How's the Murdochcracy going?

It was a stunningly beautiful day in Brisbane today.  The tides were right too, so it was off to Cleveland for some canal fishing for (as it turned out) about 5 hours.  (Small fish caught and thrown back; prawn smell still slightly persisting on everyone's fingers.  Takeaway pizza for dinner.)

So, while I was out, can anyone let me know if the installation of the Murdochcracy has been completed, with the rise to power of his favourite "conviction politician" (ha!), Tony Putin Abbott?*

Seriously, there seems to be a pretty unusually muted response by anyone to the completely over the top editorial line being pursued by the Murdoch papers in this election campaign.

But then, even Insiders was weird today.   Barrie Cassidy started by asking some pointed questions about why Rudd's movements yesterday were so important to the Murdoch press;  Malcolm Farr half fobbed it off, making out that he didn't think what Rudd did was such a sin.   But then by the time Cassidy got to the Rudd interview, he was very aggressive towards him on the matter of the Gillard record   As Cassidy was supposed to be pals with (Gillard's) Tim, I can only assume there was a large element of revenge in this for Rudd's role in her departure.  

Rudd's sin apparently was in not making it clear he was doing Kitchen Confidential (essentially a bit of campaign related work) before having a briefing last night on Syria (done in lieu of some Brisbane campaign thing, I think I read.)  The video of the briefing that took place did look pathetically transparent - but then again, there have been several videos of Tony Abbott pep talks to his shadow caucus team over the last six months which looked every bit as stilted and "for the cameras" as yesterday's effort.  As for appearing on Kitchen Confidential - Abbott has already done his episode. 

So, as far as I can tell, Rudd has every right to be furious with his treatment at the hands of the Murdoch press; but as nearly everyone thinks Rudd was a jerk for the way he undermined Gillard, no one's going to put their job on the line by putting in too much effort into calling out Murdoch.

What a sad state of affairs for someone like me, who has never liked Rudd, but considers that Labor collectively now has a sounder approach on economics and a majority of other issues than the alternative, which is headed by a bloke who has become a disgraceful fence-sitter and increasingly shows himself to be just not very bright.  (Not that you need to be all that bright to be a successful politician.  In fact, being too smart as a politician runs the risk of frequent paralysis.  But you need to have enough smarts to know who to listen to.  Abbott hasn't even got that, if you ask me.)  

And look at the way that Abbott's odd ideas (buying people smuggling boats in Indonesia) are simply not getting any significant coverage in the press.  For God's sake, I saw that quite a few at Catallaxy thought it was a stupid idea on Friday; then phftt; the proposal gets next to no attention while Murdoch's minions come up with the next "Rudd's a disaster!" headline for the following morning.

I haven't read much about the Liberal Policy launch today.  I saw Abbott's daughters front and centre (for God's sake, Tony & Kevin, leave the kids at home like 99% of working people do), and something about defence spending being 2% of GDP in future.  Tying defence spending to GDP was a Romney promise**.  What a surprise.  Mind you, this was an aim to be reached "in a decade".  As irrelevant as Rudd's "aim" to reduce company tax in the Northern Territory if re-elected in 3 years.

And how appropriate that one of the few election commitments was for a big boost in Alzheimer's research.  I wasn't really aware that Australia had any particular expertise there, and would have thought that other areas of biomedical promise might be worth pursuing - but Tony does have his power base to support.

All I can say in conclusion - if you value  press coverage that runs something other than Murdoch's geriatric views, go an and pay for a digital subscription to a Fairfax paper.  I'll be doing it tomorrow.   It would be an appalling state of affairs if Fairfax did not exist.

* Has anyone else called Tony's never ending appearances as fitness he-man his Putin-isation?  I doubt that is an original thought...

** I see that Labor has previously committed to this figure as well, which Alan Kohler calls a nonsense way to determine appropriate defence spending.   At least Labor won't be reminding people of this the election campaign.

Goodbye trees

I wasn't expecting much from the video, but watching trees disappear vertically underwater makes for a very peculiar look:



Incidentally, is it just me, or does the number of sinkhole stories in the media seem much higher now than it ever used to be? 

What a load of absolute bollocks

Gillard led a contest of 'crude political head-banging', says Abbott

Sorry, folks, but this confirms it.

Abbott is not smart and has no self awareness.

There has been nothing in the history of Australian modern politics to compare to the personal slagging off and rumour mongering that Julia Gillard suffered at the hand of the right wing media such as Alan Jones, Michael Smith, Larry Pickering (and Andrew Bolt, who would gleefully point people to those last two sites even if he wouldn't repeat it himself.)

Tony Abbott did make snide comments about Gillard's single woman status for years (a minor list is collected here) and the Gillard "misogyny speech" was red hot because he had just echoed Alan Jones' highly offensive "died of shame" comment made after her father had died. 

Now Tony confirms that he felt really sorry for himself after that speech.

I don't care that he was a Rhodes scholar.    He's just not smart.

Update:  Wendy Harmer's take on this is pretty good too, likening him to a bully boy who just can't resist going back for one last punch, when he's already won (vis a vis Gillard).    I don't know that nastiness is the best explanation, though.  I tend to lean more to mere gormlessness. 

This analysis of him at Independent Australia (admittedly an over the top site in many respects) also seems pretty accurate:

It’s as if he can’t be bothered. Or it’s as if he has missed the past four decades entirely. Though, presumably he wasn’t alone in this. Presumably he is in sync with an entire demographic that has not seen the need to pull back the curtain and only reluctantly ever answers the door.

He really does think, when confronted with the issue of the recognition of the rights of gays, that it’s a matter of fashion.

There’s a certain laziness here. It represents the approach that says that some things aren’t worth noticing, learning, respecting. They’re just not important. He is comfortable where he is and really can’t be bothered to take on new information, or understand new dynamics.

I would add - he appears to show an interest in changing mainly when the need presents itself directly to him in his family - thus more (allegedly) understanding of gay issue because his sister went into a lesbian relationship.  He realises the importance of parental leave to women because his daughters are now of child bearing age.  He's on board with fertility treatment (against Catholic teaching, incidentally) because he knows Christopher Pyne and his chief of staff have had it.  Yet again, this indicates to me a significant degree of shallowness and/or opportunism that I find unacceptable in anyone aspiring to be PM.

From the Friday night video archives

I just stumbled across this at Millard Fillmore's Bathtub (a blog I still don't quite understand thematically):  a segment from the old Groucho Marx quiz show featuring a very young, and very tall, Ray Bradbury.


This is apparently from 1955, and Ray is rattling off all of his most famous books as already being written.  I would have thought they came a bit later - in the late 50's to mid 60's.  Obviously my mental chronology of his career is wrong.   I also had no idea he was such a strong looking bloke.  My image of him is as being grey haired with thick glasses, and not physically imposing at all. 

A peppery tale

Tableside pepper grinding at restaurants: Why servers started wielding pepper mills in the early 20th century.

I would have thought Slate would have covered this before; but evidently not.

It's actually quite a good read that gives a bit of background about the evolution of restaurants between the 19th century and now.

Changing expectations

English views of marriage: From here to eternity | The Economist

From a review of a new book looking back at changing views of marriage in England.  The author reckons that high expectations really kicked in during the 1950's.  These paragraphs are interesting:

The growing idea that marriage was all about feeling alarmed many. The Bishop of Sheffield thought that the institution would buckle under the load of emotional and sexual expectation. The Royal Commission on Marriage and Divorce of the early 1950s feared “an undue emphasis on the overriding importance of a satisfactory sex relationship”. They were not wrong. By 1959 the Archbishop of Canterbury was thundering against the “tide of adultery” sweeping the land. Ms Langhamer convincingly argues that the sexual permissiveness of the 1960s and the subsequent decline in marriage were less a reaction to the so-called stability of the 1950s than a product of the decade’s instability.

She sees the 1920s and 1930s as a time of pragmatism, of slow courtships and modest expectations. The question was less whether a couple were in love than whether she could housekeep and he could earn. Ms Langhamer concedes that the trends she traces are winding and unsteady—that caution was urged in the 1960s, just as emotional intimacy was sought in the 1920s. Still, she finds that after the devastation of the first world war, steadiness was valued above all. The woman who, in 1930, wished simply to meet someone “clean, and if not good-looking, at least pleasant”, with £5 a week, was not untypical.

What a waste of research effort

New research suggests 'female sperm' and 'male eggs' possible - Science - News - The Independent

As a person who thinks that IVF research has been pretty much an inappropriate allocation of medical resources, I can't fathom why it is thought useful to do this research for the tiny number of humans who find they would want to go absolute extremes to reproduce. 

There are probably thousands of biology research subjects into how cells work that are of more potential benefit to humanity than this.

Defending Kevin

Kevin Rudd does have a huge burden of well known examples of past poor treatment of his minions to overcome.  For years, I noted he had a fake public persona, according to many, many accounts.

And it is entirely possible that anyone who saw how he interacted with the TV make up woman the other night might have thought "that's a bit much Kevin, you *%#@."

But honestly, should the press really run with an uncorroborated complaint of  being "treated badly" which contains no details at all?

She didn't say at all how he was rude.  It could have been anything from heated swearing to ignoring an attempt at polite chit chat to saying "hurry up, and don't talk to me while I prepare mentally."  Yet it was run all day by not only the Murdoch press, but Fairfax and on the ABC too.

On the Drum, they wondered why he didn't just apologise.  Apologise for what?  We have no idea what he actually did.

OK, so perhaps its Kevin just reaping the consequences of past bad behaviour.   It still seems to me to be disreputable of the media to spend so much time on it during a campaign without knowing how he allegedly "treated her badly".

Update:  I see that Andrew Bolt, who ran with the Rudd rudeness story at great, great length yesterday, is now complaining that the story was not covered enough by Fairfax!    Apart from the fact that it did run on Fairfax websites all day, he apparently can't see that his comparison with the story of Abbott and an incident from his university days is just a little different in this way- we knew exactly what Abbott was alleged to have done.  (And, incidentally, Bolt's own employer recently had to apologise in Court for running Kroger's claim that the complainant had a history of lying and was a nutter.  Did Bolt ever note that at his blog?  He certainly hasn't updated his original post giving publicity to Kroger's claim.   Just like he has never updated corrections to Anthony Watt's wrong claim about how his project would show the temperature record was wrongly attributed to CO2.  Bolt is a propagandist who hardly ever bothers noting corrections to his past errors - and when a court confirms they are errors, he whines bitterly about that too.)

Update 2:  what a sleazy, sleazy gossip monger Bolt has become.   Running a post today about a band aid on a the hand of Rudd, and parsing Rudd's comment about it as if there is a scandal being hidden (the suggestion obviously being that he hurt himself hitting something in a rage.)

Even a two faced politician doesn't deserve groundless crap like that.

Update 3:  the first account I have heard that gives any detail of what is supposed to have happened in the make up room:

Whether Rudd deserved the critique is another question. Accounts of those who were in the room are consistent with Rudd's - that he said ''hello'' and ''goodbye'' to Fontana and virtually nothing in between as he prepared for the most important 60 minutes of the campaign to that point, reading intently from last-minute briefing notes before taking the stage. ''I was in the zone,'' is how he put it.

Murdoch's journalists not what they used to be

I have been wondering how the intense anti-Labor editorial and headline slant of Murdoch's papers has been sitting with some of his senior journalists.   Their reaction certainly seems a far cry from what went on in 1975, when they went on strike:

A letter written by News Limited journalists and presented to management outlines clearly some of the concerns they had resulting in their strike action on 8th-10 December 1975, the last week of the election campaign.

…the deliberate and careless slanting of headlines, seemingly blatant imbalance in news presentation, political censorship and, more occasionally, distortion of copy from senior specialist journalists, the political management of news and features, the stifling of dissident and even palatably impartial opinion in the papers’ columns…

~ Denis Cryle; ‘Murdoch’s Flagship: 25 years of The Australian newspaper’; MUP (2008)

Is the only difference that Murdoch's editors have given up on actually altering senior journalist's column's to give a different slant?  Come on, you weaklings - speak up for yourselves.

There's money in underpants

Well, there you go.  Just yesterday, as I noticed the pre-Father's Day blitz of underwear advertisements at the local shopping centre,  I wondered to myself "how much money does Bonds make from men's underwear?"

Quite a lot, seems to be the answer:

A SURGE in demand for Bonds underwear has helped clothing group Pacific Brands post its first full year profit since 2010. 
 
But the maker of work clothes, bed linen and shoes is bracing for a tough financial year ahead as consumer confidence remains weak.

Pacific Brands' $73.8 million net profit in the year to June 30 is a turnaround from a $450.7 million loss in fiscal 2012.

The underwear division drove much of the result, with earnings rising to $78.1 million, compared with a loss of $330.3 million the previous year.

Undergarment sales revenue also rose by five per cent, to $453.9 million, as wholesale, in-store and online sales for Bonds underwear accelerated in the second half of fiscal 2013.

So, undergarment sales for just one company are approaching half a billion dollars?   In which market, I wonder?

In a different shopping centre, I was annoyed by several poster ads for (I think) Bic women's razors, which featured only a close up frontal shot of a woman's panties (with woman inside them.)  The byline was something like this (I am going by memory, because I can't find an image of it on the net):  "Showered, shaved and ready to go, all before he's even found his keys."

Whatever the exact line was, the point of the ad was obviously to encourage women to have a daily pubic shave, just like their blokes do to their face.

I am not exactly outraged by this current hairless fashion per se, but there is something about razor companies actually encouraging it for profit that irritates me.   Perhaps because it is obvious that the fashion is often having a poor effect on women's self image, 'cos they get to see clearly shapes and folds which would normally be somewhat obscured by hair.  And besides, the ad is surely guilty of that old term "objectifying" a women's (hairless) torso in a way that I think everyone should be uncomfortable with in a public space like a shopping mall.

And while we are in the general groin-al area, can the papers please stop running headlines such as this:

Lily Patchett explains why she allowed student newspaper Honi Soit to publish a photo of her vagina

The fact that a University newspaper was intending to publish a front page featuring 18 vulva images (which is, technically, more correct than saying they were photos of vaginas) is surely not that dramatic an issue is it?   University newspapers have been routinely "in your face" for the mere sake of it for the last 40 years, haven't they?, and while I think the idea is not in great taste, I find it less objectionable in the context of who would likely see it and the effect on attitudes to women than decades of page 3 girlie photos in Murdoch owners papers in England.

The motive for it was actually on pretty solid feminist grounds:

The editors of Sydney University's Honi Soit publication said they published the graphic edition in order to make a statement about how vaginas have become "artificially sexualised ... or stigmatised".

Yes, it was a response to the effect of the likes of the Bic poster which I had a problem with.

Of course, it goes too far, as University papers are wont to do (the people who run them are immature, let's face it).  Surely the point could just have readily been made by referring people to a website or two which feature "average" vulva for women's reassurance without them being on the street.  (There was a website set up specifically for this purpose in the US recently; I read about it at Slate or Salon.)  Or the photos could simply have been inside the paper.

But still, as for the mainstream media, it should be treated as a bit of a non story, rather than taking it as an opportunity to write a half dozen headlines referencing genitalia. 

Saul sounds skeptical

Coalition has $30b gap in promises: leading economist Saul Eslake

He predicts that the Coalition will ultimately adopt all of Labor's proposed budget savings measures, except for ending the tax break for cars bought through salary sacrifice.

Even so, Mr Eslake estimates, the Coalition has so far committed to $28.4 billion of tax cuts and $14.8 billion on new spending in the next four years, a total of $43.25 billion. But he estimates the nine savings measures the Coalition has announced so far would save only $13.44 billion over the same period.

"By our reckoning, over the remainder of the election campaign, the Coalition needs to announce additional savings measures totally in the vicinity of $30 billion over the four years to 2016-17 in order to be able credibly to claim that it would produce better bottom line outcomes than those projected (by Treasury and the Department of Finance), he said."

"That is a substantial sum, although it is considerably less than the $70 billion 'black hole' suggested by the government."

Clive and Mal had a chat

Mad, rich Clive is probably telling the truth about this, I reckon.

Mal Brough's role in the Slipper saga was clearly dodgy from the start, and he lied to journalists about it.  As Bernard Keane wrote:

Twice now Brough has been revealed as having misled the public over his role in the affair. The first time was in early May when, in the aftermath of Fairfax’s Jessica Wright outing him as having met with Ashby, he arranged a tell-all explanation to The Australian, complete with photo shoot with his wife, to explain he’d met with Ashby three times and had only spoken to a small number of trusted legal advisers about the matter, and not anyone else in the Coalition or LNP.

That marked a change from his position of just a few days earlier, that claims he was aware of the legal action beforehand were “nonsense”.

We now know, courtesy of yesterday’s document release by the Federal Court, that he was misleading the public again with his claims to The Oz, and was a key player in the co-ordination of what appears to have been a campaign to damage Slipper, trying to arrange a job within the LNP for another disaffected Slipper staffer, Karen Doane. Ashby is also alleged to have emailed Brough with confidential material from Slipper’s diary.

Self inflicted wounds

There's no doubt, I think, that the issue of the funding and costs of the Tony Abbott endorsed Paid Parental Leave plan is hurting the Coalition.  Maybe not "election losing hurt", but certainly a significant negative for the campaign.   And it would appear entirely self inflicted, because the claimed supporting costing done by the Parliamentary Budget Office is presumably sitting in the box in Liberal Party HQ marked "do not open less than 48 hours before election day."

The evidence that it is hurting:  everyone in the Coalition is showing clear annoyance and irritation at persistent questioning about it.  Tony Abbott last night, Joe Hockey during the day yesterday, and this morning the heavily South African accented Mathias Cormann on Radio National.

Cormann amuses me - he is like the perfect antidote to the annoyance I am sure many Australians have felt over the years towards Scottish or English accented unionists, some of whom have gone on to political careers (hello, Doug Cameron.)   They have often provoked the reaction that they were importing their aggro, working class warfare from the UK to a country that didn't want it.  

Well, fortunately for Labor, we now have a Coalition spokesperson who comes with an accent which, especially when they get agitated, I think people associate with sentiments ranging from "I am born to rule and you aren't" to "release the hounds - we must have law and order." 

And to make it funnier - I see that he is actually from Belgium and only sounds South African because that's where he learnt English. he, um, sounds South African. (To me.  And clearly when I went looking for a reason why he sounded that way, I read the Wiki link too quickly!)

As far as I am concerned, he should be on TV and the radio more often...

But back to the Tony Abbott's parental leave:  there must be many, many teeth grinding about this policy amongst Coalition strategists - it is wholly of Abbott's creation, never been widely supported within the party, and he has been so persistent about it for so long, it is politically impossible for him to back down now.

A perfect, and completely unnecessary, self inflicted wound.

Update:  Delicious.  Despite Henry Ergas' attempt to put lipstick on this pig of a policy, Judith Sloan calls the scheme "crazy", and Sinclair's inevitable gut reaction against anything involving money being handed to a government means he's been helping the bad PR for it as well.
 

For people who can't work out the basics

Gosh.  Slate finds it appropriate to have a video that argues that slicing a tomato is much better with a serrated knife than a straight edge one.  

I think I might have worked that out successfully by the age of 14.

Anyway, perhaps I have noted this before here, but Victorinox steak knives are a fantastic general purpose knife in the kitchen, and they slice tomatoes very well.

But I must thank Slate for one kitchen idea that I never knew, and it does work brilliantly:  how to boil eggs right.  (You don't really need the ice bath at the end, though.) 

Record rains watch, and old men and climate change

Record rains flood large tracts of China, Russia, the Philippines 

My theory that large, more frequent disastrous floods from more intense rainfall may be the earliest, clear sign that global warming is a highly disruptive and economically harmful thing might be getting some more support via these floods.

It's been a funny, mixed  summer for global warming:  some record heat in parts of China, a very hot, record breaking, run in Japan, and Alaska and other parts of the North.  I think the Australian winter has been pretty warm on a country wide scale, and it's been a bad snow season.   Yet it also seems to have been wet and cool in part of the US, and weather conditions are such that the Arctic ice cap itself (while well down on long term average) will not get close to record summer minimums. 

Those are my impressions anyway.

As for how this is reported:  Rupert Murdoch is over 80, and is now free of a liberal wife and her friends, so of course he no longer sounds at all convinced of climate change being a problem.  

On the age issue, it's also funny to drop in on that paper retirement village for conservatives known as Quadrant. It runs very, very heavily against climate change now, but look at the line up of writers who get space to go "ha, as if!"   Geoffrey Luck (former ABC journalist) - appears to be age 82.   Someone called Tony Thomas - never heard of him before, but appears to be an author and some Googling indicated he was born in 1940 - age 73 this year.  I can't spot an age for retired right wing economist Des Moore, but here's a photo: 

What else can I say, but "typical".

Ian Plimer is 67, a relative spring chicken amongst the climate deniers who have written in Quadrant.  I haven't yet spotted the age of fellow retired geologist Bob Carter, but he looks of the same vintage.

Tom Quirk's name turns up on Quadrant as a climate commentator; he's on the IPA but I haven't found his age yet either.  Time for another photo then:

Not exactly youthful.

I just find it remarkable how age specific active climate change denialism is.

Sure, there are younger folk (and women, such as Quadrant's own Phillipa Martyr, who hasn't yet cracked 50, but is an ex smoker with a cat who has offered to date Rupert Murdoch) who are happy to tell the world that they think it's all crap; but to be a really active club participant in spreading the word, it helps enormously to be over 65 and require prostate checks.

Not politics

This review in the TLS of a new book about the history of the attitude towards death in Britain has a couple of interesting suggestions.

The first:  that the loss of the idea of Purgatory helps explain English affinity for ghost stories about lost souls haunting the earth:

Watkins paints a vivid picture, in the first part of his book, of a medieval way of life in which the “Church Suffering” (as the souls in Purgatory were called) formed part of an economic community which straddled the realms of the living and the dead. The endowment of monasteries, churches, almshouses, gifts of land were bequeathments by the dying to those who followed after. Golden chalices, jewelled reliquaries, stained-glass windows, wood-carvings: all the splendour of the medieval Church was underwritten by the dead, with wider consequences for the economy as a whole. Focusing closely on the dealings of John Baret, a fifteenth-century merchant from Bury St Edmunds, Watkins shows how businesslike he was in approaching eternity, settling earthly debts, endowing monuments, buying masses in advance to promote his soul’s salvation. If the lack of spirituality is striking, so, too, is the unquestioning assumption of a continuity between this existence and the next.

An unscriptural amendment to the Christian tradition, Purgatory was ripe for abolition. Yet, as a psychological support for striving Christians, it had made sense and its loss left ordinary people bereft. It is no surprise that its phantom should have stalked British society from that time on. To some extent, folklore filled the gap – songs and stories of wild wastes which had to be traversed by wayfaring souls on their way to the afterlife; there were tales of ghosts and what we would now call poltergeists. Watkins rejects the idea that such traditions were a sort of “strange Catholic survival” – yet they surely stemmed from some deep anxiety. Justification by faith may sound a soft option, but the faith required is the mountain-moving sort: how many, after all, could seriously hope to be saved?

 The other suggestion, novel to me, is that Spiritualism, when it arrived, felt "modern":

There was nothing much respectable about the Welsh doctor-druid William Price, yet it was he who effectively brought about the legalization of cremation in 1884. In doing so, suggests Watkins, he carried to its logical conclusion both the demystification of the human body which had begun with the rise of dissection (albeit in the face of fierce popular resistance), and the detaching of the life of the individual from that of the community which had begun with the replacement of the churchyard by the cemetery. Yet it was to be a self-consciously progressive, scientifically minded set which brought the dead back into the everyday existence of the living with the craze for spiritualism from the 1850s. Watkins makes the point that, with all their various knockings and tappings, the spirits’ communications seemed as modern as Morse code. 

Ultimately, spiritualism can be seen as an aspect of a general secularization which saw the imaginative hold of the afterlife weakening: “the other world had thinned”, Watkins concludes. Quite how and why this happened isn’t clear. While scientific rationalism must have played its part and immigration made new perspectives available, we’re finally reduced to some version of Virginia Woolf’s mischievous suggestion that “On or about December, 1910, human nature changed”.

 Update:  on that second point, I have noted here before how the explanation for where heaven can exist has changed with increasingly sophisticated scientific ideas, so that (for example) the belief that it was just  beyond the dome of the sky was replaced by it being in a higher dimension which we could not perceive from our 3 D "flatland" perspective.  But I wouldn't have thought that Spiritualism per se felt "modern" when it first arrived.  There are, however, cases where Spiritualism has specifically gone into science-y explanations.  Apart from talk of spirits living at different "vibrations" (an idea that seems almost as old as the Fox sisters), in the Scole experiments in the 1990's, I recall that there was much talk of how the device used in the sittings was constructed via instructions from spirit scientists on the other side as to how to build a good quality "receiver". It's a wonder that, as far as I know, we never hear of spirit communications that talk about quantum science and the multiverse.  (The skeptical explanation, of course, would be that mediums simply aren't that interested in the topic and don't read enough about it for their subconscious to regurgitate it during "communications".  But the idea does get a lot of publicity in the popular media now, so it's a bit curious that it doesn't turn up.)

Good luck, losers

What a time for a Shooter's Party to be running candidates for an election...

The tragic random thrill killing of a young Australian in America has the Australian tabloids talking (with justification) about "the madness of American gun culture,"* and Tony Abbott already (even before the shooting) had a specific policy out about cracking down on illegal imports of guns.

So good luck, wannabe gun law reformers of Australia.  

And boo hoo to reader IT, wannabe Texas Ranger for Perth.

*  Just lucky that it would appear Rupert's not a gun fan, I suppose.

Possibly the funniest thing Rupert has ever said

So, Rupert Murdoch has tweeted:

Conviction politicians hard to find anywhere. Australia's Tony Abbott rare exception. Opponent Rudd all over the place convincing nobody.

Yes, Rupert.  Sure Rupert. You've never really read Bernard Keane's clever 2011 history of Tony Abbott and climate change, have you?   I'll reproduce just part of it:

Tony Abbott: OK, so the climate has changed over the eons and we know from history, at the time of Julius Caesar and Jesus of Nazareth,  the climate was considerably warmer than it is now. And then during what they called the Dark Ages it was colder. Then there was the medieval warm period. Climate change happens all the time and it is not man that drives those climate changes back in history. It is an open question how much the climate changes today and what role man plays.
Tony Abbott: I am confident, based on the science we have, that mankind does make a difference to climate, almost certainly the impact of humans on the planet extends to climate.
Tony Abbott: The argument is absolute crap.
Tony Abbott. We believe climate change is real, yes, we believe humans make a contribution towards climate change.
Tony Abbott: There may even have been a slight decrease in global temperatures (the measurement data differs on this point) over the past decade despite continued large increases in emissions associated with the rapid economic growth of China and India.
Tony Abbott: I think that the science is far from settled but on the insurance principle you are prepared to take reasonable precautions against significant potential risks, and that’s I think why it makes sense to have an ETS.
Tony Abbott: I think there are all sorts of ways of paying for this that don’t involve a great big new tax that we will live with forever.
Tony Abbott: There is much to be said for an emissions trading scheme. It was, after all, the mechanism for emission reduction ultimately chosen by the Howard government.

Update:   further "conviction politics" from Tony, only in May this year:

The letter, signed by Mr Abbott, states that he had been briefed by shadow special minister of state Bronwyn Bishop about the agreement, negotiated between former special minister of state Gary Gray, Liberal Party federal director Brian Loughnane, and the ALP national secretary George Wright.
"I am satisfied with the agreement reached and indicate the Coalition's intention to support the legislation and to deal with it, as requested, before the end of the sittings," the letter states.

However, today Mr Abbott explained that he changed his mind after discussions with his colleagues.

 Update 2:  yet more conviction:

 TONY ABBOTT (archive footage, July 22, 2002): Voluntary paid maternity leave: yes; compulsory paid maternity leave: over this Government's dead body, frankly. It just won't happen.

First it was lead pipes, now it's copper...

Copper may play key role in Alzheimer's Disease - latimes.com

It's funny how metals in water pipes never seem to be a good idea.

Then again, plastic pipes probably secrete hormone affecting chemicals that are drying up our vital bodily fluids and shrinking genitalia.

I also have quietly dismissed my wife using a filter jug for most of her drinking water.  Now I am not so sure.

Anyway, go read the article: it's quite interesting

Why people don't like politics

Treasurers' debate: either intellectually dishonest or no intellect

From Michael Pascoe's pretty accurate take on last night's Q&A debate between Hockey and Bowen:

But ultimately it was the same old routine, leaving the voter with the same old quandary: is it a matter of intellectual dishonesty or an absence of intellect?

Neither Bowen nor Hockey could or was prepared to level with the audience on the nation's looming taxation demands, a failure highlighted by both sides running away from improving the GST. Labor ran further and faster than the Liberals on that score, but the Liberal performance over any “big new tax” other than their own and perpetuating an illusion of a lower tax future has been at least as shameful.

The Coalition has been wildly successful in flogging the government debt horse and Hockey showed no inclination to dismount, never mind that the beast is only one-fifth equine and four-fifths canard. Chris Bowen attempted and failed, like his predecessor, to put the deficit issue in perspective. The pink batts have stuck.

And that was the core of the problem on display last night: a government incapable of standing on the relative success of its fiscal big picture thanks to the focus on failures in detail and looking after some select union mates; an opposition that's so successful in beating up the government's shortcomings that it hasn't had to go beyond sweeping generalisations and the Magic Pudding aspects of Hockeynomics.

Both have finished up abandoning principles and squawking “me too” when the other seems to have a policy that's a vote winner – the Coalition on Gonski, Labor on something as loony as a Northern Territory company tax haven.

Direct Action dismissed, and ignored

At least Fairfax is making an effort to deal with an important election issue.

All the dirt on carbon is a pretty good explanation of the issues with both Labor's and the Coalition's CO2 cutting plans.  

In this Factchecker article, they look at the recent claim by the Climate Institute that Direct Action must at least cost several billion more than claimed to reach its target.  The assumptions made in the Institute's analysis do indeed appear very conservative (that is, looking at the most optimistic take possible on the Coalition's plans) and it still comes up short.

And at the SMH, at least, the website is noting aspects of the latest leak of the next IPCC report.

Meanwhile, at the news.com.au website, the most popular story is "man inserts fork into penis".   Good job, Rupert...

The hard slog

The very individual journey of novelists

There's a nice, brief story here about the ways different authors work.  I hadn't read before about how Harper Lee wrote To Kill a Mockingbird:

  I have been thinking recently a lot about the unique Harper Lee who wrote one novel in her life, To Kill a Mockingbird. There is a marvelous documentary about her called Hey Boo. In her twenties she came to New York from Alabama and accumulated a bunch of not quite finished stories. Kind friends who had extra money gave her a gift of a year off from her job at an airline reservation counter. A publisher found her very rough draft of her novel to be appealing and gave her a contract. For what she called two terrible endless years, she revised and revised until the book took its final form. She revised it in an old NYC apartment smoking endless cigarettes. And she never published anything again. She was working on something else for a time.

Election talk

Ben Eltham's summary of the last week in politics seemed pretty accurate to me. Insiders yesterday was great - George Megalogenis and David Marr versus Gerard Henderson.  Henderson claimed hypocrisy on the part of George - George promised to email him the articles where he did criticise Labor for late submission of policy costings in 2007.  I doubt he is making it up.  Will Henderson retract in his weekly column?

But on the issue of Coalition non costings, Peter Martin has an interesting take on it today, in which he notes that their tactic of getting three prominent, independent minded economist/bureaucrats is  surprising, given that part performance indicates they will have no reservations about criticising dubious costings.

As for my take on matters:  it seems elections are just won or lost on "the vibe" lately*.  I mean, the Howard government hadn't really done much to warrant a loss to Rudd - it was just the sense that Howard had hung on too long and run out of steam and ideas that led to a Labor victory  which was barely based on policy at all.

This time around, the reverse is happening.  "The vibe" is that minority government didn't work - which is pretty bizarre given the long term and beneficial changes to education, disability care and carbon pricing which it achieved.  The Coalition doesn't have to worry about making sense as far as to  how it will reduce a deficit which is very manageable - it's just "the vibe" that it must be reduced quickly and Tony will look after that.

And possibly the worst thing - the correction to the Australian dollar is likely to make very significant changes for the better for the Australian economy pretty soon.  On Inside Business yesterday, there was also some commentary that the global economic outlook is finally starting to look a little brighter.   It will be very annoying, but an Abbott government will benefit from such changes which are completely beyond any Australian government's control.

*  I think it was George on Insiders who mentioned "the vibe" yesterday too, but I had been thinking about writing this comment before I saw that.  Great minds thinking alike, etc..

Age, a birthday, and encroaching silence

My mother turns 90 tomorrow, and a pleasant family gathering happened today at the aged care facility where she now lives.

Her health held up well until about the age of  87, when a decline in mental function started to become apparent, and pretty quickly set in at a more rapid rate.  The specialist had referred to it as Alzheimer's, but he also noted that her brain had a quite distinct shrinkage, even allowing for her age, and more on the left hand side than the right.   I suspect this may account for her sudden decline of ability with language.  This happened really quite quickly, pretty soon after moving into aged care.  In fact, so quickly that a mini stroke seemed also a possibility, but at her age and with some dementia already clear, further investigation is not high on the priority.

She recognises us all, we are sure, but it is unclear how much of what she is asked she understands.  Most visits are lucky to get a "what?" or "what d'you say?" as the sole response  (and I mean sole - she only speaks once during the entire visit, if you are lucky).  But then suddenly, she will sometimes respond to something indicating she did understand a comment clearly.   To take a mundane example, we were watching TV a few months ago and that awful Celebrity Diving show was on.  I said "oh, that's Denise Drysdale" (a minor TV celebrity, most notably in the 1970's), and Mum's immediate response was a knowing "yeah".   But to more useful questions or comments like "how are you?" or "did you see X today" (when I know a brother or sister has been in) invariably gets no response at all.  (Of course, her short term memory was already going before she went into the home, so I don't really expect her to remember even if the other visitor only left an hour before me.  But the point is more that she attempts no comment at all.)

I have noticed this about the other residents too.   The dinner table, for example, is silent.  No one tries to speak; perhaps because even the ones who can communicate well (and there is at least one pleasant lady there who is an enthusiastic reader and is capable of pretty normal conversation) know that they can't get a good response from most of the others.   That is the most unnatural thing about the place - the stony silence at meals.

I wasn't around too much as my grandmother (my mother's mother) aged - she lived to 96 I think - but I do recall that she always lived in a silent house, and herself grew increasingly silent and withdrawn as she aged.  Mind you, her house had always silent, except for the sounds of a grandfather clock.  That always felt a bit creepy to me - she long outlived her husband, who I barely remember, and had lived separately from him for many years anyway - but living alone in a small house with just this grandfather clock noting each passing second, minute and hour always made it feel as if she had been noting the passing of time towards death since her 60's.  My mother used to say the same thing - she hated the silence in Grandma's house and always had the radio on at home to hear music throughout the day.  In fact, her loss of interest and ability in turning the CD player or radio on was a sign that she was changing a couple of years ago.

Along with the silence there is the increase in sleep.  At least it is peaceful.  Mum can get around - just barely - with a walker, but seems happy to sit and doze and watch TV or DVDs the staff put on. They do get her out of her room for some attempts at stimulating group activities, but I have my doubts that they can be very successful, given the apparent lack of abilities of most of the residents. 

So it's a case of happy birthday, but tinged with inevitable sadness at watching the decline of a formally active and quite strong woman.  There are people with much, much worse aging stories, of course; and it's nothing like the tragedy of children dying.  But still, it seems an unfortunate design of a universe for it to allow for protracted mental decline and the slipping into silence.

An executioner's tale

I have read about Live by The Sword somewhere before, but don't think I've mentioned it here.

From its review in Literary Review (which I was looking at in hard copy at the newsagent this morning - it does seem a very high quality read):

This is a marvellous book about a fascinating subject. It is, in a sense, a portrait of a serial killer. Frantz Schmidt was employed between 1578 and 1618 as the official executioner (and torturer) of the prosperous German city of Nuremberg. Over the course of his career he personally despatched 394 people, and flogged, branded or otherwise maimed many hundreds more. His life is also a tale of honour, duty and a lasting quest for meaning and redemption.

The penal regimes of pre-modern European states were harsh and violent, heavy on deterrence and the symbolism of retribution. Towns such as Nuremberg needed professional executioners to deal with an ever-present threat of criminality through the public infliction of capital and corporal sentences. Punishing malefactors with lengthy periods of incarceration was an idea for the future, and would probably have struck 16th-century people as unnecessarily cruel. Methods ranged from execution with the sword (the most honourable) to hanging (the least), and from the relatively quick and merciful to the dreadful penalty of staking a person to the ground and breaking their limbs one after the other with a heavy cartwheel. This was not a world of mindless violence: the punishments Schmidt imposed were carefully prescribed by the city authorities, down to the number of 'nips' (pieces of flesh torn from the limbs with red-hot tongs) convicts were to receive on their way to the gallows.

Schmidt kept a diary, and it is from this that his life and views are re-created in this book.

Perhaps the most remarkable thing is how he got into the business:

His own apprenticeship as an executioner was the result of a catastrophic fall in family fortunes, originating in an episode of almost cinematic vividness. In October 1553, the erratic and unpopular Prince Albrecht Alcibiades von Brandenburg-Kulmbach suspected three local gunsmiths of plotting against his life. Invoking an ancient custom, he commanded a hapless bystander to execute them on the spot. Frantz's father, Heinrich, had no option but to carry out the commission and, tainted by the act, no options thereafter but to become a professional executioner. Nearly three-quarters of a century later, after a lifetime of devoted civic service, his son successfully petitioned the imperial court for a formal restitution of the family honour so that he could see his own sons enter the medical profession. Schmidt himself was a killer, but his true vocation was as a healer. He tortured and executed hundreds of people, but claimed to have treated more than fifteen thousand patients in and around Nuremberg. This is not as paradoxical as it seems: executioners often doubled as medics, drawing on their unrivalled practical knowledge of human anatomy.

The original incident sounds like something bizarre from a Tarantino film, no?

The Economist gets stuck into animation

New film: "Planes": Crash landing | The Economist

Sure, it's in the Prospero blog at the Economist, so it's not in the main part of the magazine itself, but it still seems odd to be reading a complaint about the recent quality of Pixar animation at that website.  He is right, though:

Just look at Pixar’s recent offerings. Its newest film, “Monsters University”, was a middling prequel. Last year it released a sequel, Mr Lasseter’s own little-loved “Cars 2”. The previous film, “Brave”, was a muddle: its director was replaced halfway through. And while the preceding film, “Toy Story 3” was a triumph, it was also a “threequel”. It has been a long time since a Pixar film was celebrated for its innovation. Now Mr Lasseter is credited as the executive producer of “Planes”, and as the co-writer of its co-called “Original Story”.

Disney has produced solid fare under Mr Lasseter’s stewardship—“The Princess And The Frog”, “Tangled”, “Wreck-It Ralph”—but the golden age his fans predicted has not arrived. Meanwhile, cartoons from rival studios, including “The Croods”, “Rango” and “Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs”, have beat him at his own game.

More memory coming

Denser, Faster Memory Challenges Both DRAM and Flash | MIT Technology Review

Given that I get along well with tablets that have only 16G memory (I have the option of expanding the Samsung, but haven't had the need yet), it's kind of hard to imagine what use the much larger potential storage will be.  Still, onwards and upwards:

 A new type of memory chip that a startup company has just begun to test could give future smartphones and other computing devices both a speed and storage boost. The technology, known as crossbar memory, can store data about 40 times as densely as the most compact memory available today. It is also faster and more energy efficient....

“It will be much denser and faster than flash because it is not based on moving electrons around or on transistors,” says Wei Lu, a professor at the University of Michigan whose research led to the development of crossbar memory. Lu is also a cofounder and chief scientist of the Santa Clara, California-based startup Crossbar, which is commercializing the technology. He notes that initially the company is developing its technology to replace flash storage.

Demonstration crossbar memory chips are being made by TSMC, the world’s largest contract chip manufacturer. Crossbar says that the current version of the technology can store one terabyte of data (1,000 gigabytes) on a single chip 200 square millimeters, about the size of a postage stamp. By comparison, the densest flash memory chips on the market today store 16 gigabytes on a single chip.

Ken Parish explains from Darwin

Ken Parish is a great writer at Club Troppo, who unfortunately does not post often enough.

But here he is, doing a thorough take down of  both Abbott and Rudd for talking up exclusive economic zones for the Northern Territory. 

Come to think of it, Ken was a "Gillard must go" supporter too.   Rudd's silly, opportunistic ploy must hurt him more than me, then...

Campaign suggestions

You know what I think is sorely needed in the Labor campaign?

A speech the equivalent of the Bill Clinton one in the Obama campaign, which clinically took apart the Republican economic policies as just not making sense.   There is plenty to work on in a similar vein in the Coalition policies.  They are, essentially, claiming that costings don't matter, and that people should simply trust them that they can save billions and billions easily while at the same time discarding revenue raising measures introduced by Labor and not introducing any of their own.  They are going for a environment policy that not an economist in the land believes can work at the cost claimed.   They are claiming (quite falsely) that the Commonwealth cannot legislate away the need for the States to agree to a GST rise.  They are saying GST will be part of a tax review, but it will never go up. 

It shouldn't be made by Kevin Rudd, though.  As with the Obama campaign, it needs someone else who people tend to trust, or someone whose judgement on economic matters is trusted. 

Finding someone on the Labor side like that is the challenge.  Hawke is getting too long in the tooth.

You know, if he could wind back the desire to conduct a bitter personal attack on Abbott, and avoid self aggrandisement about what he achieved (a big ask, I know), I think Keating might actually plausibly be the best to do it.   Perhaps as a warm up to the Rudd campaign speech?  Sure, people remember him as arrogant; but even so they do give him some credit for understanding economics and being able to run with reforming, economic common sense.  Or does the image of one Labor PM the public took the baseball bat make too many laugh with glee that they are going to do the same to his "friend" Kevin?  (In fact, what has Keating ever said about Rudd - I can't remember.)

I'm just trying to be useful...

A new Miyazaki

The Wind Rises English trailer: The new Miyazaki movie looks haunting.

Ooh.  Slate brings us news of a new Miyazaki film, which is proving popular in Japan.

I see I didn't mention in my post about Arrietty that at the end of the DVD there was a pretty amusing interview with Miyazaki himself (in Japanese.)   It is well worth watching to get an idea of his views on the Japanese animation industry.  (He reckons it's a lot more fragile than people would imagine.)

Go, Lenore...

No one can make Tony Abbott's climate plan add up, so he should do the maths | World news | theguardian.com

Lenore Taylor makes some points about Tony Abbott and his "direct action" plan which are obvious but being pretty much avoided by Rudd.  (I assume his thinking is "stay away from the carbon tax; people don't like to be reminded about it.):

It’s not that “direct action” can’t work to reduce carbon emissions. It’s that the Coalition’s Direct Action plan – cobbled together in a couple months after Tony Abbott took the Liberal leadership and ditched the Coalition’s support for emissions trading – can’t work for the money that’s on the table.

And almost no one thinks it can. Not the business groups that have for years now been unsuccessfully seeking detail. Not academic experts who have studied the various sources of carbon abatement it proposes. And not anyone who has sought to model it.

The Coalition has responded to the latest effort – from Sinclair Knight Merz/MMA and Monash University's Centre of Policy Studies – by shooting the messenger, suggesting the modellers and the Climate Institute who commissioned them are not “objective”.

But exactly the same question has been raised by pretty much everyone who has looked at Direct Action. The Treasury actually calculated the shortfall would be much bigger than the $4bn the new modelling has estimated by 2020.

And, as Abbott’s own frontbencher Malcolm Turnbull explained in 2011, continuing with Direct Action would become prohibitively expensive in future years.

On 4 February 2010, Abbott wrote this about his newly minted Direct Action plan: "Our policy is also much cheaper. We have estimated that it will cost $3.2bn over four years ... Our policy has been independently costed. A team of economists at the respected firm Frontier Economics says our policy is both economically and environmentally responsible."

But the managing director of Frontier Economics, Danny Price, said at the time it only made sense as a transitional plan, a precursor to either a more developed set of “Direct Action” regulations, subsidies and “reverse auctions”, or, more likely, some version of an emissions trading scheme.

But no, Kevin, let's talk about corporate tax rates in the Northern Territory in 2018...

Kevin Rudd: "I can still be as silly as the next politician"

Poor John Quiggin.  He runs a civilised blog; his economics seem to me to be about 300% more reliable than  the guff that comes out of Catallaxy; yet he seemed to have a complete blind spot towards the problems with Kevin Rudd.  If anything, he was aggressively against Julia Gillard because, he argued, everything she had put in place had been Kevin's brilliant idea anyway.

No, some of us argued:  what you should consider is that Gillard got some things done by doing the hard slog, working collaboratively, and not just coming up with ideas by doodling on the back of a envelope during a plane flight.  (My evidence for that:  changing education and disability funding after getting reports and recommendations first; the negotiations that led to carbon pricing; how Kevin came up with the NBN.)

Well, those of us who were pro-Gillard can at least take some bitter satisfaction that it would appear our view of Kevin has been reinforced by his sudden (partial) adoption of Coalition policy and rhetoric about the bright future of the North, if only tax rates would drop there.

Admittedly, Rudd's policy seems more limited than Coalition ideas (which sound a tad more grandiose, but are really just to have a good hard look at what to do after forming government), but the worrying aspect of it is - how did he arrive at this idea?  What collaboration within his team and instant Ministers took place before it was announced? 

It's a very worrying sign.

From one end to the other

BBC News - Mouth bacteria may trigger bowel cancer

Researchers say they have uncovered how bacteria may set off a chain reaction leading to bowel cancer. 

Fusobacteria, commonly found in the mouth, cause overactive immune responses and turn on cancer growth genes, two US studies reveal.

The microbes had been linked with colorectal cancer before but it was not known whether they were directly involved in tumour growth.

The early findings are published in the journal Cell Host & Microbe.

In addition to potential new treatments, the discovery could lead to better early diagnosis and prevention, experts hope.

The first study, carried out by Harvard Medical School researchers, showed that fusobacteria were present in high numbers in adenomas - a benign bowel growth that can become cancerous over time.

The same researchers also did tests in mice showing that the bacteria speeded up the formation of colorectal tumours by attracting special immune cells that invade and set off an inflammatory response which can lead to cancer.

Kevin Rudd: "I can be as silly as the next politician", and some free advice

Kevin Rudd rules out new coalition deal to form government | World news | theguardian.com

As I criticised Tony Abbott for a premature ruling out of forming a minority government, it's only fair that I call out Kevin Rudd for coming up with a similar line.  A case of "if Tony jumped over a cliff, would you too?" being a pretty ineffective line that mothers can use on their future politician sons, I guess.

In any event, we can safely assume both of them are lying.

Here's some other free advice for Mr K Rudd:

1.   enough with the "selfies":  when two ABC comedy shows (the Gruen Transfer team, and The Chaser - with the latter being quite a bit less annoying than usual in their outing last night) spend time on this, it's time to quit.

2.   let's firm up on policy implementation on how you plan to help diversify the Australian economy.  If it needs something like the Hawke approach, talk about that.  Your mysteriously popular (with a segment of the population) personality alone, everyone in the media has now agreed, is not going to get you across the line.

3.  If you're calling out the Abbott approach to budget (as indeed you should) don't fling around rubbery numbers.  If $70 billion is a dubious figure for the Abbott "budget hole" (and all media say it is), don't use it.    You're the side with the immediate issue with rubbery figures - be conservative with your claims about the other side's rubbery figures.   Let's face it - with the public, a convincing sounding $50 billion costing hole is just as bad a $70 billion one.

4.  There will be no harm in putting the boot further into Murdoch papers, but in doing so you have to run a fine line of not appearing to blame them for your polling position, even if they should be (at least partly).   It's one of those weird contradictions of politics:  of course the media plays a major role in how the state of politics is perceived, but people punish politicians who note it and complain about how the media is reporting politics.

5.  Let's see more of your new Ministers on TV and in the news.  They'll remind people that you aren't taking the old team to the election.

Just my suggestion...

Checking in again with the Abbott powerbase...

The "rocketman" post

As mentioned a couple of posts back, I was delighted (much more so than my wife, children, or any other person in the vicinity, it seemed) to see a "rocketman" again last Sunday.  Here's video of him doing a daytime practice at the same Brisbane showgrounds where we were:



The guy doing the flying is David Clarke, who calls himself "Ozrocketman."  (Not sure I'm keen on the name, but it hardly matters.)   He has his own website, and is an ex RAAF aeronautical maintenance engineer who appears to have decided to try to make a business out of promotional flying using his own, homebuilt jetpack rocketpack.  Good luck to him.

On his site there's an excellent video from a kid's TV show explaining how this old "rocketbelt" design (famously built by Bell Laboratories in the late 1950's) works:



For a simplified illustration of why there are three tanks, see this:

David Clarke refers to "ten years" of research to make his own personal rocketpack, although it's a little hard to see why it would take so long these days - there seem to be many enthusiasts on the Web.  I think I have mentioned before on this blog that you can even order one from a Mexican aviation company.  Their website looks flashy, but honestly,  I wouldn't be paying the deposit without some good reassurance that they are still in business.  It would also appear that you might still be able to buy one from an American company which claims their model can fly for up to 75 seconds.  (That seems optimistic - most sites talk of a about a 30 second maximum.) 

Interestingly, it's via the Mexican company's website that I found an ad for a 2010 Discovery documentary about another Australian named David who wanted his own rocketbelt.  Here's the blurb:

Australian jet pilot David Mayman builds and flies his own Rocket Belt. This is the story of a tenacious Australian Jet Pilot, David Mayman, as he strives to achieve his childhood dream of building and free-flying his very own Rocket Belt, only to discover he faces a nearly impossible task. Collaborating with the world’s leading Rocket Belt engineers David risks life and limb to become the world’s next Rocketman. ROCKET COMPULSION will take the audience on a ride that shows point blank why less people have flown Rocket Belts than have walked on the Moon.

In fact, the documentary has its own website too, with a page of short video clips from it, including this one talking about the history of its design:



But by far the oddest tale of what has happened with a rocketbelt is the story of three Americans in the 1990's who went into a partnership to build their own one for profit.  They had a spectacular falling out; one of them was murdered, the rocketbelt went missing, and the partner who had taken it was kidnapped, kept in a box and threatened with it being thrown in the sea.

The story has been the subject of a book, but you can read about it at this site, or just watch the embedded videos there summarising the story.   Pretty amazing.

But going back to technical stuff:  Howstuffworks explains the dangers and expense involved in the hydrogen peroxide rocketbelt:

 Rocket belts run on hydrogen peroxide fuel, which is not explosive on its own. This makes rocket belts slightly safer than jet packs. When the hydrogen peroxide is combined with pressurized liquid nitrogen and a silver catalyst, the chemical reaction generates superheated steam that shoots out of twin rocket nozzles at 1,300 degrees Fahrenheit (704.4 degrees Celsius). There's no flame, but it's still extremely dangerous. The result is 800 horsepower or about 300 pounds of thrust [source: CNN.com]. Hydrogen peroxide is a good, reliable fuel, and it's only by-product is water. However, it's very expensive, costing about $250 per gallon (3.78-liters). Each flight uses almost all of the fuel in the tank -- about seven gallons (26.5-liters) per flight.

Some other sites make mention of the pilot having insulated pants legs to make sure the superheated steam doesn't burn them.  I guess you certainly wouldn't want to be too close under a "rocketman" hovering over you. 

 But given their limited flight time, it was interesting to read of an attempt in the 1960's to develop an actual jet powered backpack, which I might have read about before, but forgotten:

In 1969 Wendell Moore and John K. Hulbert of Bell Aerosystems had Williams Research Corporation design a turbojet small enough to be carried on a man's back. The jet was mounted with the intake facing the ground and the exhaust shooting upward to a pipe that split the outflow and pointed back down. Two nozzles were located just in back of the pilot's shoulders similar to those on the rocket belt. The jet had less power for its weight than the rocket engine, but also used much less fuel. Tests were carried out that showed that the pack could carry a man in the air for ten minutes, and with improvements the flight time might reach as long as a half hour (This device turns out to be the one I'd actually seen on the cover of Popular Science). The jet pack seemed to solve the biggest problem associated with the rocket belt: range. Twenty-one seconds was now thirty minutes. 

Here's a photo of this shortlived device from the same site:

Wikipedia (under the entry "Jet pack", but which also talks of the hydrogen peroxide rocketbelt, which just goes to show how confused the terminology in this field has become) gives some further details as to what happened with the turbojet pack:

In 1965 Bell Aerosystems concluded a new contract with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to develop a jet pack with a turbojet engine. This project was called the "Jet Flying Belt", or simply the "Jet Belt". Wendell Moore and John K. Hulbert, a specialist in gas turbines, worked to design a new turbojet pack. Williams Research Corporation (now Williams International) in Walled Lake, Michigan, designed and built a new turbojet engine to Bell's specifications in 1969. It was called the WR19, had a rated thrust of 430 pounds of thrust (195 kgf, 1,910 newtons) and weighed 68 pounds (31 kg).

The first free flight of the Jet Belt took place on 7 April 1969 at the Niagara Falls Municipal Airport. Pilot Robert Courter flew about 100 meters in a circle at an altitude of 7 meters, reaching a speed of 45 km/h. The following flights were longer, up to 5 minutes. Theoretically, this new pack could fly for 25 minutes at velocities up to 135 km/h.

In spite of successful tests, the U.S. Army lost interest. The pack was complex to maintain and too heavy. Landing with its weight on his back was hazardous to the pilot, and catastrophic loss of a turbine blade could have been lethal.

Thus, the Bell Jet Flying Belt remained an experimental model. On 29 May 1969, Wendell Moore died of complications from a heart attack he had suffered six months earlier, and work on the turbojet pack was ended. Bell sold the sole version of the "Bell pack", together with the patents and technical documentation, to Williams Research Corporation. This pack is now in the Williams International company museum.

 How sad.   Of course, flying with your spine mere centimetres from spinning turbine blades which have been known, from time to time, to shatter and spray out in all directions does make this a design one which few might like to risk.   Still, I assume turbines have improved a hell of a lot since 1969, and I wonder if it will ever be reattempted.

It's taken me a while to find it, but here's some video of the jetpack being flown (and not just in a test setting either: it looks like it got a PR outing to the public):



As it happens, while reading about all of this, news turned up that the New Zealand developed "jetpack" (more like a mini personal flying vehicle, really, but it still looks awesome) has advanced:

The New Zealand makers of a one-person jetpack hope to have it on sale by the middle of next year. The Martin Aircraft company says its jetpack can reach speeds of up to 70 kilometres per hour and soar 1 kilometre high. 

The Christchurch-based firm has been testing its prototype 12 via remote control. 

The New Zealand Civil Aviation Authority said the jetpack has now been issued with an experimental flight permit for development test flying, which allows someone to pilot the aircraft.

 In case you have missed it, this is what they look like:

  

I'm seriously looking forward to seeing one of these at the Ekka in the future.

Q&A reaches new I&A* levels

Last night while composing my account of Sunday's expedition, the ABC's Q&A show was on in the background.

Someone should make a highlight tape of how spectacularly annoying Christopher Pyne and Janet Albrechtsen (who, I only recently realised, separated from her husband a couple of years ago and is now the partner of Liberal heavy weight Michael Kroger) frequently showed themselves to be.   In a further bizarre twist, it seemed to me that Tony Jones kept cutting Penny Wong short in her attempts at responses to yapping Pyne's over the top claims.

I then saw Malcolm Turnbull being very sarcastic on Lateline with Anthony Albanese.  

The one upside of this is that I think the Coalition is already looking very cocky and too self assured that they are going to win the election. 

With only a percent or two to swing in the right seats, this could well come back to bite them.

* Irritating and annoying.

Yet again, an Ekka report

Look, there was no "House of Pork" to be spotted yesterday at the RNA show, but it was replaced by something much more significant:  the re-appearance of a "rocketman" display which I had not seen live since about 1968, by my rough reckoning.

The rocketman deserves an entire post of his own, as it led me today to read up on the history and design of the equipment, and it was more interesting than I expected.

But for this post, some observations:

*   for the last two years, the family has enjoyed the auditorium 30 minute shows, which usually have an anachronistic aspect to them.  (In 2011, it was the "Sideshow Superstars", which was pleasantly grotesque in parts; and last year it was a stage hypnotist act,  a form of entertainment which I thought had died out by about 1990.)   This year it was a pretty standard "magic and illusion" act, by a young-ish performer whose comedy shtick seemed to be to play (or be - he was pretty convincing) the vain, sleazy jerk.   Yes, he even managed a "sometimes when they say 'no', they mean 'yes'" reference about women; a joke played without irony, and which did, to a modern audience's credibility, managed to get only a few groans in response.  The tricks were competently done, but were of a stock standard variety for a stage magician these days, and as such did not really contain any element of surprise, as you could tell from the somewhat muted audience reaction.

I therefore consider this year's auditorium show a failure.  I wonder what they'll dig up for next year.  The Kransky Sisters are (as part of the act, I am sure) from a Queensland country town, and may well have been in the local CWA.  I think they may be worth a try...

*  Now onto the troublesome topic of the evening "ring" entertainment.   This year they did do a large re-vamp,  which had its good points and not so good points.  First, having a so-so female pop star sing (or lip sync?) songs in the distant centre of a stadium, and then get driven around to sing from four perimeter "stages," quickly became pretty tedious.  The fact that some of the dance choreography involved much hip thrusting (and the pre-performance video of the singer was of an extraordinarily overt "I'm a sex kitten thinking about sex" variety), it seemed an appeal to a audience that was simply not there to see such content.

The rocketman bit was given some attempt at context by having a man in an Ironman costume come out for a drive by appearance; the logic seeming to be that although we can't make the dude in the costume fly, we can get someone else airborne for 10 seconds.  Meanwhile, Fake Ironman snuck over to another position where he later pretended to play heavy metal guitar during the fireworks display.   Kind of wacky; but Fake Ironman need not bother turning up again next year.  (Unlike the actual rocketman, who can come back any time as far as I'm concerned.)

The fireworks, flame, laser and water fountain show was actually pretty good and continued the trajectory of increasing complexity that has been evident for the last few years.  I'm not entirely sure how you get a job that involves designing such a show, but I like to imagine how strange some of the suggestions at the brainstorming session may have been when the final outcome includes Fake Ironman doing a bad heavy metal impression.

*  The showgrounds are undergoing major, major re-development, and the new convention centre at the heart of it was open for the first time and looked reasonably impressive in the upstairs area.   However, it seems a very "brave" decision to put food outlets on a newly carpetted convention hall floor.   Curry, wine, satay sauce, waffles with cream and syrupy fruit are all going to find their way onto the floor by the end of the week.   It's going to drive the cleaners berserk, I expect.

Or can someone in the know explain to me the secret to what seems to be a bit of a crazy decision as to how to use the convention room floor space?   Is the carpet of some special stain and oil resistant fabric that will solve this pretty obvious practical problem?  I don't think it was made of carpet squares that can be individually replaced, but I didn't get down on my hands and knees to examine it closely.

The convention centre is of much smaller area than the absolutely massive (and quite recently expanded) Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre at Southbank.  I love that place, and was told a couple of years ago by someone who has worked there for a long time that it is a very successful international convention centre; I hope the new one at the RNA showgrounds can find its niche in the market.

The Abbott powerbase react to the debate

I didn't see the political debate last night:  I was watching a jetpack rocketman doing a 10 second spin around the Brisbane showgrounds instead, which was much more exciting, I'm sure.  (My annual report on the Ekka will appear soon enough.)

But I see from having a quick look at Catallaxy that the sclerotic brains trust of the Abbott power base reacted like this: