Touched By The Son

'Ell even

2012-01-01T13:37:00.000+11:00

2011 was a tumultuous year: the waters rose up, the ground rose up, the ocean rose up, the people rose up.

While the Right were simultaneously crediting the Arab Spring to the Bush invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, and decrying Western protesters as disorganised rabble who should hie thee to the nearest barber (these old farts obviously living a nineteen fifties wet dream), the truth is that this was the year of uprising.

Protests can be as unpredictable as natural disasters and little good came out of the London riots save to illustrate that there was more discontent under Cameron than under the previous Labour government. If the Occupy movement can continue to highlight the excesses of senior executive salaries and bonuses, especially in the wake of the GFC, then they will have a legitimate - if inconvenient - stand that will have to be directly addressed.

Realistically, celebrating the people rising up in one country but not another is the kind of ideological blindsiding that only conservatives would engage in. When the protests degenerate into looting and violence, then that is a sign that there is something amiss, but the message - whatever it may be - should be squarely met.

It was good to see so many dictators and powerlords tumble. In that, this year rivalled 1989.

Personally I was okay with the fairly binary year and continue to enjoy the benefits of current and future technology, but globally it seemed intent on proving that the earlier tsunamis and tso forth were a drop in the bucket.

Newt erred

2011-12-03T16:36:00.002+11:00

says it all really

Blacked out black doubt, white out why tout

2011-11-26T02:35:00.000+11:00

Things aren't as black and white as they used to be
though the sepia seeps through your pores
You've always been coming out in one way
regardless of the level of plausible poise
It would always come out some day
a measure of the pleasure found in noise

Race hate sites

2011-11-19T02:45:00.000+11:00

It's been a disturbing experience dropping in on message boards where ignorant bigots come to share their views. Apart from the obvious disquiet that hatred brings, there's the blunt lack of thought that forms opinion there.

Leaving aside the morality of selecting a whole race for opprobrium, the central hypothesis - that the race they deride are primitive savages - falls apart quite readily by the sheer count of high achievers, working at the senior levels of government and industry, dominating the entertainment and sporting worlds. It is too much to explain away an actor's success on some paranoid notion of the film world being dominated by interest groups that put him in that position. As with all film stars, standing is based on popular acclaim and Box office success.

And, drug cheats notwithstanding, a record in the sprint or long jump is unarguable.

A merry can-do spirit

2011-11-12T03:12:00.001+11:00

In my own keening to capitalism I started subscribing to the Early to Rise newsletter (as I sit here assuredly staying up late and sleeping in) some years ago. They crowd up my oldest inbox at Yahoo and are barely opened. Imagine what thoughts stirred then when I saw there with the seventy three thousand six hundred and three messages, give or take, this bold claim

The Most Important ETR Article You'll Ever Read

the new-ish editor's effusive introduction. Excerpt: 'Today Robert Ringer has written the essay I wish I had written. It is one of the finest essays to grace the pages here at Early to Rise. Let it inspire you and let it remind you of the good that we can do when we build businesses and add value to the world.

I won't give up on spreading the word that the American Dream is still alive. I will fight the powers that be tooth and nail to protect the American Dream and to prove to others that it still exists. '

Imagine the combination of lords of leaping logic and value-add that will be required to live up to that. As it is I could run rings around Ringer viz

The Entrepreneur and the American Dream

By Robert Ringer

With the word entrepreneur becoming increasingly popular with media pundits on both the right and the left, more and more people are coming to realize that entrepreneurship was the driving force behind America's widespread prosperity – prosperity that few Americans could have imagined as recent as the mid-20th century.

Entrepreneurship, in fact, embodies the spirit of the American Dream. After all, many of the Founding Fathers were entrepreneurs, and perhaps the two most famous in that regard are George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. They also are good examples of just how far apart the results of individual entrepreneurs can be. Though they were both farmers, Washington was one of the richest men in America, while Jefferson struggled financially throughout his life and died broke.

Jefferson's financial difficulties are a reminder that there are no guarantees for the entrepreneur, who labors away without the luxury of a safety net. In fact, perhaps the single greatest attribute of an entrepreneur is his willingness to take risks – including the risk of losing everything if he fails. By everything, I'm not just referring to savings, stocks, bonds, and collectibles. I'm talking about his house, his furniture, his cars – everything he owns – not to mention his credit and his self-esteem.

In this vein, Barbara Walters did an excellent special last week on self-made billionaires. The slant of the show belied the rhetoric of politicians who pander to voters by implying that being rich, of and by itself, is evil. They would have people believe that rich people somehow prevent others from getting ahead financially. The truth, of course, is that most wealthy people achieved their success by creating products and services that others want.

Barbara Walters' first guest was Guy Laliberte, founder of Cirque du Soleil. Laliberte, who has a net worth of $2.5 billion, struggled early in his career as a street performer in Montreal before venturing out as an entrepreneur. Today, his multibillion-dollar business showcases in 271 cities worldwide, employing tens of thousands of people in the process.

When Walters asked Laliberte if he still takes risks, he quickly responded, "Every day." Wall Street Journal Wealth Reporter Robert Frank, who added his insights throughout the show, then explained, "Part of the risk-taking personality is the ability to overcome failure. ...One of the things that makes billionaires successful is their reaction to failure."

Unfortunately, those who spew out class-warfare rhetoric are clueless about the risks the entrepreneur takes in his quest to achieve the American Dream. Or about the self-evident principle: The greater the risk, the greater the potential reward.

As a result, politicians have a stubborn habit of stepping in and trying to curb the natural rewards of the marketplace, insisting that "it's unfair" for the super rich to make so much more than the average working person. That's right, no other explanation other than "it's unfair."

It goes without saying that from a moral point of view, their position is indefensible. If people are truly free, they should be free to become as wealthy as their talent, creativity, and hard work can take them, so long as they do not use force or fraud against anyone else. The American Dream is about opportunity, not guarantees.

And from an economic viewpoint, it's a no-brainer. Contrary to what some politicians would like us to believe, it's impossible for anyone to become rich without creating jobs. Wealthy folks start and expand businesses and, in the process, employ others – not just by hiring people, but through the jobs that are created indirectly by those who furnish the raw materials, parts, transportation, etc. that their businesses require.

But what about someone who spends hundreds of millions of dollars indulging himself in such luxuries as mansions, private jets, and yachts? It doesn't take a Ludwig von Mises to explain that workers are needed to build those mansions, private jets, and yachts, not to mention to produce the materials and thousands of parts and accessories that go into them. Then, once built, it takes people to operate and service those mansions, private jets, and yachts – which means long-term employment.

Thus, economic reality makes it clear that the entrepreneur is not the villain some politicians make him out to be. On the contrary, he is a bona fide hero who creates jobs and wealth for everyone who is willing to work, thus giving others a leg up in achieving the American Dream.

As such, entrepreneurs who accumulate great fortunes should be admired rather than scorned. To vilify someone for having "too much" is the height of asininity and self-destructiveness. The American Dream is not about envy; it's about getting what you want in life by creating products and services that are valued in the free market.

The single most important fact about entrepreneurs such as Bill Gates and the recently deceased Steve Jobs is that their great wealth not only does not prevent others from becoming successful, it actually gives their customers the tools to become wealthy themselves. Think computers, hand-held electronic devices, and cell phones, to name but a few of the more obvious of such tools, all of which are easily available to even the most financially challenged among us.

The optimistic side of me wants to believe that truth may be on a roll here. If so, it needs all the help it can get. As angry redistribution-of-wealth advocates preach about lame abstracts such as social justice and fairness, those of us who know the truth about the American Dream need to spread the word.

We need to explain to all who will listen that the individual who aspires to great wealth by creating products and services people want is not the cause of America's problems, but, rather, thesolution to its problems.

When an individual focuses on hard work, resourcefulness, and wealth creation – and is willing to take risks – it puts him in a position to achieve the same American Dream that millions of wealthy people have experienced through their own efforts.

Imagine the combination of lords of leaping logic and value-add that will be required to live up to that. As it is I could run rings around Ringer viz

The first nine paragraphs present a sustained position for the risk and value of entrepreneurship but what both the writer and his err-steamed editor completely miss is that the occupation/protest of key spots against the excesses of the wealthy is not aimed at the self-made man or woman so, in other words, the chances of this being the most important ETR article we'll ever read are so greatly reduced as to be infinitismal. If it takes that long to come to the wrong point.

So what are the protests about this time? Quite simply, that this is scam capitalism. We're not all socialists trumping the line that we're out to destroy capitalism. An individual can become rich on the strength of their idea or invention without this in any way sanctioning bosses awarding themselves ever higher salaries and perks - paid from the company coffers - while laying off workers or screwing them over.

Surely the dimmest of anti-commerce campers would have no problem with profits based on sales; the real dispute, in this case, is economic mismanagement on a grand scale, with whole countries going to the wall. If capitalism was as robust as Ringer would have it, then why didn't all their vast funds prevent catastrophe? Why wasn't their brilliant skill and success enough for them to weather the meltdown? Why did they need a hand-out?
Doesn't this make them bogus capitalists? More potted manure than entrepreneur. A CEO is the opposite of a small business owner. The start-up concern survives on the skin of its teeth. If the profit margin is too low, if there is a lull in people wanting that service, if a new bypass is built, that little family business is going to the wall. Not so the corporation. The CEO can run it into the ground, wipe millions off its value, and still receive a bonus if he or she can wangle a government bail-out. This is grounds for further remuneration, despite the fact that they are, by all accounts, failed capitalists and unworthy of any reward.

And the hide of Ringer's wrangling in omitting a very important conclusion that the Wall Street and St Paul's squatters have come to: that these pretend venture capitalists aren't forging powerful laissez faire partnerships that produce profit, they're taking from the taxpayer. So on top of taking the lion's share of money and objects already, now these fat cats are stealing even more from the poor saps who lack clever accountants and meaningful negative gearing. Far from being something to be applauded, and encouraged, this is morally reprehensible.

The only justification for providing any business leader with a bonus is if they perform. This means producing nett profit for the company and shareholders. And the people who happen to do the work that results in that profit.
No good has come of obscene greed that bears no responsibility. A revised model is needed, and that's what the one percent have to face. Eventually.

Piece in the valley

2011-10-15T12:58:00.000+11:00

It would be easier to persuade people not enamoured of knowledge or interested in information, to embrace a nineteenth century curiosity for the natural world, if labelling was not so imprecise. Or, rather, it is hard to reconcile the existing nomenclature.

Take valleys. We picnic in valleys, we rest in their shade and admire their aspect, but we don't give them much more thought. Perhaps the locale of pleasant memories is not the basis for a dry discourse. Or vice versa.

Still, as I'd written on rivers, which run through valleys, and mountains, through which valleys nestle, it seemed reasonable to have a peek down their side.

In its broader sense a valley is identical to a dale. One with a river can be a vale. There are the river valleys, cradle of civilisation - having all that is necessary for the basis of primitive agriculture, and for development beyond that.

The largest valley is the Great Rift Valley. Rift valleys are created by the action of a geological rift or fault.
Not every valley is as clear cut. Capertee Valley is the widest valley. According to one source it is also the "world's largest canyon". Yet, when researching narrow and deep valleys, another source describes deep, narrow valleys as being known as "canyons or gorges", and not even normally referred to as valleys. Now if this is the case, why would a wide valley be known as a canyon at all, never mind the widest valley?

So perhaps there are other conditions under which a valley can be classified as a canyon.

Tiger Leaping Gorge is the longest, narrowest, and deepest gorge in the world.

A correspondent to an online Q and A conjectured that the Mariana Trench is the deepest but probably couldn't be considered a valley since it is underwater.

The premise of measuring valleys accurately to determine whether they are also (or rather) a hollow or a coon is fraught by complication. Even in this day and age.
There are enough glens and ravines to go around, straths aplenty. The earth doesn't lack for terms to describe the bits where it splits.
A dell was a part of the landscape long before it adorned desktops, a gully had nothing to do with cricket, and kloofs, well what are kloofs?!

Apt title

2011-09-20T21:53:00.000+10:00

The Minister for School Education, Early Childhood and Youth was in a band who released an album called Redneck Wonderland and I feel this epitomises the current clime. Generation Y are too close to comment but it could be time for another shake-up if the kind of reactionary cant that passes for commentary is to be dispelled.

It's probably people of my generation who are fueling the disaffection and playing into the one note of the Opposition. I don't understand it myself. For all of PM Gillard's shortcomings, they are as to nothing compared to Abbott's. At least we can apply the blowtorch to the belly with Labor, that's not possible with the federal Liberal Coalition. But it's not a general distrust for conservative politics that vexes me, it is the singular unsuitability of the current Opposition Leader to coming even close to leading our country. I remember people commenting on his nature many years before he lead the party, and it was a negative appraisal.

He already carries the burden of a history of callous gaffes, why give him the opportunity for more?

Like a Lake eh

2011-08-27T23:33:00.001+10:00

When determining the largest of lakes, one opens the floodgates. I can safely disregard the need to document the highest lake but the deepest and the longest come into play. As it happens, among these worldbeaters are both - Lake Baikal is the deepest lake, and Lake Tanganyika (which has not had an update in its name like the country it borders, along with Burundi, Zambia, and the Democratic Republic of Congo) the longest.

Caspian Sea
Michigan - Huron
Superior
Victoria
Tanganyika
Baikal
Great Bear Lake
Malawi
Great Slave Lake
Erie
Ontario
Winnipeg

If the bilge pump that is this blog has any idea why the list stops at Winnipeg, you'd have to interrogate the wiki editing process, as it is much longer than this now. But these are the Great Lakes of North America, tussling over whether Lake Michigan and Lake Huron are separate bodies of water, in which case Lake Superior is well named. The Caspian Sea is sitting unsteadily on top with constant accusations that it is, as its name suggests, a small ocean.
Russia and Africa manage the monumental in most respects and this also applies to lakes.

The largest lake in South America is the delightfully titled Lake Titicaca
Europe's largest is Lake Ladoga
In Anarctica there is the sub glacial lake Lake Vostok
Oceania, Lake Eyre when flooded.

Left with Crumb's

2011-08-20T03:08:00.001+10:00

I guess I get angry when ignoramuses spoil the party. I don't mind people who know their stuff, having an opinion contrary to mine. That's a learning experience, hopefully for all.

But when a bunch of ideologues light on something smarter folk have known about for years. Gee, you didn't know that Robert Crumb is the premiere underground comix artist; his material eccentrically individual and highly libidinous. If you knew this and had long been on the trail of Crumb's then, fine, Fritz the Cat ain't your granddaddy's Felix.
But that and a knowledge of even the barest Crumbs: the many issues he drew of that renowned autobiographical comic magazine, Harvey Pekar's American Splendour, in the film listings, the biography of one R Crumb. If all this draws a blank then you are not qualified to make pronouncements on his work or his character. You can fuck off.

The rest of us will keep on truckin'

Individual charter

2011-07-23T12:31:00.000+10:00

The poststructuralists were right about the extent to which our language constricts our discourse. It is a dull instrument that could easily be used as a weapon.

Periodically I watch the top 20 of the pop charts. I get to be amazed that Ne-Yo and Flo-rida are topping the charts. It's as if there wasn't music coming out of our ears. Good music. Great music. Music that can fuel your mood, set your course.

Instead one synthesised blob of gloop followed another, leavened only by white girls with piano backing. Adele is classically good and the way she finished the song jerking back a tear was emotionally revivifying. Likewise Christina Perri brings a satisfying mainstream sass to a thought often expressed in endearing indie-er circumstances.

As with the charts through the ages, we become overly thankful for a song that is that is more soulful than cynical, that grasps a universal emotion rather than one concocted in a meth/od lab. Who wouldn't want Snoop's job? Less is more, more or less. It's just I can see the nudity and bling and product endorsement; the hustling on each other's fame. It's not appealing or particularly promising at speaking out to thoughts ne'er so well expressed. Repetitive shite is a choice, so is strong narrative, clever wordplay, an intricate rhythm, a tune you can hum.

PC plod

2011-07-09T19:01:00.000+10:00

Clearly I'm not as politically correct as liberals. While I denounce Jeremy Clarkson's unfunny attacks on the national character of Mexicans, I'm not quite sure that it is precisely racist to talk about your TV reception as being "like Lenny Henry in a cave". It isn't exactly polite and it's certainly not amusing, but it says nothing derogatory about being black. Perhaps there is a pre-existing sensitivity to the fact that he has a mouth on him like Prince Philip.

I also fail to see why Lars von Trier has been banned for life from Cannes. There seems to be certain conditions for joking about being a Nazi and Lars didn't meet them, despite saying during the actual speech that he was aware that Hitler was "not a good guy". It may not have been smart, it was hardly deftly handled, but it's not as bad as the Michael Richards and Mel Gibson rants, which were said without humour, and designed to offend. And, as one reporter noted, Roman Polanski committed an actual crime, and he's not black-banned.

The Demon impulse

2011-07-03T03:14:00.000+10:00

Imagine if every pronouncement had to be in verse

Each iteration smartly curtailed by such curse

Before you could ask for assistance

or be rewarded for your persistence

there would be this incessant insistence

that you made your point

and sought to anoint

with rhyming and timing

the appointed hour

Kronic-al

2011-06-25T22:30:00.000+10:00

It makes sense that just as there is more attention on Kronic, the government steps in to ban it.

Not so Good Lord

2011-06-25T17:01:00.000+10:00

I'm currently working on a blog post on that other lauded vaudivillian, Lord Jesus. But while I give that the attention it deserves, thought I would rush a quick comment on another Lord. I speak of Lord Monckton who is soon to disgrace our shores.

Not versed with Godwin's Law, he rushes to Nazi comparisons when describing his political opponents. Oh he's not so hot on Strawman Fallacy either. The thing I find most singularly exceptional about the whole farrago though, is his outrageous disregard for methodology and measured response.

It doesn't stop at Godwin either. Perhaps another saying/maxim/ he's not familiar with 'let he who is without sin cast the first stone'. I take this not to mean that if you cheat on your taxes you can't talk about violent erotica, but that you should be very careful about making the kinds of comparisons that can backfire when a big enough audience starts looking for those shortcomings in the guy making them.

A certain callousness is present but that's a harder case to make than to point out how Lord Monckton is an enthusiastic practitioner of the Big Lie. This was Hitler's infamous notion that, if the lie was truly outrageous then people would respond by embracing it under the thought that no one could make such a claim if it didn't have some credence.

Seven Summat

2011-06-04T17:11:00.000+10:00

From the Himalayan region there is some drop when considering the highest mountains in each of the seven continents, though the 22,834 feet/6960 metres of Aconcagua in Argentina is impresionante.

McKinley (Denali) in Alaska sits at 20,320 feet/6194 metres making it the highest mount in North America

Kilimanjaro in Tanzania is the highest African mountain

Gora El'brus in Russia is the highest mountain in Europe

Puncak Jaya in the New Guinea region is the highest in Oceania

Vinson Massif in Antarctica is 4,900 metres high

Mount Kosciusko is the highest mountain in Australia at 2,228 metres

Remount'n

2011-05-28T19:50:00.001+10:00

In preparation for listing the highest peaks I had a peek at the Everest stats. Quite apart from the academic exercise, it made me realise just how formidable conditions are that far up. Wikipedia contributor has braved the elements and brought back a guide to the different features, not to say hazards.

It seems that if you die on this mountain, you get left there, and bodies of those who've perished can still be viewed as you make your ascent. This may contradict the opinion of those who feel that mountain climbing these days has become a doddle.

Mount Everest/
Sagarmatha /
Chomolungma

K2/
Qogir/
Godwin Austen

Kangchenjunga

Lhotse

Makalu

Cho Oyu

Dhaulagiri I

Manaslu

Nanga Parbat

Annapurna I

Gasherbrum I

Broad Peak

Gasherbrum II

Shishapangma

Gyachung Kang

Gasherbrum III

Annapurna II

Gasherbrum IV

Mahalangur Himalaya is a range that achieves great heights, and also up where the air is thin, Baltoro Karakoram and various other parts of the Himalayas such as Kangchenjunga Himalaya, Dhaulagiri and Manaslu and more.

My arbitrary cut-off - over a hundred of the highest peaks are all in this Asian region - was at those mountains over twenty six thousand feet above sea level.

Shiftaced

2011-05-25T14:01:00.001+10:00

Watched Stateline on Friday night and learnt that twelve and fourteen year olds with a family history of mental illness shouldn't smoke dope. It was quite a specific message but one too subtle for the panel assembled.

Perhaps the broad focus of the program dictated that there was little time to compare the effect of beginning the consumption of alcohol at 14 when you have a family history of mental illness. Or alcoholism.
Perhaps there was no time to consider the effect of a 12 year old smoking cigarettes when he or she has the cancer gene.
And maybe there was no time to compare the effects of an early introduction to valium or ADD drugs on the growing mind.

But a quick wrap-up could have accomplished something in the way of avoiding the impression that this was a grossly one-sided beat up of the kind that the media usually deliver on this subject. Not really to the standard of ABC journalism anyway.

Mount: a search

2011-05-15T16:20:00.000+10:00

Mid-ocean ridge - 65,000 km (40,389 mi)^[1]
Andes - over 7,000 km (4,350 mi)
Rocky Mountains - 4,800 km (2,983 mi)
Great Dividing Range - 3,700 km (2,299 mi)
Transantarctic Mountains - 3,500 km (2,175 mi)
Himalayas - approximately 2,400 km (1,491 mi)

These are the longest mountain ranges in the world but there are many many more, from Alborz in Iran to the Zillertal Alps, it would take as long to list them as it would to cross them so, intriguing as the Titiwangsa Mountains in Malaysia might sound, I'm climbing back down.

USAma

2011-05-07T13:44:00.000+10:00

[with apologies to Melanie]

Look what they done to USA ma
Look what they done to USA
code orange nightmares
for some patriot act

Cleaning up consciences
after the act

Look what they done to USA

Look what they done to USA ma
Look what they done to USA

war profiteering in some other clime
here's what they do what you do for crime
Look what they done to USA

Look what they done to USAMA
said they thought he'd be wearing body armour
underneath his fucking pyjamas
Look what they done to Usama mama

Buried him out at sea
Far away from you and me

The bulletholes keep changing
the spouses rearranging
the amount of resistance
and just the insistence
that the world is better
now that bin Laden is gone

Look what they done to Obama mama
His peace is written in swift killing
His demograph is God willing
Look what they done to Obama

Mama

They pulled apart the seams
of his hope and change
of father's dreams

"He tried to kill my Daddy"

So look what they done to Saddam mama
Sold him the hoist for his own petard
Hung him out to dry on the boulevard
Look what they done to old Saddam

And look what they done to USAma
Look what they done to USAma
Intelligence feared the blurring of lines
in the names and the games and the small confines
Look what they done to USAma

If it's all Osama to U

2011-05-07T01:03:00.002+10:00

As an armchair anarchist I've always felt one remove from the chardonnay socialists in the adjoining room. We care about the environment and we take science seriously, we like to be well informed and we wonder at all this talk of avoidance, we can focus on more than one thing at once and we're prepared to have our assumptions questioned as long as it's done with finesse.

We like much of the same popular culture we find ourselves immersed in and we tut tut at much of the same corruption and excess we see in the next part of the conversation. Neither are we blind to the faults of those whose views we share.

But sometimes my fellow lefties leave me slightly puzzled, if at nothing else than the way they stink of liberal; small l liberal.

Here's the man who has engendered such sympathy on his untimely (??????????) demise, responsible for:

post-9/11 the whole series of rules and regulations; the highly regulated, not to say spooked, society we live in. The way Y2K was a false alarm but was well and truly replaced in the western conscience by 9/11 and all that would follow.
a successful strike on all of the United States of America's key 'targets'
a raving misogynist swine
a millionaire who had a problem with the wealth of opposing ideologies or is that the wealth inherent in another ideology i.e. a hypocrite
set the scene for racial profiling, Guantanamo Bay, burning of holy book, innocents being caught up in the fray in one way or another
abused the hospitality of his faith and his one time allies
abused his brilliance and skill as a strategic mastermind for evil
ensured that the twenty first century would revive atrocities committed on fellow humans despite and gains and understanding we may have made through our technology and our increased knowledge of global events
lived his life celebrating death and reveling in bringing destruction down on those he classed his enemies. Where others wrote angry letters to the paper, this leader shattered lives. Through his machinations he struck down bog ordinary people trying to pay their mortgage and halfway enjoy their weekends. People who had no particular interest in persecuting other religions or cultures, much less the power to do so. The bravest and best of the municipality were killed and sickened by their efforts to save office workers from his murderous work
had the influence and ability to do so much good in the world but chose to pervert this so that it became the complete opposite
encouraged fear and mistrust across the East West divide
imagined that fucking up the world more than it was already was doing God's will and encouraged others to believe the same

I hadn't thought about it until it happened but the death of Osama bin Laden has survived his watery grave; his ability to sow discord will long outlast him, his compound a shrine, the circumstances of his death causing instantaneous conspiracies to sprout.

Nutjobs come out of the woodwork to conjecture on the passing of one of their own. Everything from 'he wasn't responsible for flying domestic airplanes into buildings' to 'he didn't exist - he was a mythical figure used to justify the invasion of the Middle East'. Now I know there are no shortage of conspiracy theorists on both sides of the divide but I don't necessarily believe there's a need to give them much credence when planning commando raids.

The SEALS who've been briefed know only that those al Qaeda broadcasts were real, the act was real, and the threat is still very real. Let's face it, a combat operative who applied any of the theories that sprang up from 9/11 would be doomed to failure.

As would anyone contemplating the involvement of the country that housed his stronghold lo this decade past.

There are some things that have to be conducted not by intellectuals, pacifists, and moral philosophers but by battle trained hardarses, and the conquest of the world's number one terrorists is the prime example. Could bin Laden have been dissuaded by theological point scoring or superior logic? Would he have strayed from his vengeance on - us, basically - if we could only have got some folk singer flown in to his hideout? Would a spot of rehabilitation cure his attitude and would that make up for all his sins?

No, now it's you who've discovered the compound, staked it out, got the heads of operation watching, got the fate of the free world in your sweaty palm.
You've been told that he could turn suicidal if cornered and what reason to doubt - it's his fucking M.O.
Not only could be be wired to blow but there's a fair chance that there are others who will make your passage out problematic unless you take the most drastic course of action possible You know those stories where the fight goes out of the foe when their leader is felled? This is that in real life.

Those movies where it's burst through the roof and start firing? Maybe wait a nanosecond to see whether one of the most unlikely men on the planet to surrender might be in the mood to do so

As the chopper blades or the oxy through the roofing herald your coming your first thoughts are of risking your life and your mission in order to capture the guy alive. You won't be like those Italian peasants who strung up Mr and Mrs Mussolini, nor will you run in and shoot to kill like they did the Ceaecescus. You won't callously throw the body of a revolutionary commander on the bonfire when he carks it like the Khmer Rouge did with Pol Pot's corpse, or take it to study as the Soviets did with Hitler's remains. You'll be better than your enemy and pray they meet you halfway.

Sure.

II

I was gratified to see that the one silky thread of noughties paranoia was held up at the end, a screenshot of the terrorist website showing that Usama bin Laden was marked as deceased.

Riverine razing

2011-04-30T02:20:00.001+10:00

Wikipedia lists the "mighty Murray" as the longest river in Australia and, indeed, it is the river that runs through three different states (New South Wales, Victoria,and South Australia - the Murray River in Western Australia is a different body of water.)

What's more it then lists the Murrumbidgee,which is only in NSW and the ACT. The three rivers are placed here in reverse order. The Darling River has shrunk from a worldbeating length to third place in Australia. I don't doubt the rest of the top 30 river systems so I think it must depend on which part you count as the Murray and which the Darling.

Otherwise what happened? Were there boggy bits they couldn't get to with the tape measure leaving them having to guess? Add in some hostile waterfowl and bite-y insects and it becomes apparent why the Wikipedia waders had a different reading to the midstream monsters, and the role of remote readers barely skims the surface.

Riverine rising

2011-04-22T21:24:00.005+10:00

[this database taken from Factmonster. Other lists omit Red Rock from the Mississippi-Missouri, don't list them again individually, and list the Murray-Darling as one super-long river]

River	Source	Outflow	mi.	km
Nile	Tributaries of Lake Victoria, Africa	Mediterranean Sea	4,180	6,690
Amazon	Glacier-fed lakes, Peru	Atlantic Ocean	3,912	6,296
Mississippi-Missouri- Red Rock	Source of Red Rock, Montana	Gulf of Mexico	3,710	5,970
Chang Jiang (Yangtze)	Tibetan plateau, China	China Sea	3,602	5,797
Ob	Altai Mts., Russia	Gulf of Ob	3,459	5,567
Huang He (Yellow)	Eastern part of Kunlan Mts., West China	Gulf of Chihli	2,900	4,667
Yenisei	Tannu-Ola Mts., western Tuva, Russia	Arctic Ocean	2,800	4,506
Paraná	Confluence of Paranaiba and Grande rivers	Río de la Plata	2,795	4,498
Irtish	Altai Mts., Russia	Ob River	2,758	4,438
Zaire (Congo)	Confluence of Lualab and Luapula rivers, Congo	Atlantic Ocean	2,716	4,371
Heilong (Amur)	Confluence of Shilka (Russia) and Argun (Manchuria) rivers	Tatar Strait	2,704	4,352
Lena	Baikal Mts., Russia	Arctic Ocean	2,652	4,268
Mackenzie	Head of Finlay River, British Columbia, Canada	Beaufort Sea (Arctic Ocean)	2,635	4,241
Niger	Guinea	Gulf of Guinea	2,600	4,184
Mekong	Tibetan highlands	South China Sea	2,500	4,023
Mississippi	Lake Itasca, Minnesota	Gulf of Mexico	2,348	3,779
Missouri	Confluence of Jefferson, Gallatin, and Madison rivers, Montana	Mississippi River	2,315	3,726
Volga	Valdai plateau, Russia	Caspian Sea	2,291	3,687
Madeira	Confluence of Beni and Maumoré rivers, Bolivia–Brazil boundary	Amazon River	2,012	3,238
Purus	Peruvian Andes	Amazon River	1,993	3,207
São Francisco	Southwest Minas Gerais, Brazil	Atlantic Ocean	1,987	3,198
Yukon	Junction of Lewes and Pelly rivers, Yukon Territory, Canada	Bering Sea	1,979	3,185
St. Lawrence	Lake Ontario	Gulf of St. Lawrence	1,900	3,058
Rio Grande	San Juan Mts., Colorado	Gulf of Mexico	1,885	3,034
Brahmaputra	Himalayas	Ganges River	1,800	2,897
Indus	Himalayas	Arabian Sea	1,800	2,897
Danube	Black Forest, Germany	Black Sea	1,766	2,842
Euphrates	Confluence of Murat Nehri and Kara Su rivers, Turkey	Shatt-al-Arab	1,739	2,799
Darling	Central part of Eastern Highlands, Australia	Murray River	1,702	2,739
Zambezi	11°21'S, 24°22'E, Zambia	Mozambique Channel	1,700	2,736
Tocantins	Goiás, Brazil	Pará River	1,677	2,699
Murray	Australian Alps, New South Wales	Indian Ocean	1,609	2,589
Nelson	Head of Bow River, western Alberta, Canada	Hudson Bay	1,600	2,575
Paraguay	Mato Grosso, Brazil	Paraná River	1,584	2,549
Ural	Southern Ural Mts., Russia	Caspian Sea	1,574	2,533
Ganges	Himalayas	Bay of Bengal	1,557	2,506
Amu Darya (Oxus)	Nicholas Range, Pamir Mts., Turkmenistan	Aral Sea	1,500	2,414
Japurá	Andes, Colombia	Amazon River	1,500	2,414
Salween	Tibet, south of Kunlun Mts.	Gulf of Martaban	1,500	2,414
Arkansas	Central Colorado	Mississippi River	1,459	2,348
Colorado	Grand County, Colorado	Gulf of California	1,450	2,333
Dnieper	Valdai Hills, Russia	Black Sea	1,419	2,284
Ohio-Allegheny	Potter County, Pennsylvania	Mississippi River	1,306	2,102
Irrawaddy	Confluence of Nmai and Mali rivers, northeast Burma	Bay of Bengal	1,300	2,092
Orange	Lesotho	Atlantic Ocean	1,300	2,092
Orinoco	Serra Parima Mts., Venezuela	Atlantic Ocean	1,281	2,062
Pilcomayo	Andes Mts., Bolivia	Paraguay River	1,242	1,999
Xi Jiang (Si Kiang)	Eastern Yunnan Province, China	China Sea	1,236	1,989
Columbia	Columbia Lake, British Columbia, Canada	Pacific Ocean	1,232	1,983
Don	Tula, Russia	Sea of Azov	1,223	1,968
Sungari	China–North Korea boundary	Amur River	1,215	1,955
Saskatchewan	Canadian Rocky Mts.	Lake Winnipeg	1,205	1,939
Peace	Stikine Mts., British Columbia, Canada	Great Slave River	1,195	1,923
Tigris	Taurus Mts., Turkey	Shatt-al-Arab	1,180	1,899

Roll Out the O'Barrell

2011-04-03T21:45:00.000+10:00

Tony Abbott's got it wrong, and not for the first time, when he states that the landslide victory (only the third such in our democratic history) is a rejection of Carbon Tax. That's giving this carbon tax too much credit(s).

The people of New South Wales were fed up with the state Labor Party for a number of reasons (if you were unkind, you'd stretch that to multitude of reasons). There's been plenty of talk about the way they had drifted from their own constituency - even from the departing Premier Kristina Keneally - and of long term Labor-ites angry enough to vote their political adversaries in instead.

At the end of the day, a government of whichever stripe is going to be booted out if it doesn't govern well. Here are the 306* more valid reasons than a federal carbon tax for why a government of sixteen years lost power:

They're a government that's been in for several years and warded off every challenger during that time. That breeds the kind of inefficiencies and distractions that plague a political party that feels entitled and complacent.
They weren't a real worker's party any more. Mick Young was a shearer and Bob Hawke was a drover's dog but the generations of NSW Labor driven by Carr were branch officials, with unions becoming recruiting grounds for a seat of one's own. If new Labor Party leader, John Robertson, follows through from his job as an electrician and as an empassioned union boss opposing the privatisation of electricity, then he could have the credentials for returning the party to its roots.
Whenever a party rapidly changes leaders - and it's not the only party to do so - it appears unstable, which does nothing to engender confidence. When you get stately state leaders/statesmen like Neville Wran or Sir Charles Court or able premiers like Bob Carr, the voting public feel reassured. A series of wild cards being flicked across the table would more describe the last government once Carr retired. Iemma looked like a rabbit in the spotlight most of the time and was as tiresome with his slogans as Abbott's support base. Nathan Rees gave it a red hot go but then got rolled by factions.
Ah yes, factions, and behind the scenes powerbrokers. That's what makes politicians as a profession so unpalatable to the common (wo)man; the whole needling and manouevring that is hidden from view.
The T Card, which rivals the Tea Party for monumental folly to a t. Why is it not possible for a government, or one of its many agencies, to put out a contract as applicable as any commercial undertaking? If you quote low, make sure you can get it in in under budget, and if you claim to be the most able to implement the project, please have the courtesy to prove it and recoup the investment. Here the bottom line is: you have the successful tender, make sure you make it work or you don't get paid. That's eleven million dollars down the drain. Makes a wildly overbudget swimming pool at local govt level look like a trifle.
Splendour: remember that episode of Tony Abbott being rebuffed by Andrew Wilkie for having offered too much? Fiscal responsibility on the part of government is the best way to convince the populace through any blip in the market. And we really just want to know that the appropriate amount was spent to get the most productive outcome. Anything else is fluff.
the Premier State was in bed with developers; its ministers movers and shakers, often with odious personalities that added to a volatile fuel.
Barangaroo deserves its own special column for getting taken for a row. A project for which there was widespread and vocal, not to mention high profile, opposition to, being shoved through without consultation in the dying days of a government on the way out. Here's the symbol of all that arrogance, all that manipulating of planning laws, all in the one gaudy monstrosity. More of a fuck you than a thank you from the party that had been given so many years in power.
Public transport. Sydney had a great transport system when the 2000 Olympics were on. That proved it could be done. It's been a sad and sorry saga since then, with promises of new lines, new trains, new safety mechanisms, and none met. I worked at Rail Access Corporation and it seemed to be just a thing to show on the whiteboard the different kinds of driver error occurring each month, without a plan to prevent it.
The road network hasn't been much better. It's fascinatingly horrible to hear of tunnels not getting usage and of other networks jamming up.

*I don't have time to list them all

Essentially the voter looks at a government's performance on the ground, they care considerably less for gimmicky issues that concern the Opposition of the day. Barry O'Farrell didn't have to be flash, or running with weirdo protest groups, to make an impact. He just had to promise better government, and getting things back on track.

Sage Undertaking

2011-04-02T14:24:00.000+11:00

Tolja!

I didn't vote Green this time. I accepted that Janet Mays had the most active involvement in pursuing the course best for the Mountains and so I decided to be local.

I know there's an argument from the party to say you should give them all the support you can; that second preference won't keep the wolves at bay. But, since this is the same kind of line taken by the ALP to stop people voting Greens or independent, I doubt the Green party would want me to water down my conviction, even if it did cost them.

I like the Labor candidate too, and I accept that her old boss Koperberg was more true to his electorate than I may have proposed.

Sage may be an asset, being a member of the victorious party, but I do share some disquiet at the idea of having three tiers of conservative rule.

I like the fact that the incoming O'Farrell government have made a checklist of promises, and they understand what the priorities are through those specific undertakings.
There's reason to have some confidence when an Opposition leader promises more public service jobs, not less. Perhaps he has learnt from Peter Debnam's unpopular slash'n'burn policies, not to scare the horses. But I do get the feeling that Barry is a more temperate and moderate leader than his immediate predecessors in the Liberal Party.

Cleopatriarch

2011-03-21T14:00:00.001+11:00

I could just link to this but then it would get taken down at some stage, and it's too good and too historic for that:

Women of the revolution should be shaping the future
Ruby Hamad
February 26, 2011
As the euphoria of Egypt's revolution fades and the world's attention is captured by the massacres in neighbouring Libya and Bahrain, it is worth taking a moment to acknowledge that for Egyptians - particularly women - the battle is really only just beginning.
On February 15, Egypt's military ruling council appointed an Islamist judge, Tarek al-Bishry, to oversee the constitutional panel that will be responsible for drafting the new constitution. The panel, handpicked by Bishry and consisting mostly of fellow judges and politicians, does not feature a single woman.
Bishry has been referred to as ''moderate'' in his views, although Wael Abbas, a popular and influential blogger, calls him a "worrying" choice. "There is no such thing as a moderate Islamist," Abbas warns. "We want equality for all Egyptians, including Christians, Jews, Bahais and those who consider themselves atheists." Even from Abbas, as progressive and secular a figure as there exists in Egypt, there is no mention of equality for women.
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It is a testament to how marginalised women are that there is more dismay that the panel features only one Coptic Christian (a judge) than there is that it features no women. Ten per cent of Egyptians are of the Coptic faith; at least 50 per cent of Egyptians are women.
Given 10 days by the military council to ease the transition into civilian rule, it is unlikely the panel will draft a new constitution so much as hastily amend the old one. This means the dreaded Article 2, which proclaims Islam the state religion and shariah the main source of law, is unlikely to change.
While minorities such as Copts are directly affected by Article 2, so too are women, and despite their marginal status, women are not a minority.
The fact that no women have been asked to help set Egypt on its future course is particularly galling when one considers the large role women played in the revolution itself.
On January 18, 26-year-old blogger Asma Mahfouz posted a video of herself on her Facebook page, telling of her intention to march to Tahrir Square on (the now legendary) January 25. In the video, Mahfouz implores her fellow Egyptians to help her overturn the 30 years of "humiliation and degradation" that characterised Mubarak's reign. Her video proved so popular, she was credited with awakening the revolutionary spirit in thousands of young men. After all, if a girl was brave enough not only to protest but also to make public her intention to protest in a regime known to crack down ruthlessly on dissenters, then they had to show their manhood by joining her, right?
Then there are Gigi Ibrahim, one of the ''Facebook youth'' who were instrumental in disseminating the images from Tahrir Square via Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and Vimeo, and the activist Mona Seif, who gave one of the most harrowing live interviews of the revolution on al-Jazeera English. Witnessing the invasion of the square by pro-Mubarak goons, she cried out through tears that leaving was not an option for the protesters because they knew if they gave up, the regime "would hunt us one by one".
Even outside Egypt, women led the way. The New York-based Egyptian columnist Mona Eltahawy undertook what she dubbed a "media uprising" in the United States, crisscrossing the country in an effort to relay to confused Americans - audiences and media alike - what was actually occurring on the ground. In fact, Eltahawy was credited with prompting CNN to change its framing of events from ''chaos'' to ''uprising''.
So why are Egyptian women being excluded now? These early days are pivotal.
Without a female voice to influence the constitutional reform, it is unlikely that any reforms will be made that improve the rights of women, particularly given the short time frame. Egypt has unacceptably high levels of sexual harassment and low levels of female employment (in 2007, women's activity rate was only 23 per cent). While the two may appear unrelated on the surface, the fact is that the status of women in Egypt, as in the rest of the region, is one where they are largely relegated to the private sphere. As long as women are viewed primarily as wives and mothers, then their roles - and their bodies - will be regarded primarily as sexual.
Reforms that improve the status of women, giving them options outside the home and an identity outside of their strict gender roles, are needed to change the attitude many men harbour towards women.
Without these changes, for the women of Egypt it could be a case of the new boss looking remarkably similar to the old boss.
Ruby Hamad is a freelance writer.

PreSage

2011-03-16T13:55:00.001+11:00

I'm bracing for the inevitable: there will be a repeat of the federal Macquarie result where the Liberal candidate did nothing - didn't contribute to discussions and debates, didn't stand at the top of the stairs at the train station gladhanding commuters and thrusting pamphlets in their hands, didn't address any letters to the editor - and romped in regardless. Apparently my fellow Mountains folk care little whether the person they vote for is actively involved in the process, which seems rather strange. Perhaps, like me, they are more inclined to vote on party lines (or, OK, in my case, not-party lines). So I've already picked out my title for the aftermath: 'Sage Undertaking' (or, in the unlikely event that Labor is returned 'Sage Brush' as in, that was a brush with getting some arrogant toadie in power instead of a vitally interested local member.)

The lady in question, Roza Sage, is something of a Bronwyn type figure to look at. You know Barry Humphries objection to voting for Kevin Rudd because he looks like a dentist, well Roza actually is a dentist. Maybe she got tired of being hated and feared and just chose the wrong vocation.

Meanwhile, in the tradition of Labor rising through the ranks, the far more open and friendly (appearing) Trish Doyle is retiring member Phil Koperberg's head of staff.
The Greens are running former councillor Kerrin O’Grady.
Another - very active - councillor Janet Mays is running as an independent meaning that, yes, it is an all female field yet again (if you don't count the Christian Democratic Party candidate Merv Cox, and I don't).

Postscript: I take that back about Roza Sage: she was at our train station this morning, the eve of the election, along with our former federal Liberal member, Kerry Bartlett.

In other news - so assured is the routing of the ALP in this state that there is a forum scheduled for Monday in 'the wake of their defeat', despite it not being election day til tomorrow!

Dapin opens/opines

2011-03-13T02:21:00.002+11:00

Mark Dapin is another of those columnists whose work I am exposed to through the caprices of the weekend newspaper lift out. Like that previous columnist I spotlighted, Dapin fills his spot with tales of his mum coming over from England and falling on her bum, of beer with an amusing name. He doesn't go to the lengths that a Ron Saw would*, of naming his wife and children with cute code names and writing about them incessantly. Or am I thinking of Ross Campbell?

*a habit that's been taken up by many an Australian columnist

Well, a letter writer yearned publicly for Dapin to return to more political commentary and the message was received yielding this one true return to form:

I came back from holiday to find a postcard from my federal MP, asking whether I thought gays should be allowed to marry. I was a bit surprised, since she has never canvassed my opinion on any other issue: whether, for example, midgets should join the library service.
I'd have thought everyone should have the same civil rights, regardless of their biology or beliefs*. So,yes, gays should get married, if they want. Your sexual orientation doesn't matter. As soon as you get married, you stop having sex anyway.

According to my MP's postcard, "Recently the government asked Members of Parliament to gauge local community attitudes to same-sex marriages." But in the Netherlands,which has about three-quarters of the population of Australia,only 1100 gay couples married in 2005. Do we really need to find out what everyone in the country thinks about this? I only ask, because I don't remember the government consulting me over whether we should invade Iraq. And when I demonstrated against the idea, it ignored me. Perhaps I should've sent the postcard.

I wonder if my (comparatively left-wing) MP is looking for my backing in the chamber because the people who object most strongly to gay marriage are religious - and everyone knows it's cruel to upset religious people, and if atheists stand up to them, we will burn in hell. I've never quite understood why it is so important to respect religious - as opposed to political - convictions, but I guess religious people vote in Australia and dead Iraqis don't vote anywhere.

Last year, religious people helped the Victorian government decide not to allow classes in humanism in Victorian schools. But that colourful assembly of property developers' proxies, the NSW State Parliament, has long agonised over whether NSW schoolchildren should be allowed to take ethics classes instead of religious education. Ethics, like PE, would be taught by volunteers. Am I the only person who thinks that their children should be taught by teachers?

I have a stake in this, since in England where I grew up, religious education was compulsory and I was excluded from it. "Noddy" Reese refused to teach me after I wrote swear words on the exam paper. I did this because I didn't like the subject, and there didn't seem to be any way og getting better at it. Religious education classes weren't real lessons, and I had more spiritually uplifting things to do, such as smoke cigarettes behind the bike sheds. Ethics periods won't be proper classes either, and kids in state schools will use them to persecute the volunteer tutors and stab each other in the arm with their (immoral) compasses.

At school, I hope my children will learn words and numbers, countries and kings, and the fact that osmosis is the attraction of a dilute solution to a concentrated solution through a semi-permeable membrane. I don't want them being told that Jesus was the son of God. Yes, I it's important to be familiar with the Judeo-Christian tradition, so you can understand great works of devotional art, and ideas that have changed the world, but this should be taught as history, like the rise of Islam and the spread of Buddhism.

A reader has complained I don't write about politics any more. There are two reasons for this: (1)Alexander Downer is no longer the member for Mayo. My work is done; (2)I don't get it. Labor politicians used to be mild right-wingers pretending to be left-wing so they'd get elected. Now they're mild left-wingers pretending to be right-wing once they're in Parliament. Does anybody seriously believe Julia Gillard is personally against amending the Marriage Act? Or, for that matter, that Tony Abbott really thinks climate change is a scam? Why should I tell politicians what I believe when they won't tell me what they believe?

Answers on a postcard, please.

*Except for estate agents, who are just a bunch of crooks.

[Good Weekend, February 26,2011]

Sic s'White Boomers

2011-02-27T03:27:00.000+11:00

Until I went back to Perth this month, I thought of myself as Generation X. I was of the generation that rejected, in some fashion, the ideals and fashions of the sixties and early seventies. Sure Johnny Rotten and Jello Biafra make improbable Baby Boomers but, despite their unassailable credentials for rebellion against that hippie ethos, they are older than me!

If I'm to be a Baby Boomer, I want not to have just seen the bands I have, but the Beatles at the Cavern Club, the Rolling Stones while they were young-ish, the Doors for freak's sake.

It's no good saying "Oh, you're a baby boomer" and not having anything reasonable to back it up. Why were the soldiers still straggling back to sow their seed in the early sixties? The war ended in 1945. Even allowing for clean-up operations, would the randy and relieved servicemen not have returned with lust in their loins ere now?

Where were you in '62? I was in the womb for most of it. I don't recall anyone then saying "Son, not only are you a baby, you're a baby BOOMER"
Nor was there an occasion in the schoolyard that anything particularly boomer-ish happened. My stepmother is a boomer, not me.

An Australian cultural portal posits the Baby Boomers as ending in 1961 (phew!) It also states "Between 1962 and 1972, Australia's adult population leapt by almost three million as the baby boomers reached voting age."
I was well and truly a child through that period. I didn't reach voting age until the end of 1980. Eight years when you're still growing up is quite a significant length of time. That's your entire primary school years or, high school and the first couple of years as an undergraduate.
Did you think you were completely on the same wavelength as the 'big kids'? I didn't really.
Add on some more years and the comparisons stretch further still.

I began to embrace the Whitlam ethic but not before parroting my parents Liberal voting in the wrong place and being scoffed at. I certainly hadn't worked through all the theory that followed my reading so you get a raw response, but I was still just finding my way. Which is not quite where you want the voting citizenry, even those casting their ballot paper for the first time.

The Vietnam War killed one of my second cousins but I was too young for it to be a threat to my future. We'd virtually banished war when I was coming of age, and the Cold War and nuclear power were our bogies. Sure the Communist element was an ongoing theme but one could say the same about today, with our uneasy relationship with China and North Korea.

I do like 60's garage bands, and Captain Beefheart albums. No matter how much different incarnations of
Starship suckitude ensues, I'll always like classic Jefferson Airplane. But I had to delve back to discover that. It might be through a cover of White Rabbit or any one of a number of stimuli. Who knows what turns you on to things when you reach a certain age. The point is I wasn't around to witness it. The retro bands we would go and see in inner city Sydney pubs were just that, retro. We never thought of ourselves as continuing on in an unbroken line from late 60s/early 70s. Au contraire. New Wave was marketed as breaking from the stentorian rock acts. Punk just spat. Neither would have had much more than a grudging respect for Al Jarry or even the Yippies because of the era and the associations. It's pretty hard to have a 'generation' that is at contrast over a, what was that term, generation gap
That seems contradictory and not just in the sense that one subset fails to get along with another or not see they are usurping them in some way.

If Generation X won't have us, despite Billy Idol naming his band after them (make that before them), then I'm afraid we'll just have to occupy a very narrow demographic between the two.

FanTAStic

2011-02-05T13:11:00.002+11:00

I don't know how I could have failed to note all this but, in the recent tradition of knife-edge elections, Labor was returned in Tasmania only through a power-sharing arrangement with the Greens.
This has meant, momentously, that their state leader Nick McKim has become the first Greens government minister in Australia.

Hopefully this means the state is a little less under the Gunn than it has been.

Since then Premier David Bartlett has resigned, citing family reasons, and Tassie also has joined another growing trend by having its first female premier Lara Giddings.

Flood a memories

2011-01-30T03:12:00.000+11:00

I've lived through a flood and a fair few droughts. My last case of lower floor flooding in Lower Bowen Terrace New Farm was the end of the eighties but I could look up YouTube and see a nearby street that (suburb being on the Brisbane River and all) was flooded so I get a pretty good picture (there's a YouTube picture of drier times and a tamed bird flying across the park - and over picnickers heads - and returning to its perch. But that's a different story)

I thought Anna Bligh's statements to the media (well, the ABC at least) were exactly the kind you'd want - expect - from a leader. She made it very clear the priorities and she took charge.

I also loved the fact that both Prime Minister Gillard and Foreign Minister Rudd, whose electorate is in one of the flood-affected areas, were straight on site; offering comfort and organising relief.

I thought it was perfect that it was the Premier's Flood Relief campaign that would sort all the donations and put them toward the mop-up.

II

Conditions were severe enough for (sometimes remote) neighbours to render assistance. Australians were by turns shocked and saddened and alarmed. They had reasons for all these emotions and more. Conditions after the worst flood effected regions were said to resemble the aftermath of a tsunami.

III

Alarmed? Suddenly other states starting putting in flood reports of their own. The north of New South Wales often cops it and is close to the existing floods. But Victoria started sandbagging and calling panicky meetings (a year after they had been wracked by bush fires), South Australia was getting what - run-off from Victoria? And parts of Tasmania also flooded. We got some rain here.

Western Australia had another bad bush fire.

Yeah, to cultural theorists and reactionaries both, with their whole claim to dominion over nature, I say PHOOEY

We may be on the verge of nanotechnology breakthrough and in the process of buggerising around with DNA to our heart's content, but we couldn't stop a flood (or riverine rise as some insurers are calling it) hitting on several fronts at once, while a destructive fire happened elsewhere in the country. We couldn't even stop massive flood damage in one of our state capitals. Government and Opposition have both come forth and addressed the obvious need to raise funds for the huge expense of rebuilding.

The Gillard government have proposed a flood levy but, in the same way that the Rudd bonus going to overseas nationals was counterproductive, the impost would also affect those ravaged by the very conditions that the levy is meant to help. Unless you spent months on drafting tax legislation to consider how to exempt some taxpayers from the levy. Help is needed until things are returned to normal, whether this be in the way of keeping businesses alive in the townships that were inundated, by going and cleaning up, helping out in the wayfarer stations of people who've lost homes, sending money, raising funds, it's all necessary.

Opposition Leader Abbott has asked for a bipartisan meeting with the PM and Treasurer to propose alternatives to another, you guessed, Great Big New Tax.

Though thinking about it, if you were hit directly by the floods recently, you're not going to be earning too much for a while, so the limit might sort out most of the faults with a double jeopardy model.

It's not as though Julia has been resting on her Green supported independent allied laurels, as witness her moves to slash Cash for Clunkers and, oh, I don't know, every single positive environmental initiative in place. Like that's going to help the erratic weather.

All at Sea

2011-01-23T22:40:00.002+11:00

A tlantic Ocean

Mediterranean Sea

Others

Arctic Ocean

Southern Ocean

Indian Ocean

Pacific Ocean

Arafura Sea
Banda Sea
Bering Sea
Bismarck Sea
Bohai Sea
Bohol Sea (also known as the Mindanao Sea)
Camotes Sea
Celebes Sea
Ceram Sea

Chilean Sea
Sea of Chiloé
Coral Sea
East China Sea
Flores Sea
Gulf of Alaska
Gulf of California (also known as the Sea of Cortéz)
Gulf of Carpentaria
Gulf of Thailand

Landlocked seas

Some large inland lakes, usually brackish, are called "seas".

Salton Sea

That was '10 and this is Now

2011-01-02T02:38:00.000+11:00

I ended the year on strange note: Tom Waits will be among those elected to the Rock'n'Roll Hall of Fame this go round, while my other all-time favourite gruff-voiced songsmith, Captain Beefheart died at the age of 69.

I barely made it through two French speaking countries yet my table companion at the big office Christmas party speaks fluent French and said when he's in France he likes to speak French. I was so impressed, and he's only a few years older than me.

I did surprise him with a good language anecdote before becoming too drunk to keep up such banter.
He left early. Others left early. I went on to the next pub with the hardier soles, including our director.

This was the year that I made a connection with my Dad's past

and truly went abroad, ahead of the maelstrom.

It seems every year now I read of misfortune on reflecting back over the year. I think 2010 was a cracker of a year. I caught up with my good mate, stayed at my sister's house in the English countryside, visited the home of the Bard, went through the many drawing rooms of Windsor Castle, and climbed the many steps of St Paul's Cathedral

We soaked up the sun on the Seine and strolled the canals of Amsterdam. We visited van Gogh Museum, Reijksmuseum, and sections of the Louvre. We climbed the crawlspace of Anne Frank House and the bell tower of Westerkerk.

Back home, I'm the shoveller with sunburn so - with the days getting even hotter - have started going outside in the eve.

Peak-a-view

2010-12-13T22:24:00.000+11:00

Any fellow bloggers checked out your stats? It's weird when you can see where your viewers are and some of the sources that direct people to your site. There's nothing engineered about it from my perspective as I was just as surprised as anyone.

A hen's party site is directing traffic to my blog. Why?

I'm finding it hard to wean myself from fuming indignant over Right wing American blogs. I know I should learn to celebrate all the good things going on in the world since Obama started mucking in and fixing up the nightmare Bush created, but the whole tea party thing is distracting. And then there's the fact that US-watching is fraught at the best of times. I envy those who can enjoy the pop culture without buying into the politics

Baillieu straw poll

2010-12-01T21:45:00.000+11:00

Another narrow election. There's a pattern of real democratic outcomes breaking out all over. This time it's the conservative side that has the narrow victory, but I'm not partisan about this. The increase in Greens votes and the general trends to swing over issues and performance are healthy.

But what of the man of the hour? I looked him up, DIB style, and found he was already renowned as a teetotaler. The list is long enough and varied enough not to expect that he's been included to boost numbers.

I don't think Brumby was brilliant and I'm more concerned for Labor to stay in at the federal level.

City zen

2010-11-20T01:49:00.000+11:00

Abidjan
Abu Dhabi
Abuja
Accra
Addis Ababa
Algiers
Amman
Amsterdam
Andorra la Vella
Ankara
Antananarivo
Apia
Ashgabat
Asmara
Astana
Asunción
Athens
Baghdad
Baku
Bamako
Bandar Seri Begawan
Bangkok
Bangui
Banjul
Basseterre
Beijing
Beirut
Belgrade
Belmopan
Berlin
Bern
Bishkek
Bissau
Bloemfontein
Bogota
Bonn
Brasilia
Bratislava
Brazzaville
Bridgetown
Brussels
Bucharest
Budapest
Buenos Aires
Bujumbura
Cairo
Canberra
Cape Town
Caracas
Castries
Chisinau
Colombo
Conakry
Copenhagen
Dakar
Damascus
Dar es Salaam
Dhaka
Dili
Djibouti
Dodoma
Doha
Dublin
Dushanbe
Freetown
Gaborone
Georgetown
Guatemala City
Hanoi
Harare
Havana
Helsinki
Honiara
Islamabad
Jakarta
Jerusalem
Kabul
Kampala
Kathmandu
Khartoum
Kigali
Kingston
Kingstown
Kinshasa
Kuala Lumpur
Kuwait City
Kyiv
La Paz
Libreville
Lilongwe
Lima
Ljubljana
Lome
London
Luanda
Lusaka
Luxembourg
Madrid
Majuro
Malabo
Male
Managua
Manama
Manila
Maputo
Maseru
Mbabane
Melekeok
Mexico City
Minsk
Mogadishu
Monaco
Monrovia
Montevideo
Moroni
Moscow
Muscat
N'Djamena
Nairobi
Nassau
Nay Pyi Taw
New Delhi
Niamey
Nicosia
Nouakchott
Nuku'alofa
Oslo
Ottawa
Ouagadougou
Palikir
Panama City
Paramaribo
Paris
Phnom Penh
Port Louis
Port Moresby
Port-of-Spain
Porto-Novo
Port-Vila
Praia
Pristina
Prague
Pretoria
Pyongyang
Quito
Rabat
Rangoon
Reykjavik
Riga
Riyadh
Rome
Roseau
Saint George's
Saint John's
San Jose
San Salvador
Sanaa
Santo Domingo
Sao Tome
Sarajevo
Seoul
Singapore
Skopje
Sofia
Sri Jayewardenepura Kotte
Stockholm
Sucre
Suva
Taipei
Tallinn
Tarawa Atoll
Tashkent
Tbilisi
Tegucigalpa
Tehran
The Hague
Thimphu
Tirane
Tokyo
Tripoli
Tunis
Ulaanbaatar
Vaduz
Vaiaku village, Funafuti province
Valletta
Vatican City
Victoria
Vienna
Vientiane
Vilnius
Warsaw
Washington D.C.
Wellington
Windhoek
Yamoussoukro
Yaounde
Yaren District
Yerevan
Zagreb

I started this mad labour of love on 19th August, I then visited four of those cities, which informs the links not one whit.

Oppositional

2010-11-01T12:05:00.000+11:00

New South Wales

Charles Lee
Ernest Durack
Bill Dunn
Vernon Treatt
Murray Robson
Pat Morton
Pat Hills
Peter Coleman
John Mason
Bruce McDonald
John Dowd
Peter Collins
Kerry Chikarovski
John Brogden
Peter Debnam
Barry O'Farrell

The plan was to feature all opposition leaders from the six states but, to my surprise, these are not readily documented yet. If anyone feels like doing a Wiki post on Victorian opposition leaders, there's an opening.

In the meantime, thought I would go ahead and post the intendeds for the Premier State.

The not so Good Oil

2010-10-31T03:00:00.000+11:00

I'm not comfortable with this notion that because we consume so many oil-based products to the point of becoming reliant on them, we have to grin and bear it when oil companies fuck up, or when shipping companies or other service providers fail to uphold their end of the bargain.
The point about how reliant we are on a consumable has no bearing on how many safeguards a well should have on it, on how well the well works. WELL...

I guess it's all relevant when you're used to bandits hacking your pipes traveling over land as to where you're wasting oil and everything it touches. The fact that the oil needs to be staunched in the water rather than on sand becomes academic.

Every occupation is witness to at least one cock up. These acts are as to nothing compared to billions of dollars of damage to the fragile ecology and surrounding industry reliant on the ongoing exploitation of same, in the case of the BP failure.

If I want my CD (or vinyl, hippy) then I better accept where the raw ingredient comes from. As much as we might pine for wind, hydro, or solar, to provide for our energy needs, coal and oil hold sway. They are unlikely to lose their influence until one of these greener forms of energy overtake it for usefulness.

We know, from our past use of steam and gaslight, how ready and able we are to use whatever material is at our disposal that does the job.

But nobody's arguing the influence of Big Oil. Either the rewards they get or the the rewards they give. Left and Right draw swords, or pistols at dawn, at the gates of Big Oil.
It's when Big Oil makes a Big Mistake and doesn't even have a Backup Plan for a Big Project involving Big Impact potential for when things go wrong, that we start to wonder.

Does even such a large blip on our stock market holdings deserve our continued support if they haven't factored in the welfare of all those who are dependent on them being a good corporate neighbour, if nothing else?

Still oversees

2010-10-16T19:07:00.000+11:00

Haven't attempted much in the way of blogging while abroad as tapping the screen of an iPad is not as fast as touch typing. Needless to say am having a wow of a time, having stayed in Brussels and Paris since the last post. We're now at my sister's house in the English countryside.

Gouda day

2010-09-26T03:22:00.000+10:00

Just a quick blog to say I am in Nederland, home of my fathers. We took a trip to Gouda yesterday and took photos of the row of five houses that Great Grandfather built. Quite exciting, especially as there is a plaque with his name on it as proof.

The train trip also takes you out through countryside so you don't only get to see (and feel) the delights of Amsterdam, which are considerable.

Keeping us in suspense

2010-08-25T22:06:00.000+10:00

Our first hung parliament in fifty years and it certainly feels like a real democracy now, with voters refusing just to toe the party line either way. We are unlikely to know for a fortnight who will be in a position to form government. Not only that but there were other remarkable occurences:

our first Green MP, Adam Bandt, in the seat of Melbourne. It was a decisive win.
our first indigenous federal MP, Ken Wyatt (preceded by federal Liberal senator Neville Bonner - who took office in 1971, and Australian Democrat senator Aden Ridgway. First state parliamentarian was Wyatt's fellow West Australian MP, and Labor minister, Ernie Bridge.)
our youngest ever MP, 20 year old Wyatt Roy

The balance of power is now held by independents:

though the only one who is being truly independent, arguably, is Wilkie who has accused the others of forming a bloc. He has refused to join in discussions with them in consulting with the two major party leaders over what would be required to secure support. Whether this has anything to do with the fact that the others come from conservative backgrounds - having all been former members of the National Party - is a matter for conjecture. Certainly some of the things that Windsor, Katter, and Oakeshott stand for (like an ETS and national broadband) are more in line with ALP policy than LNP.

Astray liars, let us rejoice

2010-07-25T03:23:00.001+10:00

It's hardly very patriotic to base a discussion on the topic by citing overseas sources; particularly, perhaps, the US of America.

Apart from some airkzist-ent-ya l'st angst surrounding the loss of the southern cross tattoo to our local version of the redneck, we are prone to celebrating our national day with a good less saluting and genuflecting to the flag as some. We're the country who mumble through the second verse of our national anthem because none of our sports stars knows the words. There's a smattering of bigotry but it doesn't necessarily speak in one national language; our prejudices spread through region and demographic as they do elsewhere, but our riots are fewer and calls for secession an historical oddity. I don't worry about Australia having an excessive nationalist bent or an overblown patriotic fervour. I'm bloody grateful in a way that we don't.

Having a paucity of patriot principles with which to govern us, hasn't stopped us from excelling in a range of disciplines. One could argue for the benefits of a superior climate, but the mad mix of floods and droughts, cyclones and tornadoes, shows that we can triumph in adverse conditions. Go far enough inland and there's all the proof you need. And there are countries with rainforests who experience a lower standard of living and less economic nous.

Capitalism co-exists with a national health plan and not even our conservatives persist with the idea of abandoning Medicare the way they once did with Medibank. We may not pull off some of the people power advances our neighbour New Zealand have, but we offer welfare without the need to have saved the insurance. And that hasn't damaged our economy, nor meant we are unable to participate and contribute to the more right wing favoured causes like our Middle East incursions and 'boat people' policy.

Pater rot

2010-07-10T02:27:00.001+10:00

A 'patriot' is deeply paranoid, a misanthrope at heart, with an enemies list and a capacity to take whatever means expedient. At least, this is according to a right wing blogger I've conversed with. What makes me say this? Well Richard Nixon could be fairly described in this way and my ruddy necked adversary defended the dead scoundrel by saying he was a patriot.

What's wrong with the above paragraph? Well, there's a few things actually. Though if the stiff stern style of patriot are presented as a fallacy, it's their own damn fault.
But, yes, even if Nixon was all those things, that doesn't mean this is a feature of all patriots, or an inevitable consequence of their fervour. To suggest otherwise is to fall into the same trap of stereotyping that our political foes employ.

What it does demonstrate is that ruthless behaviour is so often part and parcel of power; that one need not be possessed of all the facts, or always have the best interests of the American people at heart, to have dominion over them and, to a certain extent, their destiny.

After all, if we are to frame patriotism in any meaningful way, it is in the sure sense that we have a common interest in our nationalism and a belief in preserving our values at a social or community level. Taken too far, this ignores what is really best for us.

Without any strong sense of patriotism, our love and devotion restricts itself to the family or clan level, or it barely manifests itself at all.

Cheering for your team, backing your writers, championing your thespians.. patriotism has its positive traits. But when it comes to an uncritical level of support, one is almost asking to be led astray.

It is the patriotic many who fuel the elite few by aiding and abetting their enterprise. The most Machiavellian tosser, fucking his country over, is dependent on dupes for a living. So an admiration for the finest qualities we retain and an appreciation for the natural beauty and outstanding weather we have, is probably enough. That and the occasional social ritual.

The patriotic gesture brooks no argument once a predetermined understanding of acceptable conduct is agreed to by a cabal that would not have you in its ranks.

All this really points to is that is supremely popular of being manipulated in ways that, say, saving the whales or reducing the methane emissions in livestock is not. These are defined activities. You measure them and read the instrument, you don't get to 'form an opinion' since your job is to report, not interpret; to act, not expostulate. However misguided or frivolous, these ideals are at least not pretending to be other than what they are. But anything from reducing taxes to committing the kind of atrocities we judge our enemies for can, and has, stood in for patriotism. It has been invoked for the very cause that is guaranteed to ruin those who place most faith in it as a means to salvation.

Privileging it over other verities like honesty and kindness and you've got all kinds of trouble.

Relative Terms

2010-07-05T22:08:00.000+10:00

The second time I've been published in the free afternoon paper. Don't know if you can actually read it, though I have blown it up. I keep reading of sentences for paedo-priests, killers, sadists, and ne'er-do-wells who ALL got lighter sentences than Schapelle. And to think, Indonesia used to be a place to hang out and smoke dope - apparently.

Only Women Lead

2010-07-02T16:12:00.000+10:00

Well that's clearly not true but while we're on a roll.. Yes, my manager and director are only acting in their positions at work. But in the political sphere, while our local state member is reasonably blokey, it's uncertain how long he'll stay on. In the federal seat of Macquarie, which is having its boundaries redistributed, the highly accomplished Bob Debus is retiring and both the Liberal and Labor candidates are female, as is the Greens candidate.

Ma'am

2010-07-01T14:02:00.000+10:00

Not forgetting the overall ruler, the Queen of Australia, who has a 'divine' right that precedes the other landmark appointments by half a century or more.

Ruled by Women

2010-06-28T15:18:00.001+10:00

Partial

2010-06-16T11:00:00.000+10:00

Briefly, as I'm at home with a cold and need to get out in the sun: enough chasing shadows

Retraction

2010-06-11T11:12:00.000+10:00

I was concerned when I wrote that last post, about using the Gaza incident as an example. That's because I actually fall very heavily behind the aid flotilla and would be as likely to post accordingly as the next blogger. Subsequent fellow bloggings I've read only reinforce this for me.

Nor did I wish to suggest that not having this blog bookmarked was a sign in itself, of a deficient intellect. There could be a number of reasons it fails to appeal, not predicated on its impartiality or philosophical rigour.

Keeping in Touch

2010-06-06T18:18:00.000+10:00

What I do when blogging is pretty much the same approach I took to songwriting in the eighties; that is, I juxtapose. I once had a use for this perpetual means of generating fresh ideas for lyrics but now I find I can get more leverage from simply working from the title concept. Thus the shift from the rather unwieldy A Table for Two in the Fallout Shelter to the neat Drawn Inside and the positively insistent Elbow Room.

So why did I cling on to this notion of random association for Touched By the Son?
I've always seen a blog as a way of exploring thinking and ideas that are prevalent, but I don't want to strap on some didactic straightjacket and host just one more opinionated rant. It is the very tiresomeness of this approach that I am writing against. So when digging out knowledge and information that may help the decision making and participation, it is best not to go out looking for an article that confirms a preconceived notion on what is 'right'. With no mediating force, it is difficult to do this. That's where the function of a found object stimulates the discussion.

Hyperlinks, happily, are the perfect vehicle for ramming together disparate elements and producing something unthought and unexamined. The best blog for me is a voyage of discovery for the blogger as much as for the follower. 'Let the cards fall where they will' is an excellent way to shine light on a subject. Of course another feature of political and idealogical blogs is that they string together images and quotes to support an argument, without genuinely engaging with the topic themselves. The way I see it, while it's good to strew a few good articles and quotes throughout, a more substantive argument is derived from addressing the points yourself and fearlessly interrogating assumptions. The main problem with the standard of debate, as I see it, is the way that each combatant goes in with a set of values and beliefs and attempts to cajole the other party across to this way of thinking. This retards growth and limits understanding; it is distinctly unhelpful.
For a concrete example of what I mean: let's say you wanted to write on the recent incident where ten people on an aid flotilla were killed by Israeli commandoes. You could approach this by defending our allies, Israel. You could take the position of the Palestinians, or the Turks. But wouldn't it work better from an objective standpoint to examine the facts of the case and reach a finding from that? Believing in the Israeli cause doesn't - or shouldn't - mean that you defend all their actions, and nor does a general support for the attempt to get the aid to the territory blind us to the possibility that those aboard overreacted to being boarded. So why were there so many posts falling stridently down one side or the other, almost as soon as the incident occurred? Because of this very failure to be impartial and negotiate all the events that lead to the tragedy.

Neither does going in with an open mind suggest that one is subscribing to the postmodern notion of radical indeterminacy. Some things do hold true and can be seen as 'more real', but we must work to reach them. An air of abstraction may convince that this blogger at least is not just one more clumsy blowhard happy to ignore data if it helps his case.

Another precedent for my blogging methodology came in a quiz I used to run when I worked on the staff magazine; rather than starting from a point of view of what I, omniscient quizmaster, knew on the subject, I would try and distill the essential components of a special subject and frame the questions around those. It was a learning experience for me as well.

II

The approach wasn't universally popular in the fortnightly quiz, and it isn't exactly a winner in the blogging world, as a vain attempt to find someone who has bookmarked Touched by the Son on their blogroll will confirm. But that is because the millions who sign up to religion, major political parties, commentators, and popular culture tropes, don't want to continually engage, they want others to do their thinking for them. Cult leaders, charlatans, and conmen of every kind rely on this failure of nerve; this pride in 'meat and potatoes' acceptance of the norm.
No great advance in humanity has come about by conformity, it takes rebels. Not the stupidly reactive kind, but the ones who have analysed more data, explored more facets, deconstructed more tenets, and arrived at some lasting proposition as to how this works, or how it might work.

Glover compartment

2010-05-22T14:28:00.001+10:00

I know I've written on the subject of climate change before, but at the risk of being as boringly repetitive as those sceptics who seek to debunk the science, I just had to share this article with you. It's by Richard Glover, whose column is always entertaining and suitably self-deprecating for its humorous take on domestica, but here is employed to greater purpose, and in a fashion that manages to contain his hallmark lightness of touch, while at the same time flaying the climate change sceptics alive:

The Lara Bingle of climate change

March 20, 2010

Do climate-change sceptics have the same attitude to other pieces of expert advice? When their car develops a fault and the local mechanic says the brake pads are shot, do they seek a second opinion? And having been told by the second mechanic that, yes, the brake pads are shot, do they then trawl around town until on the 99th visit, they strike a mechanic who says “no, the brake pads are fine”? And then driving at high speed up the F3, do they entrust their lives to this last opinion?
No. Because it would be mental.
What happens when Maurice Newman, climate agnostic and ABC chairman, goes to the doctor? Does he storm from the office when they diagnose chickenpox and seek second, third and 99th opinions until he finds a doctor who will give him the all clear? And does he then decry thefirst 98 doctors as victims of “group-think”?
No. Because it would be mental.
As a non-scientist, I cannot directly evaluate the evidence for anthropomorphic global warming; I cannot clamber up a glacier and take readings, just as, when I visit the doctor, I can't check my own prostate (even though, according to some readers, I've spent a lifetime with my head stuck up there).
I can, however, evaluate the debating techniques used by both sides. And here, the global-warming sceptics are very, very annoying.
First, there's the obsession with 1998. Climate sceptics love that year. In their spare time, they must listen to Elton John and the Backstreet Boys. They love 1998 because it was so hot that if you use it as the starting point for a graph, the globe appears to be getting colder. Widen the frame of reference to a handful of years — or, better still, to a whole decade — and their graph falls apart.
Again, do they act like this in their day-to-day lives? If there's a particularly hot day in December, followed by a slightly cooler day, do they declare that summer is over, deflate the kids' swimming pool and unpack the winter woollies?
No. Because it would be mental.
They also love shifting the topic of debate. One minute, you are arguing about whether the world is becoming hotter — blah blah, 1998, blah blah Elton John — but if you happen to win that one, they suddenly say, “Well, yes, but is mankind to blame?”
Fair question and I understand the distinction but many of the sceptics don't seem to, bouncing randomly between the two debates as it suits them. An army that constantly shifts battlefields, I always think, must know it's on swampy ground.
Where was I? Oh yes. Annoying sceptics. Point three is the way they search out errors in very large documents and then claim one error renders the whole document false.
Back to the medical analogy: this is like getting a bad test result from your doctor then refusing any further treatment because he misspelt your name on the envelope. Certainly, he should have spelt your name properly. You might even want to get a second opinion, since it could indicate sloppiness. But it doesn't of itself disprove the test results.
Which brings us to the excessive love-in between the sceptics and the “shrinking Himalayan glaciers”.
True, they are not shrinking at anywhere near the rate suggested in one paragraph of a 938-page report from one of several working groups. But the sceptics have a contagion model of human knowledge: find one mistake and a whole branch of scienceis diseased. Theycan't see the forest for the occasional misshapen tree.
And so the Himalayan glaciers have become the Lara Bingle of climate science: they get more media attention than they really deserve. Whack the phrase “Himalayan glaciers” into Google and, on the latest count, you'll get 458,000 references. This is getting up there with Lara Bingle.
Then there's the glee with which the sceptics seized the leaked emails from East Anglia — and the amazing revelation that scientists suffer from hubris, bitchiness and other human attributes. That they received so much attention tells us something. People — some people — are so desperate to plug their ears, they will grab anything that's available. And so, in the absence of anything decent, it's a wet wad of 1998, Himalayan glaciers and some bitchy emails.
Remember that great poem by Adrian Mitchell about Vietnam? Maybe it's time for a rewrite.
So chain my tongue with whisky/ Stuff my nose with garlic/ Coat my eyes with butter/ Fill my ears with silver/ Stick my legs in plaster/ Tell me lies about climatechange.”
richard@richardglover.com.au

Four see

2010-05-16T02:21:00.001+10:00

Even if there were only four people who had ever possessed clairaudience, clairvoyance, necromancy, telepathy, or any of the other mystical abilities stroke psychic powers, that would be proof that they exist(ed). You don't get to take a mean average to see whether a manifestation is real. The test is whether whatever is predicted, scryed, and so forth, could not have been arrived at by some other means.

And this is where the sceptics place all their emphasis. I would rather observe that powers possessed by 'dumb animals' would make us appear extraordinary if we had anything like them naturally within us. I'd also note that it is true that you are more sensitive to experiencing or observing events if you still your mind and allow it to focus on something other than the everyday.

Claim to possessing a heightened sense can be tested easily enough, but it would have to be in the form of observing the 'gifted one' working in the field. You would simply damp what power they have by placing clinical conditions on their validation. A lost child or a solved mystery will do splendidly.

Medium density

2010-05-15T02:44:00.000+10:00

I feel I should say a few words in defence of psychics, since there are certain right wing bloggers who would outlaw them altogether. Now certainly there are shysters in the trade, and this is made all the easier by the nebulous state of prophesy. How can one really tell whether someone can read the future?

Well the first place to start is by looking at the most high profile cases. Jeanne Dixon had a fairly shabby record, all except for one case: the assassination of President Kennedy. This was the one event she was adamant - frantic - would occur, and sought to prevent and couldn't.

In older cases there is, of course, Nostradamus and his celebrated prediction of a tyrant named 'Hister' who would rise to power in the 20th Century. I'd be very interested in seeing how doubters debunk that one. Another esteemed psychic (I use the term rather than 'prophet', which implies someone who has followers or claims a religious or spiritual base, and 'fortune teller', for the less serious carnival spruikers telling you your lucky numbers) was Mother Shipton. And then there's the guy who has predicted every Pope from his own time until now. Obviously that's a very difficult task and not something one would attempt if they were only interested in deception. For a start, there's no reward in it if you are right. And these pontiffs are going to make their appearance when their predictor has long turned to dust.

The fact that the Pope commands a large flock but no longer has most of the world in thrall, may make the present day sceptic or rational thinker wonder at the focus but, according the Church, here was God's representative on earth. Number their days and you also forecast the end.

Millenial prophets are a dime a dozen and draw their inspiration on - sorry, from - commonplace objects. But here the specifics give us a more definite measure.

The hardbitten cynic will see the correlations and the code to be circumstantial, but that doesn't detract from the genuine fascination.

With Nostradamus I have heard how predicted modern weapons and transport technology could have been simple pitch fired from a catapult writ large. But who the hell is 'Hister'?

Here is where I think many critics make their fatal mistake. They look at the evidence unfolding, the devastating accuracy with which this seer predicts the future, centuries hence, and they are impressed. But then the force of their own belief system rights itself and they decide either that they are Christian and it smacks too much of forbidden magic or runs against the notion that 'no man may know the day' (because, as with the papal predictor, the prophesies take us right through to the end and give us all the yardstick to see how long we have. Or you decide you are not Christian and so this prophesying is too clearly in the Christian tradition to be true.

Here's what I think: Nostradamus was genuinely a seer, and one of great power, but was also a man of his time, and couched his predictions in his own understanding of what was to come through how the world was. As twentieth century theorists have shown, we can only be of our time, and view other times and other climes through our set of sensibilities as formed by our surrounds. This can only be more so the further back in time you go, because there is ever less knowledge of the world and its people.

We mortals, trapped in the here and now, see things only decades old as quaint, of a different era, yet no one seems to have considered to what extent someone that far back in time would make of our customs; of how we have changed. We can gain much from treating his work seriously, and seeing, as we would with any ancient parchment, if we can understand it through the prism of our own world view.

To a certain extent this has become a staple of SF (think of 'horseless chariot' references) yet has not penetrated to the real world correlative. And yet it is no more mysterious or problematic than testing the word of an unsteady witness who has a little trouble describing the driver of the getaway car.

Asia miner

2010-05-06T16:05:00.001+10:00

I remember years ago a female member of staff expressing her frustration "He said that the person on the phone had 'an Asian voice'. Well, we're all Asian". Indeed, there were members of staff from many different nations that were all part of Asia. And, to add to our aura of unsophisticated ethnic profiling, this was the Immigration department, where we were supposed to be informed about such things!

Not that I've ever embraced Prime Minister Keating's assertion that Australia is 'part of Asia'. We're busy being part of Australasia and Oceania.

Some sources would have it that Turkey and Cyprus are a part of Asia, but that claim has already been made for Europe (though, by all means, consider them part of Eurasia). Likewise, Egypt, which this blog has located in Africa.
(while I haven't been able to find a link to America the ensuing hegemony will take care of that)

Central Asia
Eastern Asia
Northern Asia
Southeastern Asia
Southern Asia
Western Asia

Abkhazia
Afghanistan
Akrotiri and Dhekelia
Armenia
Azerbaijan
Bahrain
Bangladesh
Bhutan
British Indian Ocean Territory
Brunei
Burma (Myanmar)
Cambodia
China
Christmas Island
Cocos (Keeling) Islands
Georgia
Hong Kong
India
Indonesia
Iran
Iraq
Israel
Japan
Jordan
Kazakhstan
Korea, North
Korea, South
Kuwait
Kyrgyzstan
Laos
Lebanon
Macau
Malaysia
Maldives
Mongolia
Nepal
Oman
Pakistan
Palestinian Authority
Philippines
Qatar
Russia
Saudi Arabia
Singapore
Sri Lanka
Syria
Taiwan
Tajikistan
Thailand
Timor-Leste
Turkmenistan
United Arab Emirates
Uzbekistan
Vietnam
Yemen

The Orient is a vanishing term referring to the East. The Middle East encompasses southwestern Asia and Egypt, though it has come to extend to Afghanistan and Pakistan, the Caucasus, and North Africa.

What is Wrong With Certainty

2010-04-26T01:35:00.000+10:00

One thing struck me researching (aka looking it up on Wikipedia) the topic of this world's largest continent - the subject of a future post - and that is the mistake of trading in certainty.

Although conservatives and reactionaries cling to a model of a time and a place that never was, reality swirls around them; confusing and unsettling.

the Left is ritually lambasted for being "impractical" yet the kind of hot blooded, hot headed type who thinks he can go storming off in any direction depending on how 'determined his resolve' and 'sure his purpose' is the very sort of well meaning (perhaps) idiot who embroiled the West in two consecutive costly and never ending wars, to the tune of a herd of Fox network jackasses braying how the Iraq war would all be over in three years.

For that matter, calculated ignorance that allows room for only one interpretation, also contributed to a succession of unwise appointments that systemically and inevitably failed the administration during the noughties.

From immersing myself in Right wing think (which is not unlike plunging into a greasetrap) it is more important to be right than to know the truth. By this I mean that, whereas you or I might start our investigations of religious faith and/or spirituality by going to the services, reading the tracts, speaking to parishioners, a Right wing blogger will typically come in with his or her viewpoint and gather material to support that.

To a degree that is a rational approach to conducting any debate; choose a side and then shore up your position. But the danger always lies in the fact that you personally may not know certain facts in the case and your judgment is in error, in all innocence but wrong anyway. Then there is the altering perspective opened up by changing eras. We discover more and this informs our view of the past as well as the present and future.

Those wanting 'certainty' - or, god help us, 'a return to certainty' - seem to confuse the pride they feel at not being gullible and falling for quackery or nonsense, with a distrust of all things not certain. They cling to the driftwood of a morality that left much unchecked and hidden, comforting themselves that the outward expression of, say, family values, forgives a multitude of sins.

It is only when we confront the fact that the clean cut cowboy of vintage cinema was a confection bearing little resemblance to the real thing, that we can start to see how manufactured their concept of reality is. Even the church is the very den of iniquity it rails against.

There are varying degrees of certainty and much of these are measured in units of time: from the burning up of stars to the splitting of nucleii. What is science fiction to us and to many future generations, is ultimately reality for the planet, which will not last forever. Yes we are the zygotes and embryos, the infants and adolescents of days gone by, and we are the dust of days yet to come. The 'certainty' that we will live and die is offset by an almost infinite accumulation of variables for 'the road not taken'. While we can be sure that some things were beyond our nature, at least at the time, there are other perfectly reasonable courses of action that would have changed us completely.

Suspending the notion of certainty is NOT suspending our belief. Not at all. If anything 'belief' and 'certainty' go hand in hand.

Land sakes

2010-04-24T18:57:00.000+10:00

I was heartened to hear on today's news that the Government has reversed its decision to allow foreign ownership of residential property. I was also bemused to hear the Opposition describe this as backflipping and point out that the situation has returned to that which we had under the Howard government. I guess it's all relative as clearly Howard wasn't too precious about foreign ownership of Australian companies or Australian icons. But I certainly do support any initiative to make it more affordable for people to own their own home. And letting greedy foreigners buy it up in no wise helps.

A-freak Afrique

2010-04-20T22:07:00.003+10:00

It's amazing how Africa gets treated like a basketcase. It is larger than our southern regions, larger than Europe, the Americas.

It is the cradle of civilisation, our place of origin.

And it is so large and varied - and not easily classified as 'poor' or 'disadvantaged' as the cant runs - it is divided into regions: Eastern Africa, Middle Africa, Northern Africa, Southern Africa and Western Africa.

Algeria
Angola
Benin
Botswana
Burkina Faso
Burundi
Cameroon
Canary Islands
Cape Verde
Central African Republic
Ceuta
Chad
Comoros
Congo
Democratic Republic of Congo (Zaire)
Djibouti
Egypt
Equatorial Guinea
Eritrea
Ethiopia
Gabon
Gambia
Ghana
Guinea Bissau
Guinea
Ivory Coast/ Côte d'Ivoire
Kenya
Lesotho
Liberia
Libya
Madagascar
Madeira Islands
Malawi
Mali
Mauritania
Mauritius
Mayotte
Melilla
Morocco
Mozambique
Namibia
Niger
Nigeria
Réunion
Rwanda

Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic
Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha
São Tomé and Príncipe
Senegal
Seychelles
Sierra Leone
Somalia
Somaliland
South Africa
Sudan
Swaziland
Tanzania
Togo
Tunisia
Uganda
Zambia
Zanzibar
Zimbabwe

China cabinet

2010-04-08T14:20:00.002+10:00

Probably thanks to The Epoch Times, I've become fascinated with the bad behaviour of the Chinese government. They really are a bunch of pricks. And the worst thing is that, thanks to underqualified leaders like Bush jr ramping up debt borrowing, and our own Faustian mining deals, we really can't do anything about it.

I've come to the table with this, though, due to an article about them banning _______________ Bob Dylan. I thought communists were supposed to like socially aware performers. Maybe they aren't real communists, just thug opportunists with a murderous talent for keeping the population under control.

Well, as I always say, fuck the Chinese government.

All around US

2010-03-29T16:11:00.000+11:00

Some quarters insist we see the Americas as one block and this seems reasonable until you realise that that there is an isthmus between Africa and Eurasia and no one is suggesting a supercontinent (indeed Europe and Asia are more often seen as discrete).

But even North America has the kind of definitional indeterminants that we find in Sahul and surrounds, with some identifying it as the US and Canada alone, others adding Mexico.

North America

Anguilla
Antigua and Barbuda
Aruba
Bahamas
Barbados
Belize
Bermuda
British Virgin Islands
Canada
Cayman Islands
Clipperton Island
Costa Rica
Cuba
Dominica
Dominican Republic
El Salvador
Greenland
Grenada
Guadeloupe
Haiti
Honduras
Isla Aves
Jamaica
Martinique
Mexico
Montserrat
Navassa Island
Netherlands Antilles
Nicaragua
Panama
Puerto Rico
Saint Barthélemy
Saint Kitts and Nevis
Saint Lucia
Saint Martin
Saint Pierre and Miquelon
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
San Andrés y Providencia
Trinidad and Tobago
Turks and Caicos Islands
United States
United States Virgin Islands

(Central America and the Caribbean and Latin America are regions, not continental designations)

"I hear that South America is coming into style"

2010-03-15T17:10:00.003+11:00

It seems that whenever you hear reports of South America, it is a tale of woe; of endemic corruption and vice. Even history speaks of blood sacrifice and barbarity. But then I realise that this is in the nature of the news. Why should a report of that part of the Americas that rarely gets to tell its story (at least not to us, and not in a language we understand) shy from catastrophe? Here is a Cook's tour of a different kind:

Argentina
Bolivia
Brazil
Chile
Colombia
Ecuador
Guyana
Paraguay
Peru
Suriname
Uruguay
Venezuala

SOUTH AMERICAN TERRITORIES

Galapagos Islands
Falkland Islands
French Guiana

Heading South

2010-03-02T22:52:00.000+11:00

We may be known by the Northern Hemisphere as Down Under but in truth there is a Greater Southern Land that is further down still. This incredible place is a larger continent than both Australasia/Oceania and Europe yet has no states, no capitals, no countries. Just ice really, with seals and penguins and nematodes.

It's considered a desert (an extremely large and incredibly cold one). In fact, it's the coldest, driest and windiest continent with the highest average elevation. And, understandably, doesn't have a static population; just 1,000 to 5,000 researchers and scientists scattered throughout.

And you do start to see mention of Antarctica when you are in the southern part of Tasmania as it really isn't that far.

Mushrooms for the Memories

2010-02-17T16:11:00.001+11:00

It didn't rain enough on the farm to get a good mushroom 'crop' very often, but you can be sure that when we did, we didn't waste the opportunity.
Of course the mushrooms didn't all grow in the one spot and we drove around different paddocks, looking in all the likely places. We'd pick so many that we couldn't possibly eat them all ourselves and I remember one season offering some to the local minister.
The only type of fungus that seemed to grow in the district was the common mushroom - the type that we gorged - and the toadstool, which one could never mistake.

It is disappointing now to see them growing on the side of the track home and watching them quickly turn black and inedible. Do the same people who ignore this bounty from nature, turn around and pay a premium at their local greengrocer for this 'meat for vegetarians'? It seems passing strange as they are quite delicious eaten straight from the ground when they first sprout.

I thought that maybe people were just unobservant but then I noticed some at the back of University where I work, growing right near the benches where we eat our lunch. By the time I spotted this clump, they had already gone off. What a shame.

Nutt job

2010-02-13T13:45:00.000+11:00

Ah, yet another expert gets the chop for saying what anyone with a real clue already knows; that cannabis is far less harmful than cigarettes and alcohol. Among those with genuine integrity and decidedly less ignorance than the average punter, the 'drug debate' has become a source of perpetual tedium as the official spokesmen teeter between poorly thought out smokescreens and cynically submerged detail.

I am on my own experiment with marijuana: I'm not smoking it. For three months. Go ahead, 'social' drinkers and ciggy-break takers; binge eaters and pill poppers, put your money where your mouth is and prove you can do the same.

Thought not.

II

Now that's off my chest, we return to normal programming. I can understand why British PM Gordon Brown dismissed his scientific advisor, Professor David Nutt, for stating that marijuana should not have been reclassified from a Class C to a Class B drug. Not because he [Brown] was correct to do so, nor because it deserves to be so, but because he is fighting for his political life and playing to the peanut gallery - the kind of people who think the War on Drugs has value - is one more desperate effort to keep his job.

I am intrigued to see that Professor Nutt has also classed ecstasy and LSD as being less harmful than the legal mainstays. I imagine this may be worked out on a per capita basis, and the effect these substances have on the majority being of sound mind. Though I have to say, the mentally defective are going to have problems with medication of any description; it's the nature of the illness. 'What do we take them off, what do we put them on?' is a question for health professionals, not a factor in determining drugs policy.

Infringing on people's right to self-medicate, and to open the doors of perception, is not the only area where government engages in perpetual policy on the run, of course. Expediency rules. As long as the tabloids can sensationalise the issue and the politicians can make capital out of being tough, little will change.

Bilderberger chains

2010-02-07T14:02:00.000+11:00

A friend put me on to The Obama Deception. It hurt watching it as Obama is all the things Bush jr is not; an intelligent speaker, architect of a broad and inclusive program of social change, literate and knowledgeable, and seeming to be holding the banks and corporations to account. He's made all the right noises about the farce that is the Iraq War, right from the outset, and has been consistent in his condemnation of renditions and imprisonment without trial in offshore internment camps.

But this film shows that the rhetoric and the reality are two different things. Part of me thought it was too good to be true - when have governments every pursued an agenda in the people's interests? - but it is profoundly disappointing nonetheless.

Give 'em enough Europa

2010-01-26T00:58:00.009+11:00

As the place of origin of many of our industrious immigrants, it is of more than passing interest to look at the next smallest continent, Europe. The divisions between Asia and Europe occur at the Ural Mountains, Ural River and Caspian Sea in the east, the Caucasus Mountains and the Black Sea with its outlets, Bosporus and Dardanelles in the south. Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Russia and Turkey are considered part of both Europe and Asia. Armenia and Cyprus, which are entirely in Western Asia, are sociopolitically European countries. Some scholars speak of a combined continent, Eurasia, as the land mass is not separated by ocean.
Europe is the ancestral home of at least six branches of my family tree.

Albania
Andorra
Austria
Belarus
Belgium
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Bulgaria
Croatia
Cyprus
Czech Republic
Denmark
Estonia
Finland
France
Germany
Greece
Hungary
Iceland
Ireland
Italy
Latvia
Liechtenstein
Lithuania
Luxembourg
Macedonia
Malta
Moldova
Monaco
Netherlands
Norway
Poland
Portugal
Romania
Russia
San Marino
Serbia and Montenegro
Slovakia (Slovak Republic)
Slovenia
Spain
Sweden
Switzerland
Turkey
Ukraine
United Kingdom
Vatican City

Within these countries are several semi-autonomous states:
Abkhazia
Åland
Faroe Islands
Gibraltar
Guernsey
Isle of Man
Jersey
Kosovo
Nagorno-Karabakh
Northern Cyprus
South Ossetia
Svalbard and Jan Mayen
Transnistria

Grouping

2010-01-09T20:53:00.010+11:00

Weight in the lobby

2010-01-09T00:48:00.002+11:00

Lobby groups may be obstructionist and hopelessly at loggerheads, but they are a crucial part of any good democracy. It helps for an organisation to have pooled all its time and resources into one issue, no matter how offbeat or inane.

This is both the strength of the Greens and their weakness. There is broad agreement for their cause, even causes, but this does not translate to larger numbers of first preference votes.

And the kind of organisation that represents pedestrians or public transport advocates has a full-time putting forward their position. They need no greater power than the sympathetic ear of a sitting member.

Aughts well that ends well

2010-01-02T01:35:00.008+11:00

There is no honour in honour killing

2009-12-18T08:50:00.001+11:00

Keneally's not 'ken good enough

2009-12-07T13:52:00.003+11:00

I have taken a couple of days to blog on the ascenscion of Kristina Keneally to first female Premier of New South Wales because, well, I'm just not that excited. If she can arrest the government's terminal decline then that's a different story. But the last guy only lasted fifteen months and I just don't see her turning things around, especially when the cries of 'puppet' began from the outset, suggesting that the powerbrokers are behind her victory. And we're well sick of those guys.

And an important qualifier - I don't want the government to win, unless they do so by making genuine change and fixing the manifold stuff-ups. If it's just a default choice or the novelty of a female Premier (see Carmen Lawrence, Joan Kirner, Anna Bligh, Claire Martin) then I think it's time for another Barry.

Rise of the mad monk

2009-12-01T13:44:00.003+11:00

and here I was worried that Joe Hockey would take Malcolm's crown! No, it had to be the big-eared dick whose own daughter describes him as a loser. Never been a fan, and he doesn't have the science to back his stance. Boo Abbott.

Continental drift: Australia, Australasia and Oceania

2009-11-21T02:40:00.017+11:00

I was brought up with the nationalism that said that Australia is the largest island and the smallest continent.

An entry on Oceania refers to this notion also; even though it goes on to speak of greater continents.

Then there's Australasia, which sometimes includes New Guinea, the Indonesian islands, Lomboc and Sulawesi. At other times it is exclusively a description of Australia and New Zealand combined.

Although Oceania sounds like nothing so much as a region straight out of George Orwell's 1984, it's become a description for the area that encompasses Papua New Guinea, the disputed territory of Irian Jaya, Fiji, Tonga, New Caledonia...
and even with the thousands of coral atolls and volcanic islands of the South Pacific Ocean, it's still the smallest continent.

Melanesia

# Amplett Islands
# Papua New Guinea Bismarck Archipelago
# Papua New Guinea d'Entrecasteaux Islands
# Fiji
# Papua New Guinea Louisiade Archipelago
# Indonesia Maluku Islands[8]
# New Caledonia
# New Guinea, politically divided between independent Papua New Guinea and the Indonesia Indonesian provinces of Papua and West Papua
# Norfolk Island
# Indonesia Raja Ampat Islands
# Indonesia Schouten Islands
# Solomon Islands Santa Cruz Islands
# Solomon Islands, politically divided between Papua New Guinea and independent Solomon Islands
# Torres Strait Islands, politically divided between Australia and Papua New Guinea
# Papua New Guinea Trobriand Islands
# Vanuatu
# Papua New Guinea Woodlark Island

Micronesia

* Banaba, an outlier of Kiribati
* Gilbert Islands, which forms part of Kiribati
* Mariana Islands, politically divided between Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands
* Marshall Islands
* Caroline Islands, politically divided between Palau and the Federated States of Micronesia
* Nauru
* Wake Island

Polynesia

* American Samoa (overseas United States territory)
* Cook Islands (self-governing state in free association with New Zealand)
* French Polynesia ("overseas territory", a territory of France)
* Hawaii (a state of the United States)
* New Zealand (independent nation)
* Niue (self-governing state in free association with New Zealand)
* Fiji Rotuma (in Fiji)
* Samoa (independent nation)
* Tokelau (overseas dependency of New Zealand)
* Tonga (independent nation)
* Tuvalu (independent nation)
* Wallis and Futuna (overseas territory of France)

Strange bedfellows

2009-11-03T13:52:00.004+11:00

Normally I wouldn't agree with Kevin Andrews about much at all, and you might expect a typical small 'l'liberal response of outrage from me, that is, if I was a liberal.
As it is, I think that monitoring the influx of immigrants with extremist viewpoints is a sensible idea.

Juvenile fenestration

2009-10-24T02:48:00.003+11:00

If you see the world as the site of random events, and your life as a biological event that has but a limited hold on this plane, then you won't be interested in observing the patterns that suddenly start to occur. Now I'm not going near those houses that held young girls captive for years.

Although it says something about (post)modern society that this can go unnoticed in the neighbourhood for so long, I am more immediately fascinated by the incidence of small children falling out of the windows of a block of flats (or apartments, if you will). I am trying to figure out why you would have a toddler playing near an open window when there's no balcony and there's concrete below. It's a bad design to begin with, but there's that thing about allowing for your environment.
If someone reading this had a flimsy fly screen that a youngster plunged through, then I apologise for my insensitivity but, you know, we've only just gotten over the string of children being left in cars while their mother's gamble, is it really time for more neglect?

This: 'posers' the question

2009-10-13T16:00:00.000+11:00

I pass this gem on without comment.

Spam (69)

2009-09-17T08:47:00.002+10:00

When a ready made title like that appears in your Gmail whatcha gonna do?! Sham 69 was among the vinyl that I lost in my travels. Johnny Rotten didn't think much of them and, in a guest review spot for the NME ('I use the NME..'), he snorted "Shame of 69 more like" though I always thought it was a blunted retort since a 'sham' is hardly a thing of delight.

The Australian Opposition

2009-09-16T13:37:00.008+10:00

Alternative leaders

When compiling this list, I couldn't include the first Opposition Leader, even though he served two terms in this capacity, from 1901 to 1904, and again from 1905 to 1908 ,as he also took turns at the bat. George Reid became Prime Minister.

Frank Tudor
Matthew Charlton
John Latham
Herbert Evatt
Arthur Calwell
Billy Snedden
William Hayden
Andrew Peacock
John Hewson
Alexander Downer
Kim Beazley
Simon Crean
Mark Latham
Kim Beazley
Brendan Nelson
Malcolm Turnbull

Dictum

2009-09-13T02:02:00.003+10:00

The way to live your life well really can be reduced to obeying the maxim of 'doing unto others as you would have them do unto you'. This doesn't mean organising food parcels. It does mean that if there is something for which you have a shared responsibility, know enough to exercise that.

I like a clean environment so I put my rubbish in the bin. I like to see out the window so I don't scratch my name in the glass. I like to sit down without getting marks on my clothes so I don't write on the seat. I choose how my wall and my fence will be painted so I don't tag.
I dislike second-hand doof-doof so I check the volume and adjust it accordingly.
Smoking is a choice so, even if I did smoke tobacco, I would never sit down next to someone eating their lunch and light up. They might not like smoke with their sandwich. They might be asthmatic.
I like to feel safe so I don't rob or rape or attack people.

See how easy it is.

from private secretary to Secretary General

2009-09-05T16:04:00.006+10:00

How many people in this Commonwealth know who the Secretary-General is?

Of the five Secretarys-General that there have been, the first Arnold Smith, has died but the others are still kicking; just not in charge of a disparate remnant of Empire any more.
Sir Shridath Ramphal
Chief Emeka Anyaoku
Sir Don McKinnon

Libertarians and the Jungle Crow

2009-08-23T02:59:00.002+10:00

Speaking of libertarians, while I would never have a link to Andrew Bolt's blog on mine, I do admire their fresh approach. You won't readily see this kind of intelligent analysis in the media. You'll see other kinds but not this kind.

I am with them on the corruptive nature of government, I just have different social conclusions. But that doesn't mean I don't get something from reading (what I see as cockeyed) viewpoints. Provided they are well argued and properly defended.

To the extent libertarians and their binary opposite, anarchists, do this without flinching, I find them useful.

II

We had crows on the farm. They had a mean reputation. Pecked the eyes out of sick sheep and baby lambs, cunning, with a harsh call signifying a dry heat.

I have only ever shot one and it meant staking out silently and with my gun barrel positioned just so.

The birds that live in Sydney are very different. They seem unperturbed by humans, who are always only walking by, and they go about their carrion eating/gatekeeper of death duties almost unnoticed.

Jungle crows are different. I was reading about the jungle crows in Japan that damage internet cable. The real kicker though was - remembering how formidable a crow is to begin with - the article went on to say that the jungle crow could form its claw into a fist and "punch you in the head"

Faaaaark indeed.

Hockey won

2009-08-17T15:16:00.003+10:00

[Now I can't use that pun if Joe Hockey rolls Turnbull as leader but I'll be so bummed, I won't want to.
If you read the article I link to here you'll guess that I refer to the 'hockey stick' formation in the Mann charts on global warming. I thought it important to include a dissenting voice that wasn't just foolish and, in this libertarian blog, I've found one]

"A Skeptic's Primer for 'An Inconvenient Truth'"

Sceptic tank

2009-08-13T13:44:00.003+10:00

There is virtue in being sceptical but one can take things too far. Climate change sceptics appear to fit the mold of fiddling while ~~Rome~~ Earth burns.

I was going to dive into the melted ice floe myself but was much relieved to discover I don't need to.

Holdren promise

2009-08-11T10:53:00.001+10:00

Deal to warm the hearts of jaded observers
Geoffrey Lean in London
July 11, 2009

WHAT is the opposite of deja vu? Whatever it is, I experienced it this week in a dingy meeting room beneath London's US embassy talking to Barack Obama's principal adviser about the chance of international agreement to combat climate change.

I had last been in that room, 18 months ago, to discuss the same issue with one of George Bush's top advisers. For an hour we fenced, as I suggested different approaches towards a deal. The response was consistent: nothing doing. On Wednesday the room was the same, the subject was the same. But the conversation could not have been more different. For I was given the most bullish assessment of the prospects for an effective agreement that I have heard in years.

This was all the more surprising because Professor John Holdren, assistant to the President for science and technology, is no spin doctor, but an award-laden scientist who has long been one of the United States' foremost authorities on global warming. Yet he was saying that he would "bet" that the US would legislate to cut its carbon dioxide emissions by the beginning of December, making it possible to get "a degree of agreement that will surprise people" at a crucial international negotiation in Copenhagen.

Professor Holdren shares Prince Charles's sense of urgency. He says it is already too late for the world to stop "dangerous" climate change and it can now only hope to avoid "catastrophic, unmanageable change" where global warming runs out of control.

Average temperatures worldwide have so far warmed by about 0.7 degrees above the levels of pre-industrial times, causing much more rapid changes than scientists expected.

So if we are committed to an increase of 1.2 degrees and more, what is the maximum before the world is condemned to become Prince Charles's "living hell"? The scientists' best estimate is 2 degrees.

The US remains central to any agreement. But its system of checks and balances makes it hard to do anything quickly.

Professor Holdren says Mr Obama is so committed that he will twist enough arms to get the bill finalised by December. But, at best, it will only aim for emission cuts a few percentage points below 1990 levels. This would, in fact, be quite an achievement as its emissions have grown massively over the past two decades, but it might not be enough to provoke the big developing countries to act.

In the end, everything depends on economics, on whether nations feel a climate deal will help them out of the recession. Achim Steiner, the executive director of the United Nations Environment Program, says a serious deal would be "the biggest stimulus package of them all".

It's also about future generations. Eighteen months ago, I eventually asked Mr Bush's representative whether he ever lay awake at night worrying about what he would tell his grandchildren if he proved to be wrong. "I have no children," he shot back, "therefore I will have no grandchildren."

Professor Holdren, I'm glad to reveal, has five.

Telegraph, London

You, you, uranium

2009-08-09T03:34:00.003+10:00

Given how dangerous U is (are?), I am implacably opposed to more mining. I know it has its uses, but humanity hasn't had the success it could have had with dangerous substances in the past. And I'm not talking about my chalk outline pasting past either.

Midnight Oil were right to want to ward off the threat of uranium mining and resultant nuclear fallout; it wasn't just songwriter rhetoric.

If there is any irony in being under the Gunn environmentally, the former head of the Australian Conservation Foundation and spokesman for Nuclear Disarmament, must surely find it in the approval of a fourth uranium mine

Stuck inner Garrett

2009-08-02T01:57:00.003+10:00

INBOX ONE

From: Kevin Rudd

To: Peter Garrett

Subject: It's logical

Dear Peter,
PM Kevin here. How are you? I am fine.
Look, well done on making the tough decision re the uranium mine. I know you'll probably get flak for it, especially as you used to sing anti-uranium songs. But the truth is, we all change our opinion - it's human nature!
Why, I used to like caramel ice cream; now I like strawberry. This really is no different: you used to dislike uranium mining; now you like it! And applying that logic, you could change the lyrics to 'Dead Heart'.
Here's my suggestion:
ORIGINAL: Mining companies, pastoral companies, uranium companies, collected companies. Got more right than people. Got more say than people.
CHANGE TO: Mining companies, pastoral companies, uranium companies, collected companies. Good for working families. Moving forward, all the aforementioned company types will gather positive results in terms of detailed programmatic specificity.
And you thought I couldn't rock!
Anyway, don't lose your hair over it.

['Inbox One' by Patrick Witton, Ointment, The Big Issue no. 334]

The Most Value

2009-07-12T01:36:00.004+10:00

In a list of the public utilities that give you the most value, I consider gratis items to hold the most value and additional administrative expenses or exorbitant tips to hold the least.

the library

the park

the abandoned quarry

median strip

the mall

Commonwealth

2009-06-30T14:44:00.043+10:00

Antigua and Barbuda
Australia
The Bahamas
Bangladesh
Barbados
Belize
Botswana
Brunei Darussalam
Cameroon
Canada
Cyprus
Dominica
Fiji Islands
The Gambia
Ghana
Grenada
Guyana
India
Jamaica
Kenya
Kiribati
Lesotho
Malawi
Malaysia
Maldives
Malta
Mauritius

Mozambique
Namibia
Nauru
New Zealand
Nigeria
Pakistan
Papua New Guinea
St Kitts and Nevis
St Lucia
St Vincent and the Grenadines
Samoa
Seychelles
Sierra Leone
Singapore
Solomon Islands
South Africa
Sri Lanka
Swaziland
Tonga
Trinidad and Tobago
Tuvalu
Uganda
United Kingdom
United Republic of Tanzania
Vanuatu
Zambia
*Gibraltar

*Associated members

Buzzwords

2009-06-20T01:16:00.002+10:00

You'll take your place with buzzwords
You'll share your faith with buzzwords
You'll smash his face for buzzwords
And in the construct of their being
Free from thought you'll find their freeing
Jest adjust your way of seeing
It begins to really grate
Patterns fattened upon fate
Precursor cursin just you wait
Make a beeline with your beetle brow
For the furrow frequent plowed
And oft repeated out loud
It's trite and true
Blight the blighters blue
It's only right you do

Cold Ghost

2009-06-17T09:52:00.003+10:00

I don't know if you've ever been to a marketing seminar, but the pinnacle of achievement is often an apartment on the Gold Coast. Years ago when I was hitching in South Australia, the travelling salesman who picked me up also lauded the place.

It must be a commercial thing because to me it seems like the perfect ruination of a beachfront: skyscrapers that block the sun out and stop you from getting a tan. Soulless tourism without the simple pleasures that the ocean could otherwise provide. The perfect realisation of Queensland's long reign of conservative gerrymander government and white shoe developers. But that's just me, you go on to Surfer's Paradise and leave the unspoilt fishing shacks and small coastal villages to us.

Rent Asunder

2009-06-04T13:51:00.004+10:00

Now that I no longer rent it is perhaps timely to ruminate on what an unpleasant and ghastly enterprise it is. When I look back at all the rentals I've lived in - and we're going back more than twenty-five years - I am reminded of the times that frantic calls to real estate agents met with a glacial response and we'd have to shower in cold water or figure out how to prepare meals with no stove, houses would be sold up under us (with the added nuisance of constantly being bombarded by prospective buyers and having our right to peace trampled, despite still paying full rent), owners or their reps doing inspections and giving the all clear only to magically produce some damage to justify a chunk out of the bond. I have developed somewhat of a healthy aversion to real estate agents and landlords as a result, even though some were very friendly and/or attentive to their tenants' needs.

It does run the other way and I've been a helpless witness to outrageous acts of malicious destruction and careless commotion committed by fellow residents. It's a risky business for all concerned it seems.

Manly, beyotch

2009-05-23T00:24:00.004+10:00

I've never particularly cared for men who had to defend their manliness. I am naturally conditioned to like my build and my proclivities but it doesn't go much beyond that. Why blokes have to retreat to their sheds muttering into their mo about getting away from the missus for a bit is not a question that gets to the heart of maleness for me.

Neither do I think that we've shown evidence of all being athletic or sedentary. Many of us are a little of each.

Some of the coolest guys I know are not obsessed with their sexuality or their masculinity. There's too many other diversions.

Things we'd like to see

2009-05-06T13:58:00.001+10:00

Bush administration 'could face charges over Guantanamo torture'

Posted May 6, 2009 05:05:00

An international lawyer says the former Bush administration in the United States could be the subject of foreign investigations into interrogation of detainees at Guantanamo Bay.

The United States Government last month released memos outlining the interrogation methods used on terrorism suspects held at the base during the previous administration.

Lawyer and author Philippe Sands has told ABC TV's Lateline that any criminal investigation into the Bush administration is more likely to come from outside the US.

"The evidence seems to be pretty strong now that certainly [former vice-president Donald] Rumsfeld, certainly now it seems [former] Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice were involved," he said.

"And the issue I think is much more one of political will. Can we really imagine an independent prosecutor opening a criminal investigation of the most recent administration?

"That doesn't mean that foreign criminal investigations might not do precisely that."

Mr Sands says criminal cases against suspected terrorists held at Guantanamo Bay could be dropped if torture was used against them, because the use of torture reduces the chance of a successful prosecution.

"The bottom line of it is that once someone has been abused in that way, the evidence that has come out of those interrogations can no longer be used," he said.

"That undermines the likelihood of an effective criminal investigation and opens the door to a sort of reverse targeting of the individuals who caused the abuse to happen."