Howard, Costello, etc

The 7.30 Report - ABC

It seems to me that the media, and the ABC in particular, is disproportionately salivating over the issue of just how much Costello and Howard like/dislike each other.

The bottom line is this: Costello has felt hard done by for years, and we already knew that. But, for whatever reason, Costello polls very poorly in preferred PM stakes compared to Howard. No one in their right mind, including Costello, would think that means its a good idea to do a leadership swap now.

The only issue of relevance to the election is Howard being put under pressure to declare that he will really hand over the leadership in the next term. But, surely this time, that's a given anyway.

So Kerry, Tony, Michelle, that's about it really. Go have a Bex and a good lie down and find something else to talk about.

Unfortunate positioning

Quake-hit atomic plant sits atop a fault line | The Japan Times Online

From the article:

The fault along which Monday's magnitude-6.8 earthquake occurred appears to extend right beneath Niigata Prefecture's Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear plant, the world's largest atomic power complex, an analysis of aftershock data by the Meteorological Agency showed Wednesday.

Seems to me to be a good argument for the modular, smaller Pebble Bed Reactor. To get a big power station, you just string a half dozen of them together, and the modular design (I imagine) would mean less risk of all of them being taken out at once in one earthquake or other disaster.

Dr Haneef

There's a couple of things about this case that I haven't noticed being said yet:

1. One of the consequences of Dr H deciding to fight the Commonwealth's decision to revoke his visa is that the surety has not been paid and he is spending the next few weeks in remand in Brisbane instead of at Villawood Detention Centre in Sydney (where people undergoing immigration detention are kept.) The detention in Brisbane is described in The Age as follows:

Queensland Corrective Services Minister Judy Spence said Haneef would face a different regime to other prisoners.

He would be allowed no contact with other inmates and would be given an hour a day to exercise. Ms Spence said Haneef would be managed as a terror prisoner under terrorism legislation.

"Anyone who is charged under terrorist legislation is obviously seen as a greater threat to the good order of our society than other type of prisoners," she said. "A terrorist prisoner is required to be held apart from the mainstream prison population, so he will be held in a segregated environment."

It seems certain that the Villawood detention centre would have conditions nothing like this, as he would be bailed on the criminal charge and simply be there as a visa-less person awaiting his ticket overseas after the trial on the Brisbane charge.

I wonder whether his lawyers have made this clear to him, as spending a few more weeks in custody as a terrorist subject is a serious issue. (There is also the issue of the ease with which he can get access to lawyers when in Villawood. However, it's not like Sydney is a million miles from Brisbane, and I expect telephone contact is readily available. Who is paying for his representation anyway? That has never been made clear to me.)

2. I am curious as to what people think about this hypothetical: if the doctor were lodging his visa application today, after the attempted attacks in England by the relatives he has obviously been close to, should the government approve his visa? What would the media reaction be if it was disclosed that he had been approved to come here, despite the family connections, and sharing the same profession?

Should the government in that circumstance simply accept the applicant's claim that he knew nothing of his relative's plans, and only ever had "innocent" association with them?

If you think that the government in that hypothetical situation should not approve the visa application, acting on a precautionary principle, then how could you really complain about the government revoking his visa now?

There is too much hot air blowing around this case, mainly from lawyers. I don't like the media and other's role too (whoever was leaking before the barrister did too.) It's reflecting badly on both sides if you ask me, but I still don't think the government is going to (or should) lose on the issue of deporting him.

How England became England

New Scientist reports how the English Channel appears to have been carved out in a giant "mega flood".

Such stories of spectacular geological events are always interesting. The English Channel event was about 500,000 years ago, though. The flooding of the Black Sea is more interesting due to its affecting people.

The famous playwright

Dazzled again by Stoppard's big ideas

I wish Tom Stoppard plays were produced more often in this country. He seems to be the only English playwright of the last 30 years who deserves fame for having such a combination of wit and intellect.

But he's turning 70! I don't know that there is really anyone on the horizon who is likely to replace him.

From the "only in Japan" files

Sex seems to be the topic of quite a few posts here so far this week, and it's not even spring yet. Still, who can resist looking at some highly amusing packaging for Japanese condoms? (I think I may have seen some of these around the web before, but here they are together with some funny commentary.)

Found via the entertaining Japundit.

Questioning everything about CO2

In a series of posts late last year, I explained that the effect of increasing ocean acidification from the rapid rise in CO2 levels over the next century was enough for me to drop scepticism about the worthiness of programs to seriously reduce CO2 emissions. The benefit of this approach means you don't really have to continue worrying about who is right in terms of how much the temperature will increase, and what effect it will have on climate generally.

Still, it is interesting to see that arxiv has published last week a very lengthy article arguing that the physics of CO2 warming is completely wrong. (Maybe this argument has already been discredited, as I haven't followed all of the skeptics arguments all that closely over the years. It is hard to believe that thousands of other scientists are wrong.)

In any event, it would be nice if we didn't get as hot as predicted because of misunderstood atmospheric physics.

On marriage

Madeleine Bunting has an interesting column in The Guardian about the political response in England to high rates of family break up.

I don't agree with her conclusion (politicians should just give up on trying to promote marriage, and just make sure that there are plenty of services to ease the effect of separation on children.) Still, there is interesting information in the article, such as:

Relationship breakdown is not caused simply by poverty and inequality - they may contribute as a stress factor, but something else is going on too. Some of the world's highest separation rates are in Scandinavia, yet countries such as Sweden and Denmark are among the most equal and have the lowest rates of poverty. Other commentators attribute relationship breakdown to increasing working hours and the pressures of employment, but most Scandinavian working cultures are genuinely family friendly.

Just remember that when the ACTU and Labor party go on about Workchoices being bad for families!

She does allow that some deeper cultural issues are probably at play:

What's also involved is that a set of cultural assumptions about how to conduct long-term relationships, and what can be expected of them, have gone seriously askew - as one thirtysomething father said ruefully after the break-up of his relationship, "our generation just can't do it". The right likes to call this moral breakdown, but it's more tragic than that - often it's a kind of lack of emotional capability.

To which I quite liked this response from commenter simonx:

Why on earth are Guardian writers so loathe to praise and support the institution of marriage?

.....today, we have Ms Bunting blaming the break-up of relationships on a ' lack of emotional capability.' Yet loyalty itself should not be dependent, surely, on the whims of emotion. Instead, it is founded on the solemn promises and commitments couples make to each other when children become part of their relationship. There's nothing which underlines these vows better, surely, than the symbolism of marriage.

For the record

I really don't like The Australian's new website design. (What is it about News Limited: I have never learned to like the last re-design of the The Times website either.)

The blue pill that's good for the economy

The widespread use of Viagra seems to be causing significant problems, according to a long article in The Times. Some young idiots find it necessary to counter the effects of ecstacy:

Hayley, a 24-year-old fast-track civil servant, said men in her social circle take Viagra because it counters the effect of cocaine and ecstasy, which raise lust but cause impotence. “By about 3am you might have run out of everything else, so you might get two girls and a guy, or maybe a bigger group, taking Viagra and going off to have sex for the next three hours. With Viagra, guys can do it again and again.

So it would seem, according to a young man who gets it from a mate who fools his GP into giving him scripts:

“With Viagra you can do it four or five times in a row,” says Olly. “I’m sure I wouldn’t be completely crap at sex without it, but it puts your mind at rest that you’ll be able to perform.”

Even at the lust filled age of 24, there is something seriously wrong with wanting to "do it four or five times in a row", isn't there? I presume that the other recreational drugs might have something to do with the desire, as Hayley said.

The article goes on to explain that Vaigra use, and the husband's subsequent pressuring of the wife to have sex, is being increasing cited in divorce cases. Sounds plausible.

Yet there are doctors who won't have any of this talk of a downside:

John Dean, a doctor specialising in sexual medicine in London who took part in the original trials of Viagra, insists that its use has brought happiness to millions of couples, saved the cost of treating epidemics of depression and other illnesses linked to mental health, and allowed many men to increase their economic productiveness.

Finally, the key to never ending economic growth. I like this part too:

Pfizer is trying to persuade the Department of Health to allow routine NHS prescription of the drug, and it is developing a programme to help GPs recognise erectile dysfunction.

"Hullo, hullo, hullo. What's this we've got here? Erectile dysfunction I do believe. Wouldn't have recognized that unless Pfizer told me what to look for.."

All very interesting.

Monday Miscellany

There's a few things which I have read lately but haven't yet mentioned:

* It's been there for a couple of weeks, but there's an interesting interview in The Observer with an American author of a book comparing international attitudes to adultery. She points out that different countries have different "scripts" that most people expect to be followed in the course of adultery:

The key points of the American script resonate so strongly, it's almost tedious. For example - the first rule of infidelity in the US and the UK is that it becomes understandable, borderline-permissible even, if the prospective cheat says they're unhappy in their marriage. 'And of course,' says Druckerman, 'everyone has flaws in their marriages, things that aren't quite perfect... but here and the US, you start complaining about your marriage, and that way, you're not some lousy guy who cheats on his wife because he wants sex, you're a puppy dog who's looking for love.' Which might sound so trite that it hardly merits comment - until you consider the Japanese script, in which a cheating man praises his wife to his girlfriend, to demonstrate that he's a good husband.

I read a short novel about an Englishman having an affair in Japan a couple of years ago. He didn't mention his wife to his girlfriend, but then again, he was English. One thing the novel did point out, though, was that one of the hazzards of breaking up with a lover in Japan was the risk that she would commit suicide. The whole issue of the cultural attitude to adultery in Japan is an interesting topic. (A purely theoretical interest on my part, I hasten to add!)


* Speaking of Japan, I am currently reading "Across the Nightingale Floor", the first of a series of fairly popular novels set in a semi-fictionalised medieval Japan by Australian author Lian Hearn.

I am very impressed so far. The genre is a little hard to describe, as it contains a fantasy element, but it is really just a case of some characters having psychic abilities. (Sort of like psychic ninja, in a way.) I don't feel that the introduction of that alone means "fantasy" is an appropriate description for what I am reading.

I can say that the novel really has a very authentic sense of place. (I have spent my fair share of time around old Japanese temples, historical villages and castles.) The writing style is not overly ornate, but it has a very visual or "cinematic" quality to it, and it is a pleasure to read. I think it would be very easy material to convert to a screenplay.

I see from Hearn's website that Frank Marshall and Kathleen Kennedy (who have produced many films with Spielberg, and generally have a good track record) have acquired the film rights. I reckon it would make a great movie, except one would hope they use Japanese actors instead of Chinese, as in Memoirs of a Geisha. (That was one spectacularly good looking film, by the way, but the story only so-so.)

* Nick Cohen talks about the odd fact that, once Middle East terrorists really became a serious threat to the West, Hollywood stopped making films about them. He points out that the BBC drama "Spooks" went even one better:

The 2006 series of Spooks, for example, showed Islamist suicide bombers taking over the Saudi Arabian embassy. Nothing too far-fetched in that; real MI5 agents are running themselves ragged as they try to close down terror cells. The BBC's novel twist was that its fictional MI5 agents discovered that the Islamists weren't Islamists at all, just Mossad agents in disguise engaged in the perennial Jewish conspiracy.

An interesting read as usual.

* The Guardian has a "Comment is Free" article by a prominent gay activist who complains that, despite vast improvements in their legal position, homosexuals still have to put up with a lot of prejudice and hate, and suggests that in fact the title "gay" should be given up. (He suggests that bisexuality, or simply fluid sexuality, is more prominent than people realise.)

The odd thing about his argument is that he starts with a (I think) jokey thought that inadvertently shows why "gay" has an image problem:

I had a gratifyingly zeitgeist moment the other day in one of London's smarter clubs. It had met with a spot of bother; people were going into the loo cubicles together to share lines of coke. So now the loo doors brandish a strict sign: 'Any two people found in this cubicle using drugs will be ejected from the club.' And I just thought of a member of staff knocking on the door when a boyfriend and I were over-amorously engaged therein and being able to say: 'Don't worry we're just having sex,' and the doorman saying: 'OK. Carry on.'

It seems very odd to me that he doesn't realise that he is encouraging an image of gay men which he is seemingly arguing against in the rest of the article. If you want to "normalise" an image of sexuality, you don't do it by suggesting that toilets are appropriate place for sex, whether gay, straight or some other colour. Similarly, hasn't the concept of a gay Mardi Gras outlived its overall political usefulness? If you truly want to blend into a society and not be treated differently, why run a parade which has such an "in your face" approach to its participant's sexuality? As with sex in a toilet, it is far from dignified, and (I would argue) counterproductive in terms of changing the minds of those who may already either hate, dislike, or just be sceptical of, the whole modern Western concept of gay identity.

Something you didn't know

If you want some esoteric information to share around the dinner table tonight, try this. The keeping of rats as pets (in England, at least) seems to have started with Jack Black, who Wikipedia describes as:

...rat-catcher and mole destroyer by appointment to Her Majesty Queen Victoria during the middle of the Nineteenth Century. Black cut a striking figure in his self-made "uniform" of scarlet topcoat, waistcoat, and breeches, with a huge leather belt inset with cast-iron rats.

The title "mole destroyer" has a certain ring to it, don't you think? As Wikipedia goes on to explain:

When he caught any unusually coloured rats, he bred them, to establish new colour varieties. He would sell his home-bred domesticated coloured rats as pets, mainly, as Black observed, "...to well-bred young ladies to keep in squirrel cages." Beatrix Potter is believed to have been one of his customers, and she dedicated the book Samuel Whiskers to her rat of the same name. The more sophisticated ladies of court kept their rats in dainty gilded cages, and even Queen Victoria herself kept a rat or two.

How would you all manage without me providing such vital information?

Not common knowledge

Christopher Pearson's column in The Australian today talks about the "noble savage" view of aboriginal society, and mentions some extracts from Louis Nowra's recent book "Bad Dreaming".

While most people have probably heard of the traditional custom of female "child brides" in some aboriginal groups (as it is indeed still an issue today), I for one had not heard before of the customary pederasty in some aboriginal groups:

Nowra notes evidence of "boy-wife arrangements that are known to have existed late into the end of the 19th century", citing the work of Carl Strehlow. "Pederasty is a recognised custom among the Arunta and has a name, kwalanga. It prevails especially among the Western Loritja and tribes north of the MacDonnell Range, the Katitja, Ilpara, Warramunga, etc. Commonly a man, who is fully initiated but not yet married, takes a boy 10 or 12 years old, who lives with him for several years."...

Nowra comments: "Boys in a boy-wife arrangement were called chookadoo (about age five) or mullawongah (ages five to seven). Some boys could remain in such a marriage up until the age of 11 ... Even into the 1930s, there was evidence of homosexuality (among) the Kimberley Aborigines. The youths of 17 or 18 who were still unmarried would take boys of 10 or 11 as lovers.

"The women did not regard it as shameful and considered the practice a temporary substitute for marriage."

Heterosexual abuse gets a mention too:

Nowra's evidence of heterosexual abuse is just as compelling. For example, he says that "when a nine or 10-year-old girl was handed over to her husband, there was generally no sexual intercourse (until) after puberty" but notes anthropologist Phyllis Kaberry's caveat that "sexual intercourse without penetration did take place but infrequently".

Anthropology has never been a huge interest for me, but common sense has always suggested that it is one of the "softest" sciences in which political and personal prejudices of academics in the field have played a huge role. It seems to me that such prejudices are behind the lack of common knowledge of the harshness of sexual and other aspects of many traditional aboriginal societies.

Too much

It's reaching the bottom of the barrel when I post about Rosie O'Donnell, but some days the regular news just doesn't inspire me much.

In case you have never seen it, Rosie O'Donnell maintains a blog (of sorts) which regularly features video addresses to her admirers. Her girlfriend/partner and kids feature sometimes too.

This is a good example of one of her video entries. Go have a look and see if you agree with my observations:

a. Without make up, a hair do and studio lighting, she becomes startlingly unattractive.

b. The way she interacts with her girlfriend/partner makes it seem like a relationship dominated by Ms O'Donnell.

c. She is currently on one of her gay family cruises, alone, as her partner has had a neck operation. If Rosie has a shipboard romance, would she blog about it? Probably. This sort of exposure of a happy domestic life just feels like a set up for a spectacular fall. (It's like couples who renew marriage vows. Don't do it! It will make you look much more of a goose than necessary when one of you has an affair within a year.)

Hitting the jackpot while spending a penny

Money flows free in men's toilets in Japan - ABC News

That heading was too hard to resist, sorry.

Anyhow, the story is that visiting a public toilet can be very profitable for some in Japan:

The suburban sprawl of Saitama, north of Tokyo, does not make the news that often. But it is not everyday that someone visiting the toilet finds a box of 10,000 yen notes - each worth $A100, each wrapped in a traditional Japanese paper envelope.

Reports of the find in the Saitama local government headquarters flushed out similar incidents across the country...

The first case now seems to have been in September 2006, in Shizuoka prefecture in central Japan. Similar events have been reported in 18 of Japan's 47 prefectures, from Hokkaido in the north to Okinawa in the south.

National broadcaster NHK has tallied up the figures and believes around 400 envelopes have been found - the equivalent of $40,000.

Galactic geeks for science

Found via New Scientist: there's a potential contribution to science that you can make by looking at and categorising galaxies.

It's not just letting your computer grind away in the background on processing radio signals for alien contact, or working out how proteins fold; you have to use your own brain. As the site explains:

Welcome to GalaxyZoo , the project which harnesses the power of the internet - and your brain - to classify a million galaxies. By taking part, you'll not only be contributing to scientific research, but you'll view parts of the Universe that literally no-one has ever seen before and get a sense of the glorious diversity of galaxies that pepper the sky.

Why do we need you?
The simple answer is that the human brain is much better at recognising patterns than a computer can ever be. Any computer program we write to sort our galaxies into categories would do a reasonable job, but it would also inevitably throw out the unusual, the weird and the wonderful. To rescue these interesting systems which have a story to tell, we need you.

Go have a look. The inner Geek in me finds this very appealing, and I'm very tempted to sign up.

Star rock's cot noping?

According to the Courier Mail:

Mr Garrett yesterday refused to say when he last took a drag on a joint but stood by an earlier statement saying it wasn't with Daniel Johns and it was a long time ago.

The rock star-cum-political wunderkind fronted the media yesterday after a speech on global warming and the tourism industry but the one burning question was about his own hazy past.

Even those observing his speech to the Tourism and Transport Forum could have been forgiven for thinking he was a touch out of it.

At one point he said he would "brief speakly" about part of the issue before criticising the Federal Government's funding cuts to heritage protection. Unfortunately he referred to them as "cunding futs", which briefly alarmed many in the audience.

It's all relative

Report: Iranian adulterer stoned to death

From the article:

A man convicted of adultery was stoned to death last week in a village in northern Iran, a judiciary spokesman said Tuesday, the first time in years that the country has confirmed such an execution....

Death sentences are carried out in Iran after they are upheld by the Supreme Court. Under Iran’s Islamic law, adultery is punishable by stoning...

Under Islamic rulings, a man is usually buried up to his waist, while a woman is buried up to her neck with her hands also buried. Those carrying out the verdict then throw stones until the condemned dies.

Capital offenses in Iran include murder, rape, armed robbery, apostasy, blasphemy, serious drug trafficking, adultery or prostitution, treason and espionage.

Meanwhile, in Australia, civil rights types are griping that anti-terrorism laws don't have an automatic time limit on detention:

Terrorism law experts and civil libertarians called for a limit on the time a suspect can be held without charge under the Anti-Terrorism Act, while Dr Haneef's lawyer, Peter Russo, said his client had fewer rights than someone charged with a criminal offence, as he couldn't even apply for bail.

"That's the craziness in the legislation," Mr Russo said. "There should be a mechanism for review. We need to put some balance in the system that has got some accountability."

This despite the fact that extensions have to be approved by a court, which has already not been granting the length of extensions sought by the police. (The stoned Iranian adulterer, by the way, had spent 11 years in custody before he was killed.)

Call me when the Magistrate starts granting 3 months extensions, rather than 48 hour ones, and then I might care.

A completely expected answer

Rudd stone cold on marijuana - National - theage.com.au

The least likely man in the universe to have ever tried marijuana confirms he has never smoked marijuana. (Nor have I, so I don't criticise politicians who haven't. Still, isn't it sort of funny to think that anyone might even bother asking supernerd Kevin this question?)

Polling day

It seems that there is a relatively subdued response in the left leaning blogosphere to the Newspoll out today that is still good news for Labor. Not much crowing at all compared to previous months.

I suspect that this is because, despite it not reflecting in voting intentions yet, the general feeling is still there (even amongst Labor supporters) that Howard's decisive action in the aboriginal crisis, and the renewed discussion of terrorism within Australia, are issues which are going to work in the Coalition's favour, with yet another resurrection of Howard's electoral performance still very possible.

People have to remember that, while a 12 point TPP lead seems impressive (and would be on an election day!), it only takes a shift of 6 points to make them even again.

Oddly, though, Howard's performance was not that great in the last week, when he dissembled on "oil is why we are in Iraq" issue (a problem caused by Brendan Nelson really, who I can't stand) and seems to have made a mistake on the Indonesian terror warning.

On the other side of the fence, surely some people are starting to tire just a little bit of Rudd's very mannered way of speaking (once he gets a phrase going during a speech or interview, he can't let it go.) And is it possible that just a little mud might stick via the "Peter Garrett smoked pot with me and Bono" story by seriously strange musician Daniel Johns?

Interesting political times coming up in the second half of this year.