Los Angeles Forest Fires

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

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.

That's it. That's the whole post

US elections

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.

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

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

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?”