myblogisafairblog

The election

2010-08-20T18:07:00.002+10:00

Tomorrow I'm going to be voting 1 Green. No surprise there right? I mean come on Sam, you're a lefty pinko commie terrorist appeaser, and about 10% of people are doing the same thing anyway! If anyone was voting green it would be you.

Many of those people are doing it to register a protest vote against the major parties (usually Labor). They wouldn't actually want the greens in government, they just want to scare the incumbents into doing a better job than the last 3 years.

The central claim at work here is that the Greens would be very bad economic managers; that their actual policy, if implemented would be so unbalanced in it's treatment of the environment/economy tradeoff, they would destroy the country. We would be "up to our necks in owls, and out of work for every Australian" to paraphrase George H W Bush.

When people say this, I often ask them what particular Greens policies they think would cause this. I can't see much that would harm the Australian economy, and they would get rid of some very bad policies which stupidly have bi-partisan support.

Take their carbon reduction strategy. They want to implement a very modest, $23 a ton, nearly revenue neutral carbon tax, with a slight overcompensation only to the poor. The average Australian uses about 18 tonnes per person per year, so would have to pay less than $450 extra a year in tax. The median wage in Australia is about $48000 and taxes probably account for about $15000 of that. To make the tax more or less revenue neutral would require only a tweaking of the tax system, say by reducing the GST rate by a percent or two. This would entail almost no change to the governments revenue, and almost no change to the net tax burden any individuals would have to pay. So your electricity bill would go up, but your tax bill would go down. What is so devastating about this proposal?

Contrast that with Abbot's unfunded, big government, winner-picking scheme, and Julia Gillard's non-solution in the form of a citizen's assembly. Who is being more responsible in fixing the biggest economic externality the world has ever seen?

Looking beyond the environment, we see waste on grand scale from both major parties. Both of them are gorging themselves on middle class welfare largesse, churning tax until it turns to butter milk, anything to appeal to the economically illiterate median voter. "So what if it's your money!", they cry; "Help yourselves!" It seems the solution to every problem in this country is; dump public money into the private sector as a free gift, and hope the problem solves itself. This isn't the free market, it's a free for all, heads I win, tails the tax payers lose. For examples of this take the following:

30% private health rebate. Disastrously expensive, reverse means tested, and only half of it gets to private hospitals at all. The rest is swallowed up by insurance company profits and administration. The Greens would get rid of it.

Petrol subsidies to mining companies. Need I say more? I don't want to insult my reader's intelligence by pointing out what's wrong with this. The Greens would get rid of it.

First home buyers grant. Disastrously expensive, reverse means tested, and incredibly inefficient. It's principle effect is to push up all house prices. The Greens would at least means test it. This is not enough but at least it's a start.

The Greens support public housing over faux market housing fixes, a very fast train from Melbourne to Sydney over continued subsidies to the South Australian car industry, the list goes on.

There are plenty of things I disagree with the Greens about. As a minor party they may not have acquired the technical expertise yet for government, but that can be learned. In not appealing to the median voter they bring some sort of rationality and fiscal responsibility to the table. Their best economic strength lies in rejecting Howard era "Big Government conservatism", the worst of both worlds; where politicians spend your hard earned money on anything and everything, the more the merrier, so long as it doesn't involve improving the government's bottom line, building infrastructure or transfers to the poor.

This year, I'm voting Greens, and not I'm doing it because I want to send a message to Julia, I want to see Bob Brown in the lodge.

Can you tell me who to vote for?

2010-07-27T14:30:00.004+10:00

For the second ¹ time in my life, I am unsure how to fill out my lower house ballot sheet.
This time it's more difficult. I want to lay out what I am sure of, and then explain.

Green
Democrat
Assorted other greeny/social democraty micro parties
Single issue parties where they're right about the issue; i.e. excluding shooting/fishing etc
Independents (who cares what order, alphabetical let's say)
Labor or Liberal
National
Single issue parties where they're wrong about the issue i.e. shooting/fishing etc.
Socialists/Communists
Family first and other Christian groups
Racists, and Right wing conspiracy theorists 2

^{I always vote Greens first, Democrats second. I will continue this in the 2010 federal election with much more zest than previously. The acceptability gap between these and the major parties has widened significantly in the past 12 months (due to the intellectual implosion of Labor and Liberal, not because Bob Brown has starting making more sense).

The order difficulty in this case is in fact the only relevant one on the whole ballot. Should I vote Labor or Liberal?

Reasons to vote Liberal}

I am in the seat of Griffith. It is safe Labor anyway so to an extent the point is moot.
I personally dislike my local member Kevin Rudd.
His Liberal challenger is hot, in a Frau Goebbels sort of way. This reason is very minor, but has not gotten more so recently, while both parties have failed dismally on everything else.
I want to send a message to Labour that I am not a "captured voter," that they can do enough to disgust me out of their camp altogether. The Hotelling law which underlies my whole dillemma may be disrupted by expectations of altruistic punishment. If ice cream sellers know that customers will walk the extra small distance to their competitor, out of frustration with the nearest duopolist's cynicism, they may site their stores more equitably.
The Labor party is crewed by a bunch of populist opportunists who believe in almost nothing and regularly change sides in a debate as soon as the spin doctors judge it is expedient to do so. Before any interview, we always know exactly what they are going to say, they are not even really pitching to the audience of the interview, but to the people who watch Channel 7's pithy 30 second extract of the interview. They view voters with intellectual contempt which is doubly annoying since they themselves are not smart.

Reasons to Vote Labor

Tony Abbot's Liberal party is further to the right than Gillard's Labor and I am left wing.
Tony is a weirdo conservative Catholic and I am an atheist.
If I vote Green first, and then Liberal, I may be viewed not as a protesting voter, but as a "light green." This may send Labor further to the right on social and economic questions.
Labor did an OK job on the economic stimulus
The Liberal party is crewed by a bunch of populist opportunists who believe in almost nothing and regularly change sides in a debate as soon as the spin doctors judge it is expedient to do so. Before any interview, we always know exactly what they are going to say, they are not even really pitching to the audience of the interview, but to the people who watch Channel 7's pithy 30 second extract of the interview. They view voters with intellectual contempt which is doubly annoying since they themselves are not smart.

^{Can you help me make up my mind internet?

1. The first was in my political youth when I was unsure whether the Socialist Alliance should receive priority over the Liberals or not. Going to a few SA meetings, doing a course on Soviet history and talking with them at political events helped me make up my mind then. As the great man said, "Clowns without power, Monsters with it."
2 who would be lynching black people in the street about an hour after the lights went out and the cops went away. The kind of people who exist only to remind us that humans are murderous, savage apes barely suppressed by social convention and the threat of retributive justice. I count One Nation as being the mildest of these, and the CEC somewhere in the middle."}

Final

2010-03-11T17:33:00.000+10:00

Zigzagging a motorcycle through the devastated city proved to be quite difficult. The streets were not just gridlocked, they were jam packed, and even though he took the freeway, Dave found it tough going. The death surrounding him was so over-powering he couldn't process it. He had to get away, get upwind, grieving could come later, feeling could come later.

About 5 miles into his journey, the devastation seemed to lessen, and not all the cars were on fire. Topping a rise, he saw what he'd been dreading. Movement. In the back seat of a station-wagon there was a person still alive. Swinging his legs over the saddle once again, Dave went to see what he could do. It was a woman, about 30 years old. She was blackened to a crisp, clearly dead, but somehow moving. He pushed the woman gently with his finger and she fell away. Dave saw what had been causing the female corpse to move. What was underneath was a sight too dreadful to behold, even for a cynic like Dave, who had seen many things in his long life, and who had had his natural compassion dulled by horror. A baby seat. With a small, burnt form in it. The sex was indiscernable. Blind, choking and writhing in agony, the baby was still trying to breathe, trying to LIVE. But it was failing.

It's mother must have seen the blast wave coming, and thrown herself over her infant to protect it. If she had not, the baby would have died a relatively quick death. As it was her form was just enough to protect the baby from the worst of the bomb's immediate effects, but in a twisted, awful caricature of the maternal instinct, she had condemned her child to suffer in hell for the last awful hours of it's existence. There was no way this horribly burned creature was going to survive, even if it could get to a hospital, and anyway the nearest one was part of a 10 million Kelvin atomized cloud of gas, pluming 100 000 ft into the sky.

Dave stared at the scene, unable to find words appropriate to explain the horror. "The problem is so big. What can I do?" The dry voice inside him warned him not to intervene. "There will be thousands of children in as much pain as this little wretch. You can't fix them all. What can you do indeed? You're just one man. You need to find the Others. You can do more with them than you can on your own. You need to get away. " Yeah, he was just one man. But he could do something on his own. Afterwards he would link up with Kissinger junior and fight to save the American race. But first he would do this; he would make things right, right here, right now. The future was uncertain, and he didn't have any spare ammo clips. But in this, he could help. He could reach out and save one child. Maybe not quite what the World Vision folks had in mind, but this earth was imperfect. Dave cupped the baby's stricken head in his hand one last time, reached to grab his gun, and fired it into the innocent's temple. The report echoed across the otherwise silent freeway, marking him for all time as a child murderer. The spasming stopped. This killing had been an act of compassion, and he would have to live with it for the rest of his life.

Dave turned away from the car, and vomited. He was tired, so very tired. He felt old, older than the Earth. He needed sleep. Bitumen on a gridlocked freeway felt suddenly soft and inviting. More than anything in the world he wanted to sleep now...

But he couldn't. He had a duty. He needed to regroup, needed to find Kissinger. He needed to fight the good fight. There was plenty of time to rest when he was dead, which might not be that long if he stayed within 10 klicks of a fucking H-bomb blast for more than a few hours. There were people in this world that needed killing, the end of their life stories had Dave standing over them, a Magnum 45mm lodged in their brains. And more than anything in the world, David Barry needed to find the Vaginal Orgasm, and keep her safe. It was only the craven part of Dave that wanted to sleep. Yeah, the Vaginal Orgasm might have perished in that 4-th dimensional Manchurian Tesseract. But right now, he had to operate on the assumption she was alive, and needed his help. With a superhuman effort, Dave shrugged off his weariness and got back on the bike.

From here on, traffic was thinner. this must be the point where people started not being instantly fried by the radiation. Dave thought, "Things can only get better from here. I'm gonna make it, we're ALL gonna make it. We're gonna be ok."

Continued

2010-03-11T16:22:00.000+10:00

The stairwell was a little cooler and more strongly built, but it was still a scene of death. By chance a cop had been visiting the surgery, he was now lying face down on the floor, holstered gun by his side. Dave pocketed the weapon, you just never know when such a thing might come in useful. Running down the stairs, he got to the parking level. All the lights were out, and his Zippo didn't cast much gleam, but he managed to find his Harley. For Dave, the second half of the twentieth century had been a time of technological regress. He had always shunned electric starter motors, and now was his vindication. EMP would have taken out all the other vehicles. He kicked the stick, and his pride and joy roared to life. Old faithful, just like the geyser. His headlights glared , and revealed a probable homosexual slumped in a dead Prius just opposite. "Would it kill you to buy American?" Dave muttered under his breath.

Time was short, but Christian charity is a wonderful thing, and even now our hero was moved to render whatever assistance he could. He dismounted, and moved cautiously to the traitor's pathetic excuse for a car. Through the window, Dave could see "The New York Times" in the likely sodomite's lap. The headline proclaimed "Health-Care passed through House-Senate reconciliation: 53 senators can't be wrong!" A fitting epitaph for the noble American experiment. That must be why the federal government dropped the nuke! Dave realized in a flash.

The near-certain fairy stirred. He was half-conscious, and badly burnt but babbling. "Change, change we can believe in. I voted for change!" "Yeah, and how's that working out for you friend?" Dave asked quietly? The fancy-boy opened his black, soulless eyes, and saw the conservative. He started to laugh. "Well I'm done for", he rasped, "but at least you'll die too, even if you can get out of here. Cancer from this bomb's radiation will finish you off, Obamacare 'll make sure of that." His face seemed to be overwhelmed by pain from his burns for a minute, but he whispered, "The America you knew is already over. We've won!"

At this Dave had to laugh too. There was really nothing else to do. He laughed big, hearty gaffaws. The dry, analytical part of his mind, warned him there was a tinge of hysteria in his voice, but he couldn't help it. "Cancer," he shrieked, "Cancer from the bomb! Well just tell that radiation to get in line!" Dave took a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, and lit up. The dull, familiar pain in his chest was beginning to burn again. "I'm already dying of lung cancer! Friend, when it comes time to reap the soul from my body, only horseman that's gonna do it's gonna be the Marlborough man!"

The now-confirmed sapphic had lapsed again into unconsciousness, and clearly he wasn't going to make it. Dave swung his legs over the saddle and roared off into the smoke.

Dave and Henry Kissinger

2010-03-11T15:05:00.000+10:00

Ok guys first of all, big shout-out to my brothers and sisters working tirelessly in every city you can name in the contiguous 48 plus Alaska. From Seattle to Washington .D.C., Miami to El Paso, they never give up hope, their energies never flag. Whether it's town hall meetings in Olympia, rallies in Chicago, or just organizing internet campaigns out of small-town USA, these patriots fight, struggle, and yes sometimes die, all the way across this vast, eternal, God-given Tea-party Nation. And if by chance we should give up the fight and say it's all too hard, or if the enemies of the light should triumph? Well let's just see what life would be like under ObamaCare.

The strange hum of the CAT scan machine shut off abruptly, and Dave was plunged into darkness. Startled out of his reverie, he sat up, just before realizing where he was, and bumped his head on the low, curved ceiling. The curse words were barely out of his mouth when the red emergency lights sputtered to life. Somehow the hellish, dusky gloom accentuated the CAT machine's coffin-like appearance, and Dave fought back a rising tide of claustrophobia. Firmly, and contemptuously, he suppressed the moment of irrational weakness, but resolved to get out anyway, clearly the scan was over.

Dave had no sooner completed the thought when two things happened at the same time. The whole lead-lined concrete room shook from a sound like a thunderclap, and the emergency lights winked out. "What the hell is going on?" wondered Dave. Groping toward his jacket, he felt for his Zippo lighter, nestled snugly in a pocket. He was getting out out of here, something was very wrong. The room was heating up now, and Dave scrambled for the only door, but found the electronic access panel dead. Snarling, he reached for a steel chair and began using it as a club to break the lock. It was strong, but made in China - and to keep people out rather than in, ultimately no match for an old cagefighter. With a snap, the
lock broke. Dave pushed the door open - and stared at the vision of hell which confronted him.

What had been a peaceful doctor's surgery waiting room just minutes ago was now a burning wreck, ghastly corpses strewn everywhere. Everything was on fire, and of the cadavers not completely burned to a crisp, Dave could see by the contortions on their face that death had not been pleasant. The building was utterly destroyed. Through gaping holes in the walls, he could see buildings aflame half a mile away, burning so fiercely they shone through the atomic cloud. Judging from the scene of devastation before him, and the long lag between the initial EMP burst and his "thunderclap," this had to be a big one, a hydrogen bomb. He had to get out of here, the radiation would kill him. Automatic fire suppression sprinklers had kicked in, cooling the air somewhat, but the toxic fumes were choking. Wrapping a cloth over his mouth, Dave crawled toward the fire escape.

Obamalypse

2010-02-25T19:12:00.000+10:00

The wide eyed Student is now a world weary cynic.

The Teacher is but a memory.

The Grandson follows in his forbear's footsteps.

The mission? Same as always.

Dave and Henry Kissinger (junior) Liberate the Vaginal Orgasm.

Coming soon to a blog post near you!

Best Wedding Ever

2010-01-13T13:45:00.000+10:00

From Wellreadhead. What a fantastic way to walk down the aisle. Such a vibrant celebration life, and love. Congratulations to the happy couple! May all the days of your union be as fun-filled as the first.
Update: Guess I spoke too soon. Although technically, my blessing was fulfilled.

A surprise from Garret

2009-11-11T14:12:00.000+10:00

Wow. I never knew he had it in him. Good on him. I still think he's a pretty pathetic environment minister, but slightly less so now.

Still not good enough.

2009-08-22T16:19:00.000+10:00

So William Calley is sorry for the My Lai massacre.
He says "I feel remorse for the Vietnamese who were killed, for their families, for the American soldiers involved and their families. I am very sorry.'' Note the passivity in his description. He doesn't say "I apologise for the fact that I am a mass murderer," he is just expressing regret for the fact that something bad happened. Well anyone can do that. He is sorry for the American soldiers involved; you know, the ones who took evident delight in killing hundreds of old people and children.
This is not good enough. The man's punishment was 3 and a half years of house arrest. That was not good enough. The absolute least he could possibly do is go back to Vietnam, meet the relatives of those he murdered, douse himself in petrol and go from house to house asking for someone to strike a match. Even then he wouldn't have paid his debt.

Question Time

2009-08-19T12:12:00.000+10:00

I know I know, I shouldn't waste my time. But when I have a shower, I usually turn on the radio, and if question time is on, that's what I listen to. I mean, I can hardly change the station can I? I have wet hands.

Lately they have been talking about renewable energy. I would in all seriousness like to know how many members of parliament have completed high school physics.

One guy (didn't catch the name, or the party) was talking up the prospects of Mackay Sugar's co-generation plant. "It produces 266 000 Megawatts a year" apparently.

Another person (from the Opposition), was warning about the cost of solar and wind energy. "Coal fired electricity costs 3c per kilowatt hour (at least this guy was dimensionally correct), whereas solar and wind cost between 5-8c per kilowatt hour. Therefore, if we switched entirely to wind and solar, electricity costs would go up by 100-200 %. Can the working families of Australia really afford that?" Well that's very interesting, because working families currently pay between 10-12c a kilowatt hour. The difference comes from the fact that there is a lot more to the electricity grid than simply production. Transmission, billing, marketing and general business administration-not to mention profits- all have to take their cut. All these costs are likely to be the same (or possibly less for transmission due to local production) under a renewable energy regime. I don't think the guy was being disingenuous mind you, just ignorant.

Lastly there was July Bishop claiming that solar hot water systems were not "an energy generation system," but merely "an energy efficiency-displacement measure" and hence should not be regarded in the legislation, or included in the renewable energy mix. Does July Bishop actually understand the difference between electricity and energy? If she doesn't, then does she claim that gas fired water heaters are also merely energy efficiency-displacement measures?

Now, I don't usually like to be a pedantic nerd about physics errors, but in cases like these it really matters. The people running our country don't understand how the natural world works and this is a big problem. Solar hot water is the most economically efficient carbon displacement technology we have and its prospects are being endangered by someone who doesn't understand science.

I should really spend less time in the shower.

The LHC

2009-05-13T21:37:00.000+10:00

Does anyone else think there may be a strong anthropic reason why the LHC failed last summer?

The UN racism forum

2009-04-21T20:35:00.000+10:00

"UN human rights chief Navi Pillay said she was "shocked and deeply disappointed" by the boycotts" of the US, Australia, Israel, Italy, the Netherlands and Canada. The UN argument is that countries that refuse to participate in this debate must not take the issue of racism seriously, or are passing up the chance to take on rogue states within the normal UN process.
I disagree with this. There comes a point when UN bodies like the "Human Rights Tribunal" or the "UN racism forum" become such Orwellian caricatures of themselves that the entire body must be abandoned and left to die. Any group that attempts to pass declarations requiring countries to outlaw criticism of religions has lost all relevance or moral claim.
The danger is that this is happening on a much larger and more important scale with the UN security council. With amoral, undemocratic countries wielding their veto pen whenever they feel like it- as China does whenever it's Sudanese clients are threatened with condemnation- the United Nations itself is slowly dying of irrelevance. Ban Ki Moon is right to say that countries should debate these issues, but he is wrong when he thinks only the UN is capable of hosting such a forum.

Plot device for a detective novel

2009-04-16T13:26:00.000+10:00

I noticed in the maths lift the other day that on an LED screen a "2" is a mirror reversal of "5." I feel sure this could be be used in a whodunnit thriller of some kind. Perhaps the murder victim took a photo moments before he died in an elevator, the picture seeming to show that he was on level 5, thus granting an alibi to someone (known to be on level 2 somehow) who would otherwise be a suspect. Let's say it was a double murder, with the other victim (not the photographer), partly visible in the shot. Near the end of the book, the strained detective (possibly suspended from the force by his no-nothing lieutenant (or if a private investigator, fired by the victim's newly wealthy heiress(which may or may not be a red herring))), suddenly discovers upon closer inspection that the wedding ring of the other victim is on the wrong hand, and thus, that the entire shot is actually of a mirror opposite to the lift door. I could weave in some subtle hints about mirrors throughout the book, so much so that an avid reader would, upon conclusion of the mystery, grasp her head in her hands and exclaim "Of course, the answer was staring me in the face all along!" But I can't write that novel now. I've just given away the ending in a blog post

In which I watch commercial television

2009-04-16T13:19:00.000+10:00

So I was watching an ad the other day from the Queensland government. It told me that I should be eating more vegetables. At the end of the ad it said something like "Queensland (something to do with health) association. Working to ensure that Queenslanders are the healthiest people in Australia." Now maybe this says something about my personality, but surely the easiest way to accomplish this is to simply detonate radioactive dirty bombs in the major cities of all the other states? Or as Chris points out, at least run ad campaigns in the other states encouraging junk food and binge drinking?

Oh Chris? Well if I'm so retarded, how come I found a mobile Dharma station right in the middle of Kuala Lumpur?

2009-03-04T21:12:00.000+10:00

Not my problem John...

I for one, have no illusions about which Indiana Jones character I most resemble

2009-02-15T20:50:00.000+10:00

You want to find Sam? Forget it. He's already got a day's head start, which is more than he needs. He's got friends in every village from Melaka to Sa-Pa, he speaks a dozen languages, he'll blend in with the crowd, disappear; my guess is you'll never see him again

In which i am at uni after midnight

2009-01-29T23:36:00.000+10:00

Chris has some weirdo christian on gmail complaining that bloggers only produce silly, unlettered rants that don't add anything to considered opinion or mainstream society. To counter this I offer my thoughts on a few salient issues.
The Rebel Alliance seems pretty racist. Not as bad as as using the death star to blow up Alderaan mind you, but compared to us, they are not very evolved.
"Will somebody get this big walking carpet out of my way?" That, ladies and gentlemen, I call snide. I guess it just reflects the evolving moral zeitgeist (from a long time ago in a galaxy far far away).
On the other hand, the Mon Calamari do seem to be the only ones commanding starfleets these days. Maybe its a rare example of the dominant culture rather condescendingly "giving" the under culture one cool trait that apparently only they can do well. You know, like man "Humans, can't command starfleets." Maybe they could make a movie with that as their title, or even a whole series of Calamarixploitation such films. Of course inevitably we would witness the rise of so-called "Hulamaris," rich kids that, much to their parents chagrin, reject the traditional, WASHish pursuits like lightsaber duelling, and instead only want to command enormous
fleets of organically shaped hyperdrive equipped capital ships like those no-good ne-er-do-well's who always ask them for money on the street.

The only upside to all this is that we could eventually look forward to another movie about a particularly talented Hulamari, rising from humble, human trash beginnings, butting his head against an entrenched establishment of Mon Calamaris, with their own set of prejudices, and their own little club blocking ascension to those deemed "not fish enough" -oops sorry, did I offend your liberal sensibilities? I forgot that use of the `f' word was a faux pas now, in the politically correct straitjacket of a world in which we are now imprisoned. Anyway, such a movie would really make one think. And it can't be worse than the prequels.

In other news, Kim and I are going to Malaysia tommorrow. This time we will try to keep the weight down.

Parched

2008-12-12T13:50:00.000+10:00

I have been following John Quiggin's excellent blog lately. He was recently on a radio national program about the politics of water in Australia and the world. You can listen to the discussion here. Once again however, there was a gigantic elephant in the room called overpopulation that nobody wanted to talk about.

Only one of the speakers touched on it, and then only very briefly. In a closed economy (like planet Earth), demand for water -and indeed every natural resource- is driven by two things: per capita demand, and population. The bigger our population, the more we must constrain our lifestyles in the long term.

In discussions like these we often treat population levels as a given, but here in Australia we are doing everything we can to increase our population as fast as possible. At the same time, we seem completely unable to talk about the consequences for the environment and our enjoyment of life. Until we face up to this, and start including population as one half of the argument in any discussion about natural resources, we cannot hope to truly deal with the problem.

“They would have been happier having someone closer to president Bush's policies.”

2008-11-20T16:59:00.000+10:00

The quote in the title is from this article, about al-Qa'ida getting worried about Obama's popularity.

Now that's funny isn't it? I thought they would "pray, as many times as possible, for a victory not only for Obama, but also for the Democrats." Could John Howard have been wrong?

Los Angeles Forest Fires

2008-11-17T14:38:00.000+10:00

Look at this guy. He's all decked out, with all the equipment he'll need to survive this emergency. The only thing he forgot is how not to be a wanker.

Columbus

2008-11-17T11:40:00.000+10:00

I'm reading a book about Christopher Columbus. Let's put ourselves in his head for a moment, and believe that in sailing west from Europe across the Atlantic, he had reached India, rather than the New World. Why then, did he call it the West Indies? That doesn't make any kind of sense. He had clearly reached the most easterly point of India. Anybody who thinks that that sounds reasonable, and that it makes sense to speak of "India in the West" is either trying to make me angry, or has not properly understood the concept of the spherical Earth with it's arbitrary meridians.

Update: Geoff falls into at least one of the above categories. So the great edifice of modern physics goes up, and the majority of the cleverest people in the western world have about as much insight into it as their Neolithic ancestors would have had.

I'd forgotten how messy it is eating a mango with a beard.

2008-11-17T11:39:00.000+10:00

That's it. That's the whole post

US elections

2008-10-30T16:12:00.001+10:00

If McCain wins the US election, I will be very upset. Why? Partly because I am a left wing pinko, and partly because I have US$250 riding on it. That's right, I put my money where my political mouth is and bet on the intrade prediction markets. As a result I stand to gain a cool US$31 playing the stocks.

It seems as though this political betting system could use some "innovation." The odds of all the individuals mentioned as possible winners add up to more than 100.% I should be able to exploit arbitrage opportunities to rectify that. Also, I would like to short sell McCain shares. I think that at 12.7%, they are overvalued. Maybe we could introduce options trading. It certainly couldn't hurt. I mean, can you name me one occasion when exotic derivatives did harm to the financial system?

Update: Maybe I wasn't so smart after all. I bought the shares at 1AUD= US 60.8c. Now the exchange rate has improved to 68 something. I'm going to find a window ledge somewhere.

Australia Needs To Have A Superficial Conversation About Religion.

2008-10-20T10:59:00.000+10:00

The people of Australia need to put aside their differences and come together on common ground. Especially at this crucial moment in our history. How better, I ask, to achieve this goal than to engage in an inconclusive, protracted, ignorant, and superficial examination of the issue of religion?

Forget that old refrain about not mentioning politics or religion at the dinner table, emotive asseveration is all the vogue.

Before we get started though, I think we need to set a few ground rules. First of all, let's be really drunk and loud, and only get started at about 3am. Sobriety and appropriate courtesy are the twin killers of any incoherent, boorish argument. Interrupt as often as possible. Every time your opponent verbally completes a train of thought, baby Jesus cries. Crucially, the personal enmity grounding this vitriolic nonsense should centre (at least at first) on mistaken identity, where the semiconscious mind of a juvenile inebriate projects the hebephrenic pro-fascism of one drunken idiot onto another (drunken idiot). The fact that a certain disliked character in "Die hard 4" bears a passing resemblance to your adversary cannot be brought up enough.

After we've interrupted the other side's facile, vapid nonsense, we need to replace it with our own; pick out the most irrelevant part of their ill-considered diatribe and argue on a complete tangent. Allow the conversation to oscillate randomly from religion to the War on Terror. No rejoinders please, that would get uncomfortably close to a logical debate. The format should be assertion, interruption, rebuttle, personal attack. In fact if at all possible, we should maintain logical coherence only at the level of the individual sentence. Contradict ourselves as often as possible. Confuse male circumcision with castration. One person who thinks the US government organized the September 11 attacks should use it as evidence of the absence of a benevolent creator, the other side should recycle half remembered BBC documentaries that fail to address the question, and then claim that no one in Afghanistan supports Al-Qaeda.

During an intermission, we should play drinking games, but even then, residual nastiness is key. When playing "I never" (normally a way to discover the other's adventurous side) we should declare "I never met a supervisor of Kim's that I respected."

On the pro-religion side, we need to make liberal recourse to the "appeal to consequences" fallacy. Let's insist on the existence of local metaphysical truths applicable to the whole universe, which vary from person to person depending on mood and circumstance. Deny the atheist's right to an opinion; assume their lives lack personal tragedy, and argue that as a result they are too shallow to think about this.

For the anti side, 2 simple words; Scientific Chauvinism. Deny any possibility of being wrong, even the solipsistic one intrinsic to all empirical observations.

Only by opening an embarrassingly one- dimensional dialogue on the most simple and wholly ignorant level can we ensure that we, as a nation, never get down to the deeper issues about religious identity that truly threaten to tear this country apart.

Who's with me?

With apologies to the onion.

Queensland Transport

2008-10-16T11:19:00.000+10:00

I am quite frequently told, and not without an element of truth, that I am overly simplistic in my political and economic prescriptions for society. I am told that the problems facing the world are by nature complicated, and that a lowly non-expert like me should not be quite so certain in lambasting those in charge of dealing with them. To a certain extent I have to accept this advice as sound, and nowadays I do try to learn a bit about different sides of an issue before I form concrete opinions.

Today I received an email asking me to participate in a survey for Queensland Transport. After completing the questionnaire, I browsed the site and had a look at their infrastructure plan. I like infrastructure, especially rail. I had a train set when I was a kid, and it was really fun to play with. Trains use electricity to run, which theoretically can be produced from green sources. They are fast, efficient, and clean. The website explained that, with South East Queensland projected to grow from 2.9 million to 4.3 million by 2026, rail upgrades were urgently required. Here is the plan:
What needs to happen

To help determine suitable solutions to increase capacity, Queensland Transport engaged independent consultants Maunsell Parsons Brinckerhoff to conduct the Inner City Rail Capacity Study. The study found that inner city rail required an additional four tracks (a doubling of existing track capacity) on two new lines to meet the growing demands on our rail system over the next 20 years. These new lines will ideally be constructed in a two-phase upgrade of inner city rail infrastructure.

Phase one will connect the southern (Beenleigh/Gold Coast) rail line to the northern (Caboolture/North Coast) rail line through the inner city by 2016.

Phase two will connect the western (Ipswich) rail line and to the northern (Caboolture/North Coast) rail line through the inner city by 2026. Infrastructure such as new routes, tunnels and underground stations are key features of the proposed upgrades.

What happens next

Queensland Transport will now undertake a detailed feasibility study to decide on a preferred phase one route. Determining any preferred rail alignment for our future needs must be carefully planned to ensure all options have been sufficiently investigated.

The detailed feasibility study will commence shortly and is estimated to be completed by mid-2011. Completion of this study will allow construction to commence in 2012.

I'll leave the question of how a severely water stressed region can possibly accommodate a doubling in its population for another time. What I want to talk about here is how impossibly unambitious this scheme is. The feasibility study for phase one won't even be finished until 2011! How can anything possibly take that long? In China they made a 50 km Maglev track in 2 years. In Victorian times, they rolled out rail track at walking pace. I understand that there are legitimate environmental concerns these days in Australia, and that responsible planning for these things takes a bit more time and effort, but 3 more years to complete a report before even getting started is appalling.

Things are no better federally. As part of its fiscal stimulus package, the Rudd government plans to invest heavily in infrastructure. This means that they will bring forward a report on priority infrastructure projects by a few months. The study was begun as soon as the last election ended. This is insane. They should already have a list of such projects ready to be started as soon as macroeconomic pressures ease. By moving so slowly, encumbered by such hulking bureaucracy, Labor governments are proving all those hoary old Milton Friedman cliches about state ineffectiveness correct, and he didn't used to be correct. Now I am not a small government person, I am a big government person who is trying not to become disillusioned. I like to see a lot of orange vested workers scrambling around cities laying complicated looking cables, and digging tunnels and things. But all these independently commissioned reports, counter reports, memos, reviews, inquiry groups, fact finding missions and endless focus groups are making me angry. Government should have less paper pushes and more actual workers, there I said it. Without wanting to contradict the change of heart towards moderation and humility indicated in my first paragraph, everyone in charge of everything is an idiot, and I could do it all much better myself.

US election

2008-10-02T09:27:00.000+10:00

More Shadenfreude from me.
This part is especially funny

Some Republicans say they are uncertain of McCain’s electoral strategy, wondering why, for example, he’s back in Iowa this week, a state few independent analysts see as being in play and where public polls this month show Obama enjoying a double-digit lead even before the economic meltdown. Asked why McCain was in Iowa, one veteran Republican there replied: “Because he’s running a senseless, non-strategic campaign. Why else would he come here?”

More nonsense from Mark Day

2008-09-18T10:59:00.000+10:00

Now he wants to start charging for ABC podcasts. This is a terrible idea. It inhibits diffusion of taxpayer produced intellectual property, something we all have a right to use. It clearly goes against the spirit of the ABC charter of free, open access, and at a time when the commercial networks are serving us so poorly, the public broadcaster has never been more necessary. I know The Australian is full of free marketeers who think "user pays" trumps all, and that the government has no role to play in the economy, but guys, on a day like today, I would be keeping a low profile.

"Not" Wanted

2008-08-27T18:23:00.000+10:00

I saw this movie a couple of days ago. I don't make the claim that it's the worst movie ever made, merely the worst I have personally seen. Angelina Jolie, Morgan Freeman, this is a joke right?
One star, and only because of
a) The special effects and
b) I'm not sure you can give less than one.
I mean, you should actually go see it, this movie seems to have gone Misere, so in a strange way, I feel like it deserves an Oscar in hell.
This guy says it better than I could. What's the worst movie you guys have seen? Should we have a bad movie night at my place some time? We could hire a projector.

Guest workers

2008-08-21T14:31:00.000+10:00

In 2001 I was 18 and looking for adventure. I wanted to earn enough money (about $14 500, as I recall) to have Centrelink declare me independent from my parents, and pay me while studying. The method I chose to earn this money was fruit picking. I had a license, an old car and barely enough money to drive across the state. There is almost no skill in this industry, and farmers never turn away workers that are willing to turn up. All I had to do was find a fruit picking farm that needed workers. Surely a simple task?

I contacted Centrelink, and asked them which farms had vacancies. They said that they wouldn't tell me, as I wasn't a registered jobseeker on Newstart or Youth Allowance (which of course I couldn't be given I wasn't independent from my parents). They also said it wasn't really their job to directly get people work, only to manage the network of employment agencies. So I rang the relevant agencies, like CSR, and Employment National, etc. They all said that each one of their branches, in each little outback town operated as little semi autonomous entities, that did not share records with one another, nor with their parent office. In short, I would have to call them all, every single office of every single company, throughout the state. After several rejections, I finally got a tentative "yes" from a company in Wondai. After driving down with a high school friend on a 1200 km trip from Townsville, we arrived at the office, only to be told that the position had been filled, but that positions open up all the time, and would I mind waiting around for a day or two? After two weeks in a grubby caravan park, and with our money running perilously low, we decided to try another town. I can't remember how many horrible little places we went to but the answer was always the same; "Just wait around here for a little while and we will probably get you work." Having read Marx's Das Kapital vol 1 that summer, the words "Reserve army of the unemployed" kept flashing up in my mind. It became clear that these job agencies always ask you to stay, no matter how scarce the work is, just so they have a good selection of workers to choose from when they need it. In Bundaberg, we stopped in at a backpacker's hostel. They said they could get us work in exchange for us staying there-paying $100 a week to sleep in a bunk bed. At that time, the average rent my friends in Brisbane were paying (for a house) was $70 a room. By now, my friend and I didn't have $200 between us, so we had to drive home. Once back, we decided to simply call every farm in the phone book within a 200 km radius. In this way, we did eventually find work at a farm near Ayr.

The work was reasonably physical, but not exhausting and I enjoyed it. I talked to my coworkers and none of them had been employed by a job company. Most of them had done the same, incredibly inefficient thing that I had been forced to do, and cold-called every farm they could. Some were living in another horrible backpacker's hostel, paying extortionate rent to live in squalid conditions. After 6 weeks of living this way, a Canadian coworker named Dan decided to move out and get a house somewhere in Ayr. In response to this, the backpacker's hostel forced the farmer to fire him, with the threat of sending no more workers otherwise. This was not a subtle suggestion on the part of the hostel manager, but an explicitly stated policy. The word "Dickensian" comes to mind. Fruit picking seasons inevitably end and I was again forced onto the same treadmill. For that year I was out of work around a third of the time, in a state where fruit was being left to rot on the trees, and by the end of the year I had still not quite earned the required amount. The same stories were repeated in town after shitty little town. The failure of labour supply in this industry is not due to laziness on the part of the unemployed (or at least not entirely) . Rather, a dysfunctional system for finding work imposed by a set of Neo-liberal free-market ideologues acts in concert with grubby collusionist small town cockroach capitalists to deliver the least efficient possible outcome.

This is why I oppose the fruit picking guest worker scheme. Enough willing Australians exist to fill every job available, especially if it becomes a requirement for the long term unemployed in fruit picking areas. The employment system just needs to become more centralized, with the government mandating that all vacancies be advertised on one central website. It is incredibly inefficient to fly pacific islanders back and forth for a few months at time. It would be a terribly carbon intensive exercise for a start, and the resulting additional strain on our overpopulated country can only increase the pressures on water supplies and so forth. The economic cost should also not be underestimated. I am not blind to the developmental benefits such a program could have (in the form of remmitances) on the Pacific nations themselves, but I believe that direct foreign aid on the part of our government is a much more efficient way to deliver improvements in living standards in the third world. The guest worker scheme is a Turnbullite solution, one that posits eternal population growth and environmental vandalism as a remedy to deliberately engineered market failure.

Georgia- Letters from Adriana, her friend, and my response.

2008-08-15T13:42:00.000+10:00

On 15/08/2008, at 10:47 AM, Adriana's friend wrote:

At first glance I thought that Georgia had really fucked up... Now I am
not so sure... One thing that it looks like we can count on is that
wherever there is imperialism and oppression of minorities, america is
close by... That said: what have russia been doing in southern ossetia for
the last ten years (where have all the georgian's gone??- this is a
baseless suspicion)... It would proably be good policy for Russia to
withdraw from Gori and Poti... At this moment in time I am in support of
them being in S. Ossetia and Abkazia (sp?)...

-------------------------------
What do you think about this?

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/08/15/2336041.htm

From: Adriana Siddle

I am confused by it. I have been reading:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Ossetia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgian-Ossetian_conflict

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_South_Ossetia_War

So the people who live there, while not strictly independent from Georgia, consider themselves to be and want to be. What is their relationship with Russia? If wikipedia is telling the truth, most of them have Russian passports.

Also, if wikipedia is right, it was Georgia who began the fighting with the South Ossetians. Hence Russia was just sticking up for a minority group in a country where there was potentially a civil war breaking out.

I don't really get this.

?????

Here is my response:

I can see the argument that Georgia, in invading a semi-independent region first is primarily responsible for this crisis. It’s funny how it struggled for so long to achieve independence from the Soviet Union, and then as soon as that was achieved, immediately began persecuting its own secessionist movements. I suppose you can’t have countries being carved up into ever smaller pieces, but it’s not clear that a “natural” country should be Georgian sized.

My instinct though, (in contrast to Zach) is to see the modern Russian Federation as an amoral, expansionist empire, bereft of any ideology but RealPolitik. Running the (very real) risk of invoking Godwin’s law, it is instructive to remember that Nazi Germany justified its expansionism during the 1930’s with hyperbolic rhetoric about the plight of German speaking minorities in other countries. It really seems to me like Russia has over reacted, and is trying to bully countries within its former sphere of influence. Their obsessively adversarial attitude to the West is as needless as it is dangerous. Given the evil empire’s tendency towards belligerence, I believe that in the long term, Georgia belongs in NATO, under the protection of America’s nuclear umbrella. The two player MAD game makes even less sense than its name suggests, but it has the virtue of being more stable than any other kind of standoff. What would be ideal though, is for Russia to learn the lesson nearly everyone else did after World War One, which is that disruption to trade flows caused by conflict more than outweigh the benefits of adventurism and ill-gotten gains.
Am I wrong?

She's not even that hot! And don't you have to be 35?

2008-08-11T08:31:00.000+10:00

I can see that this is mostly a self parody, but somewhere in the back of her tiny narcissistic mind, this inspiration for "The White Chick's Burden" thinks she should be taken seriously. She thinks that even though she hasn't bothered to inform herself about "all that boring stuff," that her opinion on these issues matter. She plays precisely the same role in public affairs as Marie Antoinette, in her time. The only difference is that after the revolution no one at all will weep for her. It's a good thing voting is non-compulsory in America, or generation Y could really do some damage.

Karadzic

2008-07-23T17:33:00.000+10:00

One more naturopath off the streets.

WYD

2008-07-14T00:18:00.001+10:00

"Australia in its historical configuration is part of the Western world," the Pope said. "The West over the past 50 years has seen great success, economic and technological success. But religion has been relegated."
But? BUT? Why not AND?

Surely its a bit late?

2008-07-08T17:23:00.001+10:00

Italy declares Pompeii emergency

Arguments with Dave

2008-07-01T13:22:00.000+10:00

I don't think it was background on Scalia. He is saying that his fierce commitment to textualism was the cause of his decision on the Gore case. He said that the recount was "unconstitutional" and hence should not continue (even though such a recount was clearly in the public interest). What I want to know is, why did he think it was unconstitutional? What silly obscure reason in the letter of the law did he find?
He writes that the original founders of the the constitution were in favour of the right to bear arms, even though the second amendment does not make it literally clear that this state of affairs should persist after the temporary emergency of the revolution. But surely they would also have been in favour of a thorough recount in a disputed presidential election? Scalia is clearly a selective textualist, and a partisan hack, and you Dave will only disagree with me because you share his prejudices.
But this isn't even my main point. He can't say that it was Al Gore's fault for the judicial outcome. Gore was perfectly entitled, morally and legally, to demand a recount. If you want someone to blame for the inauguration of the most disastrous presidency in history, look no further than this gun-toting, religiously anti-abortion, illiberal, Republican voting Reagan appointee who cast the deciding vote in this case for the most sectarian of reasons.

Worse (in outcome) than Zimbabwe

2008-06-30T13:16:00.000+10:00

I genuinely don't understand this, it doesn't seem logical. It was Al Gore's fault this guy brought down an indefensible judgement, because he asked the courts to intervene? He should have conceded defeat in the face of probable illegality like a previous election loser? If I was mugged in the street and asked for a cop to help, it would be my fault if he awarded the criminal my wallet? And what does textualism have to do with this case anyway? Lawyers irritate me, they seem too much like practicing philosophers, revelling in distorting the law into a caricature of basic ethics.

I have become that guy

2008-05-20T19:32:00.000+10:00

support@txt-services.com

Dear Sam

Thank you for contacting our helpline. We understand that you have
requested a refund for the premium text messages sent to your mobile
phone.

This is to confirm that the requested number 0435203527 has been
unsubscribed from the service and will not receive any further
messages.

When you first subscribed to the service on the internet on 25.04.08
all subscription charges, how to unsubscribe and a helpline number for
further information, were explained on the web-ad.

The following free of charge message was delivered to your phone
explaining the costs and how to unsubscribe:

Free msg: Play this subscription quiz: add. 8 msg/month, 14+ only,
$2.5/msg each way, stop? txt stop to 19993500, $2.50 joining fee.

You initiated the service to win a Macbook Air by entering the pincode
on the online advertisement.

Please be advised that the registered bill payer is ultimately and
wholly responsible for the access, activity and usage of their mobile
phone.

We regret to inform you that we are unable to offer a refund as you
did receive all the necessary information regarding the service.

Yours Sincerely

Kirsten
Customer Services
Txt Services

sam.kault@gmail.com

I did not, repeat not sign up to any such service. I have never received your claimed text message, and have had no communication with your company prior to receiving my phone bill. I did not enter into any competition to win a Mac-book air, in fact I consider such plebeian indulgence in games of chance with negative expectation value to be irrational and somewhat beneath me. I think you misunderstand my position. I am not "requesting" a refund from your company, I am simply demanding that you drop your bogus claim. I have not paid that portion of the telephone bill, I shall never pay that portion of the bill. Since you have refused to withdraw your pernicious and ridiculous allegation, I shall now be in communication with my telephone company instructing them to manually remove those items fraudulently added. If they refuse, I will end my relationship with them, and take my case to the relevant telecommunications ombudsman or regulatory authority. Opportunistic financial predators like your company shall not go meekly unchallenged in today's business environment.
Yours in wearied irritation,
Sam Kault

Update- After speaking to Virgin Mobile, they agreed to grant me a one-time "refund", and warned me that this is the only time they will do so; I suppose this is as far as I'll take things. If Virgin Mobile wants to give a donation to that company, that's their prerogative. However, even though I've won I've still lost. I've had to invest time and energy into these parasites, but more important that that is the abrogation of basic free market commercial principles; that transactions proceed only with the consent of both buyer and seller. I also take issue with the term "refund," as though items on a bill are a divine commandment, reducing my net worth in a cosmic ledger somewhere in an invisible platonic heaven. This is wrong-headed, a bill is a legally challengeable claim for money, nothing more. If I agree with the claim I will pay it, If I do not, I have the option to take the matter to a civil court and make my case, where two and a half thousand years of civil law will back me up. I thanked the woman at Virgin Mobile for this "one time refund," and assured her that if this happens again, I will make precisely the same phone call, and demand that the item on the bill be again withdrawn. I will do the same thing on the third time, and once again on the fourth.

It's not that I believe these companies shouldn't exist, indeed, I believe they fulfill a very valuable social function; they act rather like reverse miner's canaries, when businesses like these are doing well, policymakers know there is something very wrong with society. The size of their revenue correlates well with just how much the education system is failing our kids. I am more than happy with this vital social barometer being funded by a non-government collected tax on abject stupidity. It's only when the economic parasites cross the line and invade polite society that I raise my voice, and very calmly say "Listen vultures, DO NOT FUCK WITH ME."

Posting

2008-04-21T20:50:00.000+10:00

By popular demand I have decided to present another post. Trouble is, I don't have any material. I decided to do some research on the blogosphere for inspiration (yes firefox it is a fucking word, also firefox is a word). Naturally, I don't have as generous a figure as our one time bridesmaid, nor do I know as much about boring cricket statistics as a certain expatriot. I could spend my time lamenting my lack of understanding vis-a-vis international anti-piracy safeguards, or screening the poor sportsmanship involved in human-chimpanzee wrestling. But I won't do any of those things. I won't even attempt to plumb the depths of profanity portrayed in Pink Elephants. Perhaps I should do something really lame and just show some Youtube videos. I've been asked by a certain European politician to show solidarity with my fellow democrats.

Less political, but still crucial to our way of life is;

Speaking of showing solidarity,

This makes me think a Communist revolution would be a good thing. My Vietnamese girlfriend doesn't completely agree, and I think the Beatles also make a convincing rebuttle

So I'm a little confused on the issue. How could two awesome, emotive, glib examples of popular culture contradict each other? Many hands make light work, but too many cooks spoil the broth. A stitch in time saves nine, but haste makes waste. Having been largely failed by Youtube I shall close by asking people what they thought of the 20 20 summit. How about banning smoking for everybody born after 2009? How about giving every Australian citizen 1 free degree, but charging full price for every subject failed?
Ok, I'll admit this was not my most inspired post, but for all you know, some random postmodernist internet denizen could be perusing my work and be inspired by the intertextuality. Look, everyone is entitled to one Phillip Adams moment, and anyway, me at my least coherent is still more sensible than Fitz on the best day of his life.

Mary; For your enjoyment

2008-04-17T17:09:00.000+10:00

And everyone else's too.

You maniacs!

2008-04-06T21:49:00.000+10:00

Can I take Charlton Heston's gun away from him now?

Hatred and Envy?

2008-03-24T23:57:00.000+10:00

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!

2008-03-22T11:34:00.000+10:00

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

2008-03-19T15:51:00.000+10:00

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?

2008-03-16T16:34:00.000+10:00

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

2008-03-07T16:08:00.000+10:00

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.

Introducing..

2008-02-28T21:37:00.000+10:00

Once in a great while, something important happens in literature. Something so significant it shakes the very pillars of civilisation. Think of the Gutenberg bible, think of Samuel Morse's immortal first teletyped words "What hath God wrought?" Think of Shakespeare, The Leviathan, Das Kapital. Think of Ulysses, Catch 22. Then for a long time nothing happened. However, it is entirely possible that this post will surpass all of them. It is possible, I say, because I haven't written the following. Nor, as I write this, have I read it. The following has been written by a guest blogger, one who's debut I am honoured to host. Ladies and gentleman, introducing the one, the (hopefully) only Geoff Martin!

I commence this report as a nervous, ill-prepared best-man would begin his speech at the wedding reception. Trivia...what can I say about trivia? Dave is gone. Fitz is gone. Who then was to take up the most crucial position on any trivia team, the Lord Protector of the Pen? Should we promote from within or head-hunt some young up-and-comer from without? I thought about advertising the position and accepting applications in much the same way that Rhodes Scholars are selected. The candidates would be judged on their all round abilities: leadership, trivia knowledge, fairness, services of beer to the community, sense of humour, singing, sculling and scissors-paper-rock skills (1), and beach body. It was then that I realised that a true Lord Protector of the Pen chooses himself and not t'other way round. What easier way was there to become Lord Protector of the Pen than by supplying your own pen? As it happened nobody arrived with a pen and we had to borrow one from the quizmaster, which by the way was not Rupert!

Who would know about our proud, rich tradition of mocking Harry, delivering a pride crushing defeat to the 'memes', dancing with cartons of beer born upon our shoulders through the swing dancers and all the way back to Lorenz's desk to drink our winnings. How would we get points for answering questions with Rupert? (2) It was like history meant nothing. I now know what it feels like to be an exponential distribution.

Well, Harry was still there. That's right, THE Harold Steven Robert Kinsman. Who the hell are you? That's all I'm saying. All your favourite Harry traits were on display: hair that hadn't been washed in months, the stench of tooheys, cigarettes and failure, mirth inducing umming and ahhring, insincere sympathy, an exaggerated sense of important and finally the most important Harry trait, without which he would have little to elevate himself above your typical denizen of the Red Room; two middle names.

But enough about Harry and onto the part that ultimately decides whether a game of trivia is won and lost, the report. In the greatest restructuring of power since the Magna Carta, the Lord Protector of the Pen no longer writes the trivia post-mortem. You might rightly question how lacking divine sanction I could possibly deign that my report is the one true report. Well it says so right here in the report. Case closed.

The question remains though, with what style should I report. Any sensible man would look to his predecessors for guidance. First there was Dave, renown for his dispassionate newspaper-style reports and attention to detail. Some harsh critics accused him of phlegmaticness but any historian knows that you should judge a person by the standards of their contemporaries.

At a time when every other live journal user was busy writing slash fiction, Dave was a revelation.

Contrasting starkly with Dave were the trivia posts of the son of Gerald. Less concerned with facts and structure, he preferred to grab on to your gonads and squeeze until you passed out. Sure his posts were trite, his footnotes gratuitous, his prose stifling and riddled with anacolutha but occasionally he mentioned your name and that made it ok.

I acknowledge my forebears for if in were not for them I would not be writing this report today. So what then for my style. Well, there will be footnotes, for one. However, unlike my forebears I will not feign a dispassionate voice, and I will not pretend that everyone played an equal role. There will be no mention of affirmative action trivia players that did not pull their weight, such as the girl who offered us two answers, one incorrect which we used, one correct which we ignored. I will however describe my style as melodious. I will start andante with the woodwind and stringed instruments before the crescendo bringing in the brass and percussion. So if you are ready, we may commence.

We were an eclectic set. In attempting to assemble a well rounded team with absolutely no weakness or redundancy I had before me a mathematics post-graduate student, a different kind of mathematics post-graduate student and a physics post-graduate student. One shameful person had the temerity to ask me why I had stolen his seat in the middle of the table. I replied in my usual anserine fashion, "This better ables me to distribute beer to the four corners of the table". I got a good laugh, not great, just widespread enough to ease the anxiety and nervous tension created by the uncertainty of not knowing who will collect the trivia sheet in the post-Fitz era (3).

Questions were asked and answers were given. The first three rounds were entirely ordinary; we weren't running hot, just well enough to be ahead of the riff-raff that have nothing better to do than visit the red room on a Wednesday afternoon at half five (4), and level with our arch-rivals the "memes".

The stage was set, it was the bottom of the ninth with the bases loaded, or perhaps more accurately it was the fourth and final round. The theme was proverbs; we were given the beginning of a proverb and required to complete it. Some notable examples (5), for those playing along at home, were: a half truth is ... and a truly wealthy man owes ...

Someone remarked that the questions seemed easy, maybe this was the feel good round, to which I retorted, "It will be the feel good round if we win!". The tension was palpable as we argued over who should collect the sheet. We got, ladies and gentlemen, a perfect 10 out of 10, handing us both the round and match. A mighty cheer rose up, interrupted only briefly to disparage those doubting Stevos who questioned whether our winning ways were to continue.

Our victory was soured somewhat when the beer de triomphe arrived and many of the pusillanimous members of our team decided that they had had enough to drink. To those people lacking any intestinal fortitude I say, “Have a glass of concrete and harden the fuck up!”

This ends the post. I would like to thank Sam for allowing me to guest-star on his blog. Let's face it though, his blog needed some outside assistance. Some of you are probably wondering what possessed me to strive so hard for laughs that ineluctably, I will never hear. Well I may not experience your mirth, but some day I will be wandering the corridors of the mathematics department and Liz Billington will be crossing my path, look over at me and make a pistol gesture towards my heart, and maybe even some explosive sound effects. It is at that point that I will know my trivia report was worthwhile.

1. Girls only like trivia players with skills and our trivia team desperately needs some feminine influence.

2. Stevo was the first to realise this and cleverly asked for the Quizmaster's name. Dan by the way, thanks for asking.

3. This footnote is dedicated to the late great Fitz, may he rest in peace.

4. If you have something better to do, let me just inform you that you're mistaken.

5. Notable in the sense that I could remember them.

Trapped!

2008-01-21T19:48:00.000+10:00

Kim and I are now officially criminals. For our trip to Vietnam we stocked up on plenty of presents for Kim's family, including a bread maker so I could introduce Vegemite sandwiches to the heathens (a universal thumbs down by the way Dave, they preferred Nuttella). In addition to this, we bought eight enormous tins of baby milk powder for Kim's friend who's baby has gone off breast milk. We were beginning to think we might be a tad over the aircraft's weight limit, but still we kept packing gallantly. As part of our continuing program of East-West cultural exchange, we decided also to take two of those collapsible foot scooters that were once all the rage during the dot-com boom. Now, we thought, we really ARE over the limit. Singapore airlines allows up to twenty kilograms of checked luggage, and seven kilograms of carry-on per person, or fifty four kilos between us, and we had the feeling we had shot way through that.
So we turned up to the airport, checked in, and sure enough, our checked luggage was ten kilos over. This turned out to be no big deal, Kim has a very sweet smile, and my dumb, naive first time traveller impersonation exhibits an approximation to sincerity that only reflexive relationships can. We were waved right through.
At this stage we thought the danger had passed. Upon passing through the customs X-ray
check however, our carry-on was treacherously weighed! From an allowable fourteen kilos we came in at a whopping forty! Of course, the Aussie customs guy was as unsmiling and cold as any Stalinist bureaucrat, and he wrote "Excess Weight twenty six kg*$30=$780" at the top of our boarding passes. The bastard wouldn't even let us go out of the departure lounge to dump our stuff and come back in. Well, I thought, that's our holiday gone. Kim however, is not to be trifled with. She made the rather insightful observation that the guy made no entries into his computer and that in fact, the only record of our crime was in our possession. Furthermore, we had printed out our own boarding passes from home (a relatively recent advance in e-ticketing for which all criminal opportunities have evidently, not yet been exposed). Who was to say then, that our boarding passes had to be an A4 page? What if, for example, they had a few inches at the top shaved off? Of course, my pocket-knife scissors were stowed away, but Kim, ever resourceful, used her laminated bakers delight rewards card as a makeshift paper knife, and calmly eviscerated our little problem. Not a very big change to the universe. The only difference was that instead of two sheets of paper we now had two sheets and two little strips. Now, at this point, I admit I was a little worried. I am pretty sure that the penalty for trying to avoid paying $780 is even more than $780, but we were committed now. Splitting up to avoid detection we lined up to board, Kim with 10 kilos, and me with 30, trying to look as though we were each carrying 7. My thinking though, was that the people checking our passes are bored, more worried about drugs than illicit Higgs boson surpluses, and, at 11:45pm, starting to get tired. Remembering my CIA days (or at least Jack Ryan's), I attempted with nonchalance to blend in with the all-Asian-Businessman crowd as much as possible.
Of course, you know how this ends. If we had gotten caught you would not now be reading this smug, self-congratulatory post. Of course we got through, without a further hassle, and I have to take my hat to my beautiful partner in crime. Kim is a genius at counter-counter-espionage. Perhaps the difference between her and me is that while I have grown up believing that surveillance bureaucracy is implacable, unreasonable, and omni-cognisant, Kim's experience is that they are implacable, unreasonable, dysfunctional, half-paralysed, and spasming. Thus, she is possibly better trained to spot loopholes in the system.
I'd like to end this post with a question posed to my readers (of which I'm sure there are none, given my appallingly long absence from this blog); Do you believe that Kim and I, weighing vastly less than the average passenger, should feel guilty about overloading the plane, even though our combined human-luggage weight is still less than normal? Should obese people be charged excess baggage? Has Sam read too many Tom Clancy novels? These are questions, I think, for us all to ponder as we go about our daily lives.
Until next time, Ye Hasera, and goodnight.

Micalef is back!

2007-10-11T13:08:00.000+10:00

The title says it all.

S.O.A.P.

2007-09-23T15:36:00.000+10:00

I know this may be the last post of mine that anybody reads, but this morning I watched Snakes on a Plane. I was originally only going to hire out Star Trek IV, V, and VI (so not nerdy at all then) , but between the 5 movies for $7 deal they had going, and the nudity warning on the front cover, I decided to go for it. Afterwards, I went here. In homage to the original reason I went to the video store, I wrote this post with a stilted, "William Shatner" style accent in mind. Out of respect for the brave men and women of the USS Enterprise I would appreciate it if the reader were to read aloud in just such a fashion.
For those of you who can't infer the plot from the title, hundreds of pheromone enhanced venomous snakes are set loose on a plane with the intention of murdering a witness to a gangland killing. This being a science student's blog, I have to show everyone how smart I am by criticizing the film's plot holes, of which I see two. The first is not too interesting; but if the mob could do this, surely they could plant a bomb on the plane and have done with it? The second though is the failure of our protagonists to utilize what is both a snake's natural enemy and an abundant resource at 40 000 ft, extreme cold. Outside the fuselage, air temperature hovers around -60 C. Being reptiles, exposure to any sub-freezing environment would render these slippery ophidians completely inactive- pheromones or no pheromones, and at around -20 C ( a temperature still survivable by humans who all huddled together with blankets) you can be pretty sure most of them would succumb. In short, if I was king of the world, my hero and namesake might well have shouted, "Lets start chillin' the motherfuckin' air on this motherfuckin' plane!"

Atheism

2007-09-10T11:10:00.001+10:00

Sorry John Safran, but I'm not too stupid to be an atheist. It's true I haven't read "A Brief History of Time," I've been too busy writing a thesis on relativistic quantum mechanics, so yes, I think I could give a pretty good explanation on why the Big Bang is better than genesis as an explanation of cosmic origins. More to the point though, Christians are stupid not because we just now have scientific explanations of nature which are better than biblical ones, but because we've always had competing religious explanations which are at least no worse.

Thank you India

2007-08-15T11:25:00.000+10:00

Suppose you were a juror at a murder trial. In his opening address, the defence lawyer says, "My client is not guilty of this crime. Certainly he pulled the trigger on a gun he knew to be working properly, loaded, chambered, and off safety. Yes, the gun was pointing directly at the victim at point blank range, but my client did not kill this man. The bullet did. In fact, it wasn't even the bullet, but rather a hole opening in the victim's head allowing his brains to dribble out onto the carpet. It is this hole-in-the-head who is the real perpetrator here, as such, the hole should be on trial."
This argument is of course completely nonsensical. If a person knows that effect Z will very very likely succeed cause A, and then proceeds with A, that person is morally responsible for Z, irrespective of how many other letters in the alphabet are involved in between. Why am I using this first blog entry to lecture on a simple and non-controversial point of basic morality?
Well, if the reader grows tired of hypothetical and abstract examples of this concept consider this. Suppose there was a country with vast uranium reserves, and a conviction that they should only be used for peaceful purposes. Let's for the sake of argument call this country "Australia." Suppose further there was another country with very limited reserves, and both an active nuclear weapons program, and a civil nuclear power program. Let us call this country "India." Now suppose India had publicly stated, on many occasions, that they would like to devote all of their domestic reserves to bomb making and rely on imported uranium for their civil program, in effect using the extra material to displace more of their original into military applications. Economists by the way, call this well studied process of resource displacement fungibility. Enter Australia's foreign minister (let's call him "Dame Edna"). Dame Edna says that Australia has decided to sell its uranium to India, on the condition that not one Australian atom becomes part of an Indian bomb, or even becomes involved in fission reactors on military warships. I assume that Dame Edna is aware of fungibility, and is not an idiot (actually not a foregone conclusion), but his justification of the new policy makes as much sense as the defence lawyer's "not guilty" plea. Any way you look at it, Australia is now actively supplying India with uranium for bombs.
Now, helping India acquire weapons of mass destruction is perhaps a defensible position. After all, India is a stable, liberal democracy, which has never been caught proliferating. It has justifiable concerns about its nuclear armed neighbor and semi-enemy Pakistan. Perhaps we should be having a debate about preferentially arming our good friends against our not-so-good friends, with weapons so terrible neither side dares to use them. I, like many before me, believe there is a reason this doctrine had the acronym MAD, but at least there is an argument to be made. What isn't acceptable however is the debate poisoning bile that passes for politics in this country, where our leaders try to convince us that 2 and 2 isn't 4, just because they add then subtract a 3 in the middle of the calculation.