But long enough to send back Lotto numbers?

Physicist suggests some types of wormholes may stay open long enough to send a photon through

A charming bit of research

Wild mice actually enjoy running on exercise wheels | @GrrlScientist | Science | theguardian.com

The real problem: he doesn't wink enough

See, the problem isn't that Abbott winked for unclear purpose while taking a call from a woman with a surprising occupation for her age, it's that he didn't wink when he should have during the election campaign:

"There will be no new taxes"   Wink

"There will be no changes to pensions"  Wink

Etcetera

A friend on the board

Liberal donor personally recommended Tony Abbott's daughter for scholarship | World | The Guardian

It's not exactly a good look, is it?   A private  college which has been around for 25 years and has given out 2 "Chairman scholarships" in that time, and one of them happens to be for the daughter of a supported political friend who looks to be on track to become Prime Minister.

I wonder who the first recipient was?  And was there any other applicant other than Miss/Ms F Abbott in the year she applied?   The absence of answers to these questions give rise to suspicion that the Chairman scholarship applications might be made after personal invitation, and to very few people.  (Perhaps one?)   If this suspicion is wrong - why won't the Institute simply disclose how many applicants were competing for the scholarship that year?   A simple number would breach no confidentiality, surely.

And the reason why this is indeed a matter of public interest is really set out in the very last paragraph of the Fairfax report:

In the federal budget, the government announced that from 2016 it
would for the first time extend direct government funding to private
colleges.

The changes, which also extend support for TAFEs, and diploma
and associate degree courses, will cost $820 million over three years.
They follow a recommendation from a review of university funding by
David Kemp, who was education minister in the Howard government, and Dr
Kemp’s former advisor Andrew Norton.

If the delivery of a $3000 bottle of wine to a new Premier is a matter which should have been disclosed on a public register, then a direct $60,000 benefit received by a major politician's daughter should also have been disclosed unless it was clearly made on a competitive basis from a reasonable field of applicants (including some without obvious political connections.) 

Update:   I was most amused while watching The Drum last night to hear the media editor for The Australian ask whether The Guardian had been sitting on this outrageously unfair story for some time.   "Why would that matter?"  she was asked.  "It would tell us a lot about their agenda" she said.

Yes - a person who works at The Oz complaining about another paper having "an agenda"!   Hilarious.

Update 2:   Curious that Andrew Bolt has not had a post about this, despite his knowing that close Catallaxy buddy Sinclair Davidson (wrongly) thinks it's a case of "Lefties going after Lib family members", which would normally be right up Andrew's alley.   In fact, Catallaxy readers have lost interest in the thread already too.  How convenient.

Andrew Bolt does not like being in open disagreement with anything at Catallaxy.   He also will never call them out for offensive and highly sexist language in it's threads, even though he has now quoted directly a thread comment.

He's a massive hypocrite.

Update 3:  see new post above.

Rice is nice

Another China post.

According to a study which may not be convincing all that many people, rice farmers are nicer than wheat farmers.  More detail:

Researchers led by Thomas Talhelm of the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, found that people from rice-growing regions think in more interdependent and holistic ways than do those from wheat-growing areas.

Talhelm thinks these differences arose because it takes much more cooperation and overall effort to grow rice than wheat. To successfully plant and harvest rice, farmers must work together to build complex irrigation systems and set up labor exchanges. Over time, this need for teamwork fosters an interdependent and collectivist psychology. Wheat, however, can be grown independently, so wheat farmers become more individualistic.

Talhelm found that even people from adjacent counties on either side of the Yangtze River think differently if they grow different crops. "I don't see any other theory that explains why you find these differences between people in neighboring counties," he says....

Talhelm came up with his "rice theory" after spending a few years as a teacher in China and noticing cultural differences between the north and south. "People in the north seemed more direct, while people in the south were more concerned about harmony and avoiding conflict," he says.

Bazinga in China

Well, I didn't know this:  The Big Bang Theory is popular in China.  According to the New Yorker:

After seven seasons, the subtitled Chinese version of the show had achieved iconic status—all without the remotest involvement of the government’s vast media apparatus. By the time the show was banned, Chinese episodes had been watched online no fewer than 1.4 billion times. When the actors, such as Johnny Galecki, visit China, they are mobbed by fans. In Beijing, any tall, slim, dark-haired American male is likely to have been told once or twice that he looks a bit like Sheldon, the most Spock-like character on the show.

The article goes on to note the following:

Young Chinese, who have grown up in an age of prosperity and stability, are typically the most passionate defenders of the Chinese political and economic way. When the government, for instance, breaks up demonstrations in the name of defending China’s stability, or blocks Web sites to protect China’s honor in the long-running divide with Japan, it is often the self-described “angry youth” who rise in defense of the flag. But in this case, the ban hit a nerve. In the city of Wuhan, in central China, student members of the Center for Protection for the Rights of Disadvantaged Citizens of Wuhan University issued the rough Chinese equivalent of a Freedom of Information Act request, demanding to know why they had been deprived of their favorite show. 

And it then reaches this interesting conclusion:

It is a remarkable state of affairs: at the very moment when the U.S. and Chinese governments are moving in a direction of greater conflict, the slow, steady accretion of foreign pop culture on the Chinese Web has given people on both sides of the Pacific more in common than ever before. 

Let me be clear: sitcoms are not policy. The point is that the U.S. and China are in the curious position of facing a deepening rivalry at the very moment when their own citizens are sharing ever more of the same tastes, jokes, preoccupations, anxieties, and pleasures. The United States has never faced a rival whose ordinary people lead lives that have so much in common with ours in America. (The Soviets did not get Carson.)

[As an aside, I had not watched the show for a year or so, as the last time I had seen it I thought it showed signs of a sitcom in terminal decline.  But I recently did watch a couple of new season episodes, after reading about its extraordinarily high ratings in the States, and I did feel it had improved.]

I get to post about Spielberg two days in a row...

Godzilla and Spielberg: What Gareth Edwards’ 2014 reboot draws from Jaws, Jurassic Park, and Close Encounters.

I'm not sure I want to see the new Godzilla movie.  It is, basically, a silly monster, and I don't understand the continual interest in reviving it.

More fun and games in "Defend the Budget"

Lenore Taylor writes that Prime Minister Credlin Abbott has ordered the troops into "attack" mode.

She writes amusingly of the desperate and clueless Alan Jones defensive line:

Radio announcer Alan Jones was truly bewildered while interviewing Christopher Pyne on Wednesday, astounded that despite the education minister’s “brilliant” advocacy skills the “blockheads” running state governments could not understand that the allegation of an $80bn cut was totally wrong. In fact, Jones said, “there hasn't been a more monstrous lie perpetrated since Julia Gillard said there'd be no carbon tax”.

Pyne somehow neglected to refer Jones to page 7 of the government’s glossy budget overview which clearly states that the government is changing indexation of state grants and “removing funding guarantees for public hospitals. These measures will achieve cumulative savings of over $80bn by 20024-25.”

In other "Attack!" news,  Andrew Bolt (of course) is calling protesting students "totalitarians", following the Pyne line that they are out to "shut down democracy in Australia".  Actually, I think they would be quite happy to see democracy re-exercised within the next 6 months.

Look, student demonstrations are what they are - always chanting slogans and shouty and (usually) vulgar and self indulgent.   I have never liked or approved of demonstrations that unexpectedly block peak hour traffic, damage property, or push people around. 

But seriously, the scale and vigour of what has happened (so far) looks so mild compared to previous Lefty demonstrations.  The high water mark of violent and ugly (and spectacularly self defeating) protests was the union led attack on Parliament House in 1996.   Ten years later, and there were the intensely stupid G20 protests. What has happened with student protests since the budget just doesn't bear comparison, and going on about how "totalitarian" they are acting is just gilding the lily a bit too obviously, fellas.

And besides, what did Abbott and Pyne expect with the timing of these dramatic changes within 6 months of an election that was all about reassuring the people that no great shake up was on the cards?  Of course there were going to be protests.

Now I don't deny that there is a risk that there may yet be large protests that get out of hand and start eroding into any public sympathy, and although the students probably don't realise it, Abbott and Pyne pulling out of a university visit due to security concerns may well be helping their (the students') cause.   Abbott and Pyne have a fine line to walk here - going into the lion's den may well end up looking unnecessarily provocative, but not going to any university short of via roof top helicopter does make them look a bit weak.   I'm sorry, but given that I already have an intense dislike of this government on many grounds, it's the kind of dilemma that I take some pleasure in.

And as for Abbott's understanding of his own government's announcements:  ninemsn is reporting that he appears to not even know the date for changes set out in the budget:

Mr Abbott told ABC radio that only students who start studying in 2016 would face potentially higher fees when universities can charge what they like.

"If you start next year, your conditions of study won't change," he said.

But the budget papers clearly state that anyone who enrols after May 14 will face deregulated fees in 2016.

Peta, Peta, Peta.   All your effort into training him is not paying off, it seems.

UPDATE:  More errors, and quite large ones, by Joe Hockey and the PM in trying to sell the Medicare co-payment.

Is Peta crying into a martini somewhere tonight?  Her troops are letting her down something chronic.

First Dog recommended

First Dog on the Moon doesn't always get my approval, but with the target rich environment of a very unpopular budget made by a cigar smoking millionaire Treasurer (well, I assume he's worth millions - doesn't his wife make more than him, indicating a combined salary well over $600,000?), he's been pretty funny lately.

Anyway, here's today's cartoon that I find particularly amusing.

Also:   I suspect Hockey will not win his defamation case (in itself a rich man's game), and in fact risks losing politically for taking on the paper on one of the least egregious bits of commentary on a politician that has been seen in the Australian media the last couple of years.

Just keep the scheme

Ross Garnaut has made the point that just keeping the carbon pricing scheme (even with moving to a floating price, I think) pretty much achieves the same in terms of budget repair that the Coalition wants to achieve with its vast number of controversial changes.

Professor Garnaut, the architect of the Rudd and Gillard governments’ climate policies, argues that keeping carbon pricing and abandoning the $2.55 billion emissions reduction fund would reduce the budget deficit by between $12 billion and $19 billion over the next four years, depending on the European carbon price.

On Tuesday night, he told an audience at the University of Melbourne that is about the same as the $12 billion to $18 billion in budgetary savings that the Greens and Labor have pledged to oppose in Parliament.

“Retention of carbon pricing would more or less precisely fill the gap from Senate rejection of some budget measures,” Professor Garnaut said.

“To put it another way, Australia can stay within the boundaries of fiscal responsibility defined by the government in this year’s budget by retaining carbon pricing, rather than the array of changes that are at risk in the Senate.”

But of course, because the Coalition fed the public the line that the Labor carbon scheme would be an economic disaster (based on the support of the handful of economists associated with the IPA, pretty much) for so long, they cannot back down on that now, despite the lack of evidence that it is actually causing any great economic mayhem.

As everyone says, the problem with the budget is with its priorities as to how to go about the "repair" it wants to achieve.  And the problem comes back to the Coalition running policies on ideologically justified lines, regardless of evidence.

A premature declaration if ever I saw one

I see via Jason's twitter feed* that libertarian types are giving themselves high fives about legalisation of marijuana in some US States because it is said to be "hurting Mexican drug cartels".

The Lions of Liberty (wanky name: typical) cite this article in Vice (?) which quotes a Washington Post article that says Mexican marijuana prices have dropped far enough to make it not worthwhile for some farmers to grow it.

Amusingly, though, Vice does not repeat the other element in the WP report:  that the concern is that the recent increase in heroin in the US (about which I have posted before) is coming via Mexico, and in fact it seems Mexican marijuana growers are now switching to poppies.

It's pretty remarkable that the Vice article should not mention that, given that the headline to the WP article is: 
Tracing the U.S. heroin surge back south of the border as Mexican cannabis output falls

A more detailed look at how legalising marijuana would affect the Mexican cartels can be read in this WP article from 2012.  It shows that (although no one knows for sure) marijuana was perhaps only accounting for 17% of their revenue anyway.

Libertarians, who are supposed to be big on free markets, didn't think that there would be a substitution to the cartel's operations to make up for loss of marijuana profitability by beefing up their heroin, cocaine and meth production/trafficking?    While too early to tell the extent to which this unintended consequence may affect America, it is not really a surprise that it would happen, and taking into account the extra number of people with really serious drug addictions in the big decision matrix of legalising marijuana is probably something libertarians don't want to talk about much.  Of course, some of them will probably argue that this is a reason for legalising all drugs. 

And PS:  I condemn Mel Gibson and every movie he has ever appeared in or made.  He is not worthy to touch the sandals of the Spielberg.   [ ;) ] 

*Source disclosed as I don't want people thinking I regularly read American libertarian sites 

A must watch Foreign Correspondent

What a fantastic Foreign Correspondent show tonight, about the disputed Spratly Islands which have been causing grief between Vietnam, the Philippines and China for 25 years or so. 

I felt very sorry for some Filipino Marines, that's for sure.  And it makes one think how difficult it will be to maintain long term cordial relationships with China given their rapacious acts of self interest.

An irresistible topic for a post here

Here's why Steven Spielberg is such a great director.

No, honestly, it's informative and interesting.  (And yes, I agree, Always is easily the worst Spielberg movie.)  Here's the video:


The Spielberg Oner - One Scene, One Shot
from Tony Zhou on Vimeo.

Harry does not like Henry

I'd back Harry Clarke over Groucho any day.  

By the way, if Ergas has spent much of his career on infrastructure economics, how come I hardly ever notice him writing about it in the Oz?   Does he have any concerns about how Abbott is just going hard on roads with (as I understand it) little in the way of assessment of their economic value?

And can Ergas allay my concerns that economic analysis of all but certain "obvious" infrastructure might not be that credible an exercise anyway?   As I have said before, I presume it's easy to work out some benefits of a port or railway that allows a new mining area to export efficiently.    But cutting down the time to travel across town by car by 10 minutes?  I have my doubts about the rigorousness of how you economically model that.

This is a topic Ergas could perhaps usefully enlighten me.  Instead, he just craps on with his political biases. 

Send Tony Abbott there instead

Of course, you can blame Kevin Rudd for the idea of shoving off genuine refugees to New Guinea.

But go back a step earlier, and even worse for its appalling hypocrisy is the Coalition for opposing sending boat arrivals to Malaysia (even when the deal proposed involved them having the right to work and would have UNHRC supervision to ensure they were not abused) but now happily sending them to Cambodia. 

Virak Ou, chairman of the Cambodian Centre for Human Rights, accused Australia of irresponsibly exporting its own problem.

“We mistreated our own people and have failed to protect the human rights of our own people … we don’t have the capacity or the will,” he said.

“There’s no reason for Australia to believe that Cambodia will protect the rights of refugees, which to me is very irresponsible of Australia.”

Cambodia’s opposition leader Sam Rainsy described the deal as a “disgrace,” saying Australian money will be diverted into the pockets of Cambodia’s corrupt leaders.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has condemned the agreement, saying Cambodia is a vulnerable nation still recovering for years of civil war and is still unable to provide for its own people.

However, the UN’s Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights Flavia Pansieri said the UN would be willing to provide “support to ensure that standards are met.”

The UNHCR has only a two-person office in Phnom Penh.

Of 68 asylum seekers or refugees already living in Cambodia most are desperate to be relocated to another country, welfare groups say.

Tony Abbott simply played politics on refugees at their expense, escalating matters to a much worse position for them.  What's more, he is playing politics by not disclosing what is happening on the high seas so that the public is left in the dark as to whether his government is acting like a pirate or not.  

It is truly remarkable how, so early in a Prime Ministership, he has painted himself into a position where he has no chance of redeeming himself as a moral or popular Prime Minister.

Cynical political exercises resulting in nothing

Royal Commission fails to deliver Coalition the expected political advantage

Exactly.  As it says in the article:

''This was supposed to distract from what they were doing in budget
week,'' a senior Labor source said. ''There was a clear political ploy
to drag this stuff out to remind people how much they disliked the last
government but people seem to have moved on. People are more interested
in what this government is doing.''

Coverage of Mr Rudd's and Mr Combet's appearances, as well as
former Labor ministers Peter Garrett and Mark Arbib, was swamped by
reaction to the first Coalition budget and its lead up.

Watchers at the inquiry, headed by Ian Hanger, QC, said it
had unearthed no ''smoking gun'' despite speculation before the
hearings that a trail of warnings over the lethal scheme could lead
right to the top of the Rudd government.

This enquiry, together with the union royal commission giving creep Blewitt a venue to mutter about Gillard, have been examples of very nasty political fixes attempted by a petty and pretty much morally bankrupt government.   (See next post.)

Tony talks to Insiders this year...

Tony talks to Insiders last year

I was Googling to find a photo of Abbott on Insiders yesterday, and turned up the transcript from his pre election interview with Barrie Cassidy last year.  Some notable extracts (my bold):

BARRIE CASSIDY: Let's talk about some of the policies. We will start with the cuts to come. How severe will they be?

TONY ABBOTT: There will be no surprises and no excuses from a Coalition government Barrie. We've already put out a lot of the savings that we think are necessary. Joe Hockey outlined $31 billion worth of savings this week. There will be some additional savings to be announced later this week…

BARRIE CASSIDY: That is what I as asking about. How severe will they be?

TONY ABBOTT: Nothing like Labor's scare campaign. All eminently defensible because, let's face it Barrie, our first priority here is to build a stronger economy. And that means reinvesting taxpayers' dollars in things that will actually strengthen our economy rather than just build bureaucracies.

BARRIE CASSIDY: But you now know the size of these cuts, how significant, how big?

TONY ABBOTT: Look, there will be some further, relatively modest savings announced later in the week. But I don't think anyone is going to think at the end of this week 'my God there is this massive fiscal squeeze coming.' If anything, what they will think is that there has been a massive scare campaign, a massive campaign of exaggerations and even lies from the Labor Party.

BARRIE CASSIDY: Well put it this way, will the cuts impact on ordinary Australians?

TONY ABBOTT: Inevitably there will be some changes that people won't like, for instance the …

BARRIE CASSIDY: Ordinary Australians will feel it?

TONY ABBOTT: Ending the so-called School Kids Bonus.

BARRIE CASSIDY: We know about that one.

TONY ABBOTT: I don't believe the additional savings to be announced later in this week, will impact on ordinary Australians. And I want to give people this absolute assurance, no cuts to education, no cuts to health, no changes to pensions, and no changes to the GST (Goods and Services Tax).

OK, so no surprises, other than an abrupt plan to deregulate university fees and make many of them much more expensive, require repayments of HECS faster, introduce co-payment for Medicare, increase the cost of medicines, lengthen age pension eligibility by 3 years, treat anyone under 30 punitively if they can't get a job, cut funding to the States on health both immediately and in the future, etcetera, etcetera...

Tony Abbott doesn't even remember his own political history correctly

I must admit, I didn't mentally question this when I heard Abbott claim it in trying to explain off the post budget polling drop.  Lucky someone did:

John Howard 'took a big hit in the polls too' after first budget? Er, no Mr Abbott: The first post-budget Newspoll in 1996 showed a three percentage point increase in the Coalition's primary vote, to 50; a lift in Howard's approval rating, from 47 to 51; and an increase in his lead over Kim Beazley as preferred prime minister to a score of 53 per cent against Beazley's 24.

How embarrassing for our PM.

What a dilema for anti-Labor

I can't be the only person who's enjoying the obvious schizophrenia (in the common, useful, albeit mistaken sense of the word) that is happening to Andrew Bolt and the other anti-Labor columnists re the Abbott government.

One minute, he is taking the small government, anti tax, IPA line that the budget is a problem because it doesn't really cut spending at all;  next he's going with the line that "the Liberal's cure hurts" but is warranted.

Can someone give him a nudge and tell him that these aren't exactly consistent positions?  Or does he take the line that cutting down on welfare benefits is always warranted, regardless of it not having an effect on the budget bottom line? 

The funniest thing of all, though, was in Annabel Crabb's column on the obvious casting about for something positive to say that about a budget that's gone over about as well as the plague.   She noted this about Alan Jones:

Increased petrol taxes? And no tub-thumpers angry? Surely Alan Jones would stay strong. If Julia Gillard had hiked fuel excise, Alan Jones would instantly have recommended firing her into space, and hang the expense.

But on budget morning, when the Prime Minister reported for his Jonesian rub-down, he received nothing but approval for pricier fuel.

''There are legitimate reasons around the world for this,'' avowed Jones sternly. ''One is to stop the guzzling of a scarce resource.''

Hilarious.