Hatred and Envy?

I'll grant him hatred, though a better word would be contempt. But why on Earth would the West feel envy toward the Islamic world? I've racked my brains trying to think of an advantage Islamic countries enjoy over stable, liberal democracies. It's possible a sober man might regard a violent, antisocial drunk at a party with envy, knowing that without a hangover in the morning, his condition cannot improve markedly over the course of the next day. That's about it. Does anyone have any suggestions (apart from the 72 raisins that await martyrs to the faith of course)?

Boycott!

I will certainly be doing my bit during the Beijing olympics. I would encourage everyone else to do the same. Come August, I plan to switch off the telly, and not watch even a single second of it. I will walk away from any conversation that even briefly touches on the subject. I would applaud the moral integrity of any country or athlete who refuses to participate.

Of course, I think that about every olympics. This time however, not only would a boycott serve to have less people watching boring sport, it would also humiliate the fascist barbarians in control of the Chinese State. This can only be a bonus.

The economy

The Reserve Bank has just released what is hopefully its last interest rate rise for this cycle. It has done this in order to deliberately hurt the economy enough to curb our rampant spending habit. Higher interest rates mean less borrowing, less spending, and thus less pressure on scarce supply. This should lead to a slowing in inflation which is what the Bank wants. Essentially then, the Bank is trying to reduce spending by making it more expensive. This is called monetary policy, and is the preferred countercyclical policy tool at the moment. It works, but can be very painful.

Here is my suggestion. Why not have the government appeal to the public directly, asking them to defer nonessential spending until after the inflation crisis has passed? After all, in a water crisis, we don't just raise the price of water, we appeal to people's sense of civic duty, tell them there is a physical problem with supply, and ask them to voluntarily reduce their consumption. It works, Brisbane's domestic water consumption is only 140 litres a day. Also, those people who for patriotic/protectionist reasons "buy Australian" could be told that at the moment they can best help their country by buying anything but Australian. Surely such an attempt could at least do no harm, and could take the edge off the harshness of tight monetary policy. Kevin Rudd's message could be; "Save your money now, so everyone can pay less on their mortgage."
What do you think?

Letter from the OZ. A sensible middle ground?

THERE can be no denying that the Jewish people have a moral and historical claim to their homeland. But what they don’t have is the right to extend this claim to a greater Israel on the basis that it constitutes the prophetic fulfilment of the Jewish Torah.

Such prophecy is not only a clear breach of any standard moral claim, it also looks to the day when Israel’s Arab neighbours will be obliterated by a cataclysmic divine intervention.
The time has come to now finally recognise that the prophetic dimension of religious fundamentalism is what constitutes the greatest threat to our democratic freedoms.
Dr Vincent Zankin
Rivett, ACT

More stuff from Geoff

My readers, as trivia shareholders, you will want to know firstly what I have done with your winnings. Well, of the two cartons of pre-mixed spirits we won last week, one carton was divided among the team and the other sits beneath my desk (or at least the empty box now does) and helps me deal with the realisation that society really has no need for a combinatorist.

Now I have never been present at a shareholders meeting, but I imagine that one should demonstrate not just goals attained but also improvements on past performances.
I shall start with the make-up of the team. Imagine a graph (not a real graph, one of those evil cartesian planes) with two data points:
(week 1, 8 players),(week 2, 11 players).
Imagine myself standing next to the aforementioned graph presented as a comically over-sized poster and pointing to it with an unnecessarily large stick. "As you can see," I would say in my best attempt at earnestness, "our team has grown by an impressive 37.5%."
"However as impressive as that improvement is, the most telling statistic (I mean of course parameter but making such a distinction would sound pretentious.) is in our female numbers. In week one we had no females and in week two we had a massive two. That is an undefined increase in female participation. So two out of eleven players were female, a better ratio than that attained by Kevin Rudd for his 2020 ideas summit. HOw did this happen? Well, maybe trivia seemed quite pleasurable in contrast to enduring the cringeworthy sexual advances of a mathematics undergraduate in the first year science room. What effects will this have on our trivia performance? Read on if you are intrigued. Even if you are not intrigued please read on as at Dave's behest I will mention something about the actual trivia.

Despite my hullabaloo, nobody with sufficient mettle has stepped forward to claim the right to hold the pen of truth. We heard that Rupert was going to be late because he had a lecture (as if Rupert goes to lectures) so I went to the bar to purchase a jug of their finest local beer. When I got back I discovered, much to my dismay, that Rob Pfeiffer was holding both the pen of truth and the trivia sheet. Let's just say that the Rob Pfeiffer experiment didn't make it to a second trial.

There was to be three general knowledge rounds and a final round on food. If Victor was there he might have been heard to remark "oh dear". Some noteworthy questions for the first round were:
What was a knobthatcher? (Rob corrected Rupert, "That's Baroness Thatcher to you!")
John Lennon airport is in which city? (Since John Lennon is from Liverpool that would seem like the obvious answer. We went with Mumbai!)
What French phrase means in english 'the free hand'?
What New Zealand city is named after an alternative name for Edinburgh?
This week also saw the return of Rupert's bonus question. In each round a clue is given and (5-n) points are awarded for the answer, where n is the number of the round in which the correct answer is first given. The first clue: This kingdom was in the past, controlled by the Romans, French, Spanish and Portugese. When we got the trivia sheet back, there were five ticks, a four next to our answer to the bonus question and a circled nine with a double underline. After five minutes of deliberation, we concluded that we got five questions right, plus four for the bonus question making a total of nine. Thanks to getting the bonus question right we won the first round (nice work Chris).

On commencement of the second round, the pen of truth changed hands. Now, throughout history there have been numerous examples of people who have come to power that were never fit to lead: Caligula, George W. Bush, Mark Latham, the list goes on. Append to that list the name Stevo. Apparently Stevo thought that holding the pen gave him the right to shout and whinge a lot. At least George W. Bush has the balls to use his veto powers. Let me explain.

Every once in a while a question comes along that brings together all the right elements together in one place at one time to create the perfect storm. Nobody knew the answer but everybody thought they did. Here is the question: "Which finger is the most sensitive?" Immediately everybody threw their two cents into the middle of the table. "I know this", everybody thought,"I have hands." My inital reaction was the index finger. This went no way towards settling the argument because let's be honest, my answers are given roughly the same respect as that afforded to the drunk bogans who shout their answers for the whole room to hear. Many suggested the thumb until Rupert made it clear that the thumb is not a finger (for some reason everyone always tries to answer the thumb to any question about the fingers). Where did we go to then? Well Stevo in an inspired piece of leadership thought that he would decide democratically. So here we were raising our fingers in the air while Stevo counted the most popular answer. Some people held their pinke finger in the air which was surely the most ridiculous answer. The answer that won was the ring finger. Straight away Stevo began to try to rationalise an answer that had no logic behind it whatsoever. He came up with this. A finger becomes less sensitive with use so the most sensitive finger will be the one that is used least. Leaving aside the fact that the question is obviously referring to the finger that is innately the most sensitive, I commented as sarcastically as I could that it makes sense from an evolutionary perspective that the finger used the LEAST would be the MOST sensitive (surely the least used finger is the pinke anyway!). Being affronted by this, Stevo, ever the experimentalist, suggested that we perform an experiment. The results: inconclusive. (This reminds me of The Simpsons episode where Lisa goes to the scientist with the sample of the angel to be tested. Lisa: Why did your tests come up inconclusive? Scientist: I am going to be honest with you Lisa, I didn't perform the tests.) So after ten minutes of fruitless debate Stevo declared that he was going with the majority, wrote down ring finger and handed a poison chalice to Socrates.

For round three we got 9 out of 10. The question we got wrong, which Chris assures me he did in fact know (but not at the time): "Sherlock homes was addicted to what?"

Round four if you remember and are still reading this, was on food. We were disconsolate at being three points behind first. We needed something special. If I was in the Kashmir and going to do Wazwan, I would be doing what? Well the round was on food, so the answer was either eat or not eat. We went with fast. The answer was feast. A few more interesting questions:
What is scovilles a measure of? (Chris's quip: A capsiclism is a chilli so hot that it brings about the apocolypse. It was funny at the time anyway.)
The first recorded use of chocolate was where? (We were shocked to learn that the Simpsons was wrong.)
Which country has the highest per capita consumption of beer?

The coup de rupert came when Stevo decided to write down the answer to the bonus question again because Rupert was unlikely to realise that we had already got the marks for it in round one.
It was a move that reeked almost as much as the odour that arrived at our table along with Harry. We got the extra mark and tied first. Harry was calling for a sculling competition to break the tie but thankfully Rupert decided to split the prizes. So our streak continues.

This post has turned out to be more periphrastic than I intended. I will probably cut out the trivia component in future.