Janet on mock outrage

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

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

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

And on the Labor party reaction generally:

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

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

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

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

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

UPDATE

Here's Carr from the Sydney Morning Herald today:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Huey Dewey & ...Gooey

Woman Helps Ill Duck, but State Seizes It

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

I like this part from the Yahoo link above:

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

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

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

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


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

Women in Pain

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

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

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

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

Hitchens -V- Jon Stewart

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

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

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

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

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

Dangerous "research"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Feeling unloved..or at least unread

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Downsides of cycling

Research On Bicycle Saddles And Sexual Health Comes Of Age

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

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

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

And this line I like:

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

Indeed!

Unhappy in Canada too

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

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

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

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

Sound familiar?

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

Very familiar.

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

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

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

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

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

Giant green lizards take over Florida

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

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

Oh, and personally I blame John Howard.

Whining lefties..

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

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

Martin writes:

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

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

And he ends with:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Anyone out there into moral philosophy?

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

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

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

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

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

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

More on space radiation

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

"Active" shields have a lot of practical problems.

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

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

Any wonder Beattie lost two seats?

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

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

A new type of space suit at last?

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

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

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

Someone finally says it

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

As Rosemay Neill says:

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

What a pleasure to read such common sense.

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

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

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

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

Ann Coulter on Maureen Dowd

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

As Ann says:

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

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

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

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

Good reading on North Korea

The New Yorker: The Critics: Books

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

Media Watch on Red Cross canapes

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

Hitchens on Cindy Sheehan

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

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

In the papers today

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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