Compulsory voting

There is a natural tendency to think of compulsory voting as a straightforward contradiction of one of the  fundamental principles of democracy. 

But I have been reading several things which throw light on this apparent contradiction. One is Judith Brett's excellent if rather clumsily titled book on Australian democracy - From secret ballot to democracy sausage: how Australia got compulsory voting (Text Publishing, 2019)

There has also been an interesting report on American democracy by the Knight Foundation - The Untold story of American non-voters (The 100 Million Project) (Knight Foundation, 2020) downloadable from https://the100million.org/ 

At the 2016 US presidential election, 27.3% voted for Trump, 28.5% voted for Clinton, and 41.3% did not vote. Non-voters have a relatively lower confidence that elections represent the will of the people. Those lacking confidence do so on the principal grounds that the president is not elected by popular vote, that the system is rigged, or that the process is over-influenced by big money. But the low vote itself undermines democracy.

And also worth listening to is a podcast by Chris Budd (Professor of Mathematics at the University of Bath) Truly fair elections are impossible - mathematically. (Radio National, 27 February, 2020).  Download the podcast from https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/bigideas/truly-fair-elections-are-impossible---mathematically/11949644 Australia's electoral system comes well out of Budd's analysis.

As Brett argues, one of the preoccupations of Australians has been the importance of broad participation in the process. In Australia, participation in the electoral process is seen as a civic duty, and there are many measures to make voting as easy as possible. And in spite of the common aphorism, "vote early and vote often" there is no evidence that there is a significant level of fraudulent voting.

Brett concludes, Australia does voting well, and this is the result of a long period of evolution, a broad sense of fair play, and an electoral administration which is perceived to be impartial and honest. It does not of course mean that Australia does government well. 

I think that these are the six elements of Australian voting which make it work well:

• the secret ballot - we are said to have invented that, and it is sometimes called the Australian ballot
• the fact that everyone votes, and must vote - we don't have categories of people excluded from the franchise (e.g. people who have committed crimes); and in fact voting is not compulsory, since you are not obliged to vote, only to take a ballot paper.
• there is an impartial and fair electoral administration, not controlled by the political process, so our electorates are close to equal size and boundaries are drawn fairly; the same systems apply in all states and nationally.
• Australians can vote by postal ballot, by absentee vote (at any polling booth in Australia), and at many locations overseas. The electoral rolls are kept up to date. Voting is easier than anywhere else in the world, and has been for over a century.
• preferential voting, together with an element of proportional representation means that the system is more representative of different political currents than the systems of the UK, US and other first past the post systems; it means that there is a much higher element of choice in voting than there is in simple majoritarian two-party systems
• there is a relative absence of animosity, as exemplified by the custom of the democracy sausage.

It may be that introduction of some or all of these features into the electoral systems of other countries would enhance their effectiveness. What it is reasonable for your country to ask of you? 

Voting seems the most reasonable and least onerous of all the things governments demand of us.

Paradise for neologisms

The current coronavirus is, to look on the cheerful side, a paradise for neologisms, just as staying at home is a paradise for the introvert, as you can see from this poster advertising the many advantages of staying at home, using the slogan "It has never been so easy to save lives."

A coronavirus is a large family of viruses of various kinds, which can cause illness in mammals and birds. The novel (new) coronavirus, causes the infectious viral illness COVID-19. This is caused by a virus called SARS-CoV-2 (named by the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses) which emerged in 2019, possibly as the result of transmission from bats.

Here are some of my favourite COVID-19 neologisms, but there are many. In these articles, I have preferred the Wikipedia as a source of information, since it is quite rigorously quality-controlled. The same is unfortunately not true of other sources of information, such as the websites of national health departments or the general media.

Social distancing is one of the major terms. It refers to "a set of nonpharmaceutical infection control actions intended to stop or slow down the spread of a contagious disease. The objective of social distancing is to reduce the probability of contact between persons carrying an infection, and others who are not infected, so as to minimize disease transmission, morbidity and ultimately, mortality."

Keeping away from other people (my take on social distancing) is designed to reduce the basic reproduction number - the number of other people infected by each infected person. A better term that social distancing is physical distancing - you can still stay in touch online, just stay at home.

There are many nice lists of social distancing measures, and one may add others. Social distancing impacts the usual form of greeting such as the kiss (French) or handshake (Australian male) or hug (increasing numbers of Australians). Wikipedia shows some animated illustrations of alternative greetings, such as those using eyebrows, shrugs, nods and other gestures.

Of course, there are many many iterations of social distancing rules. In Australia, the Government recently (20 March) issued another iteration, which referred to the new 4 square metre per person rule. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) felt that it was best to quote the Prime Minister's exact words, also providing a video of his exact words. The ABC also comments "You should still be trying to keep 1.5 metres away from people at all times, and avoiding any handshakes or physical contact with people outside your family."

The report also notes that there is a wide variety of situations in which these social distancing rules do not apply, including health care settings, pharmacies, food shops, schools, workplaces, and public transport. Anywhere you might be likely to have fun seems to be included, however, depending on your own predelictions of course.

Social distancing is widely defined. For example, this example from the BBC has quite a different take on what it is. Dr Norman Swan, now a byword, has a partcular angle. There are many others. However, it seems pretty clear that Bondi beach last weekend was a huge social distancing fail.

Next: asymptomatic.

Election in Paris

Well, decision day approaches. On Sunday March 15 the people of Paris will vote in the first round of an election for Mayor of Paris - along with many other local government elections across the country. 

In France, although the voter cannot allocate preferences in the Australian style, the election is held in two rounds. In the second round, the following week, most candidates are eliminated, and the two leading candidates contest the election, as explained.

As a result, Anne Hidalgo, the current mayor may be re-elected, though in the second round. Hidalgo was born in southern Spain sixty years ago and is a dual French-Spanish citizen. She has been mayor since 2014, and is supported by the socialists (PS), communists (PCF), and various centrists and independents, with 23% support in the January opinion poll. There is a nice article  about her in The Guardian.

The main competition seems is from Les Républicains (LR), the centre-right opposition. Their candidate, Rachida Dati, was a minister under Sarkozy and she is the current mayor of the 7th arrondissement. France24 suggests that she is a strong challenger.

The governing party, La France En Marche (LFEM), the party of the President, Emmanuel Macron nominated Benjamin Griveaux (16%) as its candidate. When he resigned as candidate in late January over a sex video, he was replaced by Agnès Buzyn a doctor and formerly Minister of Health in the national government.

The flamboyant Cédric Villani, a dissident member of the President's party, is a distinguished mathematician and winner of the Fields Medal in 2010, but his vote has slipped in recent polls, as the field as narrowed. However, he is also greenish in colour, and was a strong supporter of Hidalgo in 2014 when she was elected.

Europe Ecologie Les Verts (EELV) has nominated David Belliard, who wants to free Paris from the car. Like that of Villani, Bellisrad's support has recently fallen, as many of his supporters appear to have transferred their allegiance to Hidalgo, who also has a strong environmental element in her program and wants to pedestrianise the city centre, among other things.

There are three other candidates. Aimer Paris (To Love Paris) has as candidate Serge Federbusch, who is supported by the extreme right Rassemblement National (RN). Libenons Paris is the party of Marcel Campion, who owns the Paris ferris wheel, and has had a long career in Paris carnival. Décidons Paris is a list headed by Danielle Simonnet, of the left.

Recent comment following the resignation of the Macron (LFEM) candidate has suggested that the main challenger to the long hegemony of the socialists (PS) - since the mayoralty of Jacques Chirac from 1977-1995 - is Rachida Dati of the PR. Dati is a high profile former minister under Nicolas Sarkozy and is waging a strong campaign. France24 summarises the situation close to the end of the campaign.

So for whom should we vote? My decision is clear, although unfortunately I am without the right to vote. Not only was David Belliard born on the same date as I was (although 31 years later), but he supports the reduction of cars in Paris - the pedestrian candidate par excellence. Bonne chance, David.

Year of the Rat

The Year of the Rat, in the Chinese Zodiac, began on 25/26 January 2020, and runs to 11/12 February 2021. In Chinese it is 鼠年and in pinyin transliterated as shǔ​nián. 

So it is time to say something about the rat, which is to be expected in a blog about language. 

The Down Under Rat

Rats don't have much of a fan base, although there are rat fanciers in Australia. However, it is forbidden to import rats into Australia, even fancy (i.e. domesticated) rats. So there has been local breeding of fancy rats, and one outcome is the Down Under Rat (pictured), a handsome Australian breed with distinctive colouring. 

According to the Wikipedia, “fancy rats care for themselves and are affordable, even compared to other small pets; ...additionally, they are quite independent. loyal and easily trained. They are considered more intelligent that other domesticated rodents. Healthy fancy rats typically live 2 to 3 years." 

I have two small collections of rat material. One is my collection of rat images. Both are from Paris. One was issued by the Mairie (local council) of the 15^th arrondissement of Paris (a pleasant residential area located in the south-west of Paris between the Tour Montparnasse and the Seine River) as part of its campaign against rats. 

The other was issued as part of a campaign against the “massacre” of rats by the 15^th arrondissement. Zoopolis.fr (Paris Animaux Zoopolis) called for an end to the poisoning of rats. Their campaign in the forthcoming mayoral elections includes a manifesto. Four candidates including the current mayor, Anne Hidalgo, have indicated agreement with all of the manifesto. 

I have also a small collection of three books about rats. Brian Plummer’s Tales of a rat-hunting man (1978) is the story of a man who has been involved with rats since he was 8 anyway. Plummer (1936-2003) was a Welsh dog breeder and ferret enthusiast, among other things, and wrote over 35 books about terriers and ferrets. His interest in rats was in killing them, using a three-species team (Brian, terriers and ferrets) 

The second book, The Rat: a world menace (1929) by Alfred Moore Hogarth, (1876-?) is a serious treatise on the rat. Moore Hogarth was an expert on pests, and a member of the College of Pestology. He was instrumental in putting forward a Bill for Rat Destruction to Parliament in 1908, and was involved in the first Conference Internationale du Rat (1928). He was an implacable campaigner against rats, and his interest in them was eradication. 

Most recently, I’ve read The Enchantment of the long-haired rat: a rodent history of Australia, by Tim Bonyhady (2019). This is the engaging story of a single species – not the common foreign mammal species rattus rattus or rattus norvegicus, with which we are familiar, but Australia’s own rattus villosissimus. This is a distinct species of rat, native to Australia. Bonyhady’s fascinating book, published by Text, is a tribute to the long-haired rat, or Mayaroo in the language of the Diyari people of Lake Eyre, for whom it is a totem. Along with the Polynesian rat, rattus exulans, the mayaroo is an example of the migration of this family of rodents to remote parts of the world, preceding or accompanying homo sapiens. 

Naaman Zhou in the Guardian and Nancy Cushing in Inside Story make out a nice case for its charm and indigeneity. The illustration below is from John Gould’s Mammals of Australia. 

There is a helpful article published by the Australian Museum entitled Is It a Rat? It aims to help us to distinguish between common rat-like animals of Australia - the black rat, the brown rat, ring-tailed possums, and bush rats. Unfortunately, apart from confusion with possums (small ones) Australians do not easily distinguish between indigenous and foreign rats, or for that matter, between rodents and marsupial “rats”. 

As Zhou suggests very eloquently of Bonyhady’s book “In many ways, this book is about that language and literature itself. Like it or not, there is a certain way we talk about rats. There is a rat canon. There are rich stylistic rules. That is part of the fun. Much of the book is quotation, line after line of fantastically vibrant rat reportage from the 19th century.” 

There was a recent debate on Twitter, sparked by @GreenJ (Jonathan Green) about depredations by pests in suburban food gardens. It soon became a debate about whether the possum could be called a “pest”, as rats can be. “No, it can’t be a pest” some said, “the possum is a native animal.” Alas, many Australian native animals are called rats. I remember my father once referring to particular animals as “rat-like things”. These were antechinuses, a charming and protected Australian marsupial. 

There are seven or eight native Australian species of rattus, according to Peter Banks, writing in The Conversation in 2016. They arrived in Australia at least a million years ago. The bush rat, rattus fuscipes is one of these, and there are many other rodents too, as well as rat-like marsupials carelessly lumped in with true rats; here is one of many articles about the difference. As Bonyhady suggests, the now-iconic bilby was fortunate not to be called a rat. 

Banks also dispels what he calls the urban myth that you are never more than two metres or six feet away from a rat. The article cited suggests that the figure is more likely to be fifty metres, which still seems close; the same article suggests that there may be 10.5 million rats in the UK. 

So ambivalence and confusion mark our attitudes to rats. Let us hope that the “fantastically vibrant rat reportage” of the 19^th century continues today, as we enter the Year of the Rat.

Kurt Vonnegut Museum and Library

The Kurt Vonnegut Museum and Library, now almost ten years old, moved into new premises in Indianapolis (Vonnegut's birthplace) this November. In one of those ostensible coincidences which Vonnegut appreciated, I was reading an article in The Economist which celebrated this event. It referred to the founder and CEO of the KVML, Julia Whitehead. While it is very unlikely that she is a relative of mine, it is almost impossible to prove that she is not, and I am proud to be connected no matter how tenuously. So I am particularly pleased to congratulate cousin Julia.




Vonnegut mural, Indianapolis, by Pamela Bliss.

What explains Vonnegut's enduring appeal? The Economist suggests: 
"An unassuming candour that is native to the American Midwest, argues Ms Whitehead, a quality that disarms readers and forces them to confront eternal questions. His books are not simply criticisms of war; they are meditations on human nature and the meaning of life, wrapped up in zany plots and deadpan wit."

I started reading Vonnegut's books in the 1960s - before Slaughterhouse-Five made him very famous, I think. Vonnegut sometimes reminds me of another midwestern writer and humorist, James Thurber (1894-1961) identified with Columbus, Ohio, who I discovered even earlier. 

News of the opening of the new KVML led to two thoughts - first that I must re-read some of his books, and second that one day it would be nice to visit Indianapolis - especially now that I'm a member of the Vonnegut Library. The Vonnegut Mural, illustrated above, is at 345 Massachusetts Avenue, and is 38 feet (almost 12m) tall. The mural features on the visitindy.com wesbite, with other attractions. I clicked on "get directions" and found that the best choice in terms of price flies out of Avalon Airport and takes 25 hours. The price (A$1979) includes a trip back home. The best option takes about the same time, and has a single stop, in Los Angeles.  

I've just finished re-reading Vonnegut's novel about how to handle life if you have more money than you can imagine (God bless you, Mr Rosewater). It includes a memorable statement about human nature and the meaning of life - "There's only one rule that I know of, babies 'God damn it, you've got to be kind.'" Perhaps echoing Henry James, and many many others.

Inspired by the opening of the new home for the KVML I've taken a census of my Kurt Vonnegut collection (which turns out to include most of his books) and started to re-read them selectively. I started with Cat's cradle (1963) a few months ago, then Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) and last week, God bless you, Mr Rosewater (1965). There are a few which I don't have, and they are all available from the online shop of the KVML. I'm buying Player piano (1952).

I think that next, I'll browse Palm Sunday (1981) subtitled an autobiographical collage. 

Ron Goulart, inventive and funny, on the progress of civilization

Ron Goulart's novel, When the waker sleeps (1975), starts with a quote from Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947, no relation, as far as I know) "The progress of civilization is not wholly a uniform drift towards better things."  In the novel Goulart demonstrates the truth of this in his anarchic way, through the experiences of a group of people who wake up every fifty years, to experience, briefly, the world as it is at the time. Goulart's images of the future of our civilisation are bizarre, unexpected, anarchic.  Artwork for the book is by Michael Whelan, later the first living artist elevated to the SF Hall of Fame.

Ron Goulart (left) re-entered my consciousness last year (2018) when I bought a copy of his novel The Wicked Cyborg, published by Daw Books Inc in 1978. This was an impulse purchase, in the nice Russian Hill Bookshop in Polk Street, San Francisco. I was looking for something else.

Goulart is a prolific author of almost 200 books including many under a variety of pseudonyms. In the 1970s I mainly read his science fiction. In fact, over the last years of decluttering, a small collection of books by Ron Goulart has survived. I still have (including the new book) fifteen of his SF novels.  

Goulart is 86 now, and has written a lot. When one thinks of words, as one does in this blog, no-one has invented more of them than Ron Goulart. It is one of his trademark devices. Some of his themes are prescient - the fallibility of technology, its ubiquity in our lives, the fragmentation of America, the transformation of the artefacts we use, environmental decay, and more. The current interest in the internet of things was preceded by Goulart's often hilarious portrayal of automated devices; they are often on the fritz, as Goulart referred to a malfunctioning robot machine.

Malfunctioning is also a characteristic of the United States in some of Goulart's works, starting with After things fell apart (1970). The United States, in Goulart's imagining, has been superseded by a plethora of new political entities, such as the Frisco Enclave, in Goulart's inventive but still relevant political satires.  

Goulart makes up new words. His works provide the language for an eccentrically dystopian world, an often cheerful world of the ersatz and the new, words like neowood, the airfloat bed, naugahyde (an actual product), plazpaper, pixphone, landmobile, pros (prosthetic limb), syntin box (synthetic tin), Nondenominational Gift Day ("it used to be called Christmas"), hypogun, leisuresuit, stungun, pseudoplateglass, plyoball, simwickerchair, syncaf, jamsub (on soytoast), syntin sling chair, and pixwalz (or pixwalls).

One thing to observe is that most of the neologisms are runtogethers. I discussed these in a post twelve years ago.

You can obtain Goulart's books still. The best way to do this is to go to the extremely comprehensive list from Fantastic Fiction, and this also includes links to places which sell copies of these books - mostly Amazon. 

The elephant in the room

"The elephant in the room" is a wonderful English expression, partly because it relies for its usefulness not only on the visible presence of an elephant in the room, but also the fact that no-one mentions this.

The Wikipedia defines the expression as "a metaphorical idiom in English for an obvious problem or risk that no one wants to discuss." It is said to derive from an 1814 fable by Ivan Krylov (1769—1844), poet and fabulist, entitled "The Inquisitive Man"; the protagonist notes many small details of his visit to the museum, but fails to notice an elephant. The same approach might be taken with this photograph of the cats on my mantelpiece.

There are many suggestions about the origins of the expression in English, but my favourite is from a 1935 Broadway musical, Jumbo, in which a police officer stops Jimmy Durante as he leads a live elephant and asks, "What are you doing with that elephant?" Durante's reply, "What elephant?" was a regular show-stopper. Durante reprises the piece in the 1962 film version of the play, Billy Rose's Jumbo, with Doris Day.

The Jimmy Durante example reflects most clearly the true significance of the elephant, which is to deny, tacitly or explicitly, that there is an elephant, despite the fact that its presence is obvious to everyone.

The Oxford English Dictionary gives the first recorded use of the phrase, as a simile, in The New York Times on June 20, 1959: "Financing schools has become a problem about equal to having an elephant in the living room. It's so big you just can't ignore it."^[4] This is not a great example, since our experience tells us that there is pretty much no problem, no matter how large, that can't be ignored by most people.

There is a nice example in press release from the Climate Council recently. “The leaked COAG agenda paper indicates Federal Energy Minister, Angus Taylor wants to ignore the elephant in the room. Reducing emissions isn’t even officially up for discussion,” said the Climate Council’s energy expert, Petra Stock.

The artist Banksy illustrated the elephant in the room in this charming artwork, in which the elephant blends nicely into the room.

The poet Terry Kettering has a nice poem about the elephant in the room. 
    "Can I say his (her) name to you and not have you look away? 
    For if I cannot, then you are leaving me.... 
    alone.... 
    in a room.... 
    with an elephant"

There are many books - an example is The Elephant in the room: silence and denial in everyday life, by Eviatar Zerubavel (2006). The review in Library thing by devil_llama suggests, rather oddly, that the book tends to ignore the real elephant in the room: "The author spends all too much time on issues like sex (especially presidential sex) which is really no ones business to know about anyway, and all too little time on the real denial issues that are creating serious problems" such as global warming.

The elephant in the room is a much loved, essential and over-used expression. For something which happens so frequently (that is, agreeing not to discuss a plain reality) it is surprising that we do not have a word. The expression is used for book titles, gifs, cartoons, wines and most recently, a Nigerian movie directed by Asurf Oluseyi. The Kilivila language, spoken on the Trobriand islands of Papua New Guinea, has a word, mokita, which means "truth we all know but agree not to talk about."

Other expressions carry similar messages, and the most common relates to the emperor's new clothes. 

Why not mention the elephant? The Wikipedia suggests that "the term is often used to describe an issue that involves a social taboo or which generates disagreement, such as race, religion, politics, homosexuality, mental illness, or even suicide. It is applicable when a subject is emotionally charged; and the people who might have spoken up decide that it is probably best avoided."

All the same, there are some elephants in the room which cannot be ignored.

They have even ignored the clear sign "Please keep to the path."