How to Organise Your Scholarly Life

I advocate effective use of technology, which may not be the latest thing. [Photo: CC0 PublicDomainPictures.net]

Back in 2012, I had reached the trough of disillusionment with social media. The Campus Review thought it was novel that I had refused to use a mobile phone from 2010 until 2015. But after moving to a regional area, the mobile phone found a real purpose. I have since worked hard to find balance in the effective use of technology, rather than technology for technology's sake. In this article, I outline what I think are the best things online, particularly for serious scholars who don't want to be distracted by time- and energy-sapping online noise.

Creating a serious library

I read books. Real books, and I prefer paperbacks. But I catalogue them and cover them. Thanks to Mortimer Adler, I have given myself permission to write in my books. Keeping a library sounds simple, but there are a few things to learn.

How should one cover one's books? I asked the librarian at the Gunning Library to teach me. The first thing is to buy decent contact. I buy mine online from The Book Cover Co. 

I use labels I bought from the Gunning Paper Shop - Austab WP21 labels - and I add my name and the catalogue number and the first three letters of the author's family name (I discuss this below) to the label (before covering).

To catalogue my books, I use OCLC Classify. Simply enter the ISBN or author's name and title, and find the most common catalogue records. I decided on the Dewey Decimal system, which works best for small libraries, and it has a sense of primary school nostalgia. (I remember with fondness the smell of books in the library of Parramatta Park State School.) I use BPeck's DDC list to check catalogue numbers and for books not on OCLC Classify.

I set up my library using IKEA's "Billy" bookcases and, inspired by IKEA Billy hackers, built it into the wall using mouldings from Bunnings. My shelves are labelled using inexpensive brass drawer label holders from ebay.

So that's the library. But how do I stock it? This process is intertwined with my blog. I explain below.

Buying Books

I buy books mostly from The Book Depository because the prices are good and the delivery is free. I have also found The Book Grocer at Majura Park in Canberra, among other places, to have interesting titles. But these two are my go-to bookstores. 

The Book Depository has a personal wish list function. I use this to keep track of the books I want to buy. I explain how I discover books below. But for now, here is how I develop my library catalogue.

Say, for example, I purchase a book from my wish list. When the book arrives, I immediately add it to my Goodreads "Want to Read" list, and add it as an "owned" book. Every now and again, I export my Goodreads library, then import it into Library Thing. I paid a modest donation to have lifetime access to Library Thing and it is worth it. The free account is limited to 200 books. With my unlimited account, I have a searchable, printable, shareable, and usable catalogue of my library. But it isn't finished yet!

I use Goodreads to review every book I read. This is not to critique the book as in a typical review, but to record my notes and reflections on reading the book. I then use the Goodreads "Blog This Review" code and paste it into Google Blogger, where I label and modify the review to suit my blog. 

I became a Goodreads Librarian a while back to add new books and to correct mistakes in the Goodreads data and metadata. 

Discovering Books

The best way to become an effective reader, in addition to limiting use of social media, is to remove your television (or put it in an inconvenient location in your house). Next, set up a reading program. I use the annual Goodreads' Reading Challenge to stay on track. However, note the downside of such challenges.

In addition to my long-term goal to read all of Mortimer Adler's Great Books list, I have a number of email, podcast, and literary subscriptions I use to "discover" new books. The following is my top ten:

1. Ryan Holiday's Reading List. Ryan Holiday is my ideal student, blending the old with the new.
2. Art of Manliness Book Club and Podcast. This list and podcast introduced me to the work of Steven Pressfield, Cal Newport, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Theodore Roosevelt, to name a few.
3. Brain Pickings. Maria Popova's blog is how I'd want mine to be if I were writing for other people.
4. Literary Hub. I have learnt so much from this website. It covers an extraordinary range of topics.
5. Paris Review magazine and Podcast. It's not based in Paris, and it doesn't do reviews, but the hardcover subscription provides access to the entire archive, and the podcast, recently established in partnership with my favourite premium podcast subscription, Stitcher, is brilliant. See also the London Review of Books, but I stopped subscribing to the newspaper version, but still visit the site from time to time.
6. Esquire magazine and Esquire Classic. The cover price is so cheap, why not? Esquire Classic is a separate (although discounted for print subscribers) subscription to everything ever published by Esquire. I discovered much of Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and Truman Capote's destructive La Côte Basque, 1965 in the archives.
7. The Atlantic. I no longer subscribe to the New Yorker, but the international subscription price for The Atlantic is so low it is worth the money. Even if their prediction of the presidential election is still smarting.
8. Lapham's Quarterly, The World in Time podcast, and Lapham's Quarterly: The Podcast. Lewis Lapham, former editor of Harper's Magazine, is still one of the sharpest intellects around.
9. Stitcher. I host my own podcast on Stitcher. There are so many podcasts to listen to, but one of my favourites is Literature and History and, although as inconsistent as my own podcast, The Joy of Serious Literature. 
10. Book Riot and Annotated Podcast. This is a recent subscription. But the podcast introduced me recently to Truman Capote's downfall (see Esquire Classic above).

Blogging

My blog is less of a blog and more of a personal website. I have been blogging regularly for well over ten years. At first, I wrote standard blog-style articles on politics in the area of my research interest. This attracted the attention of ABC Unleashed (later The Drum), and my media engagement as an academic took off from there. 

Nowadays, my philosophy of blogging has changed. It is based on Rolf Potts' idea of travel journalling:

My [blog] is written by myself and for myself - an author and audience of one.

While this has severe limitations for those who wish to commercialise their blog, if one blogs for scholarly reasons alone, then this philosophy reduces self-censoring. It also enables me to record what I learn from my reading, rather than writing notes (or reviews) for others. I am my own audience. This may sound myopic, but I have a collection of notes that is always at hand, and I have a curriculum vitae that is perpetually up to date, and travels with me wherever I go.

To set up the blog, I registered the domain name www.politicalscience.com.au and have my email hosted by NetSpeed. The Google Blogger DNS code redirects to my domain. That way, I use Google Blogger templates (I have learnt over many years how to customise Blogger's templates), rather than full-service website hosting. I find this approach gives me complete control over my website.

I share directly to Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus using the inbuilt sharing functionality. I don't chase followers and I tend to broadcast, rather than interact. I use News Feed Eradicator for Facebook, and this keeps distractions to a minimum. The approach allows me to be visible on social media, rather than being consumed by it.

Email

A few years ago, I decided to separate my work and personal email accounts when organisations started to clamp down on the use of information technology. This has been a blessing. Setting up a Facebook page means I can share Facebook things with students, without becoming a 24-hour IT Helpdesk. I first used Facebook in my teaching in 2007 and had thousands of friends (mostly students). This was a mistake and has potential to increase the risk of burnout. 

My policy is to strictly follow work email protocols. Despite an initial feeling of being overly bureaucratic, there are inherent benefits to bureaucracy that create space for deep work. My student feedback improved even though I felt disingenuous. For more on dealing with email, check out BIFF. It works. Try it.

Podcasting

I have blogged about my podcasting setup previously. I host my podcast on Soundcloud, share it via Stitcher and Apple Podcasts, and add the show notes to my blog.

Academic eBooks

Although I find e-reading awkward, and I have subscriptions through various university libraries, I still find Cengage Learning's Questia the best online source for academic books. The cost of the annual subscription is less than one academic textbook.

Writing

On a recent podcast, I discovered Scrivener. For the price of a few cups of coffee, I purchased an annual subscription. The app is basically a word processor, but it enables one to organise written work, including references and images, and to keep an electronic index card system. The app enables various ways to merge and add metadata to documents, which can then be exported to MS Word or other apps. Takes a bit of work to learn, but worth the effort. Used in conjunction with Zotero's referencing app, I have solved my frustration with MS Word's inadequacies.

Teaching

Teaching is an evolving practice, and I try to balance modern employment challenges with scholarly integrity. I find the following apps and sites useful.

1. The Hemingway App. This app helps students to write concisely and in plain language. I have trialled this successfully with an op-ed, where students were required to write to an audience with a Year 9 level of education, as gauged by the app. This is similar to the in-built apps used by a variety of media websites, and teaches students to write to a particular audience.
2. Vocabify. I have been using this app since the beta version and provided feedback before it went live. Each time I encounter a new word, I add it immediately to the app. I can then review to my rote-learnt heart's content. This is very powerful, and sits right in the browser address bar.  I encourage students to do the same.
3. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Plato). I am a recent convert to the "no textbook" subject. Textbooks are expensive and, I find, unnecessary. My go-to website for articles that relate to most of my teaching  is Plato. The articles cover significant detail and, after using the site for a few years, I have confidence in the content. I use other sites, too, but when I want a reading for complex theories or ideologies, this is the best place to go, and it's free.

Storage

I have a legacy subscription to Google Drive. 100GB of data for $2.49 per month. The only disadvantage is that it is inaccessible in mainland China. The new plans are significantly more expensive on a monthly basis. 

Keeping it all together

The biggest challenge is to keep track of all my subscriptions. After reading The Barefoot Investor, I subscribe to LastPass. With one master password and multi-factor authentication, I can randomly generate passwords, test my security level and whether my email accounts have been compromised, and generally have my online security house in order. Worth every cent.

I have developed the above approaches over many years, mostly through trial and error. But my system works well and I hope this proves useful for others.

Getting my podcast groove on...

"Saint-Germain-des-Prés - Paris" 2017, oil pastel on paper by Margarita Georgiadis

The picture above is a work by Margarita Georgiadis. It is in with the framer and will look like a million dollars when we get it back later in the year. When thinking of a picture for this podcast, I thought of all the linkages this photo provides.

The building pictured above also happens to appear in a Google images search results for "le flaneur". I don't look gift horses in the mouth anymore, I just go with the flow. Here is the same building in a painting by Gustave Caillebotte. Paris Street, Rainy Day, 1877 (see below).

Gustave Caillebotte. Paris Street, Rainy Day, 1877. Public domain via Wikimedia.

In putting together these test podcasts, I am drawing on years of learning, hours of time in the chair in front of the screen, trial and error, heartache, disappointment. But was any of it wasted time? I don't think so.

Years ago I was using Facebook and wikis and blogs in my teaching - this was back in 2008. The something happened with an upgrade to the learning management system and I lost all interest in doing it again. 

But after a decent break and a revamp of my teaching philosophy and my research philosophy, and a little bit of work on being grateful for the opportunities I have had to learn, I can see a way to reconcile the competing demands of modern life with my ideas of the pastoral lifestyle that escaped even Virgil.

Enter the podcast. Doing a podcast by oneself is a lonely thing. I daresay it isn't very interesting for others either. But I need to work through the process. I am using a number of old faithful applications plus a few new ones. 

The biggest issue is the latency when I use the microphone. One must have headphones on, which means one then needs to monitor the microphone through the headphones. It is a catch-22 dilemma.

I have some interesting music which is licenced with Creative Commons. Some I found from the Free Music Archive. The track at the end of this podcast is Beaconsfield Villas Stomp by Doctor Turtle and is licenced CC BY-NC 4.0.

The sound effects are from AR Sound Effects on YouTube. The Terms and Conditions tell me I can use an MP3 converter so I used Youtube to MP3 Converter. it works really well and the sound effects are great.

In this podcast, I try to weave too many things together, as there wasn't much thought put into it. I was really just thinking out loud while getting a workable system happening. I have a while to go but it feels much smaller than the massive hulk that had me cringing at the thought of honour my own commitments to myself that I could easily have ignored because nobody else knew. But that is hardly the examined life.

The talk with John Laws happened before I was in the embargoed journalists' meeting with the then Communications Minister and now Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, and former Telstra legend Dr Ziggy Switkowski, for the launch of NBN Lite after the coalition's election victory. The Conversation asked me to go in and get a story out as soon as the embargo was lifted. Here is a link to that article.

I remember thinking that to be a real academic, one had to be on Tripel J's Hack. I got two guernseys on that show, but John Laws, even in retirement, really took the cake. To be talking to the man who I had listened to almost every day forty years previously was certainly a career highlight. I daresay this podcast may not be. it is heartfelt, but its main purpose is to be my audio lorem ipsum so I can get a decent podcast technique happening. But I do I hope you enjoy it.

Credits:

Sound effects: AR Sound Effects, YouTube. Royalty free, see Terms and Conditions.

Music: Beaconsfield Villas Stomp by Dr Turtle, CC BY-NC 4.0.

Instructions: Marziah Karch, Lifewire.

How do I podcast?

My new podcast logo, based on an oil pastel on paper work by Margarita Georgiadis.

After spending my sabbatical on reading and thinking about my research philosophy and trying to find a unifying principle for my work, I arrived at 'the concept of le flâneur politique becomes my "vehicle for the examination of the conditions of modernity"' (Walter Benjamin). In effect, I could be in the world but not of it. 

I didn't want to be a political scientist of the left or the right - these concepts are rigid and they are not reflected in the variety of arrangements that would otherwise be possible. I wrote about this recently. 

So once I had settled on the concept of one who wanders through the arcades of life to observe and understand, it enabled me to find connections in my research, teaching, and reading interests. I like the idea of the old, like federation houses and open fireplaces, but I also like blogging and radio and podcasts. 

"Le flâneur politique" gave me a kind of "steampunk" freedom to mix and match the past and the future and "straddle" the best of both worlds.

I've been blogging regularly for ten years this year. I have also presented a radio program on community radio for about the same length of time, although since I moved out to Gunning I haven't done a show. I have promised to provide a pre-recorded show but to date it hasn't happened. But that may change soon.

I decided to start a podcast show. I didn't know where to start but I liked the idea of Stitcher, which I have been using for a while as I commute to Canberra. Podcasts have opened up a whole new world to me and the commute is an exciting part of my day. It is certainly never dull.

I thought, too, that if I could get the podcast setup right, I could also record my radio show and then get back into it regularly. I started with the microphone for my digital camera. It is a Rode Stereo VideoMic. Not ideal for podcasts, but good quality recording for now.

Microphone solved. Next was the recording software. I tried a bunch of different apps on my Alienware 15 R3. It really is the best thing ever. In the end, I settled back with Audacity with the LAME MP3 converter. I'd used it a while back when making video lectures but it has been a while.

Then I went looking for some music. The Free Music Archive (FMA) provides music licenced through Creative Commons. My blog is CC BY-NC-SA 2.5 AU so this worked well. FMA has a good range of music and I will use it as my "go to" site for now.

But I also found an interesting sound effects site, AR Sound Effects, which is licenced using Creative Commons, but with a CC BY licence which can be used for anything as long as you attribute the work to the creator.

This site is really cool. It took me a while to work out how to convert YouTube videos to mp3 files, but the aptly-named YouTube mp3 did the job no problems. 

Next was to work out something to say and to test it all. I made a couple of false starts, but there was some media training happening nearby so I reflected on that and began recording. The first thing I noticed was that I had to get the Audacity setup right. I needed to hear what I was saying and hear the music and sound effects at the same time.

And here was the first big problem that I can only solve with a new microphone. Latency. When you listen to the playback through Audacity, there is a lag between you speaking and you hearing what you are saying, I had some marching feet sound effects and I was trying to speak to the beat. But it came so slow through the microphone that I started slowing down my voice and the recording sounded terrible. 

I solved it by listening to the sound effect through my headphones and speaking without hearing my voice. I felt like I was Geoffrey Rush's patient on The King's Speech, except I wasn't the king, I was just some charity case:

This is the problem with digital recording. Given all our technological advances of late it seems rather lame that we don't have a digital solution to a problem that going analogue would solve!

So I will look to microphones. I probably need two to do interviews, so a I will have to investigate whether a USB podcast microphone will work, or whether I need a mixer (which is what other podcasters do). 

The Rode Podcaster is an Australian-made podcast mic. It has a headphone jack in the actual microphone, so you can hear yourself speak without the latency. But I am not sure whether this will allow me to hear the sound effects or music at the same time. The next problem is whether I can use two of these at once in different USB slots.

If I go to the mixer, then the Rode Procaster might be the go. I will need to take some advice but I suspect this will be the best setup for interviews.

Once I had the raw product, it took a little while to play around with it in Audacity. Listening to the completed product often is required - my first few attempts left wild gaps in the middle of nowhere and my intended puns with the sound effects were completely lost because my timing was all over the shop. It would seem that "time spent in [editing] is seldom wasted".

First, I had to find a way to create the RSS feed for my blog. I played around with Feedburner (I had used this years before). No problems, all set up. But no.

I went to setup on Stitcher, thinking I could add my RSS feed and off I would go. But you need to register as a partner. You can't use the same email address as the one you used to become a listener. So off I went back to my ISP's site to add a new email address. 

Second, I had to enter the RSS feed into the application for a station. This failed. So off I went to the W3C Feed Validator. Validation successful! But there was no podcast anywhere. I needed to have this uploaded somewhere first.

Lifewire had the solution. This made sense of some parts of Blogger I had never used before. The article covers everything you need. Except how to host your podcast to somewhere.

So off I go to Soundcloud. So much easier than Stitcher. Soundcloud allows you to set up with Creative Commons, and in Settings>Content I found the program's RSS feed. So back to W3C Feed Validator and bam! no problems, so over to Stitcher and bam! no problems. The Soundcloud info is brought into Stitcher, so if you don't like the profile picture or info in Stitcher, you have to change it in Soundcloud. 

And from there it was time to add the logo (with the appropriate permission!) and there it is. I have added the Soundcloud player to Blogger. It was pretty straight-forward once I solved the initial dramas.

But that is how it all panned out. Below is my first Stitcher podcast, and I hope very soon to have some interviews appearing on Stitcher and Soundcloud, and later iTunes. Hopefully this will be of some use to others.

Nuclear Energy in Australia: From Barriers to Benefits

"Greenflation" is one of the many uncertainties in Australia's energy future [CC0]

Here are the notes from my presentation on nuclear energy at the Goulburn Soldiers Club on 3rd November 2022. 

The presentation focused on the policy aspects of nuclear and addressed the following issues:

• Why nuclear?
• The policy landscape and nuclear
• Arguments against nuclear
• The wind and sunshine gap, Victoria 2019
• Greenflation?
• Rewiring the Nation
• Policy impacts

Below is a list of supporting materials for my presentation at the Goulburn Soldiers Club, 3rd November 2022.

Supporting materials:

Allen, L. (2022, 3 October). Bill introduced to remove nuclear energy ban in Australia. Small Caps.

Australian Nuclear Association (2022). Teaming with Canada for Australia’s Nuclear Energy Future: Report on a recent trip by the speakers to USA and Canada.

Australian Electricity Market Operator (2022). Data Dashboard.

Davasse, G. and Merle, C. (2022, 3 Jun). Greenflation, the new normal? Natixis Corporate and Investment Banking.

De Percy, M.A. (2021). Models of Government-Business Relations: Industry Policy Preferences versus Pragmatism in Andrew Podger, Michael de Percy, and Sam Vincent (Eds.) Politics, Policy and Public Administration in Theory and Practice: Essays in honour of Professor John Wanna. Canberra: ANU Press.

De Percy, M.A. (2021). Policy Legacies from Early Australian Telecommunications: A Private Sector Perspective. Journal of Telecommunications and the Digital Economy, 9 (3).

De Percy, M.A. (2022). Institutional exhaustion and foreign aid in the time of COVID-19. In Jakupec, V., Kelly, M., and de Percy, M.A. (Eds.) COVID-19 and Foreign Aid: Nationalism and Global Development in a New World Order. London: Routledge.

De Percy, M.A. and Batainah, H.S. (2021). Identifying historical policy regimes in the Canadian and Australian communications industries using a model of path dependent, punctuated equilibrium, Policy Studies, 42 (1), pp. 42-59. DOI: 10.1080/01442872.2019.1581161.

Madsen, A. and de Percy, M.A. (2020) Telecommunications Infrastructure in Australia. Australian Journal of Social Issues, 55 (2), pp. 218-238. DOI: 10.1002/ajs4.121.

De Percy, M.A. and Poljak, J. (2022, 5 May). Energy security: Embracing technological neutrality. The Interpreter. The Lowy Institute. 

De Percy, M.A. (2022, 19 October). Old habits die hard: Labor’s uncosted infrastructure. The Spectator Australia.

De Percy, M.A. (2022, 1 November). Victorian Labor: Waste and Rorts. 

De Percy, M.A. (2022). What are the possibilities for hydrogen? Presentation at the CILT World Congress, Hyatt Regency Perth, 25th October.

Dubner, S.J. (2022, 22 September). Nuclear power isn't perfect. Is it good enough? Freakonomics Radio [Podcast].

GE Gas Power (2022). Cutting Carbon [Podcast].

International Atomic Energy Agency (2022). Nuclear Explained [Podcast].

Keefer, C. (2022). Decouple [Podcast].

Natural Resources Canada (2022). Uranium and nuclear power facts.

Platt, G. (2018, 27 February). 'Baseload' power and what it means for the future of renewables. CSIRO. ECOS, Iss. 240.

Poljak, J. (2022, 11 May). Hydrogen versus LNG: Choices for Europe. Illuminem.

Poljak, J. (2022). keynumbers.

Shakil, I. (2022, 26 October). Canada commits C$970 million to new nuclear power technology. Reuters.

Shepherd, A.F. (2007). Stumbling towards nation-building: impediments to progress. In John Butcher (Ed.) Australia Under Construction: Nation building past, present and future. Canberra: ANU E Press.

Tomago Aluminium (2022). Tomago Keeps The Lights On Across The State.

Victorian Energy Policy Centre (2022). Australian NEM Data Dashboard.

WSJ Podcasts (2022). Is nuclear poised for a comeback? The Journal [Podcast].

World Nuclear Association (2022). Chernobyl Accident 1986.

World Nuclear Association (2022). Fukushima Daiichi Accident.

World Nuclear Association (2022). Nuclear Power in Canada.

World Nuclear Association (2022). Three Mile Island Accident.

Easily the best podcast I have ever heard...

Tablet V of the Epic of Gilgamesh. Photo by Osama Amin via Wikimedia/CC BY-SA 4.0

The more I read, the more it all begins to converge. The same happens with listening to podcasts. I've been getting through the great books, including various religious texts, and listening to podcasts on my commute has been enlightening.

I am resigned to hearing the commentary on some books I am yet to read, even though this can colour my first reading, much like reading the book after one has seen the movie.

But this recent podcast from the Art of Manliness brings a number of ideas together in an interesting way.

Jordan B. Peterson is a Professor of Psychology at the University of Toronto. Apparently he is somewhat controversial. But aside from all that, this was hands down the best podcast I have heard so far. 

The Epic of Gilgamesh. The Bhagavad Gita. The Book of Genesis. The battle of ideologies. Jung, Nietzsche, myths, literature, history. Suggested reading. Check out the podcast:

The idea of power versus competence is exactly what I needed to hear...

Podcast Trial

©Depositphotos.com/@skynet

This is my first podcast. It is only for testing the systems I am trying to use. I thought this would be easy but maybe not! I am still having troubles with linking my RSS to Stitcher. It works fine on Soundcloud. I am having all sorts of issues.

Lenny is at the Crookwell Veterinary Hospital tonight

First, my microphone is great. But I cannot listen while I record because the latency is so bad, I keep slowing my voice down to compensate and it's not a good look. I need to solve this. Today's podcast was recorded without me being able to hear myself. I felt like I was on The King's Speech and Geoffrey Rush was treating me.

Next, Stitcher doesn't like my RSS feed from my blog. I use the Google Blogger platform but linked via my ISP to my domain name. It works for everything except Stitcher, which is my preferred podcast platform. I am waiting for their support area to get back to me.

Once I am up and running, I hope to interview people on a regular basis. And my cat, Lenny, is spending the night at the Crookwell Veterinary Hospital and I miss him.

RSS and Podcast Renaissance: Tom Kantor, Pulsar Music, and Rail Dynamics

Sunblessed from Ebden-Small on Vimeo.

The AK-47 of Phones and Dodo Birds

I remember buying the Nokia 6210 WAP phone for a cool $800 back in the early 2000s. Bob Geldof called it the AK-47 of phones and was still using one in 2014. WAP was hopeless. it was a complete waste of time and money. While I am pleased 'Sir' Bob got his money's worth, I really thought that RSS and podcasts were in a museum of popular culture somewhere as a reminder of the olden days.

I remember iPodder. It never worked. Not once. Then just a little while ago, RSS and podcasts were back! So here's a little story about the Renaissance of RSS and podcasts, and some interesting discoveries I made using these old school tools.

The Renaissance of Really Simple Syndication (or Rich Site Summary for purists)

I often commute for up to two hours per day, and this has opened up the whole old world of podcasts, which has opened up a whole old world of RSS. I say old world because I thought RSS and podcasting would have gone the way of the WAP phone by now. But no, RSS and podcasts are experiencing a renaissance.

I used RSS years ago and I had almost forgotten about it until I listened to a podcast. Good old Feedly was recommended, so back I went. I have dropped out of social media several times (except this blog), and each time I rationalise all the apps and social media sites I use, and Feedly (along with iPodder, which is now Juice) was an early casualty. 

One of the things I have been doing unsuccessfully is subscribing to a number of websites. But my personal email ends up as a stack of unread emails about things I might be interested in but rarely get the chance to read unless I print them out or let them sit in the inbox or open on tab in my browser for an eternity.

When Twitter first came out (I was an avid user back then, not so much now it is over-run by trad media. Twitter has been a casualty of rationalisation several times), I remember the discussions about how it was a stream, like a river where everything floated past and you might look at things of interest, but if you missed it and it wasn't popular, then c'est la vie.

Email is like a dam - it fills up and fills up until it either explodes or you have to open the flood gates and let the stored energy disappear in a rush. Either way, you miss out on things. C'est la vie.

So Feedly it is. I find myself unsubscribing to all the email subscriptions that clutter up my inbox and I daresay I miss out on more than I do using the RSS aggregator. When I unsubscribe, I am providing feedback to say that I am still following on RSS. 

Occasionally, I find websites that I want to follow but there is no ready RSS feed. They are stuck in the Middle Ages I guess.

So now I subscribe to various RSS feeds through Feedly. I simply search for what I want, delete what I don't. For example, if it has 'Trump' in the title it gets deleted. Instantly. It makes no difference to my current affairs knowledge and I stay remarkably happier. 

Not because I care about Trump. I just don't care about Trump. Whenever anyone says they are a world beater, I say let them have a go. They all go the way of the WAP phone. I don't need to read about it every second of my short life.

Occasionally, I stumble upon really interesting things. The video made by Tom Kantor at the top of this page is one example. Filmmaker Tom Kantor, died too young, son of philanthropist Anne Kantor, sister of Rupert Murdoch; Tom's sister runs the Poola Charitable Foundation.

The film is haunting. It provides the sounds of my childhood. A sound so familiar I pretend to cringe in case anybody notices. And the haunting scenes of familiar brands and that empty landscape, always present, unpaved, the new discarded upon the ancient. The rich kid who went to Swinburne TAFE, and they who have unknowingly educated angels. Brilliant.

Podcasts are great. And I am learning so much I simply must use them in my teaching

For listening to podcasts, I find Stitcher suits me best. I was thinking of using Stitcher for my own podcasts, but I cannot seem to login to their content provider portal and they aren't answering my emails, so maybe not. But for now, Stitcher will do.

My favourite podcasts are Art of Manliness and Lapham's Quarterly. But the more I commute, the more I burn through the episodes. Some times there just aren't enough.

Last week I stumbled upon the Smithsonian Institution's podcast "Sidedoor". It's great. Here are two of great discoveries:

Pulsar Sound: An app that makes music out of the stars. Turn the app on, point your phone at the sky, and it makes music based on the frequencies emanating from pulsars. Or something like that. Bet that won't work on your AK-47, Sir Bob.

Rail Dynamics: Emory Cook basically created Hi-Fi. That's not a typo. And he is most famous for his cult hit record, Rail Dynamics. This is a bunch of recordings of steam trains. I can listen to it while I read and write, much like my other favourite composer, John Adams. It is like a naked Pink Floyd album. Just brilliant.

And to top it all off, I found some new music, while trying to put together my first podcast, I stumbled upon some new music. A Russian band, Stoner Train, with a Russian, blues throcalist. Now I have heard it all. And the cover depicts a train, so it's on theme, too.

Podcasts: Back to the Future

I remember a few years back, a friend of mine was wearing headphones as she walked around the campus. She stopped and said to me: "I'm just listening to you on a podcast".

It was the podcast of Triple J's Hack on 4th October 2010 and I was talking about the "My Lecturer" website. It was going to be the greatest thing but then it fell flat. It was good experience with the news media. And being on Hack is kind of a landmark for wannabe academics. I was on Hack again in 3rd August 2011 talking about "The Battle of the Broadband". I'd really made the big time!

The podcasts are long gone, but I remember being surprised that anyone was listening to podcasts, let alone one that had me on it. And then podcasts seemed to die their natural death and that was the end of it.

But something happened. I think it must have been the iPhone and other smartphones that finally enabled people to download podcasts on the go, rather than transferring them from a website or feed to an iPod. I am certain this is what started the revival.

I had deliberately rid myself of a mobile phone after my sabbatical in Jordan in late 2009. I lasted until the 6th November 2015 when we moved to Gunning. The one-hour commute meant that not having a smartphone was asking for trouble if the car broke down. Not only letting people know I couldn't make a meeting, but being able to call the NRMA forced it back on me.

Mercedes 300E. The greatest car ever built. Well, I think so!

But I did last six years without one. The Campus Review's "Blog Rankings" even did an article about it on 16 April 2012: "Ditching the phone for the blog".

For my commute, I first went to the Gunning Library and tried CD audio books. My 1987 model Mercedes 300E doesn't have bluetooth. Thankfully.

I listened to Hemingway's Death in the Afternoon. It had me in stitches when the narrator switched from Hemingway to the Old Lady:

Hemingway: "Sonorous baritone, masculine blahdy-blah [even though my actual voice wouldn't be an audio book competition winner]"...

Old Lady: "Oh, squeaky falsetto, castrado mea culpa!"

It was so good I listened to it twice through. The next was an historical novel about Ancient Greece. I couldn't bear the thought of listening to a book I wanted to read. This particular audio book lasted just a few minutes. It sounded like the the crew from The Late Show and it was exactly like Piss Weak World:

So that ended. Then I burnt podcasts onto CDs until the CD player started to stick. And finally, the USB charger and a cable directly into the auxiliary jack and now I have podcasts galore. It is excellent use of my commuting time and there is so much variety. And to think that podcasts almost died.

So now I am planning on creating my own podcast. Stay tuned. I hope to get my first done in the coming months and release by Stitcher.

Festschrift Podcast: Professor John Wanna: Career Reflections

Professor John Wanna and Dr Michael de Percy at their recent book launch in Canberra, 4 September 2018.
Photo Credit: John Masiello.

Professor John Wanna has studied politics, policy, and public administration since the 1970s and has published over 50 books and supervised over 50 research students. He is the inaugural Sir John Bunting Chair in Public Administration at the Australia and New Zealand School of Government based at the Australian National University.

He is a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia (ASSA) and National Fellow of the Institute of Public Administration Australia (IPAA). He received IPAA's Meritorious Service Award in 2014 after serving for twenty years as the editor of the Australian Journal of Public Administration.

John’s scholarly contribution is to be honoured with a Festschrift in September 2018, supported by ANZSOG, the ANU, and Wiley Publishing.

In this podcast, I interview Professor Wanna and ask him to reflect on his career.

John's personal website is at http://www.johnwanna.com/.

A number of John's books are available for free download at ANU Press.

The podcast is available on Soundcloud below:

Developing our own capability: Australia’s Nuclear Journey

Michael de Percy with Georgina Downer, Afternoon Light Podcast, Robert Menzies Institute

It was under Robert Menzies that Australia entered the nuclear age with the opening of the Lucas Heights Reactor in 1958. 65 years on, what looked to be the first step in a much bigger story remains practically the only step Australia has taken towards harnessing the potency of the atom to power our nation. As nuclear energy once again appears on the political radar, it is worth taking a look back and seeing what potential Australians once saw in nuclear and what could have been. 

In this week’s episode of the Afternoon Light podcast, Robert Menzies Institute CEO Georgina Downer talks to Dr Michael de Percy about how Menzies represents Australia’s unrealised nuclear potential. 

Dr Michael de Percy FRSA FCILT is Senior Lecturer in Political Science at the University of Canberra. His qualifications include a PhD in Political Science from the Australian National University, a Bachelor of Philosophy (Honours) from the University of Canberra, and a Bachelor of Arts from Deakin University. He is a graduate of the Royal Military College, Duntroon, where he received the Royal Australian Artillery prize. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, a Chartered Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport and Vice-Chair of the ACT and Southern NSW Chapter, Vice President of the Telecommunications Association (TelSoc - Australia's oldest learned society), Public Policy Editor of the Journal of Telecommunications and the Digital Economy, and a member of the Australian Nuclear Association. He was appointed to the Australian Research Council's College of Experts in 2022.

The podcast is available on YouTube or Spotify:

Podcast interview with Leighton Smith

My interview on the Leighton Smith Podcast, New Zealand

 

Leighton Smith Podcast #276 - March 19th 2025 - Michael De Percy

March 19, 2025 • 100 mins

Dr Michael De Percy is a Senior Lecturer in Political Science at the University of Canberra. He graduated from both the Australian National University and the Royal Military College, Duntroon.  

He was also appointed to the Australian Research Council’s College of Experts in 2022. 

Sound interesting? I can only say that if he’d been my lecturer at ANU, I might well have chosen a different career path. Listen below.

Instead of Hemingway's iceberg, think Gabriel's peephole...

Steamers on the Magdalena River.  Photo: Clímaco Calderón (1852-1913), Wikimedia, Public Domain.

Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

After powering through two books per week while on long service leave, back at work and teaching and applying for research grants and my literary luxury is thrown out with the bathwater. It has taken me six weeks to finish one book, and it deserved a more settled reading. Last night I realised there was less than half a page to go and I felt an overwhelming sadness and as I read the conclusion, I was at a loss. Can life and loving really be like that where it all turns out in the end? Or does the Disney gloss of undying love hide the protagonist's sinful deception sufficiently? To say I wasn't hooked would be a lie. There are so many things that Márquez puts into writing what people actually do but would die of embarrassment if they knew that others knew they knew. I found this enlightening because nobody else talks about such things. Of course, I am too embarrassed to talk about the things I mean, so it is better to leave one guessing. Márquez, at least, could always say that his work was fiction and he imagined such things, but I don't think so. He was 58 when this work was published. For once, I do not feel like I am behind the eight-ball. Not in terms of receiving the Nobel Prize, but in terms of living and loving and knowing. I have been listening to a podcast by Bryant Davis recently, entitled The Joy of Serious Literature. It is everything I ever wanted in a podcast. Something quirky, something different. So far, the podcast points to several non-traditional and non-white literary works that will certainly take me out of my comfort zone. Márquez certainly did that, but rather than freaking me out like Japanese adult manga might do, but there it is explicit, whereas Márquez drops thought grenades and leaves the reader to clean up the mess. When Florentino Ariza is resting in the brothel, I daresay the reader's imagination will be trying to see what is going on in the background. Rather than Hemingway's iceberg, think of Gabriel's peephole. But don't tell anyone. It's very powerful. And I do believe the conclusion left me with a Spanish version of saudade.

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The Joy of Korean Literature

Photo by CharlieOnTravel at Flicker [CC-BY 2.0] via Wikimedia Commons

The Vegetarian by Han Kang

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I have been reading a few novels translated into English lately and I have not been disappointed. I discovered The Vegetarian on the podcast The Joy of Serious Literature last year and finally purchased a copy. 

According to two of my Korean friends, Han Kang's work is quite popular. This book won the 2016 Man Booker International Prize which is awarded to the best novel translated into English. 

Although not a perfect measure, I am yet to be disappointed by a book that has received a national or international award. Kang's prose is brilliant, and her dialogue (a difficult skill to master) is even better. 

What I have noticed from a few international authors is the interesting use of different voices, for example, switching from first to third-person narration in different parts of the book, and also, in this book, bringing three distinct parts into one compelling story. 

What I enjoyed most about The Vegetarian was the complete absence of a happy ending. It begs the question, who was your favourite character? 

Much like the podcast's host's Korean friend, I found the artist to be my favourite. Not because of what he does, which is a bit out there, but because he is "the only character who gets what he wants". 

I doubt stories like this would work for an Anglo author - I think the tone would make it all a bit "dirty". Without giving too much away, if you are looking for inspiration, this isn't the book for you. But if you enjoy the lasting residue of stories well told, this one will stay with you for some time.

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On the Beach: The most disturbing novel I have ever read

Remnants of Chernobyl [Photo: CC0]

On the Beach by Nevil Shute
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Spoiler Alert: This novel is about how to die. Forget the reviews that wonder how people could conduct themselves so serenely and not go off like crazed rats. If I had the knowledge that I - and everyone else - would be extinct in a matter of weeks, how would I want the end to be?

I finished reading this novel last night with a powerful rush of emotion followed by involuntary tears and a horrible feeling of powerlessness. I tried to shake this off with a start on some absurd Nabokov (Despair) but it didn't work. All night I dreamt about how I would die in this situation.

In the first dream, everyone was scrambling into a cave. I was following a loved one. Deeper and deeper into the earth we burrowed. I wanted to stop and go back but I also wanted to be with the one I love. They went on. The effects of radiation began to tell on me and I wanted to be near my loved one but not in the dark, buried under ground. We died there and I felt so disappointed that I hadn't gone my own way. I awoke in a state, realised it was the novel and a dream.

My subconscious wasn't satisfied, so back into the dream state I go and the dream runs again. And again. And again. Finally, I wake and realise that life is not so serious. Dying well is more important than running on the rollercoaster of others' ideas. Trust the process. And off into the deepest sleep I go.

No art has ever affected me so. Arriving at this novel and discovering such powerful emotions was a fortunate accident of circumstance. Dilectio Libertas et Doctrina. Love, Freedom, and Learning. Such a powerful way to live.

My choice of books is often a result of random events that open an entirely new world of thought. On a recent road trip, my girlfriend selected the podcast The Cold War Vault, and we listened to the episodes about the Net Evaluation Subcommittee and how it painted an increasingly gloomy picture of the United States' ability to win a nuclear war in the late 1950s.

Dwight D. Eisenhower was President at the time, and Nevil Shute's novel was published in 1957, followed by the 1959 film starring Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner, Anthony Perkins, Donna Anderson, and Fred Astaire. The novel and the film painted a bleak picture that almost materialised during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. By then, Robert McNamara's strategy of "mutual assured destruction" (MAD) was gearing up, and the Net Evaluation Subcommittee had made itself obsolete. 

In 1983, Carl Sagan's warnings of a nuclear winter following even a limited nuclear war would ramp up the scientific debate about the end of the world. But Nevil Shute, a Brit-turned-Aussie (and author of A Town Like Alice and Beyond the Black Stump), had set it out already in On the Beach.

I had no idea about Nevil Shute. The connection to Australia came out in the Cold War Vault podcast, which referred to the film and "Anthony Perkins' non-existent Australian accent". I was intrigued and the next thing I notice, the book is staring at me in Elizabeth's Bookshop in Newtown.

These random connections in my various readings are wonderful. Even while writing this up, I looked for a link to Nabokov's Despair and discovered that it, too, had been made into a film starring Dirk Bogarde. Much like Shute, I knew nothing of Bogarde until I read Thomas Mann's Death in Venice and watched the 1971 film. I've since read several of Bogarde's autobiographical stories, opening up another world of French gardens and country living.

Back to On the Beach. Unlike the horror of dying from radiation exposure as thousands of people did after the United States bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Shute tells of the various approaches to death taken by the characters left in Melbourne as nuclear fallout following the short World War III in the northern hemisphere slowly engulfs the rest of the planet.

The hopelessness of it all is symbolised by a trip in a nuclear submarine to test an optimistic theory that radiation levels are decreasing closer to the north pole and to investigate the origin of random morse code transmissions from near Seattle. Yeoman Swain escapes the submarine off the coast of his hometown and is later seen in his boat with an outboard motor fishing. He refuses to die in a strange land in a few weeks' time, preferring to die in a few days at home. It's the individual choices that make this story so vividly disturbing.

One character decides to remain faithful to his dead wife (unlike Gregory Peck in the movie version!). Another buys a Ferrari race car and pushes himself to the limit in scenes where several drivers die brutally in an ad hoc Australian Grand Prix. He takes his prescribed suicide tablets (provided free by the local pharmacy) while sitting, victoriously, in his well-preserved car.

A couple and their daughter decide to just get it over with. A farmer worries about his cattle and makes sure they have enough feed. The naval officer goes down with his ship outside of territorial waters, and Ava Gardner's character gets sloshed and takes her suicide pills just as Gregory Peck's character (she doesn't shag him in the novel) sails off into the sunset and before diarrhea strikes her again. She's on the beach. Hence the name.

This novel demonstrates how stupid it all is - going through the motions because we don't know how to live, let alone die. I am still disturbed when I think about the novel, but differently than in my first nightmare last night.

Much like my literary idol Professor Harold Bloom said, as we age we read against the clock. But we might also prepare to die well. That starts now. And that, I believe, is what Nevil Shute was trying to say.

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