Friday, October 27

Marilyn and I found ourselves at the movies this afternoon, watching The Sapphires, part of a series of Australian films organised by the local U3A.  The acting hadn't improved since the last time we saw it but it was worth watching again just for the music.  When the credits started rolling, there was the name which is appearing everywhere you look - Harvey Weinstein. I hope he didn't have a hands-on role in the making of the movie.  'Hands-on' has a worrying meaning when you think of Mr Weinstein.

I hadn't looked at whether the local University of the Third Age has anything to offer me in my current interest in study, so I checked out their website.  Offerings for Term 4 are limited: Felt for Fun looked interesting but I suppose it depends on whether Felt is a verb or a noun.  Sadly, it's a noun and I don't really want to learn how to make felt.

The only other thing on the menu was 'Ukulele for Beginners'.  Not for me!

I have signed up for another course, over the next eight weeks.  It's through a University in Barcelona and called the European Discovery of China.  

Wednesday, October 25

I've been reading the book 'What Happened' which Hilary Clinton has been touting around the world.  I won't finish it because it is the shallowest explanation of a political campaign I have ever encountered.  We hear lots about the appalling creature who became president but, in my eyes, the alternative candidate seems to have little more to offer.

Many commentators have said that Hilary Clinton tends to be whiny.  That certainly comes through in the book; she whinges, about how she was treated and how her speeches were interpreted, and how the Head of the FBI was unfair to her.  I was looking for evidence that Ms Clinton would have been a competent president, but I was disappointed.  She showed that she is motivated by pride, and the desire to prove that a woman can do anything a man can do - all very laudable but hardly the basis for throwing your hat in the ring for the top job in the US.  I soon got fed-up with her pithy inspirational slogans, and her heart-warming anecdotes about people she met on the campaign trail.  There was a whole chapter on the food they ate between rallies and how they fought over a jar of jalapeños with a yellow label.  When she was loading her masses of luggage into her car on the way to another rally, husband Bill cleverly asked 'Are you leaving home?'  I'm sure that little bon mot could have been left out.

Her whole outlook appears to be banal.  She claims to be intelligent but she wallows in sentimentality and trite statements made by folk-philosophers and populist poets.

  But, it's what the book reveals about the US political system which is the most damning.  Her campaign had 3 million donors with an average donation of $100.  $300 million spent on the losing campaign and, no doubt, a similar amount spent to put Trump in the White House.  Money well-spent? I don't think so.

Hilary underlined she was pro-choice, pro-faith and pro-something else I have forgotten.  It's sad that a political philosophy can be boiled down to a handful of binary choices.  And the greatest of these is pro-faith.  It is harder for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a non-believer to be president of the US.  Although, you only have to say you have faith; you don't have to prove it.

There must be others out there who have the capacity to be another Lincoln of Roosevelt.  If only the US system will allow them to rise to the top.  Somehow, I don't think so.

  

Tuesday, October 24

Marilyn is getting fed-up with me moping around the house so suggested I take on some study.  It seems like a good idea and there is so much on-line nowadays, I don't have to leave the comfort of my lounge-room.  I certainly don't have the energy to travel into the University in Launceston every day but the computer gives me instant access to universities right around the world.

Open2study, run by Open Universities Australia, was my first port of call and there happened to be a number of courses starting immediately so I've enrolled in an Anthropolpgy course called Becoming Human.  It's run through Macquarie University and runs over four weeks.  It seems there are 503 students around the world doing this course.  I'm into my second week and it's fascinating. 

I've also found a cluster called FutureLearn which has even more choices: the sky seems to be limit.

I'm amazed at the process the University goes through in an attempt to keep their students motivated. No sooner had I enrolled than I started receiving 'badges' - a Bronze Quill of Knowledge badge for participating in a forum, a Slingshot' for asking for a hint, a Camper Van for completing my profile, and so on.  I even got a Papyrus Map for earning the other Bronze badges!  It beggars belief.

I'm 74 years old and the lure of badges doesn't work for me. They're not even real badges so I can't even stick them on my old scout shirt.

Anyway, there's years of work ahead of me.  The University of Wollongong has a course on Homo Floriensis starting in a fortnight, the University of Glasgow can tell me all I want to know about Robert Burns and the University of Groningen can help me understand the Scientific Revolution.