Leyonhjelm tackles the big issues

Cut ciggie tax, Leyonhjelm urges govt

THE federal government must slash the tobacco excise to crack down on sales of blackmarket cigarettes, independent senator David Leyonhjelm says.

AUSTRALIA'S major tobacco companies have released a report into illicit tobacco products which claims their share of consumption has increased from 13.5 per cent to 14.3 per cent in 12 months.

First, one would have to be very suspicious about the precision with which that estimate has been reached.

Second, Leyonhjelm goes on to show again that you don't have to be immature to be a libertarian, but it certainly doesn't hurt:

The trio called on the federal government to better resource law enforcement agencies to combat the problem - which they say is the equivalent of 156 million packets of 20 cigarettes a year.

But Senator Leyonhjelm says law enforcement isn't the answer. Instead, tobacco excise should be slashed. The government had created a "magnet" for organised criminals, he said.

"The best way to deal with them is not by law enforcement because all we end up with is more police running around in black pyjamas and guns and jumping out of helicopters," the libertarian senator said.

 Says the man who liked to stroke his guns....

He's also trying to stir up gay marriage.   Yeah, majorly important stuff, from a man unhappy with using the word "liberty" in his party name to prevent voter confusion.

Bound to go viral amongst those who follow Australian politics...

Should I know who Hugh Atkin is?

A spectacular urban market

MVRDV's Markthal Rotterdam photographed by Hufton Crow

There are many more photos at the link, but just look at this gaudily decorated, but very spectacular, food market building in Rotterdam:

Probably much to dispute, but right on some key points

30 Years of Conservative Nonsense, An Explainer | Vanity Fair

The post heading gives my take on this article.  I don't know enough about some of the topics to have a firm  opinion, but on the matters of economic policy, I reckon the article is pretty correct.   

The still complaining Bolt

Isn't it getting ridiculous the preciousness of Andrew Bolt -  his view that every journalist or commentator in the land who is not reflexively anti-Labor is a "Leftist."

Maaate:  your credibility is shot. 

Update:  Bolt goes all Fox News creep on race in America:  blames blacks for being upset when an unarmed petty thief is shot multiple times in the street.   

The facts of the Wilson killing were always obviously going to have conflicting versions, and from this distance it would be foolish to say which was obviously "right".  But its also pretty ridiculous to blame blacks for their upset with no indictment at all.

On watching the brain make decisions

Do Rats Have Free Will? - Neuroskeptic | DiscoverMagazine.com

A fascinating report here on a new study relevant to the interpretation of the famous Libet experiments.

And it combines two things I like - rats and pop philosophy.

Oh. What we missed about the Brisbane speech...

Abbott clueless on how to handle US and China

Gee, it took a long time for anyone to explain this in the media.   Hugh White explaining that Obama's Brisbane speech contained a lot of warnings about accepting China as the regional leader, which Abbott promptly ignored.

An important article.

Important free movie alert! (not really)

I mentioned here months ago that I had bought the Chromecast dongle, but after an initial burst of trying it out, I hadn't gone back to it until last Sunday.  Here's what I discovered:

*  ABC's iview service does hook up to it, as they said it would.  But picture quality on a large screen TV, as you might have suspected from watching it on a tablet, is not good.  (I didn't experiment with the screen format size though - that may make it better.)

*   I don't think the SBS on demand service works with it yet.

*   Movies and shows from the Crackle app seem to play extremely well through it, with good quality.  It's a pity that new material seems to get added there very rarely.

And now for the really important news:

Mothra is available through Crackle!!

Yes, the movie I will always remember as the anti-exploitation exploitation film looks great.  I didn't realise it was in colour and wide screen - I had only ever seen it on a black and white TV in the 1960's.   It actually looks relatively expensive for its day, and Japanese movie production values in 1962 were much higher than I realised.  

I haven't finished watching it yet, but just knowing it's there gives pleases me.

Cat; pigeons

The ABC has flab to be cut

I don't keep up with Australian media intrigue much, so it is curious to read a strong critique of ABC management from one Louise Evans, who appears to have had a very shortlived job as manager of Radio National last year.  Now, her criticisms may well have some element of truth in them, but it would be good to know more about her background (such as when she was managing editor at The Australian) and what went wrong in the ABC job so quickly.

Henry's rubbery figure?

Henry Ergas lines up for duty for some Obama /clean energy bashing in today's Australian, but what caught my eye was this line:

But it works a treat with the billionaires Obama courts, who helped the Democrats outspend the Republicans by some 35 per cent in last month’s elections.

Really?  When I Google the question (with, for example:  "did Republicans outspend Democrats in midterm elections" - because, I guess, most people would assume Republicans did)  I can't see any article that talks about a 35% outspend by Democrats.  In fact, nearly every article quotes the Centre for Responsive Politic's estimates that Republicans slightly outspent Democrats.   Even the Washington Times, a paper with (I think) even less credibility for objectivity than the Australian, if that's possible.

Even Googling using the 35% figure, I can't find any reference quickly.

It's clear that "dark money" donations in the US are hard to track, but even so, I just can't see anyone estimating that 35% Democrat outspend figure.

So it would good to know where Ergas gets this figure from.   Fox News?  Breitbart?  You know, the reliable sources...

We're unpopular - who can we blame?

Gee, now that everyone across the political spectrum is acknowledging that Tony Abbott is proving to be the hopeless Prime Minister that I always said he would be (did you see his closest buddy Greg Sheridan on Lateline last night suggesting he stop the stupid repetition of what he just said?) it's getting a bit boring coming up with yet more examples of his bad political judgement.

But I will.   Everyone needs a hobby.  (Heh).

While everyone - again, really, across the spectrum - has acknowledged that his opening remarks at the G20 about his own political problems were weirdly inappropriate for the occasion, I was reminded while Googling around this morning that he has precedent for not understanding when not to try to score points.   In this paper, someone from ANU back in 2011 noted that Abbott was routinely using addresses in Parliament to visiting foreign leaders to try to score points again the then Labor government.

As for the government generally, I see that the Australian today (in an article by Chris Kenny, of all people) is talking up some bashing of HRC head Gillian Triggs by Scott Morrison over her revising explanations at a Senate estimates hearing about why she didn't enquire into children in detention while Labor was in power.

Now I don't hold any particular card for Triggs - she seems to have decided to deal with her politically appointed Human Rights Commissioner for Selfies, Gays and Transgendered (but mainly selfies) by giving him unlimited travel and accommodation allowances and sending him on his way on a never ending tour of the nation - but this kerfuffle is pretty small change.   The blindingly obvious point about children in detention that arrogant wannabe fascist Morrison overlooks is that while a lot went through it under Labor,  the ones there now have absolutely no idea what the future holds for them. They have been left in a protracted, hopeless situation in hot, isolated, inadequate facilities in the middle of nowhere.  Maybe some of them will end up - one day, no one has any idea when - in poverty stricken Cambodia, because the Coalition decided Malaysia was not up to it when Labor wanted to send some there.

And did anyone see the appearance of ABC head Mark Scott at the Government dominated Senate estimates hearing this week?   The hate against him was strong, for his making the entirely justifiable claim that the budget cuts were quite large that would lead to hard decisions that would have some effects on what they can do and where.  There was a bit of back and forth over whether he had really sent a letter to Christopher Pyne (Pyne rang into the hearing to say he never got a letter, Scott said it was sent.  How petty.  The Chair at one point angrily reminded Scott he was "under oath".  He said something like "am I?")

The political optics of the hearing was terrible - it was like they thought they could cut  the ABC's budget and then blame Scott for any blowback.   "If you cut anything you're making us look bad!"  seemed to be their theme, but Scott is such a smooth performer who is so obviously on top of his game, there was no way that was going to work.   And do Coalition politicians only get their views on the ABC by reading Bolt, the IPA and the Murdoch press?   How do they not notice the consistency high approval of the ABC in seemingly every poll that has ever been held?  If they had any sense at all, their approach would be a sympathetic one, not trying to angrily pass the buck.

So suck it up, Coalition Senators and Members.   You're a bunch of thin skinned cry babies whose own incompetent policies, politicians and Prime Minister have got you to where you are.  And there is no sign  of when a turnaround in popularity is going to arrive.  

Lenore on the "deeper" Abbott government

Tony Abbott keeps digging himself in deeper, and it makes no sense | Australia news | theguardian.com

What a great column by Lenore Taylor, which contains this interesting detail:

Tony Abbott and senior ministers were deeply angry at Barack Obama’s show-stealing climate change speech during the G20. We know because they have been briefing News Ltd columnists to that effect all week – including graphic accounts of how they rang up afterwards and yelled at state department officials for failing to give a “heads up” that the president was going to “dump on” the PM.

Putting aside for one second the extraordinary position we are in when a speech that calls for an ambitious global climate deal and points out Australia has a lot to lose from a warming climate is seen as “dumping” on our prime minister, let’s think about how government
ministers could have responded.

Read the whole thing if you haven't already...

Something in the water at RMIT?

I see that RMIT has on staff yet another economist with ties to the IPA, who has written an economic analysis of cuts to the ABC which is rather pointless, fanciful and will convince no one other than Rupert Murdoch. 

Along with Sinclair Davidson ("inequality? - Ha! you'd have to be a communist to be against it"*) and the absolutely rabidly Obama hating, climate change is just a Leftie religion, Say's Law obsessive, author of the only economics book that gets things right, Steve Kates, RMIT seems to be the Australian centre of Right wing economic extremism and eccentricity.   Doesn't that have an effect on the number of students who want to go there?

* only a slight paraphrase of what I take his attitude to be.

Why semi-historical films can annoy

The Imitation Game: inventing a new slander to insult Alan Turing | Film | theguardian.com

It's a real problem when films based on recent history don't make it clear which bits are real and which are completely invented.   This film about Turing gets a pasting in this review for some inventions which seek to further hurt the reputation of a man with a pretty tragic life.

I missed that one

ABC, climate change: the Coalition is drowning us in nonsense | Australia news | theguardian.com

Kathrine Murphy makes the point everyone understands, whether they be on the Left or Right:

This morning, on the wireless, I heard the finance minister, Mathias Cormann, say the government wasn’t making cuts to the ABC.

The day before, I heard the communications minister, Malcolm Turnbull, say Tony Abbott hadn’t actually promised before last September’s election not to cut the budgets of the ABC and SBS. If Abbott had said something like that, then he didn’t mean it; and more
likely, we’d all just misunderstood what the prime minister had said.

Also on Wednesday, I heard the prime minister tell the French president, Francois Hollande, that part of the Australian government’s policy arsenal to combat the risks associated with climate change involved funding an agency called the Clean Energy Finance Corporation.

What he didn’t tell the French president was the government intends to abolish the CEFC.

In politics at the present time, we are drowning in nonsense. The nonsense waves are not only lapping, elegantly, at our ankles, they are picking us all up and dumping us head first into the sand.

The Abbott government is performing so many contortions, and running so rhetorically ragged, it’s hard to see if anything coherent is actually going on.

I had missed the  bit where Abbott now claimed the Clean Energy Finance Corporation as his own.   Has he changed policy on that?  Or is it just another example where he tells whichever audience before him what he thinks they want to hear?   I think we all can guess which is most likely, can't we? 

Odd cosmic alignments

Spooky alignment of quasars across billions of light-years

It would be funny if, after looking long enough, for the right sort of thing, astronomers eventually find a message written in the sky.    Something more profound than a big smiley face, I hope; although that would be cool too.

Not that Andrew Bolt will comprehend this

Lake-effect snow in Buffalo: Climate change is making snowstorms more extreme.

A pretty convincing explanation here at Slate, with graphs and all.   Snow is a form of precipitation.  More intense bursts of heavy precipitation were always expected to increase under global warming.  

On the downside

What It Would Really Take to Reverse Climate Change - IEEE Spectrum

What did I just write the other day about the wild swings from optimism to pessimism you tend to see in prognostications about the future of energy?

Here we have a somewhat interesting, if not particularly well written, article by a couple of Google engineers who explain why Google pulled the plug in 2011 on trying to come up with an entire clean energy solution.  (I'm sure I wouldn't be the only one who didn't even realise Google had such a broad program in the first place.)

The argument they use seems flawed in a couple of respects:  an apparent insistence that a 350 ppm level of CO2 is key (when it has already been well exceeded), and a large downplaying of any possibility of future international co-operation for pricing carbon.

It's ridiculously easy, I'm sure, to find any number of other engineers/economists/scientists who will strongly disagree with these two.

But such widespread diversity of opinion certainly doesn't help guide politicians.

 

More than you probably needed to know about speculums

Here's a novel topic:  the somewhat controversial history of the development of the speculum, as used for pelvic examinations in women. 

While part of the story is merely unpleasant (its inventor using black slaves for experimental surgery), this part, about the then cultural anxiety of the effect inserting anything, um, down there, is amusing for its oddness from the modern perspective:

Prostitutes were often hired as model patients for doctors to practice on. “There’s this really interesting line between torture device, disciplinary device, sexual device,” says Terri Kapsalis, a professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and the author of the book Public Privates: Performing Gynecology from Both Ends of the Speculum. Police officers would even leverage pelvic exams as threats against sex workers when they were arrested. Some doctors worried that using the speculum even on proper women might somehow make them sex-crazed.

In 1850, the Royal Medicine and Chirurgical Society of London held a standing-room-only meeting in which the community heard arguments for and against the speculum. These doctors worried that women would mistake the exam for a sexual experience. The British physician Robert Brudenell Carter reinforced this fear in his 1853 book, On the Pathology and Treatment of Hysteria, writing that he had “seen young unmarried women, of the middle class of society, reduced by constant use of the speculum to the mental and moral condition of prostitutes; seeking to give themselves the same indulgence by the practice of solitary vice; and asking every medical practitioner ... to institute an examination of the sexual organs.”

Simplistic rubbish from Leyonhjelm

In his piece about metadata today, David Leyonhjelm makes this claim:

When governments get involved in regulating things they don't understand, things tend to go terribly wrong. Getting into the insulation business, for instance, resulted in installers dying and houses burning down. This proposal has the potential to have equally significant consequences.

Mmmm yes;  the politician most against government regulation of businesses now tries to make an example of a problem that occurred because of inadequate regulation, or enforcement thereof, in a business.

Shameless inconsistency by a gun stroking numbskull.

As for metadata:  if some ISPs are already storing it for a year or two (as the government has said), then who are libertarians to stop them running their business as they see fit? Sure, privacy concerns are raised by the practice, and that is conceded below. 

Common sense suggests that there is no reason to doubt that metadata could be very useful for some very serious criminal investigations and anti terrorist intelligence operations.

The issue with metadata should not be about storage per se, but about who, and the basis on which, access can be given.

If the argument was restricted to that, I don't see a problem.

But the argument that metadata should not be kept or accessible by anyone at all - that doesn't pass the common sense test.

Update:  I see from this Gizmodo article, that the intention of the government legislation is to actually reduce the number of authorities who can access it:

 Currently any authority or body that enforces a criminal law, a law imposing a pecuniary penalty or a law that protects the public revenue is an ‘enforcement agency’ under the TIA Act and can seek telecommunications data where that access complies with the requirements set out in Chapter 4 of the TIA Act. In 2012-2013 data was accessed by around 80 Commonwealth, State and Territory agencies with criminal law or revenue protection functions.

The Bill will require that bodies who are not a ‘criminal law enforcement agency’ for the purposes of the TIA Act must be declared by the Minister to be an ‘enforcement agency’ before they can authorise the disclosure of telecommunications data. These amendments will ensure that only authorities and bodies with a demonstrated need to have telecommunications information can authorise the disclosure of this information. These amendments are consistent with Recommendation 5 of the PJCIS Report that the number of agencies able to access telecommunications data be reduced.

 This is the type of detail that should be being discussed.