Well, that didn't take as long as anticipated
Topic: Whatever
It turned into a perfect day for reading just after lunch -- the wind picked up and acquired a bite, clouds rolled in, and it started to rain. Almost as if the weather was endorsing my decision to curl up with a blanket and a pot of tea and just not move for several hours.

So I had blocked off the weekend to read Half-Blood Prince and I managed to knock it off in about 9 hours. I'm debating the merits of reading it again. I probably will -- I've got no other novels in the house at the moment, and no inclination to read anything that's not fiction. But I didn't find it as satisfying to read as the previous books. It doesn't seem to me that the characterizations in this book, particularly those of minor characters, are as engaging as they were in previous volumes. Obviously, it still held my attention, but I felt like the sub-plots and side jokes that I enjoyed in the previous books were missing from this one.

Rowling covers a lot of ground, but the story feels a bit rushed and didactic, as if to say, "I need to tell you this. Pay attention! This is important. So is that. This and that. Got it?" I felt like several plot points were telegraphed too obviously. There were also several instances where events from a previous book that were related to character or story development and continuity were referenced in a way that suggested that Rowling couldn't quite figure out how to use them, so just sort of threw in a "remember this?" sentence in a way that I found a bit jarring.

That said, I liked the way the book fills in quite a lot of significant back story, takes some interesting and unanticipated twists, and establishes a clear mood for the next book. I enjoyed the evolution of Ginny Weasley, and Harry's character is developing nicely as well. I think its possible that I may not fully appreciate this book until the next one is published, since it seems the book's primary function is to push the story along to the final showdown between Harry and Voldemort by tying up some loose ends, providing motivation for future action, and establishing what the stakes are for various characters.

Okay, yeah, I'm going to read it again.

Disappearing act
Topic: Whatever
The new Harry Potter book sits waiting for me. First, laundry, dishes, grocery shopping, tidying up. Where did this sense of responsibility come from?

It's already been a busy weekend. Yesterday HM invited me to lunch with her and her friend who's visiting from the States. HM was at the law school on a one semester student exchange, so she's not going to be around much longer and I wanted to spend time with her. So lunch was followed by a little souvenier shopping and a look at the exhibits at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, and I let myself be talked into a trip to the Observation Deck in the Rialto Towers (the tallest office building in the Southern Hemisphere! At least, it was at the time the publicity materials were written), and then, because there were plans to go to Ro's that evening anyway, we just went straight there. Which is where I ended up spending the night, because the trams stop running at midnight, and the little party we had going didn't run down until 3 a.m. I really had thought I'd be coming home at some point during the day, which is why I didn't do the dishes or the shopping, and I'm off to do that now, and you will not be hearing from me again until I've read Harry Potter at least once!

Things Australia has done for me:
Topic: Catching up
Reminded me how delightful Cadbury's chocolate is - outside the US, that is.

Given me several delightful new junk food fixations: Arnott's is evil.

Introduced "reckon" into my conversation.

Made me feel strangely at home by rockin' out to "Livin' On A Prayer" at odd moments.

Given me several bizarre "tram tales" with which to entertain my friends. (Bizarre tram tale having nothing to do with me: 15-year-old boy takes tram for joyride).

Made me extremely wary of crossing the street, because I'm still not entirely sure which direction traffic will be coming from.

Taken my arachnophobia to fairly ridiculous levels.

Reminded me how much I enjoy thrift stores.

Occasionally bewildered me by having a nickname for just about everything: Macca's, cozzie, brekkie, footy.

Helped my budget go a bit further with great student concession tickets to everything from movies to museums.

Provided me with a lovely, vibrant, multiethnic city to live in. I love Melbourne.

Maybe some day the Blue Fairy will make this a real blog,
Topic: Development
with news taken from the headlines of the day. Until that happy day arrives, you get old news and more stuff about G8, because I just don't think that fast.

Prior to the start of G8, Salon.com published this list of things that Bush could do at G8 to demonstrate that he is serious about fighting poverty in Africa. The author makes some suggestions that sound good to me. Stopping with the lazy shorthand that lumps all the diverse countries and peoples contained in the continent under "Africa" could very well be a good thing, for instance. And recognizing that nations that aren't the most capable but also aren't the poorest get lost in the mix is important. But the author doesn't seem to have much doubt about the helpfulness or desirability of Western aid. And her suggestion for channelling more aid through NGOs suggests that she's either not aware or doesn't agree with critiques of NGOs, such as the question of who they're accountable to and whether there are appropriate systems in place for monitoring NGOs. I have a problem with the fact that there's no signficant acknowledgement in the article of the debates around the effectiveness of development aid and the practice of channelling aid through NGOs.

Economist James Shikwati, in an interview in Der Spiegel, absolutely rips into the concept and practice of aid, for both humanitarian and development purposes. I don't know enough about Africa to make any specific counterarguments, but I can't help but feel that there's some serious oversimplification going on in at least some of his arguments. For example, in his characterization of the Marshall Plan and the post-tsunami reconstruction in Thailand. But I found it an interesting read, nonetheless.

Clearly Shikwati must be disappointed in the outcome of the G8 summit: more aid, but no fair trade. Disappointed, but not surprised.

Update: Just found the following articles from BBC coverage of the TEDGlobal (Technology, Entertainment and Design) conference in Oxford: Technologies 'to aid the poor', which highlights the Grameen Bank's mobile phone program in Bangladesh, and Call for rethink in aid policy, which presents a succinct overview of problems with traditional development programs: short time frame, inappropriate technical assistance, distortions in the local economy.

Also from TEDGlobal coverage: It's here, it's queer, get used to it.

New billing month, new bandwidth cap!
Topic: Whatever
Finally. The good thing about my ISP is that they don't charge extra when I exceed my monthly usage cap. The bad thing is that when they slow down my service speed after I have exceeded the cap, Tripod seems to not want to let me play with my blog or website. I had to go to uni to write my last two or three entries, which is a drag. And the really bad news is that, 2 months out of the last 3, I've gone over my cap about 2 weeks into the month. Hopefully, when I'm not indiscrimately downloading journal articles in the name of last-minute "research" or attempting an extensive and long-delayed update of Better Late... the bandwidth will go a little further.

Life as I know it: I'm still looking for a part-time job, on the countdown to the start of the next semester, and most importantly, on the countdown to the next Harry Potter book! A group of us impoverished grad students are pooling our resources to buy it, and while full custody arrangements have not been worked out, I think I'll be getting it first since I read fast and have been known to stay up most of the night when I get drawn into a story.

Links galore! Having a blog may become an obstacle in finding a job in academia. Good thing I don't want one. A good editorial by Robert Fisk on the London bombings. London Mayor Ken Livingstone's statement following the bombings is worth reading, and can be found at the end of John Nicols's latest post, which is also worth reading. As if hackers didn't have a bad enough reputation, someone has proven willing to exploit the bombings to perpetuate computer viruses. Newest entry on my reading list: War Made Easy. Does the investigation into who outed Valerie Plame, and the subsequent jailing of Judith Miller herald the end of investigative journalism? Before Judith Miller was a poster child for investigative journalism, she was using anonymous administration sources to sell stories about Iraq's purported WMD (Slate's Jack Shafer took Miller and the Times to task on this point repeatedly. What a way to live: six months in a motor home, six months on a barge in Europe.

Adding up
Topic: Development
I literally just stumbled across this, so I haven't taken the time to really go through it and digest it, but my initial reaction is definitely warm and fuzzy. 1000 Women for the Nobel Peace Prize is a website - and a forthcoming book - about work being done by women around the world to further the cause of peace, broadly defined as the enhancement of human development and security. The bio information on the individual women is very brief, but interesting, nonetheless (click "Browse" under "1000 PeaceWomen" to read through the available bios). Being a nerd, I'm looking forward to digging into the information about the project's methodology and results, since its the first attempt to document the development work of women, particularly women engaged in grassroots-level work, that I've heard of happening at this scale.

My thoughts are in London today
Topic: Events
Heard from my friends in London, and everyone is okay, which is a relief. Lacking a TV, I've been following the news on the Guardian's news blog.

MaryAnn Johanson has some thoughts on the role of blogs in disaster reporting, along with snippets from various Londoners' blogs.

David Plotz wrote dispatches from London for Slate, here and here, but I think I prefer Slate's blog round-up.

Its good to see the blog entries emphasizing how Londoners took things in stride, but still, I'm feeling sorry for London today.

Translation
In the class I took on Human Rights in Southeast Asia last semester, we spent a lot of time talking about whose voices get heard at the global level, and the significant barrier that stands between many Southeast Asian activists and scholars and widespread recognition of their work in the English-speaking world. We spent the best part of the last class discussing the difficulties with translation: creating a work that is true to the author's intent while rendering comprehensible to an audience from a different language and culture. Just translating words does not a good translation make.

Too bad we didn't have this to illustrate the point for us: a guy living in Shangai found a pirated DVD of Return of the Sith in which the subtitles were derived by translating the Chinese language dub script back into English, and posted choice screencaps from the DVD. I think my favorite may be the rendering of "Jedi Council" back into English as "the Presbyterian Church".

(link via BBspot)

Loving the G8 coverage
Topic: Development
Suddenly everybody is interested in development! How exciting! I wonder what it says about my future career plans that the articles I like best are those that are critical of the development industry?

For instance, in Welcome to the aid business, Michael Holman takes Western NGOs to task for their relationships with governments and the media, and highlights the lack of accountability structures for NGOs operating in developing countries. Chukwu-Emeka Chikezie's article in the Times develops a point made in Holman's piece: that the governments of donor countries can and do use aid to gain influence over developing countries, while the gains to the recipient country (particularly its poorest), are often very small-scale.

Chikezie suggests that the G8 leaders would do well to listen to people from Africa, and Emily Wax's article in the Washington Post concurs. She highlights the issues of corruption and international trade and how they perpetuate a cycle of poverty in Africa.

Criticism of Western aid and development NGOs doesn't tell the whole story, of course. I'd hardly want to do the work if I thought it did. For one, if the alternative to NGOs and development agencies is to hand poverty relief over to multinational corporations, as George Monbiot alleges G8 leaders are doing, I'll take most NGOs any day. But I do think it's important to look at the dark side of development as well. Obviously, any time money and politics coincide, there's going to be more going on than what's apparent on the surface.

Update: From the Christian Science Monitor, a good story about what it takes for a family in Malawi to live on $1 per day

Courting trouble
Topic: Politics
I really liked this post on This Is Not Over about the significance of Sandra Day O'Connor's role in Supreme Court decisions, how one vote on the court can make a difference, and why it's important to be concerned about the person who will replace her. (See this article as well)

Also see Slate's article on potential nominees, and note that many of the candidates listed are in their late 40s or early 50s, which could very well mean that her replacement will have a long tenure on the Supreme Court. I know Supreme Court nominations don't usually make for exciting news, but this is a story worth following, and an issue worth being active on.

Update:
I thought that this story in the Nation on the potential importance of O'Connor's replacement was interesting: Court Fight: It's More Than Left vs. Right.

Two more lists of potential nominees have been published in the New York Times and Washington Post.

The Post also has an article about cases on the Supreme Court's fall docket in which O'Connor's swing vote likely would have been significant.