On Writer's Courage: Perplexing Reflection

Sunset over Lake Pejar, NSW. Photo by Dr Michael de Percy

 

No Matter Our Wreckage by Gemma Carey
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I've met the author a couple of times and we follow each other on twitter. I bought this memoire on Kindle recently and once I started, I couldn’t stop. I usually write notes on my blog about every book I read but this one made me double-check. It was only yesterday when talking to my students about developing a professional online presence and I mentioned how Gemma Carey had gone against the academic grain with her book that I realised how courageous she is in publishing this story. While it was far less courageous, B.F. Skinner took a similar approach decades ago and was admonished for writing a novel (Walden Two), despite its own type of brilliance.

I think the book is very courageous and has challenged my thinking on multiple levels. I don’t know where to go from here, but I suppose that is the importance of the book. After days of reflection, I am still at a loss as to “where to from here?” But I hope my perplexity honours the work sufficiently for now.

View all my reviews

On Narrative and Momentum; or, I just needed to write something about something right now

Mushrooms at the Gunning Golf Club [Photo © 2021 Eliza Markert]

Sometimes I just have to write something. If there is a single thing I love to do, so much so that I just have to do it, then that thing is writing. It is my world; my raison d'être. I make no apologies for it.

I've been trying to get myself back on track after a couple of years of alternately healthy and not-so-healthy distractions. I've been blogging for so long now it is part of my identity, but my reading and other scholarly pursuits have taken a back seat. Or so it seemed. 

It was merely a blip on my reading/writing radar. That is not to say that my life hasn't been better than ever before. It certainly has! But my scholarly life needed a revival.

The idea of momentum comes up time and again in my research into technologies such as transport and telecommunications. I find these topics interesting because - well - I found out that as an Aquarius I am interested in all things related to time and space. So logistics is key. And I do whatever I like as much as I can justify it! Anyway, I digress.

As a former artillery and later pay corps army officer, and having completed the Logistics Officers Intermediate Course at Bandiana (another lifetime ago), and more recently becoming a Chartered Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport, it all makes some sort of serendipitous sense.

My research focuses on the topics of these things: transport and telecommunications. But that is not key to my narrative, and I have become entangled in the "subject matter expert" divide before. But why is it that if I focus on multilateralism and foreign aid or refugees, for example, that I am outside of my expertise? Well, please let me explain.

The key theoretical thing I am interested in is how institutions change or don't change, and how policy instruments help or hinder the outcomes of policy goals as they relate to institutions. Effectively, I am interested in how governments can achieve what that want to achieve, and why they don't do these things. It is pretty straight forward!

But my approach is also relevant to international institutions such as the Word Trade Organisation and the World Bank. If I were to be asked, at a pinch my specialisation is government-business relations from a regulatory, industry policy, and an international political economy (IPE) perspective. None of these perspectives disrupt my personal narrative. They are related to subject; not specifically to theory.

So therein lies my narrative. What is my purpose? To understand what institutional factors help or hinder, from a policy perspective, governments' achievement of desired policy goals.

That's it for now. So what is your narrative?

Why won't my link previews work on Twitter?

 

Twitter Card Validator

Ever noticed how previews fail to materialise when sharing links on Twitter? It's because your website doesn't have "Twitter Cards" enabled.

I did what I always do and searched Google for "why won't my blogger links preview on twitter" and eventually found the "Twitter Card Validator" (pictured above).

Enter the link in the validator, and if it comes up with image above, then your website needs some code added to it.

I found the code for Blogger sites here.

<!--Twitter Card-->
<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == "index"'> <!--homepage-->
<meta name="twitter:card" content="summary" />
<meta name="twitter:description" expr:content='data:blog.metaDescription' />
<meta name="twitter:title" expr:content="data:blog.pageTitle" />
<meta name="twitter:site" content="@username" />
<meta name="twitter:image" content="YOUR_LOGO_URL" />
<meta name="twitter:creator" content="@username" />
</b:if>
<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == "static_page"'> <!--page-->
<meta name="twitter:card" content="summary" />
<meta name="twitter:description" expr:content='data:blog.metaDescription' />
<meta name="twitter:title" expr:content="data:blog.pageTitle" />
<meta name="twitter:site" content="@username" />
<meta name="twitter:image" content="YOUR_LOGO_URL" />
<meta name="twitter:creator" content="@username" />
</b:if>
<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == "item"'> <!--blog post-->
<meta name="twitter:card" content="summary_large_image" />
<meta name="twitter:description" expr:content='data:blog.metaDescription' />
<meta name="twitter:title" expr:content="data:blog.pageName" />
<meta name="twitter:site" content="@username" />
<meta name="twitter:image" expr:content="data:blog.postImageUrl" />
<meta name="twitter:creator" content="@username" />
</b:if>

<!--End Twitter Card-->  

Paste it immediately before the </head> tag. Replace all instances of @username with your Twitter username and all instances of YOUR_LOGO_URL with your actual URL. 

Although my Blogger site is actually at madepercy.blogspot.com, I used my alias address of politicalscience.com.au and it worked just fine.

I hope this is useful. All credit to https://jumiaafrica.blogspot.com/2020/03/how-to-add-twitter-cards-to-blogger-and.html - thanks for this, its been bugging me for years!