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.

Introducing..

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!

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!

The title says it all.

S.O.A.P.

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

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.