Empire Times 42.2 by FUSA Association

EMPIRE TIMES YOUR STUDENT MAG

42.2 it's Free!3

- Editorial -

ey Guys! My name is Laura and I am the newest editor of ET, joining the fabulous Jenn and Jess. Although feeling slightly inferior due to not matching the J themed name I am very much excited to be joining the team. What is there to know about me? I’m a politics buff, worshipper of Annabel Crabb and enjoy a good laugh. I have spent the last six months studying in England and gallivanting around Europe in the hope I would gain some “life experience”. So arriving home, what have I learnt? Study Abroad is perhaps the best experience of your life, especially if you meet an incredible bunch of people like I did. Despite travelling every weekend, exploring castles, waterfalls, ancient cities and different regions, one can actually get a lot of study done (and see big results) when you live on campus, have actual study dates and sleep in the library. Also alcohol is a fabulous thing, but I wouldn’t recommend heavy doses with a 10 hour bus ride the next day! Now with that fateful advice in your pocket, go on and read the awesomeness found in the forthcoming pages! Much love, J-Laura

y now, most of you will be underway with your classes and already justifying most means of procrastination despite how counterproductive they may be to your life goals. Whether it’s bingewatching your neglected list of TV series or Youtubers, tweeting celebrities who will probably never ever tweet you back let alone follow you, or trying to think up witty puns that will allow you to appear informed and comically relevant in front of your peers, I don’t hold your dedication to procrastination against you. Just as study is the staple of a uni kid, procrastination is the ‘sometimes food’. This issue is themed ‘justice’. For me, when I think of justice I tend to go down the comical lines of Christian Bale’s “I’m Batman” or the ever-sassy Judge Judy who is paid a grandiose amount of money to name and shame as many folk as she is years old. Beyond film and television, however, justice can encompass varying notions - equality, capital punishment, social justice, animal rights, civil rights, karma and more. This issue covers some of these meanings, counterweighted by some light-hearted banter in conjunction with this year’s O’week. Stay focused, study hard, and try not to wreak havoc on your lecturers. Jess

large dog was tied up to the bikeracks whilst I was in my local Coles. I came out and couldn’t get my bike free, as every time I went near the dog, it would bark. I am terrified of large dogs. I went into the Coles and told them about the dog and they called for the owner. When it appeared that no one was coming, one of the employees went to look at the dog. It barked at him. He asked if I trusted him with my bike-code: I did. He manoeuvred himself around the other side of the bike, undid the lock and got the bike free. He said that he understood why I was wary; he had experienced a dog-related incident when he was younger. Whilst I was getting ready to leave, a very large man came out, and grabbed the barking dog and walked off. We all have injustices in our lives. Some are bigger, some are small. Some are small and feel big. There are times when we can do something about it, and times when we can’t. I wasn’t about the pick a fight with a big man and a large dog. You pick your battles, and then sulk quietly in a corner with some chocolate. Or whinge in an editorial. ;) Xx, Jenn

TOP PICKS FOR THIS ISSUE

17 The Perving Injustice 36 We Need to Talk About... Gendered Language 38 The Human Side of Policing

14 36 38

28 31 38

Mad March in Adelaide Beware of the Real Estate Agent The Black Sun Commission

Cracks in the Armour Automated Justice The Black Sun Commission

OH HELLO there. EDITORS Jess Nicole Jenn Matters Laura Telford

SUB-EDITORS Shaun Hobby Simone Corletto Jess Miller

COLUMNISTS Laura Telford Emma Sachsse Marat Sverdlov Kaisha Wyld Eleanor Danenberg Karen Smart

ILLUSTRATORS Rafal Banasiak

CONTRIBUTORS Anthony Bruno Kevin Clark Sarah Dinham Kayla Gaskell Amber Hall Shaun Hobby Jess Miller Caleb Pattinson Georgia Riessen Rosalie Dow-Schmidt Jo Schofield Brendan Whittaker

JUSTICE ISSUE

Issue 2 Vol 42 March 2015 empire.times@flinders.edu.au www.empiretimes.com.au Advertising: stephanie.walker@flinders.edu.au Empire Times is the student publication of Flinders University. All work within remains the property of the producers and may not be reproduced without their consent. Empire Times reserves the right to republish in any format. Empire Times would like to acknowledge the Kaurna people who are the traditional custodians of the land Flinders University is situated on. We would also like to pay our respects to the elders past and present of the Kaurna nation and extend that respect to other Aboriginal peoples. “The opinions expressed herein are not necessarily those of the editors, Flinders University, or Flinders University Student Association. Reasonable care is taken to ensure that Empire Times articles and other information are up-to-date and as accurate as possible, as of the time of publication, but no responsibility can be taken by Empire Times Magazine for any errors or omissions contained herein.”

FUCK YEAHS • •

Anyone who got a car park this morning Still being able to find your way around if you’re not a first year. Ricky Muir gave his maiden address in parliament. Laura’s first issue as an editor!

FRONT COVER

• •

WITH THANKS TO

FUCK NOS

Issue 2’s cover was shot by Jess Nicole.

Jess Miller, Simone Corletto, Paul Harrison and Shaun Hobby for helping us out during O’week. The members of Student Council and FUSA who kindly volunteered to get cream pie’d with us; courage and humility in numbers.

• • •

The Flinders ducks have appeared to have relocated elsewhere. The fifteen minute hike through the wilderness to get to Humanities Courtyard from South Ridge. Laura’s last issue as a columnist.

Index INTRO

FEATURES

CULTURE

EDITORIAL Introduction

18 WE ARE THE LAW NOW Law and Justice in the Digital Age

38 FICTION The Black Sun Commission

PREZ DISPENSER A message from the President

21 AUTOMATED JUSTICE Driverless Cars and the Law

43 SHORT FICTION Our Little Boy

23 Q&A An Interview with the VC

FUN STUFF

COLUMNS 10

FEDERAL POLITICS Tony Abbott: Dead Man Walking

26 VOX POPS O-Week Edition

44 BAND REVIEW Life Pilot

OPENLY SEXUAL Mad March in Adelaide

28 CRACKS IN THE ARMOUR Vaccines and Conspiracies

46 CROSSWORD Win movie tickets!

14 THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING The Matter with Metadata 15 FEMINISM The Perving Injustice

31 STUDENT REPRESENTATION A Word from the Education Officer 32 SELMA TO FERGUSON The Long Bend of Justice 36 BEWARE THE REAL ESTATE AGENT The Realities of Renting and Buying

16 WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT Gendered Language 17 GET SMART The Human Side of Policing

48 PODCAST REVIEW Serial

What type of Supervillain are YOU? 50

pop

vox

Like Vegas, what happens at the Fringe, should stay at the Fringe

LETTERS TO THE EDITORS empire.times@flinders.edu.au

www.empiretimes.com.au

/empiretimesmag

@empiretimesmag

/empiretimesmag

Empire Times Contributors

Dear Empire Times,

Hey lovelies!

Thanks for an AWESOME issue 1, can’t wait to see what you guys do this year.

ET is great for creative Flinders peeps, but where’s the love for music and drama?

Party On!

I couldn’t help but notice that O’Week had very few stage acts from Flinders students. Sure there were a few DJ’s, but where’s the trashy garage rock, the acoustic two pieces and all of that other musical talent? What about drama acts? And where’s the amateur comedy?

Regards, Simone J

The Wizard.

Whatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Going On If you would like your Flinders University event in the calendar, contact us at empire.times@ flinders.edu.au

WEEK 5 30 Mar-4 Apr

WEEK 4 23-28 Mar

WEEK 3 16 - 21 Mar

TUE Relax @ FMC

Welfare @ Library

Muay Thai Training Gym, 5:30pm

FLICS Movie Night Nth Theatre 2, 5pm Muay Thai Training Gym 6pm

THUR

FUTURE Game Day McHughs, 11am

Korfball Training Sturt Gym, 8pm

Welfare @ Library

Welfare @ Anchor

Muay Thai Training Gym, 5:30pm

National Day of Action

Korfball Training Sturt Gym, 8pm

FLICS Movie Night Nth Theatre 2, 5pm

FRI

Welfare @ Flinders Living

Relax @ Tonsley

FUTURE Game Day McHughs, 11am

MUN in the Sun Botanic Gardens, 6pm

Muay Thai Training Gym, 6pm

Relax @ Sturt Welfare @ Library

Welfare @ SILC

FUSA AGM Humanities Courtyard From 12pm Muay Thai Training Gym, 5:30pm

Relax @ Anchor Welfare @ Library

WEEK 6 6 - 11 Apr

WED

Muay Thai Training Gym, 5:30pm

Important Info

FLICS Movie Night Nth Theatre 2, 5pm

Korfball Training Sturt Gym, 8pm

Census Date

Korfball Training Sturt Gym, 8pm

FUTURE Game Day McHughs, 11am

Muay Thai Training Gym 6pm

Welfare @ Sturt FLICS Movie Night Nth Theatre 2, 5pm Muay Thai Training Gym 6pm

Census Date

Mid Break

3rd April

13 - 26 April

Withdraw Dates Exams Start WNF: 15 May WF: 19 June

20 June

Relax and Welfare are events hosted by FUSA with free stuff for poor students. Go to them.

Prez Dispenser

The Student Council President (“Prez”) is the official spokesperson of students and the Student Council. They make representations on behalf of students to the university, media, government, and external organisations.

Our society is full of injustice — it’s everywhere, and it seems to be getting worse. So-called ‘rights’ are a distant memory for most, or off the radar entirely for the younger generations.

from the neoliberal handbook: help the rich get richer, help their children enjoy greater privileges, and make the rest of us pay for the so-called privilege of an education of diminished quality.

The right to have a job, earn livable wages and work in safe workplace conditions — who would have thought!

So far, however, the federal governments’ plans have been foiled. In 2014 students protesting their cruel new regime chased politicians off campuses. Thousands took to the streets to rally against fee hikes. The student campaign helped to create a Senate gridlock — the government failed to get its cuts through parliament!

Free university education because it’s good for society — are you kidding? The right to decent/affordable housing, free healthcare, welfare support and adequate public transport — what planet did you come from? The right to be able to marry the person you love regardless of gender — ok so we never had that, but seriously... The list of everyday injustices, the kind that affects the great majority of people, keeps getting longer. Those injustices are worse, much worse, if you happen to be poor, a student, Indigenous, a refugee, a migrant, disabled, gay/ lesbian or transgender. Access to affordable education is a key area where injustice is on the rise. Families and students pay much more now, than they have ever before, for schools, TAFE or university education. The Liberal government continues to pave the way for a deregulated US-style higher education system that would give universities free rein to increase fees. If they get their way, the cost of going to university will skyrocket further and funding cuts will be a permanent reality. The Liberals want to slash university funding by 20 percent and have students make up the shortfall— and then some. We will be left with decades of debt repayments or be pushed out of the education system entirely. The government’s own post-budget Treasury forecast predicted a 58 percent hike in student debt within two years if deregulation goes ahead. Their proposals come straight

The success of that campaign has added to the government’s current strife. We can’t let up and relieve the pressure on the politicians. The demonstrations need to continue. That’s why the National Union of Students has called a protest for Wednesday 25 March, and that’s why you’ll probably be hearing more about this from your Student Association reps! We want you to get involved in defending your education. As enjoyable as the recent spectacle surrounding Tony Abbott’s leadership has been, the Liberal Party is in agreement about its agenda. The only disagreement between the Liberal ministers is about how best to sell it. For example, speaking to right wing Sydney radio host Alan Jones last year, Malcolm Turnbull said, “I support unreservedly and wholeheartedly every element in the budget — every single one.” We know what the Liberals are united on. They want a user pays system that shackles, with massive debt, students from lower income families. This year let’s give them a reminder about how we can resist. Join the campaign. Let’s wipe the smirks off their faces.

James Vigus, Student Council President

Inside Student Council: Queer Officer

The Queer Officer acts as an advocate on behalf of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, Trannsexual, Intersex and Queer (GLBTTIQ) students while recognising the importance of sexual and gender diversity and communicating the views of GLBTTIQ students to the Student Council.

Why did you run for Student Council? This is my second year on council, so my main reason for running for 2015 was how much I loved the role in 2014. I like the idea of being part of change; I don’t always like everything about uni, but instead of whinging about it I want to be involved in improving those things. I’m lucky too, to have enough time to be involved, and so I can represent the needs of queer students on Student Council. What kind of issues does the Queer Officer handle? Queer Officer is a great role because it has such a community aspect to it. A lot of what I do involves spending time with queer students and then trying to figure out how I can use what I have heard to bring about positive changes. A lot of the issues I hear about relate to heteronormativity (the assumption that everyone is straight) and cisgender privilege (the ways in which life is easier for people who identify with the gender they were assigned at birth). For example, the majority of toilets on Flinders campuses are marked with ‘male’ or ‘female’, which excludes people who identify as neither and can make it hard for trans* students. Queer people, including Flinders students, also often experience higher levels of homelessness, poverty, and poor mental health. That’s why we have places like the Queer Space, and groups like Flinders University Queer Society, to provide avenues of support when people are doing it tough.

and pronouns are. People of any gender should equally comfortable in any space at Flinders. How can people help out? One of the best ways is by becoming more educated about queer issues themselves. A person doesn’t need to be queer to be a super helpful ally! Also if you are queer or an ally, come hang out with us in the Queer Space. This year it is underneath McHugh’s in South Ridge, and there’s nearly always someone fun hanging out. People can also help by following the Flinders University Queer Society on Facebook, or coming to see us at campus events. From there more opportunities to engage with queer issues at Flinders will emerge as the year progresses. Best way for students to contact you? Email is best, or Facebook. queer.officer@flinders.edu.au facebook.com/FUQSociety

INTERVIEWEE Rosalie Dow-Schmidt, 24, BA (Women’s Studies Major)

If Rosalie could have any super power, she’d like to be able to read people’s minds, because she gets so frustrated not understanding why people behave in the ways they do...but only if she could turn it off when their thoughts got too weird!

What is the one issue you’d really like to tackle this year? It’s super hard to choose one issue! I think continuing to campaign for less gender binary options is probably one of the most important to me. This isn’t just about the bathrooms on campus; it’s about so many practices. We should have better gender options on out enrolment forms, and we need to make sure that it’s easy for people to let others know what their preferred name

Federal Politics in Australia Tony Abbott: Dead Man Walking! by Laura Telford

The idea of justice is different for everyone, whether it be people who plagiarise and get suspended, speeders who get fined, or fraudsters who get caught. But what about justice in the political setting? Is it your preferred party being elected after a long time in Opposition? An elected member being called a misogynist? Heavy scrutiny imposed on bad decisions? Karma playing its cosmic role? A politician stepping down/being forcibly removed for having poor judgement? A prime minister being deposed? Or a government not being re-elected? Everyone thought that Jacqui Lambie and Clive Palmer were going to be the most contentious issues of the 2015 political year, but it seems history is repeating itself. The leadership woes that plagued the ALP during the Rudd/Gillard/Rudd years seem to have encroached upon the Liberal Party, and threaten the reign of Tony Abbott. After what seemed like just another faux pas, knighting Prince Phillip (the Queen of Englandâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s husband) actually ignited the deadly leadership spill flame. The day many lefties dreamed of and many on the right feared, came on the first day of the new parliamentary year, with 39 members of the Liberal Party choosing anyone but Abbott to lead the party. The motion failed but the tension remained and only time will tell if the self-proclaimed love child of John Howard and Bronwyn Bishop will remain in the top job! Given that the job of Prime Minister has been under more scrutiny than usual during the reign of the last

three prime ministers, many people have begun to question a partyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s decision to hastily change leaders whilst in office. What some forget is that during a Federal Election, one only votes for their local representative and the party who gets the most representatives elected, wins government. Therefore, unless you live in the seat of Warringah you cannot vote for Tony Abbott. Likewise, unless you lived in the seat of Lalor you could not vote for Julia Gillard. However, that does not stop some people from assuming that when you vote for the Liberal Party you are directly voting for Tony Abbott, or more importantly, the Prime Minister. Particularly during the Rudd-Gillard years, many questioned the legitimacy of the ALP for deposing two leaders and reinstating one of them based on the loose idea that they would have better electoral success if someone else was party leader. Not that leadership contests are anything new - one only needs to look at the Howard-Costello years or the Hawke-Keating era to see the contest for the prime ministership being played out in the public arena. Perhaps with the Internet, social media and the 24-hour news cycle, it is more accessible to the average Joe, but let us be clear, leadership contests are nothing new. The irony of Tony Abbott and his previous comments regarding the unworkability of constant leadership spills while in Opposition, is that he now finds himself in the middle of a backbencher and constituency sandwich.

The chaos he once cried was coming from within the ALP, now comes from within his own ranks, and so far he has been unable to fix the problem. Dwindling opinion poll ratings and civilian protests suggest he needs to act quickly if he has any hope in staying at Kirribilli House. Not that he isn’t trying to keep his job, but by keeping his public appearances to a stage managed minimum, limiting scrutiny by journalists and the public he is not giving people a good reason to keep trusting him. While the general consensus is that most of the public wish someone else was Liberal leader, and an increasing amount of Liberal MPs also agree, people are at a loss of who to promote. The left’s poster boy within the Liberal party, Malcolm Turnbull, is somewhat too progressive on social issues for the party and follows the same economic stance as Abbott. Julie Bishop seems firmly in support of keeping the deputy Liberal leader position and, for all accounts, thrives in the Foreign Affairs portfolio. Furthermore, in light of recent events, no one credible has even mentioned a Joe Hockey, Scott Morrison or Peter Dutton run for leadership and Roy Wyatt only needed to mention the need for change before he was shot down as a candidate.

you didn’t even need to get the ball rolling… that is, until you are expected to present an alternative government, yet you come up empty. People say they want anyone but Abbott, but are you ready for justice to be served? Because the alternative may be even worse!

AUTHOR Laura Telford, 19, Arts

Laura’s super power would be to be able to control the flow of time so that she could do more things in a day!

For the members of the ALP and its supporters, it seems justice is being served by doing nothing, the same war strategy Abbott used during the later years of Gillard and during the Rudd comeback. There is nothing more poetic than sitting back watching the show unfold, knowing

OPENLY SEXUAL unknown creative type, they may feel threatened by your previous more famous conquests. It isn’t fair but it can happen. Make sure that when you have sex with a celebrity it is in a dignified place, on your terms, and that you enjoy it. Do not just try to please them. For instance, giving them a blow job in a public place isn’t going to be either a great experience or a great story to retell at dinner parties. Whereas the time that so and so took you back to their place and you discovered that the grown man who was poised on the brink of international fame had a single bed, Star Wars figurines in his bedroom and the most comprehensive Pez dispenser collection, is a cute story that doesn’t demean you. To be clear I am not saying that sex is demeaning it is just the circumstances that can make it seem sordid to others.

Mad March in Adelaide

I know we shouldn’t care what others think of us, but we often do. It isn’t fair. It isn’t just that having some fun with someone exciting can mean nothing to them and everything wrong to your acquaintances, but as always with sex I suggest being careful with yourself. You are precious and should treat yourself as such and

It isn’t nice to gossip like this but it is human nature. We love to tell stories, and stories about celebrities are way more fun because we all feel we know them, or at least know who they are. I am not saying you shouldn’t go ahead and enjoy that connection, but be aware of the consequences. When you go to have a serious relationship with a nice unknown they may already have an opinion of you formed by gossip. Or when you date the as yet

”

aving sex with someone leads to a feeling of connectedness. There will be different levels of connectedness, but all the same, there is a connection. You know, bits of you, squished together. Sometimes one person feels it more than the other. This is especially true when it is a fan having sex with someone they are a fan of and even more so if that person has a lot of people offering up that connection. No offence but that life-changing moment you spent with -fill in person on a stage or screen? They may not even remember it. Anyway the point I was trying to make, besides don’t be a star fucker, is that while the celebrity may not remember the incident, those people who hang around the venue will. Thus, the time that so and so gave a minor celebrity a head job on the back stairs will be told.

STORIES

should definitely make sure others treat you well. By forcing a celebrity to treat you with respect you may in fact make a more lasting impression on them than a doormat might. I have had the slightly weird buzz of hearing someone who is now internationally famous mention me in an interview 20 years after the event. Well, they didn’t name me, and for all I know there could have been two or even three of us that made his “summer in Adelaide very special” but I like to think that it was me— we did after all remain friends for many years after. You would think it would warrant a free ticket to his now exorbitantly priced show, but no. There is no justice in the world of connections and sex, just the respect you give yourself and your partners. Especially yourself.

AUTHOR Emma Sachsse, 42, Psychology (Hons) Emma’s super hero power would be time travel so she could go and hang out with interesting people in interesting times, like Dorothy Parker at the Algonquin.

TIE

BRI E L E C T BOU

”

EF R O M E S AR

How to enjoy sex with a

performer

during Mad March • Never ever approach a performer before a show, they may bite. • Be sassy and cool; not sycophantic and dribbling. • Buy them a drink. However don’t expect anything in return for that drink. In fact the cool thing would be to walk away after handing it over. Very cool. • Be entertaining and witty; don’t hang on their every word- they have done the performing thing for the night-now they want to relax. • Connect with them; ask them how they are really feeling, who they really are. • Treat them like a real human being who is very probably lonely and homesick and exhausted. • Offer to show them around exciting Radelaide, local knowledge can make this town a lot more enjoyable.

Like Vegas, what happens at the Fringe, should stay at the Fringe • Show some respect and sympathy, tell them they were fabulously funny/talented/witty/clever and sexy. • Stay sober so that you know what happened and can tell your mates not have them tell you. • And remember like Vegas, what happens at the Fringe, should stay at the Fringe. • Have fun and respect yourself and your sexual partner and enjoy it for what it is and do not expect a festival fling to be much more than just that. • As always, condoms, lots of them, these people have been touring… you know what I mean.

- Science -

The

Theory Of

Everything The Matter with Metadata: Spies & You in the Internet Age by Marat Sverdlov

etadata: what is it, why is everyone so upset about it and how can I protect myself if it is actually a big problem? Metadata is the information that describes and identifies other information. Put another way, it is the context of your communications without the content, and it is this point governments and intelligences agencies are trying to spin for public hearing. If you use email, your metadata includes your name, email address, IP address, the name and email of the recipient, the date, time and time zone the email is sent and received. Your phone calls’ metadata is your phone number and that of everyone you call or who calls you, the time and duration of the call, the serial numbers of everyone’s phone, and your location during the call. Your social media data includes every last piece of information you’ve put in your profile, locations, activities, check-ins, subscriptions, locations, posts and comments. Google searching leaves the metadata of what you actually searched for, what results showed up, and which ones you clicked on. Kurt Opsahl from Electronic Frontier Foundation spoke about how this can be collated to reveal a whole lot more about a person than any proponents of metadata retention are conceding. “They know you spoke with an HIV testing service, then your doctor, then your health insurance company in the same hour. But they don’t know what was discussed.” The Abbott government has introduced a mandatory metadata retention measure, as part of their newest antiterrorism laws, forcing service providers to record and store the above information; but there are ways around it.

The legislation would not force places that provide public wifi hotspots to retain the metadata of everyone who connect. The catch-all solution at present is to use a VPN (Virtual Private Network). If you imagine the internet as a series of interconnected highways, a VPN is a personal tunnel that runs along them; you still get the advantage of all these highways that go everywhere, but you do it in privacy. Your traffic is encrypted, secure from prying eyes The VPN also acts as a gatekeeper. It’s a private club with a bouncer. No entry unless you’re on the door list. The good thing about this seemingly devious workaround is that it has so many legitimate uses, it’s not practical to crack down on VPN use Companies use VPNs to send information between office locations via the internet without information being intercepted. People use VPNs to secure themselves in public hotspots from people snooping for bank details. People travelling overseas use VPNs to connect to their internet as though they were in their home country to get around country-restrictions for content. Pirates use VPNs so that media companies won’t come knocking with lawyers (the government’s Metadata retention scheme opens the door for companies to gain access to the metadata about what you’ve been torrenting). So right now, if you want to maintain your privacy on the internet, look into VPNs. They are free ones and paid ones, with lots of competition to provide the best, most private service. Just be aware that it won’t help you if you leave all your information laying around on social media..

- Feminism -

“ Feminist: a person who believes in the social, political, and economic equality of the sexes - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

“ The Perving Injustice by Kaisha Wyld

his is something that has been bugging me for a while, and as a feminist who believes in equality for all genders, it can sometimes baffle some people when I bring this up from the seemingly ‘wrong’ side. Taking unsolicited pictures of, catcalling, and openly perving on women in public is frowned upon. More than this, it is heavily advised against, and, anytime you hear about it online or otherwise it’s a bad thing. A group of men are verbally abused if they openly talk about the female hottie on the bus, or share a series of raunchy images between one another— even if this is done privately. And, with the exception of the verbal abuse (because that’s not cool ever) I am currently fine with how this is. Non consensual anything should be heavily discouraged. However, you flip this around and it becomes something that is encouraged. Taking non-consensual pictures of, catcalling, and openly perving on men, in public, is something that is openly supported by the majority of the Western female population. I have a female friend on Facebook who often posts a ‘Monday arvo pick-meup’ which is a series of images of male models in tight underwear. Seeing as it is a widely recognised offence to share unsolicited images of women, why isn’t it also a recognised issue to share the same images of men? I am appalled by this gendered imbalance that seems to be rife online. What’s worse, is when you point out the inequality and degradation to the females sharing these images, they tend to echo the same sentiments of the creepy perv on the bus. It’s almost as if it’s totally fine behaviour, so long as it isn’t happening to them.

exists. First is the false idea that feminism is about pushing women to the top of the gender food chain, ultimately overtaking men and making society a matriarchal party, full of champagne and pink stuff. By reversing the inequalities, and giving men a ‘taste of their own medicine’, these people somehow believe they are creating a culture of equality. Evidently, this is a counterproductive practice and will not ever result in any type of equality known by the Oxford Dictionary. Or by me. Second is the thought that perhaps this may be one of the first unregulated opportunities for Western women to exercise this pervy freedom, aided by technology that men did not have when they had the same opportunities. However, in having this opportunity available to them, people should also be thinking of how they would want to be treated by others. Flip the coin and see what it would be like from a different perspective. If whatever you are doing is negative from one perspective, it’s generally going to be negative from all perspectives. Regardless of why this is happening, it needs to stop. Objectifying people and taking non-consensual pictures of them and sharing them is not a positive thing, and I have difficulty conjuring up scenarios when this would be a good thing. No matter your gender, or the gender of the other person, stop it. Stop it now. And if you see someone doing the above to anyone, stop them too. Being a bystander is only aiding the issue, not helping it— and that goes for all sides. AUTHOR Kaisha Wyld, 22, Psychology (Hons)

Kaisha’s super power would be to would have the power to read minds, only so she can find out who demolished her emergency Oreo supply!

I have a few thoughts as to why this blatant imbalance

- Feminism -

We Need to Talk About... What’s in a name?

Isn’t it interesting that language can simultaneously put down women, while raising up men? by Eleanor Danenberg

here is a saying that makes my blood boil, my fists clench; it even makes me hyperbolise. I hate to hear it said, and worse, I hate to hear it met by laughter and approval. Don’t be a pussy. The theme of this Issue is ‘Justice’. With musings of Justice, come those of policing, and being PC — politically correct. It’s a term that gets eyes rolling and people sighing, and while it can be a bit of a drag, it also can be very important. This is especially true when it comes to language that is associated with gender or sex-based terms, such as: “Don’t be a pussy”, “You throw like a girl”, “Man up”, “Grow a pair” As these statements are often aimed at men, they’re presenting guys with something that they shouldn’t want to be associated with. These phrases not only present women as weak, but they’re used to berate men for not living up to idealistic cultural standards of masculinity. Isn’t it interesting that language can simultaneously put down women, while raising up men to near impossible standards? Why must men and women constantly be presented as polar opposites within society? And what does this polarisation do to those who fit into neither category? I don’t know about you, but I’m fascinated by the covert ways that sexism, double standards, and gender roles sneak into every day life, especially through language. I know what you’re thinking. “It’s just a word, it’s just an expression, I’m not literally comparing my friend to women’s’ genitals, it’s just a joke, don’t read so much into it.” However, saying ‘it’s just a word’ is not an excuse. These ‘simple’ words are part of something bigger; language is how we communicate, and it’s is taught, passed down from generation to generation. This ‘joke’ reveals something

greater; what are we communicating about women, about ourselves, without even realising it? When you participate in using derogatory language aimed at demeaning women, you are contributing to the view that there is something weak, or wrong, about what women are. We are people, and we are damn strong; we are not the butt of your joke. And of course, this language doesn’t only stain how we think about women, but men too. This language puts pressure on men to be emotionless, untouchable, ‘manly’ breadwinners — who have to be good at everything. In contrast, women are to be the emotional, silly ones, there to be seen and not to be heard — who are only good for some things. Personally, I’m so sick of the never-ending lists of things we should or must be according to our sex; what we should be doing is throwing away these archaic rulebooks. If you feel the same way that I do about this, the first step is to notice it in yourself and others, and challenge it. If these generalisations or comments just come out of your mouth and the second they do, you feel bad, then take it back — be brave and humble. If your friends say it and you disagree, speak up. We do need to talk about it. We should all be insulted by this. Women will not be silenced and we are nobody’s joke.

AUTHOR Eleanor Danenberg, 19, Arts

As a student who perpetually leaves homework to the last minute, Eleanor would relish having the ability to freeze time – and therefore meet her deadlines

- Get Smart -

The Human Side of Policing by Karen Smart

olice officers. The natural enemy of young, newly-licenced (and legal!) uni students. Revenue-raising, humourless wankers, right? They exist solely to ruin our day with their speeding tickets and demerit points and anti-hoon driving laws. How dare they try to save lives! Those bastards! Most of us never consider the human side of policing. Cops are a badge; a uniform. An inconvenience to us. Maybe in the back of our minds we think they might have lives beyond ‘the job’, or maybe we don’t. Either way, we probably don’t lie awake at night sympathising about their mental health. We don’t see them steel themselves before they knock on the door of a mother whose fifteen-year-old son was just killed in a car accident. We don’t see them pick up a scattered shoe on the side of the road after attending a collision and recognise the brand because it’s the same one their daughter wears. We don’t imagine them giving evidence in court to ensure a violent predator is kept off the same streets you and I are able to walk down safely. We don’t consider their frustration over encountering the same idiots committing the same offences over and over, or worse, recognising a family name and realising with a sinking heart that the cycle has moved on to the next generation. We don’t spend any time at all thinking about the failed resuscitations, the daily threat of personal injury, the increased risk of depression and suicide, the public scrutiny, the missed holidays or anniversaries or school events.

I’ve seen backyards blitzed, funds raised, families supported and kilometres cycled for charity. I’ve nearly wet myself laughing at one story only to want to cry over the next, because you know, the ‘bad stuff’ you hear is only the tip of the iceberg and there are twenty other stories more painful than you can possibly imagine just lurking in the shadows. The kind of stuff that surfaces when they’re lying in bed at night. The weight of the world, resting on two already-burdened shoulders. The toddler they couldn’t save. The overdose they attended. The abuse and neglect they witnessed. The hungry kids. The drug-affected teens. The regrets. So the next time you’re pulled over, don’t be a dick. Forgive them, their brusqueness; you may have come to their notice after a morning dealing with the consequences of a fatal road accident where speed was a contributing factor. If you deserved it, cop it on the chin, and don’t do it again. I know it can be hard to imagine, but police officers really are human.

We just argue about a speeding fine and turn to Facebook to complain about how unfair it all was. I’ve known a lot of police officers over the years. Their dedication and personal sacrifice is something that is hard to comprehend from the outside, but I can tell you this with supreme confidence: they are some of the most decent, selfless and hilarious people you’re ever likely to come across. Here in South Australia it’s a 5000-strong family, and I’m privileged to call some of these men and women my friends.

AUTHOR Karen Smart, 30ish, plus 5, Nutrition & Dietetics

Karen would love to have the super power of being super-intelligent, like Dr Spencer Reid in Criminal Minds. It’s not strictly a super power, but even Batman didn’t have any of those.

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We Are The Law Now Law and Justice in the Digital Age

At the time of writing, Anonymous and a coalition of international hacktivists are feverishly turning out the lights on some of the central broadcast hubs of the global jihadist movement. The self-appointed marshals of the digital frontier have turned their attention to the social media presence of Islamic State militants. Their stated aim is to rout the scourge of hate speech from the Internet. A secondary benefit is likely to be that the muzzling of these voices will cut the number of channels that are available to those who are vulnerable to radicalisation Particularly the development of those who are ensconced in the echo chambers provided by web-based extremists to reinforce their emergent value systems may be slowed or otherwise diverted. In a way, it’s sort of comforting to know that there is a guardian on the wall of the digital domain who are making it their mission to direct cleansing sunlight on those who would otherwise choose to use the power of the Internet to spread hate or recruit murderers. However, as an expression of the established systems of justice and accountability that we subscribe to in a liberal democracy, it presents some ethical challenges. Under a system of government such as the one currently in operation in Australia, we know where each of our laws come from. We can access the Acts of parliament that give effect to those laws. We can locate and access the content of the debate that surrounded the creation of our laws. We can, in a perfect world, be confident that for all of the laws that exist, a rationale for their existence is also in place. Decisions made under these laws are made by bodies made up of individuals with identities. Decisions around the breaking of those laws can be scrutinized and appealed. If laws are found to be lacking or overly prescriptive, they can be changed. We, as those represented under the system, are responsible for those laws — whether we always agree with them or not. Vigilantism can make no such claims. Vigilantism makes its appeals to the public’s sense of justice, through the promise of a corrective mechanism to address the issue of laws being insufficient to satisfy their need for punishment. When this seemingly fails, the vigilante moves to act as an unofficial proxy. There are a number of problems inherent in this act; chief amongst them is the issue of accountability. The vigilante is not necessarily bound by the structure of laws that exist within their society, as their actions are frequently prompted by a perceived inadequacy in those very laws. Therefore, the question of the source of the vigilante’s code of conduct remains unanswered. It seems to follow that it would be different for each person or group who takes on the mantle. The emergence of decentralized digital activist collectives extends this theme while potentially compounding the issues associated with actors operating without a legitimizing authority. This decade has seen the rise of digital activist (or hacktivist) collectives such as Anonymous, who pitch themselves as a faceless army of avenging angels

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working to preserve the integrity of the Internet sphere as a place of civil discourse. They perform a range of investigating, prosecutorial and punitive functions usually reserved for established judicial systems. Traditional law enforcement methods are bound by procedural and jurisdictional constraints that some would argue limits their effectiveness in dealing with the stateless nature of life online. Groups such as Anonymous are not bound by the same restrictions. However, one consequence of their structure and operations is an inherent lack of accountability and transparency. It could be argued that they, under a broad populist definition of the term, represent an overwhelming force for good thanks to their efforts to inhibit religious extremist material from broadcast or by publishing the details of users of child exploitation websites. Thank them we may, but a robust conception of accountable systems of justice requires us to acknowledge a group like Anonymous as simply the lesser of the evils it battles. Neither Anonymous nor the Ku Klux Klan is “the law” in Ferguson. The law may have failed that community and may very well continue to do so, but that does not give license for alternative operators to set up shop in their place. It is not that hacktivist collectives do not have a role to play in guiding the evolution of social mores in the digital sphere; that could not be further from the truth. One issue that does present itself, however, is that of overreach. Professor Gabriella Coleman suggests that in future ‘(police) will open the door to selectively working with groups who do contribute to providing useful information for law enforcement’. This clear demarcation between providers of intelligence and distributors of justice may prove important for the future growth and development of hacktivist groups. Respecting this compact will require hacktivist groups to maintain strict control over the activities of their members and force them to accept a more plodding dispensation of justice than that to which they are accustomed. The rise of digital activist collectives as a force for change in the evolution of online conduct has seen both high and low points. When they attempt to bridge the gap between being a kind of Superpowered Neighbourhood Watch and being an unsanctioned police force, the world at large faces a number of issues. These issues are not easily solved by binary declarations of good and bad or welcome and unwelcome. They do, however, suggest the need for an ongoing discussion of the nature of online citizenship and the effectiveness of traditional law enforcement models in overseeing matters of crime and punishment on this new frontier.

AUTHOR Shaun Hobby, 34, Arts (Hons)

If Shaun could have any super hero power it would be teleportation. Good for both when you’re running late for work and exploring the surface of new planets without having to eat any wacky paste-based food.

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AUTOMATED JUSTICE: IT’S KIND OF HERE ALREADY

Imagine it’s 2025 CE: You are hurtling down South Road during peak hour, almost hitting 15km/h and listening to the latest re-re-rerelease of U2s greatest hits with the token new track (which you skip over every time). Casually checking Facebook (or whatever the latest social media is these days), you sip your coffee. After all, the car is doing all of the driving for you. Suddenly, the brakes engage and the seatbelt constricts across your chest, there is a thump from the back of your car and louder crash as the front hits someone else. Won’t this make for an interesting status update? That morning, Mr Cyclist had an appointment with his lawyer’s computer. Perhaps the best part of it was that he didn’t require any personal contact with the lawyer. Instead, he verified his identity then confirmed that the list of assets stored on their servers was accurate and in date. From there, it was as easy as going through the assets, line by line, and selecting who each item should go to in the case of his death, before allocating any remaining passwords and digital accounts of his estate. The computer compared this to the default legal proceedings for his jurisdiction, before sending a copy to his lawyer, complete with necessary legal obligation. She had approved it before he had reached the receptionist. Fortunately, Mr Cyclist didn’t need the document quite yet. His MyBike had sensed the traffic and done its best to arrest his downhill descent, facilitated by live communication with all of the cars involved.

Your car in particular, had adjusted its forward trajectory to provide the shallowest angle of impact possible, increasing the time it took Mr Cyclist to crash. All of this took place in the time it took you to comment on your best friend’s new puppy. You have (probably) graduated university by now, perhaps even have a job and can afford to pay the bills. Perhaps you haven’t, and you can’t, and the car you were being driven in was stolen. Or your mum’s. I won’t judge you, but the car might. Both the cars and the bike transmit a mountain of information to all insurance parties involved about everything from environmental factors to the rider’s hydration levels and your level of (in) attentiveness on the manual brake override. Forget about privacy, the owner signed off on that in the computer generated T&Cs at purchase. Within a matter of minutes the computers at the insurance companies have generated a dozen offers and counteroffers for who pays what, and have an agreement, already accounting for injuries sustained and projected costs for treatment needed. Everyone involved, including the car manufacturer, has been billed appropriately and is ready to get on with their day. Around 3pm that afternoon an over (or under) caffeinated human may even verify the results. We are generating and sharing more and more data about ourselves all of the time and

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WE ARE GENERATING AND SHARING MORE AND MORE DATA ABOUT OURSELVES

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companies are already collecting and storing it. It is only a matter of time before insurance agencies begin acquiring it, and devices you use begin requiring it. This will allow us to automate civil legal proceedings at an increasing rate, making them more accessible while being even less understood. As you climb back in your vehicle you notice that your phone is already recommending a near by mechanic and barista. As for the spilt coffee, you may have to clean that up for yourself. AUTHOR Kevin Clark, 20, Engineering(Software)

If Kevin could have any super power it would be selective mind reading (there are some things you want to know, and others you don’t)

Q+A

Q+A:

FLINDERS VICE-CHANCELLOR PROFESSOR COLIN STIRLING Empire Times sat down with Flinders University’s new VC Prof Colin Stirling and spoke about his role as Vice-Chancellor, what happened at Curtain University and his plans for Flinders University. What exactly does a Vice Chancellor do? It’s my job to set the strategy of the university - its strategic direction and its vision, and of course I do that in consultation with [University] Council. Council has to approve the strategy and it’s my job to develop the strategy to take to them. I’m going around the university, I am keen to talk to as many staff and indeed students as I can. I’m trying to learn about all the good things that we do both in research and in teaching and in engagement. And it’s very exciting, there’s lots of really exciting things happening at Flinders. What do you think the biggest challenge for Flinders is going to be [in the next few years]? The same challenge for any university, at the moment, is that we are entering a very different competitive world in higher education so there are many more choices and alternatives and different ways of studying. I think the challenge for the established universities is to ensure that the education you offer is not just relevant but we also have to ensure that we are offering an experience and quality of education for our students that is that offers them more than the competition does. Does research at the university come into play in terms of making sure that the student courses are relevant to what’s happening in the world? I am an absolutely passionate believer in the importance of research lead education. I sometime see that there are universities that would describe their education as research-led where if you then actually looked closely and asked “show me the ways in which it is research led” it might struggle to demonstrate. I think we have to make it an absolutely central feature of what we offer. So if our graduates leave and they’ve been exposed to some of the finest [research], and who better to teach you research than some of the finest researchers in the country, in the world. When graduates leave the university if they have that skill, then it’s not that we’ve prepared them just for the first job, we’ve prepared them for their career. We’ve prepared them for a lifetime of learning and that, I think, is fundamentally important. Do you feel that sometimes the skills of research aren’t translated over to students because the skill of research is not necessarily connected to the skill of teaching? I have to say that in my personal and professional experience, my experience has been that some of the very best teachers I’ve known have also been some of the very best researchers I’ve ever known. So I think there’s a bit of a myth that the best researchers don’t make good teachers. They very often truly do. But I didn’t disagree with what you said - sometimes it can happen.

What’s interesting in universities is that teaching styles vary and also learning styles vary. What you often find, and I’ve seen it so often, is that you have a class of students and some of them will love a given teacher and others will hate them because of the way that they teach. What then we should do is offer access to components of a curriculum in flexible ways that allow students alternatives. Some students like to attend lectures and sit through them. Others find them deathly dull. If you provide the content in alternate ways, I think that’s fine. It’s interesting, the model of the “lecture” is hideously outdated. It comes from a time, it’s over 700 years old, when there were no printing presses, so there was one copy of the book. Someone stood up the front and read it out and literally, the class transcribed it. They wrote out their copy. Now, we don’t need to convey information in that ridiculously unidirectional way any more. What do you think the benefits of online learning are? I’ve seen some fantastic online stuff. There are a few new players in that space who have emerged in the last couple of years. There is a company called Udacity, which was set up by a chap called Sebastian Thrun in Silicon Valley - he’s the co-inventor of Google’s driverless car. I’ve done the physics course on Udacity, and it’s absolutely brilliant. It’s incredibly engaging. There’s another enormous potential in online though, which is that computers don’t get bored. You can ask computers to mark an assessment, and then mark another one... and it won’t get bored. And its got all the time in the world to do that. And there’s a really interesting concept. The Khan Academy is a not for profit which is largely teaching K-12 kids, and Salman Khan does a brilliant presentation about why he did this. He makes the point that a lot of structures in education are set up to fail students. You take an exam, you fail. You may get a re-sit. You fail it again. That means that you can’t do this stuff. So that student gets funnelled off into another subject area. He uses Learning Analytics, and I think that Learning Analytics has the potential to transform the way universities interact with their students, because a teacher can look at screen and see where every one of the students is, going through a series of assessments. Some of them are going straight through. Some can’t get past an assessment. In the past, you’d have written this student off, if they can’t do maths, they can’t do maths. He sends someone in to address that students’ particular issue. And he can show with the Analytics that they then get the concept. They pass that component. Do they then stumble through the next one? No. Many of them actually progress at the same rate as other folks have been all along. They weren’t dumb, they just didn’t get the concept.

Vice-Chancellor Prof Stirling greeting students and staff during Orientation Week.

Is that something that you’d like bring to Flinders? I think that Analytics for this is the key. It’s not everyone that needs it. But in using online, we have to ask what we want to use it for. For me, it’s not about us just replicating what we otherwise have done. A number of universities you’ll see that online content is someone filming a lecture. It has merit, and I’m aware of plenty of studies that show that if you film your lectures then students tend to progress better because they get the chance to go back and view it and do it again. So it’s not like it ain’t worth doing - it is. But it’s a fairly limited application of what online can achieve. I’d like us to look really closely at how we can use online not to save money, not to make it easier, but to allow our students to have the best possibilities of access. Is that something that Flinders should be focusing on: developing communication between staff and students? I really want to go out and consult our staff and our students and find out what we’re doing really well, what we could do better and so forth. I’m still in that process. But it seems to be pretty obvious that if we can provide content in the digital space so that content is available to students as and when they want to look at it, what that means is that we don’t then necessarily need staff to spend time going to lectures, giving lectures. That involves preparation and so forth. If we can therefore use online to mean that our staff don’t have to spend time doing that, the ought to then have more time available to interact with students in a much more personalised fashion. I think that would be a very positive thing.

That has merit, but we’re getting into very competitive times, potentially students might be being asked, who knows what happens in Canberra, to pay much more for their education than they presently do, for example. You have to think, what’s that money being spent on? Well, it’s being spent primarily on staff salaries. I have a strong view that if we are spending money on staff salaries, those people have to be productive in the job that they do. They have to do well. And that I think therefore, as you would probably imagine, there are some outstanding teachers who are unsuccessful in research. They may have been successful, but they may have had enough of it. What I’ve seen in the past is fantastic teachers who have had the lowest self esteem in their workplace because they keep being told that they’re part of the performance tail, they’re not performing in research - up your game, get your research going. They try and they can’t do it. When people like that have then gone into a bona-fide career path as an education specialist then I have seen people who, frankly, stayed away from the staff tea room, the lights go back on and they turn into a highly valuable member of staff. What do they do all day? They teach, the enjoy it. What do they do when they’re not in the classroom? They have time to innovate the curriculum, so the curriculum improves. New things get done. The students experience new ways of teaching that other members of staff are too busy to do because they’re off doing research all the time.

I think that the days of just mass lectures with 300 students in a room looking at a talking head in the distance that’s a very limited educational value I’d say. It’s got some but it’s limited, and there are far more constructive ways which we can get our staff to engage with students.

I have seen staff who are excellent, outstanding teachers who want to teach in a university environment who don’t want to do research. I’ve seen them deliver fantastic innovations for students. Frankly, I think that it’s a really powerful tool. Will we do it at Flinders? It’s early days. I think we already have some staff that are closer to the education specialists. We might see that increase somewhat. It’s early days.

When you were at Curtin, there was the idea of separating teaching and research...

Is this where you see Universities heading in Australia for the future?

What I’ve done previously in Manchester - so I’ve got a bit of a record - is to create specialised academic roles. In your conventional Australian university, every academic member of staff is in a balanced role doing some research and some teaching.

It’s inevitable. There are some whose passion is teaching. Why would we not tap into that passion?

VO Q.

1. Bachelor of Teaching, Bachelor of Science (4th Year)

2.It’s cold! Lots of fun and free food, which is awesome 3. Best thing of the summer was that I got to go back home to China and spend time with my families. Worst thing - I started doing placement in mid-Jan, which meant that my summer holidays ended in January! 4. Equality and respect to anyone no matter what their backgrounds are 5. No idea

6. Time travelling. I could witness the history or see the future

HESTINA

1.WHAT ARE YOU STUDYING? 2. WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ON FLINDERS O’WEEK? 3. SUMMER HOLIDAYS JUST ENDED - WHAT’S YOUR BEST AND WORST MEMORY? 4. THIS ISSUE’S THEME IS ‘JUSTICE’ - WHAT DOES JUSTICE MEAN TO YOU? 5. JUDGE JUDY YAY OR NAY? 6. IF YOU COULD HAVE ANY SUPERHERO POWER, WHAT WOULD IT BE AND WHY?

1. Speech Pathology (3rd Year)

2. It’s a cool community base and there’s a nice setup given the circumstances (construction!)

3. Best memory - meeting new people and relaxing before the year ahead. Worst - it was all really good, I feel lucky with the life I lead 4. Justice, to me, means being treated fairly. That is, everyone getting a fair go and fair treament including in our sometimes corrupt justice system

1. Commerce (Accounting) 2. It’s busy and we have a tough crowd

3. Worked and went to uni. I enjoyed the cool weather for Christmas 4. Batman, Flash 5. Yay

5. Nay

6. Glitter of happiness to spread smiles!

KATE

6. Cyclops - laser eyes to burn and melt stuff

david

1. Double degree: Disability Studies/Middle Secondary Education (4th Year) 2. Fun things that I never seem to get to!

3. Best - I got a kitten! Worst - no work over break = no $$ 4.Equality

5. Yeah - we can do it! 6.Time travel

TARA

2. Fantastic, vibrant and really exciting.

3. Spending more time at the beach than any summer before was the best and the resulting sunburns were the worst.

4. Equality and fair treatment to all without prejudice

pop

X O 1. Creative Arts (Creative Writing)

1. Bachelor of Business 2. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a good way to promote clubs 3. Best - starting holidays Worst - ending holidays 4.Capital punishment for human trafficking 5. Yay!

5. Nay

6. Flying - because it would be obviously amazing

LIAM

6. To create portals and go anywhere to surf and drink after 5pm somewhere

thom

Cracks in the Armour

WHEN THE OBVIOUS CONSPIRACY ISN’T ENOUGH. Strap yourselves in, we’re going to talk about vaccines. We’ll start with a crash course in how vaccines work, and then go on to address the ongoing problem with how we talk about the vaccines and the infamous “autism issue”. A vaccine is to a disease what a crashtest dummy is to a human — it’s a mock-up, a pretender. When a crashtest dummy is run through a crash it simulates a person. It hits its body parts and gets flung about, but it doesn’t bleed or feel pain or die, because it’s only a representation that mimics the movements of a person. The specific ways in which the dummy gets thrown around or damaged by a crash enables car-designers to prepare and refine the features of their car. This ensures that when a real person gets into the same situation, precautions have been put in place to make sure the outcome is as favourable to people as possible. A pathogen (a type of disease) is covered in molecules called antigens, giving its outside shape and function (like the shape of the limbs and body of a person) and determines how it interacts with other cells. When a vaccine is prepared, these antigens are replicated, harvested, suspended — in short, we build the shape of a disease without having the living disease itself inside it. It’s often mixed with chemicals that make the dummy flail around harder to attract more attention during the crash, as it were. Then when you’re vaccinated, the crash test dummy of a disease is rammed against your immune system. This is of course where the metaphor reverses; a real crash test dummy is used to prepare cars so that less damage is

done to the thing it represents. A vaccine is used to prepare the immune system to do more damage to the invading body, to destroy it faster and more thoroughly. Every disease has a unique shape, and your immune system’s response is shapespecific. If a disease is full of square holes that can only be taken down by plugging them with square pegs, and your body hasn’t encountered them before, then you have no square pegs. By the time your body works out that you need square pegs, and makes them, a lot of damage could have been done. When you have the vaccine, your body learns about this disease’s shape and makes square pegs (antibodies) to fight off the disease. Afterwards some of these square pegs stick around in your immune system’s arsenal. If you then catch the real thing those antibodies get to work and, because the vaccine gave it a practice run, immediately starts fighting the infection. Crisis averted. It’s the difference between studying for an exam and walking in ready, and not studying at all and trying to work out the answers to everything from first principles. Only one of those two things will consistently work and you know which one it is. Now that we all know how vaccines work let’s talk about vaccination risk. Some people claim that the MMR vaccine (measles, mumps, and rubella) carries serious risk of severe allergic reaction. It is true that it’s possible to have a severe allergic reaction to the MMR vaccine. It’s also true that it occurs in less than one in a million people, and that’s just the allergy, not a death. In 2012 in Australia, 58 people out of every million

died on our roads. 31 people per million died from tripping over. One person per million died falling off a chair and two people per million died falling out of bed. You are more likely to die by accident just from existing inside your own house, (not even counting accidental electrocutions from appliances or heavy things falling on your head) than you are to developing an allergy to the deliberatelyadministered MMR vaccine. According to the WHO (World Health Organisation), 145 700 people died from measles that same year. Most of them were children under the age of 5. Thanks to vaccines, that number is down from more than half a million in 2000. Now, not everyone can be vaccinated. Anyone who is immunocompromised due to specific chronic illnesses can’t have certain vaccinations, as well as anyone who is on immunosuppressant drugs (such as people undergoing certain cancer therapies and anyone who’s ever had an organ transplant). Pregnant women can’t have certain vaccinations at certain points in the pregnancy or at all. I say certain vaccinations because there are specific vaccinations that people in specific conditions can and can’t have, and it varies based on the condition. Suffice to say, there are people in our community who can’t have all the vaccinations that everyone else can. They rely on something called herd immunity for protection. A disease spreading is a lot like the world’s worst

game of connect-the-dots. It moves from person to person (dot to dot). Some people it passes by through circumstance— they just weren’t around anyone infectious at the right time. Some people’s immune systems are more robust. It happens. Either way, a lot of people are infected. If some of those people are vaccinated, then, not only do they themselves not become infected, but they also block the path of the dot-to-dot spread. In doing so, these people prevent the spread of the disease to people who themselves cannot be vaccinated for medical reasons. Imagine each dot below is a person. The coloured dot is someone who has caught an infectious disease.

Now we connect the dots, and a lot of people get sick. Some get lucky and it passes them by, but overall…

It’s not great for anyone involved. Now imagine some people in this population are vaccinated, the blue dots, and the yellow dots represent people who can’t be vaccinated.

The blue dots, in addition to remaining healthy themselves, also create a buffer zone through which the disease can’t travel to get to the vulnerable members of the community. This is herd immunity. It is a population’s armour against illness. When members of the community aren’t vaccinated, not only are they in danger,

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but they are breaking holes in the armour that protects the vulnerable people behind them, by allowing the disease to be potentially transmitted through them. Right, that’s the science. Let’s talk about conspiracies and autism. Opponents of vaccination have in the past publicly claimed the existence of a conspiracy involving vaccination and a link to autism. Ironically, that’s not far from the truth. In 1998, a highly-regarded medical research journal called The Lancet published a paper by then-highlyregarded doctor Andrew Wakefield. Wakefield linked the MMR vaccine to colitis and autism-spectrum disorders, and began publishing papers and holding press conferences claiming that the immunisation program was unsafe. An investigation was launched in the mid-2000s over the resulting controversy, and that’s when things get… conspiratorial. It came to light that in 1996, a solicitor named Richard Barr who was pursuing a class action case against the companies manufacturing the MMR vaccine, claimed the product didn’t work. Not that it caused any side effects, of the autistic spectrum or otherwise, but that it just didn’t work. Before his MMR-Autism publication in 1998, Andrew Wakefield received £55,000 from legal aid solicitors seeking evidence against the MMR companies and filed his own patent for a rival measles vaccine. Wakefield did not disclose the money or the patent to anyone, including the hospital he was based at, on the behalf of which he filed it (listing himself and a colleague as the inventors). Several of the parents of the 12 children Wakefield used in his study also happened to be litigants in the pre-existing lawsuit against the MMR manufacturers.1 After further litigation, investigation, and eventually a government inquest, it came to light that Wakefield had received over the span of several years, some £400,000 (roughly $800,000) from the legal aid lawyers pursuing the lawsuit. Now, private bodies fund scientists to do research all the time, but it’s customarily done above-board. Wakefield hid the contract, the money, and the patent to what would have been the only ready alternative, should MMR have been discontinued. Testimonies during the government legal inquiry revealed that Wakefield had ‘fixed’ his data. He had deliberately ignored data

that contradicted his MMR-Autism hypothesis and left it out of his findings. It also revealed that he sometimes outright fabricated data where there was none. The statements that the children had begun exhibiting autism-spectrum behaviours immediately after receiving the vaccine were also found to be false. Seems like a good enough conspiracy for anybody. The Lancet made a partial retraction of the paper in 2004 and a full retraction in 2010. Wakefield’s co-authors issues retractions as well, and Wakefield was struck from the medical register. No study has ever been able to find a verifiable link between vaccines and autism before or since. There’s one more thing we need to talk about, and although it’s not science, it’s very important. There’s a problem with how we discuss the vaccinesautism link. It’s more blatant in those who oppose MMR vaccinations, who are openly treating the possibility of their children being autistic as wholly worse than even the possibility of their own and other children being dead. Phrases like ‘the light dying from their childrens’ eyes’ are common. It’s less overt among proponents of vaccines but the undertones are very much still there. Autistic people are being discussed like their existence is a punishment, a disease, a worst-case-scenario to be avoided. So devastatingly horrible, that allowing ones’ children to contract and spread a dangerous infection like measles, is being considered as an alternative. It’s this attitude towards autistic people however, that is an almost entirely unaddressed problem. Autistic and other non-neurotypical people lead full, productive lives as much as anyone else. They are people, with goals and needs, and desires and dreams, and the tone of the dialogue about vaccines treats their very existence like a tragedy. That needs to change. It’s not right. It’s not just. 1

http://briandeer.com/mmr/1998-vaccinepatent.pdf

AUTHOR Marat Sverdlov

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Student Representation at Flinders It’s about more than just hating Gone Girl Hello fellow learners! My name is Caleb Pattinson, and this year I was elected by the good people at Flinders University to the position of Education Officer. You are probably now asking the question, ‘Caleb, what does that even mean’? Well, I am here to represent your every educational need! This year I have a bunch of ideas to help students out, notably increasing your representation around campus as well as fighting the cuts to higher education, establishing school-based associations around Flinders and advocating for all students on all education based issues. The important thing is, if you have any issues, such as being unhappy with a final mark, problems with the library room booking system or feeling a lack of student voice around the campus, please get into contact with me so I can point you towards the abundance of resources both FUSA (your student association) and the university at large have to offer, as well as working with the student body to fight for change around the place. Very briefly some background on me; originally I am from the mighty Adelaide Hills. I am now an Education/ Sciences student majoring in maths, with a bit of history in there as well. I am heading into my third year in 2015 and enjoy sports and a casual beverage at the nonexistent uni bar. I hate the movie Gone Girl. I joined FUSA not only to get a warm-fuzzy feeling for making a difference at uni, but also because in today’s crazy world anything you can do at uni to separate yourself from the pack is good news to a potential employer. What this means is: get involved! So you may have heard a phrase going around campus that sounds like ‘Student Representation’, apparently it’s a thing now! This goes back to my point of getting involved – how good will it look if you have on your resume that you helped change the face of Flinders University! Get a degree at uni that’s more than just

rocking up to classrooms; use the potential for making friends and connections so that into the future you have lived a life with stories and adventures. We have a big plan for this year that we’d love your help on. We are looking at creating an association for every school around the uni that doesn’t already exist. Furthermore, we are getting into contact with all the well-established school associations to try to increase their level of collaboration with FUSA so that we can help out with all the important stuff they already do. This is important, as these student organisations are here to represent you! As Education Officer, I have worked closely with FUSA staff to roll out the Education Collective. Check it out on FUSA’s website and make sure to sign up! It’s open to anybody and everybody and will involve 1-2 meetings a semester to give you the chance to voice any concerns you have about academic or welfare issues at Flinders University. This can be anything from advocating for a widespread time for online submissions or to push for a university-wide referencing system; it can be anything! This is something strange and new being brought into the world of Flinders, but exciting at the same time. Make sure you sign up and if you have any further questions – contact me at education. officer@fusa.edu.au. As somebody famous once said, ‘it’s not what your uni can do for you, it’s what you can do for your uni.’ Or something like that. Did I mention that you should sign up? www.fusa.edu.au/collectives AUTHOR Caleb Pattinson, 21, BScBEd

If Caleb could have any super power, he would have the superpower of luck as it could be applied to any part of life that ever existed past, present or future.

SELMA TO FERGUSON: T h e L o n g B en d T owa r d J u st i ce

“

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the enactment of arguably the most effective piece of civil rights legislation in American history, the Voting Rights Act. The Act allowed African Americans the right to vote and was brought about by the Martin Luther King Jr. led Selma-Montgomery marches. But, as opposed to being a celebration of a half-century of civil rights, 2015 is serving more as a sombre reflection of the progress that America still has to make. This is highlighted by the events that occurred in Ferguson, Missouri last year, which brought the existing racial divide in America to the societal forefront. This continuing rights struggle has also exemplified how the savageness of man continues to threaten America’s collective humanity; “We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.” Forty-seven years after his death, King’s words remain relevant because his dream for an America free of racism, violence and poverty persists into the 21st century.

“

On August 9, 2014, Officer Darren Wilson fatally shot Michael Brown Jr; exasperatingly, the chain of events in Michael Brown’s death are muddled at best. The witness testimonies along with evidence all contradict one another.

“What we need in the United States is not division, what we need in the United States is not hatred, what we need in the United States is not violence, and lawlessness, but is love, and wisdom, and compassion toward one another. [Because] the vast majority of white people, and the vast majority of black people in this country, want to live together, want to improve the quality of our life and want justice for all human beings that abide in our land. [Let us] dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote many years ago; ‘To tame the savageness of man, and make gentle the life of this world.” On April 4, 1968 in Indianapolis, Senator Robert F Kennedy announced that The Reverend Dr Martin Luther King Jr. had been assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee. Indianapolis was the only major city that did not riot. Sixtythree days later, Kennedy would be assassinated in Los Angeles.

What can be ascertained is that Michael Brown stole cigars from a store whilst behaving in a manner indicative of teenage posturing. (In fear of protestations from Tanya Pilbersek and Nicola Roxon, theft of cigars is nothing to your life for.) Following Brown’s exit from the store, in a ninety-second long confrontation, Officer Wilson shot Michael Brown seven times, of which at least one was fatal. Wilson claimed the shots were fired in self-defence due to violent provocation from Brown. Whilst witnesses couldn’t corroborate this, Michael Brown’s last words were agreed upon; “I don’t have a gun, stop shooting.” Officer Wilson then walked away from the scene with minor facial injuries, whilst Brown was left lying dead on the street for four-and-a-half hours. The event garnered international attention, because the unsettling truth is that Brown was an unarmed 18-yearold boy who died for the crime of being an African-American, in the wrong place at the wrong time. And it is far past this time being over. The origins of the civil rights movement lie with the untenable slavery epoch in the United States. Slavery began in the 1600s, increased with the expansion of the cotton industry in the early 1800s, and did not end as a legalised institution until the passage of the 13th Amendment in 1865. When finally freed

the American slave population numbered around four million but despite the Emancipation Proclamation being ratified by President Lincoln in 1863, slavery — particularly in the South — transitioned into the social policy of segregation. Tragically, the consciousness of racism that had allowed slavery only burrowed more deeply into the fabric of American society, remnants of which still remain today. The pervasive power of collective consciousness was further proven by the counterculture dream. This dream was a societal shift in the 1960s which, with a psychedelic revolution of peace, pop music and hallucinogens, brought about the civil rights movement’s vanguard, the Rev. Dr Martin Luther King Jr. With his nonviolent doctrine, he was markedly different from some of his activist contemporaries such as firebrand preacher Malcolm X. The proficiency of his peaceful power reached its pinnacle during the three Selma to Montgomery marches, which were sparked by the murder of activist Jimmie Lee Jackson. Images of the passive protestors being brutalised by police caused national outcry, and not only resulted in federal protection during the demonstrations, but the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965. Today the route is a U.S. National Historic Trail— the Selma to Montgomery Voting Rights Trail. In comparison, a police officer’s canine urinated on a memorial to Michael Brown before officers used their vehicles to decimate this physical representation of the mass public outpouring of grief. An indictment is the formal charge of a serious crime. On November 24, 2014 a Grand Jury decided that no indictment would be laid against Officer Wilson. In the immediate aftermath of the verdict Michael Brown’s parents, who demonstrated the extraordinary grace of dignity in the face of injustice, asked for four-and-a-half minutes silence; “We are not here to be violent. We are here in memory of our son. We are here for protection of all children. We are here to request justice and equality for all people.” There were also peaceful protests, which called for a demilitarisation of the police force. In response, Governor Jay Nixon deployed thousands of extra guardsmen to the area . This was to curtail the inevitable riots, which despite “a riot [being] the language of the unheard,” received widespread condemnation. Whilst a fair criticism, it must be considered that the definition of police is; “The civil force of a state, responsible for the prevention and detection of crime and the maintenance of public order.” Which is why for me the most

horrifying images to come out of this tragedy were those of a pseudomilitarised Ferguson. It’s hard to put faith in a state that treats its citizens like terrorists, whilst simultaneously allowing the maintenance of public order to descend into any chance of justice being tear-gassed to death. Beyond that, the riots were the consequence of political apathy and legal injustice when it encroaches on the dignity of which humanity is occasionally capable. As Martin Luther King Jr. said; “It is incontestable and deplorable that Negroes have committed crimes; but they are derivate crimes. They are born of the greater crimes of the white society.” Whilst there were people who manipulated the situation as a chance to cause violence, that doesn’t make them unanimously reprehensible. In a society that rejects those at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder, any form of lashing out is reactionary. There was a time when it would’ve been referred to as revolutionary, which makes it a problem with the system rather than the people. As, astonishingly two months after the grand jury verdict, the FBI disclosed that no federal charges would be levied against Wilson for violating Brown’s civil rights. The primacy of the ‘free market’ enshrined in the American system

is one that promotes inequality through non-universal healthcare and an elitist university structure, denying decent higher education to the majority. This must surely have inflamed the rioters: “The US is a decadent, gunridden, violent, war-mongering, ungovernable mess…by the end of the century it will be a Third World nation from greed, stupidity and exploitation. ” – Peter Goers (2013) For example, compare the demographics of Ferguson, Missouri with one of America’s wealthiest municipalities, Short Hills, New Jersey. According to the 2010 census;

Racial Makeup: Ferguson

Racial Makeup: Short Hills

Population: Ferguson vs Short Hills

Median Age (yrs)

Median Household Income ($)

From January to April, 2014, there were 27 white people arrested in Ferguson compared with 217 black people ; and crime statistics for Short Hills were un-locatable. If nothing else, it would appear that twelve years after the Invasion of Iraq, we have found the weapons of mass destruction that could destroy America. Many media outlets, particularly those who affiliate with the political right, overlooked these instigations; “Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.” And for living proof of this truism, you need look no further than Bill O’Reilly of Fox News; “But to the race hustlers, Officer Wilson is already guilty. They have convicted him. Their slogan is “no justice, no peace”. I guess that’s lynch mob justice because those people will never accept anything other than a conviction of murder in this case. They don’t really care what happened. They want Officer Wilson punished. And he should be punished if he murdered Michael Brown. If a jury finds Wilson guilty he should be put in prison for the rest of his life. But Officer Wilson is entitled to the presumption of innocence that we all have under our constitution.” Bill O’Reilly’s belief that justice means anything but the truth,

and his supposition that it would be brought to fruition highlights nothing but his own delusions. There was no justice, beginning with Officer Wilson not extending the presumption of innocence to Michael Brown. This provoked another slogan from the ‘race hustlers’; “Sagging pants is not probable cause.” This mantra formed part of a mural for Michael Brown in Trenton, New Jersey,—which was removed as local police officers believed it fortified a negative message about the relationship between police and the community. Perhaps, though, the media reaction was an inevitable result of human behaviour. It seems that if the faces asking for help are black, the world looks the other way. Doing so makes it easy for Bill O’Reilly who has never known the “fatigue of despair,” to condemn that which he can’t empathise with. So, in lieu of humane reporting, remember the words of the one true King that this world has ever had; “Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”

progress with civil rights, but the events in Ferguson seem to have highlighted the deep moral crack which still divides the country. As for my belief in justice, it died in Ferguson. AUTHOR Georgia Riessen,19, Arts

If Georgia could have any super hero power it would be the ability to travel in time, so that she could go to Woodstock and kiss Jimi Hendrix.

At the end of the SelmaMontgomery marches, Martin Luther King Jr said that equal rights for African Americans could not be far away, “because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice”. In the interim halfcentury America has made immense

“ I SURPRISED THE AGENT (AND MYSELF) BY CATCHING HIM OUT ON HIS OWN LIES

“ This article was going to be titled “Renting vs Buying” or “The Pitfalls of Renting” or the like, but the common danger in either endeavour is that you usually have to deal with a Real Estate Agent.

loud, it is a $300,000 plus asset that you’re investing in. Be rational; don’t fall for their psychological mumbojumbo. It is just a house; if someone else buys it before you then it wasn’t “The One”.

I’ll begin with a caveat: there are undoubtedly a number of professional and ethical agents out there working hard to ensure we all have a roof over our heads. However, industry reputations are not formed in a vacuum and frankly there are probably many good reasons that agents are regarded as about as trustworthy as politicians.

Renting has its upsides. Sure, you can’t paint the interior “cadaver black”, but you don’t need a massive deposit to move in and if you don’t like it you can simply not renew the lease. Also, if the hot water system shits itself — not your problem. In saying that, renting does come with its own set of hazards, along with the obvious fact that you are paying off someone else’s mortgage. So here is my lowdown on renting.

I have both owned and rented homes. My thought on the process of buying is it is incredulous that the largest purchase of your life is based on maybe two 15-minute viewings guided by a person who, by the very nature of the purchasing arrangement, is biased against you. I have spent more time on choosing which pair of shoes to buy than what agents I have been comfortable providing me with to decide on whether I want to spend the next decade in a place that may or may not fit me properly. For crying out

You need to pay a bond. If the rent is more than $250 per week expect to pay the equivalent of six weeks, if you are lucky enough to find a place below $250 then its only four weeks. This money is given to the agent who in turn forwards it to the government for safekeeping. You will get the money back when you leave, on the proviso that the premises are still the way you found them and there is no rent in arrears.

Rent: you pay this weekly, fortnightly or monthly in advance. Do your credit history a favour and pay the rent, in the full amount, on time. If for some emergency you fall short, contact the agent immediately and negotiate a solution. If the hot water system does die and the agent refuses to repair it in good time, you are still required to pay the rent but you are also within your rights to organise your own repairs with a tradie of your choice and recoup the cost from the agent. Rather than doing this immediately, I would first send them an email informing them of your rights and your decision, with a copy of the act for good measure. Make sure you read the relevant sections of the Residential Tenancies Act to make sure you have fulfilled the tenant requirements first though! Before moving in you will do duplicate copies of an inspection report of the property with the agent. This is often where the agent appears not overly fussed or initiates idle chit-chat about inane subjects. Believe me, they won’t be quite so lackadaisical at the end of the lease and it’s your bond money on the line. Best thing is to be

businesslike. Check everything, write it down and take photos. Open the stove, take a photo. Air conditioners and exhaust fans, take a photo. Window and door screens, take a photo. In every room, take a photo. Email the agent a file of the photos; this way everything is recorded and dated. Who cares if it’s more work for them? They are employed to manage the property – I say, start managing. Ask for a copy of the incoming report to be emailed to you once the agent has signed it off. As part of this administration, expect a quarterly visit just to check you haven’t installed a meth lab or are harbouring any illegals (aka unapproved pets). These inspections need to be notified in writing 7-14 days in advance. The agent can do the inspection without you present and will expect a level of cleanliness (not a feature students are usually renowned for!) This is also your home though, so unless you have damaged the structure or have let the garden become a fire hazard don’t be bullied, you are not competing for the cover of Vogue Living. Make sure that you clarify all of the costs from the outset; some agents will want you to pay water usage and

supply. This is negotiable. I would never be willing to pay water supply and would only consider paying usage if I was renting a freestanding house with a garden and no strata. If you are responsible for the water bill have it emailed to you showing both front and back pages which indicates it is the correct amount and property (agents deal with numerous accounts; mistakes happen). In fact, I would recommend having all correspondence emailed to you as this organises your filing. I once had things go pear shaped with an agent after which they started sending correspondence via snail mail. I am sure they were hoping that the documents would go astray. When you leave a property be present for the final inspection, don’t let them brush you off or ignore your requests for a joint appraisal. On a former property I wrote three times to schedule a final inspection to no avail, only to be burnt months later at the Residential Tenancy Tribunal. If you are unlucky enough to be summoned to the RTT, take note: while the laws have been written up reasonably fair, this is an arena real estate agents are familiar with. I have had two incidents that involved the above agency, both regarding the same rental property. On the first visit

I surprised the agent (and myself) by catching him out in his own lies. The second time I was not so fortunate; he was prepared. I sat across a conciliation table late on a Thursday afternoon and his party comprised of five individuals including two agents, the owner, her husband and a toddler. In reality the mediator acts like an auctioneer in a clearance house. I was tired, fed up and felt harassed – they all sensed this. The experience had nothing to do with equality or integrity— it was about being practical. Yes, I could have continued the matter in court but, as was so logically pointed out by the referee, would it be worth my time and energy? Not to mention the unneeded stress over what amounted to less than $150. So while justice vacated the premises, what I received were the keys to unlocking houses. Whether buying or renting, it’s best to prioritise the rational over the sentimental and beware, or at the very least be aware, that you may now be dealing with someone who normally shouldn’t be let passed your front gate. AUTHOR Jo Schofield, 40ish, Arts (Honours)

Jo would like the magical ability to cut through beauracratic bullshit because it would be nice!

The Black Sun Commission

By Shaun Hobby

With the benefit of hindsight, you can always catch the sun glinting off the scope of the bullet that finally puts you in the ground. It shows you the guy in the next lane dropping the travel mug that causes him to lose control and send you careening over the guardrail to your fiery death in the valley below. It will also show you the moment that you realise that the captain of the ship you’re being paid to recover is also tipping his shots in the cactus pot. What it won’t show you is the butt of the homebrewed assault rifle that puts out your lights and introduces you to the chilly laminate of the galley countertop. Or so you think. Chad Hardcastle awoke slowly. The back of his head throbbed where he had been struck. Tentatively he felt around the point of impact, relief washing over him as his hand came back streaked only in the sweat and grime he had collected during the previous week of bar-hopping and roughsleeping that had served to cement his cover story. He eased himself to his feet and looked around the washroom where he had been deposited, unconscious and alone. He went to the sink attached to one of the walls, soaked a hand towel and pressed it to his aching head. A few minutes later, his vision cleared and the tremors of shock that locked his hands in the ministrations of a drunken puppet master had mostly subsided. He went to the porthole and looked out across a slowly lightening horizon. The slight undulations of the waves beneath the vessel helped calm him. He was glad that these events had not befallen him on land, where he was much less surefooted. Outside, on deck, he saw a man dressed in olive green fatigues and a tattered brown t-shirt wipe sweat from his bald head with his long black neckerchief, the man’s jaw moved in a thoughtful chewing motion. Chad moved away from the window and moved toward the doorway. He tried the door and found it locked. He found a scrubbing brush hanging from a hook in the shower cubicle. Grasping it in his right hand he surveyed its heft, then swung it across his body a couple of times in a diagonal motion. Unsatisfied with its usefulness as a weapon, he returned to the door and rapped upon it with the metaltipped brush handle. ‘What?’ a muffled voice boomed through the door. ‘How long have I been in here?’ he asked. ‘About seven hours,’ came the reply. ‘That makes sense. I could use something to

eat. Also, is this water in here safe to drink?’ ‘Try it and find out. You want to eat and Marcus wants to know what you’re doing here, Reggie Smith. We all want something.’ ‘I was looking for work. Graham was unreliable and Marcus took me on in Lobito. That’s all there is to know. Also, I can hear a knocking noise coming through the floor. I should probably check it out.’ ‘Nice try, Reggie’ he replied, stressing the syllables of my heretofore rock solid identity. ‘You can stay right there.’ Chad heard a stream of muffled radio chatter from the hallway. A few minutes later, the door to the washroom swung inward. A heavyset man in black trousers and a greasy grey t-shirt walked through the door, the barrel of the oft-repaired Russian assault rifle swept back and forth as if hunting for his scent. Grey-shirt pointed the gun at Chad and ordered him to move. He carefully backed out of the room and moved backward and to the right. As Chad exited the room, he instinctively turned left only to be met with a sharp bark of ‘turn around’ which was immediately followed by ‘walk.’ He turned on his heel and walked toward the stairs at the end of the narrow hallway; he caught a barrel poke in the spine for his trouble. They descended the stairs together in an impromptu conga line of thinly veiled hostility. At the bottom of the stairs, they were greeted by yet another uniform hallway lined with doors. Through the door to the galley, Marcus sat propped in what had become his usual chair. He looked as though he had not moved since Chad had last been in the room. As they entered, he briefly looked up before going back to sharpening the carving knife that he held in his wiry right hand. Marcus was tall, but not physically imposing. Chad figured this meant he was either the brains of the operation or the most ruthless of the pirate crew. The fake drinking the night before and the deferential expression on Grey-shirt’s face suggested he was probably both. Chad felt a cold ball of terror begin to expand in his chest. Determined to hold his water, he squared his jaw and began to take stock of ‘Captain’ Marcus. ‘Reggie, my friend,’ Marcus began, ‘what are you doing on my ship?’ ‘Marcus, you know what I’m doing here. I’m keeping your engines running until we reach Barbados,’ he replied, trying his best not to

PHOTOGRAPHER Sarah Dinham, 29, Education

Sarah would choose the power of teleportation as her superhero power because it’s a cheap and efficient way to travel around the world. Retouching by Jess Nicole

belie his cover identity. ‘You come here under false pretences, insult my hospitality, smuggle mutineers onto my boat…’ ‘Hang on a second, Marcus, mutineers?’ ‘Four white boys, sneaking around the ship, ask Little Joe he’s seen ‘em.’ He signalled at Grey-shirt who was still standing behind me. His commanding demeanour completely evaporated as he readied himself to give his report.

They made their way to the cabin. Chad opened the door and a gust of foul-smelling wind hit him like a bat to the face. He closed his eyes against the onslaught and walked up the narrow stairway. Cupping his eyes with his hands he slowly opened them. What lay before him in wet crimson lumps were the tattered remains of Little Joe and something he assumed to have once been Billy. The front window of the cabin had been smashed, the movement of the ship pushing the noxious wind down the stairs to where Marcus stood below.

‘Weirdest thing I ever seen, Captain.’ Little Joe began. ‘I was in the hall outside this one’s room when I saw this guy in grey walking that way,’ he gestured to his right in a chopping motion. ‘Just going all slow like he was sleepwalking. I yelled at him to stop but he just kept going. Went after him but by the time I got up on deck, he was gone.’

‘Marcus,’ said Chad as he turned and descended the stairs, ‘it’s bad up there. Joe and Billy have been torn apart and there’s nobody piloting the ship.’

‘Big Joe says he saw somebody down in the engine room. He had yellow hair, not black like Little Joe’s guy.’

He let Marcus disappear from sight before slowly making his way back toward the stairs. When he reached the top he found Marcus, t-shirt in hand and rifle slung over his back, frantically cleaning gore from the instrument panel. He was muttering to himself, ‘where the hell? Where the hell are we?’

‘Whoever they are, they’re not with mine.’ He protested calmly. The little radio on the counter next to Marcus crackled to life. Static poured out of the tiny speaker. A voice, presumably Big Joe’s, spoke hurriedly but Chad could not make out the words. Marcus’ eyes widened and he reached for the gun next to him on the table. The voice on the radio fell to a whisper, and then the screaming started. A single gunshot rang out of the radio before the radio fell silent. Marcus snatched up the walkie-talkie. ‘Billy, how is everything up there?’ he asked of the man who was currently piloting the ship. There was no response. He pressed the button again ‘Billy, come in, over’. Still there was nothing. ‘Joe, go check on Billy.’ ‘Yessir,’ the large man replied. A few minutes pass before the radio crackled back to life, Joe’s voice filled the small kitchen space. ‘Captain, you gotta get up here now.’ ‘What is it, Joe?’ ‘It’s Billy, he’s… he’s…’ ‘Stay there, I’m on my way.’ He said into the receiver. ‘Come on, you’re going to tell me what’s going on and then you’re going to die.’ He picked up the gun and pointed it at Chad’s chest. ‘Move.’

‘Get out of my way! Stay here!’ Marcus growled as he moved past him, gun barrel raised, and went to the cabin.

Chad, still shielding his eyes from the whipping of the wind and ocean spray asked ‘what’s our heading?’ Marcus looked at the compass on the dash, disbelief turning to horror as he realised that the needle was spinning endlessly. He checked the GPS device that sat next to the compass. The satellite map on the display showed us as being in a field outside Johnson City in western Kansas. Marcus wheeled around and pointed at Chad. ‘You did this!’ Chad raised his hands in supplication, ‘I had nothing to do with any of this. I have exactly zero clue what is going on here, man. What I do know is that I want to get the hell off this tub.’ Marcus, his gun still pointing at Chad, fumbled behind him for the satellite phone receiver behind him. He picked it up, the jagged remains of the cable hung across his chest. Dismayed, he threw the receiver at the wall behind Chad’s head. Chad saw the face at the window behind him as the broken piece of phone left his hand. Two red-rimmed grey eyes stared out from under a shock of black hair plastered to a grey face. The stranger’s mouth was a twisted rictus of unfettered malevolence. An enormous grey arm shot through the hole in the window, cleared the control panel and grabbed Marcus by the head. The hand dragged his head backward and onto

the jagged shards that lined the windowframe. A gurgling scream filled the room as Marcus’ lungs began to fill with blood and seawater. Chad clamped his hands over his ears as the arm that held his gun moved upward and began firing blindly behind him. As he jerked the barrel about spasmodically, a bullet struck home and connected with the head of the figure outside the window. The sound of the bullet ricocheting off the man’s skull was barely audible amongst the reverberations of gunfire in the small space. Chad ran through the door that led to the outside of the cabin. He hurtled into the railing that led down to the deck, turned right and began to descend the stairs that ran toward the bow of the now-runaway cargo ship. He turned to see that the man who held Marcus’ head against the window-surround was perched on the wall outside the cabin. Stranger than this feat of endurance was the realisation that the man’s foot seemed to be embedded in the outer wall of the ship as if he had clawed his way up the side of the wall. The grey man, looking down at him, released the ragged remains of Marcus’ skull and began to climb down toward the deck. Chad started to back up, tripped on a length of rope that lay on the deck and collapsed with a wet thud. He quickly got his hands beneath him and shuffled backward on all fours toward the starboardside railing. As he backed away, his hand found its way into the steel-capped toe of a dark grey boot. He wheeled around frantically and saw that the boot contained a leg clad in light grey trousers. The figure had the same red-rimmed eyes as the creature that continued to pick its way slowly across the deck toward him. The figure grabbed him by the collar of his dirty, checkered shirt and lifted him to his feet. He turned, squinting as he and the sun turned their gazes upon each other, to find the air behind him empty. He spun on his heel, searching for the other, and found himself alone on the deck. He headed back toward the bottom of the cabin stairs. Gripping the handrail for dear life, he trudged slowly toward the top - the scene of carnage inside still fresh in his mind. Get a grip, Chad-man, we’ll get the navigation working again and then we can return this damned boat to Black Sun, get paid and go sit on a nice beach where the deckchairs come fitted with straightjackets. He reached the cabin door; a murky soap-wash stained the small window and mercifully blocked his view of the interior while he steeled himself. He turned the handle, held his breath, screwed his eyes shut and stepped through the door. The cabin was empty.

Empty and clean.

Chad sunk to his knees. He sat there for over an hour, images of slaughter flooding his memory, threatening to overwhelm him completely. He stood and looked at the console. The satellite phone had returned to its cradle, the cabling reattached to the desktop. The GPS showed him a few hundred nautical miles off the West African coast and the compass read a northerly heading. The phone began to ring. Chad picked up the receiver. A hiss of static slowly rose, crackled a few times then cleared. A voice so clear and sharp that it might have been coming from right behind him said ‘Mister Hardcastle, this is the Black Sun Trading Company. We wish to extend our thanks for your efforts in recovering our property.’

“

THE VOICE ON THE RADIO FELL TO A WHISPER, AND THEN THE SCREAMING STARTED.

“

The bodies of the three men, their clothing, guns, everything, were gone. There was no blood, no broken window; the shell-casings that littered the floor during Marcus’ desperate fight for survival were gone.

‘Stolen property? Do you think I give a flying fuck about your property? Also, don’t you think it might be a matter of professional courtesy to let me know that I was recovering a fucking ghost ship?’ ‘Mister Hardcastle, please take a look out the window.’ Chad looked out at the deck of the ship; the long deck of the cargo ship had disappeared. In its place rose a mast and sails. Ropes zigzagged across his field of view and a strong breeze caused the sails to billow — the picture of perfect health. Around him, the cabin walls dissolved, the phone receiver vanishing as if it had never existed. The voice continued, seemingly from thin air. ‘You make your coin by stealing back that which has been stolen. Does this not make you anything more than the pirate of pirates? The one thing that any men brazen enough to take to the sea on another’s property has come to fear? Long has this ship weighed anchor captained by those whose lot is to inspire terror in the hearts of iniquitous men. You are not the first, nor will you be the last. Long may she sail, Captain.’ ‘What about Marcus and his crew? What was so special about them?’ ‘They were not special, they were simply a different flavour of the same thing as you.’ ‘And what’s that?’ ‘Bait.’

Fiction

Our Little Boy The tears fell, streaming down her face like rain drops on a window. It seemed as if they would never end. Just as she was losing hope there was a knock at the door. It was a man in uniform. His face was drawn. Georgia could tell that something was very wrong. He told her that they had found the body. Years had passed since her son’s murder, yet she still couldn’t make herself care for the empty words that people handed her. She grew distant with her friends, and even her family. She didn’t want their compassion or their tears. She had wasted too many of her own. Her grief was eternal. It was the grief which drove Jackson away. They were still technically married but he’d moved out months ago. They’d struggled through couples counselling but in the end, nothing helped. No one could help them deal with the burden of losing a son. She had been busy packing away Jarrod’s things, Jackson buried himself in work. He’d once confessed that he felt dead inside, but for some reason he was still there. Still breathing, still eating, still living. She saw him now at the courthouse. He looked haggard, on the phone to someone and trying awkwardly to tie his tie with one hand. He hadn’t had time to shave that morning. She clucked and made her way over, automatically reaching up to help with his tie. As he hung up the phone he gave her an astonished look. ‘Imagine Jarrod seeing you without a tie,’ she murmured in excuse. A stout man stood beside the door to the courtroom, calling for the Joshua Haines case. She straightened up slightly and glanced at Jackson. ‘Are you coming?’ Jackson had no choice but to follow her into the courtroom. This was the first hearing that he’d attended and it was the sentencing. She was glad that he’d decided to come. Joshua Haines was separated from the court by a glass partition. He was a tall, lanky blonde whose hair had always been combed to perfection. His eyes were guileless but that would never fool her again. He was the man who stolen her child away.

word. He sat, his back straight and tall, visibly on edge. He never said so, but she knew that he blamed her for Jarrod’s death. She was the one who let him out of her sight. ‘Will the defendant please rise,’ the judge began, turning to look at Haines. She looked up. The entire courtroom held its breath. The room began to blur as her eyes filled with tears. Hastily, she wiped the tears away. She stared back up at the judge, as if he was about to give her permission to stop her grief. Finally, her little boy’s killer would see the punishment he deserved. ‘Due to your cooperation and the contents of the psychological reports provided…’ She didn’t give a stuff about the psychological reports. Absently she reached for Jackson’s hand. This time he didn’t resist. She glanced at him, surprised and a little relieved to see that he was crying. He squeezed her hand, so tightly she was sure that he’d cut off circulation. It didn’t matter though. She looked back to the stand. Watching Haines, she realised that her tears were running again. They ran unrestrained as she watched Haines clasp his hands together nervously. He looked as if he already knew the outcome. She couldn’t decide whether he looked remorseful or not. ‘Twelve years, with a minimum parole period of five.’ She whimpered and Jackson’s hand slackened in hers. The courtroom had erupted in whispers. She stared at the defendant as he gave a relieved sigh. She closed her eyes, deciding that he wasn’t remorseful. Five years. There was a call for silence and they all stood at the judge made his exit. In the scramble for the door she didn’t get to see whether Joshua Haines had been taken away in handcuffs. She and Jackson let the rest of the row pass, still dumbfounded by the sentence. She watched the reporters and the students chattering eagerly and the students. They all seemed so untouched by the case. She almost wished she were one of them.

The front benches were filled with law students and reporters, all abuzz with excitement about the case. As Jackson took his seat beside her, the courtroom stilled. Haines looked up, meeting Jackson’s gaze, fear flashing across his face. He was working for Jackson at the time of Jarrod’s disappearance. Jackson seemed to be frozen still as he stared the other man down. Georgia reached for her husband’s hand but he quickly pulled away, breaking his gaze with their son’s killer and shifting in his seat. They sat in silence. They stood as the judge entered. She welcomed for the distraction. Head down, she fixed her gaze on an imperfection in the wooden bench in front of her. It seemed wondrous to her that it could remain so untouched by human pain and misery. They retook their seats and she tried to listen as the judge spoke. He started reiterating the evidence, to her it sounded as if he was speaking another language.

Once the room was almost empty, Jackson threw a punch at the bench in front of them, succeeding only in hurting his hand. He shook it out and buried his head in his hands.

She avoided looking at the judge directly, having heard that they didn’t like to be looked at. Perhaps if she didn’t look at him at all he’d deal out the maximum penalty. Jackson, however, gazed brazenly at the judge, hanging on to his every

ARTIST Amber Halll, 21, Arts/Early Childhood Education

‘Why did I think that it would be different?’ he whispered, half to himself. ‘You believed in justice,’ she began calmly. ‘This is a sham. How is our little boy only worth five years? There isn’t anything just about that.’ AUTHOR Kayla Gaskell, 19, Creative Writing

Kayla would like to be invisible, that way she could go anywhere and do anything and her options are completely limitless.

If Amber could have any super power it would be astral projection so she could attend classes without leaving the comfort of her bed.

Music -

LIFE PILOT: Anthony Bruno takes a look at the debut EP from Adelaideâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s powerful noise/metal band Life Pilot and shoots Eli Green, the drummer, with the fast five.

REVIEW: LIFE PILOT // HIGH NOON My first experience with Life Pilot was in 2013 at Soundwave. I was eagerly waiting for Crossfaith, a great band from Japan, to begin their set. On the neighbouring stage, Life Pilot was performing. Even from my relatively far distance from the stage, I was in awe of their sound and stage presence. They were commanding the show, jumping from the speakers, and as the last note sounded on their final song, the guitarist threw his guitar across the stage. But it wasn’t until the release of their EP that I sat down and listened to them properly. Will this crazy and energetic band be able to convert their insane live performances onto a record? Put on your cowboy hats as I give you my thoughts on Life Pilot’s western-inspired debut EP: High Noon. The first song, Born of a Jackal, showcases what to expect on the rest of the album. It starts off with guitar feedback before the vocalist bursts into the track, yelling the words “I want to start it off so let’s make things clear, I wish everyone of you would disappear” while the guitar and drums build up. The song then explodes into crazy guitar work and intense drumming ending in a crushing dissonant breakdown that is hard not to bang your head to. If the EP was all dissonant chords, breakdowns and general insanity, it would get old quick. However, Life Pilot throws in healthy doses of variation in song writing throughout the record. At the end of Four out of Five ain’t Five, the whole song strips back to a pleasant sounding guitar riff and a basic drum beat, with catchy vocals. The song My Time showcases the band’s more melodic side, with intricate guitar work, powerful lyrics and a general ‘epic’ vibe to the song. Another song, Raw Hide, includes a western sounding riff at the beginning of the song and some lyrics from and old country song of the same name. The vocalist is someone whom I don’t think will be everyone’s cup of tea. He generally utilises a high, raspy yell. Occasionally he lets out a lower pitch growl to accentuate certain sections of a song (such as in Raw Hide) but the reliance on the higher pitch vocals may turn people off the record. Personally, the more as I listened to the EP, the more I liked it. I feel like it adds to the energetic sound that Life Pilot has. Overall, High Noon is an astounding debut EP from Life Pilot. The album is heavy, fast and crazy, with enough variation to stop listeners from getting bored. It is clear that they’ve managed to turn their incredible live performances into a true-to-life recording. I highly recommend giving the EP a go, particularly as it is utilising the pay-what-you-want system on Bandcamp! They have some massive shows happening soon and another EP in the works, it would be wise to keep your eyes on this upcoming band.

Music -

Q& A:

Fast Five with Eli Green, Life Pilot’s drummer Q: What was your thought process behind releasing High Noon digitally on a paywhat-you-want basis? A: We had some pretty bad luck on our previous release, Compass. We put a lot of hard work into promoting that split record and a week before it was released, a download leaked and we ended up with hardly any people buying the record. This time we thought we’d get ahead of the inevitable piracy and offer it for a Pay What You Want so that at least we could see who was buying the EP and where from. Those details really help you target your future releases/tours and without it, you’re just hoping for the best. People seemed to get behind it this time around and a surprising number of fans still paid for a download.

Q: Any pre-gig rituals? A: Nick and I sometimes do some yoga and deep stretching to loosen up so we don’t fall apart the next day. Jake will strap on his headband and his ridiculous soccer shorts. That get-up usually means a crazy show is about to kick off.

Q: Best album of 2014? A: Tough! For me it’d be Royal Blood’s self titled record. That album takes no prisoners!

Statues’ Together We’re Alone deserves a mention even though it was released in 2015, we got a sneaky peak in 2014 and it blew everything else away.

Q: What’s in store for Life Pilot in 2015? A: We’ve got a busy few months. We’ve got some great shows with Norma Jean and Jack The Stripper coming up, but sadly Tim is leaving us. So we’ll be training a new guitarist and writing/recording our follow up EP to High Noon. The new tracks are sounding heavy as anything so far, so we’re pretty keen release it and get back into touring for the rest of the year.

Q: Favourite song to play live? A: For me, it’s probably By The Book. It’s one of the few songs we have that isn’t massively technical but still hits like a sledgehammer. It’s usually the track we end on, which means that whatever energy you’ve got left in the tank gets spent on this one. Usually to pretty insane results. Many instruments have been broken due to this song. AUTHOR Anthony Bruno, 19, Computer Science

While not playing drums, Anthony is found getting angry at his teammates in League of Legends. Photo by Julia Henning, Imagenel Productions

Complete the crossword and send a picture of your answers to stephanie.walker@flinders.edu.au and WIN one of ten free double passes to Palace Nova!

ACROSS 5. Medical discrimination, homophobia, what more could you ask for? 6. You just want to burn your comics on his head (2 Words) 8. Something you can’t handle in this military legal drama (2 Words) 10. It’s got Nic Cage and hell, usually that would be enough, but… no. (2 Words) 11. An unemployed mother blows open a contamination scandal (2 Words) 17. This cabbie becomes obsessed with the welfare of a teenage sex worker (2 Words) 20. An family reunites following the death of their adoptive mother (2 Words) 23. And you thought YOUR boss was the devil... (3 Words) 25. A kidnap victim’s family take brutal revenge in this horrorcomedy 26. An aging military man cleans up a London housing estate (2 Words) 27. A pair of bounty hunters take down an evil plantation owner (2 Words) 28. The first, and sadly not last, of the Paul Kersey films. (2 Words) 29. A series of child abductions leads a father to desperate measures 30. William Foster is having a bad day in LA (2 Words) Crossword clues by Shaun Hobby

DOWN 1. Masked vigilante gives the dark knight detective a run for his money 2. A spy-turned-bodyguard takes extreme measures to solve a child abduction (3 Words) 3. Kevin Bacon goes on a quest to avenge his family (2 Words) 4. Following the death of his family, Frank Castle becomes (2 Words) 7. A woman violently hunts down her husband’s killer. (3 Words) 9. They should have picked another house. Any other house. (6 Words) 12. A man comes back from the dead to avenge the killers of he and his fiancée (2 Words) 13. Federale turns vigilante in this in over-the-top romp 14. A woman takes brutal revenge against the men who invaded her home (5 Words) 15. This attorney proves you don’t need a ‘proper’ office (2 Words) 16. Tells the story of the case that ends school segregation in America. (3 Words) 18. A man takes revenge on the justice system that failed his family (3 Words) 19. A veteran tries to steer a young man from involvement with a local gang (2 Words) 21. A lawyer in a class action suit is threatened with bankruptcy (3 Words) 22. Still the go-to film about custody battles 24. A lawyer defends an altar boy accused of murder (2 Words)

O’Fiesta // 2015

Review -

Reviewed by Jess Miller

Notice of Reminder...Reviewed by Georgia Riessen

This year’s O’Fiesta was, once again, a fantastic way to see out O’Week. Apart from a light smattering of rain, the weather certainly beat last year’s Arctic temperatures, creating the perfect atmosphere for free Henna, the Laneway’s new food vans and some (reasonably sensible) alcoholic fun. And with live bands like Safia and The Griswolds, who wouldn’t have a great time? As a long-time Griswolds fan I have to say I was particularly stoked about this performance, even though they didn’t play my favourite song; on the other hand, as someone new to Safia, I confess that I think I’ve found my new favourite band. So if you attended this year’s O’Fiesta, I strongly suspect you enjoyed yourself immensely—and if you weren’t there, then I hope to see you there next year!

At the beginning of this, the second year of the 7th Liberal cabinet’s reign of terror, Tony ‘the Scarecrow with Hay for Brains’ Abbott asked the Australian people for one thing. That we stop questioning his government so they may get on with the job.

Who: Students Who Like Music What: Evening Concert

Who: The Australian Public What: Your Leaders

Rating: $5 Beer and Cider

Because he holds the people of Australia in such malicious contempt that he’s forgotten that we are paying him upwards of $500,000 per year to run this country and take accountably for it. But seeing as he is too incompetent to do the former, perhaps we shouldn’t baffle him with explaining the latter?

Price: $500,000 Rating: 2016-2017

On Starting Honours // Reviewed by Shaun Hobby Academic Stress

Judge Dredd // Movie

I would rather shoot myself in the face with a shotgun loaded with broken glass than give my Honours presentation. I get that we’ve only got one shot at this year, but I can’t imagine that repeating that fact to us every hour on the hour is doing much to reduce anybody’s stress levels.

My first question when viewing Judge Dredd for the first time, was ‘What’s happening with those giant gold shoulder pads?’ Once I got over the initial shock that I was supposed to believe that these gold shoulder pads would actually provide some level of protection for an officer, I was quickly blitzed by Sylvester Stallone’s jawline, and the bleak future of humanity presented in the story.

Maybe I’m panicking prematurely. Maybe this whole thing is just a long, methodical process that ends with us carving the first juvenile scratchings of long academic careers into the desktop of history. Maybe it’s just a picture of a dick. Only one way to find out. Who: Honours Students Price: Your Soul What: The Hardest Year Ever Rating: Ask in October

Reviewed by Jenn Matters

It’s a terrible 90’s action flick, and you should watch it if you like any of the following: one-dimensional bad guys, explosions, or for some unknown reason, Rob Schneider’s acting. Who: Lovers of Bad Movies What: Your Favourite Thing

Price: $4 (iTunes) Rating: 5/5

PODCAST REVIEW Serial For several weeks, there was a great deal of talk and speculation online about a new serialised crime show; word of mouth had created a level of interest that was rarely seen in any but the most addictive entertainment. As the hype train steamed along to the inevitable conclusion (and almost as inevitable disappointment), one factor of the show stood out from any other; people were excited about a radio show. Serial, a spin-off of another radio series, This American Life, had managed to capture the imaginations of millions of listeners. So what was it about this show that had enamoured so many people? Serial was envisioned as podcasting’s answer to the American cable television experience — an audio-only answer to The Sopranos, The Wire, Mad Men, and their

ilk. However, the show has far more in common with Errol Morris’s film The Thin Blue Line; it documents an investigation into real events, into a case that had long been thought solved, through interviews, example of evidence and the documentarian’s own interpretations. For the first season, the show follows Sarah Koenig as she investigates the murder of Hae Min Lee, an 18-year-old high school student in Baltimore, Maryland, USA. The chief suspect in the case, her exboyfriend, Adnan Masud Syed, was found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment. However, far from being an open and shut case, Koenig finds that many of the pieces of evidence don’t quite match up; despite this, the truth (or at least, definitive proof of the truth) remains extremely elusive.

Serial has been the fastest podcast to reach 5 million downloads in the history of iTunes. Make up your own mind: serialpodcast.org

This is not a show that presents the audience with clear answers. Though we are privy to Koenig’s thoughts on the case, nothing about them gives absolute or definitive conclusions. The slippery, back-and-forth nature of the show may frustrate some listeners, but it is this element I believe has captured the audience’s imagination. In a post-Lost world, it seems that audiences are addicted to questions, more than answers, and attempting to nut out mysteries lets people engage in the show in a way that more straight forward narratives lack. And it must be said, if that’s your jam, then Serial delivers in spades. Serial has contradictory testimonies, evidence that will confirm one story and deny another, and additional evidence that will do the exact opposite, which is all tied up around the central question: is the likeable, normal-seeming Adnan a murderer? Koenig herself finds him charming, but given the verdict, and testimony that Adnan is a manipulative sociopath, can she (and the listener) really trust her judgment in regards to him? It’s this central dilemma that has likely sparked the imaginations and conversations of audiences around the world, and to be honest, it’s a bit of a doozy. Given the nature of the show however, listeners may find the conclusion of the season frustrating, and be frustrated by Koenig’s own conclusions as well. Koenig

The slippery, back-and-forth nature of the show may frustrate some listeners, but it is this element I believe has captured the audience’s imagination. never tells the audience what to think, but she does tell them what she thinks which has the potential to alienate audiences who find her lines of reasoning incorrect. And again, it has to be said, that anyone who lives in hope of definitive answers will likely be disappointed with the show. The case is over a decade old, and much of what can be said has been — the show is going over old ground, and anyone expecting shocking revelations, as in, never-before-seen evidence uncovered, is looking in the wrong place. That being said, it does become clear as the show goes on that the pre-existing case against Adnan is spotty at best, and many factors involved make Adnan’s fate seem extremely unlucky. Then again, there’s this other piece of evidence… and so the show goes on. Second and third and forth guesses, ad infinitum. Two additional points must be mentioned in this review. First of all, as of February 2nd this year, Adnan Syed has had an appeal request approved by the State of Maryland, which is the first step in Adnan’s attempt to clear his name. I think there can be little doubt that the work done by Sarah Koenig during the show has been a major contributing factor to this, demonstrating that, for all its faults, investigative journalism still has a place in the modern media landscape, even when using older formats to gets its message across. Secondly, the theme-song sounds irritatingly like the opening few bars from the opening of Sesame Street. This drove me nuts. Should you listen to Serial, then? If you’ve an interest in True Crime, procedural drama and mysteries, you’ll probably find something to enjoy in this series. It’s also free, so that’s a plus. However, I would caution any listener to understand that there are no solid answers forthcoming, and to manage their expectations accordingly. Or become obsessed with trying to solve the case yourself — that’s also a valid option. AUTHOR Brendan Whittaker, 30, Bachelor of Media

If Brendan could have any superpower, he would like robot hands.

What type of Supervillain are YOU?

What do they call you then?

Do people ever call you crazy?

Yes

A madman

Goal oriented

Would you classify yourself as good or evil? From where do you watch your plan unfold?

Do those people continue to live?

Good, of course.

Why?

Maybe

Are you a leader or a loner?

The thick of the fray

Leader

Loner

What is the motivator for your actions?

Just â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;cause

A thief

Neither

What do you value most?

Justice

The Anti-villain

Famous psychopaths include The Joker and That Yellow Bastard

Famous anti-villains include Magneto and Sinestro

Whatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s the best way to get cash?

Power

Make it

A Just Cause

The psychopath

The rooftop

My mansion

THE POWER HUNGRY MADMAN Famous power hungry madmen include Lex Luthor and the Kingpin

Steal it

THE trickster Famous tricksters include Loki and Catwoman

ORIENTATION WEEK 2015