But I still want to see a "Kaboom"

From New Scientist, some NASA people think the easiest way to deflect an incoming asteroid is just to park a big spaceship near it and let gentle gravity do its work:

'For a 200-metre-wide asteroid, the spacecraft would need to weigh about 20 tonnes and lurk 50 metres from its target for about a year to change its velocity enough to knock it off course.

"This is hands down the best idea I have seen," says Erik Asphaug, a planetary scientist at the University of California at Santa Cruz. "This will work, but you need to put a large enough spacecraft out there at the right time."

Not even half the fun of an atomic explosion.

Anti anti Globalisation

From The Economist:

"In the past few weeks ..... a fairly bold American proposal for reducing its farm protection has been greeted by a much weaker response from the European Union and none at all from Japan. And ministers from Bastiat's own country, France, have vied with one another to denounce all talk of further reform to the EU's common agricultural policy. Europe must, they say, remain an “agricultural power” even at the expense of the taxpayer and the poor, and, according to President Jacques Chirac, must fight back “liberalism”. Whatever happened to Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité?....

The likeliest outcome both from the Hong Kong meeting and the eventual Doha agreement is a compromise—as always. The European position is feeble but not risible, for it has offered an overall average cut in its farm tariffs of 39%, up from 25% only a month ago, though with rather a lot of loopholes that could severely limit the benefits. France, and other European farm protectionists, may prove more flexible than they currently imply: this is hardly the first time they have promised to man the barricades shortly before striking a deal. ....

Although the case for reducing poverty by sending more aid to the poorest countries has some merit, the experience of China, South Korea, Chile and India shows that the much better and more powerful way to deal with poverty is to use the solution that worked in the past in America, western Europe and Japan: open, trading economies, exploiting the full infrastructure of capitalism (including financial services—see our survey on microfinance) amid a rule of law provided by government. In other words, globalisation."

Vodkapundit on the War on Terror

Vodkapundit's long promised essay is finally there, and it's a pretty good read. Well worth a look.

One thing about his main point (that the West needs to win a media war to win the war on terror) bothers me, though. I have often been amazed at how (gosh, how to put this nicely - here goes -) especially gullible about rumour the Arab world seems to be. There are many, many examples, but the one that sticks in my mind as emblematic was watching hundreds of men shooting and hunting around a Baghdad river on live TV during the Iraq war because there was a rumour that an American pilot had parachuted there from a downed plane. No parachute to be seen, but boats racing up and down, men going into the reeds to find him, hundreds of men pointing excitedly at the river every time they saw a bubble. After a scary 30 minutes (or so I recall it) of wondering if we were about to see an American shot on the spot, turned out there was no one there.

Then, how often do we hear, after some home made bomb goes off in Gaza or Iraq, someone saying it was an American or Israeli plane or missile that came out of the sky, and it seems to be immediately believed by the mob?

I suspect there must be something very cultural about this. I know that all cultures can be prone to believing rumour in the right circumstances, but as I say, I just haven't noticed it to such an extreme extent in other parts of the world.

If I am right about this (and of course this is an extremely subjective judgement for which I have no great body of objective evidence to back up,) it makes the media war for their minds a particular challenge.

Cute USB drives

プレスリリース

Found via Japundit (see link at the side) is a site (link above) showing a range of very cute Japanese designs for USB drives. An example is above.

This made me wonder if anyone had ever made USB earrings. Yes, they have. (The comments about them are pretty funny too.)

I really love USB drives, and wish they could be just built into my body, for convenience sake.

Spielgel Online on France

Rioting in France: What's Wrong with Europe? - International - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News

See link for a very conservative sounding article in Der Spieleg on the problems in France and Europe generally with Muslim migrants. It runs quite close to the Mark Steyn line.

No unseemly gloating please...well, just a little

Today's dramatic events (arrest of 17 suspected terrorists in Sydney & Melbourne) deserve some comments:

* it's rare to see any politician's decision vindicated so quickly. The fact that Howard gains political points out of this is driving Margo Kingston and her readers crazy. She writes in respect of today's press conference:

"His political timing again strangely perfectly tuned to his police arm's actions, Howard smiled throughout, including when he asserted, in the face of mountains of evidence during his reign, that Australia's Commonwealth law enforcement agencies - the ones he's stacked at the top with yes men and favourites - acted independently of the Government. Chilling."

Could have fooled me that the standard semi-grimace that Howard used through the press conference was his smile. I thought he was pretty restrained, and in light of the cynicism expressed of his timing last week, who can be begrudge him this chance to say "I told you I wasn't making it up."

* I also heard on the radio today someone, (I think it might have been the NSW police commissioner, but I am not sure), saying that the 1800 terrorism hotline had proved to be a very successful source of information. Seems all the skepticism about the fridge magnets might have been a misplaced too.

* Generally, I don't mind Kerry O'Brien. But sometimes, he can't help his face showing his gloom at things going unexpectedly well for John Howard. On tonight's 7.30 Report, his expression at the intro reminded me of that he had when it started becoming clear on election night that Howard would be returned with a good majority.

As for his interview with Kelty, I thought it was pretty pathetic to spend so much time on trying to find out when the government was told of the need for the amendment which was rushed through last week. The only reason I can see for sticking to this line of questioning was because it was the last hope of finding a way to criticise the government. (Well, apart from the question of leaks to the media.) Seems Kerry can't accept that the amendment proposal may have been made months ago, without at that time a particular sense of urgency; a decision was made to bundle it with the big Bill; then intelligence made the security services ask for it to be done urgently. Why does that seem so hard to believe?

* Margo Kingston also has a go at the government showing no inclination to investigate leaks to the media (see same link above). She cannot believe Ruddock's claim on Lateline tonight that he is not so sure that there were leaks.

It seems to me that for those leaks attributed to "senior security services", there were so many police involved you may as well not even start to look.

For those attributed to "government sources", I suspect that the risk of perhaps jeopardising the raids, which the leaker would presumably know were coming soon, as against the alleged political benefit of making the leaks, would make it less likely that it would come from anywhere high in the government.

Margo also takes umbridge at Ruddock's suggestion that some journalists were probably only claiming they had received leaks when they had not. Come on Margo, surely that has happened before.

* If anyone wishes to read my lengthy post over at Road to Surfdom today, here it is. (Posted by "Steve".) You might also note that, even tonight, some are still questioning whether the rushed amendment was necessary, despite 3 police commissioner and Bracks saying it was. Talk about taking a horse to water....

Sedition re-visited

Now I have looked at the "final" anti-terror bill and can see why Ruddock agreed to review it again.

The main problem is with the definition of "sedititious intention" (see page 113 of the .pdf version here.) This is the very broad definition which has been getting a fair amount of media attention, as it refers to urging disaffection against (amongst other things) the Government. What's more, there is no defence of acting in good faith, which I thought was probably a drafting error in the first draft of the Bill. (It seems that the old Crimes Act did have this available.) However, it is still not available as a defence in the final Bill. There is also no reference to incitement to violence in this section.

It is, however, very important to note that this definition is only relevant to the "unlawful associations" part of the Crimes Act. For an individual to commit sedition, there is a completely separate section, which does (for the most part) incorporate encouragement to violence as being part of the offence.

This distinction seems to be lost on a bunch of comics who are putting on a concert next weekend to protest the laws.

The Sydney Morning Herald article says this:

"Under the proposed sedition clause, a person can be sentenced to seven years in jail for carrying out, advocating or encouraging seditious intention.That might include "urging" others to feel disaffection with the Government, the constitution or parliament ..."

Well, if I have read the Bill correctly, and I am pretty sure I have, that paragraph muddles up a couple of sections quite badly. The "urging" and "seditious intention" bits are only relevant to this issue of what is an unlawful association. Therefore, the only risk for comedians by "urging" others to have disaffection towards the Government would be if they have formed an association for this purpose and the Attorney General has convinced a Federal Court judge that it should be declared an unlawful association. Yeah, seems a real risk to me.

Individual comedians making jokes or comments "urging disaffection" are therefore not at risk, even theoretically, in my view. If they urge people to take up arms and attack Parliament, well that is a different thing (under the sedition offence section itself.) The "good faith" defence still applies to an individual accused of sedition, as it has been for decades, and as I said in previous post, the new re-write of the "good faith" defence looks like an improvement to me (in favour of the accused, I mean.)

Having said that, I now do agree that the unlawful associations section should be amended. It is too broad, and although I do not think that there is much risk of a Federal Court judge ever agreeing to rule that (say) a trade union that urges disaffection should be an "unlawful association", I can understand why people do not want that theoretical risk. It needs at least the re-instatement of a type of "good faith" defence as applies to the other parts of the sedition laws, as well as being connected to incitement to violence in some way.

I still suspect that the way this has ended up in the Bill may not have been fully intentional.

Mungo has a go

From The Age this morning, Mungo McCallum can still muster up "the rage" about the dismissal. He's not so keen on John Howard and conservatives, in case you didn't know:

"And these days we see the other side of the coin: the Right in full and untrammelled flight, the Right relieved of the need to play Mr Nice Guy to minorities in the Senate.

Now the ugly side of capitalism can be reintroduced, the states overridden, the public service - and even the armed forces and the intelligence services - politicised, ministerial standards trashed, account-ability abandoned, civil liberties ground underfoot, the public good sacrificed to private profit, dissent ridiculed and even criminalised.

Now we will see the triumph of fear and greed over rational idealism, and the utter ruthlessness that lurks behind the avuncular hypocrisy of the professed conservatives. This is the real lesson of the Dismissal, and it is still valid after 30 years."

On the other hand, we might also see a continuing growing economy, a further fall in unemployment, wage growth, continuing great relationship with our near neighbours, some terrorist plans thwarted, no refugees drowning on the high seas, some new ideas in aboriginal matters, and those with Howard Derangement Syndrome still seeing it all as the end of the world. Oh sorry, the last point is a given.

New Farm Park, Brisbane

Tipping off terrorists

The Australian undeniably generally runs a very pro Howard line. So it was a bit of a surpise to note that its editorial on Friday criticising him for the timing of the terror threat announcement. But the piece was a bit all over the place, and everything is almost back to normal in today's editorial, which offers strong support for the legislation.

On Friday, they criticised Howard for leaving himself open to the charge that he made the announcement for his own political benefit. But how much consideration has been given to alternative ways Howard could have dealt with it?

My point is this: if Howard had not made the announcement and tried to sneak the amendment through quietly, who could possibly think that Bob Brown and the Greens would not have demanded loudly an explanation as to why one little bit of the Anti Terror Bill had to be rushed through now? Peter Hartcher in the SMH suggested that "the amendment could have been dealt with unobtrusively in the usual course of business" but I find this impossible to believe. The government is copping enough flack as it is over its procedures in speeding through the lengthy Bill. If it suddenly introduced this one amendment unexpectedly ahead of the rest, surely it would have been accused of doing amendments "by stealth," or some such, and the media would have only been too happy to speculate at length as to why Howard was adopting such an unusual tactic. I would bet money that such speculation would involve the words "heightened terrorist threat". The astute terrorist would surely have noticed that something was up.

Howard did say that he was damned if he did and damned if he didn't announce the new terrorist warning. But I took the "damned if he didn't" part to refer to being damed if there was a terror incident in the near future and the warning Howard received had not been made public. But as I say, he would also be damned politically if he did the amendment with no explanation, and in my opinion in the process the terrorist planners would have noticed something going on anyway.

The Australian today gives more background as to why the amendment was made urgently, and notes that there was considerable debate between ASIO and the AFP over whether Howard should explain why it was needed. Ruddock says that the agencies (presumably ASIO and the AFP) also approved the form of words used in the announcement. It was therefore certainly not a "one man show" when it came to this decision, but I think early critics of the move gave the impression it was likely a spontaneous, cynical and careless act by Howard.

Update: John Howard had his own "column" in the Herald Sun today and ran pretty closely with the same argument I described above in his defence. Great minds think alike (haha).

Aliens and me

I haven't recommended a book review for a while. This one on Slate, about a new book looking at claims of alien abduction, is interesting.

The late John Mack, who gets a mention in the review, came to Brisbane sometime in the mid 1990's and I saw him giving a talk at the University of Qld. He seemed pretty reasonable, and indicated that he had some documentary in the making with very interesting interviews with "abductees", but I don't know if he ever finished it or had a distributor. He was definitely of the Jacques Vallee school of Ufology (believing that it was all more of a paranormal thing that a matter of nuts and bolts spaceships.)

One of the (very few) disappointments I have with the internet is how difficult it is to find "credible" sites about UFOs. Of course, there are a zillion sites that really, really believe in them. But sites which are neither overly skeptical nor overly credulous have been very hard for me to locate. I would welcome suggestions from my vast international readership!

Amusing science headline of the day

Scientists Show How Thinking Can Harm Brain Cells

The story itself is only moderately interesting.

Anti terror errors

* I hope everyone saw this bit from LGF: Village Voice runs an apparently serious piece saying some activists are trying to get Cindy Sheehan to run for President. What a hoot that would be.

* Surprisingly few letters to the Sydney Morning Herald expressing skepticism about the timing of the terror threat announcement by John Howard. One letter doesn't understand which legislation is being rushed through "overnight" either. Should letters editors permit clear mistakes of fact go through? (I don't like the new website layout much either. Requires too much additional clicking.)

* There is also an opinion piece in the SMH by a publisher (Nick Parsons) complaining that the new anti terror laws attack free speech as it may make his company an "unlawful association" because it publishes books which are arguably seditious. Funny thing is that, as far as I can see, the new legislation (I am looking at the Stanhope published version) does not create the unlawful associations provisions at all - they have been in place for some years. The article implies that these provisions are completely new. Go have a look at the Crimes Act s.30A and see for yourself.

The writer talks of the "good faith" provisions not applying to the "unlawful associations" part of the Act as a result of the new Bill. He might be right, although it is not clear to me wether this was deliberate or an accident of drafting. (The new Bill amends several bits of legislationa and mistakes can happen.)

I think he is clearly wrong when he says: "Unfortunately, the bill makes no special allowance for criticism, political or otherwise. What it says is that sedition is an offence, regardless of how it is committed, or by whom."

But he then points out that there is a "good faith" provision which his company, as an association, may not have the benefit of.

If you read the good faith section of the Bill, it seems plain that legitimate criticism is what it would protect.

This opinion piece is in my view seriously misleading. SMH luvvies will be lapping it all up, though.

Update: I found this submission by a Sydney academic lawyer about the sedition laws. In one section he complains that the "good faith" defence is too narrow and technical, and "might", for example, mean that teaching a class about opposing views to those of the government could not use the defence.

My problem with this is that the "new" good faith defence - see s.80.3 in the Stanhope bill linked above - is extremely similar to the "old" good faith defence in s.24F of the Crimes Act, which the notes indicate was inserted in 1960! If anything, the new definition is better, in that it is clear in the second part that the government wants the court (when deciding whether "good faith" applies or not) to look at the question of how the comments make relate to the incitement of violence.

Why wasn't the old section dealing with "good faith" the subject to criticism by these lawyers for the past 45 years? Just how many teachers have been charged with sedition under the present laws? Why give the impression to people that it is something new?

I stand by my comments above that it is clear that the good faith provisions will protect the "usual" criticism of the government, particularly when there is no question of it being a case of urging violence. To argue otherwise is silly, and misleading, scaremongering by lawyers and lefties.

Shock! Horror! Left wing discovers sedition!

Janet Albrechtsen in The Australian makes the witty point this morning about the Fairfax press and its readership:

" AUSTRALIA has a new measure of sound public policy. Called the Fairfax Index, it works like this. The more hysterical the hyperbole on a particular topic on the Fairfax opinion pages and the greater the number of progressive pen pals spilling their outrage on the Fairfax letters pages, the more likely it is that the target of their anguish is good public policy. Using the Fairfax Index, the latest anti-terrorism laws must represent very sound public policy indeed."

I was somewhat chuffed to find my blog made Margo Kingston's page yesterday, presumably because of my "clever" heading on a previous post. Funny thing is, it seems to have done almost nothing to my hit rate, which may say something about the number of Margo's readership at the moment.

But the main point of today's post is just to make clear what some others have already pointed out, but no letter writers to Fairfax seem to acknowledge. Namely, the offence of sedition, in terms very similar to that in the anti terrorist legislation, has been around since 1914. The easiest way to check this out is to use the very handy Austlii site, which has links to all Commonwealth and State legislation.

Here is section 24 A of the Crimes Act 1914:

"Definition of seditious intention

An intention to effect any of the following purposes, that is to say:

(a) to bring the Sovereign into hatred or contempt;
(d) to excite disaffection against the Government or Constitution of the Commonwealth or against either House of the Parliament of the Commonwealth;
(f) to excite Her Majesty's subjects to attempt to procure the alteration, otherwise than by lawful means, of any matter in the Commonwealth established by law of the Commonwealth; or
(g) to promote feelings of ill-will and hostility between different classes of Her Majesty's subjects so as to endanger the peace, order or good government of the Commonwealth;

is a seditious intention."

Here is section 24D:

"Seditious words

(1)

Any person who, with the intention of causing violence or creating public disorder or a public disturbance, writes, prints, utters or publishes any seditious words shall be guilty of an indictable offence.

Penalty: Imprisonment for 3 years."

Now certain acts done in good faith are not sedition by virtue of s.24F, but it is too long to post here.

The new anti terrorist bill in fact amends the Commonwealth Criminal Code. But the basic terms of "seditious intention" are very close to those listed above. The offence itself is worded differently, but there is still a section providing for criticism done in good faith not being sedition.

It seems to me that the Premiers know that the changes here are not dramatic, because I have noticed little (or none?) of their criticism as being about this part of the Bill. It is pretty funny how the Sydney Morning Herald readers have lived under legislation of very similar effect all of their lives, but only now (that it is a Howard government) has it become the greatest threat to democracy, freedom of speech, etc, ever seen.

Update: OK, I have found a lengthy Margo Kingston post which does set out (via a legal opinion Peter Garrett obtained) the differences between the new law and the old. So Margo's readers were at least aware of the old law. (Not that it seems to have made any difference.)

As I have said before, lawyers were designed to disagree. It should come as no shock that some can be found (including QC's or SC's) who will criticise this bill. I think this particular opinion in Margo's piece is very contentious. No time to set out why now, but if you read it, I think you will see what I mean.

Yoghurt hands

Could Plain Soap And Probiotics Beat Hospital Bugs?

The story above suggests that hospital doctors may be better off dipping their hands in yoghurt after washing them with plain soap, rather than using antiseptic soap or lotions. Hopefully, it would be a case of good bateria crowding out the bad. (I had read before that one of the problems with frequent handwashing by doctors is that they can get drier, cracked skin which allows more places for bacteria to hide. But I think that was one reason - in addition to their being easier to use- that several hospitals overseas use mositurising alcohol wipes instead of soap or lotions with water.)

I am sure there is a joke to be made out of the idea of your surgeon dipping his hand in yoghurt, but can't think of it yet.

Mosquitoes in England?

Malaria research given �28m boost | the Daily Mail

See link above for story about the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine getting big money fromm the Gates Foundation to work on anti malaria measures.

Isn't it a little odd that they do this work in England? Do mosquitoes exist there at all even in summer? Can't some tropical (or semi tropical) country do this work and not have to import the mosquitoes?

Just wondering..

Anyway, good on you Gates.

Round up all the Muslims and exterminate them

The title is what letter writer Vincent Zankin in last Saturday's Sydney Morning Herald thinks is John Howard's real agenda:

"It seems Muslims are neither welcome here, nor can they be trusted, because the Government's involvement in the war on terrorism means that this country is at war with the religion of Islam.

This is why Mr Daye was treated as though he were an enemy combatant, and the sooner we stand up to this gross injustice, then the sooner this nation will be spared the infamy of heading towards another Holocaust."

(The story about Mr Daye was that his house was raided by ASIO by mistake shortly after 9/11.)

Zankin(who has long suffered Howard Derangement Syndrome) has attracted many comments over the years in the Australian right wing blogosphere (check Google,) but I think the above letter is likely his all time personal best. (For moonbat dribbling hyperbole.) Of course, the reward for this is having your letter on top of the pile in the Saturday SMH.

The other letter from that edition (see same link above) that was so breathtakingly wrongheaded was this:

"Why not urge our Government to try making friends instead of alienating just about everyone except their powerful business and American cronies?

The refugee policy, the invasion of Iraq, the downgrading of support for the United Nations, the patronising attitude to South Pacific nations and the refusal to say sorry to indigenous people are just the beginning of the long list of ways in which this Government has put Australia "on the nose" for fair-minded people around the globe and at home.

No wonder it wants to hide behind repressive laws and razor wire. It has made a lot of enemies.

Michael McGrath Manly Vale"

Where to start? Let's see: which country exactly did our refugee policy upset? Invading Iraq: well I suppose it upset the then murderous dictatorship, but who else is now "our enemy" over it, even they think it was a mistake. Downgrading support to the UN: don't know much about that, but we did giving direct aid and assistance at much greater rate than the UN could after the asian tsunami. The patronising attitude to our South Pacific neighbours: I suppose like helping at least 2 of them (Solomon Islands and PNG) restore law and order by putting our Federal Police there in potential harm's way. For God's sake, even Phillip Adams praised the Solomon Islands effort. Failing to apologise to the aborigines? Like that rates as a big issue anywhere other than in the innner city enclaves of the Left in Sydney and Melbourne.

Relations with all those countries who are either physically near to us (such as Indonesia) or our trading partners (US, Japan, China etc) appear to have never been better. (And I love the fact that this must really annoy Paul Keating.)

The Howard government has only "alienated" those individuals, like McGrath, who would never have voted for it in the first place. Dill.

Pearson on IR reform, and minimum wages

The Australian: Christopher Pearson: No job? No cash? Sod off [October 29, 2005]

I just read Christopher Pearson's weekend column on IR reform (link above), and this part is particularly interesting:

"In the US, not only is there no social security safety net to speak of but the minimum wage is little more than 30 per cent of median full-time adult earnings. In Britain, which has a social security system similar to our own, the Low Pay Commission has set the minimum wage at 43 per cent of median full-time adult earnings.

In Australia, thanks to the AIRC, the minimum wage is 58.4 per cent of median earnings, the highest ratio in any of the 12 comparable Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development economies. It's worth noting that the AIRC, without conceding any adverse effect on employment from raising its cost, has belatedly let minimum wages fall by all of 2.2 per cent relative to median earnings since 1996.

The Howard Government is proposing that the last award by the AIRC become the benchmark for minimum wages, so that they will be eroded by time and inflation rather than any sudden intervention"

It sure indicates that the expected gradual lowering of the minimum wage to even something like the equivalent of Britain's is going to take quite a few years; which would have to be good politically for the Liberals at the next election.

Sydney Morning Herald - if it's anti Bush, it's in

The SMH today reprints Joe Wilson's column from the Los Angeles Times in which he has another go at the Bush Administration.

Of course, the most important thing about the whole affair - whether or not Wilson got it right on the Iraq uranium issue - is left completely out of the picture. (As is Wilson's own admissions about how he "misspoke" about when he saw the fake letter.)

In fact, Wilson still insists in today's piece that he is right and the CIA and British Intelligence were wrong:

"I knew that the statement in Bush's speech - that Iraq had attempted to purchase significant quantities of uranium in Africa - was not true. I knew it was false from my own investigative trip to Africa (at the request of the CIA) and from two similar intelligence reports. And I knew that the White House knew it."

Of course, many people will believe this because the White House itself, prematurely and rather strangely in hindsight (all to do with political infighting with the CIA, apparently), did back away from the claim soon after Wilson wrote his original column.

The best summary of all of this is, I think, on the Factcheck.org site, with its further links to other material.

Now the Sydney Morning Herald, if it had any interest in keeping its readers aware of what the facts are, and how Wilson has been largely discredited in his original claims, would balance today's opinion piece with an article which spells out the facts around Wilson's Iraq uranium claims.

In fact, I think it would be outrageous to let Wilson's paragraph above go uncontradicted.

But I am not going to hold my breathe waiting for the SMH to do this.

More interesting than all that Plame stuff

I knew Gene Roddenberry deliberately made Star Trek into a unisex, equal opportunity version of the future, but I never knew that Sulu would turn out to be gay.

I guess no one on the Enterprise had much of a love life anyway, except for Kirk, Spock (sort of, in his "Spock on Heat" episode) and I am straining to think if any of the others may have had a love interest for one episode.

For what it's worth, the original series, and a few of the movies, were worth watching, but it always seemed to me that "Next Generation" and all subsequent incarnations were repeating the same sort of storylines. I couldn't be bothered watching them.