Word of the day

Sometimes I think that rather than a word of the day (and its been a long time between days) I should have a metaphor of the day. I love metaphors, and yesterday The Australian provided several examples of a wonderful metaphor, "not out of the woods yet". The Cut and Paste column in the newspaper provided examples from Agence France Presse, the Wall Street Journal, Wayne Swan and the New Brunswick Times and Transcript. Needless to say, the out of the woods website tells us more about the wonderful industry which has arisen to monetise domain names than about the metaphor. To find out about that, you need to go to something like the Free Dictionary, and poke around amongst the advertising for a definition.

The Economist

I have read The Economist pretty much every week for the last 25 years or so - ever since I thought I could afford it, rather than having to sneak a look at the State Library of Victoria copy. So I was engaged by the piece in The Australian today about the new movie Dead Man Running, where the main character (played by the rapper, former drug dealer and multi-millionaire 50 Cent) is seen reading The Economist. If you are a serious liberal, a radical liberal, with a real-world approach to economics, it is for you. If even 50 Cent reads it . . . what did The Economist pay for that brilliant piece of product placement, I wonder? Or was it done for love? I would have.

Word of the day

Today's word is an acronym, BOEH, from Dutch Baas Over Eigen Hoofd and in English Boss of My Own Head. According to the Economist this week, it is a Belgian feminist group with mixed Muslim and non-Muslim members. It supports the idea that women should be able to choose what they put on their own heads, or what they don't put on their heads. BOEH has demonstrated the principle in demonstrations, where they put "sieves and toys on their heads." Here's a nice group picture, and some more from Indymedia ("don't hate the media, be the media").

Poems and Songs

Last week my colleague John Arfield, University Librarian at the University of Western Australia, sent us all a song written about the new UWA Science Library. "To my knowledge" he wrote, gloating, "it's the first song written about a new library building." And as the refrain goes "It sets your inner nerd free, Its the new science library."

On Sunday afternoon John Shipp, at the centenary celebration of the Fisher Library (the University of Sydney), produced not only a wonderful poem about the Fisher Library - Les Murray's Incunabular (1998) - but also the poet himself to read it. Surely the only poem about a university library written by Australia's greatest living poet? And with this memorable comment on the virtual library:
"Others may have my joys at home. Fine.
But I surfed the true paper."

My own library is certainly not jealous of these achievements. Youtube has everything one could wish for including, in the case of Swinburne, Library Pacman, possibly the only live Pacman re-enactment in a university library. It was put together by Swinburne games students. It only has these words: "They're more than games to us too."

The poem about the Fisher Library (an ode to Thomas Fisher) was complemented by the Vice-Chancellor, who described the pleasure of cutting the pages - and discovering the contents - of books which no-one had yet read. I wonder how many more thousands of volumes that no-one has ever read lie awaiting discovery in the University of Sydney library?

Word of the day

One of my favourite expressions is win-win, and the expression was recently used by Bryan Frith in The Australian to describe the Commonwealth Government's recent announcement relating to Telstra. The piece was headed "Reform package a win-win for all but Telstra." But given that Telstra is the major party in the reform package, surely this is a win-lose situation? How can youo have win-win when the major party loses?

The term applies in both game theory and conflict resolution, according to the Wikipedia, and according to the Wictionary, win-win is an adjective. And according to the Wikipedia article, non-zero-sum is a synonym. Brad Spangler, on the Beyond Intractability website, points out that a win-win situation doesn't necessarily involve everyone winning - but everyone believes he has won.

Nevertheless, I think that Telstra lost, making it a win-lose, or possibly a win-loss, to turn the expression into a noun.

Word of the day

Today's word is shovel-ready. During a recent visit to Canberra, I encountered the word several times, used in a normal everyday context. The main reason for this is that because of our infrastructure-driven economic recovery, which has been so effective, it became increasingly important for government to locate projects which are shovel-ready.

The meaning is fairly clear - a project for which early stages are completed (rationale development, planning, and so on) so that we can start spending money now. The importance of the concept, and hence the ubiquity of the term in these difficult times, are also clear. The term is also used extensively in the US, where similar strategies are being used to pull that nation out of recession. The concept of shovel-ready infrastructure projects was referred to in Word-Spy at the end of 2008 but there is a use cited from as early as 1995. The concept is not new.

Some people may have assumed, as I did initially, that shovel-ready refers to shovelling money out of the money wheelbarrow. Not true. The term is a metaphor taken from the building industry.

Government Discovers Web 2.0

As I started writing this post, I listened to a short video featuring Lindsay Tanner and Nicholas Gruen. Mr Tanner is the Commonwealth Minister for Finance and Deregulation, but also has a strong government role in information management and IT. Dr Gruen is the head of the recently announced Government 2.0 Taskforce.

One might be cynical and say that just when a term starts to lose what little meaning it had through over-use, government discovers it. But in fact the new initiative is impressive and worthwhile - a second life for government blogging, too. The taskforce is interesting, and not just as an example of a runtogether. It has a large and diverse membership - 15 of them. They include strong advocates of open public sector information and open licensing too - Brian Fitzgerald, for example. The taskforce has one of the rare domain names outside the gov.au circle of wagons. There is a blog, on the front page, and the members of the taskforce have been taking it in turns to blog. Well worth a look, and more - there are good opportunities to participate.

In fact, the Taskforce has just published Towards Government 2.0: an Issues Paper and invites comments before 24 August. You can comment in many ways, and the process is pretty open - worth following. Government 2.0 sits in AGIMO (the Australian Government Information Management Office), which sits under the Minister for Finance and Deregulation.

Meanwhile, over in the Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, the consultation on the future of Australia's digital economy has led to a final report on the process, Australia's Digital Economy: Final Report, published online on 14 July.

And finally, a very interesting report from the Victorian Parliament. This is the Final Report of the Inquiry into Improving Access to Victorian Public Sector Information and Data, issued by the Economic Development and Infrastructure Committee on 24 June. It is issued as a Victorian parliamentary paper, and is a remarkably comprehensive summary of where we are with public sector information. Its recommendations are far-reaching and if implemented, would set an admirable benchmark for openness of government information.

Encouraging developments, each of them in its own way. I'll read them and get back to you.