Now they decide it's a bad idea

What do you know - there are two men with experience in the field who now have some regrets about where the "anything goes" approach to modern reproduction leads us:

Exhibit A:  not so well known actor Jason Patric, who is having a court brawl (and waging a PR campaign) regarding his rights to have a relationship with his biological son.  Yeah, he was happy enough to give a long term on again, off again girlfriend a sperm donation (delivered via artificial insemination, though - really, why did they bother with that if they had been long term lovers before - oh that's right, that would be too much like how babies are made by nature) and all was well for the first couple of years when he did see his son.  Then they stopped being friends and he was told to shove off.   It seems the laws designed to stop genuine anonymous sperm donors from interfering with parental "rights" are being used against Mr Patric.   This probably seems unfair to most people - when what they should be objecting to is people making babies in such a manner way in the first place.

Exhibit B:  reproductive technology cheer leader Robert Winston now is having misgivings about rich people soon making "designer babies".   What, he's only got around to watching Gattaca now?  Bit slow on the uptake, you "lesbians using reproductive technology is fine because they'll probably make fantastic mothers" claiming populariser of making babies in a way none at all would have existed before.

I didn't know that Cardwell grows nuts

So I'm being disparaging of people who claim UFO encounters, and who had a meeting up in Cardwell, North Queensland, last weekend.

But honestly, when you read their stories and look at the photos, I'm not convinced there will be a second Cardwell UFO Festival any time soon.

Space bugs

Space Station research shows that hardy little space travelers could colonize Mars

They've been exposing various microscopic lifeforms to the space environment at the ISS for some time now, and yes, some bugs have survived and are obviously very hard to kill.

I was wondering yesterday, on a related topic, as I made my first batch of "no knead" bread, about how much research has gone into the possibility that space radiation may make a normally mild natured (so to speak) microscopic lifeform into one that was dangerous.   As I was dealing with yeast, which is pretty much wandering all about the place all the time, that was the microscopic life that I was thinking about in particular.

Remember the story about the Texan man who by some fluke had a permanent colony of yeast in his gut that was brewing alcohol inside of him?   Well, you would hope that no future Moon or Mars colony ended up with at souped up yeast version which could take up home in everyone's gut and prove very difficult to remove.   It would be a particularly ignoble way for a colony to collapse (pretty much from unintentional alcoholic poisoning), wouldn't it?

OK, so maybe it's not a big enough premise for a science fiction blockbuster, but a short story at least...

Commission of Audit examined

What a great knock down of several of the Commission of Audit's key proposals by Greg Jericho.   His final paragraphs I would count as "tough but fair":

It would be nice to think this dopey regurgitation of libertarian masturbatory fantasy will be put to one side.

In the past, sensible heads would have prevailed. Many of the recommendations are similar to those in the 1996 commission of audit. A report John Howard largely ignored, and yet bizarrely Australia was able to continue to grow for another 18 years straight. But this government is too full of those who actually believe in this idiotic ideological view of the world – where “reform” is a synonym for “cut”, and ideology trumps evidence. And for them, the budget is just a first step to achieving it.

Nauseating idiots

Death threats stop gun store from selling 'smart' gun. Why? - CSMonitor.com

Read with amazement how the nauseating gun lobby in the US (or a large part of it) opposes the sale of "smart" guns that have the potential to reduce accidental gun deaths and injury, as well as their use when stolen.

Religion reconsidering that topic, continued

I've been doing posts about the religious reconsideration of homosexuality for a while now, and here's another report directly on the topic by Slate's William Saletan.   Slate also has up the story that (retired) bishop Gene Robinson is getting divorced from his gay partner.  (I half suspect that when there are some high profile, and bitterly contested, gay divorces, this will have an effect on the number of people taking it up - not that there are that many getting married anyway, I think.)

Someone at First Things blog seems to have an interest in the topic too, as they have a link up to a blog run by a couple of Christian women who are a some sort of relationship, describing themselves as:  "a celibate, LGBT couple with a queer calling."    Odd.

Giant statues photographed

Fabrice Fouillet photographs giant monuments in his series, “Colosses.” (PHOTOS.)

Giant statues are nearly always very impressive and awesome, if you ask me, and this series of photos shows one or two from around the world that I haven't seen before.   (I've also been inside the very first one in the series in Japan!)  

TIAs discussed

My husband Andrew Marr missed the warning signs of his stroke. Don't let it happen to you | Life | The Guardian

This is quite a good article warning people not to miss the signs of a TIA (or mini stroke.)

My Mum had some many years ago - perhaps 15 to 20 years - but I think they mainly manifested as a funny  sensation on her lip and/or the end of her tongue.  She went on medication and was fine for many years afterwards.

Spending and revenue

It's the debt, not the spending: why the budget is bleeding

Peter Martin's column above contains these useful figures:

Two years beforehand in 2010-11, Treasury forecast revenue equal to 24.1 per cent
of gross domestic product by 2012-13. It was a low forecast by the standards of the previous Howard government. But what the Gillard government got was 23.1 per cent of GDP, billions of dollars less.

By a staggering coincidence, government spending that year amounted to exactly 24.1 per cent of GDP, precisely the same figure as the revenue it had expected to get.

If revenue had rolled in as expected, the past financial year’s budget wouldn’t be in deficit in all. Wayne Swan would be crowing about his success in eliminating the deficit on time, as promised.

No one is too sure where the revenue has gone. It’s a murder mystery with multiple suspects.

Small government ideologues, who have been entertaining themselves at some "We Hate Tax" love in this weekend*, like to concentrate on absolute figures for spending and revenue rather than "relative to GDP" figures.  Unless someone cares to correct me, I take it that this is done as spin to try to portray spending as being out of control by ignoring factors that indicate why government spending would have some "natural" growth over the years.

With respect to looking at it compared to GDP,  I see that even last week's National Commission of Audit report - with as fine a Right wing pedigree as one could expect when appointed by a Coalition government - contains the graphs which put in clear perspective the "it's all Labor's overspending" line.

First:  Chart 4.1 in the report - Commonwealth spending as a share of GDP

Second:  Chart 4.2 - Commonwealth taxes as a share of GDP

Labor governments that spend and tax like there is no tomorrow?  Hardly.

*  I note a guest speaker was notorious climate change denying Patrick Michaels - anti tax libertarians (with few exceptions) must attack climate change as not really being a problem because the most sensible policy to address is a tax.  Eek - a tax!  

Was never at risk of participating

Another Solid Reason Not to Do a Mud-Obstacle Run - James Hamblin - The Atlantic

 Oh.

Apparently, there's been a growing fad for people to do staged, obstacle littered, endurance runs in America and elsewhere, involving things like mud courses,  frigid water swims, etc.

This trend had escaped my attention.  The article notes that doing the mud courses is a pretty good way to get diarrhoea.

I've never been sure why people can't enough satisfaction from merely sharing things like a long bushwalk, a bottle of wine with some cheese and bread, and a nice bed.

PS:    my challenge for the weekend is making my own bread.  A "no knead" recipe published a few years ago in the US seems to have been very popular there, and recently came to my attention via my Zite account.  The dough is made, and will be baked tomorrow.

Not impressed

Svengali of spin

Interesting profile of Mark Textor that, to my mind, paints a picture of a political jerk.

An amusing review

There's a review of a memoir about Jorges Luis Borges in this month's Literary Review that begins:

For rather a short book (259 pages of large print and generous spacing), Norman Thomas di Giovanni's odd memoir of Jorge Luis Borges includes a surprisingly large number of pages devoted to urination.

It made me laugh quite a bit...

Industrial scale blackmail

I'm not surprised it happens (Filipinos attempting blackmail of cyber "boyfriends" by recording some embarrassing on line video), but I am surprised at the apparent scale of it:

Operating on an almost industrial scale from call centre-style offices, such cyber-blackmail agents are provided with training and offered bonus incentives such as holidays, cash or mobile phones for reaching their financial targets.

Bad.  

First Dog noted

I quite like today's First Dog on the Moon cartoon re the Commission of Audit.   (As it happens, it's the first one since he moved his kennel to The Guardian that I thought was up to standard.)

Does he care if it is copied here, I wonder?

Attempted indoctrination fail

Interesting article at the Atlantic about how children who are brought up in very politically doctrinaire homes often rebel and adopt the opposite position as adults:

It’s understandable that parents with strong beliefs would feel it is their duty to see their children adopt those beliefs. But, however well-meaning these efforts are, they may be in vain. A study recently published in the British Journal of Political Science, based on data from the U.S. and U.K., found that parents who are insistent that their children adopt their political views inadvertently influence their children to abandon the belief once they become adults. The mechanism is perhaps surprising: Children who come from homes where politics is a frequent topic of discussion are more likely to talk about politics once they leave home, exposing them to new viewpoints—which they then adopt with surprising frequency.

The study, led by researcher Elias Dinas, also shows that these changes are especially likely to happen during the college years. Conservative culture warriors have warned for years that universities are outposts of liberal indoctrination—and the study seems to confirm at least some of that warning.

“Extreme parental views of the world give children a clear choice for being with the parents through agreement, or against parents through disagreement,” says Carl Pickhardt, an author and child psychologist. “Thus extremely rigid views of right/wrong, trust/distrust, love/hate can be embraced by children who want to stay connected to parents, and can be cast off by children who, for their own independence, are willing to place the parental relationship at risk.”

Another potential holiday destination to give a miss

Brunei introduces Islamic sharia penalties, including death by stoning for adultery

Not that I would be expecting to break the law if I went there, mind you. But no one should reward such a place with tourism.

Competition isn't everything

Why the Audit Commission is wrong on its biggest call

Michael Pascoe's column on the Right wing's obsession with going back to the future regarding the Federal system in Australia sounds right to me.  (And I say that as someone who grew up in Brisbane who can remember sewerage only being installed in the family home about 8 km from the city in the mid 1960's.)  Here's the relevant section:

The idea is that, if the states are given more responsibility and control of their own revenue and expenditure without federal interference, they will compete to offer the best services most
efficiently, thereby achieving improved outcomes at a lower cost. Market forces to the rescue and, praise the Lord, smaller Federal Government.

The real world is different. There are some practical problems for a start. Peter Hartcher reports that, according the report itself, the proposed reform of federation would increase overall government spending and the tax burden by $5 billion a year. Tasmanian and Bank of America Merrill Lynch chief economist, Saul Eslake, has explained that the poorest states with the lowest incomes would have to have the highest rates of tax to deliver comparable services. Neither are desirable outcomes.

Worse is the reality of what happens when our states compete: it tends to be a race to the bottom.

If you're ideologically driven by a dislike of taxes and government, Joh Bjelke-Petersen could well be your hero. He abolished death duties in Australia by dropping them in Queensland and boasting about running the lowest-taxing state. That may have been an incentive for a temporary rise in the number of people who thought Queensland was a good place to die, but the other states soon copied the move.

And while Queensland claimed the "lowest taxing" title, it also provided the worst or near-worst services, especially in education.  Queenslanders ended up getting what they paid for - a backward state with a diminished long-term future - until other premiers brought it up
to the national speed....

This is not just an Australian phenomenon. The United States, spiritual home of the ideologically-driven right, is the model of competitive federalism. The result is a sadly divergent society suffering growing inequality – and that's before getting into the issue of rising education costs and debts. To be born in Mississippi means, on average, that you're a loser in the American lottery. Competitive federalism tends to keep the poor poor and the rich richer.

Putting the boot into the IPA

Propagandists masquerade as think tanks to push spurious science

What a good way to start the morning - some serious kicking of the Institute of Paid Advocacy (and to a lesser extent, the CIS).

Just your average ideologically driven Coalition wish list

Lateline - 01/05/2014: Audit Commission report

Like most other people, I'm sure, I had forgotten completely until I was watching Lateline last night that the incoming Howard government had a similar "Commission of Audit" back in 1996.  Amusingly, many of the things recommended in that report have turned up again in this new one.

These reports can, to large extent, be ignored as being just a part of Coalition government tactics.  Have a read of this part of the transcript from last night, and snigger away at how things haven't changed much over 20 years:

(1996)

BOB OFFICER, ARCHIVE: It's my pleasure to present this report.

TOM IGGULDEN: ...came not long after the last Coalition government was sworn in, the last Liberal treasurer took the same approach to the recommendations.

PETER COSTELLO, FORMER LIBERAL TREASURER, ARCHIVE: This is not a statement of government policy.

TOM IGGULDEN: The recommendations in 1996 were also broadly similar to today's...

(Excerpt from 1996 National Commission of Audit 1996)

VOICEOVER:  A Medicare upfront payment for each visit to the doctor. The total replacement of university funding with scholarships, student fees and bequests. And a tougher approach to adjusting pensions.

TOM IGGULDEN: ...few were ultimately taken up...

(Excerpt from 1996 National Commission of Audit 1996)

VOICEOVER: Means testing nursing home care and the handing over to the states of key areas such as health and education.

TOM IGGULDEN: ...despite the warnings of a budget crisis to come, especially in health.

BOB OFFICER, ARCHIVE: That program is not sustainable in its current form.

Creepy stories

I've read of the "phone call from the dead" genre of (alleged) true life ghost stories before, but never found any examples particularly convincing.   However the three listed in this post, (including one I missed recently in the Sydney Morning Herald!) give me the creeps, somewhat.