The last ten years have been a remarkable time for great earthquakes. Since December 2004 there have been no less than 18 quakes of Mw8.0 or greater – a rate of more than twice that seen from 1900 to mid-2004.Don't think I had heard that before. Source here.
Wednesday, October 22, 2014
I'm not encouraged...
Whitlam spending went where?
While it seems that everyone from Ken Henry to the IPA says that the Whitlam increased Federal government spending to levels to which it has roughly stayed the same since, I was interested to see where the increased spending went. This series of graphs from a 2007 paper is perhaps the best summary I can find:
It's curious how the second chart shows the Whitlam "real spending" was far from exceptional when you look at the long term trend. The first chart indicates how closely government spending since then has bounced around 24% - 25% of GDP. (And no, Rudd/Gillard spending did not significantly deviate from the range, either.)
And the last two charts show Whitlam spikes on spending as a proportion of total spend did show up mainly in education, health and social security. However, the country did get Medicare and much broader access to higher education, money which many would say was deservedly spent compared to the pre-1972 situation.
International comparisons indicate that the 25% range for spending is well within mid range of what other countries have been doing for a while now, with some economically successful countries spending far higher (see Germany, Scandinavia.) In fact, it's probably true to say that with very few exceptions, spending below 20% of GDP indicates the sort of poorer country most Australians would not care to emulate in terms of services.
Of the exceptions, I think we can pretty much ignore Singapore, as a case of a city state which only has to deal with providing services to a dense population on a tiny area.
Canada seems truly exceptional, though, as a country of similar size to ours that has been spending considerably under our rate. I wonder what's going on there...
Update: Stephen Koukoulas made much the same point today, but without the graphs. I think my post was up first!
Some straight talking from a physicist
Remember Garrett Lisi, who had a brief period of high publicity some years ago for his novel work on finding a Theory of Everything? He's still working on it, as this interesting interview shows, and thinks he is making some progress.
But the most amusing part is here, where he talks about string theory hold-out Ed Witten:
But the most amusing part is here, where he talks about string theory hold-out Ed Witten:
Horgan: Edward Witten, when I asked him in a recent Q&A if string theory had any serious rivals for a unified theory, replied, “There are not any interesting competing suggestions.” Comment?
Lisi: That stings a little. I don’t imagine other physicists working on fundamental non-string theories appreciate it either. Ed Witten has done incredibly impressive work, opening new doors with his insights in mathematics and physics. His papers are things of beauty. He, his students, and his colleagues have dominated the high-energy theoretical physics community with string models for decades now. However, even the most enlightened foresight from the most brilliant mind can be wrong, so it would be better if he wasn’t a dick about it.
Labor Prime Ministers and their ego
I was watching Annabel Crabb's very entertaining show with Bob Hawke last night, and it left me wondering about the string of Labor Prime Ministers we've had with very big egos.
Whitlam, Hawke, Keating and Rudd - all big ego men, and none of whom I found especially likeable personalities. Julia Gillard genuinely broke the ego mould, and this has a lot to do with my regard for her. But Beazley was also OK in this respect, and it helps explain why he never made it to PM.
Of other Labor Opposition Leaders who didn't make it: not sure how I would categorise Simon Crean, and Mark Latham is just rather generally oddball.
The Liberals don't seem to suffer from this to the same extent, with the exception of Turnbull, perhaps. Yet for me he manages the trick of having a very high self regard but retaining likeability. His eulogy yesterday in Parliament for Gough was a fantastic example of his very endearing ability to engagingly speak off the cuff with great charity towards everyone:
As for Howard, his modest demeanour was always his most endearing feature.
But going back to Fraser, I remember being told by someone who was a former Liberal staffer in Canberra that at the time he acquired the leadership he was shaking like a leaf. So it appears he gave off an arrogant air, but covering a modest ego.
Whitlam, Hawke, Keating and Rudd - all big ego men, and none of whom I found especially likeable personalities. Julia Gillard genuinely broke the ego mould, and this has a lot to do with my regard for her. But Beazley was also OK in this respect, and it helps explain why he never made it to PM.
Of other Labor Opposition Leaders who didn't make it: not sure how I would categorise Simon Crean, and Mark Latham is just rather generally oddball.
The Liberals don't seem to suffer from this to the same extent, with the exception of Turnbull, perhaps. Yet for me he manages the trick of having a very high self regard but retaining likeability. His eulogy yesterday in Parliament for Gough was a fantastic example of his very endearing ability to engagingly speak off the cuff with great charity towards everyone:
As for Howard, his modest demeanour was always his most endearing feature.
But going back to Fraser, I remember being told by someone who was a former Liberal staffer in Canberra that at the time he acquired the leadership he was shaking like a leaf. So it appears he gave off an arrogant air, but covering a modest ego.
Technology and poverty
What Role Does Technology Play in Record Levels of Income Inequality?
Here's a lengthy article looking at the debate over the role of technology in rising income inequality. Even the opening, scene setting, part is interesting, talking about inequality in Silicon Valley.
Tuesday, October 21, 2014
On Gough Whitlam and social and cultural change
A lot of obvious things will be said about Gough Whitlam: tried to do too much too quickly; big on ideas, not so good on their implementation; let down by his cabinet colleagues who badly needed some prior experience in being part of an actual government; but he was still the Prime Minister we had to have both culturally and (to the extent that a general shake up was overdue) economically.
From the cultural point of view, his government came at a very distinctive period of change, and his personal life of a long (and as far as I know, happy and scandal free) marriage, and military service, stood somewhat at odds with the social ideas of free love, marriage as a redundant institution, and great cynicism over the value of the military per se which were swirling around the Left at the time. That Jim Cairns appeared to be living up to the "anything goes in love" standard was a scandal to social conservatives, and I still think that a PM appearing in a Barry McKenzie movie was sort of undignified. (As was going to that sex education movie - the name of which escapes me for the moment - with Margaret.) He was a man who presented as both very serious, but sometimes self-deprecating, even if still in a self-congratulatory sort of way. Rather like Keating, now that I think about it.
I was just listening to someone on Radio National saying that he was a champion of the arts, but also shouldn't be seen as valuing Australian art merely because of parochial bias: his encouragement of the National Art Gallery to acquire good international works went beyond Blue Poles, apparently. I personally don't see much value, culturally, in the Australian movie industry he is said to have revived - the claustrophobically Left leaning, secular naval gazing nature of most of the output has always left me cold; and after 40 years, perhaps I can feel justified that most of the population now seems to agree, given the tiny following Australian movies tend to have. Still, economically it has been of some value, as it allows decent enough foreign films to be made here.
I'm not sure that there was ever really a "right" way for politicians to respond to the social changes underway at the time, but the Whitlam Labor government represented (I think) a particular challenge to Catholics. The social programs which they (Catholics) could have approved of were always at risk of being overwhelmed in their minds by the apparent embrace of too rapid a change to views about sex and family. I don't think the Church was particularly enamoured of the idea of no fault divorce, either, although no doubt many Catholic women in difficult marriages welcomed it.
It perhaps only took to the 1980's until a bit of equilibrium had returned, and some of the extreme ideas of the theorists of the swinging 60's were recognized as not really being realistic. (If one took some ideas of the 60's seriously, we'd all be living in open or group marriages now with communal child raising, and be able to walk nude to the shops if we felt like it. Or perhaps I've just read too much bad, later Heinlein!) Sure, there is the matter of gay marriage which has seen another remarkable turn around in cultural attitudes, but there is the view that it is in a sense a vindication of the conservative value of marriage - even though I am not convinced.
The wild, very parochial, enthusiasm for "Australian stories" to be told in schools and cinema had also died a bit by then, I think. This cultural aspect of the 70's was always going to be somewhat stymied by the fact that our national history actually had little in the way of great drama, compared to most other countries, anyway. But as with the later Keating, it seems a tad ironic that a PM who is seen as the champion of all things culturally Australian was very keen on knowledge of European history and arts (or so I take it, given his later work as European tour guide that I have heard about.)
In a way then, I think it a bit unfortunate that Gough's turn as PM came when it did. Even if he was in power in the second half of the 70's, instead of the first half, it might have felt somewhat different. But who knows - we don't get a choice in these things.
PS: Can someone tell Sinclair Davidson that it is rather ridiculous of him to be incorporating an attack on the ABC for letting a guest on a TV show make a disrespectful comment on the death of Margaret Thatcher (how Tony Jones was meant to prevent it remains a mystery), when we all knew that the very same thread at his own blog would contain some of the greatest bile that we will see with respect to the death of Gough. As indeed it already does...
Update: this is one of my posts where I keep doing minor re-writes for a while to try to improve it, so perhaps it's a bit better by now than the last time you read it!
From the cultural point of view, his government came at a very distinctive period of change, and his personal life of a long (and as far as I know, happy and scandal free) marriage, and military service, stood somewhat at odds with the social ideas of free love, marriage as a redundant institution, and great cynicism over the value of the military per se which were swirling around the Left at the time. That Jim Cairns appeared to be living up to the "anything goes in love" standard was a scandal to social conservatives, and I still think that a PM appearing in a Barry McKenzie movie was sort of undignified. (As was going to that sex education movie - the name of which escapes me for the moment - with Margaret.) He was a man who presented as both very serious, but sometimes self-deprecating, even if still in a self-congratulatory sort of way. Rather like Keating, now that I think about it.
I was just listening to someone on Radio National saying that he was a champion of the arts, but also shouldn't be seen as valuing Australian art merely because of parochial bias: his encouragement of the National Art Gallery to acquire good international works went beyond Blue Poles, apparently. I personally don't see much value, culturally, in the Australian movie industry he is said to have revived - the claustrophobically Left leaning, secular naval gazing nature of most of the output has always left me cold; and after 40 years, perhaps I can feel justified that most of the population now seems to agree, given the tiny following Australian movies tend to have. Still, economically it has been of some value, as it allows decent enough foreign films to be made here.
I'm not sure that there was ever really a "right" way for politicians to respond to the social changes underway at the time, but the Whitlam Labor government represented (I think) a particular challenge to Catholics. The social programs which they (Catholics) could have approved of were always at risk of being overwhelmed in their minds by the apparent embrace of too rapid a change to views about sex and family. I don't think the Church was particularly enamoured of the idea of no fault divorce, either, although no doubt many Catholic women in difficult marriages welcomed it.
It perhaps only took to the 1980's until a bit of equilibrium had returned, and some of the extreme ideas of the theorists of the swinging 60's were recognized as not really being realistic. (If one took some ideas of the 60's seriously, we'd all be living in open or group marriages now with communal child raising, and be able to walk nude to the shops if we felt like it. Or perhaps I've just read too much bad, later Heinlein!) Sure, there is the matter of gay marriage which has seen another remarkable turn around in cultural attitudes, but there is the view that it is in a sense a vindication of the conservative value of marriage - even though I am not convinced.
The wild, very parochial, enthusiasm for "Australian stories" to be told in schools and cinema had also died a bit by then, I think. This cultural aspect of the 70's was always going to be somewhat stymied by the fact that our national history actually had little in the way of great drama, compared to most other countries, anyway. But as with the later Keating, it seems a tad ironic that a PM who is seen as the champion of all things culturally Australian was very keen on knowledge of European history and arts (or so I take it, given his later work as European tour guide that I have heard about.)
In a way then, I think it a bit unfortunate that Gough's turn as PM came when it did. Even if he was in power in the second half of the 70's, instead of the first half, it might have felt somewhat different. But who knows - we don't get a choice in these things.
PS: Can someone tell Sinclair Davidson that it is rather ridiculous of him to be incorporating an attack on the ABC for letting a guest on a TV show make a disrespectful comment on the death of Margaret Thatcher (how Tony Jones was meant to prevent it remains a mystery), when we all knew that the very same thread at his own blog would contain some of the greatest bile that we will see with respect to the death of Gough. As indeed it already does...
Update: this is one of my posts where I keep doing minor re-writes for a while to try to improve it, so perhaps it's a bit better by now than the last time you read it!
Ken's thinking big
Ken Parish writes at Troppo about the idea of a "charter city" for refugees in Northern Australia.
It's the kind of big idea that has appeal, but as some people in comments are already noting, shoving a bunch of people from very disparate cultures and races into a new, small, remote, settlement "city" would be a pretty novel social experiment with potential for some major social problems...
It's the kind of big idea that has appeal, but as some people in comments are already noting, shoving a bunch of people from very disparate cultures and races into a new, small, remote, settlement "city" would be a pretty novel social experiment with potential for some major social problems...
Monday, October 20, 2014
Being able to fly didn't help
Century After Extinction, Passenger Pigeons Remain Iconic—And Scientists Hope to Bring Them Back
I heard someone talking on Radio National about this last week: the remarkable extinction of a North American pigeon breed which numbered in the billions, and was (reliably) said to darken the skies for at least hours, if not days, during its migrations.
Here's a description from another article:
I heard someone talking on Radio National about this last week: the remarkable extinction of a North American pigeon breed which numbered in the billions, and was (reliably) said to darken the skies for at least hours, if not days, during its migrations.
Here's a description from another article:
In May 1850, a 20-year-old Potawatomi tribal leader
named Simon Pokagon was camping at the headwaters of Michigan's Manistee
River during trapping season when a far-off gurgling sound startled
him. It seemed as if "an army of horses laden with sleigh bells was
advancing through the deep forests towards me," he later wrote. "As I
listened more intently, I concluded that instead of the tramping of
horses it was distant thunder; and yet the morning was clear, calm, and
beautiful." The mysterious sound came "nearer and nearer," until Pokagon
deduced its source: "While I gazed in wonder and astonishment, I beheld
moving toward me in an unbroken front millions of pigeons, the first I
had seen that season."
These were passenger pigeons, Ectopistes migratorius, at the
time the most abundant bird in North America and possibly the world.
Throughout the 19th century, witnesses had described similar sightings
of pigeon migrations: how they took hours to pass over a single spot,
darkening the firmament and rendering normal conversation inaudible.
Pokagon remembered how sometimes a traveling flock, arriving at a deep
valley, would "pour its living mass" hundreds of feet into a downward
plunge. "I have stood by the grandest waterfall of America," he wrote,
"yet never have my astonishment, wonder, and admiration been so stirred
as when I have witnessed these birds drop from their course like meteors
from heaven."...
In forest and city alike, an arriving flock was a spectacle--"aUpdate: from another article, talking about the ease of getting dinner when a gigantic flock was overhead:
feathered tempest," in the words of conservationist Aldo Leopold. One
1855 account from Columbus, Ohio, described a "growing cloud" that
blotted out the sun as it advanced toward the city. "Children screamed
and ran for home," it said. "Women gathered their long skirts and
hurried for the shelter of stores. Horses bolted. A few people mumbled
frightened words about the approach of the millennium, and several
dropped on their knees and prayed." When the flock had passed over, two
hours later, "the town looked ghostly in the now-bright sunlight that
illuminated a world plated with pigeon ejecta."
These flocks were so densely packed that a single shot could bring down 30-40 birds. He birds could be brought down and killed just by hitting them with pieces of wood as they flew over hilltops. The bird's only natural predators were hawks and eagles. As they flew, they covered settlements with droppings, once an important way of spreading seeds, but viewed as a nuisance by settlers.The massive, industrial scale over-hunting for food and fun in the 1800's is also described:
After 1830 the pigeons were hunted for sport, hog feed and even for agricultural fertiliser. In the 1870s, 250,000 Passenger pigeons a year were released from live traps for shooting practice. Its decline began in earnest with the onset of large-scale commercial hunting carried out by well-organised trappers and shippers supplying cheap meat to the developing cities on the east coast of the USA. The opening of railroads linking the Great Lakes area with New York meant 300,000 Passenger pigeons were sent to New York during 1855 alone. The most devastating killings were during the 1800s and 1870s. Th figures were recorded as a normal part of commerce: 23rd July, 1860 (23 July) saw 235,200 birds sent east from Grand Rapids in Michigan; 1874 saw 1,000,000 birds shipped east from Oceana County in Michigan; 1876 saw 1,600,000 shipped east from Oceana County (400,000 per week during the season). In 1869, Van Buren County, Michigan, shipped 7,500,000 birds to the east. In 1880, 527,000 birds were shipped east from Michigan.I'm surprised I hadn't heard the details of this extraordinary animal and its extinction before...
Cross dressing soldiers
Earlier this year that I noticed a story of an Australian woman who had got on board an Australian troop ship heading off to World War 1. She was found out fairly early, but it appears that in the American Civil War, some women managed to carry out the subterfuge for a very long time.
I think this review of a book on the topic might have come out earlier this year, but it's just turned up on my Zite account, hence I have only noticed it now. I was particularly struck by this part:
I also think this is part of what makes the true stories of pretend male soldiers so remarkable - because if we see it in a movie, it always looks so improbable.
I think this review of a book on the topic might have come out earlier this year, but it's just turned up on my Zite account, hence I have only noticed it now. I was particularly struck by this part:
Though once found out, these female soldiers were discharged from the army for “congenital peculiarities,” “sexual incompatibility,” or the unambiguously termed offense of “unmistakable evidence of being a woman,” most of these women went undetected, at least for a while — a fact not all that astounding in the context of Victorian society where the single most revealing litmus test, nudity, was a rarity given bathing was a rare occurrence and people often slept in their clothes. (But today, in an age when the tip of the devastating iceberg that is sexual assault in the military is only beginning to emerge, one has to wonder what happened to the women who did get found out.)I'm guessing that 17th century reference, coming after talk of the Victorian era might be a mistake, but in any event, I was not aware of the general popularity of cross dressing women stories from back then.
Thanks to the poorly fitted uniforms, some women were even able to disguise their pregnancies until the very end, startling their male platoon mates with the delivery. Others chose to continue dressing as men after the end of the war, raising gender identity questions also not discussed in the book. But perhaps most interesting of all is the question of how women got the idea for this in the first place. Blanton argues that much of it had to do with cultural influence — cross-dressing female heroines permeated Victorian literature, with military and sailor women often celebrated in 17th-century ballads, novels, and poems.
I also think this is part of what makes the true stories of pretend male soldiers so remarkable - because if we see it in a movie, it always looks so improbable.
Sunday, October 19, 2014
More tales of the Saudi religious police
Married couple mistakenly arrested | GulfNews.com
Members of the powerful Saudi Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice were left red-faced after they arrested a married couple thinking the husband and wife were not related.
Acting upon a report that a man and a woman who were not relatives were spotted inside a house in the Suwaidi neighbourhood in the Saudi capital Riyadh, members of the
Commission rushed to the place and proceeded to arrest the couple. Dismissing arguments by the man and woman that they were husband and wife, the members took them to their office on the grounds that they were caught in khilwa, local daily
Okaz reported on Sunday.
Don't worry, they got an apology, and a kiss on the nose:The khilwa offence in Saudi law consists of being in private with a member of the opposite sex who is not an immediate relative.
“It looks like it was a malicious report targeting the couple, and the Commission should never follow up to the end without verifying the claims,” she said. “Even though there were apologies and traditional kisses on the head and nose to show regret and sorrow, there is always the negative feeling of bitterness that hit the couple in this case,”
she said.
Saturday, October 18, 2014
Germs, sex, minds, behaviour, maths, philosophy and religion. (Not necessarily in that order.)
I am reminded, via a link tweeted today by J Soon, that I don't think I have ever noted here the odd theory of Greg Cochran that has been around for a few years that exclusive male homosexuality has arisen via an infectious agent. I am not sure whether Cochran ties his theory to the "modern" version of the homosexual, but Peter Frost, at the last link in the following paragraph, certainly does, and he argues that it might be either an infection or an environmental chemical which led to what he thinks is a change in homosexuality since about the start of the 20th century.
Here's the first link from Jason (more generally about how certain sexually transmitted diseases might affect behaviour), and then you go to Frost's blog, and follow his series of posts on the topic.
It seems to me that the idea of Frost becomes unreliable at the first step, where he argues that it was only from the late 19th to early 20th century that there arose a lot of exclusively homosexual men. Sure, the argument goes, there has always been homosexual behaviour, but:
Surely, this is an improbable step too far. For example, isn't it very likely that the matter of "third sex" categories turning up in quite a few indigenous societies must have encompassed not just what we would now call transgender individuals, but at least some exclusive homosexuals?
And what of the difficulty of judging the experience of homosexuality based on historical records? Just because most of the contemporary commentary we have of homosexual behaviour in a society might be about (say) the pederasty of older married men (see Greece), it may simply never have occurred to anyone to research carefully what men as a group felt about their own experience of sexuality over a lifetime. I mean, it's even controversial now, the scientific studies of bisexuality that involve trying to work out what gets certain men subconsciously aroused. (There was a good article about this earlier this year in the New York Times. It seems that a study a few years back which got widely reported as showing that bisexual men really did respond more as homosexual is now accepted as having a particularly poor experimental set up.)
The point is this - what hope do we really have of a detailed understanding of subjective experience of sexuality across a population of men from 2000 years ago, before anyone really had ideas of objective, scientific surveys or any other detailed form of psychological research?
Foster is especially unconvincing when he argues that the "flapper" fashion of the early 20th century - where women strove to look more boyish and flattened breasts were in vogue - indicates anything meaningful about the heterosexual male "search image". Doesn't the advent of Marilyn Monroe and other famous, buxom stars of a mere 30 years later put a serious dent in this suggestion?
We certainly know there has always been a lot of concern in Abrahamic religions through the centuries as to how much homosexual behaviour was going on. The article "The Experience of Homosexuality Across the Middle Ages" gives a good idea of that. (And interestingly, its author now says in an updated preface that he has changed his mind about many of the paper's conclusions. I don't really know what he believes now.) My point would be: who knows whether a monastery which had a particular reputation as a haven for homosexual activity in 1500 CE was that way because it had attracted exclusive homosexuals, or because of jail-like opportunistic homosexual behaviour, or in what proportion it was a case of one and the other? Bishops and saints didn't really care to psychologically investigate it before condemning it.
In any event, not that I have made any detailed study, but it still seems to me that no one really understands the interaction between gender identity, sexual identity and sexual experience. Sure, there is strong reason to believe the widely reported phenomena of a gay man who has "always known" he was different from other boys - but why does the difference sometimes manifest in conviction that they are the wrong gender, not just attracted to their own gender?
It's something of an understatement to observe that the brain and mind are complicated. For example, I find anorexia as a psychological disorder incredibly hard to fathom - how it is that the rational part of the mind cannot convince the other part of something that I would have thought obvious from looking in the mirror, along the lines of "OK, this is really getting unhealthy now, you look like skin and bones and as the doctor says, you're going to die unless you start getting food into your body." I have a similar attitude towards late onset transgender cases - come on, fellas, you've been married, climbed mountains, had kids and presumably quite a few orgasms with your wife. Why is changing gender now going to be some kind of fulfilment? Can't you just take up quilting, or something a bit less dramatic?
In any event, history at least teaches us that varieties of same sex activity have always had some appeal to some people, and anthropology also indicates that people who want to be the other gender have always been with us . It seems that in some societies, homosexual behaviour was treated as a mere matter of taste and not the subject of much in the way of analysis. So much of the controversy about it since then seems to have come from attempted overanalysis which may well be forever doomed to be an example of one of the suggested implications of Godel's incompleteness theorem, that the mind may never fully understand itself. See this quote from Hofstadter:
Update: on re-reading this post, I think I need to clarify my position, because it perhaps got lost a bit in the ramble:
a. it may be that a lot more men in the 20th century have started thinking of themselves as exclusively homosexual, but the reason for this is most likely the Foucaultian explanation about the change in thinking about sexuality - broadly, along Freudian lines that there is a large hidden element to it that people sooner or later uncover.
b. But as to whether the number of pretty much exclusively practicing homosexual males has changed over history is very much guesswork, given the lack of any detailed interest in anyone until about the 20th century in trying to work out such numbers.
c. Even current thinking, of what we think to be enlightened modern thinking on sexuality, is very much a work in progress, and one in which people seem always too sure of themselves that they understand it and its intersection with gender, sexual experience and culture.
Here's the first link from Jason (more generally about how certain sexually transmitted diseases might affect behaviour), and then you go to Frost's blog, and follow his series of posts on the topic.
It seems to me that the idea of Frost becomes unreliable at the first step, where he argues that it was only from the late 19th to early 20th century that there arose a lot of exclusively homosexual men. Sure, the argument goes, there has always been homosexual behaviour, but:
In the Middle Ages, this behavior was seen as a ‘vice’ of older heterosexual men, typically with young boys or men of a servile status. In contrast, far fewer men were exclusively homosexual in the sense of being uninterested in women and resembling women in their sexual orientation (i.e., having a woman’s search image and desired self-image). This relative rarity is implied by the astonishment that European explorers felt on encountering Amerindian berdaches during the 18th and early 19th centuries (Désy, 1978).Now I know Foucault argued that the idea of "the homosexual" is a modern construct (basically, a fundamental change in the way people understood sexuality and themselves), and I have written before that much of his theory sounds plausible; but this "gay virus" idea (at least as adopted by Foster) takes it a step further, and suggests there is a biological reason as to why people started experiencing sexuality differently.
Surely, this is an improbable step too far. For example, isn't it very likely that the matter of "third sex" categories turning up in quite a few indigenous societies must have encompassed not just what we would now call transgender individuals, but at least some exclusive homosexuals?
And what of the difficulty of judging the experience of homosexuality based on historical records? Just because most of the contemporary commentary we have of homosexual behaviour in a society might be about (say) the pederasty of older married men (see Greece), it may simply never have occurred to anyone to research carefully what men as a group felt about their own experience of sexuality over a lifetime. I mean, it's even controversial now, the scientific studies of bisexuality that involve trying to work out what gets certain men subconsciously aroused. (There was a good article about this earlier this year in the New York Times. It seems that a study a few years back which got widely reported as showing that bisexual men really did respond more as homosexual is now accepted as having a particularly poor experimental set up.)
The point is this - what hope do we really have of a detailed understanding of subjective experience of sexuality across a population of men from 2000 years ago, before anyone really had ideas of objective, scientific surveys or any other detailed form of psychological research?
Foster is especially unconvincing when he argues that the "flapper" fashion of the early 20th century - where women strove to look more boyish and flattened breasts were in vogue - indicates anything meaningful about the heterosexual male "search image". Doesn't the advent of Marilyn Monroe and other famous, buxom stars of a mere 30 years later put a serious dent in this suggestion?
We certainly know there has always been a lot of concern in Abrahamic religions through the centuries as to how much homosexual behaviour was going on. The article "The Experience of Homosexuality Across the Middle Ages" gives a good idea of that. (And interestingly, its author now says in an updated preface that he has changed his mind about many of the paper's conclusions. I don't really know what he believes now.) My point would be: who knows whether a monastery which had a particular reputation as a haven for homosexual activity in 1500 CE was that way because it had attracted exclusive homosexuals, or because of jail-like opportunistic homosexual behaviour, or in what proportion it was a case of one and the other? Bishops and saints didn't really care to psychologically investigate it before condemning it.
In any event, not that I have made any detailed study, but it still seems to me that no one really understands the interaction between gender identity, sexual identity and sexual experience. Sure, there is strong reason to believe the widely reported phenomena of a gay man who has "always known" he was different from other boys - but why does the difference sometimes manifest in conviction that they are the wrong gender, not just attracted to their own gender?
It's something of an understatement to observe that the brain and mind are complicated. For example, I find anorexia as a psychological disorder incredibly hard to fathom - how it is that the rational part of the mind cannot convince the other part of something that I would have thought obvious from looking in the mirror, along the lines of "OK, this is really getting unhealthy now, you look like skin and bones and as the doctor says, you're going to die unless you start getting food into your body." I have a similar attitude towards late onset transgender cases - come on, fellas, you've been married, climbed mountains, had kids and presumably quite a few orgasms with your wife. Why is changing gender now going to be some kind of fulfilment? Can't you just take up quilting, or something a bit less dramatic?
In any event, history at least teaches us that varieties of same sex activity have always had some appeal to some people, and anthropology also indicates that people who want to be the other gender have always been with us . It seems that in some societies, homosexual behaviour was treated as a mere matter of taste and not the subject of much in the way of analysis. So much of the controversy about it since then seems to have come from attempted overanalysis which may well be forever doomed to be an example of one of the suggested implications of Godel's incompleteness theorem, that the mind may never fully understand itself. See this quote from Hofstadter:
The other metaphorical analogue to Gödel’s Theorem which I find provocative suggests that ultimately, we cannot understand our own mind/brains … Just as we cannot see our faces with our own eyes, is it not inconceivable to expect that we cannot mirror our complete mental structures in the symbols which carry them out? All the limitative theorems of mathematics and the theory of computation suggest that once the ability to represent your own structure has reached a certain critical point, that is the kiss of death: it guarantees that you can never represent yourself totally.
No wonder the current Synod is fretting about what to do, if (as I suspect) our whole understanding of sexuality, being an aspect of mind and personality, is always likely to be incomplete.
Update: on re-reading this post, I think I need to clarify my position, because it perhaps got lost a bit in the ramble:
a. it may be that a lot more men in the 20th century have started thinking of themselves as exclusively homosexual, but the reason for this is most likely the Foucaultian explanation about the change in thinking about sexuality - broadly, along Freudian lines that there is a large hidden element to it that people sooner or later uncover.
b. But as to whether the number of pretty much exclusively practicing homosexual males has changed over history is very much guesswork, given the lack of any detailed interest in anyone until about the 20th century in trying to work out such numbers.
c. Even current thinking, of what we think to be enlightened modern thinking on sexuality, is very much a work in progress, and one in which people seem always too sure of themselves that they understand it and its intersection with gender, sexual experience and culture.
Friday, October 17, 2014
Cheap at half the price!
Virgin buys low-cost airline Tigerair Australia for $1 | Business | theguardian.comgay
I was told by a gay Virgin flight attendant (comments made below by readers from Catallaxy will likely need to be culled) some months ago that this is what would happen: Virgin would finish an acquisition of Tiger to allow it (Virgin) to operate as the upmarket equivalent of Qantas, and use Tiger as the "downmarket" equivalent of Jetstar.
I was told by a gay Virgin flight attendant (comments made below by readers from Catallaxy will likely need to be culled) some months ago that this is what would happen: Virgin would finish an acquisition of Tiger to allow it (Virgin) to operate as the upmarket equivalent of Qantas, and use Tiger as the "downmarket" equivalent of Jetstar.
A conclusion that defies its elements
Ambitious foreign policy push yet to coalesce
Michael Fullilove's article in the SMH this morning seems to me to reach a conclusion that is rather at odds with the details.
He thinks Abbott has done well on foreign affairs, yet notes that in two respects (being a "globalist" not a "regionalist", and enthusiastic use of the UN Security Council) he is doing quite the opposite to what he indicated in Opposition. Maybe "Windvane Comes Good" should be the true title of the piece.
But it gets worse. Fullilove acknowledges that Abbott has had at least one really crook idea, but fortunately was been talked out of it:
I really don't get how Fullilove then gets to the conclusion that Abbott has been impressive in foreign affairs: especially since I think this week lots of people are probably starting to question what an odd look it is to be willing to spend hundreds of millions on a military deployment to Iraq that appears to be doing very little*, while at the same time looking scared and shy of getting meaningful assistance to the Ebola affected nations up and running.**
I will grudgingly agree that Bishop has performed better than I expected in her role. It seems odd, doesn't it, the way some people turn out to be reasonable as foreign ministers - I always thought that Downer was a surprise success as well. I think it probably just takes lawyers who are good in face to face "people skills", and perhaps being too intellectual (hello, Bob Carr) works against a foreign minister.
Anyway, I am rathered surprised at Fullilove's article, and have to view him with suspicion from now on!
* since I wrote this, it was announced that the RAAF had a couple of terrorist "kills", but we don't know any details.
** And when, by the way, are any journalists going to start questioning the wisdom of sending over ground advisers who have nothing to do for weeks until the lawyers get the status of forces issue sorted out with the Iraqi government?)
Michael Fullilove's article in the SMH this morning seems to me to reach a conclusion that is rather at odds with the details.
He thinks Abbott has done well on foreign affairs, yet notes that in two respects (being a "globalist" not a "regionalist", and enthusiastic use of the UN Security Council) he is doing quite the opposite to what he indicated in Opposition. Maybe "Windvane Comes Good" should be the true title of the piece.
But it gets worse. Fullilove acknowledges that Abbott has had at least one really crook idea, but fortunately was been talked out of it:
A related concern is that Abbott shows a tendency towards imprudence.So Fullilove thinks the "shirt front" episode was just a bit of trivia: I would have thought it a sign of stupid imprudence in language, which tends to be important in foreign affairs.
The shirt fronting saga is a trivial example, but there is a more
serious one. According to news reports, in the aftermath of the MH17
crash he wanted to put one thousand Australian troops onto the crash
site in Eastern Ukraine. Such a deployment would have presented
unacceptable risks to Australian personnel as well as unprecedented
logistical problems for the Australian Defence Force. Why on earth would
we put so many of our people between such bitter enemies? Luckily,
cooler heads prevailed.
I really don't get how Fullilove then gets to the conclusion that Abbott has been impressive in foreign affairs: especially since I think this week lots of people are probably starting to question what an odd look it is to be willing to spend hundreds of millions on a military deployment to Iraq that appears to be doing very little*, while at the same time looking scared and shy of getting meaningful assistance to the Ebola affected nations up and running.**
I will grudgingly agree that Bishop has performed better than I expected in her role. It seems odd, doesn't it, the way some people turn out to be reasonable as foreign ministers - I always thought that Downer was a surprise success as well. I think it probably just takes lawyers who are good in face to face "people skills", and perhaps being too intellectual (hello, Bob Carr) works against a foreign minister.
Anyway, I am rathered surprised at Fullilove's article, and have to view him with suspicion from now on!
* since I wrote this, it was announced that the RAAF had a couple of terrorist "kills", but we don't know any details.
** And when, by the way, are any journalists going to start questioning the wisdom of sending over ground advisers who have nothing to do for weeks until the lawyers get the status of forces issue sorted out with the Iraqi government?)
Fusion in 10 years? I don't think so....
People who don't want action to reduce CO2 like to promote any report that all of our clean energy problems are about to be solved by new forms of nuclear power. "No need to worry, folks, the climate change [stage whisper: which isn't real anyway] solution is just around the corner and you don't have to do anything now."
So we see the headline in The Australian today "Nuclear Fusion on the way" above an article by the ever unreliable Graham Lloyd, with the first line "THE “true atomic age” of limitless electricity without any radioactive waste or carbon dioxide emissions could be a reality within a decade." As is usual with The Australian, Lloyd's writing contains some reservations further in, but the headline never gives that indication.
Sounds good, hey? But have a read of the somewhat more realistic take in Wired, a magazine not exactly known for its technological pessimism:
As for the other new energy source, the mysterious E-cat, ridiculous anti climate science website NoTricksZone was keen to promote the paper that claimed it had been "independently verified". But for some detailed response to how inadequate that paper is, have a look here and here and here and here:
http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1306/1306.6364.pdf
So we see the headline in The Australian today "Nuclear Fusion on the way" above an article by the ever unreliable Graham Lloyd, with the first line "THE “true atomic age” of limitless electricity without any radioactive waste or carbon dioxide emissions could be a reality within a decade." As is usual with The Australian, Lloyd's writing contains some reservations further in, but the headline never gives that indication.
Sounds good, hey? But have a read of the somewhat more realistic take in Wired, a magazine not exactly known for its technological pessimism:
McGuire designed a magnetic container that shifts the strength of its magnetic field to match those plasma ripples. “If we have a perturbation or a ripple that sends it closer to the wall, the magnetic field gets stronger and stronger, so it has the right kind of feedback to keep it stable,” McGuire says.
The problem with that reactor? It doesn’t exist yet. “Some key parts of the prototype are theoretical and not yet proven,” says Nathan Gilliland, CEO of Canadian fusion company General Fusion.And there are more skeptical takes on the matter from scientists in the field in this report in Business Insider.
As for the other new energy source, the mysterious E-cat, ridiculous anti climate science website NoTricksZone was keen to promote the paper that claimed it had been "independently verified". But for some detailed response to how inadequate that paper is, have a look here and here and here and here:
http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1306/1306.6364.pdf
Thursday, October 16, 2014
Re-watching Fiddler
Last weekend, having an idle Saturday afternoon to kill, I noticed that ABC was showing Fiddler on the Roof. I'm pretty sure it was the first time I had watched it since I had seen it in the cinema in 1971.
I remember my parents were a bit underwhelmed by it, as was I at the time. I think the basic problem was that, after The Sound of Music, there was a particularly high expectation that big musicals should end happily, and ones that didn't felt a tad unsatisfactory. And it certainly seems, looking back on it, that with the end of Rodgers & Hammerstein, the not-quite-so-uplifting musicals seemed to be quite in vogue in the 60's: Camelot, Sweet Charity, that little seen Julie Andrews movie Star!, Paint Your Wagon (which I haven't seen, but my mother said it featured lots of mud); and even Oliver and Mary Poppins have a somewhat melancholy feel about their happy endings, if you ask me.
Re-watching Fiddler, though, I did enjoy its music more than I remembered, and was reminded of its strong thematic relevance to the 1960's. The same challenges that Tevye, the father, faced in terms of his daughters not following his authority and that of "tradition" were certainly the same ones you could see sweeping the West, particularly (I think) in Catholic households. Yet the Broadway musical was from 1964, pretty much at the dawn of the sexual revolution and all the angst about contraception, and de facto relationships, etc. It seems in retrospect to be a pretty prescient work.
There's a very interesting recent article about the show up at the Guardian, written because it is its 50th anniversary. (Perhaps that why it showed up on TV too?) I see that the movie version was a big commercial success, although I wonder whether it was to the same extent here, since at that time I don't know that Australians had had all that much cultural exposure to Jewish humour and characters.
I do still think the story makes one regrettable choice which doesn't work as well as it should. Why couldn't Tevye's final scene with his 3rd daughter, the one who rejected tradition in the most direct way by marrying a Christian, have been more emotional? He is packing his cart, about to leave the village forever, and cannot bring himself to look directly at his daughter and her husband who have come to say goodbye. Tevye finally mutters softly, "And God be with you", which is relayed on by his other daughter, who is upset at her father's behaviour.
And that's it. Now, Tevye's attitude may be realistic, but if he is going to be shown to still care for his daughter, wouldn't it work better if he could soften just a bit more and look at, or embrace, the child who he may never see again? I think it sort of also sours a little the final appearance of the Fiddler metaphor, where Tevye invites "tradition" along with him as he heads his way to America.
Still, a very worthy movie musical.
I remember my parents were a bit underwhelmed by it, as was I at the time. I think the basic problem was that, after The Sound of Music, there was a particularly high expectation that big musicals should end happily, and ones that didn't felt a tad unsatisfactory. And it certainly seems, looking back on it, that with the end of Rodgers & Hammerstein, the not-quite-so-uplifting musicals seemed to be quite in vogue in the 60's: Camelot, Sweet Charity, that little seen Julie Andrews movie Star!, Paint Your Wagon (which I haven't seen, but my mother said it featured lots of mud); and even Oliver and Mary Poppins have a somewhat melancholy feel about their happy endings, if you ask me.
Re-watching Fiddler, though, I did enjoy its music more than I remembered, and was reminded of its strong thematic relevance to the 1960's. The same challenges that Tevye, the father, faced in terms of his daughters not following his authority and that of "tradition" were certainly the same ones you could see sweeping the West, particularly (I think) in Catholic households. Yet the Broadway musical was from 1964, pretty much at the dawn of the sexual revolution and all the angst about contraception, and de facto relationships, etc. It seems in retrospect to be a pretty prescient work.
There's a very interesting recent article about the show up at the Guardian, written because it is its 50th anniversary. (Perhaps that why it showed up on TV too?) I see that the movie version was a big commercial success, although I wonder whether it was to the same extent here, since at that time I don't know that Australians had had all that much cultural exposure to Jewish humour and characters.
I do still think the story makes one regrettable choice which doesn't work as well as it should. Why couldn't Tevye's final scene with his 3rd daughter, the one who rejected tradition in the most direct way by marrying a Christian, have been more emotional? He is packing his cart, about to leave the village forever, and cannot bring himself to look directly at his daughter and her husband who have come to say goodbye. Tevye finally mutters softly, "And God be with you", which is relayed on by his other daughter, who is upset at her father's behaviour.
And that's it. Now, Tevye's attitude may be realistic, but if he is going to be shown to still care for his daughter, wouldn't it work better if he could soften just a bit more and look at, or embrace, the child who he may never see again? I think it sort of also sours a little the final appearance of the Fiddler metaphor, where Tevye invites "tradition" along with him as he heads his way to America.
Still, a very worthy movie musical.
The "race to the bottom" question
I see that the headline is: Ireland moves to close corporate tax loophole" Well, about time, I think most people would say.
But I did note on his twitter feed a couple of days ago that Jason Soon thought that Bono defending Ireland's low tax regime was "sensible".
I would have been more sarcastic myself: "Super rich tax minimiser thinks countries that charge less tax are great." I generally would go along the line in this article.
Bono argues that lower tax is the only thing that Ireland has got going for it on which to build prosperity. Yet aren't there plenty of other small countries that are doing OK in fairly niche fields? Some of Scandinavian ones, with their corporate tax rates that range from about from 20 to 27%. Even New Zealand, which (as far as I can tell - correct me, anyone) is riding high on the cow's back, of all things, to be doing OK, and with a corporate tax rate of 28% (versus Ireland's "standard" rate - before the offshore business - of 12.5%.) International corporate tax rates all appear at this site.
They make for some interesting reading, and (as one would expect) national economic health is not always co-related to the corporate tax rate. Obviously, infrastructure and security issues matter. The oddest example is at the extreme, where it would seem Vanuatu looks particularly attractive to companies at 0%, but then again, the note contains this summary:
The main question I have to lovers of competitive tax regimes (who, largely, by not so odd co-incidence, also want governments to be as small as possible) is this: how do you avoid the "race to the bottom" - that if all governments undercut each other, they must at some point develop the problem of not raising enough revenue to do the things reasonable people expect governments to do.
And don't just give me some rubbish that is along the lines of "well, government can just never get small enough, and people have to adjust to that." Only a tiny minority of science fiction loving libertarians go along with the extreme views of how small government should be - the rest of the world is happy with the role of government in welfare developed over the 20th century, in a broad sense.
We know that governments can suffer from cuts that are too severe - look at Kansas, which seems to have Laffer-ed itself into some serious fiscal trouble. (By the way, I know that the Right's answer to that is "just you wait and see. They'll work....eventually." Unfortunately, Stephen Moore, when defending himself on these grounds against Krugman seems to have made some embarrassing mistakes in his figures which had to be publicly corrected.)
And of course there has been much commentary that the Bush tax cuts just didn't work, and have cost "trillions" in revenue.
So tell, me, international tax competition advocates: how does your theory avoid a race to the bottom that is going to harm countries?
But I did note on his twitter feed a couple of days ago that Jason Soon thought that Bono defending Ireland's low tax regime was "sensible".
I would have been more sarcastic myself: "Super rich tax minimiser thinks countries that charge less tax are great." I generally would go along the line in this article.
Bono argues that lower tax is the only thing that Ireland has got going for it on which to build prosperity. Yet aren't there plenty of other small countries that are doing OK in fairly niche fields? Some of Scandinavian ones, with their corporate tax rates that range from about from 20 to 27%. Even New Zealand, which (as far as I can tell - correct me, anyone) is riding high on the cow's back, of all things, to be doing OK, and with a corporate tax rate of 28% (versus Ireland's "standard" rate - before the offshore business - of 12.5%.) International corporate tax rates all appear at this site.
They make for some interesting reading, and (as one would expect) national economic health is not always co-related to the corporate tax rate. Obviously, infrastructure and security issues matter. The oddest example is at the extreme, where it would seem Vanuatu looks particularly attractive to companies at 0%, but then again, the note contains this summary:
Corporate income tax is not levied within the Republic of Vanuatu. Furthermore, there are no income taxes, estate duties, gift duties, capital gains taxes, tax treaties or withholding taxes.I'm not at all sure what this means for how the country runs...
The main question I have to lovers of competitive tax regimes (who, largely, by not so odd co-incidence, also want governments to be as small as possible) is this: how do you avoid the "race to the bottom" - that if all governments undercut each other, they must at some point develop the problem of not raising enough revenue to do the things reasonable people expect governments to do.
And don't just give me some rubbish that is along the lines of "well, government can just never get small enough, and people have to adjust to that." Only a tiny minority of science fiction loving libertarians go along with the extreme views of how small government should be - the rest of the world is happy with the role of government in welfare developed over the 20th century, in a broad sense.
We know that governments can suffer from cuts that are too severe - look at Kansas, which seems to have Laffer-ed itself into some serious fiscal trouble. (By the way, I know that the Right's answer to that is "just you wait and see. They'll work....eventually." Unfortunately, Stephen Moore, when defending himself on these grounds against Krugman seems to have made some embarrassing mistakes in his figures which had to be publicly corrected.)
And of course there has been much commentary that the Bush tax cuts just didn't work, and have cost "trillions" in revenue.
So tell, me, international tax competition advocates: how does your theory avoid a race to the bottom that is going to harm countries?
Wednesday, October 15, 2014
Sensible and Rotten
Johnny Rotten and I agree: neither of us wants Russell Brand’s ‘revolution’ | Polly Toynbee | Comment is free | The Guardian
I really don't care for Johnny Rotten's perpetually angry/aggro act (or genuine demeanour?), but he comes across as rather sensible and astute on politics in this interview.
It's also remarkable to note how few young people vote in England. Compulsory voting has a lot going for it.
I really don't care for Johnny Rotten's perpetually angry/aggro act (or genuine demeanour?), but he comes across as rather sensible and astute on politics in this interview.
It's also remarkable to note how few young people vote in England. Compulsory voting has a lot going for it.
Fear and loathing of divestment
I'm rather confused about the Right wing fury over the ANU divestment campaign. I'm not sure Judith Sloan is sleeping at nights: she seems to be too busy practising attempts at satire, perhaps because her "logic" is not gaining ground?
Back in February, Sinclair Davidson posted about how the South Africa divestment campaign was not actually a financial success. (And he got very cross that anyone should argue that being anti fossil fuel mining is in any way a worthy cause - or at least worthy in the sense that being anti-apartheid was.)
So if that's right, why is the divestment campaign against all that lovely, lovely coal being burnt such an outrage? Are they worried for the universities losing money, or for the mining companies?
For the university, the ANU shares are apparently only 2% of its investment portfolio. How much trouble can that cause?
For the mining companies, the hope is that divestment campaigns causes public pressure for them to move away from fossil fuel mining, but how bad does reputational damage have to be before it really does hurt them when there is a market paying good money for their product?
Given the fury on the Right, the suggestion is that this is a sign the campaign can have serious effects. The best look at the issue seems to me to be this one by Frank Jotzo, who obviously thinks they can ultimately "work", but also notes the points I made above - the current reaction from the Right is rather over the top, and (in reality) probably works to give encouragement to those pushing divestment as worthwhile.
A good case can perhaps be made, then, that the Right wing hand wringing about it is actually counterproductive to their "interests". Hee hee indeed, hey Judith?
Update: Sinclair Davidson has missing out on the hyperbole, so he adds to it in a column on the Drum:
And by the way: the Drum article just contains the usual by-line that he's a Professor of Economics at RMIT. Isn't it especially relevant to this topic that it also disclose this:
Back in February, Sinclair Davidson posted about how the South Africa divestment campaign was not actually a financial success. (And he got very cross that anyone should argue that being anti fossil fuel mining is in any way a worthy cause - or at least worthy in the sense that being anti-apartheid was.)
So if that's right, why is the divestment campaign against all that lovely, lovely coal being burnt such an outrage? Are they worried for the universities losing money, or for the mining companies?
For the university, the ANU shares are apparently only 2% of its investment portfolio. How much trouble can that cause?
For the mining companies, the hope is that divestment campaigns causes public pressure for them to move away from fossil fuel mining, but how bad does reputational damage have to be before it really does hurt them when there is a market paying good money for their product?
Given the fury on the Right, the suggestion is that this is a sign the campaign can have serious effects. The best look at the issue seems to me to be this one by Frank Jotzo, who obviously thinks they can ultimately "work", but also notes the points I made above - the current reaction from the Right is rather over the top, and (in reality) probably works to give encouragement to those pushing divestment as worthwhile.
A good case can perhaps be made, then, that the Right wing hand wringing about it is actually counterproductive to their "interests". Hee hee indeed, hey Judith?
Update: Sinclair Davidson has missing out on the hyperbole, so he adds to it in a column on the Drum:
Australian universities simply do not have the social licence to trash the domestic economy or place the livelihoods of thousands of Australians at risk on a whim.Yes, it's economic apocalypse because a university made an investment decision he doesn't agree with.
And by the way: the Drum article just contains the usual by-line that he's a Professor of Economics at RMIT. Isn't it especially relevant to this topic that it also disclose this:
A paper to be released on Monday by the Minerals Council of Australia says the campaign "may contravene the letter or me spirit" of the Corporations Act, and calls on the corporate watchdog to assess tile potential breach.
The council commissioned Sinclair Davidson, a professor of institutional economics at Melbourne's RMIT University, to write die paper, in its most aggressive push-back to the anti-coal collective's urging investors to sell shares in coal companies.
'To the extent that stigmatisation deliberately causes investors to make valuation errors and consequently rebalance their portfolios away from fossil fuel stocks, a violation of the Corporations Act has occurred," Professor Davidson writes.Has anyone other than an economist associated with the IPA ever found that Corporation Act argument convincing? How did that other IPA big legal claim go - that tobacco companies could get $3 billion a year in compensation from the government for plain packaging laws? Oh, that's right: a complete bust. (Well, subject to the outcome of a rubbish Hong Kong arbitration.) Come to think of it, perhaps the Australian government should be sending Davidson over to the arbitration to give evidence - he's the one who thinks plain packaging hasn't had any effect on smoking rates, after all. As with divestment, the Right can't seem to keep its argument straight.
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