Fannish Accent?

Rescuing some water-damaged magazines, I came across an issue of Vile Temptress which reproduced with permission Cathy Soukup's r.a.sf posting Fannish Accent?. It's a summary of a convention panel on fannish speech and body language. Cally added the caveat that the speech therapist's comments aren't based on formal studies and weren't intended to be taken as gospel, but her observations are fascinating - I recognise those pauses to think through complete sentences, the eye contact punctuation, and the gasped laugh at the end of a joke. The idea that fen may think in writing, not speech, is an intriguing one.

Uh Oh

Votes for Australia's federal Senate are counted in a slightly complicated way, so it takes longer to work out who's won seats there than it does to work out who's won the election. Counting continues, but there is a real risk that the Coalition (the conservative government formed by the Liberal Party and the National Party) will gain half the seats there, giving them control of the Senate. (They may also be missing just one seat, so that the right-wing religious party Family First will hold the balance of power.)

If this happens, they will be able to rubber stamp their own legislation, where before the Opposition (the Labor Party) or the minor parties (such as the Australian Democrats) would have been able to reject or amend dodgy laws. They will also be able to vote down Senate inquiries they don't want, successfully covering up anything they like. This is alarming - no government (even one you like!) can be safely allowed to be so unaccountable for its actions.

Jon sounded a note of hope by pointing out how Americans prefer a "divided house" - the House of Reps under the control of one party, the Senate under the control of other, so that they act as a check and balance on each other. After a few years of government extremism, Australians may also want those checks and balances back, and vote accordingly. Also hopeful is the fact that although the Dems have likely lost three of our Senators, the Greens will probably add more Senators, so there'll still be progressive voices in the Senate. I'm also given hope by the fact that not all elected Liberals are as far right as the party's leaders - they're unlikely to "cross the floor" (vote against the party's policies) but they may act as a moderate voice in the party room.

We're in for a rough three years, but there's still hope, and things to do.

ETA some media comment:

A mournful column from Margo Kingston's Web Diary:
New era dawns for an Australia in Howard's image. In case this demands registration you can't be arsed with, she argues that the "fair go" can no longer be called Australia's essence, and contrasts Howard's victory speech - in which he said Australians have never felt more confident - with the scare campaign he ran. "The truth is that Australians feel so insecure, due to their high general debts and crippling mortgages, that they cannot tolerate any perceived risk. They are so focused on staying in front of the mortgage that they turn their faces away from Iraq and its consequences for Australia."