Abbott and Reform

Recently Tony Abbott gave the 2010 Alfred Deakin speech which was on the topic of reform. As is perhaps to be expected, he used the opportunity to take a swipe at the governments policies without offering much by way of an alternative. Along the way he criticized the NBN, the mining tax, the recent proposed changes to health care funding and carbon pricing, saying none of these are true reform but mere Labor power grabbing at the peoples expense.

I can't say that I agree with his analysis of these subjects. The NBN is an investment in infrastructure that I think will be of much more benefit than could be initially estimated, just as someone trying to estimate the value of building the telephone network decades ago would have failed to consider all the value derived from things utilizing that infrastructure such as faxes, DSL internet and more. I also believe that the NBN is one of those infrastructure systems where having a non commercial standardized underlying system that everyone has access to equally is a good thing. Roads are another example of such a system.

The mining tax, while terribly introduced by the Rudd government is something that to me seems eminently rational. Mining companies dig up minerals from land that is held by the government in trust for all of Australia, so it is only right that they pay the Australian people for what they take. And while the government was suggesting taking a 40% cut, they were also going to take a 40% cut of any losses. And while you may want to haggle over the exact amount, the principle is sound.

Tony also suggests that he is for a market based solution to reducing carbon emissions, and yet opposes introducing a carbon price. I can only ask how can you have a market without a price?

I haven't got anything to say on the matter of health care as I don't know much about the most recent proposals, but my recent time in hospital has made me even more supportive of public health car for all in general.

As an alternative to Labor's "reforms", Tony harkens back to the Howard days for some of his own examples of "reform". Work for the dole, while a good idea, is hardly what I'd call reform. More of a tweak really. And while helping disabled people to live independently is a good thing, doing so by cutting their welfare to drive them into the workforce is hardly the best way to achieve that goal. The only example of reform that wasn't Tony resting on his laurels was a suggestion to raise the tax free threshold to $25,000 and then have a single tax bracket from there's to $180,000, but that comes from the Henry review, which was started by the Rudd government.

Tony also said that in a hung parliament the opposition has an even greater responsibility to not just be the opposition, but to be a credible government in waiting, with viable policies of its own. Based on this I'd say the Coalition has a long way to go yet.

And So It Begins

Sarah Palin has announced that she will run for president in 2012, "if there is no one else to do it." Now that the cat is out the bag, I don't think there's any chance she won't try to become the Republican candidate regardless of who else may put their name forward for the job, regardless of how much more better suited to be president they are.

Since Palin was plucked out of Alaskan obscurity by the McCain campaign she has undoubtedly done well for herself, with spots on Fox, a huge book deal, a documentary series, and so forth. However, while all this may have built up her popularity, she hasn't really shown herself any more suitable to high office than she did while running for VP, and that wasn't really all that good a showing, all things considered.

Across a wide swathe of issues, Palin has come across as lacking in the statesmanship field. Inciting hysteria by dreaming up death panels that didn't exist in the health care bill, provoking hostility to the builders of the Islamic cultural centre in New York, using inflammatory language and encouraging people to reload and take aim at Democrats, and much more paint a picture of someone who is catering to a narrow section of society, and does not particularly care for or respect the rest of it.

Besides for increasing her popularity and her bank balance (both essential nowadays for a wannabe president), she hasn't made much progress on other things necessary to being a good
president. She resigned as governor of Alaska halfway through her term, showing a lack of commitment to the responsibility the voters had entrusted her with, she still hasn't built up any experience with foreign affairs (support our troops is about the closest I've seen from her on foreign affairs, and that's more patriotic jingoism than thought out foreign policy), and policy positions that are a mix of opposing anything the democrats suggest and populist slogans with no thought as to the implications beyond the fact that it rates well now.

I'm not sure I want Palin to run, because although I think if she ran Obama would be a shoe in for reelection, I think it would be better for America if the voters had a choice between two people who would be a good president.

Blatently False Headlines

So a news story turned up today with the headline "Pi record smashed as team finds two-quadrillionth digit" which I was naturally interested in. This new digit of Pi was found by means of some clever method of computing digits separately, which is kind of interesting. But then I got to the meat of the issue, what was the two-quadrillionth digit of Pi. It turns out that it is a 0, in binary.

In binary? Really? If we're doing it in binary you've got a fifty fifty chance of getting it bloody right. But that's not my major complaint against doing it in binary. My gripe is with claiming this is the two-quadrillionth digit of Pi. When I count digits of Pi I count decimal digits after the decimal point (the three is too easy and doesn't count). Pi to five digits is 3.14159. In binary the same number is 11.001001000011111 which is just a tad longer, and could have been much longer (my first run to calculate the binary value of 3.14159 got to over 350000 digits before I killed it for taking to long. I then decided to limit it to 15 digits for this example). My point is that calculating a bunch of binary digits is really easy and doesn't match what we normally consider the number of digits in a number. So calling this the two-quadrillionth digit of Pi is a bit of an exaggeration. In fact, I'd call it a bit of bullshit.

Those Wacky Catholics

So I'm sure we're all aware of the recent public relations fiasco the Catholic church has been suffering through recently. To deal with this they've updated canon law to make it slightly easier to fire a priest who gets caught doing things they shouldn't.

Not being one to kill just one bird with one stone, the Catholic church decided to make a few more updates to the canon law while they were at it. The other big thing they updated was the treatment of those who dare to ordain a woman.

Now of the two, guess which one of these is considered worse. The ordaining of women is now considered a "grave sin". And abusing children is a "grave sin". Now I'm sure there must be some sort of theological argument based on scripture and church doctrine but I don't see it, and I really don't think I'd see it if the pope himself visited to explain it to me. The church is over reacting on one issue and under reacting on the other

I Say Nepo You Say Tism

Tajikistan's national broadcaster has a new newscaster. And I'm sure despite the fact that she's only sixteen she'll be great. Obviously she must have tons of experience and have really impressed whoever was making the appointment. I mean the fact that her dad is the President surely can't have affected her appointment. And I'm sure her sister the deputy foreign minister got her job on merit as well.

I don't think I believe this

So apparently one of the UK's new conservative MPs got a bit wasted at a late night sitting of parliament recently. Apparently he was so drunk he was unable to vote. This seems a rather impressive feat, as voting is not exactly all that difficult to do, especially when you have a bunch of people around you telling you when to stick your hand up to be counted, or however they do it in the UK parliament.

The really good part of the story though is the guy's name. Mark Reckless. Who on earth gives responsibility to someone named Reckless. It's just asking for trouble.

A Note on the Australian Constitution

One of the byproducts of the transition from having Kevin Rudd as PM to Julia Gillard has been a bunch of people who think we live in America complaining that the whole process was undemocratic and not what they voted for. They say that they voted for Kevin Rudd as Prime Minister, and not Julia Gillard.

On this they are wrong. None of the voted for Kevin Rudd to be Prime Minister. Most of them didn't vote for Kevin Rudd for anything (I happen to be registered in his electorate, but he didn't get my first preference (I think he would have been around second or third depending on what other parties were running)). They voted for a member to represent their electorate.

They should take a closer look at the Australian constitution. And then they could tell me which part of it says we get to vote for a Prime Minister. In fact, if they can find anything about there being a Prime Minister I'll be surprised.

Back when they were setting up the federal government in the late 19th century, and they cribbed a lot of stuff of the British, including the concept of the Prime Minister, who was basically the member of parliament who had the most support from the other members of parliament. If the PM loses the support of parliament, he loses the job.

And that's what happened here. By losing the support of his party, Kevin Rudd effectively lost the support of parliament as a whole. And while technically he did not have to stand down as soon as it was apparent he had lost that support, by doing so he avoided a lot of messy parliamentary procedure that would have had the same end result.

This is all a well accepted part of the Westminster system. The government we have today is the same government we had before and is the one we elected. While you can definitely question the motivation of the Labor party (the support of the party has gone to the person they think will give them the best chance of being reelected, which is not necessarily the same thing as who will be the best leader of the country) in making this change, what they have done is in no one unprecedented, or even unexpected. Keating did the same thing to Hawke, and Costello should have done it to Howard.

So, in conclusion, let us welcome our new red-headed PM, and hope she does right by the country, even if she has missed an early opportunity to get rid of Senator Stephen "Internet Filter" Conroy.

Abbott's Paradox

Does anyone else find it odd that Tony Abbott's statement that we should only take his scripted statements to be 100% correct was not scripted, and so shouldn't be taken as 100% accurate?

Your not really making the point you think you're making

Thanks to Media Watch I found out about a little bit Alan Jones did reading out another of those chain emails that gets certain types of people going. This particular one was on the topic of refugees. As Alan read out

Alan Jones: The smugglers know the rules. The new ones. They know you don't have to go to Nauru now. You don't have detention in the desert now. You don't have a temporary protection visa now... There's an email doing the rounds at the moment which is most probably a bit apocryphal and a bit inventive but it's instructive and it says that:
"If you cross the North Korean border illegally you get 12 years hard labour.
If you cross the Iranian border illegally you are detained indefinitely.
If you cross the Afghan border illegally, you'll get shot...
If you cross the Chinese border illegally you may never be heard from again...
but" as the email says, "if you cross the Australian border illegally you'll get a job, a driver's licence, a social security card, welfare..."

The point I think Alan wants us to take away from this little monologue is that we need to be tougher on refugees coming to Australia illegally.

That's not the message I take away from this. The message I take away from this is "and that's one of the reasons why Australia is a better country than those other countries."

Now I know that the problem of a higher than desired number of refugees arriving through improper channels is complex and will require a multi-facted solution, there are two things I'm reasonably sure are not part of that solution.

One, a race to the bottom between nations for who can treat such people the worst (and trust me, Australia will lose on this one anyway),

and Two, not helping the countries the refugees are coming from become better and safer countries to live in will just keep them coming.

Really? You're Surprised by this Development?

The story on the front cover of yesterdays MX was about high school students, who, having been given a free laptop by the government to use for schoolwork have managed to get around the filters and install games, MSN, and are breaking the administrator password.

Now I just have to say, who didn't expect something like this to happen? I mean really, you give a kid a computer and say you can't play games on it and expect them not to try and play games? This is ignoring basic human nature.

I mean if the government had really wanted the kids to not play games on their laptops, why give them a Windows machine? Give them a laptop with Linux installed, an ordinary user account, and a copy of OpenOffice. I can bet you now the number of kids doing stuff you don't want them to on that will be a bajillion times less.

Anyway, a tip of my hat to the kids who worked out how to get around the filters, a wag of my finger to the ones who just followed the directions they found in the facebook group (I endorse initiative and learning, not getting around the filter just for the sake of playing games) and a sterner wag of my finger to the relevant governments for putting in place an inadequate system that they knew the kids were going to try to break.

Justice, Bangladeshi Style

So here's the situation: A 16 year old girl gets raped, to cover it up gets quickly married off by her parents, and it turns out she got pregnant from the rape. How do you think things go from here?

If you said the bastard who raped the poor girl gets dealt with harshly, guess again. He got pardoned by the village elders.

How did the husband react to finding out about his wife was pregnant with another man's unwanted child? He divorced her.

And the parents, how are they faring? Not so great. The fathers been fined with the threat of being outcast if he refuses to pay up.

And what do the village elders propose to do with the girl, who surely has already suffered more than enough? After letting off the man who raped her, threatening her family with ostracism, this poor girl was forced into isolation until her family accepted her punishment of 101 lashes.

101 lashes. With a whip. For getting raped.

That's one hell of an incentive to not get raped. Although I'm sure you have to weigh it up against the hell she'd have had to pay if shed kneed the guy in the balls or sprayed mace in his face. It's a bad choice either way.

Just what the hell were these village elders thinking? How is this in any way just? By what sort of messed up view of the world does this girl deserve punishment? And how is it that the rapist gets off free?

We like to think that just because our little corner of the world is pretty decent, things must be OK, but the sad truth is that for too many people, the world is not a very nice place at all. This is just one more reminder of this sad truth.

China's Love Hate Relationship with Avatar

China just can't seem to make up its mind about the film Avatar. First, it banned screenings of the 2D version because it thought the movie was hitting a bit too close to home with China's own forced eviction of millions of people so that some mining can get done.

But soon after, in an attempt perhaps to catch some of the megabucks that Avatar has raked in, some Chinese provincial officials have said that the Hallelujah mountains in the movie were inspired by a more grounded mountain in their province, and have renamed the mountain from The Southern Sky Column (a translation I'm sure) to Avatar Hallelujah Mountain.

I guess this is part of the Chinese duality. Rigid totalitarianism mixed with cash hungry pseudocapitalism.

Finally, a slightly tangential factoid, apparently China only allows 20 foreign films to be shown in cinemas each year.

End Post
Writing time: 14 minutes
Time since last post: 12 days
Current media: none

When Boogeymen Collide

In response to the guy who attempted to blow up a plane but only managed to blow up his groin on Christmas day, various countries have stepped up their "security" in an attempt to prevent this exact type of scenario happening again. The US have cracked down on people doing things in flight, forcing you to stay in your seat for the last hour and not have anything in your lap.

The Brits are beefing up preflight security (again). And their doing this with fancy new full body scanners that can see through your clothes and provide something that is a lot closer to a nude image of you than a clothed one. These images exist in a very fine line between decent and indecent, and are more likely to fall on the indecent side, as I'm sure the photos released to the press are not as clear as what is actually produced (it's a standard tactic to understate your capabilities).

And now the Brits want to use these machines on everyone, which is causing a problem. For most people, while they don't like have indecent images taken of them by low paid security guards and feel like it's an invasion of privacy, it's not actually illegal to do so. But there is a subsection of the population for which it is illegal to make an indecent image of. Who? Children.

That's right. Terrorism is butting heads with Child Pornography. Won't somebody think of the children? When the two biggest boogeymen of our day butt heads, who will win? Right now, Terrorism is losing as the suggestions for dealing with this is to just not scan children with the machines, but I expect Terrorism will come back strong once an under-18 terrorist wannabe pops up somewhere.

I think a better solution would be not to use these $150,000+ machines and not make indecent images of anyone, but then what would I know?

Around the World in 5 Stories

A few small items I'd like to comment on. Going in order of geographic proximity we have

1) Malaysian police had a busy new year's eve, raiding hotels to find unmarried couples there. Since Islamic citizens aren't allowed to be alone with members of the opposite sex, those caught are looking at up to two years in jail and a fine. Of course, the non-Islamic population of course are free to get jiggy with it.

2) The chairman of Thai Airways has resigned after getting caught avoiding excess baggage fees. Surely a perk of the job you'd think. But he took it too far when instead of the meagre allowance of 150kg for himself and his two companions got in first class, he brought 398kg back with him from a trip to Japan. Apparently a friend gave him some fruit for a temple in Bangkok. In addition, he got the fruit sent to the lost property office in Bangkok, conveniently skipping customs in the process. It's fair enough that he resigned, but he clearly wasn't trying hard enough to profit from his position. All this netted him only $5,000 dollars or so. If Thailand wants to improve its economy, it needs it's businessmen to take greater liberties with their companies. Ken Lay and Bernie Madoff couldn't have done what they did without huge companies to take advantage off.

3) Burma news now. The military leader of Burma has spoken to his people about the election happening some time this year. He has called on the people to make the "correct choice" when voting. I have no doubts about what he'd consider the right choice, and I'm pretty sure making the "correct choice" won't necessarily be the best for the people. Although given what happened last time the military allowed an election, I wouldn't bet on a freedom loving government coming to power. However the military has rigged the game a little, with the constitution requiring a quarter of the parliament being military members appointed by the head of the military so there's a little bit more of a chance they'll play nice after the election.

4) Out of Asia and into Africa now. A tribal king in South Africa facing 15 years in jail for charges including kidnapping, arson, assault and more is threatening to secede and take more than half the country with him in an attempt to get out of jail free. The king's supporters have called for the charges to be dropped and he be paid over ten billion US dollars in compensation for humiliating him. President Zuma has said that the claim the king can declare a new country in South Africa is ridiculous which is perhaps the best way to deal with such things, and a surprisingly sane reaction from a man with three wives.

5) And finally, a surprisingly sensible and rational policy from a political party. The French Socialist Party has announced that even though they are opposed to the burka, they are going to oppose efforts by the government to introduce a legal ban on people wearing them. It is good to see a party that is willing to say that they don't like something, but realize that legislating against said thing is not the best way to deal with the problem. Kudos to them for this.

Life is Hard for Beautiful People

Life is hard for the beautiful. All those online social networking and dating sites are full of people who are, well, not beautiful. And it wouldn't do to be seen online associating with someone of the non-beautiful inclination.

You might think BeautifulPeople.com might be an answer to this horrible, unfair dilemma. An online dating and social networking site where to join you have to be judged beautiful enough by the existing members sounds like just the thing for beautiful people wanting to avoid slumming it with the beautifully challenged masses.

But even with this great aid, life is still difficult for the beauties who walk among us. Apparently, over this Christmas/New Years period some members indulged a little too much and might have put on a little weight. Not too unusual an occurrence, but it was enough to get 5000 members kicked out for getting too fat. Those poor people. Being judged like that. It's so unfair.

Of course, once my application for the site gets approved, this post and any related disparaging remarks will disappear into the ether.

Bradfield By-election

I recently found via Toxic Custard (a blog from before blogs, this guy had a weekly email of his life and other stuff back when I was in high school) Antony Green's Blog (Antony Green is the ABC's elections guru) which is quite an interesting read. I've especially found interesting some of the posts about the Bradfield by-election.

This by-election will have a record equaling 22 candidates. This however doesn't mean that a significant diversity of views are represented by the candidates. 11 candidates are standing for the Christian Democratic Party (CDP) led by Fred Niles. This is generally seen as a publicity stunt, since there is no way they are likely to win, and splitting the vote 11 ways is not going to help with this. It will however increase the number of invalid votes, as with 22 boxes to be correctly numbered, the odds of innocent mistakes are going to be a lot higher than for the average election. Helping the CDP is the fact that one of their candidates is listed first on the ballot, so they will probably gain a bit from the donkey voters.

Also running in this by-election, although with only one candidate, is the Australian Sex Party. I was unaware of this party's existence, which is understandable since it is a rather new party. Having looked at their policies they seem pretty reasonable. The worst I can say of them is that some will depend on how they're implemented whether I think they're good or not. There are also a few which stray from the focus you'd expect the Australian Sex Party to have, but getting rid of tax exemptions for religious organizations is definitely something I support.

This is a stark contrast to my reaction to the CDP's policies. Deporting muslims who look at you funny, refusing to take action on the environment, web censorship, hiring the Fiji Navy to stop people smugglers, and more. The only one that almost sounds good is giving every Australian a free 4G mobile phone to use with no phone bills. The only problems are, 1 we'll still have to pay for this with taxes instead of just paying a bill, 2 we're still building the 3G network and a 4G network is a fair while off into the future.

Anyway, I won't go on any more, as no one I know has a vote in the electorate.

On another note, I will try to post at a more frequent rate in the coming weeks. I've been very slack this year.

1967 is calling, and they want their parochial attitudes back

So there's this guy in Louisiana who issues marriage licenses. And apparently he doesn't believe in mixed race marriages. This guys seems to be quite behind the times. The US Supreme court said this was OK in 1967, and quite frankly the debate has moved on since then. I'm sure back then that there were people like this guy who said that these marriages don't work, are immoral, against nature, etc, much like there are people today using these same arguments about gay marriage.

Fortunately, this guy has been called out on it this time.

Whoops-a-daisy

A group of Somali pirates have made a poor choice for their most recent victims. They attacked the Somme, the flagship of the French contingent patrolling the region. The pirates were a little surprised to find bullets flying back towards them. We need to see more of this sort of thing.

Preparation is Key

A successful political campaign, like all things, requires preparation, and these days the amount of time spent on preparation continues to grow to the point where politicians seem to be perpetually campaigning.

This seems to have been taken to heart in Kenya where the two main ethnic groups are already making preparations for the next presidential election, which is to be held in 2012. Given the disruptions that occurred following the last election, surely this can't be anything but good news.

Well, not really. They're buying up guns, and since both sides are saying that they're doing it because the other side is doing it, I can just see this escalating over the next three years. Election by tank does not sound like a recipe for fun.

Closing a few tabs

There's a couple of items I've had open for a few days intending to write something about them.

First, another sad story of a child who died because his parents went to a faith healer instead of a doctor. It's uncertain yet if the parents will be prosecuted for neglect.

Next was to be a link to a story about the continuing debate over a political movie about Hilary Clinton that got banned during the primaries in 2007, but the New York Times has decided you now need to subscribe to read the article, so there's no link.

In news I'm glad to see, Nozomu Sahashi, CEO of NOVA, has been sent to jail for three and a half years after being found guilty of embezzlement. About bloody time.

Finally is a business opportunity I should look into setting up over here in Australia. It's a company run by atheists that offers to look after the pets of Christians after the rapture. The Christians pay $110 dollars for ten years of protection. And if there's no rapture, there's no refunds. Pretty easy money I think.