Horse 3282 - Let MARC Play Properly

The Bathurst 12 Hours has firmly established itself as one of the world's great GT races. In some respects it has taken on a lot of the functions that the Bathurst 1000 in October used to play, in that that touring car race no longer invites overseas teams and has closed the shop to such an extent that privateer and teams wanting a one in a million shot, will never be allowed to play again.

Being a GT race, the Bathurst 12 Hours tuns according to GT3 rules, though to pad out the field, it has allowed Improved Production Cars and GT4 cars to play in the past. It has also allowed Invitational Teams to play as well and in this respect, I think that the race organisers openly show weaponised incompetence.

If you look through the list of competitors for the last decade, you will see the team MARC appear again and again in the Invitational Class. MARC Cars Australia Pty Ltd which is a race car manufacturing company, originally built a a prototype for South Africa's Global Touring Car Championship (GTC) and have supplied the tubular chassis ever since. The premise is simple, MARC provides a chassis, the teams are then free to source a bodyshell and panels to fit on the outside, then the engines are mandated at 2-Litre turbocharged and producing 325kW and 600nm of torque. 

However, MARC still wants to be able to sell it chassis beyond merely South Africa and putting it on the world's stage at the Bathurst 12 Hours is a sensible idea. However, at the Bathurst 12 Hours, MARC cars are effectively not eligible for a race win because they are consistently kneecapped so as not to show up the GT3 cars. 

In the past, MARC cars have included the Mazda 3, Ford Focus and Ford Mustang, and all run some version of Ford's Coyote V8. The MARC cars according to their own website are described as:

https://www.marccarsaustralia.com.au/marc-car-ii.html

MARC II V8, a second generation car featuring a more powerful 5.2L version of the Coyote V8. The Mustang inspired MARC II is a fully carbon body, paddle-shift operated Albins 6-speed transaxle gearbox with GT-style aerodynamics. 

- MARC Cars Australia Pty Ltd.

Here's where I think that the organisers of the Bathurst 12 Hours demonstrate weaponised incompetence. They have chosen to allow a car into an Invitational Class but not allowed it to win outright or effectively compete against anything else. Is it truly a race when you are the only competitor?

The problem is that that the MARC cars from the outset do not properly fit into a GT3 class. FIA GT3 does allow for a very large variety of car types to be homologated; seemingly with no limits on engine sizes, drivetrain configuration, or even rollcage and chassis construction. FIA GT3 homologation though, must be endorsed or approved by the manufacturer; which means that an independent fabricator like MARC would never be allowed to submit their work for GT3 homologation.

The unbelievable truth is that there is a series which upon finding that they FIA homologation process was too hard, decided to allow "FIA GT3 like" cars in its series; then even went and provided a standardised chassis and a crate motor for the purposes of allowing independents to join in. The Japan Automobile Federation (JAF) in running Super GT in Japan, has two classes being GT500 which was their eventual successor to Group A, and GT300 which as the name might suggest, is not exactly a GT3 series but a GT3 plus series.

In addition to FIA GT3 cars, there are so called "Mother Chassis" cars which teams are then free to put whatever they like over the outside, and JAF regulations which allow teams to build a car as though it were a GT3 car but without the need for FIA homologation. This is why for instance, there has been Toyota GT-86 MC and a Subaru BRZ JAF car but not an actual FIA GT3 Toyota GT-86 or Subaru BRZ.

So what gives? The Subaru BRZ JAF car took the EJ20 four cylinder boxer engine from the World Rally Championship WRX. The Toyota GT-86 MC uses the standard GT300 crate motor which as a 4.5L V8, looks suspiciously similar to the Nissan VK45 which is also a 4.5L V8 engine. How do these things run together in the same series? How do they run in the same series with the existing GT3 cars like the Lamborghini Huracán, Porsche 911, Mercedes AMG-GT, Audi R8 LMS Evo II, Lexus LC500 and Nissan GT-R? A curious thing called "Balance of Performance".

The end point of imposing Balance of Performance is obvious. As GT3 is already a mix of cars and GT300 further mixes those things, with engines in the front, back and centre, driving the front or the back, then power and weight is played with, then fuel flow rates are played with; along with a standard set of front and rear aero; all in the name of balancing the performance of the cars to make sure that they perform roughly the same on track and produce similar lap times. As far I can tell from the JAF GT300 regulations, weights and power generally range from 1000kg and 267kW to about 1330kg and 350kW.

Now here's the thing, if the FIA can do this kind of thing for FIA GT3 cars, and JAF can do do this kind of thing for FIA GT3 cars and JAF cars and Mother Chassis cars, then why is it beyond the organisers of the Bathurst 12 Hours? Are they just incompetent at running the race? Do they think that this is too hard? 

Since the JAF allows a team to put any engine ever made by a manufacturer into any car produced by that same manufacturer, then why aren't MARC allowed to out a Coyote into a Ford Focus and have it BoP'd against GT3 cars? It seems to me that Ford's 5.2L quad-cam Coyote V8 would already be a suitable candidate under JAF regulations. Since the JAF would have this car which produces "615 Bhp @ 7000 RPM" tariffed at 1725kg (since that's what the BoP works out to be), then what's wrong with that? I am sure that MARC could derate the amount of power coming out of the engine to be exactly equivalent with say the BMW M4 and the same weight by adding or removing ballast. If I can do these kinds of basic calculations, why is it beyond the organisers of the Bathurst 12 Hours?

From the outside, motorsport always looks like a plaything for the rich and by the rich that sometimes we are allowed to look on at. It also looks at though, given that Australia doesn't even have a motor industry any more, that the organisers of motorsport in Australia are perpetually too lazy to let people in Australia try to innovate and invent, because it is too much work for them to work out how to compare the new things to other things.

Quite frankly, I think that MARC should be allowed to play because they have invented a thing. If I was Grand Poohbah and Lord High Everything Else, then I'd have contracted MARC to act as the standard for our own Mother Chassis type cars and then maybe we'd have seen a whole flood of fabulousness in the Bathurst 12 Hours, just like they have in Super GT in GT300. However, MARC is not allowed to play because the shop is closed... again.

Horse 3281 - Yes, The President Is An Officer

Twice in as many days, I am writing a piece which touches on US Constitutional law. Yet again I find myself somewhat mystified that people supposedly hold this document up as being as sacred as the Bible, Qu'ran, or the Vedic Scriptures, and yet don't seem to have read it either. 

The thing which has caused MAGAists to burn incandescent with rage, is a decision made by the Colorado Supreme Court which makes former President Donald Trump ineligible to appear on the State's primary ballot papers because he incited an insurrection for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, and would therefor be disqualified from holding the office of President under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.

https://fortune.com/2023/12/19/donald-trump-banned-ballot-colorado-supreme-court-insurrection-clause/

The Colorado Supreme Court on Tuesday declared former President Donald Trump ineligible for the White House under the U.S. Constitution’s insurrection clause and removed him from the state’s presidential primary ballot, setting up a likely showdown in the nation’s highest court to decide whether the front-runner for the GOP nomination can remain in the race.

The decision from a court whose justices were all appointed by Democratic governors marks the first time in history that Section 3 of the 14th Amendment has been used to disqualify a presidential candidate.

“A majority of the court holds that Trump is disqualified from holding the office of president under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment,” the court wrote in its 4-3 decision.

Colorado’s highest court overturned a ruling from a district court judge who found that Trump incited an insurrection for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, but said he could not be barred from the ballot because it was unclear that the provision was intended to cover the presidency.

The court stayed its decision until Jan. 4, or until the U.S. Supreme Court rules on the case.

- Fortune, 19th Dec 2023

I think that this ruling by the Colorado Supreme Court is fair enough. The State of Colorado is responsible for holding elections within the state of Colorado; so of course it makes sense that their own Supreme Court has jurisdiction to make laws with regards a matter which is completely within its scope. However, taking this to the Supreme Court Of The United States (SCOTUS) is exactly what will happen and I think sets a somewhat dangerous precedent if ruled upon because it will both define the states as not having control over their own elections and will also confer god-like powers upon the President who will no longer be deemed to be capable of being removed from office under the 14th Amendment. 

In the first instance, I do not think that given that the states are explicitly defined as having a republican form of government and also expressly given the powers to define their own terms by which they send Electors to the Electoral College, whether SCOTUS has any standing at all. As the states are expressly responsible for their own terms of conducting the election and the results therein, then SCOTUS would have to overturn the very principle of a republican forms of government in principle. If you want to talk about a branch of government claiming an absurd amount of power for itself, then striking down a decision made in the Supreme Court of a State, which has the express powers to interpret law and making rulings, seems very very dangerous.

One of the major points of contention which is being thrown forward by Trumpian MAGAists, is that Trump was never an "officer" of the United States and therefore the 14th Amendment does not apply to him. There is a problem with this. Namely that they idea that the President Of The United States, who holds a term of office, is very obviously an "officer" of the United States. 

The words of Article II, Section 1 read:

https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/articleii#section1

Article II

Section 1.

The executive power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America. He shall hold his office during the term of four years, and, together with the Vice President, chosen for the same term, be elected, as follows:

- Article II, Section 1, US Constitution (1789) 

Now of course you can make the argument that the text of Article II, Section 1 does not explicitly say that he is an "officer" but as is the case with so many of these things, a word at law in a piece of text has the normal and usual definition of that word, unless it explicitly does not. The things that are usually quoted in such cases are the definitions sections of the Acts in question, or an appropriate Acts Interpretation Act, but upon failing those things, then a commonly accepted dictionary such as the Merriam-Webster is acceptable, or in the context of law the normal authority is Black's Law Dictionary (which at 2019 is not in it's 11th Edition.

Black's Law Dictionary has this to say about what an "officer" is:

OFFICER n. The incumbent of an office; one who is lawfully invested with an office. One who is charged by a superior power (and particularly by government) with the power and duty of exercising certain functions.

- Black's Law Dictionary, 11th Ed (2019).

On top of this, the only opinion which actually matters here is that of SCOTUS which thanks to Marbury v. Madison (1803) which claimed for itself the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is. It said:

https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/457/731/

This grant of authority establishes the President as the chief constitutional officer of the Executive Branch, entrusted with supervisory and policy responsibilities of utmost discretion and sensitivity. (457 U.S. 749-750).

- Nixon v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 731 (1982)

Is the chief constitutional officer? Apparently not. 

Opponents here, in arguing that the President of the United States of America, who 'shall hold his office' is not an officer; despite and in spite of being the incumbent of the office of the President, which is charged by a superior power which is The People, and takes an oath to faithfully execute the officer and exercise the power and duty of that office. Prima facie evidence, including the words of Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution, would suggest that the office of the President, who is elected to office, who holds office, and who does their work in the Oval Office, is an officer. 

MAGAists have tried to claim that SCOTUS has previously ruled on this and said the President is not an officer, when in actual fact it has not. The closest that SCOTUS ever got to making a ruling about something similar to this, was that people further down the chain of command, are in fact still officers; who may be subject to all of the provisions of the US Constitution mentioning officers.

https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/561/477/

The President can always choose to restrain himself in his dealings with subordinates. He cannot, however, choose to bind his successors by diminishing their powers, nor can he escape responsibility for his choices by pretending that they are not his own.

   The diffusion of power carries with it a diffusion of accountability. The people do not vote for the “Officers of the United States.” Art. II, §2, cl. 2. They instead look to the President to guide the “assistants or deputies … subject to his superintendence.” The Federalist No. 72, p. 487 (J. Cooke ed. 1961) (A. Hamilton). Without a clear and effective chain of command, the public cannot “determine on whom the blame or the punishment of a pernicious measure, or series of pernicious measures ought really to fall.” Id., No. 70, at 476 (same). That is why the Framers sought to ensure that “those who are employed in the execution of the law will be in their proper situation, and the chain of dependence be preserved; the lowest officers, the middle grade, and the highest, will depend, as they ought, on the President, and the President on the community.” 1 Annals of Cong., at 499 (J. Madison).

- Free Enterprise Fund v. Public Company Accounting Oversight Bd., 561 U.S. 477 (2010)

The problem with trying to cite this as proof that the President is not an officer, is that is doesn't say that. Just because you want a thing to say something when in says something materially different, does not make that thing say what you want it to. SCOTUS in Free Enterprise Fund v. Public Company Accounting Oversight Bd. (2010) deals with a different subject matter entirely. 

The 14th Amendment which was written in the aftermath of the Civil War, was designed to deal with the possible consequences of having officers occupy positions of power, after they had waged war against the United States. In the Reconstruction Era, it was reasonably obvious that someone who had waged war against the United States (while still being a part of it according to White v. Texas (1869)) should be barred from holding office.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/amendmentxiv

Section 3.

No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any state legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any state, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

- 14th Amendment, US Constitution, 

The thing that the framers of the US Constitution never envisaged, and likely the writers of the 14th Amendment didn't foresee either, was that the President himself might be a total knave. Specifically the person of Donald J Trump has taught a lot of people about Constitutional law because he personally has tested so very very much of it. Or rather, they should have learnt something about Constitutional law because seemingly, they have not. The United States is prone to excessive myth making surrounding its Founding Fathers and very much engages in more myth making surrounding its current players, as though they were blindly supporting a football team.

What is really maddening about the reaction to the decision by the Colorado Supreme Court is that many people aren't even trying to argue the court erred. Instead what they are effectively saying is that the plain text of the Constitution should be ignored, that the meanings of the words therein should be ignored, that decisions which don't actually have material standing can be cited as support, and that Mr. Trump should be allowed to run for office (which they don't think makes him an officer despite holding an officer), purely for the sake of avoiding political controversy even though he has been cited in what is now going on for hundreds of cases as having incited in insurrection and rebellion against the United States and given comfort to the enemies thereof.

Then again what do I know? Applying the definition of words to text, reading the plain text of the law, and building a well constructed argument based upon those things, is completely useless when people have abandoned thought.

Horse 3280 - Yes, The State Can Be Harmed

On a motorsport forum recently, I was tagged in a conversation and was asked to comment on a legal matter in the United States. It looks like I have been appointed as the voice of reason because I do that apparently strange thing of bothering to look up what rules and laws actually say, and quote them, when I am making an argument. Who'd have guessed that if you want to have an informed opinion, that you should probably do an iota of research and bother to be informed? Admittedly, I live in a world adjacent to the law and I work in an industry where rules are everywhere; so looking up what the rules say is normal and obvious to me.

Probably because I am that stereotypical rule-following firstborn child, who reads every rule and looks for nudges and strategies within the game to win, and who reads every rule,  I want to be correct. Reading the law should be the first and most obvious point of order if one wants to know what the proper answer is to a legal matter. 

<><><><><>

This is the scenario:

A driver in a truck, wants to sue the City of Chicago after he was caught by a Red Light Camera, after running through the traffic lights on the red.

You'd think that this would be a bang to rights case for the Illinois Police, who would simply mail this person a ticket for the traffic infringement and that would be the end of it. 

However...

This person wants to dispute the case on the grounds that this is violates his Sixth Amendment Rights because he argues that in this case the state has no right to enforce criminal law unless a notice is served in person, as nobody has been harmed. The argument as presented is that as this is a case where the very existence of red light cameras and speed cameras themselves are unconstitutional and any evidence that they present should be struck off out of hand, in all cases.

<><><><><>

Wow.

Why are people like this?

Yes, I understand that paying a traffic fine is unpleasant and that as the hero to their own story people think that they are the most important character, but seriously? This is classic "Functional Adult Needs A Creche" stuff. This is sillier than a ordering a pizza and trying to pay with snakes. Come on. Grow up.

The short answer which should be enough is that the law says that you shouldn't run a red light and that the state can and will enforce the law. The fact that the state has sent out an infringement notice should be prima facie evidence enough to a normal person that the state has the right to enforce the law. The fact that that infringement notice exists, along with the terms and conditions which they are likely legally bound to tell you on that infringement notice, ought to be enough to convince any sane person that this has been properly thought out. However, seeing as I need to entertain with more than just "oh der", I shall have to write an opinion piece.

There are a lot of things going on here; all of which are based on smoke.

Firstly, the idea that has no right to enforce criminal law unless certain criteria are met, is blatantly absurd. I do know that the same constitution which allows that state of create and pass laws, including traffic laws, will also give that same state the right to administer and enforce those same laws. A right is the ability at law to own a thing, control a thing, or do a thing and of course it follows that giving the state the monopoly on violence to be that wellspring from which and by which law is made, enacted, enforced, and administered, is going to follow. 

https://www.ilga.gov/commission/lrb/conent.htm

SECTION 8. PASSAGE OF BILLS

(a)  The enacting lause of the laws of this State shall be: "Be it enacted by the People of the State of Illinois, represented in the General Assembly."

(b)  The General Assembly shall enact laws only by bill.  Bills may originate in either house, but may be amended or rejected by the other.

- Section 8 of the Illinois Constitution (1970)

Of note here is that Section 8 of the Illinois Constitution provides the method by which laws may be enacted but provides no limitations on what those laws can be about. The idea that the State of Illinois is somehow bound by a criteria which doesn't even exist, is stupid. Of course the state can write laws, enact the terms of those laws, and the terms of enforcement of those laws. Stop acting the goat.

Secondly, the right being assumed by the person who has broken the law, is that they are somehow immune from it. There is no right not to follow the law, and I do not care if you are the poorest of homeless people who steals food to get by, or a King who has claimed a divine right to rule, you must follow the law. The fact that even the King is subject to the law, was very much discovered if it wasn't previously known, on 30th January 1649 when King Charles I started the day as being 5'6" at the beginning of the day but only 4'8" by the end of it. The law and the authority of the law very much acted. 

There is probably some sort of background Sovereign Citizen shenanigans going on here, possibly someone absurdly claiming a right to travel which somehow makes them exempt from the rules of the road and so if any or all of this is true, then... stop it. Stupidity is the deliberate act of choosing to do a foolish thing. If you want to choose to assert that you are special and exempt from the law, then do not lose your head by claiming that you are above the law. You look stupid. You are stupid. Stop acting the goat.

Thirdly (and this perhaps is the hardest of all for this person to accept), the assertion that nobody has been harmed as the result of someone running through the traffic lights on the red signal, is wrong. Someone has been harmed. Someone has been hurt. This is difficult for people like this to accept because they neither accept that a someone has been harmed, nor accept that that someone can be harmed. That person, is the state. Yes, the state has been harmed.

The idea that the state is a person, is such a long established concept at law that it is almost moot. The state, usually as a corporation or some other legal instrument, is a person. Usually (and depending on the exact legal fiction employed), the state is Corporation Sole; that is, that it owns itself. Usually the state is given names like the Crown, or The People, or The Republic, or The State et cetera. The state owns itself and can not sell that one theoretical share in itself. The state usually has elections for the board members who make executive decisions (through councils, congresses, parliaments et cetera), it has officers who enact policy, and the state can but and sell property. 

So then, how can you have a non-corporeal person be harmed by anything? Because the state in owning various things, including the law courts, the law enforcement officers, and the rule of law itself, is harmed when the corporate good of the rule of law, is violated. In principle, the rule of law is a non-real good in the same way that other intangible property such as copyrights, trademarks, designs and patents, et cetera, are also property which is harmed when violated. The thing that has been harmed is the non real good which is the rule of law. It is not by accident that the verbs used include "violate" and "break"; which would not be a thing if the rule of law was not capable of being harmed.

Fourthly, the assertion that the state does not have the right to enforce the law just because they aren't there "in person", then that is also absurd. The state IS there in person. This might be a mind blowing concept for our trucker friend but a non corporeal person can and does occupy space in this case. The space being occupied is the boundary of the State of Illinois. In this respect, this is no different to a corporation which owns a big supermarket and you causing willful damage in Aisle 3. If you take a bent towards a rack of shelving and starting bashing it with a baseball bat, then of course the supermarket has the right to make a claim of damages. The corporation which owns the supermarket, is in fact present within the confines of the premises. The State of Illinois has a superpower in that within its borders it possesses the ability to be everywhere, all at once, all the time. 

Fifthly, this person wants to asset that violates his Sixth Amendment Rights. Looking at the words of the text, I would like to know how exactly.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/sixth_amendment

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.

- Sixth Amendment to the US Constitution (1791)

Getting written notice of a traffic violation, fulfills all the state's obligations and requirements under the Sixth Amendment, in writing; including the nature of the confrontation and of the witnesses being presented (which in this case a photograph at a red light camera bears witness).

This looks like classic "I know some legal words and I will use them as magic words to get what I want". Unfortunately, knowing some legal words is of no use at all if you do not know what they mean.

If I as a reasonable person, can make five reasonable arguments as to why the state has the right to enforces laws, then then chances that the state does in fact have the right to enforces laws should be pretty high. Unless there is something that I have missed, bothering to look up what rules and laws actually say, and quote them, seems like a good strategy; especially in reference to law.

Horse 3279 - I Rate State Logos

Logos, who doesn't love them? Probably you. Who does love them? Me. That's who.

From the branding on packaging, to the banners at building sites, to documents and certificates, a logo should be about communicating the organisation as quickly as possible. A logo is different to a wordmark, though the two might have very large overlaps. Ideally a logo should have no words at all and is a bit like a flag in that respect but a logo is not a flag, so the usual rules of flags do not apply.

I think that there are five questions that should be asked of a logo:

1 - is the thing distinctive?

2 - is it recognisable at a distance?

3 - it is relevant to the organisation?

4 - it is simple?

5 - is it able to be shown in colour or monochrome?

If a logo does all of those things, then it is probably a good logo.

However, Government logos are a special kind of breed. How do you represent a government department or an entire state or nation in a hurry? It is a vexed question. We have 8 sub-national governments in Australia; all of which have their own logos and branding. Some are successful; some are hideous. I will now give out grades according to whim and whimsy.

ACT - Australian Capital Territory - F

Disappointing.

Starting off this house of fun is the ACT Government with their shield in a black ring. Why? Yes, this is the same shield which appears on the flag but it also doesn't work there either. From a distance their flag looks like a unidentifiable blob on a yellow field. From a distance, the logo looks like an unidentifiable blob inside a ring. It looks like a giant zero; which is exactly the mark that this deserves. I guess that's prescient?

This logo is two swans flanking a shield with crossed swords and crown, with a castle, portcullis, and rose; topped with yet another portcullis and crown, with who knows what behind it. This is heraldry galore; which is likely excellent on official stationery and documents, but not as a logo. The rules for logos are similar to flags but not identical but still, this is not simple.

Heraldry works for official looking documents because you want it to lend an air of permanence and constance to the document. Usually heraldry comes with explanations for all of the elements but that matters not a jot for a logo. A logo is about being hard, fast, and mechanical, in getting a message across as quickly as possible. Mercedes-Benz, looks like a propellor on an aircraft because it was an aero engine company. Channel 9 has a big 9 and nine dots. ME Bank has two letters and a smiley mouth in a ring. One of the general tests of a good logo is it it can be used as an icon on a computer desktop because this does the same kind of thing as looking at it from far away. This fails that test. If you can't tell what it is, then it's bad. At thumbnail size, I can not tell what it is supposed to be at all.

What should the ACT Government have gone for? Personally I would have gone for a logo that looks like a Benzene Ring in Chemistry. Make use of the Hexagon of London Circuit and the big roundabout at the centre of the city. Maybe I would have doubled down on the word "act" and contracted the name of the government to GovACT. 

Be distinctive - no

Be recognisable at a distance - no

Be relevant - no

Be simple - no

Be able to be shown in colour or monochrome - no

0/5

NSW - New South Wales - A

Dear NSW Government, 

You have understood the assignment and have done well. This is an A grade.

Love, Rollo.

Dear Everyone Else,

Does it really matter that this doesn't actually look like a waratah? No. The purpose of a logo is that it can be seen at an instant and people instantly know what it is. The logo designers who made this, have made a thing which even at small scale looks like what it is, and at large scale still looks bold. This logo has appeared on stationery, on banners for infrastructure, on trains and buses, and it works on all of them from the very big to the very small. 

The waratah as the NSW State Flower might not be an obvious thing to use a logo but yet again this proves that if you use a thing often enough and keep the branding consistent, it doesn't really matter what you use. If the English Rugby team can put a rose on their shirts, which serves the triple purpose of reminding us that the English Rose is a thing, that the House of Lancaster won the War of the Roses, and that flowers are the best way to show peace through violence, then the NSW Waratah is excellent. This should also serve as demonstration to New Zealand that their silver fern should be the national flag. 

Be distinctive - tick

Be recognisable at a distance - tick

Be relevant - tick

Be simple - tick

Be able to be shown in colour or monochrome - tick

You don't have to like the way that this looks. I personally think that it looks wrong but as a logo it is excellent. This is objectively a good logo that does what it intends to do.

5/5

NT - Northern Territory - A+

Dear NT Government, 

You have also understood the assignment and have done well. This is an A+ grade.

Love, Rollo.

Dear Everyone Else,

Few people outside of the Northern Territory will know what the X is but they will recognise it because it is used both as the state corporate logo as well as the device on the away field on the Northern Territory flag. By the way, I'm also handing out an A+ to the flag as well. Exactly how many logos and flags in the world can get away with using brown as the main colour? Not many. Yet not only is this reflective of the red dust which is literally everywhere in the state, but it is so very obviously Northerny Territoryey that it can not help but yell what it is. 

Yet again we have another flower on the flag and the logo but in this case, we have a Commonwealth Star hidden in the interspace. I do not know if this is going to change should the Northern Territory ever become a state but I hope that it does not. 

The logo is bold and clean, works well at a distance, appears on stationery and buses. Yet again we prove that for a logo to work, it needs to communicate its design language in a hurry and this does so excellently. Well done.

Be distinctive - tick

Be recognisable at a distance - tick

Be relevant - tick

Be simple - tick

Be able to be shown in colour or monochrome - tick

5/5

QLD - Queensland - D

This is different to the ACT's logo in that it is in fact a logo but beyond that, this is a real  head-scratcher. 

Queensland generally doubles down on the letter Q as much as possible. Queensland Rugby League and Union both use derivations of Qs in their logos. I think that this is supposed to be a kind of stylised Q but why it has four tails , I do not know. Are the wiggles supposed to be rivers? Are they supposed to be rays from the sun? What exactly?

This logo looks like it is a corporate leftover from the 1990s when this was both trendy and unnecessary. This logo is soulless and lifeless. Take away the word mark and this could very easily be the logo for Origin Energy. I can see this very much being used by an electricity company who wants to promote themselves as harnessing solar energy. In that instance, this could be an O.

The other major question that I have here, is why is this predominantly blue? Queensland Rugby League, Rugby Union, the cricket team, all sport maroon as their colour. Quite rightly the number plates are now maroon letters on a white field too. Even Castlemaine XXXX Breweries succumbed to the proper order of things, when they changed the colour on the labels of XXXX Bitter from yellow to maroon to support the Rugby League State of Origin team and never ever went back. Why is this blue? 

If you have a logo which looks like the wrong letter, looks like it could be for the wrong thing, and is the wrong colour, then you've got something which is triple wrong and overflowing with wrongability. Yes, logos can be anything they like but if they look wrong, then they fail. This logo fails at communicating Queensland but as a logo, it is certainly one. D-grade. This is a pass mark but it is not good. Please see me after class.

Be distinctive - tick 

Be recognisable at a distance - no

Be relevant - no

Be simple - tick

Be able to be shown in colour or monochrome - no

2/5

SA - South Australia - B

South Australia appears to have seen the assignment and done as little work as they possibly could. They have taken the normal device from the field of their state flag, put some fancy words around it; then put a decorative ring around that. This roundel has made the mistake that it wants to be heraldry and can not take 'no' for an answer. This is a pity because it should have. This logo is forgettable but in a different way to Queensland.

The Piping Shrike is the official bird of South Australia and while this the logical step, it's just not particularly exciting. In the icon that appears on my screen, although it is small it is still recognisable as what it is. The Piping Shrike with its two wings raised, even at small sizes, is still obvious. 

If you saw this on stationery, you would know instantly who this was from. In that respect, it does an excellent job at communicating South Australia in a hurry. 

I totally get that South Australia wants to lean into its tricolor of Blue, Red, and Yellow (and indeed this is why the Adelaide Crows picked this as their jersey) but at thumbnail size, this is lost. In monochrome, this is just a ring like the ACTs logo.

This logo works, just in a rolling boredom way. Maybe that's what they are going for. It has been said that if you only have six months to live then move to Adelaide, because every day is like an eternity. I guess that's dependable?

Be distinctive - tick 

Be recognisable at a distance - tick

Be relevant - tick

Be simple - no

Be able to be shown in colour or monochrome - tick

4/5

SA 2 - South Australia - A

This is from the South Australia Tourism Board and although it probably isn't used as a state logo, it could be and be used very very well.

This uses a stylised map of Australia, then highlights South Australia by using a series of devices that look like doorways. At very small sizes, and in monochrome, this works. It is very clever. 

Why couldn't you use this as the government logo? This is ace.

Be distinctive - tick 

Be recognisable at a distance - tick

Be relevant - tick

Be simple - tick

Be able to be shown in colour or monochrome - tick

5/5

Tas - Tasmania - B

This is clever; too clever.

This logo tries to convey a Tasmanian Tiger in the negative space; which I also suppose is to resemble the shape of the island itself. This is not quite as simple as New South Wales' logo or Victoria's but it is still quite quite good. I even like the hints of the Tasmanian Tiger's eyes and nose in black; as well as its ears in the negative space of the plants.

If someone turned this in as a term paper, you'd award them a Credit for a good effort but not necessarily a Distinction. 

Be distinctive - tick 

Be recognisable at a distance - tick

Be relevant - tick

Be simple - tick

Be able to be shown in colour or monochrome - tick

5/5

Vic - Victoria - A+

Dear Victorian Government, 

You have also understood the assignment and have done well. This is an A+ grade.

Love, Rollo.

It kind of helps that Victoria has already been leaning into the "Big V" now for a very long time. The Victorian State of Origin Australian Rules Football team is called the "Big V"; the Melbourne Victory uses a "Big V" on its kit and was named "Victory" because it leans into the name of the state.

It kind of helps that the "Big V" as the capital letter of Victoria, looks like a triangle. Victoria has for a very long time, used a triangle V device on its number plates as the separator between the first and last three characters on the plates. They started out using the Southern Cross as device, and that is likely why this logo exists. 

It kind of helps that the state of Victoria, also looks like a triangle. Kind of? Not really? Maybe?

This logo borrowed from the past, by using cloth that was already fit for purpose. The word mark "VIC" in the negative space is also excellent. As a flat matt device, it coverts to monochrome excellently. It can be used with or without the extension of the name; so also wins in that regard too.

The logo wins and wins and wins and wins. It is very rare that you can catch lightning in a bottle and sometimes the circumstances are such that what it obvious is what must be done. This logo is so excellent that it looks like it could have just fallen out of the sky because it is so so obvious. That is the point of a logo and why A is not enough.

Be distinctive - tick 

Be recognisable at a distance - tick

Be relevant - tick

Be simple - tick

Be able to be shown in colour or monochrome - tick

5/5

WA - Western Australia - B

Western Australia started out as the "Swan River Colony". The colony was then granted the whole entire western part of the continent, when the colony of New South Wales was granted the whole entire eastern part of the continent. Almost since its inception, the colony and then the state of Western Australia has used derivations of the black swan as its branding. As a device, it is very very strong indeed. As a logo it is a wee bit complex. 

As a logo, this is not nice. Heraldry looks impressive but as before, the more complex a thing is, the more it will be lost when made smaller. I am sure that the kangaroos as supporters, holding boomerangs; with a crown and whatever that floral flourish is, means something to someone but again, this is a logo. We do not need lots of stuff communicated. 

However, there is a second part to this story.

Be distinctive - tick 

Be recognisable at a distance - tick

Be relevant - tick

Be simple - no

Be able to be shown in colour or monochrome - tick

4/5

WA 2 - Western Australia - A+

The word mark here is much of a muchness but the sans-serif font is bold. The logo which is the same device as the centre of the standard government logo, is still very bold but even more so. Even as a tiny tiny thumbnail, this is so distinctive that you can still tell what it is. It helps that the device already was in black and white because the transition to monochrome is a fait accompli.

Be distinctive - tick 

Be recognisable at a distance - tick

Be relevant - tick

Be simple - tick

Be able to be shown in colour or monochrome - tick

5/5

The undisputed winner of the logo competition here is the Northern Territory. Their seven petal flower and star is best in show. Victoria's derivation of a triangle/V is so simple as to be laughable and yet so very bold that it is excellent. The ACT's logo is objectively terrible and Queensland's while it is in fact a logo, is downright ugly. The one that I see the most, being the NSW Waratah thing, has been criticised because it doesn't look like a Waratah but I think that it is good enough. This is a logo, not a piece of fine art.

Horse 3278 - Australia Found An Opinion And Was Promptly Told To Go To Hell And Get Ready To Supply Fresh Meat

As if the current situation where Hamas and Likud are in engaged in an operation to destroy people for no other reason than to prove that they can. The discourse which surrounds this, assumes that if yoyu are not for whatever brand if murderous bastardy that their team is on, that you must by default be in favour of the other side of murderous bastardy on the other. As far as I am concerned, Hamas and Likud are on the same side and innocent people are on the other. I am neither anti-Israel or anti-Palestine but anti-murderous bastardy.

For possibly the first time in a long time, a UN Resolution calling for the immediate ceasefire from both sides in this evil evil conflict was declared and Australia like a sensible nation, voted on the side of sensibility along with 150 other countries. Immediately the increasingly fascist press in this country, yelled from pages of newspapers and Sky News with their parade of minions, sung from the same hymn sheet. The Herald-Sun, Courier-Mail, Adelaide Advertiser, Daily Telegraph and the doyenne of the brownshirt organisation that is News Corp, The Australian, all ran opinion pieces either trying to paint the Prime Minister Anthony Albanese as alternatively being lazy and incompetent, or being a diabolical mastermind who controls some kind of secret cabal. 

If that wasn't bad enough,  Samantha Maiden  pontificated on ABC Radio National this morning that all of "mummy bloggers protesting about the genocidal bombings in Gaza, wouldn't be able to find it on a map". Nice work. I bet that that the mummys who have to live through  the genocidal bombings in Gaza, can't find their children who have been blown to pieces and now stain the walls as well. Get some humanity. 

It took not even one day, for someone either at The Pentagon or the US State Department, to realise that Australia had dared take one step of its own initiative for once in its life, and "request" that Australia commit undefined resources to what could be an impending conflict in the Middle East. The "request" is that Australia send some portion of the Royal Australian Navy, to the Red Sea; with the premise that it would be patrolling and seizing Houthi Rebels who are aligned with Hamas.

Now it doesn't take very much to connect the only two dots in the world's simplest dot-to-dot picture to realise that the United States is unhappy that Australia dared to have an opinion for itself; much less one that didn't align with its own interests. It should be know to you and I and everyone that the United States is the baseline for opinions and anyone else who is in possession of a different opinion must therefore be wrong and punished for it. Anyone who holds a wrong opinion must be brought to heel like a compliant little lap dog; and will be brought into line line by the CIA, FBI, the military in a coup, proxy terrorism, contras, sandistas, anyone else who they happen to find.

As the United States is aligned with Israel and gives Israel a free pass to do whatever the heck it likes, including murdering people, then the United States will always vote on the side of Israel. The Jewish and Christian Right portion of the United States' political and military machine, has this peculiar belief that it they don't unequivocally act in favour of Israel, then they will miss out on some kind of blessing, and that supernatural beings will punish them, the earth will punish them and that space will punish them. Do unto others before they do it to you and do it with such force and brutality that they don't think about doing it or can't think about doing it.

As a nation, Austria has almost never been allowed to to have an opinion for itself. Up until 1940, Australia was an unthinking outpost of Empire and as soon as it was able, was called upon to lubricate the Empires gears of war with blood. Australians were sent as cannon fodder and eventually fertiliser for the fields across South Africa, Africa, and Europe (twice). Only when Prime Minister Curtin dared to suggest that Australia have a spine, did anything change; which was a good thing as Australians were then called lubricate the gears of war with blood in the Pacific. In 1949, that had to come to an end. Prime Minster Menzies, after having burned his previous political party to ashes, phoenixed back to power and permanently attached Australia to the United States like an angler fish. Since then, more Australians have been sent to die in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq (twice); and when we politely asked for some help in East Timor, the United States politely told us to 'get stuffed', like the pathetic little thing we are.

So it should come as no surprise that the very tory and increasingly fascist press in this country, should be joining in the chorus of barberous howling morons of Jewish and Christian Right portion of the United States' political and military machine, and demanding that we commit to sending equipment to the Middle East under premise of stopping Houthi piracy. After all, since this is government money they they want to spend, it can be painted as wasteful if a Labor Government is in charge or invoking a moral cause if a Liberal Government is in charge - or in fact both if you own the narrative. 2+2=5 or 3, or 4, or anything else they want you to believe.

None of this changes the fact that innocent Israeli citizens have been destroyed by murderous bastards. None of this changes the fact that innocent Palestinian citizens have been destroyed by murderous bastards. Unless the end game is uniform and complete destruction of every single soul, then this whole conflict has no proper objective. Israel exists and will continue to exist. Palestine exists and will continue to exist. This whole operation in essence, only exists to destroy people for no other reason than to prove that they can.

If your proposed national policy does not firstly consider people as valuable or as worthy of life, then you are as much at fault at the murderous bastards who make policy. People cry. People hurt. People die. People matter - except if you happen to be part of the chorus of bloodthirsty barbarous howling morons.

Aside:

11th November should not be about remembering the contribution made by soldiers in serving their country. Way way way back in time, when the horrors of the biggest conflict in the history of the world, fought with new machines and chemicals, was simply not allowed to fade because people still carried it with them, the day was instituted to remember the Armistice. 11th November was the day that the guns fell silent. Everything stopped. That day, at 1 past 11, was the only truly noble day of the First World War. We should be rightly angry at men (almost always men) who send other peoples' sons and daughters off to become meat and grist for the grinder.

Yes, we forget. 

We can not remember because literally nobody is left to do so. Yet here we are, refusing to learn any lessons from the past, and people in power are demanding that we prepare fresh meat to start it all again.

Horse 3277 - The 'Gabba Is Fine As Is - Leave It Alone

Much has been made in the press about the many millions of dollarpounds which will be spent to knock down and rebuild the 'Gabba for the 2032 Olympic Games in Brisbane. Mostly the narrative has been one giant pile on from the Murdoch press; who seem to be more than a little bit embarrassed that the people of Queensland elected any Labor government at all, in spite of their best efforts to turn Queensland and Australia into their own private paradiso fascista.

One one hand the Murdoch press finds it acceptable to accuse Labor governments of wasting money; yet at the same time when the Andrews Labor Government in Victoria cancelled the Commonwealth Games in Melbourne, this apparently was unacceptable. Thus we have a pair of AND gates where whatever input goes in, if it is being done by a Labor Government it is bad, and if it is being done by an LNP Government it is good.

There simply isn't any point in linking to or quoting from the Courier-Mail article which I read this morning, because it requires you to deny several things about reality and assert three things which are blatantly untrue. Nevertheless, the base question that it asks about needing to knock down the 'Gabba is valid, irrespective of what they assert. 

I do not think that a knock down and rebuild of the 'Gabba is necessary. Here's why.

Australia has previously held two editions of the Olympic Games. When it came to the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney, they were held in a purpose built venue which would be be converted back into a multi-purpose stadium after the event. Sydney Olympic Stadium (which is probably called Super-Tele-Wobble-Cheese-Waffle Stadium for sponsorship purposes) is a weird venue which is overly too long for football and just a tad too large for cricket. 

However, the 1956 Olympic Games in Melbourne, were held in the Melbourne Cricket Ground; which by virtue of being a cricket ground was already adequate to hold the  Olympic Games in. Everything that I have seen to do with the 1956 Olympic Games, suggests that the only hitch had to do with quarantine for horses and this is why the Equestrian Events for the 1956 Olympic Games were held at the home of the previous Olympic Games in Helsinki. As the photograph here shows, the  Melbourne Cricket Ground did the job nicely.

In principle, I do not understand why anything needs to be done to the 'Gabba at all. The Brisbane Cricket Ground in Wollongabba (hence "the 'Gabba") is bigger than the Sydney Cricket Ground and whilst it isn't quite as massive as the Melbourne Cricket Ground, an 8 lane 400 metre running track will fit into the space without effort. Just like the MCG, the 'Gabba would need to have a temporary surface laid for that purpose, as well has having a long jump pit and the steeplechase water jump dug into the turf but those divots can be replaced, just as they were in Melbourne in 1956. 

The 'Gabba is not as small as people think it is. Yes, it is a 45,000 seat venue which does feel a bit like being at a big café ground at times, but that centre space is still pretty vast. The thing about the 'Gabba that nobody seems to remember is that the 'Gabba used to have a dog racing track around the perimeter. That dog track was also occasionally used for dirt midget racing, as it was rated at 460 yards; which is just over a quarter of a mile. That means that the inside track was 418 meters long; which is longer than the 400 meters required for an Olympic running track. If you can put an Olympic running track into a venue, then in theory you should be able to hold the Olympic games there; which is as true for a 120,000 seat stadium as it is for Tallawong Oval in Blacktown, which has Jimmy's Aussie Chinese Tucker on the other side of a car park.

This is where I ask what would be so terrible about holding the Olympic Games at the 'Gabba as it is now? 45,000 seats is not the biggest venue in the world but you can guarantee that it would be full for just about everything held there. As for the other venues which could be used, then Lang Park, Queen Elizabeth II, Ballymore, et cetera, would also be full for just about everything held there.

Sydney was massive. Athens was frequently quiet. Beijing always had everything filled to capacity. London struggled to fill some venues. Rio made use of some of the stadia being a little smaller than expected. Tokyo was the exception as that Olympic Games was held in not quite silence. Brisbane on the other hand, if it holds the Olympic Games at the 'Gabba as it is now, would be able to retain the flavour of Brisbane being a little bit café and friendly, while at the same time having every event heaving with spectators.

I have watched Australian Rules football at the 'Gabba when the Brisbane Lions have packed the place to the rafters and my experience tells me that it is as loud and electric as anywhere else you care to mention. That is the case now. So what if you can't get another 20,000 people in the place.

I also look to the legacy left behind by the Sydney Olympic Games and wonder. Super-Tele-Wobble-Cheese-Waffle Stadium (Sydney Olympic Stadium) is fine when it packs in 80,000 people but most of the time when there is just a rugby league game being played there, it sounds lifeless. The Western Sydney Giants don't even play there for this very reason. They play out of the Sydney Showground which is next door; precisely because the café stadium produces a better atmosphere. Now obviously the 'Gabba is bounded by Vulture Street and Stanley Street, so the ground can't grow terribly much more massive but still, would a 60,000 seat 'Gabba actually be worth the effort in 2037? Somehow, I just don't think so. Nor do I think that it is worth the effort to destroy the character of the area, which includes a primary school, just to expand something which is guaranteed to become a cultural dead zone during the day when no sport is being played.

Remember, this is me talking. This is me who thinks that Rosehill Gardens shouldn't be knocked down but replaced with a short track speedway; likewise for Randwick. This is me who likes the idea of getting rid of fibro low-density housing and replacing it with medium to high density developments provided we can add more football teams in the space. This is me who has called for the development of The Bogandome in Sydney's west. I am not anti-sport by a long shot. 

I think that the best way that everyone can double their money here is to fold it in half and put it back in their pockets. The outlay to make the 'Gabba just a little bit bigger for a two week event, seems like it came from the board room of Ill-Conceived Concepts And Half-Baked Ideas Ltd. This is action without thought of consequences. This is monkey idea, monkey do; but not monkey idea, monkey think before monkey do.

Horse 3276 - The Haggis Line

I live in the remnants of empire and so as the result of cultural conditioning for a world that's been and gone, I know far too much about the dismal isle that has recently brexited itself into a brand new, tiny and pathetic, less influential and increasingly scared future. Nevertheless, that cultural legacy has been enough that my default method of thinking about weights and measures, is the imperial system, that my default Monopoly board in my mind contains Mayfair as the most expensive property (and the anomaly that the ground rent for Piccadilly is £22 and not £24 as it should be), and that motorway signs should by right be blue even though they never have been in my country.

Also, because I have a mind like a steel trap (everything that goes in gets mangled), I know a lot of facts which are only useful in trivia quizzes and/or circumstances which can be useful in technical areas. One of those facts is that the border between Queensland and New South Wales on the eastern seaboard is the River Tweed in the UK the border between Scotland and England on the eastern seaboard is the River Tweed.

This is the part of the story where someone on a forum didn't believe that I knew that or even how I could possibly know that; much less that I could pinpoint the exact point where the motorway crosses the border. Very sharp-eyed visitors to Scotland may have noticed that as you travel north on the M6, at the point where it loses the English name of M6 and magically turns into the M74, a weird thing happens. There is a line crossing the motorway.

Why would someone in Australia know that? They did not believe me. They wanted to prove me wrong; because clearly it is outrageous that someone in Australia should assert something as idiotic as without having proof; so they dared to prove me wrong.

Oops.

The English and Scottish are as traditionally unfriendly at the governments which exist in Australia. It used to be that if you wanted to go from Brisbane to Perth, you had to take five different trains because the gauge of track changed four times. Likewise in the United Kingdom, although the Highways Agency was responsible for building all the motorways, there was famously a gap new Gretna Green where six lanes of M6 Motorway ended to become a wee gally-petticoaty little two land goat track before becoming the M74 on the other side. This remained a stupidity for years and years until eventually someone bit the bullet and completed the through road. 

Now, the M6 just turns into the M74 and the only thing to let you know this is that the big blue motorway sign on the Scottish side of the border reads "M74" and the big blue motorway sign on the Scottish side of the border reads "M6". England and Scotland still bicker over who is responsible for maintenance but the bickering ends at one very discrete line. I put it to you that there is actually a far more sinister reason than just the current playing out of an ancient grudge between the Lion and the Unicorn. This has to do with taking legend seriously; along similar lines to when the people of Lancashire built the Pennines to keep out the people of Yorkshire.

Why then does this line exist? England and Scotland were united by personal union of the Crowns in 1603 after Elizabeth I died and James IV of Scotland by virtue of having married Margaret, the eldest daughter of Henry VII of England, solved the succession crisis. The formal union happened in 1707 with the Act of Union. This line is not to mark a border, when the two countries have been united for a very long time. The reason for this line is... Haggis. Haggis is quintessentially Scottish. Haggis is as Scottish as violence at the football, pavement pizza on the Royal Mile in Edinburgh, Tunnock's Tea Cake, and people being very angry as thistles can grow waist high and nobody has invented trousers. 

A line like this extends for miles and miles along the border between Scotland and England and it is because haggis is considered to be an "invasive species" in England. This is a bit like installing a grid on the road to prevent cattle and sheep from walking away; since haggis fear stepping over the line. Do not question why. There are some things which just are. It is us to know but never to find out why.

This line is a bit like the Berlin Wall in that it was built to keep the haggis in Scotland by Scottish engineers, lest they cross the border and are shot on sight by over-zealous English wildlife officers. Haggis is not known for its intelligence and once it strays over the border, it becomes subject to immediate extermination by English wildlife officials. 

This line also prevents other things such as selkies, chickens, dolphins, aerospace engineers from crossing the border going south, and inadvertently, from salads and fruit from heading north. Scotland is a nation which is unusually devoid of salad and this is unfortunately a result of this line; which is seen as necessary in preventing their precious haggis from straying too far from home. Yon chieftain of the pudding race is a national treasure; the accidental scarcity of salads and fruit is but a case of wee collateral damage.

This line does not need to extend all the way across the country as the aforementioned River Tweed acts as the border in the east. It should be pointed out however, that the River Tweed is not as effective. Selkies and chickens, do not head south but dolphins and aerospace engineers are able to cross the border at that point. Curiously though, salads and fruit are still not able to head over the border north; which I can only put down to salads' and fruit's lack of aquatic abilities. That river border in the east unfortunately does make Scotland vulnerable to migrating coconuts which have been known to travel for more than 200 days and distances of more than 10,000km on ocean currents, though as coconuts are shy, they may be collected and herded reasonably easily. 

To the untrained eye, this looks like nothing more than a simple expansion gap between two vast slabs of concrete. As always when something looks simple, the truth is often far far weirder. To those who know, this is part of a stranger (and untrue) story.

Horse 3275 - Adam Smith Would Have Probably Preferred WestConnex Be A Public Road

It should have been obvious to all and sundry that the WestConnex was always going to be one giant colossal horky-borky-whole-sort-of-general-mish-mash. The reason why it wasn't obvious when it was proposed was that we had a tory government, with Transport Ministers, one of whom would rise to become Premier and prove that she was in fact a corrupt tory, before resigning and swanning off to join Optus and never face any real consequences whatsoever. Meanwhile, the good and fair people of New South Wales and the people of Sydney in particular, will once again spend a half century suffering from the effects of the past.

WestConnex, which cost between 2 and 4 crore dollars, has been funded mostly by private capital. Or rather, the New South Wales Government took out a series of loans, and those loans were repaid in two tranches through the mechanism of privatising the bits. In return for being the holding bucket for cheap loans, the New South Wales Government got... er... nothing of any real value until 2060. This means that as I do not have an e-Tag and hate the idea of paying tolls to drive on roads because my petrol taxes and road taxes should already do that, then I will not be allowed to go on these roads in my lifetime. In 2060 I will be 82 years old and given that the healthcare system will almost certainly be degraded due to privatisation, I suspect that I will likely be dead.

As a side note, the NSW State Government selling off the Sydney Motorways Corporation more or less paid for the Sydney Metro; which is further proof that tories can and will sell off our stuff to their tory mates if they can get away with it. This is yet another thing which should have been ours in common, which is now gone forever and is never ever coming back.

The fact that we have private roads, returning private profits, and private rewards, to the benefit of a few private people, who are able to leech off of public good, public credit, and what should be public assets, is absolutely emblematic of the City of Sydney. The land, stolen from the Eora, Gadigal, Dharug peoples et al. was taken away for the benefit of a small few; who then dumped Britain's ne'er-do-wells on the other side of the planet. That same tory class of people has not changed in 235 years and they still view the vast majority of us as either criminals or refuse to be cast aside. 

So when I hear the news of traffic snarls around Balmain, Rozelle and Five Dock of a morning on the news, part of me feels a bit of schadenfreude, that this is the direct result of people wanting to avoid tolls and completely expected from an economic perspective as a toll is a barrier to entry; which is often designed to keep out the poor people. It has done precisely that. Job well done. I mean we could just remove the tolls? No? Aw well. Best of luck until 2060. You've earned it.

- Traffic Snarls? Hooray, you've earned it!

When face with the choice of going onto a toll road, there are some people for whom this is an opportunity cost question (about whether or not the utility of taking the road is worth paying for) but for people faced with this same choice of going onto a toll road, there is no choice at all. The toll is exclusionary. For those who can not afford to pay, private provision of services is exclusionary, and public funding of private provision of services is knavish and tory.

This is not a new argument by any stretch of the imagination. In the second ever proper economics textbook, "An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations" (1776) by Adam Smith (generally referred to by its shortened title "The Wealth of Nations"), Book V which is titled "On the Revenue of the Sovereign or Commonwealth" deals with issues that seem modern even though, they are themselves ancient arguments. By the way, Adam Smith favoured "public works" like roads, bridges, canals, harbors, the postal system, and hospitals, police and fire brigades because profit-seeking individuals could not and would not efficiently build or operate them.

Much like Smith's previous work "The Theory of Moral Sentiment" (1759), he sees the relationships of various people and actors in the economy as having obligations and duties to each other. Anyone who claims that Smith is just another mercantilist and is in favour of selfishness, is likely to have read maybe one section or one line of text. 

Indeed he starts out Book V, Chapter I, Part III, with a separation of duties and obligations:

Book V: On the Revenue of the Sovereign or Commonwealth

Chapter I: On the Expenses of the Sovereign or Commonwealth

Part III: On the Expense of Public Works and Public Institutions

The third and last duty of the sovereign or commonwealth is that of erecting and maintaining those public institutions and those public works, which, though they may be in the highest degree advantageous to a great society, are, however, of such a nature that the profit could never repay the expense to any individual or small number of individuals, and which it therefore cannot be expected that any individual or small number of individuals should erect or maintain. The performance of this duty requires, too, very different degrees of expense in the different periods of society.

- The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith (1776)

Smith does not have the tools in 1776 to explain how markets work, though in the micro sense it may be possible to ascertain what happens when to parties meet. A market for a good and/or service, is really just myriad-myriad-myriad of these meetings, compiled into the aggregate, then described. However, what Smith has discovered here is that it is nominally beyond the reach of individuals or firms to build great pieces of infrastructure. A market is unable to provide such a good and/or service when this happens and it is properly a market failure. This helpfully explains why Government-owned Telstra would have built the National Fibre Optic Network by the end of 2002 at a cost fo $8bn, and why privately-owned Telstra did not and could not build it. Instead, Telstra spent almost a decade moaning like a bunch of little sooky-babies and the National Broadband Network, was completed a mere 21 years after it had been proposed.

WestConnex could never have been built without government funding for the simple reason that governments as the least risk of all persons in economies, are able to borrow monies at the cheapest rates. What WestConnex did was combine government funding, with tory desires; which is why after having had a piece of infrastructure built, they are now able to extract revenues from the people for probably beyond the scope of my lifetime.

After the public institutions and public works necessary for the defence of the society, and for the administration of justice, both of which have already been mentioned, the other works and institutions of this kind are chiefly those for facilitating the commerce of the society, and those for promoting the instruction of the people. The institutions for instruction are of two kinds: those for the education of youth, and those for the instruction of people of all ages. The consideration of the manner in which the expense of those different sorts of public, works and institutions may be most properly defrayed will divide this third part of the present chapter into three different articles.

- The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith (1776)

In 1776 Adam Smith may as well have being writing science fiction here. The idea that the commonwealth should supply the things that the people ought to have because that has multiplier effects on the net good of everyone in the commonwealth, must have been completely alien to a world where some people were owned as chattel goods and could be bought and sold. This contemplates a world with public schooling and higher education and I have no doubt that Smith would have seen public health care in that same spirit.

Smith's comments here though in relation to public works, after having established that things like roads, justice, policing, defence, administration of justice et cetera, ought to be owned in common by the commonwealth. I suspect that Smith would have raged against WestConnex owning private roads for private advantage.

Article 1: On the Public Works and Institutions for facilitating the Commerce of the Society And, first, of those which are necessary for facilitating Commerce in general

In Great Britain, the abuses which the trustees have committed in the management of those tolls have in many cases been very justly complained of. At many turnpikes, it has been said, the money levied is more than double of what is necessary for executing, in the completest manner, the work which is often executed in very slovenly manner, and sometimes not executed at all. The system of repairing the high roads by tolls of this kind, it must be observed, is not of very long standing. We should not wonder, therefore, if it has not yet been brought to that degree of perfection of which it seems capable. If mean and improper persons are frequently appointed trustees, and if proper courts of inspection and account have not yet been established for controlling their conduct, and for reducing the tolls to what is barely sufficient for executing the work to be done by them, the recency of the institution both accounts and apologizes for those defects, of which, by the wisdom of Parliament, the greater part may in due time be gradually remedied.

- The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith (1776)

Private entities having inherited public infrastructure, tend to be passively negligent in the maintenance of that same infrastructure now in private hands, by virtue of not wanting to pay even a pennycent for its upkeep if they can get away with it. Britain's railways after Ms Thatcher smashed them all to pieces are a classic example of this. The NHS in Britain, having suffered a thousand cuts by the Conservative Party (who actually only wish to conserve private advantage for private persons) is undergoing that same kind of neglect. 

The wear and tear on roads and motorways likely isn't a whole lot but given that concrete can and does crumble when the reo-bar fades and dies, someone at some point will be up for expensive maintenance bills. Again, Smith writes science fiction in that he hopes for "courts of inspection and account" with regards public infrastructure that have not yet been established.

The money levied at the different turnpikes in Great Britain is supposed to exceed so much what is necessary for repairing the roads, that the savings, which, with proper economy, might be made from it, have been considered, even by some ministers, as a very great resource which might at some time or another be applied to the exigencies of the state. Government, it has been said, by taking the management of the turnpikes into its own hands, and by employing the soldiers, who would work for a very small addition to their pay, could keep the roads in good order at a much less expense than it can be done by trustees, who have no other workmen to employ but such as derive their whole subsistence from their wages. A great revenue, half a million perhaps, it has been pretended, might in this manner be gained without laying any new burden upon the people; and the turnpike roads might be made to contribute to the general expense of the state, in the same manner as the post office does at present.

That a considerable revenue might be gained in this manner I have no doubt, though probably not near so much as the projectors of this plan have supposed. The plan itself, however, seems liable to several very important objections.

- The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith (1776)

Smith proposes that the revenues gained from toll-roads, if they exceed the maintenance costs, be ploughed back into the consolidated revenues of the commonwealth to contribute to the general expense of the state. In my lifetime, very tory governments from both political football teams, robbed the Commonwealth forever by selling off highly profitable quangos such as the Commonwealth Bank, Telstra, various State Banks, GIO, et cetera. To that end, my back of an envelope calculation would suggest that in my lifetime, there has been in excess of two trillion dollars of profits that could have defrayed the need for public taxation.

Private corporations care only about returning private profits to their shareholders. Whatever tolls could have been generated by WestConnex have been foregone for probably beyond my lifetime. On top of this, the permanent scarring of the road-infrastructure above, has meant that while the tolls exist, there will be permanent tailbacks on surface roads, also for probably beyond my lifetime. That means that we have private profits, built with public monies on the cheap, with permanent public nuisance. 

WestConnex in their loveliness have been allowed to punch the people of Sydney in the face and keep on doing so until 2060. A permanent public nuisance and a denial of service of a road which should have been ours (and will be only given back to us in 37 years' time), has been perpetrated upon the people of Sydney. At the moment we have the Leader of the Opposition pointing fingers at the Government for allowing this, when it was in fact a previous leader of his own political football team, who still has not been thrown in prison for corruption, who allowed and caused this.

What promoted this was and article in the Australian which claimed that WestConnex is something that Adam Smith would have agreed with. I shall not link to that article because I do not wish to send that private firm which is repeatedly hostile to the idea of commonwealth, any pennycents at all. 

When Adam Smith wrote The Wealth of Nations in 1776 this was set against a world of mercantilists, where people some people were owned as chattel goods and could be bought and sold and which was released when a war was being fought to retain and keep that right to own as chattel goods, after punitive taxation measures did not bring that to an end. This is before the age of mass public education and mass literacy. This is before the age of public hospitals. This is before the age of public fire brigades. This is before the age of a professional dedicated police force. Nevertheless, Smith's two books, which are now seen as being economic texts, were more in the art of political economy. Yet again we come back to the most basic questions of economics and politics.

What shall we produce?

How do we produce it?

For whom shall we produce it?

Who shall own it?

Who shall control it?

Smith's answers, as denied by the Australian, frequently advocate for the common good and common happiness of the people in commonwealth. Smith would likely have been annoyed at WestConnex, as this is just more mercantilists doing mercantilist things, for private advantage. The people of New South Wales and the people of Sydney are not allowed to have nice things because of very tory policy. That's the permanent legacy of WestConnex here. We are repeatedly not allowed to have nice things in Sydney because private people want private things at public expense, and they get away with it by yelling about the spectre of "socialism". Yes, I like some socialism; especially when it contributes to the common good and common happiness of the people in commonwealth.

I like the words of another Scotsman; who also understood the idea of commonwealth and common good.

The socialism I believe in isn’t really politics. It is a way of living. It is humanity. I believe the only way to live and to be truly successful is by collective effort, with everyone working for each other, everyone helping each other, and everyone having a share of the rewards at the end of the day. That might be asking a lot, but it’s the way I see football and the way I see life.

- Bill Shankly, manager of Liverpool Football Club (1959-74)

Horse 3274 - Mittens Is Back!

At chess.com there is one bot whom is to be feared above all others. Mere mortals have tried and failed to best this terrible scourge who has come to ravage the fields of battle. Oceans rise. Empires fall.  Pawns panic. Castles tumble. Knights fall. The Clergy runs hither and yon, as it zig-zags in abject fear. Queens call out the hue and cry. Kings die.

I am of course talking about none other than... MITTENS.

https://www.chess.com/play/computer/MittensBot

Mittens is a bot who is officially stated as being rated at 1. The way that that Elo system works, is that someone who is rather 100 points higher than someone else, should be likely to win ten times as often if the two people play each other. There's then some fancy maths involving calculus upon normal distribution bell curves but know ye this, if a rank amateur rated 200, meets someone rated 1, then they should win roughly ten times ten times of the time. This means that in theory, a rank amateur rated 200 should beat Mittens 100:1. WRONG! 

Mittens is an agent of chaos.

I have beaten all of the default bots on chess.com, rated from 250 all the way to 2000. I have also lost many games against the higher rated bots too. Mittens is a different cat altogether. That 1 rating is a bald faced lie. I have no idea what rating that the bot actually is but I can tell you that it is way up in the thousands. Mittens is probably a grandmaster who just likes wailing on unsuspecting marks and rubes.

Typically the way that a chess engine works is that it looks at the board, then plays out all possible scenarios within an allotted amount of time, before selecting the best one after assigning all positions some kind of index value. The analysis system at chess.com will give you just a hint of that very first step of that process while in game review, when you can see the rating of the position on the side, which is related to but not dependent on the amount of material left on the board and the advantage therein. It will also generate values for when it has calculated out all possible scenarios to completion and find that it might be possible to generate checkmate scenarios in discrete numbers of moves (Mate in x moves is Mx). As a player M1 is often obvious. M2 is sometimes harder to spot. M3 is sometimes a mystery. We simply do not have enough time in the universe, to analyse every single chess position which can be generated from a single point but chess engines have been good enough to beat humans reliably.

Deliberately bad bots like Martin (250) cut short the processing time, such that they might not ever see Mx positions. I bet that when I play Martin, that Mx will never ever occur for him. For better rated bots where the processing time is lengthened, then Mx positions are probably everywhere. 

When it comes to analysis of position, chess is about finding patterns, gaining material advantage before the opposition can react, taking positional advantage before the opposition can respond, anticipating what the other player intends to do, and sometimes making material trades to advance the cause of all of the above. What is really interesting is that although there isn't enough processing time in the universe to actually perfectly perfectly play chess, there have been brute force calculations to prove that perfectly perfectly played chess is in fact solved; and that the perfect solution to chess is just two Kings left on the board in material stalemate.

It should follow that a machine which untold ability to analyse a very rigid game with exceptionally well defined rules, will beat humans every time. Mostly they do. The obvious underlying difference between a computer and a human is that a computer has no internal wants but a human does. As humans are sometimes irrational beings, their decision process defies rational logic; which turns out to be an advantage against a machine provided the level of skill is there to accompany it. This means that humans have inbuilt flair and creativity which a computer can not match. To counter this, the better chess engines have an inbuilt respectable level of chaos, which will purposefully assign bonus points to its calculated scenarios, which is actually useful in generating other possible outcome trees. 

I have no idea how Mittens works. Looking at Mittens is like doing black box analysis and trying to establish the internal workings. Forget it. My suspicion is that Mittens uses some kind of Stockfish engine, with some respectable level of chaos attached, and then capped off with a dialogue box which is appropriately sassy. Of course a machine has no emotions. That does not stop the meatbag human, who contains thought muscles, sometimes irrational desires, selfish ambition when playing a game, and an undefined level of chaos, from feeling slighted, hurt, and humiliated when playing Mittens. Mittens is a brilliant piece of applied psychology.

Even though we know that Mittens is not rated 1, even though we know that Mittens is a machine, even though we know that all of the caring is done by the irrational meatbag human on this side of the screen, the anthropomorphisation of Mittens is excellent. Mittens is like Boudicca, Thatcher, Borte, and Princess Unikitty all rolled into one. There is no government, no baby sitters, no bedtimes, no frowny faces, no bushy moustaches, no negativity, and no consistency. Mittens plays by the rules perfectly. Mittens does not care. Mittens plays Rock-Paper-Scissors with dual wielded katanas and a Bren gun. Mittens sees at least M6 most of the time. 

My cat Micah is an agent of chaos. We have said that if he was a person, he would own an old ute with dents in it, after doing donuts in a Woolworths carpark and crashing into a bin, repeatedly. My cat Purrana is an agent of chaos. She has grown up and graduated from being ninja kitty made of springs, to cranky old lady who wants to see the manager because it is funny. Mittens is the perfect overlay for a chess bot which plays imperfectly due to an unbuilt respectable level of chaos. Mittens cousin is Disoder. She shouts in the street, she kills the king, and she blames it on the servants.

Oceans rise. Empires fall. Pawns panic. Castles tumble. Knights fall. The Clergy runs hither and yon, as it zig-zags in abject fear. Queens call out the hue and cry. Kings die. Mittens rules them all.