I've posted some of the slides from last week's conference.
Tuesday, June 19, 2012
Sunday, June 17, 2012
Happy Father's Day
To celebrate my dad and, more importantly, to shame yours, I'm including a recent email exchange concerning one Professor Coffey:
On 6/5/12 10:12 AM, "Mikael Johansson"
>Dear Professor Coffey,>The patient you took care of on the flight was diagnosed with ST-T
wrote:
>elevations and an acute myocardial infarction. She was immediately
>transferred to interventional thoracic radiology and had an emergency
>coronary angiography performed. It showed an occlusion and a dilation was
>performed. Her ST-T elevations restituted and she went home without
>symptoms after a few days. According to the senior cardiologist the
>decision to make an emergency landing in Umeå was correct and might have
>saved her life. In Kiruna there is no interventional radiology and in
>Sundsvall or Luleå (other landing options) the thoracic intensive care is
>less advanced.
>
>The cardiologists are very grateful for your early interventions and
>support in the decision to land in Umeå. They send their best regards!
>
>I hope your trip home to Nashville was nice and safe. I appreciated your
>contribution to the conference in Riksgränsen a lot and hop to meet next
>time for the third midnight sun (or polar night maybe) symposia when the
>field probably have advanced a little further.
>
>Best regards,
>
>Mikael Johansson
>
>Mikael Johansson, M.D., Ph.D.
>
>Dept of Oncology, Umeå University
>
>No sweat. You're welcome Sweden.
Regards,
Dr. Coffey
southern Songlines
Songlines or dreaming tracks are paths across Australia which, according to traditional Aboriginal cosmology, mark the routes followed by the 'creator-beings' when the world was being made. These literal footpaths, which crisscross the continent and can span hundreds even thousands of miles, represent the footprints of the Ancestors.
Each path is said to have been sung into being by a dreamtime Ancestor. What is truly remarkable is that the paths continue to be preserved and memorialized through song. Songs, passed down from generation to generation, describe the topography of a trail and landmarks along the way. One need only sing the song to find one's way.
Bruce Chatwin's The Songlines is ostensibly about these paths, but the book is swarming with ideas.
Wednesday, June 13, 2012
theory & practice
Yesterday morning I sat in on a design charrette for the Villawood East Affordable Housing Project, part of an ongoing planning process for a comprehensive community redevelopment project in Western Sydney. In the afternoon, I took the train back to Uni to participate in an investigators meeting looking at the findings of a multi-year study examining the effectiveness of health impact assessment (HIA). It was kind of dizzying jumping from the morning meeting where we spent considerable time discussing the relative merits of a surface versus raised pedestrian walkway at a specific intersection, to the investigators meeting where, to determine 'review groups', I was asked if I identified as a positivist or a constructivist. It was cheering to see how graciously I was afforded a seat at each. And surprising how effortless it has been the last three weeks navigating these kinds of situations. If the Clinton School teaches anything valuable it is something to do with facing ambiguity. I don't mean this in a trivial sense. As public policy practitioners or public servants (or in your daily life) you're faced with uncertainties and ambiguities. Questions of technical or scientific results are primarily issues of certainty and uncertainty. To answer these we look for evidence. Questions of purpose and intent, interpretation of meaning, and ethical and political choice are primarily issues of ambiguity. To deal with ambiguity we look for justification, precedent, tradition, other sources of legitimacy. Facing ambiguity requires the facility to work in a variety of politically and socially interactive processes, translating differing value systems. For me this has meant privileging the communicative process/ stressing how things are framed, always asking who is not in the room and becoming more comfortable with making shit up as I go along. Because people make shit up everyday.
The Villawood Project was not exactly what I expected. Our office was brought along a couple years ago to look at potential health impacts and make recommendations to enhance health benefits/mitigate health risks of the proposed project. The project has had many stops and starts due to funding issues and the politically sensitive nature of the work. Similar to the U.S., the post-war period saw a huge out-migration from Sydney's city center as the suburban bungalow became the new symbol of middle class virtues and values. The government facilitated this out-migration through the construction of huge housing developments, much of it in Western Sydney. Although these developments did form part of an integrated economic strategy where the estates were to be provided with regional shopping centres and work opportunities, this public housing-led form of development turned out to be extremely problematic. The growth expectations of the time were not realised, and industry was slow to develop. Meanwhile, the composition of public housing tenants was changing from working class families to largely welfare-dependant and often single parent families. Public transport and community services were poor or non-existent. As a result of these various developments, when coupled with the high number of new migrants being housed in Fairfield (a suburb in Western Sydney), the location of a major migrant hostel, the South Western and Western Sydney sectors quickly became more stigmatised. Social exclusion of these communities has been further reinforced by economic restructuring over the past 20 years. Half of Villawood's population is first-generation immigrant, with a large Vietnamese and Lebanese population. Villawood the suburb is also associated with the Villawood Immigration Detention Centre, a massive detention facility used in the processing of asylum seekers and illegal immigrants.
This particular meeting, facilitated by the urban planning and design firm overseeing the project, brought in developers, urban designers, representatives from various social services and social housing, and other stakeholders to discuss tentative scenarios the firm had drafted based on community consultations, prior meetings, etc. Our role was to provide a health perspective to conversation. However, much of the health considerations related to the built environment--walkability and active transport, food access, air quality--is already embedded in their plans. Pointing these things out was obvious or redundant. Where an HIA seems to be effective in this situation is to point out issues of equity, disproportional impacts, and the vulnerable communities that might be impacted. At first it seems of little consequence, but just having someone at the table who is raising these issues and helping to steer the conversation can impact the overall process in really meaningful ways. More about the HIA its theoretical underpinnings in the next post.
Monday, June 11, 2012
Sunday, June 10, 2012
Vivid Sydney
Vivid Sydney is an annual music/art/technology extravaganza held over 18 days from the end of May through mid-June. Sydney has the greatest market share of creative industries in Australia and over the last ten years or so the city has positioned itself as a regional and global leader in the creative economy.[1]
Vivid Sydney is the city's attempt at showcasing its creative capital. There are really too many events to describe, many of which, frankly, sound pretty wearisome. Billed as 'a platform for the creative industries to collaborate, foster business connections and showcase new ideas,' in a lot of ways it's just an expo writ large. However, at night it transfigures and illuminates the city.
In the daylight I'd seen the unlit pink LED pillars that are sprinkled along the Sydney harbor docks, the purple flags displayed on every downtown street. As a visitor-traveler, everyone tells you that you have to see the lights at night. I had the feeling it would be part Stone Mountain Laser Show, part Ted Talk-combining the dullness of the former with the insufferable tech boosterism of the latter. Last night I cycled down to circular quay to finally see what all the fuss is about.
Thursday, June 7, 2012
Wednesday, June 6, 2012
Vegetative profusion, economic slide
Australia is the world's driest inhabited continent but after a particularly severe ten year drought, Sydney is experiencing a rebirth of sorts. The city's characteristic dry shrub has taken on a lush hue. In our backyard, the oranges are falling out of their tree. The narrow streets of inner west are choked with green. And walking through sydney's royal botanical gardens is like touring a crazed horticulturalist's we dream, the rains having transformed the grounds into some kind of eco-porn menagerie.
At the same time as this ecological blossoming, massive job cuts across nearly every sector of the economy (except mining) and the deepening recession have created a deep sense of unease among Australians. I see it every day in Sydney. Most of the people I've met are un- or underemployed. Sydney has become oppressively expensive (the 6th most expensive city in the world apparently) and the current economic slide has only exacerbated anxieties. Australia has always been a land of extremes but this current juxtapostion between Sydney's green flourishing and economic downturn draws attention to the weird and dangerous disconnect between economies and ecologies.
domestic affairs
Coletta is a lonely, unemployed spinster adoptive homestay mom my landlady, who likes to remind the two temporary boarders living in her house that she's not running a boarding house. She says things like, "That boy is silly as a cut snake" or "My mum could talk the legs off a wooden chair" or "It's cuz of the gays." She has Bob, a portly forgotten-looking golden retriever. Somewhere along the way Bob transcended that genetic compulsion that gives the breed its name. Mostly he sleeps behind the portable radiator. They both watch a lot ot TV. Last night I could hear her from the next room laughing maniacally into the television set. This morning I learned that Coletta 'discovered' Naked Gun 2 1/2.
School's out for winter
I did some work from the UNSW library last weekend and the experience made me thankful now more than ever that I'm not in real school. The library was packed and there was a palpable sense of dread and despondency. In the cubby behind me every two to three minutes-like clockwork-I would hear this heavy, forlorn sigh followed by an angry but determined "fuck"
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