Senator Blofeld is a bit of a nut...

Libertarian Senator David Leyonhjelm, pictured here:

sorry, I meant here:

is in the news today for having appointed Helen Dale, famous for getting into heaps of trouble for pretending to have a family background that was useful for promoting her novel. Well, she does have umpteen law degrees, seems to do nothing useful with them, and her blog is a bore, so she's qualified, but listen to what Leyonhjelm says about the fraudulent episode in Dale's past:

“I was impressed that she extended a work of fiction into the authorship, which I thought was entirely appropriate,” Senator Leyonhjelm told The Australian. “I regarded the controversy at the time as both absurd and amusing.”

 He's a nut.

Update:  more "fraudulently passing yourself off as someone you're not for notoriety and financial gain is hilarious"  analysis from Senator L:

"I recall at the time thinking it was hilarious, it was a big joke and she kept up the fiction for quite a while. Then, when they realised she was pulling their leg they turned on her, which I thought was very unkind."

 Update 2:   I'll make a prediction:  she will not be in the job for more than a year or two.

Update 3:  David Crowe does some sort of sucking up today for having released the story early, or something like that?  

Yesterday we learned that Paul "magic water" Sheehan has been to a libertarian conference, and also seems to think Ms Dale is the bees knees?    He notes this about a paper she gave:

Dale's presentation focused on social changes caused by technology, not expensive social engineering. Among many examples was a correlation between the removal of lead from petrol, paint and cosmetics and a decline in crime.        Practising law, she saw government regulation and compulsion as frequently having both adverse and unintended consequences.

Well, I hope her paper then went on to note that it was government regulation that forced the move to unleaded petrol, as I have the distinct recollection that there was resistance to the policy from motoring associations and oil companies.   I would like to see what the IPA was saying about it at the time, although, to be honest, I don't know that was as intensely ideological then as it is now.

Update 4:   Hey, I find something good to say - sort of - about Helen Dale's views as a libertarian.   She wrote only late last year:

5. Libertarians in particular need to drop their widespread refusal to accept the reality of climate change. It makes us look like wingnuts and diverts attention from the larger number of greenies who spew pseudoscience on a daily basis. That said, don’t confuse real science with greenie catastrophizing. When Matt Ridley pointed out (a) that climate change is real, (b) it is currently having beneficial effects, and (c) is likely to continue to do so for some time, he got a bucket of turds dumped on his head by both sides. Don’t do that. 

So, on the "up" side she should be off side with everyone who posts at Catallaxy then, her very very very good friend (he keeps telling us) Sinclair Davidson, Judith Sloan (who takes every opportunity to ridicule scientists and bodies pushing for a serious response to climate change), Kates, Moran, etc etc.

On the downside - one of the main figures she should be skeptical of is Matt Ridley, but she appears not to be.

And more downside - she's still happy to take a job with a Senator for a party whose official policy is to sit on the fence and do nothing because, you know, it kinda hates government doing things anyway...

I've read Andrew Bolt's blog today so that you don't have to.....

Tony's persistent woman problem

Tony Abbott was long said to have a "woman problem", which I am sure Andrew Bolt and his  acolytes who have migrated to Catallaxy have ridiculed as a bit of Leftist smear and imaginings.   (Obviously, though, Abbott or his minders knew it was true, given the way they made his daughters stick by his side every single minute of the election campaign.)

Today's Essential poll (indicating a government pretty firmly stuck at 48/52 TPP with Labor in the lead) also notes about Abbott's approval:

52% of respondents disapprove of the job Tony Abbott is doing as Prime Minister – down 2% since the last time this question was asked in August – and 35% approve of the job Tony Abbott is doing (down 2%). This represents no change in net rating  at -17.

84% (up 4%) of Liberal/National voters approve of Tony Abbott’s performance, with 9% (down 3%)
disapproving. 87% of Labor voters and 79% of Greens voters disapprove of Tony Abbott’s performance.

By gender men were 42% approve/48% disapprove and women 29% approve/56% disapprove.

Well, I'm gobsmacked that 84% of LNP voters approve of him; but still, the main point is that Tony has a persistent woman problem.

Hydrogen power cycle into the future

Australia's first fuel cell bicycle

This sounds like really clever technology:

UNSW researchers have built an Australian-first bicycle that can take riders up to 125 kilometres on a single battery charge and $2 of hydrogen.

One kilogram of the standard metal hybride is capable of storing 100 litres of hydrogen, but Aguey-Zinsou and colleagues at the Material Energy Research Laboratory in nanoscale (MERLin) at UNSW are now developing borohydrides that could
store the same amount of hydrogen using just 50 grams of storage material.

Hydrogen for the Hy-Cycle can be produced with as little as 100 millilitres of water. The water is split into its elements – oxygen and hydrogen – and the fuel cell recombines the hydrogen with oxygen to produce electricity.

However, Aguey-Zinsou envisions a future where riders could purchase
replacement canisters from a network of distribution points, rather than
needing to produce hydrogen.

But does it come in different colours*, and what will it cost?



*  Allusion to old what's her name**, on The Inventors

** Diana Fisher - it just came to me.

Pining for the 50's

Dear old Philippa Martyr, who I find quite an interesting character, busy pining for the 50's at Catallaxy in sympathy with the only 40-something year old man alive today who was actually born in 1910 (Currency Lad):

There may be Liberal Party branches somewhere in Australia that still believe in scones, the flag, children being seen and not heard, the Golden Rule, live and let live, the value of honest work, the economic power of lower taxes, and the therapeutic power of a nice cup of tea.

I just can’t think of any.

Of course, the scones and tea would be made by the stay at home housewives while their husbands are out building houses by sawing up asbestos laden sheets in their Jackie Howe singlets. 

How dare Parkinson defend himself!

The print version of Catallaxy (The Australian) is full of indignation that Martin Parkinson has defended the response of the Rudd/Swan government to the GFC (they, after all, were following his Department's advice which he has fully endorsed), after current cigar smoking Finance Minister Cormann was out launching some attack on Parkinson's policy from a little known, IPA aligned, economist from that power house of economics, Griffith University.

Did you see how much Groucho Ergas went on about this yesterday?  Is he paid by the word?  Today it's the turn of the least favourite economist in the land for giving key note addresses at what is meant to be a celebratory dinner, Judith "You're all Lazy Idiots!" Sloan.

I thought these economists who are outraged at Parkinson being so "political" might have asked themselves the question - who started this in the first place?   Parkinson is leaving his job early because of the sway of the cranky and deluded IPA/Boltardian Right - of which Sloan, Ergas and Davdison are the leading lights (lights with about the same utility as glow in the dark dinosaurs) - because he believes in climate change and has the belief shared by nearly every other economist not of the Catallaxy brand that Australia's successful passage through the GFC probably was in some significant part due to the stimulus policy.

Furthermore, Cormann is not content to wait til Parkinson leaves to be seen endorsing Makin's attack on his views, he's doing it now.

The politicisation of the matter is all of the Right's doing.


Update:  by the way, the IPA's Chris Berg is widely regarded as the most affable of the Institute's talking heads that still get given a ridiculous amount of time on the ABC to sprout their one eyed views.   But his entry into the commentary on the politics and economics of the GFC stimulus last week I think shows him up as just another Right wing economic lightweight who has drunk the IPA kool aid.  [Update:  see how he wasn't taking any strong position on this only 12 months ago?]

It also seems to me that he never talks about climate change.  The most he has said (that I recall) is (my paraphrase) that if you have to have a policy to tackle it, a carbon tax is the way to do it.   (Even Sinclair Davidson has said that in the past I think.)

But anyone who works for the IPA is forever tainted by the fact they make their money from an institute supported by at least one prominent billionaire miner which pays people to ridicule climate science and all policy directed towards reducing CO2.   Berg gets too easy a ride for appearing nice (certainly, he doesn't come across as an aggressive and unpleasant fellow like Roskam)  but he should be shamed for working for the IPA at all.   

Update 2:   the blogging head of the Insane Clown Posse that is Catallaxy (I'm trying out for a sort of Bernard Keane degree of sarcasm today)   Sinclair Davidson joins in the criticism of Parkinson, claiming that Makin's critique is obviously right, and again confirming that the government should be completely political in immediate sackings of public servant heads.

Is all of this angst because Judith isn't getting Parkinson's job?  (Reference to likely joke rumour that I don't believe.)

A warning from an unusual source

Scots, What the Heck? - NYTimes.com

Here's Paul Krugman warning the Scots about having its own government but not its own currency.

An unusual WWI story

World War I: Teenage girl Maud Butler cut hair, dressed as soldier and stowed away on troopship 
If I had read a novel in which this had happened, I would have thought it quite unrealistic...

What is going on at The Economist?

I was going to comment on The Economist's strangely enthusiastic investigation into prostitution, and endorsement of it as a career for those who chose it (not to mention complaining about it being "illiberal" to make it illegal) which appeared about a month ago, but I never got around to it.

Frankly, when economists start talking about things like the sale of bodies and sex, or illicit drugs, they can  work themselves up into enthusiasm for legalisation simply because of the money involved; but their discussions easily become an embarrassingly moral free zone.  Not that I am one to take a hard line stance on the question of legality for prostitution;  as with so many things, I tend to think that Australia gets the balance more right than many of the American States and without the sleaziness of some other countries, too.  But it's embarrassing to see an economics magazine downplay the exploitation inherent in such a large proportion of an "industry".   You certainly get the feeling that the number of women who were involved in compiling the story was nil.

And now we have even more cringeworthy  material appearing in the magazine:  a review of a book on slavery that sought to paint that enterprise as "not all bad".   This post at Boing Boing summarises the matter, and the Economist did withdraw the (anonymous) review and apologise.

Both of these stories indicate to me that something is amiss in the magazine's editorial decisions at the moment.

Update:  on the matter of the status of economics more generally, I thought that Harry Clarke's complaint about how the enthusiasm is now all for econometrics without tying it to theory was interesting.

It perhaps also explains why Piketty's work has been received with such enthusiasm - from what I can gather, it combined the novel compilation of figures with their analysis in terms of theory in a way not seen for some time.

Is it still under warranty?

And one other thing: quite a few people seem to have noticed on the web that Abbott seems to have had a cough or cold in interviews for months and months now. The opinion columnist with the biggest man-crush on Abbott in the world, Greg Sheridan, even questioned today whether Abbott is working himself too hard. Is his cough always a nerves thing? Or does he have some long lingering respiratory ailment? I don't think Mr Superfit is as fit as he used to be...

Schwepped up in history

In my post a few days ago about a book on gin, I noted an extract from the review which mentioned the fountain in the Grand Exhibition of 1851, and gave the impression that it might have flowed with Schweppes tonic water.  Well, that's how I read this sentence:

Tonic wasn’t far behind; at the Great Exhibition of 1851, a 27ft (8.2m) fountain flowed with Schweppes.

But looking at a few websites about the Exhibition, and the fountain, it's clear that, at most, it was mineral water.  (I'm still not sure if there was any carbonation in it.)  Schweppes paid to have the drinks concession, and it was a great success for them.

It's been interesting reading about the Exhibition, and the history of Schweppes, which was the original large scale carbonated water manufacturer.  I was never sure of the fate of the Crystal Palace - but it was relocated after the Exhibition and then burnt down in 1936.   (Good thing it didn't make the bombing raids of World War 2, I guess.)  The fountain went with it, although it is forever incorporated in the Schweppes logo. 

It seems in those days just about anything new was seized upon as being of great health benefit, and the alkaline water craze (hello Paul Sheehan) easily goes back to Erasmus Darwin (!):


Jacob did not stay long in Drury Lane and by 1794 he had moved to 8 Kings Street, Holborn. He soon moved the factory again to 11 Margaret Street, Cavendish Square, Westminster at Michaelmas in 1795. In this street, at various addresses, he remained until he retired. In Geneva Jacob had received the fullest support from the medical profession and the leading physicians. In England, it was Dr. Erasmus Darwin, grandfather of Charles Darwin who became their advocate. For the treatment of "Stone of the Bladder" he prescribe:

A dram of sal soda or of salt of tartar , dissolved in a pint of water, and well saturated with carbonic acid(fixed air), by means of Dr. Nooth’s glass apparatus, and drunk every day, or twice a day, is the most efficacious internal medicine yet discovered, which can easily be taken without any general injury to the constitution. An aerated alcaline of this water is sold under the name of factitious Seltzer water, by J. Schweppe, at no.8 Kings Street, Holborn, London : which I am told is better prepared than can be easily done in the usual glass vessels, probably by employing a greater pressure in wooden ones.

Erasmus Darwin was part of a group of philosophers and inventors who met regularly. In this circle were men such a Josiah Wedgewood the great potter, James Watt, Matthew Boulton (who made Watt’s first steam engine) and Dr.. William Withering. Boulton had been a regular drinker of Schweppes waters from as early as 1794. He told Erasmus Darwin about them and in a letter dated October 1794, he gives a fascinating insight into the waters being sold and the bottles used to contain the:

Mr. J Schweppe, preparer of mineral waters, is the person whom you have heard me speak of and who impregnates it so highly with fixable air as to exceed in appearance Champaign and all other bottled Liquors. He prepares it of three sorts. No 1 is for common drinking with your dinner. No. 2 is for Nephritick patients and No. 3 contains the most alkali and given only in more violent cases. It is contained in strong stone bottles and sold for 6s 6d per doz, including the bottles.

That's today's history.

The disgrace that is Graham Lloyd

The Australian Newspaper’s War On The Bureau of Meteorology � Graham Readfearn
We know that The Australian has been conducting a War on Climate Science for years, but it is still utterly gobsmacking that Graham Lloyd has been publicising the dog-returning-to-its-vomit stories of Marohasy, Jonova, Stockwell and others that the Australian temperature record has been deliberately (and without using the word itself, but clearly implying it continually - fraudulently) manipulated by the Bureau of Meteorology.

Graham Readfern's article above is a good summary.

The only conspiracy going on is in the paranoid imaginations of skeptics.  As Sou notes at Hotwhopper, wannabe King of Skeptics Anthony Watts appears close to breaking point recently.  He's long been a nasty, immature man when it comes to criticism.

And yet fools believe these people.

Wittiest comment of the day

There's an interview with Michael Palin up at the Guardian, because of the publication of the 3rd volume of his diaries.   From comments following, this was the wittiest response possible to a bore claiming he's a bore:

 Lest we forget:

 

Another recipe for my future reference...

Tonight's recipe - Spiced Shepherd's Pie with Pumpkin - found here,  was nice. The spice combination was not overpowering but went well with the mashed pumpkin.   The recipe is too low on the salt, though, and I just used frozen peas instead of silverbeet.  I baked the pumpkin instead of steaming, too, and then mashed it.
 

Ingredients – serves 4

• vegetable or olive oil, for cooking
• 1 onion, chopped
• 500g/18oz minced (ground) lamb
• 2 teaspoons ground coriander
• 2 teaspoons ground cumin
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon dried chilli flakes
• 400g/14oz can diced tomatoes
• 1/2 cup chicken stock (preferably salt reduced)
• 2 tbsp tomato paste
• 4 silverbeet leaves, stalks removed and leaves shredded
• 1kg butternut pumpkin, coarsely chopped
• 1 cup grated cheese
• black pepper, to season

Method:

• Heat a little oil in a non-stick frying pan and cook the onion over a medium heat for 3-5 minutes or until softened.
• Add the minced lamb to the pan and cook, stirring to break up lumps, until browned.
• Add the ground coriander, cumin, cinnamon and chilli flakes to the pan and cook for 2 minutes.
• Stir in the tomatoes, stock and tomato paste and simmer for 10 minutes.
• Heat the oven to 200C/180C fan forced/390F.
• Meanwhile, cook the pumpkin in a large pan of boiling water for approximately 8 minutes or until tender. Drain and then mash the pumpkin in the pan.
• Add the shredded silverbeet to the lamb, stir and cook for a further 5 minutes.
• Place the lamb in an ovenproof dish.
• Top with the mashed pumpkin and spread to cover the lamb.
• Sprinkle over the grated cheese and pepper.
• Bake for 20-25 minutes or until the cheese is golden and bubbly.

Why Saudi ridicule deserves to be ramped up

Readers may rightly note that I'm feeling particularly down on Saudi Arabia at the moment, and John Birmingham in the Sydney Morning Herald this morning helps explain why:

Where, then, are the battalions of those who should be concerned? The Saudi King warns that IS will be in Europe and America within months. The Saudi King, the closest thing we have to an absolute monarch outside of North Korea these days, has at his convenience an army of 75,000 men, including a 1000-strong tank armada which might even give Vladimir Putin a moment's pause if he found them sitting astride some patch of turf he might like to place within his possession. The Royal Saudi Air Force, deploying from bases somewhat closer to the Islamic State than Williamstown, boasts more than 300 combat aircraft, including F15E Strike Eagles and shiny new Eurofighter Typhoons, barely out of their bubblewrap.

And yet, in spite of King Saud's fit of the vapours about the threat of IS, there is no suggestion that these formidable war machines might do anything like deploy from those conveniently located Saudi air fields. No. His oil slaves will do that work. And many in his Kingdom will go on quietly supporting their Sunni brethren in IS.

So why are we going to another war? Surely not because the last one went so well?