Celebrations
On the weekend our parks were full of Australia Day revellers. Most, I expect, were celebrating their deep affection and appreciation of their nation of birth or adoption, the great natural gifts of a lucky country and its lucky people, the pride and the delight of being part of an essentially liberal, inclusive, and egalitarian community of mateship and ‘fair dinkum’ Aussie values. I suspect few, if any, were there to remember and rejoice in the misery of the boatloads of wretched convicts who were transported in irons from their homeland to be cast upon the desolate shores of distant antipodes.
The Fame Game
Way back in 1968, Andrew Warhola, better known as the iconic American artist, director and film producer Andy Warhol, the celebrated pinup boy of the uber-cool 1960s visual art movement known as Pop Art, made what was to prove a profoundly prophetic statement. “In the future,” Warhol proclaimed, “Everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.”
Massive Feet
As usual, this week the big news is breaking first right here on the Nyst Legal blog.
And it doesn’t get much bigger than this. Australia may boast the beautiful Ballina’s big Big Prawn, Coffs Harbour’s iconic Big Banana, and our own sunny Woombye’s Big Pineapple, but when it comes to being the biggest, who else but those dirty rotten Yanks would try to outdo everyone at Christmas time? This week the thriving metropolis of Sedalia, in the heart of Pettis County, Missouri, unveiled perhaps its proudest achievement – a 177 feet tall red-and-white sock it hopes will officially become the world’s biggest ever Christmas stocking. City leaders proudly announced this wonder weighs a whopping 372 kilos, is 22 metres wide, and about 2 metres longer than its relatively puny predecessor in the Italian city of Carrara. Who knew anyone in Italy would have time to knit a 50 metre sock?
Twentieth Century Hero
The 1953 Morris Minor utility was small by any standard. Its cabin was barely big enough for one mum and one dad, so all the kids got bundled into the back. It was right there in the back of the old ute, sitting shoulder-to-shoulder with my two big brothers on the rattling metal tray, that I first heard the awful news. Shortly after noon, US-time, on 22 November 1963, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the 35th President of the United States of America, was shot down on the streets of Dallas, Texas. Even as a little kid, when my parents pulled up to the roadside to solemnly report what they had just heard on the radio, I understood immediately from the shock and sadness in my mother’s voice the world had changed forever. Fifty-four years later, who doesn’t still remember that terrible day?
Intoxicated People
This week I learned some stuff about intoxicated people. Given the popular national penchant for a cold beer on a hot day, perhaps it’s unsurprising that it happened on a trip to the sweltering tropics.
The whole saga started more than a year ago when the Liquor and Gaming regulators decided to raid a Far North Queensland pub to make sure everyone up there was conducting themselves with all appropriate decorum and discretion. As it turned out, they concluded to their shock and horror that they weren’t.
Harvey-World Troubles
The nasty news, gossip and scandal that started with Hollywood heavyweight Harvey Weinstein has grown into a tsunami of distasteful allegations of misogynistic and worse sexual misconduct in the United States, reaching to the very upper echelons of the industry. It has been fascinating to watch the reaction from all corners of the community, one that perhaps marks a pivotal turning-point in cultural attitudes regarding the latitude we as a society will permit those in positions of power. It has already seemingly sounded the death knell for the once stellar careers of more than a few noted luminaries in Hollywood and Washington.
The Man In The Arena
When I first started doing trial work as a young lawyer I was constantly surprised and intrigued by the persistent inconsistency between different eyewitness accounts of the exact same incident. Particularly when dealing with a violent or otherwise shocking event, such as a car crash or a brutal street brawl, no two witnesses seemed to remember the same event in the same way. For a defence lawyer it was the welcome stuff of reasonable doubt, but I soon learned it was also just a fact of life. When people are confronted by emergent and traumatic circumstances, their brains can only take in so much detail, and the fact two witnesses remember one event in completely different ways doesn’t necessarily mean either one is telling fibs. Quite the contrary.
The Best-Laid Plans
The weather’s already started to heat up, and summer’s on its way. Woo-hoo! That means cocktails, beers and BBQ’s by the pool, long days at the beach and a bunch of other mindless summer merriment.
And speaking of mindless, it also means the start of a whole new round of summer music festivals.
Separation And An IKEA Future
Marriage breakdown can be tough. Even when separating parties are more than pleased to wave their erstwhile better half goodbye, they are still faced not only with the job of carving up their previously-joint property, but also the jolt of severing their attachment to the physical accoutrements of the relationship. Where children are involved, of course the stress goes up exponentially, as the children’s physical and emotional needs, and the disruptive impact of the separation on their daily lives, become the paramount consideration.
Judgement Day
The other night I had the craziest dream. Remember Haley Joel Osment? He’s that cute-but-oh-so-creepy little weird kid with the Sad Sack face who kept seeing dead people in M. Night Shymalan’s 1999 supernatural horror-movie The Sixth Sense. If you were as spooked as I definitely was by that things-that-go-bump-in-the-night ghost story, you won’t have forgotten this kid in a hurry. But then, as if The Sixth Sense wasn’t quite spooky enough, in 2001 he backed it up with a dark and contemplative tale called AI Artificial Intelligence, which was even more disturbing. This time he played – surprise, surprise – another cute, creepy little weird kid, only with a slight and distinctly unsettling difference. He’s a robot.
The Great Dissenter
“I am the result of a loving upbringing in a peaceful country, with wonderful parents and siblings, a very long-term relationship, stability, support – but a feeling that life isn’t always just and that there is injustice for people and we should do something about it.”
Redemption Road
There is no more powerful human narrative than the story of redemption, the assurance that no matter what evil we have done we can atone, strive to be better and ultimately find forgiveness. Not everyone believes in true redemption. But, like the good preacher, a good lawyer has to believe we all can hope to one day be delivered from our sins.