Table of contents for Summer 2018 in Smith Journal

Of course, he doesn’t use that word. “It’s an opportunity,” he clarifies virtually every time I see him. The “opportunity” works like this: first, purchase a mattress from one of those online mattress companies, the kind that comes with a 90-day, no-questions-asked returns policy. Then, on day 90, ask for your refund, having purchased a rival company’s mattress a few days prior. Rinse and repeat every three months until you run out of mattress companies to “engage”, at which point convince your housemate to put their name on the order, or move house and start the whole process over again. The plan is not without its hassles. For one, endlessly liaising between mattress companies requires a fair bit of planning: miss your 90-day period and you’ll be out of pocket.…

ON JULY 29, 1944, GERMANY’S MILITARY COMMAND SENT WORD TO ONE OF THEIR TOP SPIES IN ENGLAND – CODENAME: ALARIC ARABEL – THAT HE’D BEEN AWARDED THE IRON CROSS. THE TOP HONOUR WAS SAID TO HAVE COME FROM HITLER HIMSELF, AND FOLLOWED ARABEL’S THREE-YEAR STINT GATHERING INVALUABLE INFORMATION ON THE ENEMY. “The extraordinary successes of Arabel have been made possible by his constant, complete and express confidence in the Führer and our cause,” one military memo beamed. But that was a lie. Arabel actually despised both Hitler and his cause, and was in fact a double agent – one of history’s finest. The man behind Arabel, Juan Pujol García, was in reality a Spanish national whom the British intelligence community called Garbo. By the end of that same year, 1944,…

THERE’S A FAMOUS STORY ABOUT THE WISDOM OF CROWDS. IT GOES LIKE THIS. In 1907, the great English polymath Francis Galton attended a county fair. The locals were running a competition to guess the weight of a prize ox (no-one said it was an exciting county fair). Galton, ever the numbers nerd, started crunching the data, and found that while people’s individual guesses were all wrong, their average (1,197 pounds) was improbably close to the ox’s actual weight (1,198 pounds). This stumped him. A group of strangers, none of whom knew the ox personally, had more or less arrived at the correct answer. What the hell was going on? He didn’t know it at the time, but what was going on was ‘collective intelligence’, a phenomenon by which solutions to…

PATIENT ZERO WAS TWO DAYS AGO, AND THE INFECTION IS SPREADING. The news doesn’t know what’s going on. People are raiding supermarkets, grabbing tinned soup, crossbows, paracetamol and whatever you’re meant to stockpile in these situations. There’s traffic clogging the freeways. And all you can think is, “Oh, god… Zombies are coming. What the hell should I do?” It sounds like a scenario designed to entertain overenthusiastic horror fans. But it turns out some well-credentialled scientists have also been wondering how humanity might react to a shambling, implacable, brain-eating zombie horde. Can science devise an optimal Zombie Survival Plan? Or should we all just go to the Winchester, have a cold pint, and wait for all this to blow over? “It’s an interesting challenge, isn’t it?” asks Professor Greg Foliente,…

How did you get into making leather goods? Back in 2004, no one was making boutique men’s wallets; you could buy one from a surf brand, or you could go to a department store and get something bland that you might find in your dad’s pocket. One day, my friend Scott Hawkes and I decided to try and make our own. We started walking them around, literally just rocking up at fashion boutiques in Sydney. Surprisingly, they loved it. It’s a bit different these days; you’d probably have security escort you out of the store. Was it tough managing the side hustle? Actually, it made things easier – as a side hustle, you can test the waters without sending yourself bankrupt, and let the market tell you if you’re on…

EVERY MONGOLIAN WRESTLING MATCH BEGINS WITH A DANCE. IN ULAANBAATAR, YOU’LL SEE A WRESTLER GRACEFULLY FLAPPING HIS ARMS IN BROAD SWEEPS, BRINGING FORTH THE SPIRIT OF A FALCON, OR GARUDA, THE KING OF THE BIRDS. Over the border in the Chinese autonomous region of Inner Mongolia, where Danish photographer Ken Hermann travelled to take a series of striking photographs, that dance might instead depict a lion or a tiger. Regardless, the dance is fierce, an invitation for the spirit of the great wild beasts to join in the struggle to follow. Bökh is an ancient sport, older than the history books, but one that’s still integral to Mongol culture. Genghis Khan himself, those books suggest, was a dab hand even as a child, and later used the practice to keep…

EVERY YEAR, FORTUNATO FOTI STANDS BENEATH THE SYDNEY HARBOUR BRIDGE AND WAITS TO WATCH EIGHT MONTHS OF HARD WORK EXPLODE. SEVERAL TECHNICIANS ARE NEARBY, BROWS FURROWED, CHECKING SEQUENCES ON A LAPTOP. THE CLOCK STRIKES MIDNIGHT. IT’S GO TIME. BANG! WHOOSH! SHOOM! HAPPY NEW YEAR. Violet supernovas burst over the water, a spider web of Brocades, orange Fireflies and Bombettes of pure magenta. Schools of silver Fish swim across the clouds as pinwheels twirl, green Pistils bloom inside one another, and Ring Shells, bright pink Dahlias and Tourbillions burn circles in the sky. Just another day at the office. Fortunato is a maker of fireworks, just like his father before him – and his father before him, and so on and so on. It’s safe to say sulphur runs through the…

I BE A PATIENT LISTENER (IT IS THIS, NOT FAST TALKING, THAT GETS A CON-MAN HIS COUPS). II NEVER LOOK BORED. III WAIT FOR THE OTHER PERSON TO REVEAL ANY POLITICAL OPINIONS, THEN AGREE WITH THEM. IV LET THE OTHER PERSON REVEAL RELIGIOUS VIEWS, THEN HAVE THE SAME ONES. V HINT AT SEX TALK, BUT DON’T FOLLOW IT UP UNLESS THE OTHER FELLOW SHOWS A STRONG INTEREST. VI NEVER DISCUSS ILLNESS, UNLESS SOME SPECIAL CONCERN IS SHOWN. VII NEVER PRY INTO A PERSON’S PERSONAL CIRCUMSTANCES (THEY’LL TELL YOU ALL EVENTUALLY). VIII NEVER BOAST. JUST LET YOUR IMPORTANCE BE QUIETLY OBVIOUS. IX NEVER BE UNTIDY. X NEVER GET DRUNK.…

TIP 1: READ THE RULES It sounds obvious, but you want to read the rule-card first. “A lot of first-time pinball players don’t realise that every game is coded differently,” Jones explains. Generally found on the left-hand side of a machine, these rule cards explain which targets are worth the most points. “Someone might keep the ball alive five times longer than you,” Jones says, “but you’re going to beat them nine times out of 10 if you alone understand the scoring potential.” TIP 2: WATCH THE BALL A common mistake many novices make is focusing on the flippers (the little levers you use to catch and hit the ball). “If you’re watching your flippers, then you’re not reading the play,” Jones reckons. “It means you’ll only be reacting to…

IF YOU’RE HEADMASTER DR HENRY INGLES, LOCKED INSIDE YOUR BOARDING HOUSE WHILE YOUR TEENAGE STUDENTS LITERALLY RIOT OUTSIDE, YOU’RE PROBABLY THINKING TWO THINGS. FIRST: “HOW ON EARTH AM I GOING TO GET OUT OF THIS MESS?” AND SECOND: “I DON’T GET PAID ENOUGH FOR THIS SHIT.” It’s November 1797, and Ingles is in all sorts of trouble. He only took the gig at Rugby School (that’s a school in Rugby, England, not a school dedicated to rugby, the sport) three years ago, and while his first two years ticked by uneventfully, his students are really sticking it to him in year three. The trouble started when a boy named Astley began firing cork bullets at the study windows of the housemaster for a lark. Ingles confronted the boy, who claimed…

1. A nasty dull rumrunning pig Had fingernails which could not jig They sashayed and shouted But still quickly pouted And sometimes resembled a prig. 2. Calm is all nature as a resting wheel. The kine are couched upon the dewy grass; The horse alone, seen dimly as I pass, Is cropping audibly his later meal. 3. A kind in glass and a cousin, a spectacle and nothing strange a single hurt color and an arrangement in a system to pointing. All this and not ordinary, not unordered in not resembling. The difference is spreading. 4. you are inscribed in the lines on the ceiling you are inscribed in the depths of the storm 5. Desolation is a stormy shore. Love, death, and desolation. The whale grows like a sunny…

For all the sport’s modern-day affiliation with caffeine-rich, taurine-loaded energy drinks, stock car racing actually got its start from a very different tipple. “We have booze to thank for NASCAR,” explains Noah Love, one half of CLUB, a graphic design studio based in Los Angeles. “Prohibition ended in 1933, but running cut-price booze across state lines remained big business for years after. The government stationed revenue agents out in the Appalachian hills where the bulk of the moonshine distilleries were. They didn’t like the idea of drinkers drinking tax-free.” Moonshine ‘runners’ needed more than a dose of derring-do to get their hooch into the cities – they needed cars capable of outrunning a federal vehicle. Blatantly modified hot rods wouldn’t cut it (you didn’t want your car raising suspicion), so…

SOME TIME IN THE YEAR 2000, NORTHUMBERLAND BOOKSELLER STUART MANLEY BOUGHT A BOXLOAD OF ANTIQUE BOOKS AT AUCTION. WHILE UNPACKING THEM, HE DISCOVERED A POSTER FOLDED UP AT THE BOTTOM OF THE BOX. IT WAS PLAIN RED, AND BORE BOLD WHITE LETTERING BENEATH A CROWN. IT READ “KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON.” The British government had printed more than two million such posters as war with Germany loomed in 1939, but never ended up distributing them. Thinking it looked nice, Manley framed it and put it up in his shop. When customers began enquiring about it, he made a few prints to sell on the side. It has since become one of the most recognised, reproduced and parodied images of all time. That simple, nearly forgotten poster is a reminder…

EL DORADO When the Spanish first arrived in the Americas, the promise of gold hung heavy in the air. The native populations adorned themselves with the stuff, yet seemed to have no understanding of how valuable it actually was. (Technically this is only half true: the metal had great religious and cultural value to indigenous Americans, but that wasn’t really front and centre in the calculations of the conquistadors.) Stories grew, as they do, and soon boat after boat of musket- and smallpox-wielding Spanish explorers were risking life and limb in pursuit of El Dorado – literally “The Golden One” – a vast kingdom supposedly hidden deep in the forests of South America, where gold and precious jewels ran like water. The quest for El Dorado has become synonymous with…

Whisky is a drink whose entire nature speaks against the idea of innovation. A simple concoction of barley, water and malt, it can take upwards of five years to prepare, meaning one has to be supremely confident of their vision to go out on a limb. Yet for Melbourne-based Starward Whisky, that was the whole point. “I just wanted to make a distinctive Australian whisky,” explains founder David Vitale, “and I wanted to offer it to the world with pride.” Not that life as a distiller was always on the cards. “I’m actually a frustrated homebrewer,” he laughs. Vitale set up his own microbrewery in 2003, but soon came up against the base fact of brewing: good beer doesn’t travel well. “I knew that whatever I might be doing, I…

When Jacques Cousteau was a French naval officer in WWII, he helped set up France’s elite commando frogmen unit. (Presumably as a side hustle while simultaneously pummelling the Hun.) Around the same time he went off to embrace the life aquatic, the special ops divers of Marine Nationale started looking around for a watch company that supported their underwater mission. They found Tudor, and a decades-long collaboration was born. After an evaluation process in 1956, Tudor Submariners became as much a part of the French combat swimmers’ kit as scuba tanks, foot fins and the kind of fetching mid-century wetsuit later made popular by James Bond, Action Man, and Monsieur Cousteau himself. It didn’t take very long for the first Tudor watch to grace a French combat swimmer’s wrist. The…

THE NOTION THAT AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY IS CONDUCTED PRIMARILY IN THE INTERESTS OF CORPORATIONS IS A FAVOURITE THEME OF FOIL-HATTED FULMINATORS. AS CONSPIRACY THEORIES GENERALLY ARE, THIS NOTION IS MISGUIDED: A MEANS BY WHICH THE FOOLISH CAN PERSUADE THEMSELVES THAT THEY UNDERSTAND COMPLEXITY, THAT THERE IS MEANING IN CHAOS. INTERESTINGLY, IT’S NOT ALWAYS ALTOGETHER WRONG. On September 11, 1973, Chilean President Salvador Allende was removed by coup d’état; he shot himself as troops closed in on La Moneda Palace, the presidential residence in Santiago. It is well known that, at the very least, the U.S. was pleased with this outcome – even the C.I.A.’s official account acknowledges trying and failing to foment the overthrow of Allende shortly after his election in 1970, and that the Agency had foreknowledge of the…

LIKE MANY OF US, BRITTANY NICOLE COX SPENDS MUCH OF HER WORKING DAY WATCHING THE CLOCK. UNLIKE MANY OF US, SHE ISN’T PROCRASTINATING OR COUNTING DOWN THE MINUTES TILL HOME TIME WHEN SHE DOES THIS: SHE’S WORKING. “IN THE 17TH CENTURY, PEOPLE STARTED TO SEE THE WORLD AS A GIANT MACHINE THAT HAD GOD AS ITS MECHANIC.” “I’m an antiquarian horologist,” she explains, seated amid a jumble of whirring, ringing, chiming contraptions in her Seattle workshop. “Horology is the study of time, and I’m a certified watchmaker who specialises in restoring antique horological objects. I keep time ticking.” Her days are spent pulling clocks and other mechanical oddities apart, working out what makes them tick, then putting them back together. It’s an interest that began in childhood. “I was always collecting…

A FISH OUT OF WATER Growing up I went to Catholic school, and I was one of only two black kids in my year. I’ve always said it felt like I was at a family reunion – but I wasn’t in the family. I was technically accepted, but there was a feeling that I wasn’t quite in the club. And for black people in America, that fish-out-of-water thing is pretty much your whole life. Even as a kid I was keenly aware of feeling left out, and I chose to handle it by being self-deprecating. Comedy helped me in those moments. Still, I never dreamed I’d make that my profession. BE AMBITIOUS, BUT HUMBLE I used humour to deal with adversity at home, too. When my parents divorced, my family…

FOR THE PURPOSES OF WRITING WHAT I’M ABOUT TO WRITE, I CATALOGUED EVERY COUNTRY I’VE VISITED OVER THE LAST 28 YEARS OR SO OF BEING VARIOUS KINDS OF JOURNALIST. Such lists are not an exact science, there being no rigid definition of what even constitutes a country. My minimum qualification was that a given entity be recognised by at least one other country – so I reckoned Abkhazia and Kosovo (to name but two) could be counted, while I filed Ambazonia and Republika Srpska (to pick a couple at random) under Cameroon and Bosnia-Herzegovina respectively. The Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus made the list; Catalonia did not. Also, I had to have actually cleared customs and spent some local currency there – so I did not count the likes of…

It’s safe to say rap music wasn’t on Sidney Swartz’s mind when he first laid out the designs for a yellow six-inch boot back in 1973. Nicknaming his creation the Timberland, the Abington Shoe Company CEO was just hoping to create a superior boot for the construction workers of New England – one that was hardy, comfortable and entirely waterproof. In fact, Swartz was so preoccupied with creating America’s first waterproof leather boot that, during the prototyping phase, he immersed samples in toilets overnight, just to prove their mettle. With the help of its tagline, “Boots that cost plenty, and should”, the Timberland led a quiet revolution in heavy-duty footwear. They weren’t quite boutique, but they made a compelling argument that quality was worth paying for, even if your day…

“THE PAST IS A FOREIGN COUNTRY”, L.P. HARTLEY ONCE WROTE: “THEY DO THINGS DIFFERENTLY THERE.” Still, anyone curious about the past can always dig back through the archives to read what was going on, or trudge up the hills to see the crumbling ruins. It’s much harder to reach forwards in time and grab on to the significant stuff of 50 years ahead. And yet the artist and writer Emily Noyles Vanderpoel appears to have done just that. The New York creative stubbed her toe on abstract expressionism and minimalist design at the dawn of the 20th century, a good five decades before either movement actually reared its head. And she did this quite by accident, while on a mission to explain how colours interact with one another on the…

BEN GOLDBERG When I moved to New York, my first job in music was working for Ben Goldberg, who founded Ba Da Bing Records. He turned me on to a lot of music I hadn’t heard before. I got on to the New Zealand label Flying Nun through him, and more recently Big Thief. He also taught me how to promote myself before I ever thought I was going to take music seriously. He’s like a big brother to me. LOW, SECRET NAME The first time someone encouraged me to play music was when a friend asked if I would sing at an open mic with him. The song we performed was ‘Two-Step’, off Low’s 1999 album Secret Name. I was really self-conscious and nervous because I loved…

BORN: January 4, 1890, Hostinné, Austria-Hungary DIED: March 11, 1947, Springfield, Missouri, U.S.A. IN THE TIME BEFORE NIGERIAN PRINCES AND SHADY TEXTS URGING YOU TO LOG IN TO YOUR BANK ACCOUNT VIA THIS LINK, CON ARTISTS HAD TO DEPEND ON THE THING THAT GAVE THEM THEIR NAME: CONFIDENCE. Count Victor Lustig had this quality in spades, as well as a devious mind for coming up with elaborate and wholly convincing scams, and the emotional intelligence to read his marks like a book. In fact, his longest-lasting con remains unsolved to this day: his real name wasn’t Count Victor Lustig, and although the authorities, when they finally caught up with him, identified him as Robert V. Miller, that proved to be just another of his 47 aliases. Verifiable facts are hard…

I’M AN ANTI-RACIST EDUCATOR WITH A BACKGROUND IN WHITENESS STUDIES AND CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS. I FACILITATE DISCUSSIONS ON ISSUES OF RACIAL JUSTICE AND INEQUALITY. I ALSO CONSIDER MYSELF, UNAVOIDABLY, RACIST. When I say that I’m racist, what I mean is that I was born into a racialised hierarchy that has shaped my worldview, and from which I have benefited. I was born white, and that has meaning. In fact, the forces of racism were shaping my future before I’d even been born. For example, it could be predicted that my mother and I would survive my birth, and it can be predicted that I will live longer than someone who is not white. Being born white also meant that my passage through life would be easier. I grew up in…

MCCRACKEN PIKE MIGHT BE THE MOST KENTUCKY ROAD IN KENTUCKY. OLD-FANGLED WEATHERBOARD HOUSES, PORCHES BIG ENOUGH FOR THE EXTENDED FAMILY, TRUCKS OUT FRONT, UNFILLED LETTERBOXES BY THE ROADSIDE. DRIVING ALONG IT IS LIKE DRIVING THROUGH A FILM SET DESIGNED IN KENTUCKY’S IMAGE. But we’re here for something that doesn’t seem particularly ‘Kentucky’ at all. Because if you press on down McCracken, your eyeballs will chance upon an elegant – and entirely out of place – European-style castle. Where most castles were built to keep kings and queens safe from harm, this one was built for making booze. Lots of it. Founded in 1887 by Colonel Edmund Haynes Taylor Jr., a man often referred to as “the father of the modern bourbon industry”, the limestone fortress was once the home of…

IN 1949, A BRITISH BRAIN SURGEON NAMED GEOFFREY JEFFERSON MADE A ROUSING SPEECH AT THE LONDON SURGICAL SOCIETY. Taking the stage, Jefferson railed against the idea that the recently invented “digital programmable computer” would ever be capable of human-like thought. Yes, he conceded, these new machines could perform impressive mathematical calculations. But they would never be able to “write a sonnet… because of thoughts and emotions felt.” Faced with a new and powerful technology, Jefferson used poetry to draw a boundary around humanness. And in defining poetry as the yardstick of our humanity, he was in good company. Philosopher John Stuart Mill once said that to write poetry was to “paint the human soul truly”, and the art form’s elevated position in our culture has hardly dipped since. To this…