No wet hair in my court, please

Further to my criticism of the Beattie government re-appointing Di Fingleton as a magistrate, she is reported today at having a swipe at the government at a really sensible time - her re-appointment to the bench.

' During the swearing in ceremony Ms Fingleton criticised the process which led to her jailing.

"Over the last few years I have experienced total alienation from the legal system in Queensland following what has now been held to have been an unnecessary, self-righteous, wrong-headed and unjust process which saw me stripped of my career, my status and my reputation," she said.'

Oh great. Won't that give prosecutors appearing before her the confidence that she will be objective and fair in any all of the more contentious cases they might bring before her.

To be fair (although that's little fun,) this could be an example of bad reporting, in that she may have given some sort of qualification or re-assurance after this that she could still be completely unbiased to both sides in criminal matters. Who knows. I still think she is demonstrating exactly why I argued she should not be re-appointed.

And finally: are magistrates really worth $200,000 a year? Gees, although you have to put up with being posted to the back of Woop Woop for a few years the first time around, its not that hard to put up with anywhere for a relatively short time out of your career, especially when you have a nice safe job til you want to retire. (I also wonder how many weeks leave they get.)

Update: Yes, there was a fuller report in the Courier Mail this morning, in which Di Fingleton's words of re-assurance are reported.

" Even as she wiped away tears during her swearing-in as magistrate at the new Caloundra Courthouse on the Sunshine Coast, Ms Fingleton still managed a swipe at the legal system which she believed let her down.

"I had always hoped I would make a mark on the law," she said.

"I was not to know it would be so famously, as the recipient of one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in the history of the Queensland and Australian legal system."

I still can't get over the irony that the Chief Magistrate didn't find her own defence. (At least one ex judge was reported as thinking the High Court just got it wrong anyway.)

' Ms Fingleton also seized the moment to publicly refute allegations that she was a bully.

"It is important that those parties who will come before me in court and the staff at this courthouse know this . . . anyone coming into my court, or my chambers, will be treated with dignity and courtesy – no moods, no inefficiency, no baggage," she said.

"I will be on time and dry-haired. I will also be, as I have always believed myself to be, competent and fair."'

What's the dry hair bit all about? She made some comment on Enough Rope about her believing other magistrates were not pulling their weight. Was one of them famous for arriving to work with wet hair?

And there will be "no inefficiency" in her court? Sounds like another go at other magistrates.

I am very curious to hear how her court room behaviour develops over the next 6 months.

Lucky Snakes

The above list of good and bad snake omens comes from the Malaysia Star, in its article about the King Cobra that slithered into a temple for a few days and was taken to be a very good sign.
To my western mind, the list of when a snake sighting is good as opposed to bad has its amusements. But first the temple story:

"According to vasthu sastra (the Indian form of feng shui) expert Master Yuvaraj Sowma from Chennai, India, sighting a king cobra is considered a good omen and that explains the throng of visitors to the temple.

He said the appearance of the snake signified that the 123-year-old temple has “matured and is now blessed with enhanced divine powers.”

“It is incorrect to perceive the snake as a sign of luck,” he added

He said, however, that those who prayed and made offerings of milk and eggs before the snake would find obstacles and challenges in life easier to overcome.

One would receive optimum blessings if the king cobra was sighted with its head raised and hood open and if there was direct eye contact, he said.

He believed that the arrival of the snake at the temple was not by chance and should be interpreted as the divine having come “alive” in the form of a snake."

OK....

Anyway, the omens which make least sense to me are these:

"If a snake crosses over an individuals leg it means the person will have longevity"

Well, for many Aussies, that would only apply if your heart doesn't give out from the shock.

Snakes in a poor house is good, but in a wealthy person's house, it means losing money. I wonder what a snake in Margo Kingston's house would currently mean, then. (Sorry, joke mainly for Australian readers!)

Sighting snakes having sex is good (other than in a perverted sort of way, I think that means), as is seeing one when building a house. Does a snake brought to the building site deliberately for sighting count?

Ah, making fun of other cultures omens is a half-guilty pleasure.

Daily Kos readers' media control techniques

Am I the only person to not read Daily Kos much because I just don't understand it? I mean, understand its politics, but its site design is just confusing isn't it?

Anyway, the political techniques of Daily Kos readers are far from subtle, as this post's suggestion shows:

'DKos logs almost a million hits a day now. We're the largest blog on planet earth. Over the past few months you may have noticed that stories which appear here and elsewhere first, show up on the cable networks shortly thereafter. No doubt, the media is paying attention to US and the reality based community in general. We are the growth, and thus we are the market share of desire to court. WE DO NOT HAVE TO TAKE THIS SHIT ANY LONGER.

I just sent this e-mail to Hardball because I was disgusted when Chris Matthew's allowed Bernard Kerik to lie on his program without presenting a rebuttal or the simple facts on record:

This is offered as a fair heads up so that you can correct yourselves. Most of the DKos readers like Hardball, we're a huge component of your viewership. But if you keep having liars like Kerik or anyone else on trying to shift the blame for Homeland Security to the goddamn local mayor, without rebuttal or the actual facts available and promptly presented, I and several others will feature your top sponsors by name and e-mail addresses on the biggest blog on earth and recommend to my fellow million plus readers and members that they boycott your program and sponsors for one week, and send your sponsors personal e-mails explaining why they're doing it.

This isn't politic guys, this is fucking survival. We can't afford to let these clowns off the hook to screw up again. Am I getting through?"

So, if a current affairs problem has an interview which doesn't go according to DKos' liking, they can expect their advertisers to hear the wrath of DKos? Why don't they just go the whole hog and demand editorial control, or a DKos censor sitting in the control room ready to pull the plug when it starts going the "wrong" direction?

I guess so many Kos readers and contributions are paranoid and (at least) half deranged that they don't recognize their own totalitarian leanings. One can only hope they gradually grow out of it, because maturity and any sense of generosity of spirit, or self criticism, are usually the last things evident on the site.

No wonder parasites have a bad name

Found via Slate, this story in the New York Times about a parasite that eats out grasshoppers, then for a finale injects a mind contolling protein into their little brain that gives them the urge to jump into water and drown, just so the worm can escape into the habitat it needs at that time to reproduce. Pictures of the worm are included.

I certainly hope that evolution is not working towards making smarter parasites. It's enough that maybe that cat borne one might be making humans less risk adverse, without worrying about ones in future that might give people the urge to try to swim to New Zealand or some such.

Is there any parasite that humans can find likeable?

Gravity sucks

An interesting theory here to help explain dark matter and its strange nature. (Short version: there are an extra 3 dimensions to the universe, of significantly larger size than the multi dimensions that string theory normally suggests, and the way they work alters the effect of gravity over short distances.)

Sounds like a neat solution, but the article doesn't mention how you can test it.

Straight to DVD?

The incoming new head of Disney is quoted as suggesting that it may be better for studios to shorten the window between cinema release and DVD release, and that it is not "out of the question that a DVD can be released, in effect, in the same window as a theatrical release.".

Seems very hard to believe that this can in any way offset the drop off in cinema attendance. All it means, I guess, is that the studios get their DVD money faster. But if cinema attendance still drops, it can't be good for the industry overall, can it?

By the way, I feel a bit shallow posting on this topic while still in the shadow of New Orleans.

Saturday Night Live - recommended sketch

SNL Transcripts: Kate Winslet: 10/30/04: NBC Special Report

Saturday Night Live runs in Australia about 6 - 9 months late on the Comedy Channel, and while its quality is highly variable, the sketch that played recently and linked to above (transcript only) was very funny and surprisingly liberal.

It won't read as good as it played on TV, but it's still good.

Update: I suppose I should give readers an idea of what it is about. It's a pretend bin Laden tape in which he talks about the choices in last year's Presidential elections. Michael Moore gets a mention too!

Lesbian Wars

From the SMH today, a story about the interesting legal problems when lesbian "parents" break up. (We are talking donor semen for the necessary biological trick here.)

I am curious to see future long term research on how successful such relationships are. I suspect, but could be proven wrong, that relationship break-up will run at a higher rate than for hetero couples, even though that is appalling enough in its own right.

Can't gay couples at least have the good grace to leave nature alone when it comes to the question of whether it is possible for them to have a child? (Hey I did warn you at the top it is a conservative blog...)

New Orleans, anti-Bush etc

Time to post on the appalling tragedy in New Orleans.

What seems surprising is how slowly the details of the destruction have come in, especially considering it's the First World. Images and detail of the asian tsunami destruction seemed to arrive more quickly. But perhaps it is just that the flood in New Orleans is so long lasting (and started in the midst of wild weather), that there were few people willing or able to record it and get the image to a news service. The impression now is of an immense area devastated, but each night the details just get worse and worse.

As to the "politics" of the event, I knew for sure that one of the centres for Bush blaming for this would be Salon.com. It's wildly one sided (and rampantly anti-Bush), and frankly its rants have long ago become tiresome to read. Having said that, it sometimes has stuff of interest in some quirky columns. (I am surprised too that it seems to attract little attention in the world of right wing blogging.)

As predicted Salon carries several New Orleans articles with anti-Bush headings, even if within the body of one article (with a link from the main page headed "War effort diverted funding") there actually is some balance:

"It is too early to tell, however, whether the additional funding would have prevented the levee breaches and overruns that have flooded New Orleans. Scientists, journalists and public officials have been warning for decades that New Orleans could not withstand a Category 4 or 5 hurricane. Even SELA, which was started in the mid-1990s after flooding caused billions in damage, was designed to protect against smaller storms, though planners said it would reduce damages of "larger events."....

According to Michael Zumstein, a Corps official working to drain New Orleans, both of the major levee breaches in New Orleans were caused by more water than the Corps' current plans, even if funded, could handle. "It's just the law of physics, that's all," he said, noting that the system was designed to withhold a slow-moving Category 2 or a fast-moving Category 3 hurricane. Katrina was a Category 4 storm when it hit land Monday morning. He said an unexpected break at the 17th Street Canal occurred 700 feet south of a bridge where the Corps recently completed a troubled construction project.

Flooding also occurred on the east side of New Orleans, in the St. Bernard Parish, an area that environmentalists have long warned would be susceptible to flooding because of a poorly designed canal built in the 1960s that joins the Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico. Since 1998, local politicians have been demanding that the so-called Mississippi River Gulf Outlet be closed, in part because it was allowing saltwater to destroy marshland, increasing the danger of a storm surge. Both the Clinton and the Bush administrations have been slow to respond to those demands, and earlier this week, the storm surge topped levees, flooding the parish, said Zumstein." (Emphasis mine)

Believe me, if something in Salon is even vaguely suggesting that maybe Bush isn't entirely to blame, you have to believe it.

The other point of interest goes to the question - why did the city seem to be so unprepared for emergency evacuation in the event of a levee break? Another article in Salon looks at this briefly too, but doesn't really answer it. (Briefly, a plan did exist, but just seemed to be hopelessly inadequate.)

Meanwhile, it's good to see Tim Blair countering the "it's all global warming's fault" line so quickly.

UPDATE: more reasons given for not blaming Bush and the Feds (well, not entirely anyway) from an unexpected source - the New York Times! One of the crucial points is this:

"While some in New Orleans fault FEMA - Terry Ebbert, homeland security director for New Orleans, called it a "hamstrung" bureaucracy - others say any blame should be more widely spread. Local, state and federal officials, for example, have cooperated on disaster planning. In 2000, they studied the impact of a fictional "Hurricane Zebra"; last year they drilled with "Hurricane Pam."

Neither exercise expected the levees to fail. In an interview Thursday on "Good Morning America," President Bush said, "I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees." He added, "Now we're having to deal with it, and will."

And:

"Army Corps personnel, in charge of maintaining the levees in New Orleans, started to secure the locks, floodgates and other equipment, said Greg Breerwood, deputy district engineer for project management at the Army Corps of Engineers. "We knew if it was going to be a Category 5, some levees and some flood walls would be overtopped," he said. "We never did think they would actually be breached." The uncertainty of the storm's course affected Pentagon planning."

UPDATE 2:

An extremely detailed post on this is at Michelle Malkin (which I found via Powerline). It is a must read.

Queensland, nice place to live, but...

Time for more teeth grinding over the woeful things that happen in the Queensland legal system.

The Dr Patel inquiry is all up in the air because a couple of the bureaucrats didn't like being questioned in a slightly sarcastic and rude sounding fashion. Poor boys.

As the News Ltd story says: "Justice Moynihan stressed in his written judgment that it was not important whether Mr Morris was biased, only whether a "fair minded" observer would perceive him to be so."

And strangely, Premier Pete says he won't appeal. (Given the number of times controversial decisions in Queensland courts are overturned on appeal, I would have thought it might be worth a shot!)

I can appreciate that the law has to be based on appearances here, since you can hardly just go and ask the commissioner himself whether he is "really" biased. However, it seems unsurprising that a commissioner in an enquiry like this, where he has statements of most (or all?) witnesses before they go in the box, and has a truth seeking mission that is completely different from what court trials are about, can give an appearance of bias if he questions a witness aggressively.

As it happens, I think Tony Morris was putting on too much "showmanship", and a part of me is a little happy to see him rebuked. However, overall his behaviour did have a positive effect on the victims who finally felt that they were receiving a very public, and very sympathetic, hearing. I also expect that the two bureaucrats who didn't like his style will ultimately gain nothing from this result. I cannot see that the facts against them can be read by anyone in a substantially different fashion.

So, despite misgivings about the Morris style, the judge hasn't done anyone any favours in this whole exercise. There was certainly room to make the decision the other way, and that's what he should've done.

And then there is the Di Fingleton case. She gets substantial compensation and a magistrate's job back. In any earlier post, I argued that having someone on the bench who has been in jail is not a good idea. Lots of room for perceived bias there (probably against sending convicted persons into jail. Or maybe she will be too keen to send some in, just to show she is not biased.) Not to mention that she will presumably be having magistrates conferences where the other magistrates, who were glad to see the back of her, will also be in attendance. A few post-conference drinks, and we could have something that will make the Brogden affair look trivial!

This is a bad mistake. Surely they could have come up with some other job for her. But then again, she admits to being combative and aggressive in style, and maybe now that her former champion Matt Foley is out of the government, no one else in the government was willing to put their hand up to take her.

The Beattie government is on a downwards spiral here. It's just a pity it is so far from an election.

All John Howard's fault: Part 1545

An opinion piece in the Sydney Morning Herald this morning has author Mark Mordue (who feels sorry for John Brogden) concluding as follows:

"In some strange and ironic way I get the feeling Brogden's self-annihilating plummet is bound up in the culture John Howard has forged, a new 1950s mentality in which all our thoughts and actions are strictly defined in black and white; where it is too easy to say who is good and bad, who is right and who is wrong."

Wow. So even though the 1950's was a time when, without question, Brogden's drunken behaviour would never have been reported, and even if reported would not (in pre-feminist times) have had all of the "sexual harassment" connotations that it has today, a commentator can still find a way to link it to Howard's alleged record of having "taken us back to the 1950's."

What absurdity.

Cranky, hungry rodents

Most people have probably heard that deliberately underfeeding mice and other animals can have a dramatic effect on increasing their life span. Some people have been known to try it too. Problem is, according to this story, it seems it doesn't work to any very significant degree for human, 'cos we aren't rodents. To quote:

"Scientists have known for six decades that cutting the caloric intake of rodents by 40 percent or 50 percent results in dramatically longer lives for them.

"You can practically double their life span," Phelan said. "The same result has been found in fish, spiders and many other species. If it works for them, some thought, it should work for us; I'm here to tell you it doesn't." "

But for humans:

"Their mathematical model shows that people who consume the most calories have a shorter life span, and that if people severely restrict their calories over their lifetimes, their life span increases by between 3 percent and 7 percent -- far less than the 20-plus years some have hoped could be achieved by drastic caloric restriction. He considers the 3 percent figure more likely than the 7 percent."

What's more, just because a rodent lives longer doesn't necessarily mean they're enjoying it:

"The rodents placed on severely restricted diets bit people who tried to hold them, and had an unpleasant demeanor, unlike the more docile animals given more "normal" amounts of food, Phelan said."

And why does it work well for rodents but not humans?

""When you restrict the caloric intake of rodents, the first thing they do is shut off their reproductive system," said Phelan, citing a finding from his dissertation. A normal rodent reaches maturity at one month of age, and begins reproducing its body weight in offspring every month and a half. If humans shut off reproduction by severely limiting calories, "our reduction in wear and tear on the body is minimal," he said."

Makes sense.

I will go enjoy my moderately sized dinner tonight, and I probably won't feel like biting anyone either.

More news from North Korea

Great committee names come of looney socialist totalitarianism and its supporters. This from the North Korea news service:

"Marwan Sudah, chairman of the Arab Solidarity Committee for Supporting the Anti-Imperialist National Democratic Front and the Struggle of the South Korean People, released a statement on Aug. 14 on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of Korea's liberation. He recalled that the U.S. imperialists have so far imposed unbearable sufferings and misfortunes on the south Korean people by converting south Korea into their colony and military base."


And in other news on the site, youth day was celebrated in style:

"Evening galas of youth and students were held in different parts of the country on Aug. 28 in celebration of the Youth Day. The evening galas began as the song "Waltz of Youth Day" resounded forth. Youth and students in Pyongyang danced to the tune of "Dear Name," "Pride of Youth," "Girl on a Galloping Steed," "Let's Meet on the Front" and other songs"


"Let's meet on the Front" is a song to celebrate youth day? Wish I knew the lyrics...

Janet on mock outrage

Janet Albrechtsen in the Australian today is spot on in her comments on the John Brogden incident.

Of course, it is fair enough for Janet to compare the reaction to Brogden's insult to the non reaction given to Latham calling her (Janet) a "skanky ho". As Janet says:

"Call me precious but an insult that means "smelly whore" seems just a tad personal and demeaning. Back then feminists, such as Anne Summers, were silent. But yesterday she was waving her metaphorical finger: "It's good to see that racist remarks attract such swift and unanimous condemnation ... but let's hope we can be equally outspoken against sexist comments and behaviour." Anne, you forgot to be equally outspoken a few years ago when sexism was aimed at your opponents."

And on the Labor party reaction generally:

"The mock outrage from Labor types over the past few days might be an easy look but it's not a convincing one. Their commitment to civility arises just long enough for them to confect outrage for political purposes. That makes them not merely hypocrites, but contributors to the lowering of standards."

Also, there's nothing like a suicide attempt to make critics go a bit sheepish. Carr is reported as saying before the resignation:

"I just think this guy's got to be evacuated from the Liberal Party leadership by close of business today," Mr Carr told Southern Cross Broadcasting.

"I think that his apology is entirely unacceptable to Helena and that is the greatest insult not only to her but of every woman of Asian background." "

Mr Carr was sounding much gentler about it this morning on Radio National (along the lines of everyone makes a mistake, but he has a good future in politics etc) but I can't find a transcript yet.

UPDATE

Here's Carr from the Sydney Morning Herald today:

"Mr Carr said he and his wife were willing to forgive Mr Brogden for describing Malaysian-born Mrs Carr as a "mail-order bride".

The comment about Mrs Carr, and revelations about Mr Brogden's behaviour towards two women journalists, led to his resignation on Monday.

Mr Carr said Mr Brogden still had a possible future in politics and as a family man.

"We're a forgiving society," he told reporters.

"Bob and Helena Carr forgive what was said about Helena. Helena wants me to say that.

"Let's get on with it, let him rebuild his life, he's got a big role as a citizen and as a father and husband."

Mr Carr said he did not regret his refusal earlier in the week to forgive Mr Brogden for his comments about Mrs Carr.
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"I'd be hypocritical if I didn't say I was very, very angry about what was said," he said"

Huey Dewey & ...Gooey

Woman Helps Ill Duck, but State Seizes It

I missed the above duck story with a happy ending (more or less) that started a couple of weeks ago. (Short version: woman nurses hurt wild duckling back to health. State officials come to sieze it, since people aren't supposed to keep wild ducks. State relents and Gooey the duck is back home. Until he decides to leave.)

I like this part from the Yahoo link above:

"Last Friday, two state Fish and Wildlife agents showed up at Northwest Territorial Mint asking for Erdmann, who's a manager at the company.

Kristin Donovan, assistant to the company president, said she heard "a very loud, very booming, very aggressive-type voice."

"He said, 'Give me the duck.' I heard a pause, then, 'If you don't give me the duck, I'm going to arrest you.'"

When Erdmann refused to hand Gooey over, she said the officers became more stern. One of them showed her his handcuffs. As she cradled Gooey in her arms, the other one lunged at her and grabbed the duck, striking Erdmann on the chest, she said."


The Seattle Times story (see second link above) has a pic of Gooey too. He (or she?)is a fine looking duck.

Women in Pain

news @ nature.com�-�Surging hormones blamed for pain�-�Study of sex-change patients reveals role of oestrogen.

The link above is to a story about how it seems that women experience more pain than men because of oestrogen. It notes that men taking female hormones (for sex change purposes) often start to experience chronic pain. (I wonder if Zoe Brain has thought about this?)

Actually, the whole article surprises me a bit because I had not realised that women "have long been known to experience more pain than men." Well, I suppose it was obvious that they have more painful events (like childbirth and, for many, monthly period pain,) but I didn't realise that apart from that they generally have more pain, as the article suggests. So the old excuse of "not tonight dear I have a headache" is accurate after all?

The article notes that it may help women with chronic pain to give them testosterone, but "giving testosterone to women is more complicated than giving it to men." Yeah I guess growing a beard and getting a deep voice is a pretty big price to pay for pain relief...

Hitchens -V- Jon Stewart

Everyone who reads around right wing blogs would know by now of Christopher Hitchens good Weekly Standard article on the Iraq war.

Maybe some have missed his appearance on Jon Stewart's Daily Show. You can watch it here.

What is disturbing about it is the rabid enthusiasm of the Daily Show audience for every pearl of wisdom that comes from Stewart's mouth. I think I have read that this show is very influential with the college age crowd in the States. And to be honest, a lot of the writing is pretty sharp and funny. But it is so unrelenting liberal it is a worry.

Hitchens barely gets to fit a word in between Stewart's rants, but his audience doesn't care.

If you want to be more depressed, go to this liberal site (Crooks & Liars) and read the comments on the interview. It has obviously become fashionable amongst liberals to dismiss rational argument by continually alleging the writer is an alcoholic. If Hitchens is technically an alcoholic, he certainly must be a very "high functioning" one, as his output in various magazines and books is pretty phenomenal.

Dangerous "research"

Report Finds Fetuses Feel Pain Later Than Thought - New York Times

The doctors who wrote this report deserve some stick, I think.

I would have thought that the obvious way to look at it is whether a premature baby under 29 weeks, of which there is plentiful experience, appears to experience pain. Like by crying. And a doctor sceptical of this research agrees (to quote from the above New York Times article):

"Not all physicians agree. Dr. K.S. Anand, a pediatrician at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, said: "There is circumstantial evidence to suggest that pain occurs in the fetus."

For example, he said, tiny premature babies, as young as 23 or 24 weeks, cry when their heels are stuck for blood tests and quickly become conditioned to cry whenever anyone comes near their feet."In the first trimester there is very likely no pain perception," Dr. Anand said. "By the second trimester, all bets are off and I would argue that in the absence of absolute proof we should give the fetus the benefit of the doubt if we are going to call ourselves compassionate and humane physicians." But despite his view, Dr. Anand did not recommend trying to anesthetize fetuses during abortions. "It is premature at this point to say we should do this or not do it," he said. "As a scientist, I'm not sure we have the best methods."

Dr. Anand said he did not oppose abortion, but had testified that fetuses feel pain at hearings called by legislators seeking to ban late-term abortions."

As far as I am concerned, that is game set & match.

The argument against this would have to say, I suppose, that the crying is a reflex which does not reflect true processing of pain in the undeveloped brain. But this is running not a million miles from the Peter Singer argument that you can ethically treat even full term babies as less than fully "human" because they don't have the same self awareness that even a smart animal has. (I don't think I am misrepresenting his position here.)

Nope. If a human body cries when stuck, you gotta deem it to be human and ethically assume that causing the crying is a bad thing.

Feeling unloved..or at least unread

Forgive a bit of self indulgence, but I am feeling worse about blogging since I put on the new site meter and realised how many "hits" to my site are complete accidents. (And probably half of my 8 or so a day hits are me looking at my site to link to other blogs on my roll.) It is interesting, though, how high on the google search results a blog can come for certain word combinations. I suppose I am creating a bit of cyberspace opinion and information that will be around and coming up on search results for a long time...

Anyway, there seem to be precious few readers who visit this site with much regularity. And no one leaves comments (except for Zoe Brain once, I think) He (when still a he) also gave my blog a recommendation, but hasn't added a link as far as I can see. I think about 4 or 5 blogs have linked to me, the most popular of which would be the widely read and well written Currency Lad. I have emailed Tim Blair a couple of times on stories or inviting him to look here, but no answer.

Seems small "reward" for the number of times I post here. (Not a huge number of posts, but pretty regular, and causing my work efficiency to suffer no end.)

Oh well, I enjoy the process of posting stuff that interests me for all the world to see. But I feel like how Barbra Striesand must have felt before she won an Oscar. (That's a line I never thought I would use.) Namely, a need for a little bit of acknowledgement from someone that they like me (well, my blog.)

Hmm, this leads me to look at Barbra's official website. Could be awful.....Yes it is!

Who would have guessed that she blogs on politics so much? Her most recent words of wisdom:

" August 6, 2005 marks the 60th anniversary of the US bombing of Hiroshima. The Atomic Bomb, which decimated the Japanese city and its people, was never used in combat again. This day is also the anniversary of another "bomb" that was dropped 4 years ago, this time into the lap of President Bush in the form of a memo titled 'Bin Laden Determined to Strike in the US.' While on yet another extended vacation at his Crawford ranch, the President chose to neglect his duties as Commander in Chief by refusing to act decisively and immediately on this impending threat, leading to the worst terrorist attack in American history. These anniversaries remind us to learn from our past actions in order to ensure a safer more secure future."

(Now back to me, me, me. Comments - or even one comment - to cheer me up welcome, but I shouldn't expect any..)

Downsides of cycling

Research On Bicycle Saddles And Sexual Health Comes Of Age

See above link for recent article about cycling induced erectile dysfunction. The reason:

"the high pressures in the perineum while straddling a saddle compress and temporarily occlude penile blood flow. They also hypothesized that the lining vessels of the compressed arteries become damaged, thus leading to potential permanent artery blockage.

However, not all men who ride bicycles will develop erectile dysfunction. One past study suggested that sexual health consequences adversely affect 5% of riders (based on survey data that would therefore include 1,000,000 riding men with ED). "

And this line I like:

"Schrader further concluded that "the health benefits from having unrestricted vascular flow to and from the penis are self-evident."

Indeed!

Unhappy in Canada too

I posted twice recently on the unhappy and deplorable state of remote aboriginal communities in Australia. Mark Steyn has here a bit about the equivalent problems in Canada. He writes:

"About a decade ago Canadians switched on their televisions and were confronted by '‘shocking'’ images of the town'’s populace passing the day snorting drugs, glue, petrol and pretty much anything else to hand.

So, as any impeccably progressive soft-lefties would, Her Majesty'’s Government in Ottawa decided to build the Mushuau a new town a few miles inland a— state of the art, money no object, new homes, new heating systems, new schoolhouse, new computers, plus new more culturally respectful town name (Natuashish)....

Two years after the new town opened, the former Mushuau chief and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police both agreed that there were more drugs, alcoholism, gas-sniffing etc., than ever before. Also higher suicide rates."

Sound familiar?

"The net result of 40 years of a '‘caring'’ policy intended to maintain communities in their traditional '‘culture'’ is that Canadian natives now have tuberculosis, diabetes, heart disease and brain damage at levels accelerating further and further away from those in society at large, not to mention lower life-expectancy, higher infant mortality, and endemic suicide."

Very familiar.

Mark's column then diverts into a broad ranging swing at multiculturalism, but his key point on the problem of indigineous cultures being "maintained" in countries like Australia and Canada is summed up as follows:

"By pretending that all cultures are equal, multiculturalism doesn'’t '‘preserve'’ traditional cultures so much as sustain them in an artificial state that ensures they a’ll develop bizarre pathologies and mutate into some freakish hybrid of the worst of both worlds."

I think he might be playing a bit loosely with the term "culture" in this column.

I guess I would be more inclined to say that it is not that all aspects of aboriginal culture are undeserving of existence (although certainly parts of it should be done away with); it's just that it is harmful to encourage the belief that such remote communities with no real integration with the actual economy of the country can be socially successful. If that means that some aspects of their "culture" are lost, well that is the cost of the greater good known as "being alive and moderately healthy." Anyway, it is not as if there is much culture being preserved by brain damaged petrol sniffing youth.

What should the government actually do? Well, the fundamental thing, I think, has to be to have policies that discourage remote communities with no prospect of economic integration from continuing to exist. Primarily, this would have to be by encouraging the young to get out of there. If the adults want to stay in their train wreck of a community, so be it, although there may be forms of incentive to re-locate that would work. But the young should definitely be taught that there is a better future for them somewhere else.

Giant green lizards take over Florida

According to this story, big green iguanas are no longer considered a novelty by folks in Florida.

In Brisbane, gray lizards known as water dragons hang around many residential areas which are near creeks or watery spots, and they can easily reach 2 (or maybe a bit more)feet long. However, the article about iguanas talks of them being up to 6.5 feet long! Sorta like having goannas in your backyard. No wonder they aren't so popular.

Oh, and personally I blame John Howard.

Whining lefties..

Today in The Age, staff writer Martin Flanagan writes the type of column I am thoroughly sick of reading over the last decade - a stupid whinge about how the general public of Australia has supposedly been lulled into selfish indifference by our bad, bad Prime Minister.

This way of thinking is what is holding Labor back from winning elections at the Federal level. They cling to the idea that it is the Left that is naturally morally superior in its attitude to everything from aboriginal issues to the environment, migration etc. Part of the whinge is also that there are no "big ideas" about Australia's future under Howard, which of course assumes that fuzzy "big ideas" are important in the first place. That we have become culturally boring is another line commonly run. (Jonathon Biggins keeps writing articles whining about this in the Sydney Morning Herald.) Of course, our great selfishness under Howard is a common theme in Margo's Webdiary.

Martin writes:

"Sometimes, working in the media in this country at this time, you sense this is a culture in free-fall, that it no longer knows exactly what it believes, or indeed if it believes in anything beyond self-interest, Anzac Day and the fortunes of our various sports teams - these, incidentally, being the interests of the Prime Minister who, as our politics become more presidential, becomes increasingly emblematic of us. Overlooked in this process are such aspects of his past as zero active interest in the environment, repeated flirtations with the politics of race and a farcical victory in the last election that he chose to fight on interest rates."

Giving the game away a bit by calling it a "farcical victory" aren't you Martin.

And he ends with:

"Let's fire up, as we say in sport. Let's have a real debate. Let's revive the idea of Australia."

Oh dear. I can see how useful that suggestion is going to be.

I can save Martin, Jonathon, Margo and their ilk many hours of writing by teaching them to say this: "Jeez I hate John Howard and it pisses me off that people keep voting for him." That's all you are saying guys, over and over and over again.

What's more, the majority have not become morally depraved or uninterested in serious issues. They just don't agree with your take on them. That's all.

And to the extent that the culture might be suffering, to large degree it's because it is generally comprised of dills like you whose material either has the text or subtext that most Australians are bad or dumb because they tolerate this government.

As to "big ideas" how about this one: that a government's job is to defend the country and its inhabitants, manage an economy to be as robust as possible in the circumstances, and to legislate to otherwise protect and provide a reasonable degree of services that governments are best at providing for the general population. (Took me about 2 minutes reflection to come up with that.) How in practice those things are done is a legitmate area of debate. But to suggest that we are bereft of inspiration unless we have sat around and come up with some "mission statement" for the nation reeks of 1980's management theory and is well past its use by date.

Anyone out there into moral philosophy?

Amazon.com: Books: After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory

Just in case I have readers who think I post too often about space stuff, I will divert into philosophy for a minute.

The above link (perhaps obviously) is to the Amazon page for a 1980's book "After Virtue" by Alasdair MacIntyre, and I have stumbled across it before. I am not familiar with MacIntyre, but the reviews make it sound of great potential interest to me. This is the first reader review (sorry it is lengthy, but it is easy to follow, and even the non-philosophically inclined reader might see the relevance of it to current left/right debate about the Iraq war):

"After Virtue is a delightful book which presents the contemporary problem of moral philosophy today. MacIntyre says that there is an interminability of moral debate today. No consensus solution to the variety of moral issues such as abortion and war will present itself because proponents of both sides of the arguments in these two issues argue from a different set of premises from a different tradition of moral philosophy. You have Thomistic ideals of the value of life and justice against Rousseauist ideals of individuality, for example, in life issues. Can any of the enlightenment moral philosophies really help us make rational, clear decisions about the morality of a particular decision? MacIntyre investigates the moral philosophies of Kant, Hume, & Kierkegard, showing how each of them miserably fail as possible moral systems. Utilitarianism, pragmatism, and emotivism are also wonderfully skewered.

With what are we left? It seems as if after the failure of these systems we are left with the Nietzschean amorality of total chaotic relativism. MacIntyre understands the enigma of Nietzsche's ideas and shows how his attacks toppled the pompous, arrogant ideals of the Enlightenment. But Nietzsche's system seems impossible from a human standpoint, since, for example, we are left with the unsettling discovery that events such as the Holocaust are not really "wrong" in any objective sense. MacIntyre interjects that there is another alternative: go back to the source of the Enlightenment project. Sometime around then a bald decision was made philosophically to abandon the Neo-Aristotelian metaphysics that had supported Western thought for the previous 2000 years whether in the purest Aristotelian form or rather in highly developed Thomistic incarnations such as that which the Catholic Church held (and still does) and similar ones influences by Islamic and Jewish philosophers during the middle ages. Can this form of moral philosophy withstand criticism and ultimately rise as a viable alternative to Nietzsche? MacIntyre thinks so, and he spends a large amount of time laying the groundwork for a revived account of such a system. When he poses the question, Nietzsche or Aristotle, finally I at least think that he has made a compelling argument in favor of Aristotle (and Aquinas as some of his later work will evolve towards)."

Given my tiny readership here, I am unlikely to get a response. But: does anyone know about this book or author?

More on space radiation

I found a good detailed article on possible methods for shielding spacecraft from cosmic radiation. Unfortunately, there is no clear practical solution. The simplest idea is to be in the middle of a really big ship. But that doesn't help you while you are on Mars, say. Here's another, shorter, article that indicates this is beleived by some to be a major reason against sending humans to Mars (at least with current technology, I guess.)

"Active" shields have a lot of practical problems.

Although I find this area depressing (because it is another blow to easy exploration of space by humans) it does strike me a little as being similar to the challenges facing early maritime exploration of the earth. For example, the navigation problem of accurately determining longitude, solved by inventing an accurate transportable clock. Or perhaps there is more similarity with scurvy, suffered by sailors until they realised taking citrus juice would prevent it.

Anyway, although there are already engineers and scientists thinking deeply about it, I wonder whether this is another case (like the longitude problem) where the government ought to offer a reward for a good solution. It just seems possible to me that some sort of "new" idea for active shielding might be being overlooked.

Any wonder Beattie lost two seats?

With his government's stunning incompetence in handling its public health system crisis being exemplified by stories like this one (in the Courier Mail on the election day,) it would have been all but inconceivable for (Queensland Premier) Peter Beattie to have retained the two seats up for by-elections yesterday.

Short version of the linked story for those who can't be bothered clicking: just as in the case of Dr Patel (the enthusiatic but untalented and rather deadly surgeon who skipped town as soon as his case came to light), the apparently fake psychiatrist from Russia that Queensland Health employed for Townsville hospital who is now suspected of being a paedophile (practiced not just in Russia but perhaps also here) has fled the country. Unlikely to be seen again.

A new type of space suit at last?

news @ nature.com�-�An outfit suitable for Mars�-�Slimmer space suits on the rack for astronauts.

Readers with a science/ science fiction interest will know that the type of space suit discussed in the above link has been a feature of future technology used by some sci fi authors since the 1970's. (Jerry Pournelle springs to mind, but I am sure there are others.) Anyway, its good to see that it is still under active research, and actually looks a goer.

Sounds very hard to get into though. I also wonder about women's breasts getting painfully squashed by these. Any thoughts, Zoe?

Someone finally says it

This opinion piece in the Australian today finally says out loud something so politically incorrect that even the Federal Libs wouldn't say it (yet). Namely, that you really have to question whether remote aboriginal communities are viable.

As Rosemay Neill says:

"A notion of cultural autonomy that discounts the importance of real jobs and formal education simply divorces indigenous communities from mainstream power structures, even as they are flooded with the worst aspects of Western culture, from junk food to drugs."

What a pleasure to read such common sense.

Just last week, Phillip Adams up at Garma was interviewing someone who said that it was obvious from the festival that an active aboriginal culture can save lives (pointing out all the young ones who had evident musical talent at the festival.)

My suspicion is that active culture is still only successful if it results in that particular community being better integrated with the actual economy.

No one would expect success from a new community of (say) a few hundred white folk who had the idea of going to live in a remote and infertile part of Australia so that they could be successful musicians who connect with Gaia (or some such equivalent to aboriginal "connection to the land".) Not unless the said group also had a proper plan as to how they were going to deal with growing food, getting a source of clean water, building and maintaining adequate housing, etc. I suspect that all "hippy" communes (which is the nearest real life example of my theoretical case) which are successful are in fertile areas, grow a substantial part of their own food, and are not hundreds of klicks from the nearest town or hospital.

So why do liberals think that for aborigines culture alone is enough to live on?

Ann Coulter on Maureen Dowd

Ann Coulter, who I don't read regularly but probably should, takes her own swipe at Cindy Sheehan, as well as the Maureen Dowd column which had the much ridiculed line that (quoting Ann, quoting Maureen) : 'it's "inhumane" for Bush not "to understand that the moral authority of parents who bury children killed in Iraq is absolute." '

As Ann says:

"The logical, intellectual and ethical shortcomings of such a statement are staggering. If one dead son means no one can win an argument with you, how about two dead sons? What if the person arguing with you is a mother who also lost a son in Iraq and she's pro-war? Do we decide the winner with a coin toss? Or do we see if there's a woman out there who lost two children in Iraq and see what she thinks about the war? "

But the line I liked most in the column is this:

'Dowd's "absolute" moral authority column demonstrates, once again, what can happen when liberals start tossing around terms they don't understand like "absolute" and "moral."'

I have been meaning to write something at length about my belief that a major problem with current day liberals is their apparent lack of knowledge of some pretty basic moral philosophical concepts. But it will probably have to wait for another day...

Good reading on North Korea

The New Yorker: The Critics: Books

The link is to an excellent book review/essay in the New Yorker on the history and current status of North Korea, with particular reference to the dictatorial Kim family. Highly recommended.

Media Watch on Red Cross canapes

Credit where it is due. The Media Watch story this week on the alleged Red Cross plan to use donations to fund a "series of catered parties for wealthy donors" was well done. The Sydney Morning Herald should be deeply ashamed of this example of tabloid quality journalism, especially because of the problems it could mean for Red Cross fund raising in future.

Hitchens on Cindy Sheehan

Cindy Sheehan's Sinister Piffle - What's wrong with her Crawford protest. By Christopher Hitchens

See the link to Hitchen's take on Cindy Sheehan's grandstanding. It is what you would expect (pretty scathing).

In the papers today

In The Age today, some straight talk against late term abortions from a woman who would appear to be of feminist inclination (yay).

In the Sydney Morning Herald, Mem Fox takes on the phonics/whole language debate and seems to side strongly with whole language. I am not sure she makes a well argued case. For example:

"Parents often make the understandable mistake of believing that phonically sounding out words is reading. But we do most of our reading in silence: the meaning is on the page, not in the sound.... Is it necessary to have a grasp of phonics in order to be able to read? Broadly speaking, the astonishing and contentious answer is no, otherwise we wouldn't be able to read silently;"

This is a bit of a reach, isn't it? I thought the point of phonics was the assistance it gives to children (or adults) learning to pronounce a new word. The fact that you may not rely on it much as an experienced reader is neither here nor there to debate on education in primary schools.

She does make one valid point, in that she points out that languages based on pictographs don't use phonics at all. However, although Japan, for example, claims a very high literacy rate, I believe it does have the downside that it takes many years of school before they can read newspapers or similar "adult" material with full comprehension, because of the rate it takes to learn the couple of thousand pictographs that are necessary.

Her main argument seems to be against going back to a phonics only system of teaching. But is that really the likely outcome of the current federal government inquiry into literacy teaching? If the report simply wants all teachers to be able to effectively teach phonics to those student who benefit from that approach, it may not necessarily mean whole language is completely out the window. The current problem may be that some teachers may be too wedded to whole language.

And even it if did recommend going back to phonics only, if the empirical evidence is that literacy levels overall were better under that system, what is the point of insisting on whole language or a combined system being best?

To further confuse the argument, Mem then ends up with this:

"Phonics comes into its own as soon as children begin to learn to write. Josie is now courageously struggling to write. She has to match the sounds of language to the letters she scrawls across a page. During the complex battle between her brain and her hand she's now coming to grips with phonics and spelling. Those people who argue for an exclusively phonics approach in reading misunderstand what phonics is and forget how absolutely fundamental it is in learning to write."

Huh? Suddenly sounds like a bit of an argument for phonics to get more emphasis. I don't see her point here.

That Josie, by the way, is an acquaintance of hers who at age 3 can "read anything from atlases to adult books on dream interpretation."

Just what we need, more 3 year olds with a deep understanding of dream interpretation!

Mem obviously has a fair bit of sympathy for whole language, and I guess it may work well for some. The debate is more about those it doesn't work well for. Mem fails to approach the issue in this article with any empirical stuff at all.

She also had a few meetings with Mark Latham and seems to have liked him quite a lot. Maybe that says a lot about her judgment too.

Able Danger rollercoaster

The Able Danger story in the States, which is also relevant to Mark Steyn's defence against last week's Media Watch story, seems to have more twists to it than your average corkscrew rollercoaster.

What impresses me a lot, though, is the rapid willingness of LGF and the other right wing sites to admit that it is looking like the allegation against the 9-11 commission may be a lot less than it first seemed.

Even if the allegation proves unreliable, Mark Steyn's point in this article (that it is still entirely possible for Atta to have been in the States prior to June 2000) seems solid. However, Mark seems to be much less emphatic about the veracity of the Florida story than before, saying that Atta "might [my italics] have been in Florida, attempting to get a U.S. Farm Service Agency loan for the world's biggest cropduster, as reported by USDA official Johnell Bryant."

He's a great read anyway, even if the Florida stories were to be debunked.

Peculiar plane crash

Guess you don't need me to tell you, but the plane crash in Greece earlier today is mighty peculiar. Obviously, a problem with the air is at the core of the disaster, but reports are that people were moving in the cockpit long after the problem started, and the passengers had their emergency oxygen masks on.

Surely then there were some flight attendants still able to work out what to do with the (presumably) incapacitated pilots. I mean, even if the cockpit crew all passed out due to an undetected or sudden air leak (which is rather puzzling in itself), obviously someone in the aircraft activated the emergency oxygen in time to keep some people alive. (Or is it automatic at a certain level of depressurisation?) If an attendant was alive, why couldn't they revive the pilots (or at least, taken the controls for a time and stopped a descent into a mountain?) I wonder if flight attendants all know how to use the radio in an emergency. Surely they would have to be taught?

Maybe flight attendants and the cockpit crew all passed out and it was only passengers moving around wondering what to do. Again, you would think shoving some of oxygen on an attendant would have revived one, and couldn't a passenger fly the plane at a steady, low altitude until someone could make radio contact?

If it all happened in a short space of time, it would be more understandable. But it seems to have taken place over a considerable time.

Oh well, guess we will know eventually.

A Test Post about fonts

I have used firefox ever since I started this blog, and found that using the "normal" size font for posts looked really big, so I got into the habit of making all of them "small".

For the first time today, I looked at my blog with IE, and found the font was really uncomfortably small.

Other sites don't seem to have much difference between IE and Firefox, but then most people use additional software that I haven't investigated yet.

Oh well, sorry to any IE user who has had a problem with my font.

Hold, whip and return

Just as Australia starts taking a softer approach to its detention centres, a news story from the Jakarta Post says that Malaysia has this year taken to flogging illegal immigrants, and has no plans on changing this policy any time soon:

"KUALA LUMPUR (AP): Despite increasingly congested detention centers, Malaysia will not deport illegal immigrants immediately, but will stick with its policy of sending them to trial and sentencing them to the lash, the home minister was quoted as saying on Sunday.

"If they are charged and then punished with whipping, they would think many times before running the risk of re-entering the country," Home Minister Azmi Khalid was quoted as saying by the national news agency Bernama.

More than 9,000 illegals, mostly Indonesians, are being held at the centers throughout the country as they await their trials to start or be completed, according to Azmi.

"This is due to delays in the legal process," Azmi was quoted as saying by the Berita Minggu newspaper. "The cases drag on (sometimes for more than a year) due to many postponements, whereas illegal immigrants are caught almost every day."

Azmi said congestion in detention centers will worsen as the government steps up the operation to round up illegals by empowering civilian volunteers - besides police and immigration officers - to detain them.

Whipping was introduced as a punishment for illegal immigrants as part of a crackdown launched in March 2005."

I had not heard of this in the Australian media, but maybe I missed it.

Puts our treatment of such people in some sort of perspective, doesn't it.

Aboriginal woes

A detailed bad news story here about chronic aboriginal problems (petrol sniffing, sexual assault, lawlessness, etc) in the community near Uluru, despite a steady stream of income from the tourists. Part of the problem (I guess) is that the money comes without much (or any?) effort from most in the community.

I had never heard this before:

"Some community members bought cars "like tennis shoes", dumping them in what he called a "World Heritage Car Dump" within sight of Uluru when they broke down.

"I counted about 1000 cars there – that's about $4 million ... of money that has potentially been wasted," he said."

Meanwhile, this week's Phillip Adams' Late Night Live radio show has been up in Arnhem Land doing tedious reports on the Garma festival, an annual event which has previously escaped my attention. If I can believe Phil, it would seem that the communities up there are much healthier than the ones further south. Maybe it has something to do with being nearer to a big city, and having some decent natural resources to live off. Anyway Phil, rather than rubbing shoulders with the relatively successful, and their white groupies, why not do a week from the Uluru community and help them workshop ideas to get out of their appalling mess?

Euthanasia in practice

This item didn't seem to get much attention in the Australian media, but is interesting nonetheless.

It's about a recent study that indicates there were well over a thousand cases of euthanasia actually administered in a year in the Netherlands. (Country population: about 16.5 million; still seems a lot to me.)

A few points of interest:

"Project leader Bregje Onwuteaka-Philipsen said she was surprised that "the most important reasons for doing the request are not strictly medical." The survey asked physicians the reasons that patients sought help in ending their own lives, with the most frequent being pointless suffering, loss of dignity and weakness.

In cases in which doctors denied the requests, the most common reasons were not wanting to be a burden on their family, tired of living and depression.

Well, Australia's scientist/ aboriginal adviser/death-loving creepy doctor Philip Nitschke wouldn't have any such doubts and must think it is a stupid law then, if he can't help people who are just old from topping themselves.

"Under a law that took effect in 2002, euthanasia is restricted to terminal patients suffering unbearable pain with no hope of improvement, and who request to die when they are of sound mind. Each case is reviewed by a panel of medical experts."

The study also reportst that 13 % of those who requested euthanasia changed their minds.

The report continues:

"But in a critical accompanying editorial, University of Minnesota law professor Susan Wolf said the important question is whether mercy killings are taking place that do not follow the strict guidelines the Dutch have put in place.

The study could not determine that, she said, because doctors self-reported on whether their efforts complied with Dutch rules, among other reasons.

"The ultimate question remains — if you permit physicians to take life deliberately by assisting suicide or performing euthanasia, can you control the practice? Can you keep it within agreed boundaries? ... We do not yet know the answers," "

If I can't trust my hospital doctor to wash his or her hands, I am not sure I should trust them with this either.

Moon tourism and other space stuff

Interesting news about possible commercial trips around the moon, coming soon to you for $100,000,000. That's a lot of money for a holiday that offers the potential danger of death from solar flare.

But then again, maybe if the spacecraft is thickened up a bit from the average density of the old Apollo craft, maybe death is avoidable. This interesting article (from NASA, so maybe it is more optimistic than it should be) indicates that the Apollo command module would have given a fair degree of shielding. Maybe the real concern during Apollo was for the astronauts if they were caught on the moon during a flare. I am sure the Lunar Module would have offered pretty pitiful shielding, as there was not much to it.

I also found this nice little site about the possible replacements for the Shuttle. The little rocket based on the shuttle solid rocket booster looks very neat, and I don't think even I would have much worry about riding a solid rocket. From what I gather, they are pretty damn simple devices, and don't tend to blow up. Unfortunately, looks like you still need a liquid fueled second stage too. D'oh...

On education..

Seems to have been a pretty quiet week in the world of blogging. At least in the bit of it I check regularly.

However, an opinion piece in The Age caught my attention. The writer, one Neil Hooley from the academia of education, talks about how being teachers forced by the terrible Federal government to use a simple scale to rank children's achievements is "letting the kids down".

"Apparently, parents are confused by other terminology that might use words such as "established", "consolidated", "developed" and the like. A grade of B, for example, is very explicit and everyone knows what it means."

Well, yeah. But in the world of education, nothing can be allowed to be so clear:

"We have a distinct choice here. Either it is appropriate to draw up an absolute scale that measures achievement, or we look at progress that has been made over time. In the former case, the context is really unimportant - all that matters is product at the time. Contrast this with the latter case, where the conditions are crucial and really shape what is achieved."

Here we go:

"The allocation of absolute grades to the learning of children fits into a particular logic of knowledge. This says that schools are involved in the passing on of predetermined information or subject content that can be known, taught, assessed and rated accurately at each age or year level. Under this arrangement, the logic is internally consistent and defensible. There trouble is, there is another logic.

An alternative view indicates that children learn by building their own knowledge and that learning is always a work in progress."

Fair enough. The problem comes with the next sentence in that paragraph:

"Under these conditions, it is highly problematic whether predetermined content can be known, taught, assessed and rated accurately. With this logic, a graded system of assessment is therefore entirely inconsistent and indefensible."

Why? Every sensible person agrees that it is good for an education system to encourage students to "build their own knowledge" and realise that you can go through life continually learning, if you want to. But why should that preclude being able to give a simple assessment of where the student is in their level of objective knowledge of a subject at any particular time?

Surely he is getting at something more subtle, and it would seem to be the lingering postmodernist idea that, at heart, there is no objective truth about anything. No point in testing kids for how much they remember or understand it then. Go on, admit it Hooley!

His ending is particularly silly:

"An imposed system of A to E labels assumes one logic. It assumes that schools are only about the passing on of knowledge from elsewhere, that both teachers and children are disconnected from their knowledge and that imposed external judgments are accurate and necessary.

Parents will make up their own minds, but children may have little option to do so, locked in the iron cage of A to E determinism."

Look, if teachers want to comment on a student's "progress over time" or general aptitude etc, can't they still do it in the way they always have (at least in primary school)? That is, little Johnny gets a C in maths, but teacher writes at the end of the report card that "Johnny could do better with increased effort" or "Johnny has improved considerably, but further effort should see better results." Damn simple, it you ask me. At high school level, you can test in other ways about general aptitude and combine it with the other testing of stuff learnt to get a general idea of a kid's potential.

And it is absolute rubbish to suggest students are going to be "trapped" by their school grades anyway. Surely everyone knows of fellow high school students who didn't do well there, but after a few years maturing have gone back to study properly and ended up with tertiary qualifications and well paying careers.

Oh,and he also starts by criticising the government not (he believes) allowing the aboriginal flag to be used at schools instead of the Australian flag. Yes indeed, I am sure the lack of that flag must account for so much of the educational difficulties in aboriginal society.

Relativistic Poverty

Peter Saunders makes a lot of sense in his continuing attack on the welfare lobby (and Left generally) insisting on defining "poverty" in a relative sense.

Funnily enough, one of the comments posted after the article says this:

"The thing that Saunders does not understand is that in wealthy societies where there is no starvation or dying from exposure, poverty is about being unable to participate in the society with respect and esteem.

A relativistic definition of poverty is not adopted by ‘the left’ just so they can advocate redistribution of income. It is favoured because it is the only real way of understanding what it means to be poor. If parents cannot afford Nike trainers for their child, the child ‘feels’ poor. The lack of money for trendy shoes ‘means’ poverty in our society."

What to make of this post? Surely she can't be saying that it reflects good, sensible values to say that children have a right to have the "coolest" brand names rather than simply a reasonable quality shoe? If she saying that, it plays exactly into Saunder's criticism of why a relative treatment of poverty is pretty stupid and unhelpful.

Picking brand fetishism as a way of illustrating being "unable to participate" is pretty startling, so much so that I wonder if she is having us on. But I don't think she is.

Dogs fight Black Dog

SocietyGuardian.co.uk | Health | What's up, dog?

I'm a dog person. Not fanatical, but a dog person nonetheless. (Cat people have a good chance of having brains affected by mind altering parasites, remember.)

The link above is to a nice Guardian story on dogs fighting depression. My favourite bit is this:

"Maureen Hennis is chief executive of Pets As Therapy, a charity which has been making the most of the therapeutic benefits of animals for over 20 years. The not-for-profit organisation currently visits more than 4,750 different medical establishments throughout the UK, and Hennis is convinced of the programme's efficacy.

"I'm very lucky because I've visited patients with depression with my own dogs, so I've actually seen the benefits in action. I remember at one of the places we visited there was one woman who would wait for us and when we arrived she would shout, 'There's my ray of sunshine! There's my reason to stay alive!' It was the dog she was talking about, not me." "

So, apart from my advocacy of cognitive therapy, send in the dogs too. I wonder if they help schizophrenics too? Yep, probably.

In the news

How much worse can it get for Queensland Health at the moment? The Australian (although, strangely, not the Courier Mail yet) is reporting that the apparently unqualified Russian psychiatrist employed for a time in the Townsville hospital was a convicted pedophile and served time for it in Russia! What next...Hannibal Lector worked as a neurosurgeon in Royal Brisbane? ("I was wondering why he always brought his lunch box into theatre with him" says the nurse.)

I heard recently on the ABC that the lack of doctors is acute all over the Western world, so there is a huge "market" for qualified doctors from just about anywhere to work in the Western country of their choosing. But surely to God Medical Boards in other States or countries have done a better job at ensuring applicants are not forging qualifications.

It is also presumably a good time to study medicine if you are inclined. I know someone whose son is in first year of medicine. The joke going around the students was "what do you call the med student who comes last in exams? Answer: ' Doctor' ".

More on what some doctors will do is here (abort late term pregnancies because the mother doesn't the financial cost of a child.) Good to see a prosecution happening for this.

Meanwhile, I don't really understand this whole oil price thing. Why does just the threat of terrorism against westerners in Saudi Arabia cause the price to go up? If the threat was directly against oil production facilities, maybe I understand. But attacks on housing estates, hotels and embassies, which is the character of many past attacks, doesn't seem to have that much to do with oil production to me.

The Economist reports briefly on what oil rich countries are looking at doing with their new oil wealth. Building super luxury resorts and shopping centres is much of the answer. But how many westerners want to holiday in the Middle East at any point in the near future? These nations ought to remember Nauru , I reckon. It will all end in tears before the century is out.

Getting back to Earth

Watching the space shuttle having its heat shield 'repair' live this week got me thinking. NASA has always spent a certain amount of money on engineers trying to think up innovative ways of doing space things, so how much thought has gone into building a better heat shield?

First some NASA info on the current heat shield is here. It says an average of 50 tiles are replaced between every mission, although there is lots of other work done on it every time it is refurbished for the next flight.

I think I read once (years ago in a science magazine) that they had to check the bonding of almost every tile between flights, but I haven't found a reference to that on the internet (yet).

As for the history of heat shields generally, this article briefly summarises it, and contains this interesting snippet of information:

"China developed recoverable spacecraft that reputedly used wood as an ablative material. While this may seem primitive, wood (in some cases cork) is actually used as an ablative material for some American rocket engine areas and payload shrouds, which heat up as the rocket flies through the atmosphere."

It also mentions an advanced idea:

"One promising idea that has been proposed for the future is the use of a plasma torch to form an artificial shockwave in front of a reentry vehicle. Just as the shockwave generated by a blunt body can protect a spacecraft by keeping hot gasses away from the skin of the vehicle, the plasma shockwave could theoretically protect a vehicle traveling at hypersonic velocity (Mach 6+) for sustained periods of time. But there is as yet no demand for such a thermal protection system and it remains only a laboratory experiment."

Pity if it went out suddenly though.

Inflatable shields also get an article here.

Not so long ago, using water as part of a shield was discussed in New Scientist.

So, seems there are limited options to explore for future heat shielding. Maybe I'll just wait for a space elevator to be built.

Update:

More googling has revealed that in fact the cancelled X 33 project involved a new metal based thermal protection system, that did get some testing before the whole project was cancelled. See links here, and here. In fact, one NASA media release indicates it was fully tested and ready for flight.

A more recent (2002) article about metallic reentry shields generally is here.

And while wandering around the Web, I found the forgotten (by me anyway) story of the Air Force's Lenticular Reentry Vehicle, a proposed nuclear powered, flying saucerish bomber from the dawn of the Cold War. The Popular Mechanics story on the link has a Brisbane connection too.

Gee, those 1950's boffins knew cool looking design, didn't they...

Chase giant tornadoes for fun and profit

How's this for a unique tourist venture (go to America and chase tornadoes with your tour guide.) No thanks. I haven't seen the video on this site yet, as I am on dial up at the moment. Will look next week.

Sentencing news

So the self confessed wife and (20 month old) daughter killing husband (who, as I recall, took his daughter with him while he shopped for the spear gun murder weapon) got 2 life sentences, and a non parole period of 33 years. (If you are unfamiliar with the case, read the links for the whole terrible story.)

The sentence means he is potentially able to get parole at 71. I can't see why he should ever be released. As it is, he has the potential to have a "normal" life for a decade or more after release.

This crime was so appalling that it reminds me of the Port Arthur massacre. As in that case, you can't really fathom the mental state of the killer, but there is no doubt that they were aware of their actions as they were executing their victims. John Sharpe also had weeks of forethought and planning, it would seem. I am generally against the death sentence, but there are some murders so terrible, where the facts are known with absolute certainty, that I feel they deserve an exception. This is one of them.

Shuttle sightings

Human Space Flight (HSF) - Orbital Tracking

I suppose that if you don't already know that this exists, you're not enough of a nerd to care. Anyway, the above link is to the NASA site for sighting times for the shuttle and ISS listed for all major cities. I forgot to check earlier this week, and may have already missed the best chance. But it goes over fairly high over Brisbane this afternoon at 5.42, and as sunset is about 5.20, it should be visible (clouds permitting).

Go impress your kids by taking them outside to see it.

Unleash the Ducks of War

Somehow it had never occurred to me before to look for official new sites from North Korea, but a quick Google and there I was.

It's about what you would expect from the world's craziest socialist dictator stronghold. Some things I like to read about:

Kim Jong inspects the "the command of the large combined unit and Unit 615 honored with the title of Kum Song Lifeguard of the KPA situated in the forefront area in the central sector of the front....

Expressing satisfaction over the fact that the officers and men of the unit have thoroughly implemented the military line of the WPK, thus consolidating the military bulwark of Korean style socialism as firm as a rock, he set forth the highly important tasks which would serve as guidelines in further increasing the militancy of the unit and turning the defence theatre into an invulnerable fortress....

He dropped in at the operation study room to learn in detail with the training of the commanding officers of the unit. There he set forth tasks to be fulfilled to increase the unit's combat capability in every way."

Wait for it:

"Then he moved on to the duck farm built by the unit.
He put forward the tasks to be fulfilled to boost the duck production, saying that the farm should operate at its fullest capacity to pay off profusely. He had a photo session with the servicepersons of the unit."

I hope avian flu has got nothing to do with this.

We also learn that Korea's "liberation" was celebrated recently in the Mongolian Academy of Sciences, and Democratic Congo, where:

"Otete Gaston Mboyo, chairman of the National Committee of the Genuine Lumumbist Patriotic Party of Democratic Congo, in a lecture praised the undying feats President Kim Il Sung performed by defeating Japanese imperialism and bringing about a great event of the liberation of Korea after embarking upon the road of revolution in his teens. He noted that the feats of the President are shining more brilliantly thanks to leader Kim Jong Il."

Forgive my ignorance, but that the first time I have heard of the Lumumbists of Congo, who it would appear have been around for quite a few decades. Must be hard to pronounce after a drink.

Update: Sorry - individual links to articles within the North Korean site don't work.

Geneva Convention and David Hicks

Forget peacetime niceties - this is a war - Opinion - theage.com.au

See the above article in (surprise!) The Age which gives a strong defence to the non application of the Geneva conventions to one D Hicks. An article contradicting this will probably appear soon.

And by the way, this stuff about some US military lawyers criticising the whole commission procedure. I am sure there is a considerable lack of understanding in the general public about the relative seniority of various military ranks that causes confusion. An army captain (but not a navy captain) is a low ranking officer, and major is only one step up from that. The US military has many, many lawyers, and it should be no surprise that some relatively junior ones (most likely very young) will have strong feelings against the military commission set up. Even if they were older and more experienced, everyone has to remember that lawyers are basically designed to disagree. Just because some of them see a great injustice in something doesn't necessarily mean they are right.

Gone squatting

I am going to be a bit busy for a few days, I expect, so blogging rate may slow down.

In the meantime, the SMH today in its article on vegetarianism (which, it claims, no longer has good PR) pointed me towards this article on the Australian Vegetarian Society website as an example of vegetarians not exactly doing their image a favour.

The essay has a great title: "The Sitting Toilet - An Inconspicuous ‘Carcinogen’?" and goes into great detail about the alleged benefits of squatting over sitting.

There may be something to some of the points made the article, as it does actually cite at the end a lot of proper sounding medical journal articles. But a lot of it is pretty silly.

Having to use a squat toilet is, I think, more of an issue for men than women because of the, shall we say, different angles that are involved . When trying to use one while travelling, I have never worked out what to do with my pants, especially long pants. You wouldn't want to take your shoes off in the average squat toilet (to allow for complete pants removal) but crumpling long pants down well out of any danger is a real pain, and makes the balancing act required quite difficult. That is the real reason squat toilets are unpopular with western men, I think.

Any guidelines as to what I should be doing on my next trip would (seriously) be welcome. Yobbo at his blog didn't seem to be able to work it out either.

Arguments a lawyer would prefer not to have to make

London bombs terror attack The Times and Sunday Times Times Online

'Actions were a peaceful protest over the Iraq war' is the headline on the above Times article on the arrested London bombing suspect Osman (caught in Rome). According to his female lawyer:

“He has justified his actions as a form of protest against the fact that civilians are suffering in wars at the present time. He has taken part in many peace marches and has never had any contact whatsoever with any terrorist organisation."

That will go over so well before a judge.

"The lawyer said that her client, who appeared at an initial extradition hearing on Saturday, was “calm” but would “prefer to stay in Italy”."

You bet he would.

And Italy being Italy, the lawyer herself is attracting much of the attention:

"Osman’s arrest has attracted huge publicity in Italy and made Signora Sonnessa, 40, into a minor celebrity. Her bronzed skin, long black hair and plunging neckline grabbed the attention of Italian newspapers, which carried prominent photographs of her in their coverage of the story."

Wait while I google for a picture of her

Here we go...

Lucky Osman!

That's fat

Hospital forced to open 'fat only' ward | The Nation | Breaking News 24/7 - NEWS.com.au (01-08-2005)

The link is to a story about how Royal Melbourne Hospital will soon open a room to deal with the severely obese, who can weigh from 350 to 500kg!

At 182 cm and about 82 kg, this is as if I was around 4 to 6 times heavier than my present weight. And I guess most obese people are shorter than me, so the ratio of their actual to their "ideal" weight is likely worse for them.

What I don't understand is this. Isn't there something seriously wrong in a person failing to recognise when they hit, let's say, 3 times their "ideal" weight that they just can't continue putting on more weight? I mean, mentally wrong. Doesn't the fact that they can no longer sit in a normal car or bus seat indicate something to them? I just can't comprehend it.