No Exit

• Has the “Foodie” Backlash Begun? by Katherine Shilcutt in the Houston Press (Aug 2010)
• Foodie Fatigue by Christopher Borelli in Chicago Tribune (Dec 2010)
• The Moral Crusade Against Foodies by B.R. Myers in The Atlantic (Mar 2011)
• Foodie intolerance by Tim Hayward in the Financial Times (Jan 2012)
• Let’s start the foodie backlash by Steven Poole in the Guardian (Sep 2012) 
• Deactivating almonds: foodie backlash and the commitment to food from Last Appetite (Australian blog, Nov 2012)

“Twenty years ago, I apparently changed language forever. I published a book that unleashed upon an unsuspecting public a single word of terrifying power and controversy. That word is “fashionista.”“

~ Stephen Fried, author of Thing Of Beauty: The Tragedy Of Supermodel Gia (1993), in The Atlantic (17 April 2003)

Trade unionism in Australia, as in its ideological home of the UK & Europe, is the bastard child of the industrial revolution. Prior to this you had the property owning class (aristocratic or, untitled, ‘landed gentry’) and the serfs. In between were two major groups - the city artisans & the rural yeomanry. The artisans pioneered protectionist ‘closed shop’ guild thinking & the regulated apprenticeship system. The yeomanry - often younger sons of younger sons of younger sons of nobs - had freedom from the landowners to group together & negotiate for their work: they pioneered modern ‘enterprise bargaining’.

The two merged in modern Trade Unions but not the new middle class.

The yeomanry had centuries of independence: nothing to prove & no-one to prove it to. The artisans were caught up with the freedom of the industrial revolution & discovered the trap of middle class aspiration. They fractured into the trades & the professions (bye bye to Doctors, Architects, Engineers & their ilk).

The Australian Labor Party - a Trade Union based party - draws from both of these groups but has been sucked into oblivion through the dominance of one.

As a much later child raised predominantly by my equally late born father I learned one more strongly than the other. Even my decades older siblings have never understood it. I started in a factory in my teens - I didn’t leave the trade union movement & the ALP.The trade union movement & the ALP left me.

I could set out, in detail, where the ALP has lost its way. I could argue why the Bracks & Faulkner ideas of removing the factions (& unions) is not only Teh Stupid but doomed to failure.

Instead, my Easter Egg, if you can find it, is that the ALP is underpinned by trade unionism & trade unionism is underpinned by (pre-industrial revolution) artisan & yeomanry thinking.

One of those has been replaced by a bias toward one, & with that, a thinking born of the fragility of the middle class (in & of itself a relatively new notion).

The truth is out there. Its probably unlikely to win you the next election (although polls that suggest a majority want to vote for the ALP but won’t is a clue) but an honest return that balance might set you up for the next ten years.

Happy Easter (from one of the dissenters cast outside the tent because you’d rather have weakness pointed out by the other side than listen to dissent, man up & change anything.)

From an anonymous pastebin on the Adria Richards siuation [emphasis mine]:

“She’s done the opposite of making men and women feel more comfortable working together; now men will be looking over their shoulder every time a woman is present in the workplace or a conference because hey, she might do what Adria did. This is not an environment anyone wants to work in.”

‘Speaking of Quinn Norton, she has written her own first-person account of her involvement in the case. This is a poignant read, but the extreme subjectivity of the storytelling can sometimes be tough to swallow. ‘

~ Which Long Magazine Profiles of Aaron Swartz Should You Bother to Read? from Gawker

‘I am a journalist of hackers. They are my beat and my friends, so I’d seen people harassed and persecuted. Some piece of research or conference presentation would suddenly become an investigation, phone calls and meetings with lawyers. We came to expect raids, surveillance, and threats from powerful men who couldn’t tell the good guys from the bad in my world.’

~ Life Inside the Aaron Swartz Investigation by Quinn Norton.

‘(Quinn Norton) said, ‘If you’d told me what you were doing, I would have found you real hackers, and there would have been one smoking JSTOR server and you would have what you wanted and they would not know what happened.’ He really hated when I said that. Because he was doing an M.I.T. hack, and this whole idea that if you’re going to do something criminal, I’ll find you real criminals to help you …”’

~ Requiem For A Dream in the New Yorker

‘And so, scared, naive, and in pain, I met my lawyers … I had to Google grand jury to find out what it was.’

~ Life Inside the Aaron Swartz Investigation by Quinn Norton.

‘(Aaron Swartz’s father on Quinn Norton) We never liked her. I’ll say that, too. Other people can perhaps give you a clearer picture of her, but I’m not dispassionate in this regard.’

~ Requiem For A Dream in the New Yorker