge… to fill the legal gap for the prohibition and elimination of nuclear weapons” and “the growing movement of nations supporting the negotiation of a global treaty banning nuclear weapons”. Support from both major parties saw the motion pass and Senator Singh’s impassioned speech on the issue highlighted that Australia has “never claimed the protection of a chemical weapon umbrella or a biological weapon umbrella”, calling on the government to “get serious about bringing the nuclear era to an end”.

Detractors argue that a ban treaty would have no impact should the nine states that possess nuclear weapons refuse to participate in the process. However, the unwillingness of these states to pursue disarmament suggests that they should no longer be permitted to dictate the process.

The 119 nations that support a ban could create a clear legal norm against the possession of nuclear weapons by formalising their rejection of them. This would place enormous pressure on nuclear-armed states to pursue adequate measures towards the elimination of the nuclear stockpiles once and for all. The political cost for possessing these weapons would become too great.

Historically, the prohibition of weapons has preceded their elimination. Bans on biological and chemical weapons, land mines and cluster munitions came into force before users and producers relinquished them. The unacceptability of these weapons is firmly enshrined in international law. It is a legal anomaly that nuclear weapons are not prohibited and a ban treaty would create a framework for their elimination that is sorely lacking.

Such is the growing momentum that ICAN envisages that negotiations on a ban treaty will begin within the next two years. This would force states like Australia to end their doublespeak on disarmament and decide whether or not they believe that the very worst weapons of mass destruction represent an acceptable risk. Australia can end its resistance to disarmament and take a leadership role on the elimination of nuclear weapons.

The making of foreign policy can seem like a closed shop with little chance for influence. Ultimately though, democratic governments can’t ignore their people. Students are not without a voice and can contribute to the worldwide groundswell of support for a ban. From holding events to raise awareness to reaching out directly to parliamentarians, students can encourage policymakers to stand on the right side of history and eliminate these horrendous weapons once and for all.

Follow @nuclearban on Twitter and go to icanw.org for more info on how to get involved.

illustration by lucy hunter

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reefer madness

by Angela Christian-Wilkes

“H

ave you heard about what’s happening on the Great Barrier Reef?” I ask, holding out a pamphlet to a sleepy NAB employee. It’s 7.30 a.m. I am doing my best to keep a smile on my face as suit after suit files past me disinterestedly on their way into work. “Have you heard about what’s happening on the Great Barrier Reef?” I say again, this time to a lady who avoids eye contact with the expertise of an unprepared Arts student in a quiet tutorial. Clearly, it’s too early in the day to process my beaming dial. I don’t take offence. After all, we are in Docklands.

The Great Barrier Reef: one of Australia’s many beautiful natural icons, summoning thoughts of brightly coloured coral, clear waters, and Crush the Turtle. Located in Marine National Park, it covers an area greater than that of Victoria and Tasmania combined, and has its own unique thriving biodiversity, comprised of 3000 different coral reef systems. What is happening on the reef then? And what does NAB have to do with it? It’s all a bit complicated, to be honest. I have some of the answers.

In a nutshell: a multinational conglomerate called Adani is seeking to develop coal mines on the Galilee Basin, a huge coal basin in central Queensland. Doing this requires Adani to first expand upon the coal port at Abbot Point. This is where the Reef comes into it: Abbot Point is located just 50km from the Whitsundays, a stretch of the Great Barrier Reef’s coral islands. At the moment, Adani doesn’t have the cash to do this (they don’t have the strongest financial record) and has been seeking financial support from Australia’s big four banks. That is, Commonwealth Bank, NAB, Westpac and ANZ. This is why the Australian Youth Climate Coalition (AYCC) has been hounding them – and their customers – in the nicest way possible, asking them not to fund this project.

Ask me about the science tied up in all this and for a long

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time all I could tell you was “Adani’s project will affect the Reef’s ecosystems.” This isn’t to say that this statement isn’t true. However, if you probed for anything more detailed I would try to distract you with questions about your favourite character from Finding Nemo.

In being a boss environmentalist, however, it can help to have this kind of knowledge in order to communicate ideas to a wider range of people. So hold onto your pants, because I am about to give this “communicating” thing a shot and serve up some C-grade simplified science. (They don’t call me Angela Gore for nothing.)

One of the biggest primary threats to the reef – and here, when I refer to the reef, I am referring to the ecosystems and corresponding life there – is the occurrence of dredging. Dredging involves huge machines slurping up large amounts of sediment, rocks, sand and soil from the ocean floor so as to open channels for ships. With regard to the Abbot Point redevelopment, the total dredge spoils will equal three million cubic metres (which is, by the way, Quite A Lot). Sediment caused by dredging can cloud the waters and be pushed into areas of high coral density, significantly impacting marine organisms which require sunlight to thrive. If dredging complies with the standards set by the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, it may prove to be a non-issue. However, no one really knows that for sure: there are significant gaps in the knowledge on this issue. Combine that with how little the scientific community knows about the complexities of the Great Barrier Reef, and dredging carries a high degree of risk, even when – as per the current plan – the dredge spoils are dumped on land.

The coal exported from this single basin, when burnt, is anticipated to produce yearly emissions which equate to a massive 20 per cent of Australia’s own annual emissions. In the broader scheme of things, widespread climate change caused by the burning

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of fossil fuels has a huge impact on coral reef systems by way of increasing ocean acidity and temperatures. The Earth’s oceans absorb carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere, which in turn increases the pH levels of the oceans and reef systems. Already the pH of the world’s oceans has dropped from 8.2 to 8.1 since the 1800s. Because pH is a logarithmic scale – whatever that means, bear with me – this signifies a 30 per cent increase in acidification.

When carbon dioxide is absorbed into the sea, it combines with water and carbonate ions to form carbonic acid. Many sea creatures require these carbonate ions to build their shells and exoskeletons, and ocean acidification makes it a lot harder for them to do so.

Ocean acidification has a huge impact on coral polyps, the little guys who actually make the reef. Increased temperatures result in coral bleaching. Microscopic algae zooxanthellae – please keep reading – live in coral and provide it with its primary source of food, as well as pretty colours. When things warm up, the zooxanthellae leave. The coral loses its colour and becomes more susceptible to disease.

Of course, this issue is so much more complex than the science alone can convey, and there are multiple reasons (quite apart from the damage to the Reef) why the Adani coal mines would be disastrous. (Hence why the AYCC and many other organisations have been working so hard to ensure that this project doesn’t go ahead.)

Economically, this could have huge implications for tourism on the Reef. This is not to mention the risks associated with plummeting coal prices; to put so many eggs in the dirty energy basket is pretty risky when we are (hopefully) going to see a massive shift to clean energy. Politically, Australia currently has a government that is more or less pro-coal, and therefore pro-Adani. This creates complications for organisations and businesses opposed to the project (fingers crossed the Liberal Party under Turnbull is more environmentally

artwork by Emily Keppel

savvy than it was under Abbott). For the Wangan and Jagalingou people – the traditional owners of the land where the largest mine has been proposed – the mining of the Galilee Basin presents a direct threat to their homes and cultural heritage.

Thankfully, some terrific progress has been made. In August, Commonwealth Bank publicly announced that their money would not be going to Adani. The company took a double hit when the Federal Court overturned their appeal for approval, thanks to the endangered status of yakka skink and ornamental snake (what meddlesome endangered species, messing up Adani’s destructive plans). All of our mornings spent irritating NAB employees paid off when they followed Commonwealth’s lead shortly afterwards, which resulted in some happy celebratory actions as opposed to the previously described please-tell-your-employer-to-not-destroythe-reef actions. A federal case has been launched against Adani by the Wangan and Jagalingou people for trying to pull off some shady business. On top of all this, Adani got into even more hot water when it was revealed they had botched the figures of potential jobs. They are definitely persistent, but opposition to Adani continues to grow.

The Great Barrier Reef may only make up one part of the bigger picture here, but it has come to symbolise the fight. Australians love the Reef, and now more than ever it’s crucial we vocalise our adoration and take a stand. I understand this is a lot of information to process all at once, and doesn’t even begin to cover the intricate details of the science or the broader debate. However, I hope it has clarified some of the science and highlighted what a pressing issue this is. At the very least, now you know what to say when you next hear the question “Have you heard about what’s happening on the Great Barrier Reef?”

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Nasty, Nazi Business

by Adrian Yeung

W

e don’t often stop to think about the origins of many of the brands and companies that we are familiar with. But, unbeknownst to many, the logos (and the organisations they represent) that we absentmindedly register as we walk through shopping districts or supermarket aisles may actually have a dark, Nazi past.

Now, this is no moral judgment on these companies. While there is no excuse for the atrocities of the Holocaust, companies operating in Germany at the time would have had no choice but to comply with the regime lest they all be imprisoned, or worse. Nevertheless, the Nazis and big business were good friends, and many companies performed very well under the Third Reich – until Germany was completely destroyed, of course.

Despite the United States and Nazi Germany being enemies, the Americans were not innocent either (surprise, surprise). American automotive companies General Motors and Ford were massive automobile and military hardware suppliers for the Nazis. In fact, Hitler was such an admirer of the anti-Semitic Henry Ford that he had a large portrait of the businessman next to his desk. Ford also has the dubious honour of being the only American to be named in Mein Kampf. From the peculiar to the horrific, let’s look at familiar corporations that were in cahoots with the Nazis.

Adidas and Puma Adidas and Puma, alongside Nike, are the world’s most well-known producers of sports shoes. What many don’t know is that the two giant companies were actually founded by brothers who ended up absolutely hating each other. The two brothers, Adolf ‘Adi’ and Rudolph Dassler, were running the Dassler Brothers Sports Shoe Company in the Bavarian town of Herzogenaurach. Although both joined the Nazi Party, their decision to sponsor the African-American track star Jesse Owens when he competed at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, who Hitler snubbed for perhaps obvious reasons, made their shoes internationally known. It was to be the first sponsorship of a male African-American athlete in history.

However, bickering wives and conflicting business ideas meant that the relationship of the two brothers became increasingly strained. During a bombing raid by the Allies on their town, Rudolph remarked that “the dirty bastards are back again” as Adi and his wife climbed into a bomb shelter already occupied by Rudolph. While Rudolph was actually referring to the Allies, Adi was convinced that Rudolph was talking about him. In retaliation, Adi arranged to have Rudolph sent to the front, then schemed to have his brother arrested by the Allies on suspicion of working for the Gestapo.

Needless to say, the brothers weren’t too brotherly after the war, and split their company in two. Adi Dassler named his company Adidas after himself, and Rudolph called his Puma. The two companies employed many people in the small town, meaning that the people of Herzogenaurach too became entangled in this bitter feud.

Many local businesses served only people that belonged to one or the other, and even marriage to people who wore the shoes of the enemy were sometimes forbidden. While both companies ended up being built into internationally recognised brands, the brothers remained enemies until the end, buried at opposite ends of the same cemetery.

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Allianz Established in Berlin in 1890, Allianz is today the world’s largest insurance company. With CEO Kurt Schmitt also serving as Hitler’s economics minister, the insurance company was in a fantastic position to benefit from the Nazi government’s actions. Government facilities (read: concentration camps) and public servants (read: concentration camp employees) were all insured by Allianz.

Of course, before the Holocaust many Jewish people had taken out life insurance policies with Allianz. In the pandemonium of war and genocide across Germany, the officially unaccounted for deaths of many Jewish people meant that Allianz never paid out life insurance for them.

Nestlé It’s usually quite hard to find an unpleasant story that involves the word ‘chocolate’, but this one is particularly distasteful. While the country remained neutral throughout the course of the two World Wars, Switzerland had profitable economic ties to Nazi Germany. The Swiss food multinational Nestlé won a lucrative contract to supply the entire German army with chocolate, and employed thousands of Jewish slave labourers and prisoners of war in its German factory.

The Nazis used chocolate in obscene ways, such as using it to coax Jewish children onto cattle cars that would transport them to concentration camps. A chocolate-coated bomb was also designed, which would detonate seconds after a piece of the chocolate had been broken off. Named the ‘chocolate bar bomb’, they were to be used to kill the British royal family. The Nazis also designed exploding cans of peas for the same purpose, with four being intercepted in Ireland. Why the Nazis believed that British royalty would personally open cans of peas remains a mystery.

Fanta Ever wondered why Sunkist always tasted better than Fanta? It may be because Fanta was designed specifically for the Nazis. The story begins with the German division of The Coca-Cola Company. Due to impending war, Allied trade blockades hampered imports into Nazi Germany, which included vital ingredients for Coca-Cola like corn syrup. Max Keith, the head of Coca-Cola Deutschland, invented a new drink and named it Fanta, a shortened version of the German word fantasie, meaning ‘imagination’.

After the war, Fanta was discontinued. However, The Coca-Cola Company later relaunched Fanta to combat the rise of Pepsi, who was introducing many new types of drinks to the market while CocaCola had until then only sold the same drink. In February this year, a special edition of Fanta was released in Germany to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the drink. Controversy was caused when a television commercial was aired saying that Fanta wanted to bring back the “feeling of the Good Old Times”, which many scandalised Germans interpreted to mean Nazi rule.

illustration by jenny yan and lynley eavis

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the traveller / Kosovo: Young and Restless words and photography by will whiten

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n a dusty, sunbaked street in central Pristina, there is a bold block-letter monument that simply reads `NEWBORN’. It is, in part, a celebration of Kosovo’s recent independence, which was secured in 2008 after a century of upheaval. I would wish for such a monument to also symbolise the collective optimism and hope that new life usually brings – but after just seven years of independence from Serbia, it seems there is little cause for celebration amongst Kosovars. It may have won its independence, but the world’s second newest country – only South Sudan is younger – is losing its people and faces an uncertain future.

While Kosovo may be a recent addition to world maps, its people, culture and land have a long and turbulent history. In the last century alone, the tiny nation has been wrenched from the crumbling Ottoman Empire, incorporated into a newly formed Yugoslavia, occupied by Italy as part of wartime Albania, returned to communist Yugoslavia and – eventually – given substantial autonomous powers in 1974. The chaos reached its peak in the ‘90s, however, when Serbian leader Slobodan Milošević set about stripping the region of its autonomy. A ferocious war was sparked, quickly descending into atrocities perpetrated against civilians and the ethnic expulsion of Kosovars. NATO, fearing that the Serbs were on the verge of committing genocide against the Kosovars, intervened to subdue Serbian forces and lay the groundwork for a return of Kosovan land and a new independence.

Victory following a protracted struggle is, however, always bittersweet; the independence won by Kosovo is no exception.

During the one year officially classified as wartime (armed conflict in the region lasted much longer), over 10,000 Kosovars were killed and some 800,000 more were expelled from the country or forcibly removed from their homes. Ancient towns were razed, monasteries and mosques destroyed. After the guns fell silent, leaders from both sides (most notably Milošević) faced international tribunals on charges of crimes against humanity. It is little wonder that Kosovars, having finally attained independence, want to make a fresh start – and it is this sentiment that the NEWBORN monument was supposed to encapsulate.

Unfortunately, the fresh start has brought with it fresh problems.

Much of the world, including Russia, China, India and Serbia, refuses to recognise the state’s independence. The support received from the rest of the international community has been celebrated fittingly, with the Kosovan government repainting the NEWBORN monument in 2013 with the flags of all the states who have recognised Kosovo as a sovereign state. The grandness of this statement, however, has

perhaps been undermined more recently by the graffiti gradually building up over the flags.

The infant state is definitely still unsteady on its feet. The violence may have ceased, but economic hardship, political instability and a general lack of opportunity are responsible for a new wave of Kosovan migration. This time the migration is voluntary, and also largely illegal. Although the national currency is the Euro, Kosovo is not within the Schengen zone: its citizens are unable to relocate easily or seek work in countries that are. For the average Kosovar, there is little hope for legitimate geographic mobility.

Squeezed in by their own tiny borders, squeezed out by other nations and lacking prospects at home, venturing north-west into the heart of Europe has become an option too attractive to ignore for many. Indeed, the Kosovo government estimates that in a period of just a few months from late 2014 to early 2015, some 40,000 citizens – out of a population of only 1.8 million – illegally migrated to EU countries.

With European benevolence increasingly stretched by the huge volume of refugees from Syria and North Africa (and in a political milieu increasingly defined by xenophobia and fear), Kosovar migrants aren’t seen as a high priority. EU residency is incredibly hard to come by for those Kosovars trying to leave poverty and unemployment behind them.

It seems that those Kosovars who leave are destined for a life on the run or enforced repatriation, while those who stay continue to struggle with little hope of respite. Unfortunately, the situation could easily worsen. Ethnic clashes with minority Serbs are a constant threat and the Serbian government – who doggedly dispute Kosovan sovereignty – are using their neighbour’s problems as political currency. They suggest that the flood of migrants and the scramble for Serbian passports is a sign that the territory should be returned to them. Others accuse the Kosovan government of deliberately manufacturing the migrant situation in order to secure greater visa freedom from the EU. It’s a messy situation created by a messy set of variables. There’s no solution in sight: rather, another regional upheaval looks like a more likely outcome. There may yet be another rebirth for Kosovo and whatever form it takes, it will likely involve more heartbreak and hardship for ordinary Kosovars.

In the meantime, the word NEWBORN continues to be obscured by graffiti – and its promise is starting to fade. All that the monument symbolises seems to be melting away in the furnace that is Balkan politics.

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photography georgia everteight 56 / Farragoby2015 / edition

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artwork by emily keppel

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miss morris by ellen cregan i am my fatherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s second best hollow-cheeked child knees pitted with gravel i become fatherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s keeper posthumous point-of-contact for ravenous biographers curator to collections reader of letters poems I pour over stanzas with filial tenderness i make kindling of myself

farrago 2015 / edition eight / 59

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60 / Farrago 2015 / edition eight

artwork by dominic shi jie on

creative /

A look by emily paesler

I

stepped off the train and from the other side (the side that I was stepping onto), a man jumped, leaped across the platform to open the doors of the train and I paused, alarmed. And a girl standing on the platform, still, looked at me and her look said to me, like a friend, how stupid that was, that that man did that, that she too was surprised, shocked even, and she said between us with this look: I can tell you that I thought that that was stupid â&#x20AC;&#x201C; idiotic even, what he did, because this is what you are saying to me with your face; that is what your look is saying to me too.

farrago 2015 / edition eight / 61

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62 / Farrago 2015 / edition eight

Artwork by Aisha Trambas

creative /

l’enfer, c’est les Autres by alexander linger tired, complaining he wants to choose his own hell sweat dripping off his search for light in this well life in the night people twist as they shout try as he might people still tip toe around it’s honestly boring their fears all he hears convention to ground only ‘yes’ ‘no’s between their cheers blank faces stare as he throws them a question contemplating the truth the task keeps them guessing all he ever wants is to see, smell that they care love breeding passion in this hell they don’t dare the breath of forget on their lips they seem feeble constipated conversations this hell its other people

farrago 2015 / edition eight / 63

/ Society

for and against / dogs for: by jakob von der lippe

against: gareth cox-martin

I

W

don’t really understand why people find dogs cute. Sure, they’re pretty adorable when they’re puppies, but everything is cute when it’s little. For the first couple years of a human’s life, even we are cute, and we’re shaved apes that have been stretched out on some kind of medieval torture device. Depending on the breed, dogs grow in two ways. They either remain small and stunted, bringing into question why they shirked the apex cuteness of their puppyhood at all, or they become way more massive, bringing into question whether or not they could beat you in a fight if they decided to mix up the pack hierarchy that you just know is controlling their apparently loving natures.

Cats may not give a shit about their owners, but dogs’ feelings are somewhere between cringing fear and obsessive devotion. Dog ownership seems to come hand in hand with the delusion that dogs must totally and unconditionally love their owners, but honestly I think that’s just a really pleasant way to conceal the fact your animal worships you. Literally worships. Let that sink in. In your dog’s world, you’re basically God. Dogs, once trained, will follow your commands without question like little furry soldiers, and they love it. That’s fucked. In my cat’s world, I am a larger cat who can more successfully operate sliding screen doors and pour food into a bowl.

She is a smaller cat who can sleep in more places. We are, in cat terms, peers. My relationship with my cat was built on an equal footing. As pack animals, dogs are just submissive social fetishists who are born wanting ¬– needing – someone to dominate them. My cat, in contrast, simply doesn’t give a fuck. Once I moved where she slept a metre out of where it should have been, so she bit my foot. That’s about as close as an animal can get to a calm discussion about grievances. A dog is probably not even going to notice what is clearly a violation of their own personal liberties. Dogs don’t die in hot cars because they can’t open the doors ¬– they die because they believe it to be the inviolable, infallible will of their lords and saviours, the owners. Advocate for yourselves, dogs. Take a stand, for once in your lives.

After writing this, I spent some time with the cat and she bit me for buying the wrong kind of Friskies. I think our relationship is becoming toxic. I need some time to sort this out. I think it’s safe to say that all pet ownership is kind of fucked up. Regardless, dogs suck.

farrago would like to thank the following dogs for appearing in our collage: tobey, sir nicholas, Roodie, ben, jin mao, pedro, monty, shelby, mimi, iggy, tully, duke, alfie, pippi, rose, soap, selby, bella, tamu, nzuri, peppa and roxy

64 / Farrago 2015 / edition eight

hen I was tasked with writing this piece, I consulted my girlfriend, who is the biggest dog fanatic I know. I sent her a text asking what a good thing about dogs was, and she texted back: “Having a bunch of dogs follow you and love you entirely is like being the leader of a cult.” So I thought I’d better interview her.

Q: What’s the best thing about dogs?

A: Their unconditional love. They’ll always think you’re interesting – even when you’re not. And when you’re sad they think they’ve done something wrong, so they’re really sweet.

Q: Dogs or cats?

A: Oh, I shouldn’t, but dogs. Cats are just harder! You have to give them so many treats and do whatever they want, and then they might like you. But dogs, you can do the smallest thing, like let them on the couch, and they’re eternally grateful.

Q: Dogs or People?

A: Dogs.

Q: Why do you think some people might not like dogs?

A: Probably because dogs are like good versions of people – dumb versions of people, but good – and I think bad people feel exposed around them.

Q: If you had a puppy to name, what would you name it?

A: I like the idea of a dog having an old man’s name. I always think of being in the park and yelling it in front of everyone, like “Harold!” or “Earl! Come here! Stop sniffing that other dog’s butt, Earl!”

Q: A house is burning down. In one room there is a suitcase with a million dollars. In another room is a dog and you can only save one.

A: Have I met the dog before?

Q: You haven’t met it, but you’ve seen a picture and you like the look of it.

A: Whose dog is it and what’s its personality like?

Q: It’s your neighbour’s dog. You’ve seen them walking before – never got a chance for a pat – but you like what it’s about from a distance.

A: What does it look like?

Q: It’s kind of like a medium sized, shaggy, shepherd-y type dog?

A: Ahhh no. Aww. UmmmQ: You know, with the white fur, kind of like the shaggy whiteA: Million dollars.

Q: Wait, no! What?

A: Ahhh can I just be selfish for a moment? Everybody else would say a million dollars, why do I have to save the dog just because I love them?! I mean, I’d feel bad – like, every dollar I spent I’d feel fucking terrible and then think of that dog… melting… but still, I want an apartment.

farrago /

media collective 2015: thanks to all these bloody legends

Lucy Adam Sabeena Admani Talya Alkilic Brian Allen Ayu Astrid Maylinda Jacob Atkins Danielle Bagnato Jennifer Balcomb Alistair Baldwin Andrea Barragan Melanie Basta Bhargavi Battala Louis Bearn Ruby Bell Daniel Beratis Sophie Berrill Sarah Blake Anna-Claire Blogg Emma Breheny Rachel Brien Matilda Brown Jim Burgemeestre Edie Bush Alex Cameron Alex Capper Olivia Carr Bren Carruthers Carly Cassella Jessica Castro Nina Cheles Leannza Chia Benton Ching Rupert Christie Angela Christian-Wilkes Kitty Chrystal Ben Clark Patrick Clearwater Kimberley Clemens Amy Clements Nick Clohesy Jess Comer Samuel Condon Ruby Conolan-Barrett Karen Coombs Jacqueline Cowcher Gareth Cox-Martin Kate Cranney Ellen Cregan Ryan Cushen Peter Danastasio Samuel Dariol Rhys Dawson Ruth De Jager Ghill De Rozario Georgia Delaney Sebastian Dodds Rose Doole

Harvey Duckett Timmy Dunn Pavan Dutta Jaynaya Dwyer Alexander Eastwood Billie Egan-Soeterboek Camilla Eustance Tegan Evans Georgia Evert Mollie Farrell Angus Ferguson Gabriel Filippa Nathan Fioritti Jessica Flatters Laura Foo Ting-Jun Foo Lisa Franklin Claire Frost Jack Fryer Eric Gardiner Monique Geraghty Lauren Gerondakis Kyra Gillespie Dexter Gillman Danny Glattstein Ambica Golyala Susannah Gordon Anahita Gottipati Josh Green Sam Grigg Allen Gu Emma Hall Emma Hassan Tom Hayes Andy Hazel Sorcha Hennessy James Henshall Paloma Herrera Dan Hill Anwyn Hocking Marley Holloway-Clarke Tyson Holloway-Clarke Claudia Hooper Angie Hu Angus Hughes Lucy Hunter Lachie Ince Jasmin Isobe Rachel Ivell Farah Iyer Markus Janacek Thiashya Jayasekera Dominic Shi Jie On Verity Johnson Ava K Scout Kain-Bryan Audrey Kang

Benjamin Karwan Mat Kelly Peter Kelly Emily Keppel Angela Keyte Jack Kilbride Stephanie Kilpatrick L.S. Krafter Hill Kuttner Belinda Lack Nicholas Langford Travis Larcombe Elena Larkin Nicole Latip Kate Lawrence Sarah Layton Trinh Le Trung Le Kim Hoang Le Bonnie Leigh-Dodds Charlie Lempriere Eliza Lennon Matthew Lesh Ariel Lesnick Shiri Levine Evan Lewis Nini Li Merry Hao Li Wilson Liew Rebecca Liew Tori Lill Ken Lim Michael Lim Alexander Linger Simone Lipiarski Samantha Lock Sheri Lohardjo Hannah Louey Greta Low Amelia Lugg James Macaronas Maddy Macfarlane Sean Mantesso Sarah Martin David Mastrantuono Emily Matenson Alice Mathieu Corey McCabe Tegan McCarthy Sarah McDonald Tess McGuire Jaccob McKay Nicole McKenzie Alistair McLean Helena Melton Ben Meurs Alice-Ginevra Micheli

Ryan Mitchell Joseph Moore Kylie Moore-Gilbert Sarah Moorhead Zoe Moorman Olivia Morcom Maki Morita Rachael Morris Belinda Moxon Sarina Murray Kat Muscat Jeremy Nadel Erin Newell Clara Nguyen Vivian Nguyen Yu Nong Mary Ntalianis Rachael Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Reilly Francesca Ohlert Yuzuha Oka Carla Oliver Christina Olszweski Christian Orkibi Baya Ou Yang Emily Paesler Simone Pakavakis Jesse Paris-Jourdan Alexandra Patterson Marcus Pedersen Luke Picone Ed Pitt Dominic Pollaers Rebecca Poynton Alessandra Prunotto Adriana Psaltis Putu Dea K. Putra Ash Qama Bracha Rafael Matilda Ramsay Adriane Reardon Kit Richards Samantha Riegl Alex Ritter Jacob Rodrigo Frances Rowlands M.A. Ruiz Mireille Ryan-Nicholls Jacob Sacher Maroushka Saldanha Hannah Samuel Chiara Scafidi Jasmine Schipp Claudia Schoreder Madeleine Scott Alana Scully Natalie Seiler Maria Serenade Sinurat

Conor Serong Monica Sestito Oscar Shaw Sasha Sheko Ella Shi Toby Silcock Amar Singh Christopher Skliros Ashleigh Skye Penhall Bonnie Smith Rob Snelling Ellen Son Cherese Sonkkila Thea Stephenson Vesna Stoicovici Hamish Taylor Belinda Teh Anna Theris Gajan Thiyagarajah Alice Thompson Luke Thorburn Diego Tipan Naranjo Aisha Trambas Alexander Baky Tran Hannah Tricker Caleb Triscari Isabella Vadiveloo Jenny Van Veldhuisen Isabel Viegas Ben Volchok Jakob Von Der Lippe Georgia Waite-Gertner Leili Walker Sean Watson Clare Weber Emily Weir Rhiannon Wernert Sofie Westcombe Olivia Whitaker Faye White Will Whiten Linah Winoto Duncan Willis Fabrice Wilmann Alana Winfield Jason Wong Vicky Xu Jenny Yan Reimena Yee Adrian Yeung Jessica Yu Cindy Zhou Yan Zhuang Will Ziebell Candy Zoccoli Alyona J-Dart

by emilyeight keppel farragoartwork 2015 / edition / 65

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