Horse - Intelligent Commentary for a Stupid World

Horse 1273 - Rafael Nadal - Bok Bok Bok

2012-01-30T11:46:00.000+11:00

Novak Djokovic finally beat Rafael Nadal 5-7 6-4 6-2 6-7 7-5 in apparently was the longest Grand Slam final in history. At the final presentation, both of them were so exhausted that they found it difficult to even stand up.

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Ok that wasn't the point of this post, I just thought I'd mention it for a shred of sanity. The main point of this post is that I think that Rafael Nadal looks like a giant chicken.

Seriously.

I don't know if it's the headband that makes him look like he has a rooster's comb, or if it's his weird strut and scratch thing that he does on the court but I had the thought and it simply would not go away.

The Ladies' Final at the Australian Open had The Squealer versus The Grunter and so all manner of farmyard noises were provided by that match and although Nadal has his own series of grunts I still can't think of him as being anything other than a giant chicken.

It's weird because Nadal is Spanish and the national animal of Spain is the bull; Nadal just doesn't seem very bullish. I always think of him on the court as possessing a sort flair which is more Gallic and maybe that's the reason why I think Nadal is a giant chicken.

Horse 1272 - Advance Australia Where?

2012-01-26T16:40:00.002+11:00

http://www.perthnow.com.au/news/call-to-move-australia-day/story-e6frg12c-1111118660285

RON Barassi has called for Australia Day to be moved to May to commemorate the day Aborigines were given equal citizenship rights.
He said it was wrong to celebrate the day of the European invasion of Australia when "we took" this land from Aborigines.

The 10-time premiership player and coach said Australia Day should be May 27 - the day in 1967 that clauses in the Constitution that discriminated against indigenous people were removed.
In the 1967 Referendum, 90.77 per cent of Australians - the biggest majority in a national referendum - voted to enable Aboriginal people to be counted in the Census and to be subject to Commonwealth laws, rather than just state laws.
- Perth Now, 26th Jan 2012

To be fair I think that Ron Barassi has a valid point. I suppose eventually if/when Australia does become a republic that this will become the new date for national patriotism but until then, I think that the idea that the 26th of January should be a national holiday is a both misplaced and a little disgusting.

It's not the date of the Federation of the country which was January 1st 1901; it would be pointless to appoint that as a national holiday because it's already New Years' Day. The only other truly national holiday is the 25th of April, and again that isn't exactly a celebration either.

Actually in all honesty, January 26 isn't even the inception of the colony of New South Wales. The eleven ships of the First Fleet arrived in Botany Bay between the 18th and 20th of January 1788. All that the 26th of January commemorates is the day in 1788 when the British flag was first hoisted one Australian soil.
Officially the inception of the colony of New South Wales ahppened on 7 February 1788. Governor Phillip's adress reads:
"What Frobisher, Raleigh, Delaware, and Gates did for America, that, we are this day met to do for Australia, but under happier auspices. Our enterprise was wisely conceived, deliberately devised, and efficiently organised, the Sovereign, the Parliament, and the people united to give it their authority, sanction, and encouragement. We are here to take possession of this fifth division of the globe on behalf of the British people, and to found a State which, we hope, will not only occupy and rule this great country, but will also be the beneficent patroness of the entire southern hemisphere. How grand is the prospect which lies before this youthful nation !"

Contained in Phillip's address is an explicit statement of intent to "take possession" and to "occupy and rule", so it's little wonder that to Aboriginal communities it marks the day on which the British arrived unannounced and simply stole their land.

Legally under the doctrine of terra nullius the land was declared "empty" and therefore it wasn't an invasion. I note that today the 26th of January 2012 marks the 40th anniversary of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy. Since it is an embassy, I think that it would be quite worthwhile to treat it as such and for terms perhaps similar to New Zealand's Treaty of Waitangi to be drawn up.
Quite unlike the Maori in New Zealand, Aboriginal peoples weren't even considered worthy enough to sign a peace treaty with. Also unlike the Maori, there has never been a permanent commission set up to suggest any means of redress either. In fact it wasn't until 1967 that Aboriginal people were even given the right to vote and in that respect Ron's suggestion that May 27 be suggested for a replacement national holiday, I think is quite reasonable.

I don't really like the reasons for this specific date to be held up as a day of national celebration. If people really want to talk about the nation "growing up" then the replacement of this day, I think is a worthy cause.

Dare I suggest that Australia Day itself is Un-Australian?

Horse 1271 - Conservatives & Liberals

2012-01-24T16:34:00.000+11:00

At about the time of the French Revolution, the terms "left" and "right" took their meanings from where people happened to sit in the French Parliament. Ever since about the 1790s the "left" came to mean a collectivist sort of economy, controlled by the state; and the "right" came to mean a individualist sort of economy and operating to market forces.

Got that? Left = a controlled market; Right = a laissez-faire market.

The word "conservative" at its heart means to "conserve". As far as historical roots go, that meant a conservation of the then evolving hierarchical system which saw royalty at the top, followed people with titles and the landed gentry. Towards the end of the 19th century, the rise of mercantile classes, that is those of business, basically caused a schism in the classical conservative movement.

The mercantile business classes wanted to see a greater degree of laissez-faire capitalism or "liberalism". A liberal in the classic sense of the word and which is the sense from which the British and Australian Liberal parties draw their name.

The problem is that when you speak to an American, because the country deals on another more nebulous axis and is generally right shifted, the words "conservative" and "liberal" mean something entirely different.

America seems to want to deal on a weird sort of Authoritarian-Liberatarian sort of axis. Due the fact that America was born in a state which was a reaction to classical conservatism and never saw a titled gentry, it was the world of business which came to run and which still does run the country.

The American definitions of "conservative" seems to hinge around moral values, which is weird because if the United States is explicitly atheist in its constitution, then this doesn't really make sense. The idea of being free from government control seems to fit well with a Libertarian stance but even that doesn't explain the "conservative" - "liberal" axis.

Basically to be a "conservative" in the United States is for someone to be broadly morally conservative but still economically liberal. In terms of economic parlance, the leadership styles of George W Bush, John Howard and Tony Blair all fell into Neoliberalism.

The only thing to mark a "liberal" in the United States as far as I can make out is either being a Social Progressivist or perhaps suggesting a greater degree of government control in the economy which itself is leftist in the classic sense and in no way at all liberal.

To call someone a "liberal" in the United States as far as I can make out seems to be little more than to find a derogatory epithet for them. That's fine I suppose in a media climate which spends most of its time basically demonising who it doesn't like and yelling at the opposition. It also adequately explains why the functional political literacy of the average American is so low.

Because I am a genuine leftist when it comes to infrastructure, a rightist with regards the functioning of markets, prices, and consumer goods; a social conservative and skeptical progressivist, on various forum boards I've been called both a "conservative" and a "liberal" in the same thread. The scary thing is that I suspect that the people who like to call those names, have no idea what they're actually saying or what they even mean.

Horse 1270 - Rollo's Motor Co.

2012-01-21T22:32:00.000+11:00

If Toyota want to axe 3000 jobs because they can't be bothered to build cars in Australia, and Ford are thinking of giving the Falcon the chop, and Holden suspect that the next model Commodore will be the last, then it surely heralds the end of car manufacturing in Australia.
Or does it?
I bet that if the Federal Government would give me $145 million, I could very easily have viable car company within 12 months.

My basic premise is that if countries like Germany can produce world class cars, and countries like South Korea can go from making cars which were horrid 20 years ago to producing cars at least on par with those made in Japan, then why is it beyond Australia to do likewise?

Only three car companies build cars in Australia; those all of them are subsidiaries of foreign companies. All of them have proved in the past that if wages are too expensive on one country, they'll just up sticks and move elsewhere.

My gambit is that if a company was setup with the express purpose of building an all-Australian car then provided it was run with the intent of making just $1 of profit per year, then it could both retain those jobs in Australia as well as produce a World-Class car, tested in the toughest conditions on earth and export them.
Personally I can see no good reason why Australia should dig perfectly good iron ore out of the ground, to make steel, only to have it sold back to us in the form of cars.
Why can't we build a car as good as Audi, or Mercedes-Benz, or Honda in Australia? Is it simply beyond the capabilities of Australian workers? Is it really that hard?

So then, this is the challenge Australia. When the next Auto maker decides to naff-off, then let them. I'll take over the car factory and I'll give you back cars. I wouldn't be building the "big Aussie six" either.

http://www.fcai.com.au/news/all/all/292/new-vehicle-sales-top-the-million-mark-in-2011
According to VFACTS, the Mazda3 was the top selling car for 2011 followed by the Commodore, HiLux, Corolla, Cruze and i30. The Falcon comes in at No.9 and selling less than half of the number of Mazda3s. Apart from the Commodore which is only propped by by fleet sales (because if you exclude fleet buyers it falls to No.11, and the Toyota HiLux which is a tradie's vehicle, then the car which Australians are actually buying is a 2L car like they do in Europe.

The current model Focus comes with a 1.6L "Ecoboost" motor, the Cruze is sold with a 1.4L ITI Turbo, and the standard i30 comes with a 1.6L. Clearly then my new car will have to be a 1.6L car and most likely a hatchback.

Like all good cars it will need a name, and as we learnt from Homer's brother Herb in The Simpsons, who owned a motor company: "People don't want cars named after hungry old Greek broads! They want names like 'Mustang' and 'Cheetah'—vicious animal names,"
I had a look around to find all the "vicious animal names" that hadn't been used yet and thought it really quite odd that I can't think of even one car which is called a "Tiger".

Right then... this is the challenge.If someone wants to back me, I'll build the first car of a brand new marque. It will be a 1.6L Hatch and be called the Tiger. The Logo will be this:

Now then, who gonna give me the money? Anyone?...

Horse 1269 - The Big Day (Out) The Music Died

2012-01-20T15:10:00.001+11:00

http://afr.com/p/losing_it_in_the_dosh_pit_9Sm7XAPAA2SGGZN6ZfTDRP
Ken West, the founder of The Big Day Out, says he will lose money on the music festival bonanza this year for the first time in its 20 years of peace and love and selling out.
Poor consumer sentiment, sluggish ticket sales, a shallow pool of international crowd-pulling talent and a glut of rival events mean that the “golden age for Australian music festivals” is over.
- Financial Review, 20th Jan 2012

Has anyone taken a serious look at the music charts to work out why people aren't turning up at music festivals any more?

I might sound like a bit of a silly old git but in the days when people used to play their own instruments, concert goers would go out and see artists play those instruments live.

This may be kind of scary but have a look through the ARIA charts for the year 2011:
http://www.ariacharts.com.au/pages/charts_display_singles.asp?chart=A001CSSAW001001Y
Out of the top 100 selling singles in Australia, only 2 were by artists that actually played their own instruments. They were Avril Lavigne at No.48 who can play a guitar and at No.54 the band Coldplay. That's it. Just two... TWO?!

Pathetic.

What possible incentive is there for anyone to go and see a band live, when they don't even play their music live. If you want to see DJs play with mixing decks, then you can just as easily go to a nightclub. I mean just what is the point?

To give you an idea of the biggest concert I ever went to, this is a photo:

This was Oasis at Wembley in 2000 and before 170,000 people.
Now you can argue until you're blue in the face about the relative merits of the band but the point is that the 170,000 people who turned up that day, turned up and saw a band play LIVE. This poses a distinct problem when 98% of artists in the Top 100 on the ARIA charts, can't play their own instruments at all, let alone live.

Part of the blame can also be laid at the feet of those prize gits, Simon Fuller and Simon Cowell. They're the people responsible for the television "talent" shows The X Factor and before that Pop Idol. Once upon a time singers and bands would have to grind out their skills and work at it before they were noticed by record company executives; now you can take any Johnny or Jackie Q Public, pluck them out of obscurity, put them in front of a telly audience who is almost a captured market, knock out an album of 12 mediocre songs and they'll never be heard of again. Whether or not they have any actual talent is almost incidental - usually they won't have a lot; hence the reason why they weren't noticed by record company executives in the first place.

Aside from the above, I personally think that a lot of music today sounds utterly rubbish. I was going to put it down to the fact that I'm just getting older and going the same way as a lot of older people before me but if the concert going public is voting with its wallets and simply not turning up at music festivals, then it invites the very real possibility that music today, actually is in fact rubbish.
You could I suppose blame the internet and concepts like dissipation, dispersion and dissemination of talent, however the rules of what's popular on the internet are different again.

According to the official YouTube blog and as reported by MSNBC, the most viewed video of 2011 in the world was the song "Friday" by Rebecca Black. This is a case of music being notable precisely because it was rubbish.

This is noteworthy because it prompted such comments as "I feel sick" from Stephen K Amos and "It is the end of music" from JJJ presenter Myf Warhurst, who as a DJ should have her finger on the pulse of what is popular.

It could be that we're just in one of those periods that the music industry goes through from time to time and needs a major shift to kick it out of its daze.
However, I'd prefer to think that the reason why people aren't going to big music festivals like they used to is because music today is rubbish.

Horse 1268 - Stated Policy and Values

2012-01-17T16:05:00.002+11:00

Malcolm Turnbull published this speech, which he gave to the recent Young Liberal Convention. I think that a portion of it is worth reproducing because I think that it highlights something particularly worrying; not only about the Liberal Party but about both sides of politics in Australia.

http://www.malcolmturnbull.com.au/media/speeches/the-liberal-values-of-freedom-and-opportunity-in-a-globalised-economy-speech-to-young-liberal-convention-2012/

The truth is that developed economies today face a double challenge – not only is technology reducing the need for labour in many sectors – manufacturing, retailing, logistics, financial services to name a few – but at the same time globalization and the Internet mean that more and more jobs and industry sectors are trade exposed than ever before so that what had traditionally been non-trade exposed occupations (accounting, law, financial analysis, retail for example) are now increasingly trade exposed – which means that their competition is not across the street or in another State, but anywhere in the world where there are many people as well educated and as hard working as Australians but prepared to work for lower wages.

All of this is putting pressure on both employment in the developed world – hence the sluggish jobs free “recovery”, such as it has been, post the GFC in North America, and on incomes – hence middle incomes have flatlined or dropped in real terms in the USA over the last twenty years.

- Speech by Malcolm Turnbull, to the Young Liberal Convention
- via: http://www.malcolmturnbull.com.au/
- Published on: January 16, 2012

I am prepared to accept all of this as fact at face value. The truth is that middle incomes have dropped in real terms ever since the September Quarter of 1981 in Australia and about 1978 in the rest of the world.

Not only have wages themselves been falling in real terms for the last 30 years but it would seem that the gap between executive pay and the average worker is also widening:

http://www.economist.com/node/21542773
Pay at the top grew by over 300% between 1998 and 2010. At the same time, the median British worker’s real wage has been pretty stagnant. These trends mean the ratio of executive to average pay at FTSE 100 firms jumped from 47 to 120 times in 12 years.
- The Economist, 14th Jan 2012

I assume that the UK is a similar sort of economy as Australia. Admittedly Britain doesn't have the ability to keep on mining stuff out of the ground and sell it to China, largely because it's all gone but broadly speaking both countries moved from an agricultural economy, through one which was based on manufacturing to one which is now based on service industries.

I think that it's fair to say that if companies continue to be profitable then if executive salaries have risen whilst that of the average worker has fallen or gone backwards, where the money has come from to pay executive salaries.

Mr Turnbull went on in that speech to describe the sorts of values which the Liberal Party corporately holds:
Values such as self-reliance and enterprise. Personal freedom and personal responsibility. Opportunity and competition.

Personal responsibility is a two-edged sword. In the first instance it is only fit and proper for people to be self-reliant. However the economy is not a place where different players start from the same starting point. If you do start at the bottom, then the only economic chip that you have to bring to the table is your provision of labour. Factor in a dash of competition which is also a race to the bottom and its a recipe to leave those at the bottom there; freedom is pointless without any accompanying power.

I haven't for instance heard any plans coming out of either the Liberal or Labor Party as to what to actually do about the increase of competition caused by globalisation. I would have thought that the obvious thing to do would be to improve the quality of the labour force in Australia through a program of improved education standards but neither party suggests that. Such a program could be seen as an investment in the quality labour itself and would be eventually recoverable through increased income tax as a result of people being able to command higher wages. However, when it comes to governments in Australia investing in... well anything really, both sides of politics have an extremely poor record over the past 30 years. In the three and a bit decades I've been alive, neither the Liberal or Labor Parties have shown any vision or leadership at all. To be totally honest both parties have either been asleep at the wheel or have engaged in policies which have actively hurt the country.

If there are there are many people as well educated and as hard working as Australians but prepared to work for lower wages, doesn't it suggest that because of the values of competition; driven by forcing people to be self-reliant, that the only possible outcome is for wages of the average worker to go even further backwards?

http://www.smh.com.au/business/bankers-face-axe-as-jobs-go-overseas-20120116-1q3aq.html
A report by one of the country's main finance houses says the banks have hired too many staff in the past decade but that trend will reverse as they capitalise on technological advances and send more jobs to India and other lower-cost countries.
- Sydney Morning Herald, 17th Jan 2011.

As stated as part of the values which the Liberal Party corporately holds, ie. "Values such as self-reliance and enterprise" I assume that Mr Turnbull's reaction to the 7000 people whose jobs will be cut is to tell them to "suck it up" and to take some "self-reliance and enterprise" or maybe "personal responsibility" for their actions. How dare these degenerates think that they should rely on a corporate entity such as a bank to provide them with a wage.

The thing is that effects don't happen unless there are causes. In this case, there are multiple causes. Increased competition of labour across global markets as well a business decisions taken by essentially hired hands at corporations many layers above them.

Causes generally don't correct themselves unless there is positive action taken. Actions follow from the set of values which individuals, companies, (political parties?) hold. It just seems to that the Liberal Party as represented by their values statement which Mr Turnbull has expounded upon, intends not only to take zero positive action at all to improve this country but to also blame people and point the finger in the name of personal responsibility.
Really this set of statements is that the Liberal Party would like to return the economy to state of Social Darwinism as per the 1870s. That's fine I suppose but I wouldn't be at all surprised if say in another 30 years time, whether we don't see riots on the streets of Sydney, like we did London, Athens etc.

Horse 1267 - Throwing Bones at Lazy Dogs

2012-01-13T16:21:00.001+11:00

http://afr.com/p/national/hockey_fights_car_handouts_omeeluYDR3I8k7NkZIYl7N

His comments (Senator Kim Carr) came after The Financial Review reported Shadow treasurer Joe Hockey had told colleagues he will counter any move to reverse the cut not only because of its importance to the Coalition’s overall savings plan, but also out of concern at the mounting federal payments to the big car companies.

The decision escalates the political brawl over industry assistance as former Labor finance minister Peter Walsh warned the federal government against “propping up” the car companies if they could not sustain commercial operations in the long term.

Mr Hockey’s move is the first sign of a shadow cabinet showdown on the principle of industry assistance as his Opposition Leader and several colleagues speak out in favour of strong government support for car makers.
- The Financial Review, 13th Jan 2012.

In this case I agree with the Liberal Party.

The Australian Government in various guises has been kowtowing to the automakers pretty well ever since PM Ben Chifley and the then managing director of Holden Laurence Hartnett, practically begged and licked the boots of Detroit.

The idea that the Australian Government was throwing money at a company which had filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy in the United States I found pretty scandalous at the time and when you consider that Holden happily snapped up $149 million in taxpayers funds to "develop" a new small car which they'd already engineered and were then selling in other markets just defies description.

Detroit's attitude to manufacturing in Australia can best be described as contemptuous. It was Detroit who decided that the Holden Monaro could be sold in the United States and then when it failed to meet their expectations even after being a successful car in Australia for four years, they killed it off.
When Holden found an export market for the Commodore under the Pontiac badge as the G8, Detroit killed off the whole Pontiac brand.

Now Holden is building the Cruze hatchback, Detroit has decided in its wisdom that the United States will not get the Cruze in its hatchback form; thus killing off another potential export market.

It's not just Holden who acts this way. Ford at one stage promised to be building the then next-gen Focus Hatch in Australia by 2011 (which never eventuated) and Toyota was able to get millions to set up production of the Hybrid Camry in Australia. Both Ford and Toyota have at various stages threatened to close their Australian manufacturing operations.

Really I wonder what the actual intent of throwing money at what basically are foreign corporations, is about. Corporations like any other businesses exist to turn a profit and the underlying reasons for making a profit are largely to do with labour and materials costs.
Car makers time and time again prove that they're willing to up sticks and start building cars in places where wages are cheaper. The Toyota Hilux is built in Thailand, the Corolla is built in Pakistan, Vietnam, Venezuela, the Philippines etc. and even the Cruze itself is built in places like Kazakhstan, Brazil and Russia.

Holden could very easily shut its doors tomorrow, and just kill off the Commodore; it already imports every other car in its lineup except the Cruze hatch. Ford could do likewise, killing the Falcon. Toyota wouldn't even need to change its lineup, it would just change its sources.

Pray tell why do we continue to throw taxpayers' money at these companies?

Horse 1266 - AV Revisited Again Again

2012-01-09T15:26:00.001+11:00

Both Horse 1172 and Horse 1182 were written last year as the UK was preparing to go to a referendum over the issue of the Alternative Vote.
Basically the Alternative Vote or Instant-runoff Vote or Preferential Vote, gives voters a chance to rank their preferences on who they'd like to see win the election. After a process of elimination and redistribution, the eventual winner of the election will win having gained more than 50% of the vote.

Many jurisdictions and organisations choose to use the First-Past-The Post-System. This is a simpler system in which the candidate with the most votes wins. I suppose that it's fine if you have only two choices but if you more than about four choices, the system starts to look inadequate.

Consider the results of the Iowa Republican caucuses held last week:

24.5% - Mitt Romney (won by just 8 votes)
24.5% - Rick Santorum
21.5% - Ron Paul
13.3% - Newt Gingrich
10.3% - Rick Perry
00.6% - Jon Huntsman

If Romney won only 24.5% of the vote, then that means to say that 75.5% of voters chose someone else. To put that another way, more than three-quarters of the vote did not vote for him.
If the suggestion that Romney gets 13 of the allotted delegate votes and Santorum gets gets 12 of the allotted delegate votes, then that also means to say that 51% of voters or more than half of them, did not vote for them.

Under an AV system, voters would have had choices if their first candidate didn't succeed. Even under a Proportional Voting system, the allotted delegate votes would have more accurately reflected the will of the voting public.

The thing is that writing in a series of preferences is very simple for a voter to do. With six declared candidates, they'd only have to write 1-6 in the boxes. Also, preferential voting has been in use since 1918 and all votes are counted by hand, so it's not like the system requires the use of complicated voting machines.

I just think that it's crazy that the process for deciding who will be the president of arguably the most powerful nation on earth, is so undemocratic. How you can have a potential candidate go through without the majority of votes and in conditions where not everyone even bothers to show up and vote in the first place is beyond me.

Horse 1265 - Thoughts on The Electoral College System

2012-01-08T23:09:00.000+11:00

After the two major parties sort out who they're eventually going to put forwards as candidates for the Presidency in the United States, they'll then be put to the vote. The people of the United States though won't actually be voting for the President but rather they'll be voting for the "electors" which on a state by state basis submit votes to a nebulous entity called the Electoral College which will then decide the Presidency for them.

Basically in a nutshell, the Electoral College allocates votes on the basis of the number of members that each state has in the House of Representatives and in the Senate, plus 3 electors for the District of Columbia which has a non-voting delegate to the House of Representatives and no Senators. All up there are 538 "electors" of which a majority of 270 is required to vote in a President. Sounds fun?

The really weird thing about all of this is that a candidate only needs to win in 11 specific states* to take the Presidency because so much weight is given to states like California and Texas. Since they are the most populace states, they have the most seats in the House of Representatives; ergo they have the most electors.

I had a thought about whether an identical system would work in Australia considering that the specific model for electing the President which came out of the 1998 Constitutional Convention was defeated in the Republic Referendum in 1999.

If we assume that the model is identical, with an Electoral College in place and allocating votes on the basis of the number of members that each state has in the House of Representatives and in the Senate, then the actual numbers look like this:

State = Reps + Senate

ACT = 2 + 2 = 4
NSW = 48 + 12 = 60
NT = 2 + 2 = 4
QLD = 30 + 12 = 42
SA = 11 + 12 = 23
TAS = 5 + 12 = 17
VIC = 37 + 12 = 49
WA = 15 + 12 = 27

All up we'd end up with 226 electors for Australia.

Immediately this causes a problem. Almost always, every election for an Australian president would be decided on the whims of New South Wales and Victoria, since they'd control 109 of the 226 votes.
If we read through the notes which led to the federation of the six colonies in 1901, the provision that referenda be passed "if in a majority of the States a majority of the electors voting approve the proposed law"
http://www.aph.gov.au/senate/general/constitution/chapter8.htm
The people who framed the Australian Constitution decided to take the best of both worlds from both the parliament in Westminster and the US Congress. The Electoral College in the United States is very heavily influenced by the states with the most people in them. In Australia the parliament was specifically weighted so that the smaller states wouldn't be bullied by the bigger ones.

I wonder then what the justification of the Electoral College is in the 21st Century. Wouldn't it just be easier to elect a President by nationwide popular vote? You'd still have states like California and Texas dominating the final count, but at least the result would be more truly representative of the population.
And specifically by using the case of Australia, I think it very easily highlights the inherent problem with the system itself. Former PM Paul Keating called the Australian Senate "unrepresentative swill", so I wonder what he thinks of the Electoral College. Since no proposal the change the system has passed through the Congress, I guess it's the game which will continue to be played.

*The Twelfth Amendment to the United States Constitution states that "a majority of all the states shall be necessary to a choice". In regards that, 26 of 50 states must approve the president-elect, which itself poses a problem if the 26 littlest states decided to band together and vote someone in.

Horse 1264 - The Race for the US Presidency

2012-01-06T09:31:00.000+11:00

With the beginning of an Olympic year, January also marks the beginning of a race of Marathon proportions, that for the US Presidency. Apart from the completely baffling system of caucuses and primaries, which only eventually result in who gets put on the ticket and a quite frankly punishing schedule for the candidates, it does make for some interesting viewing.
As an Australian from the other side of the Pacific, I am thankful that we aren't bombarded with the panoply of adverts on television which the American public faces every single day, but I still find the whole thing sort of amusing and watch it rather like one does a neutral Test Match (in cricket).

The 2012 Primary Schedule can be found here:
http://www.2012presidentialelectionnews.com/2012-republican-primary-schedule/

Of itself the results from Iowa don't really suggest much of themselves, other than that there still may be five candidates still left with a reasonable chance of picking up the Republican nomination.
A summary of the results is listed below:

24.5% - Mitt Romney (won by just 8 votes)
24.5% - Rick Santorum
21.5% - Ron Paul
13.3% - Newt Gingrich
10.3% - Rick Perry
00.6% - Jon Huntsman

You can basically assume that Perry is likely to do well in the southern states as he is the incumbent Governor of Texas. Gingrich will probably also expect to pick up a few states in the south, coming from Georgia.

I think that we can basically assume at this point that Jon Huntsman's race may as well be dead in the water. Intriguingly he's probably contributed to more of the American economy than any other single person in the past year in his role as the Ambassador to China but because he isn't and wasn't ever a sitting Senator or member of the House of Reps, that doesn't show up on his resume.

One state by itself is obviously way too early to call anything, so the next test is next Tuesday with the New Hampshire primaries. I find it surprising that there will be 30 candidates listed on the Republican ballot and wonder why that many of them think that they'd have any hope at all.

I am however prepared to make a rash prediction that at the end of the election cycle, we'll be left with Mitt Romney as the Republican hope for the presidency; running with Florida Senator Marco Rubio. Rubio sits firmly in the "Tea Party" and with the GOP moving steadily to the right anyway, I think he'd be the most palatable choice that the Republicans can muster for the Vice-Presidency.

I also think that it's pretty well a foregone conclusion that Obama will run again for the Democrats and that Hilary Clinton will be his running mate. Basically Hilary would replace Joe Biden, and he'd replace her as Secretary of State.

So that's with I think, Romney-Rubio vs Obama-Clinton in November.

Then there's always comic relief from Jimmy McMillan, self-proclaimed karate expert:
"Yes, the revolution is on. And Jimmy McMillan has to be the driver of this bus..."
From 49mins onwards...
http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/dailypolitics/2010/12/now-ive-heard-it-all-from-jimmy-mcmillan-updated

Horse 1263 - Making Straight Streets

2012-01-04T10:18:00.000+11:00

In those days John the Baptist came, preaching in the wilderness of Judea and saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” This is he who was spoken of through the prophet Isaiah:
“A voice of one calling in the wilderness,
‘Prepare the way for the Lord,
make straight paths for him.’”
- Matthew 3:1-3

In church on Sunday the pastor made an off-hand comment that we being in the 21st Century, might find it a little bit difficult to relate to this concept in the same way that a 1st Century audience would have done. It is very true that in our post-literate, post-authoritarian society, we simply do not view people with titles in the same way as people even 100 years ago did. There isn't the same level of respect of position for Kings, the Gentry and Appointed Officials like the Police, Politicians and the Military as there once was.
Perhaps then, a revisit of history is in order.

To take a 1st Century approach to this, I think warrants a look at two rather famous Roman roads.
The Appian Way or Via Appia runs from Rome to the Adriatic port city of Brindisi and is 563km long. Once called the "Queen of the Roads", this most famous of ancient roads is by modern standards rather weedy. It is at best only about 3m wide and as such is rather pointless to send modern traffic over. Its original purpose was to either send legions down the boot of Italy, or as a royal road when emperors would either walk or be driven down it in horse drawn carriages. If the road was being used as for royal duties, people were employed to sweep the roads of dust and people so that the emperor could travel down in in comfort.
The other rather famous Roman road is in Britain and carries the name of Watling Street. The word "street" comes from the Latin "strata" and meant nothing more than a road which had been paved. Again, people were employed to sweep the street but unlike the Via Appia, it was never paved for its entire length, and strictly speaking it is not contiguous either, with the term being applied during the middle ages.

I should also mention the city of Paris, not for the Champs-Élysées which is arguably the most beautiful street in the world (if not the most expensive piece of real estate) but for the series of avenues and boulevards hacked through the city by the architect Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann under the direction of Napoleon III.
From 1853-1870, Haussmann had entire buildings, apartment complexes and major parts of suburbs cut through like a trowel passing through unturned earth. Co-incidentally, Haussmann's plans also conveniently hacked through some of the poorest areas of Paris, displacing the poor and ultimately driving great masses out of the city entirely.
Even today if an expressway is built such as the Warringah Expressway north of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, people are displaced from their houses as roads are built.
In 2007 when the APEC Conference was held in Sydney, the city went into "lockdown" with streets closed, very high barriers with razor-wire erected and an extremely high level of security employed.

I wonder if that's the sort of thing that John was trying to get at. I find a parallel to the sorts of things above just 9 verses later:
"His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor, gathering his wheat into the barn and burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire."
- Matthew 3:12
This very much implies that the imminent arrival of the Messiah would require some pretty major changes in Jewish life. The King would be arriving soon and the old order would be hacked through to the same degree as the buildings of the cities mentioned above. People's lives would need to be swept clean, or else face being displaced entirely.
Actually in the broader scheme of things, that is precisely what happened anyway. Jesus' Kingdom arrived, the temple in Jerusalem destroyed by the Romans in AD.70 and the Roman Empire would eventually officially convert to Christianity. Did John's warning go unheeded?

Horse 1262 - DRS and Absolute Impartiality?

2011-12-28T09:24:00.000+11:00

Rahul Dravid was bowled off a no-ball, given out and proceeded to walk off, except that the South African umpire Marais Eramus told him not to go and referred the decision to the video umpire Paul Reiffel. Reiffel duly noted that Peter Siddle has overstepped the mark, and the man they call "The Wall" was still not out at the end of the day's play.

Under normal circumstances letting a batsman play on because they were genuinely not out is fair and reasonable but given that both Shaun Marsh (given out for a duck) and Test debutant Ed Cowan who fell at 68 and was well on his way to making a Century on debut, were both given caught behind despite not actually making contact with the ball, I begin to smell a rat.
Why is it that an Indian batsman was allowed to continue, but two Australian batsman were denied the use of the same technology?

Personally I don't really like the ability of players in any sport to challenge the decision of the officials.
Law 5 of the Laws of the Game of football used to read that the referee among other things was the sole arbiter of the match and curiously the sole arbiter of time. Did that make him a Time Lord?.. and have access to time travel?
Law 3 of Cricket states that Before the match, two umpires shall be appointed, one for each end, to control the game as required by the Laws, with absolute impartiality.
It's that last thing which I've found particularly grating about the decision to let Rahul Dravid stay at the crease. I can understand the Board of Control for Cricket in India's stance that the DRS shouldn't be used but then don't particularly like that same stance when if they should be stading up for the principle, why have they not even made a peep about it when they've benefitted from it?

At the 2011 ICC World Cup, India were on both ends of decisions referred through the DRS:
http://iccworld-cup2011.blogspot.com/2011/02/dhoni-infuriated-by-udrs-decision.html
When Ian Bell survived a DRS review for an LBW decision going on to make another 52 runs, the Indian captain MS Dhoni was livid; calling the DRS "an adulteration of human decision and technology"

Yet when Sachin Tendulkar had a decision reversed against Pakistan also at the same tournament the BCCI made no official noise whatsoever.
http://www.thenews.com.pk/NewsDetail.aspx?ID=13503

I mean fair dos if the two captains have agreed to either use or not use the DRS before the match, but if one side benefits from its use but the other side is denied its use then the absolute impartiality of the umpires is surely compromised.
Furthermore if the BCCI wants to take a stand against the system, then should that stand be consistent, rather than only disagreeing with decisions that go against them? It is totally understandable given human nature that we have a rather selfishly and corrupted view of justice, but there's still something wrong about a set of circumstances which causes a batsman to be out when he clearly wasn't (and denying him a Test Century on debut) and another batsman to be not out also when he clearly wasn't because of the country which he happens to come from*.

*Oh yes India, this is pointed at you. The BCCI have had all sorts of power disputes with the ICC and this is just one of them.

Horse 1261 - Jesus Son of Nun

2011-12-22T22:46:00.000+11:00

The little notes at the bottom of my bible in the Gospel of Mattew, indicate that Jesus or Ἰησοῦς is the Greek for of the name Joshua. The name יְהוֹשֻׁעַ‎‎ or Yehoshua in Hebrew means "Yahweh is salvation" and in Greek and most Orthodox churches, Joshua is almost always rendered "Jesus son of Nun" in the Greek to differentiate them.

Now a lot of the Old Testament can be taken as Object Lesson for what was and is to come; so I'm wondering what sort of parallels should be drawn between the two.

Joshua was one of the twelve spies sent by Moses to report on Canaan and only he and Caleb gave reports which were optimistic in Numbers 13 & 14 and ultimately he would be the one to lead the nation of Israel in conquest of the land.
Maybe there is a parallel between Jesus in Joshua in that Jesus was sent to make a report; not on the condition of the enemy but of the soon to be arriving Kingdom of God. It could also be said that Joshua's job was to conquer the land of Canaan and to smash strongholds. Jesus' job was conquer sin and also to smash strongholds, though maybe that's too long a bow to draw.

Maybe there really isn't any parallel to be drawn, maybe Jesus name יְהוֹשֻׁעַ‎‎ simply means "Yahweh is salvation" and that's that. It doesn't need to be any more complicated than that does it?

Horse 1260 - Death Of A Madman... Enter The Madman?

2011-12-20T10:07:00.000+11:00

The BBC:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-16239693
North Korean leader Kim Jong-il has died at the age of 69, state-run television has announced.
Mr Kim, who has led the communist nation since the death of his father in 1994, died on a train while visiting an area outside the capital, the announcement said.

The Age:
http://www.theage.com.au/world/kim-jong-il-dead-20111219-1p1sk.html
Kim Jong Il, the second-generation North Korean dictator who defied global condemnation to build nuclear weapons while his people starved, has died, Yonhap News reported.
He is believed to have been 70 years old, although North Korean official records said he was 69 years old.
The news came in a radio broadcast at noon local time, Yonhap reported, citing North Korea's official media. The veteran leader died on December 17 at 8.30am, a weeping announcer said, Agence France-Presse reported.

I can only hope that this is the beginning of North Korea's acceptance back into the free-world and the reunification process; maybe even bringing back the Emperor. Hopefully Seoul and Pyongyang will start talks more or less immediately to finally get rid of the stupid line that separates the two Koreas.
I was born into a world of two Germanys and two Koreas. East and West Germany were reunited in 1990 rather seamlessly as it finally turned out but the 38th parallel that marks the DMZ between the Koreas remains.

Not long after the news reached the South, I got a text message from a friend of mine in Busan who has gone home for Christmas. He seems to think that the television report was all staged, even down to the crying from the lady and that Kim actually died maybe two days ago because he was apparantly seen opening a shopping centre (after seeing this new invention in China) on Friday and that maybe North Korean media were waiting for the most appropriate moment to break the news.

The South remains on high alert; almost a state of emergency because really no-one know much about the third son Kim Jong-Un at all. Quite unlike his father who had maybe the best part of 20 years being groomed for the position, Kim Jong-Un has had at best 15 months. One of his older brothers Kim Jong-Nam had fallen out of favour after being arrested and deported from Japan in 2001 because he wanted to go to Tokyo Disneyland and had travelled on a forged Dominican Republic passport.

The next few weeks and months will be interesting as the new Kim begins to show his hand. Presumably his government will be propped up by China merely to stop a wave of refugees from fleeing North Korea's borders. Given that there are 1.2 million soldiers under the employ of the government from a population of 24 million, even just the economic task of demobbing them should reunification ever appear on the cards is a difficult one. Quite unlike the two Germanys, where the East was the biggest and most prosperous economy other than Russia on the dismal side of the Iron Curtain, North Korea in comparision is impoverished and very very closed.
There are also reports of a missile being tested off the coast. Presumably this is a show of strength because I'm sure that the military probably wouldn't be all that happy at an untested 20-something assuming control of the armed forces.

Some commentators have mentioned that maybe there is an opportunity for the people to rise up in much the same way as many peoples have done in the so-called "Arab Spring" of 2011. I don't think this highly likely because as far as I'm aware, there are no mobile phone networks in North Korea to speak of, the internet as we know it doesn't really exist and certainly none of the social media tools like Facebook or Twitter that were instrumental in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia.

If the cult of personality fades, the three most likely outcomes for North Korea are regeiem collapse, a military coup and the status quo being maintained in much the same way as when Khrushchev took Stalin's position.
I like many South Koreans would love to see the day of a reunited Korea but I just don't see it happening in the near future. I hope and pray that history proves me wrong.

Horse 1259 - T20 Big Bash - A Shiny Diamond Duck

2011-12-17T09:12:00.001+11:00

Last night was the beginning of supposedly a shiny new era in Australian cricket with the first ever match in the new T20 Big Bash between the Sydney... oh I don't care.

And that is the point.

The first of the new T20 competition only got a paltry 12,287 people turning up. This I imagine would be very disappointing because being a Friday night in summer, you should be able to get far more than that.
The biggest problem as I see it isn't the format of the game but a horrid case of mismanagement of promotion.

Firstly rather than simply add two teams to the existing state sides to make 8 (I would have added NSW Country and Northern Victoria), they decided to tear down everything and rejink the colours so that they have zero connection which what went on before.
Cricket in Australia has been played between the states since 1892. That's 119 years of tradition simply just dumped into the bin. And seriously, in Sydney who in blinkies is going to want to support a team that plays in pink? PINK?!

The second major problem is that the new T20 competition is exclusive to Foxtel. When the late Sir Kerry Packer basically re-invented and reinvigorated cricket with his World Series Cricket in 1977 and again when the ACB relented in 1979-80, he had a ready audience on Channel 9.
The point is that cricket on free-to-air telly had an audience of several million, whereas the new T20 competition is only available to Foxtel subscribers and even then only to people to have further subscribed to the sport package. Casual cricket fans and people who aren't really cricket fans but might have watched it anyway, will now not see any of the T20 matches at all.

Kerry O'Keefe on ABC's Grandstand made the comment that in Sydney on a Friday night, everyone is probably out drinking and at pubs and clubs. Okay, so those people will probably already be at pubs and clubs and wouldn't have turned up anyway but most pubs and clubs do have Foxtel so they'll no reason to then go to the cricket, so the question is who is the intended audience of the new competition?

If cricket is on Foxtel then the rights are owned by News Ltd; that gives away the answer away. The rights can then be onsold to World Sport Group, Astro and the SuperSport channels throughout India, Malaysia and the rest of South East Asia, and into the Arabic nations (maybe even China?).
The T20 Big Bash seems to be a vehicle merely to sell TV rights to other countries and leave Australians largely ignored. That's fine I suppose but it does suggest the reason why I was watching free-to-air ABC1 and Midsomer Murders.
Even if the people who sell TV rights are able to extract just 50 cents from every person in India, that would still be half a billion dollars which would easily satisfy most broadcasters need for profits.

The news in Lols

2011-12-16T08:54:00.000+11:00

Horse 1258 - Bob Katter FC - Canberra Crocodiles

2011-12-15T15:16:00.000+11:00

http://www.abc.net.au/rural/news/content/200908/s2653462.htm
"I mean, if you could imagine 20 or 30 crocodiles up there on the roof, and if all that roof was illumination, and saying that we wouldn't see anything in this room because of a few croco-roaches up there,"
- Bob Katter (visionary), 12th Aug 2009

Bob Katter didn't know it at the time but I hope that his words will inspire a nation's capital. Currently Canberra has no A-League team; it has a W-League team in Canberra United, but that's it.
Allow me to dream for a couple of minutes and present what I think is a truly visionary idea, inspired by one of this country's greatest heroes.

To truly represent the nation's capital, a Canberra side should probably play in Green and gold. Either in a green or gold at home; since there are already more goldish teams in the A-League with both the Central Coast Mariners and the Newcastle Jets. Green therefore is the logical colour. To that end, a strip similar to the existing Canberra United strip would be good:

Next there is a question of the name of the team. For alliterative purposes, a team playing in green and called the Canberra Crocodiles would be quite good I think.

Next we turn our attention to the stadium. Bob Katter's wise words already point the way - "if you could imagine 20 or 30 crocodiles up there on the roof, and if all that roof was illumination". I can't imagine 20 or 30 crocodiles up there but I can imagine one very big illuminated one:

Turkish club Bursaspor will be moving into Timsah (Crocodile) Arena in 2013. All we need to do is find the designers and ask them to do it again. Basically Canberra Stadium (formerly Bruce Stadium) is a rubbish venue. When heavy rains come, it floods and a deep pool starts to form. I imagine that in a prolonged period of heavy rain you could probably hold mock sea battles there just like they did in the Colosseum.

So then, Canberra's new A-League team playing out of the redeveloped and renamed "Bob Katter Stadium" I think would be the sort of irreverent thing befitting a nation like Australia.
The question then is, what would Bob himself think?

"I approve of this plan, The people are crying out for something different"

Let's hope the Canberra Crocodiles are that football illumination up on the roof that the country sorely needs.

Horse 1257 - How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?

2011-12-15T10:51:00.000+11:00

How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?

http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/column-8/column-8-20111214-1ouv1.html
Jarad Bennett, of Singleton, astonished Column 8 by asking ''How much wood would a woodchuck chuck, if a woodchuck could chuck wood?'' Not because we hadn't heard the question many times, but that it was being discussed over dinner the night before, and the answer was given by a fellow who assured us that it had appeared in a Donald Duck comic in the 1960s. Apparently a woodchuck, if it could, would chuck ''16 board feet of lumber'', but we stand prepared to be corrected.
-Column 8, Sydney Morning Herald, 15-12-11

The Woodchuck (Marmota Monax) or Groundhog weighs anywhere between 4-9lb, so an average woodchuck would weigh roughly 7lbs. (I'll be using imperial here because Metric is decided French). Assuming the average 16-hand tall horse is about 1000lbs and generates 1 horsepower, then the average woodchuck is 7/1000ths as big a horse.

1 horsepower is 33,000 ft.lbs/min or 550 ft.lbs/sec. 7/1000ths of that is 3
3.85ft.lbs/sec.

How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?
I think roughly 4 pounds or about 8 kilos. That also seems perfectly reasonable to me too.

Horse 1256 - The Opportunity Cost of a Decade

2011-12-09T09:30:00.000+11:00

So far the war in Iraq has cost this much money:
###
Iraq War Cost

I'm not going to use this post to discuss whether or not the underlying reason for the war in Iraq was to do with oil or not, but I do wonder about the money which was spent and what would have happened had all of it been used for more profitable purposes.

In economics the term for this is called the "Opportunity Cost". If we assume that money is a finite thing (you can't spend money you've already spent on something else because you've already spent it, DUH), then I wonder what the Opportunity Cost of the War actually is.

The "Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways" or more simply the Interstate Highway System of the United States is the largest public works project ever undertaken in history. Even if you adjust the costs for inflation going back to 1956 when it started, you end up with a figure of just over $517 billion. Even with the clock ticking above, the War in Iraq has cost at least one and half times that of the largest public works project ever undertaken in history.
What else could have been done with that money?

Could the United States have had a Universal Health Care System? What about funding research into finding alternative renewable energies other than oil? How would the world have changed if more than $800 billion had been spent on that?

If you adjust for inflation, then the cost of sending 12 clowns to the moon only cost about $99 billion. What sort of advances in space technology could have been made with $800 billion? Would we already have people on Mars by now?
Sure, sending people to the moon was a colossal waste of money but it was probably a more inspiring waste of money than 8 years of needlessly blowing people up.

What's not to say that if Iraq and Afghanistan hadn't been invaded/liberated/whatever you like to call it, that during the Arab Spring of 2011, they wouldn't have decided their own fate for themselves; maybe earlier?

Perhaps the most worrying thing of all is that over the next decade (the tens?) the Baby Boomers in the USA will start to collect on their Social Security benefits. Almost none of the money that will be required to pay those benefits was ever saved in advance. I'm wondering what would have happened if instead of spending more than $800 billion on blowing people up, whether that money wouldn't have been better put to use in training and educating the generation who will be paying for those benefits through their taxation. How much more productive would the population have been if $800 billion had been spent on improving the quality of the labour force instead of the almost negligible benefits of being at war.

Just what was the true opportunity cost of the last decade, and will the next one be a so-called "lost decade" because of it?

Horse 1255 - Channel 10, No Longer "Your Home of Motorsport"

2011-12-05T11:11:00.001+11:00

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/motorsport/formulaone/8919026/Jonathan-Liew-Formula-One-takes-a-step-backwards-with-new-TV-rights-deal-between-BBC-and-Sky.html

But it did mark the end of an era — of terrestrial television’s 35-year stranglehold of Formula One.

It was in 1976 that the BBC first started showing every race of the season live. Until then, its output had been restricted to the odd marquee race.

But the introduction of blanket coverage transformed the public’s relationship with the sport. This was the golden age. Formula One became a staple of our Sunday afternoons, the likes of James Hunt, Gilles Villeneuve and Murray Walker infiltrating our living rooms every fortnight and becoming household names in the process.

From next season, though, the BBC will share its coverage with Sky Sports, who will show half the races exclusively live on a dedicated channel. Sky will clearly plough considerable resources into a sport it has largely ignored thus far — you can guarantee, for example, that Sky Sports News will suddenly deem it a good deal more newsworthy than it used to — but by and large, it feels like another step backwards.

Given that Sky in the UK is largely a News Ltd organisation and that they also own a considerable chunk of Foxtel, what's to stop F1 coverage going to pay TV in Australia?
Given that the only motorsports events in Australia which are covered by the Anti-Siphoning laws are the Australian Moto GP, Bathurst 1000 and the Australian Formula One GP, what's to stop Foxtel from simply buying the lot and sticking it on Pay TV?

Channel 10 has already done its level best to insult people who don't have HD by showing races up to three hours late because of this policy successfully managed to show ZERO races live on standard definition television. Not even the Brazilian GP which started at stupid o'clock Australian time was shown live and on standard definition the telecast started after 25 laps had been completed (I was watching live timing).

Channel 10 has already had a poor record of showing F1 (see Horse 1187 and 1191 for further details) so I suppose they have been preparing us for this in a roundabout way.

If it does go to Foxtel then my interest will probably become more academic and I'll be forced to read results in much the same way I do English Premier League Football because I'm not a subscriber.

The CEO of Ten Network Holdings Limited is none other than Lachlan Murdoch. The TenSport Website merely says that they will be live streaming in 2012 but I note that the drop down menus for Formula One have already been removed. I wonder what that says.

I can guess:

The lineup on ONE HD and Channel 10 will be thus:

18 March - Australian GP - ONE HD
The rest of the season... Foxtel.

Horse 1254 - The Spirit of the AE86 Corolla

2011-12-02T11:55:00.000+11:00

http://news.toyota.com.au/toyota-unveils-new-86-sports-car

As a result, the 86 offers fun driving at a level unprecedented in earlier sports cars.
It carries on the spirit of the AE86 Corolla in its aim to be a car that evolves with its owner.

I wonder if Toyota's statement that the new "86" "carries on the spirit of the AE86 Corolla" is true or not. Personally I think that it's going to be a very successful marketing ploy, but that the 86 moniker isn't really deserved.

The original "hachi-roku" or 86, has a chassis code that tells its own story:
A - for the 4A engine, 1.6L in-line four cylinder (96kW)
E - is Corolla
8 - The 8th Gen Corolla was E80 and variants
6 - if for the sixth variant of this generation.

If you were to compare that with the current "86" then the chassis code might read (I speculate because I don't know yet):

D - for the D-4S boxer flat-4 engine, "jointly developed" by Toyota and Subaru (though in reality entirely Subaru). Subaru call the engine the FA20 in their documentation; it puts out 149kW
KD - which I think is about the right sequence for what the next Toyota model is
1 - is for the 1st Generation.
0 - is for the only variant of this generation.

Putting it all together we'd get DKD10, which if it was actually carring on the "spirit of the AE86 Corolla" by taking an existing one, should read DE155.

Really if the car was going to be a sporty variant of the Corolla, then nearest thing which actually does carry on "spirit of the AE86 Corolla" would have been the Corolla Axio as used in Japan's Super GT series:

Perhaps they meant it slightly differently. The Corolla was a car for the masses, and a reasonably small one meant for spritely city driving. Surely a 1.6L variant of an existing 1.5L car would have been in order; perhaps making a coupe from an existing sedan.

A donor car to fit that purpose would have been the Third Generation Toyota Yaris. Taking the existing chassis code as a guide from that car would have produced a code of ZP133 with the engine presumably being the 1.6L "Valvematic" in-line four in the European and Japanese Domestic Market Corolla/Auris. Curiously in 20 years, the engine puts out just 1kW more than the 4A engine from the original AE86 but does so sipping just 7.3L/100km rather than 10.8L/100km.

If the car is pitched in the low $30K range as is being suggested, then the car's logical competitor is the Subaru Impreza which also reveals its new Fourth Generation next year and with the same engine.

Given that Subaru's BRZ is pretty well much exactly the same car but with a different badge on it and has already been revealed by Autoweek, I don't know why people would by the Toyota 86. If all it comes down to is the badge on the front, then I'd prefer the Subaru. Subaru has more street cred which has been built through rallying and the 86 doesn't really carry on the "spirit of the AE86 Corolla" at all.

Maybe it should have really been called Toyotabaru?

Horse 1253 - We Are (not) Ninja

2011-11-29T11:12:00.003+11:00

Not Ninjas.

The cultural phenomenon that we recognise as the Ninja, is almost totally a fib; perpetuated by the same cultural forces which set it in the public conscience in the first place.

Historically there are very few instances of accounts of ninjas. Mostly they were recruited from the peasantry in Japanese society and were not particularly notable at all.
There appears to be a blurring somewhat between what we understand samurai to be and that of the ninja. Samurai lived by the code of "bushido" which means the "Way of the Warrior" and was marked by a very distinct degree of chivalry, nobility and honour until death. Whereas ninjas never followed such a code and the art of "shinobi" was one of covert operations and secrecy. The word shinobi means "to steal away" and reflects the "invisibleness" of the ninja.

The truth is that most ninjas would have worn hard wearing navy blue overcloaks and hoods and the reason why we portray them as wearing black in the West, comes from the tradition in Kabuki and Noh Theatre that people wearing black are invisible.
For the most part Ninjas themselves usually didn't go around killing people, that was the job of hired samurai. Ninjas were more likely to dress like farmers, priests or shopkeepers and usually went around in disguise in plain sight.
A ninja disguised as a farmer would be more likely to carry an axe or a sickle than to wield a katana (swords used by samurai).

Ninjas were probably more likely trained in the art of distraction, such as clanging pots to divert attention, so that a samurai could kill someone, than they were to actually do any killing themselves.

More Likely to be a Ninja

The truth is that our perceptions have probably been shaped more by theatre and television shows like Phantom Agents and The Samurai Shintaro* than historical fact.

*Shintaro did claim to be a Samurai though

Horse 1252 - Pegasus Clipped

2011-11-25T17:32:00.001+11:00

Quite recently the Mobil petrol stations around where I live have started disappearing and have been replaced with 7-Elevens. This of itself doesn't really mean a whole lot other than to say that the visual furniture of our cities has changed a little. Gone are the blue and red signs and gone are the winged horses that once pranced across the horizon.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/opinion/eleven-nears-acquisition-of-mobil-service-stations/story-e6frg9io-1225868671876
7-Eleven Australia is close to acquiring the bulk of the Mobil service stations that were originally planned for sale to Caltex.
The deal, first flagged in The Australian earlier this month, will be for less than the $302 million price tag on the 301 service stations that Caltex had agreed to buy before it was blocked by the ACCC.

7-Eleven Australia acquired 295 Mobil service stations in NSW, Qld, SA and Vic, whilst Peregrine Corporation bought 29 of them in SA.

Yes this is a business decision and the stuff that they sell you is bound to be identical, so it's not like you can develop much brand loyalty but I can't help but feel a little sadness in the same way I did when the Golden Fleece petrol stations disappeared.
Very occasionally you still see the odd sign here and there:

Unlike Ampol, Golden Fleece and Redex though, Mobil will continue to exist overseas; in much the same way as Texaco, Eneos, Elf or Total do. It's just that we won't see the red pegasuses (?) pegasii (?) in our cars anymore.

Horse 1251 - Harry Jenkins: EX Speaker of the House

2011-11-24T10:59:00.001+11:00

Harry Jenkins, Federal Member for Scullin formally resigned this morning as the Speaker of the House of Representatives.

The actual resignation letter is provided courtesy of the ABC:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-11-24/harry-jenkins-resigning/3690850
"As members are aware in this the 43rd Parliament, to further avoid controversial party political matters I have divorced myself from involvement with the Federal Parliamentary Labor Party. In this era of minority government I have progressively become frustrated at this stricture. My desire is to be able to participate in policy and parliamentary debate,and this would be incompatible with continuing in the role of Speaker."
- Harry Jenkins MP, 24th Nov 2011

The obvious question arising from this is "why?", and I think that the answer has to do with the knife-edge position in which the House finds itself.

Currently Labor holds government but only with the support of crossbenchers. The 76–74 margin is really only certain on matter of confidence and supply. For Harry Jenkins to sit as speaker reduces that margin to just 75-74, which means that legislation can swing on the votes of a single member who decides to cross the floor.

Jenkins quite clearly states that he is frustrated at the stricture of being in a non-partisan position and that he wants to participate in policy and parliamentary debate. That is a perfectly sensible notion and one which is also more true to the wishes of his electorate which he was chosen to represent. I for one do not see how this is particularly easy to do from the Speaker's chair.

I suspect that Jenkins probably wants to move back to the floor so that he might get nominated for a Cabinet position. He is currently the longest-serving Labor member of the House of Representatives and would be the Father of the House if not for Philip Ruddock. Perhaps in an uncertain parliement, he would add stability and experience to the Cabinet, which given the Gillard Government's somewhat shaky position both in the House and in opinion polls is sorely needed.

The thing is though, I'm not sure which Cabinet position he'd take up. The Cabinet seems to be pretty well sorted so perhaps maybe there's a seismic shift yet to occur which we don't yet know about and why the Speaker did; hence the resignation.

Horse 1250 - Best Delivery Ever

2011-11-23T15:55:00.000+11:00

This is a gratuitous advert for the folks at EMPR Australia Pty Ltd http://www.emprgroup.com/au/ who are the people we order our toner cartridges for the Laser Printer.

On the online order form for the last set of four cartridges I ordered, I included the the delivery instruction:

*** DRAW A DRAGON HOLDING A PINEAPPLE ON THE DELIVERY BOX ***

This is what I got back:

Full respect to the people at EMPR. This is one of the most magnificent things I have seen in office stationery... ever.

Fun Game

2011-11-21T12:30:00.000+11:00

I have been playing this game all morning whilst being on hold with the Tax Office.

Simply type any word into the search engine of Wikipedia and see what sort of funny results can be had by juxtaposing Jimmy Wales' face with what you've just searched for:

Horse 1249 - Why Magazines Aren't Coffee

2011-11-16T11:28:00.000+11:00

This is a word-for-word copy of an advert from Magazine Publishers Australia* which ran in the November 2011 edition of Top Gear Australia Magazine:

Will the Internet kill magazines?
Did instant coffee kill coffee?
New technologies change many things. But not everything. You may surf, search, shop and blog online, but you still read magazines. And you're far from alone.

Readership has actually increased year on year over the past four readership releases and Australia has one of the highest consumption levels of magazines per capita in the world.
Rather than being displaced by "instant" media, it would seem that magazines are the ideal complement.
The explanation, while sometimes drowned out by the Internet drumbeat, is fairly obvious. Magazines do what the Internet doesn't. Neither obsessed with immediacy nor trapped by the daily news cycle, magazines promote deeper connections. They create relationships. They engage us in ways distinct from digital media.
In fact, the immersive power of magazines even extends to the advertising. And that's essential in every product category.
Including coffee.

They then go on to cite their source as Roy Morgan Readership surveys.

However a report in the Sydney Morning Herald from last week seems to tell a slightly different story:

http://www.smh.com.au/business/the-age-leads-way-with-circulation-rise-20111110-1n9gy.html
The figures underscore a difficult national environment as printed newspapers and magazines continue to struggle on both the standard measures - circulation of copies sold and surveys of people who read them - as the industry waits for a combined readership measure for both print and digital editions.

Before I present my opinions, I'm going to present my inherent bias about trusting the source of the information. Firstly the advert in Top Gear magazine is presented in a magazine with the express purpose of selling advertising space in magazines. It makes sense for ACP Magazines to publish such an advert in their magazine because they have a vested interest in it, not that there's anything wrong with that; in fact it's good business sense.
The Sydney Morning Herald (and the Age) on the other hand, more closely approaches the idea of a Newspaper of Record. That is, one which is typically authoritative and neutral (despite the SMH being a broadly centre-right newspaper).
When I view an advert like this, I instantly question what the intent is and its purpose. Despite all of this however, I still think that this advert draws the wrong conclusion.

It asks two leading questions namely: Will the Internet kill magazines? and Did instant coffee kill coffee? It then presumes that because of the answer of the second question, that their conclusion which follows in the rest of the ad must be true. I don't think that this is the case though.

Are magazines and coffee remotely comparable?
Coffee is a physical product, which requires physical storage and distribution chains. Magazines on the other hand although they are in their current format a physical product which requires physical storage, could be delivered digitally quite easily.
We saw it with recorded music. As little as four years ago there were still quite a lot of record stores and even HMV and Sanity had big multi-story flagship stores on either side of the Pitt Street mall. Recorded Music didn't die but whole outlet and distribution chains have disappeared and even smaller record stores which used to exist in the suburbs also closed their doors.
To compare magazines and coffee as the advert does, assumes that magazines and coffee are like products. However, I would think it incredibly difficult to download coffee over the internet. Whereas e-books, digital newspapers and digital magazines can very easily be delivered and downloaded.

The second line of attack that the advert tries is that Magazines "create relationships" and "engage us in ways distinct from digital media". The same could be said for books but there are no end of digital reading devices such as Amazon's Kindle, the Sony Reader, Kobo and even the iPad will easily do the job.
Even for books, the network of stores and distribution chains is on the wane. Borders, Angus & Robertson, Collins Bookseller and A&R Whitcoulls in NZ have all gone into administration over the past few years.

The big problem that magazines have which the internet poses isn't to do with the format of the product, but rather the information which they present. Newspapers found themselves under attack when the internet could deliver news even more quickly than television and radio could in some circumstances. Magazines are almost always specialist publications (and yes that does include gossipy magazines) and the truth is that the internet can pretty well much deliver the information that magazines present faster than they can.
A magazine requires physical printing and distribution, and even I've proven in this very blog that I can deliver information on certain subjects faster than magazines can. For instance, I'd already reported second-hand information about the Holden Malibu several months before it appeared in either Wheels or Motor magazine.
I'll readily admit that The Motor Report Jalopnik and Autoblog are faster than magazines at reporting spy shots, and press releases than any print magazine can, which usually only come out once a month.
That's not to say that there isn't a place for magazines. Actual test reporting and data can only be collected in the real world and there's always a place for good journalism.

Maybe the major reason why the internet is killing off print sales actually has to do with the general public.
In Victorian England people could read a 700 page novel; by the late Victorian period, people were reading serials and short stories in magazines; by the late 1980s journalism was measured in column inches; now with the rise of MyFace TwitBook and BeboSpace people are reading things no longer than a couple of paragraphs. By mid-2007 the idea of blog writing was obsolete and long-form journalism generally is seen as old-fashioned.
I suspect that one reason why magazines in particular and print media generally is that people's functional literacy is on the slide.

Personally I do like to be able to sit down with a book or a magazine but I suspect I'm in a nerdy minority. From what I've seen, most people on the train prefer to look at movies of cats on their iDevices and eMachines than read anything.

Will the Internet kill magazines? Yes, but far more worrying is that the Internet will and has killed reading.

* I think I read a similar ad ("Will the Internet kill magazines? Did instant coffee kill coffee?") in the New Yorker in April 2010. I did the research and found that Condé Nast Publications ran this campaign in America starting 1 Mar 2010. It's a little disheartening to see that Australia can't even produce its own advert campaign.

Horse 1248 - Someone Left The Cake Out In The Rain

2011-11-14T11:51:00.004+11:00

Last week I had my 33rd birthday (and no this is not some rant about how old I'm feeling) and so naturally it was an excuse to get some Cake.

We'd gone to IGA and found what appeared to be a nice Orange and Poppyseed Cake and the expiry date was the 18th of November; so following all of the instructions, we put the cake into the fridge and were expecting nice cake to eat on my birthday. I make note of the word "expecting" because when my birthday did come around, we took the cake out of the fridge and found that it had gone mouldy.
Gasp, shock, horror! (sounds of glass breaking).
What do you do with Cake once it has gone mouldy? It isn't fit to eat any more and being an Orange and Poppyseed Cake, the cats don't recognise it as food even though they will eat things like broccoli and peas (cats hate citrus).
So with nothing else doing, we decided to leave the cake out in the garden so that the Rainbow Lorikeets and Crested Pigeons could come and enjoy it. Then on Saturday night... it rained.

Why do I even bother to make mention of this story for? Because of this:

MacArthur's Park is melting in the dark,
All the sweet green icing flowing down.
Someone left the cake out in the rain.
I don't think that I can take it,
'Cause it took so long to bake it,
And I'll never have that recipe again
Oh, nooo!

This song "MacArthur Park" has plagued me for years; leaving me with questions like:
What the heck? Who in their right mind leaves cake out in the rain in the first place?

The point is that I finally do have a plausible reason why a sane person would in fact leave cake out in the rain. Not only is it plausible but it's probably quite sensible.
In my case I "left the cake out in the rain" because of thrift. I'd already paid for the cake and it would have otherwise been wasted. Maybe Jimmy Webb who wrote the song had some cake that had gone mouldy, or maybe he'd burnt it like King Alfred the Great (that's the only thing I know about him) and didn't want to waste it.

It still doesn't explain why you need to write such a dramatic song about it though; not does it explain why he'll "never have that recipe again". Surely he'd have it in a recipe book or written down or something.

Horse 1247 - Euthanasia Debate III

2011-11-10T14:13:00.000+11:00

Whilst watching the episode of QI Series I "Illness", I learnt something which I didn't know before and I think is quite scary. Not satisfied with accepting what was said as fact, I did a little investigating.

King George V was quite ill in January of 1936. It was reported by the then Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, that before the King's death:
"each time he [the King] became conscious it was some kind inquiry or kind observation of someone, some words of gratitude for kindness shown. But he did say to his secretary when he sent for him: "How is the Empire?" An unusual phrase in that form, and the secretary said: "All is well, sir, with the Empire", and the King gave him a smile and relapsed once more into unconsciousness"
- The Times, 22 January 1936 (The Times reported on this after the King had died).

The British Medical Journal reports that Lord Dawson of Penn who was King George V's doctor, at 9:25pm on 20th January:
http://www.bmj.com/content/308/6941/1445.1.full
"At about 11 o'clock it was evident that the last stage might endure for many hours, unknown to the patient but little comporting with the dignity and serenity which he so richly merited and which demanded a brief final scene. Hours of waiting just for the mechanical end when all that is really life has departed only exhausts the onlookers and keeps them so strained that they cannot avail themselves of the solace of thought, communion or prayer. I therefore decided to determine the end and injected (myself) morphia gr.3/4 and shortly afterwards cocaine gr. 1 into the distended jugular vein."

It has also been reported that King George V's last words to Dawson were "God Damn You!" which would indicate to me that under no circumstances was Dawson's injection of morphine and cocaine requested by the King.
Everything I've ever read about George V seems to indicate that he was a rather stern, severe and direct sort of character, having served in the Royal Navy and also having steered the country through various political crises and the storm of World War I. I can assume that George didn't intend to blaspheme but meant exactly what he said with all of the venom that someone being killed against their will can muster (because euthanasia is basically a euphemism).
The polite term for this I suppose is involuntary euthanasia but the correct and proper term would be murder.

The question I have is pretty simple. Given that human nature is such that literally everything can and will be misused and abused by someone at some point, what possible justification is there for giving doctors the power to perform euthanasia, even on a so-called voluntary basis?

There are now 7 billion of us on this planet and over time this figure is expected to reach 8, 9, 10... an increased population is going place ever harder strains on medical systems and services, what is going to stop some unscrupulous doctor from going back and fudging the records if it's economically better that someone be euthanised than to keep them alive?

The legal profession is keen to point out the maxim that: "It's better that 10 guilty men go free than one innocent man be wrongly convicted". However if the legal power was given to doctors to euthanise people then they can very easily play judge, jury and executioner all at once and since its easier to bring back paperwork from the dead than people, would you really entrust them with that power?
From an ethical point of view is it not better that doctors uphold the requirements of the Hippocratic Oath to preserve life than to presume that by ending it deliberately that the patient's needs are best met? Once that decision is made to deliberately end someone's life, it is very very difficult to reverse it.

Of course there are people who might suggest that I'm grossly exaggerating the situation but if not even the King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions, and Emperor of India was exempt from being euthanised involuntarily, then what makes anyone think that anyone else lower in status would be?

I of course don't mean to diminish the highly important, difficult, skillful and stressful role that Doctors play in society but they have entered into a profession which holds a lot of responsibility which given the opportunity can and would be misused by a rogue few. If the Hippocratic Oath itself says "Above all, I must not play at God." then I don't think it wise to give them the legal power to do so under any circumstance.

It simply isn't acceptable.

Horse 1246 - I Can Has a New A9X?

2011-11-09T10:04:00.001+11:00

I've been watching a documentary called "Brock 78 - 30 Years: Brock Revisited" and have been yet again impressed by the brilliance that was Peter Brock, the effort put in by the Holden Dealer Team to bounce back after Ford's 1-2 the year before and the sheer "coolness" that is the Torana A9X. I thought to myself "why can't they build cars like that anymore?" and then thought "maybe they can".

The formula which produced the A9X is dead simple. Take a roughly 2L sized car, throw away the four-pot motor and then try to shoehorn the biggest possible engine into the space provided; for the Torana it meant Holden's 5L V8, but what would be a modern equivalent?

The Holden Cruze hatchback went on sale yesterday. It sports a 1.8L in-line 4 cylinder engine and is built at Holden's plant in Elizabeth, South Australia. It's roughly the same size as the Torana was and I think would fit this end quite nicely.

The perfect donor engine would come from a show car built by Holden in 2004, the Torana TT36. Under the bonnet of this car was a twin-turbo 3.6L V6. The Torana TT36 was built mainly as a test platform for the then unbuilt VE Commodore which went on sale in 2006.

The Astra Coupe showed that you can take 2L hatchback and turn into a successful coupe. The original Torana also showed that provided the finished product is put together well, it can be the stuff of legend.
Now then, if we take a Cruze, turn it into a coupe, whack a twin-turbo 3.6L V6 in it and then maybe add a duck-tail, flared arches and bonnet scoops, I think you'd have the modern equivalent of an A9X. If a race version was then entered in the Bathurst 12 Hour (because the 1000km is a closed-shop race now), then I think you'd have a pretty good chance at building a new legend.

Horse 1245 - Hiding Behind the Paywall

2011-11-08T10:42:00.000+11:00

If you visit a News Limited website both in Australia and overseas, increasingly you'll find that news articles are being hidden behind a "paywall". The reason that they give is that quite understandably they want to derive revenue from content which they have originated and this is a perfectly valid reason. To be fair, the generation of news content is an expensive process and the intellectual property which it generates is valuable.
I wonder what the flip-side to this is though and whether or not this is going to result in either what George Orwell called a "memory hole" in which embarrassing or inconvenient documents "disappear", or something equally as serious, an inability to hold news media to account.

Consider the editorial which the Daily Telegraph ran on the 1st of November, 2011, to do with the NSW Government's sell-off of electricity assets:

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/opinion/do-nothing-and-it-will-all-go-astray/story-e6frezz0-1226181893930

SELL! That's the recommendation from the state government's special commission of inquiry into privatisation of remaining publicly-owned NSW electricity generators.
It stopped short of recommending the sale of all electricity infrastructure, including poles and wires, but on this issue a commission of inquiry is almost surplus to requirements.
In truth, we have several decades of evidence from Australia and around the world that government does not belong in the business of electricity supply or, more generally, in business at all.
Governments by their nature are neither flexible enough nor responsive enough to consumer demands to run what should be private business pursuits, kept lean and economical by market imperatives and profit motives.
Defenders of government ownership are overwhelmingly those with vested ideological or party political interests.
To say this is an outdated stance is to understate things by an order of magnitude. The overwhelming sweeping philosophy across western economies since the 1970s has been to place as much of the market as can be placed in the market's own hands.
Following these guidelines and the strong counsel of Infrastructure NSW chair Nick Greiner, The Daily Telegraph encourages Premier Barry O'Farrell to engage in a complete sell-off of government-owned power infrastructure.
Then the government can get on with the pursuit of state improvement, funded by power sales and unencumbered by running enterprises best left to private investment.

The Daily Telegraph is of course entitled to its opinion I suppose but if you look back through their online archives, it appears as though the newspaper has changed its mind:

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/indepth/keneally-power-sell-off-delivers-dud-deal/story-fn4x9za1-1225989819862
Stunning attack on power sale by state's top treasury official - The Daily Telegraph January 18, 2011
IN a stunning appearance at the power inquiry the state's top treasury official has today attacked the government's sale and revealed tax payers will be liable for billions of dollars in costs, leaving a meagre profit.
Treasury secretary Michael Schur has revealed tax payers will be liable for a $1.2 billion debt to bail out two energy companies, Eraring and Delta, which were sold by Treasurer Eric Roozendaal.
Mr Schur told the inquiry that $600 million will be lost in dividend and tax equivalent payments from the state's coffers in just the next four years.
In addition, Mr Roozendaal had used $1.5 billion in tax payer money to buy a mine to supply coal to the now privately owned gentraders.
Mr Schur's revelations, including another $300 million lost in costs, mean only $1.7 billion is left from the $5.3 billion sale of the state's electricity retailers and gentraders

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/sydney-nsw/scrap-the-power-deals/story-fn7q4q9f-1226010333419
Scrap the power deals - The Daily Telegraph February 23, 2011
THE Government's electricity sale contracts should be "rescinded" despite Premier Kristina Keneally warning such a move would cost "hundreds of millions" in compensation, the parliamentary power inquiry will find today.
The findings are contained in a draft report of the inquiry into the Government's controversial power sell-off leaked to The Daily Telegraph.
The final report will be released at noon today.
The recommendations will put pressure on Barry O'Farrell to overturn the sale if elected on March 26.

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/billions-lost-power-deal-was-a-sell-out/story-e6freuy9-1225989817664
Billions lost - Power deal was a sell-out - The Daily Telegraph January 18, 2011
BILLIONS will be stripped from the $5.3 billion electricity sale, possibly leaving either sides of politics just $2-3 billion for infrastructure spending promises ahead of the March election, the power inquiry has revealed.
And Premier Kristina Keneally laid down the law yesterday, refusing to give eight former power company directors who resigned in disgust at the sell-off a guarantee the Government would not sue them if they appeared.
The eight will be summoned to appear next Monday. But it is expected, in the face of the Government's threats, they will elect not to.
In 1997, then-premier Bob Carr promised an entire sell-off of the electricity industry to reap $25 billion before he was rolled at state conference.
His successor Morris Iemma proposed a $10-15 billion sale - minus electricity poles and wires - in 2008 before he met the same fate.
Now the Keneally-Roozendaal "gen-trader" model in which retailers and generation trading rights have been sold might yield just $2-3 billion.

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/sell-off-bad-for-business/story-fn6bmfwf-1225992919366
- Sell-off bad for business
- The Sunday Telegraph January 23, 2011
Why did the NSW Government sell the State's assets in a deal that has angered taxpayers and crippled Labor just months before an election? Political writer Linda Silmalis reports.
ERIC Roozendaal had a spring in his step. After more than two years as NSW Treasurer, the quietly spoken but intensely driven former Labor Party boss was about to pull off what none of his predecessors could manage -- the privatisation of the State's electricity industry.

Admittedly the newspaper is allowed to change its mind but given that News Limited controls more than 70 per cent of Australia's newspaper readership market, it's not a difficult step to suggest that they also help shape the opinions of a great number of voters. One wonders if by writing articles like the above, whether or not the Daily Telegraph actually had a sizeable sway in the outcome of the 2011 New South Wales state election.
If all of the above articles get placed behind a paywall, it makes it harder to hold the newspaper to account on the opinions that it has published.

One thing that especially annoys me is to do with citing an article which I have read in a newspaper. If I've bought a copy of the Australian (we have it on subscription at work) and I wish to quote something from the newspaper, then it used to be that I could post the link so that people could then click through to check the validity of the thing I've quoted. Now that the Australian sits behind a paywall, not only do I have the inconvenience of having to re-type everything I want to quote but anyone who reads it also can not click through and check its validity.

People can no longer hold me to account for what I've written and in turn I can no longer hold the newspaper to account for what they've written.
If it is true that a fair, free and open press is essential in the proper functioning of a democracy, then I think that it is also true that criticism of the press is also essential in protecting that democracy.

Before I close, here is a fun educational film from 1946. I think that the points it makes are still valid... and not hidden behind a paywall:
http://www.archive.org/details/Despotis1946

Horse 1244 - Taken For a Ride

2011-11-07T13:54:00.000+11:00

http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/all-aboard-for-the-future-singledeck-rail-network-rapidly-gathers-a-head-of-steam-20111106-1n21r.html
A RADICAL plan to convert large parts of the CityRail network to single-deck high frequency trains is closer to winning state government acceptance.
Detailed reports show senior bureaucrats have been told a multibillion-dollar overhaul of the system would be the cheapest and most efficient way to add capacity to CityRail during the next 25 years.

I'm sure that whilst the Sydney Morning Herald likes to report this sort of thing with colourful graphics and that government agencies like to appear to be doing something, the truth is that when it comes to building actual infrastructure which is costly, the NSW Government has a poor track record.

Maybe it's escaped planners that the reason why Sydney has double-deck suburban rolling stock at all was because in about 1960 a survey was done and it was decided that the easiest way to increase capacity wasn't to add more services, but to make better use of the services which already ran. The first of the Tulloch double deck trailers was introduced in 1964 with full power cars coming four years later.

When you consider that Tangaras were delivered four years late, that the Millennium Trains two years late and that the T-Card system which was supposed to be in place before the 2000 Olympics still hasn't been delivered, you can understand my skepticism that no NSW Government of any political colour has the competence to deliver... anything really.

Given that rolling stock is always likely to be late and that actual railway lines are even less likely to be built*, there is one possible statement in this article which is likely to be accurate:

One estimate shows costs of between $26 billion and $37 billion for adding capacity during the next 25 years. Without extra capacity through the CBD, trains will soon be so crowded in peak hours that services will need to be cut.

This is new. I don't think that I've ever seen a proposal to actively cut services before. Trains will be crowed, let's solve the problem by cutting services so that commuters will be jammed into even fewer trains. That makes complete sense doesn't it?

Sadly I think that that is what will happen though. Perhaps waved away under the premise that rolling stock will be replaced, I'm convinced that this is a ploy to reduce patronage of CityRail trains. By making Sydney's trains more uncomfortable and harder to use, the government can then spend less on them and ultimately divest themselves of the responsibilty, just like they did with the TAB, State Bank, GIO, the State Government Printing Office , the Homebush abattoir and the State brickworks, FreightCorp etc etc etc.

Somehow I think that the "decent and respectable people of New South Wales" will be taken for a ride yet again.

*There is the small issue I have with announcements of railways lines. It's shocking to think that none of the following rail lines ever came to fruition:

2009 West Metro - Westmead to Central via Silverwater, Strathfield and Five Dock
2008 North West Metro - Rouse Hill to the CBD via Epping
2008 CBD Metro - Rozelle, Pyrmont, Barangaroo, Town Hall, Central
2005 Redfern to Chatswood - Chatswood, Victoria Cross, Pitt St, Central, Redfern
2005 CBD Relief Line - Wynyard, "City West", Railway Sq, Redfern
2004 Western FastRail - Penrith to Wynyard via Blacktown, Parramatta and Olympic Park
1998 North West Rail Link - Rouse Hill to the CBD via Epping
1996 Bondi Beach - Extension of the Eastern Suburbs Railway Line to Bondi Beach
1974 Merrylands to Green Valley - via Wetherill Park, Edensor Park, Bonnyrigg and Green Valley
1974 Hills District Line - Parramatta to Windsor via the Hills District
1974 Northern Beaches Line - Crows Nest, Cremorne, Mosman, Balgowlah etc.
1967 Eastern Suburbs Railway Line - to Kingsford via Bondi Junction, Randwick and UNSW
1932 Northern Beaches Line - Crows Nest, Cremorne, Mosman, Balgowlah, Manly and Mona Vale
1932 Eastern Suburbs Railway Line - Via St James station, incl. Woolahra and Oxford St.
1932 Rogans Hill Line - Rogans Hill to Westmead via Baulham Hills and Northmead

Horse 1243 - Holden - As Australian as Baseball, Hot Dogs, Apple Pie and Chevrolet

2011-11-03T11:08:00.003+11:00

http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-national/holden-still-to-decide-on-commodore-future-20111103-1mwbl.html

"Senior management have confirmed it is highly likely that the 2014 Commodore will be the last one engineered in Australia,"
- Chris Walton to 702 ABC Sydney, The Association of Professional Engineers, Scientists and Managers - 3rd Nov 2011

"All I can tell you is that Holden is, for example the Commodore, 100 per cent designed, engineered, manufactured in Australia today, and the next Commodore, 100 per cent designed, engineered, manufactured in Australia, for many, many, many, many more years,"
- Mike Devereux to 774 ABC Melbourne, CEO of General Motors Holden - 3rd Nov 2011

The old adage that "there is no smoke without a fire" I think is particularly useful in this instance. Quite obviously Holden CEO Mike Devereux has the company's reputation and image to uphold and acts with the interests of the company in mind, but Chris Walton's comments are either sparked by a leak from management or perhaps at very worst spite.
The point is that if the Commodore was to be either engineered or built entirely overseas, then I'm hardly suprised by the news, as back in Horse 1217 in August, I already hinted at what the replacement for the Commodore will be.

The truth is that whilst Holden tries to palm itself off as "Australia's" own car company, its track record since 1947 has proven otherwise.

The original 48/215 (FX) was planned in 1938 to be a Chevrolet but scrapped on the basis that it was too small for the American market. Laurence Hartnett then then CEO of Holden pleaded with GM in Detroit for a locally designed car but was overridden and the prototypes were built in 1946 in Detroit.
The Torana was a facelifted Vauxhall Viva, the iconic Kingswood was a continuation of a series of cars which had been engineered in the US, the VB Commodore was basically the Opel Rekord/Senator but with the 3.3L in-line six cylinder engine carried over from the Kingswood and Torana, the VN Commodore was the Opel Omega A married to a 3.8L Buick V6 made in Bonneville and the VT was the Opel Omega B with the same 3.8L V6.
It wasn't until the VE Commodore introduced in 2006 that Holden was forced to develop an entirely new car, because there was simply no big rear wheel drive donor car to modify.

Given the history of Holden, Detroit probably sees Holden as a bit of an antiquated relic, a leftover of past lore. Truth be told that Holden itself has never built any more than 3 lines of passenger cars in Australia simlutaneously and given that the Commodore reached peak sales more than 10 years ago, it will be business decisions which finally kill the car off. Holden already realise that Australians are buying smaller cars and have started producing the Cruze in Australia. That more or less proves that even they're moving with the times.
As it is, the V8 Supercars have already future proofed the motor racing series in he expectation that neither the Falcon or the Commodore will exist beyond about 2015.

Just to undercut Mike Devereux's claims, photographs of the Malibu undergoing testing have already been taken in Victoria. No doubt that the Malibu has/was/is seeing intensive testing at Holden's proving grounds at Lang Lang in Victoria. Given that we already know that the Malibu will take the 3.6L engine already in the Commodore and already does take the 2.5L engine found in the unloved Epica, Holden would kill two birds with one stone.

From:
http://www.themotorreport.com.au/51929/2013-holden-malibu-testing-in-australia

If Holden was to kill off the Commodore and replace it with a 2-and-a-bit litre Chevrolet, then it's almost like going full circle. Laurence Hartnett had to plead with Chevrolet to even get an Australian produced GM car but that was more than 60 years ago. GM Holden is after all a business and exists to make a profit. If that means selling overseas engineered and built cars like they do with the rest of their line up then so be it.

Holden's most famous jingle was imported from the United States, so it's not like even that was engineered in Australia either.

Addenda:
Holden have released an official statement about model development in Australia:
http://media.gm.com/content/media/au/en/holden/news.detail.html/content/Pages/news/au/en/2011/Nov/1103_Holdenstatement
The issues being raised in the media relate to confidential discussions with the engineering union, APESMA, as part of the enterprise bargaining agreement (EBA) negotiations which are currently under way.

Of course Holden wouldn't discuss private negotiations between the firm and its employees. It still doesn't change the fact that they currently import most cars from overseas and employ far cheaper labour rates than in Australia.
The Spark, Barina, Cruze and Epica are all Daewoos which come from Korea and the Colorado is an Isuzu which comes from Thailand.

However, Holden does not comment on its EBA negotiations in the media, nor do we speculate about very long-term future models and we certainly don't intend to give our global competitors a free kick.

This is a bit of stupidity on the part of Holden considering that every single car in the company's history bar the VE was based on existing developments. Any sensible onlooker doesn't even need to look at Holden's press releases to work out what possible cars come to Australia. All one needs to do is look at the noises and press releases coming from Detroit and various motor shows and prototypes which come out to give you a fairly accurate picture.

Basically Holden have come out with an official press release because they're more or less required to do so. The truth is that the whole Australian operation could be shut down tomorrow provided someone was to do a Discounted Cash Flow analysis and Projected Budgets and they found an unfavourable result. It's a private company and as such, they'll open or close plants according to how it affects the bottom line. That's the reason why there's no assembly plant in Pagewood any more.

Horse 1242 - Telling the Government What It Should Do

2011-11-01T15:47:00.000+11:00

The editorial in today's Daily Telegraph makes you wonder whether or not there are any copywriters working for them. One one page, they contradict themselves. After spending yesterday's editorial with the headline "Pathetic Excuses for Lack of Action" suggesting that the Government should have done something, in today's editorial it then suggests that it should do nothing... though not in as many words.

From yesterday's Daily Telegraph (31-10-2011):
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/opinion/pathetic-excuses-for-lack-of-action/story-e6frezz0-1226180901622
The government had an obvious opportunity to powerfully address the crisis.

It could have invoked Section 431 of the Fair Work Act, forcing an end to industrial action. Instead, the government eventually took the softer option allowed under Fair Work provisions, which is why the various parties involved are now arguing in Melbourne while jets remain immobile.

Let's be specific about both the Daily Telegraph's article and the wording of Section 431 of the Fair Work Act. Section 431 states that:
http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/num_act/fwa2009114/s431.html
"The Minister may make a declaration, in writing, terminating protected industrial action..."

Take notes of the words "could have" and "may". That means that the Minister isn't forced to do anything; it isn't necessarily incumbent or obligatory that the Minister actually do anything at all.

If we then look at today's editorial (01-11-11), we find two distinct parts:

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/opinion/do-nothing-and-it-will-all-go-astray/story-e6frezz0-1226181893930

This is to do with Qantas:
All Australians are left wondering, then, why an intervention wasn't made earlier. Meanwhile, Qantas shares are up and Joyce has won an important battle.

This is to do with the sale of the remaining publicly-owned NSW electricity generation companies:

In truth, we have several decades of evidence from Australia and around the world that government does not belong in the business of electricity supply or, more generally, in business at all.
Governments by their nature are neither flexible enough nor responsive enough to consumer demands to run what should be private business pursuits, kept lean and economical by market imperatives and profit motives.
Defenders of government ownership are overwhelmingly those with vested ideological or party political interests.

Considering that Alan Joyce is the CEO of Qantas and is paid $5 million to act as the responsible officer, shouldn't the anger by the Daily Telegraph be directed at him, or do they now suggest that he isn't responsible? If "running enterprises is best left to private investment" then do they now suggest that this wasn't the result of private investment running the enterprise?
Maybe the Daily Telegraph has forgotten that Qantas which used to be a Government-owned airline, was floated in 1993 and finally completely privatised in 1995. Doesn't that suggest that the then Keating Government acted in accordance with what the Daily Telegraph wants?
Basically you can't cry that government generally should play a minimal role in the economy and then cry foul when it does precisely that. Honestly, if the Daily Telegraph or News Ltd thinks it could do a better job, then why has it never decided to run for office?

If government does not "belong in business at all" according to the Daily Telegraph, then why do they then think that the Federal Government should have intevened in what is a dispute in a private corporation? If Qantas in fact a "private business pursuit" then why pray tell, should the Minister have invoked his Section 431 powers if it's not obligatory to do so?

There is the rather annoying facet to all of this, that if this dispute had taken place prior to 1993, then the CEO would not have been in a position to order a shutdown of the airline at all.
Secondly, if the demand for profit motive and market imperatives is so strong, then shouldn't a barely profitable international air-carrier like Qantas, simply just cut all of its overseas operations tommorrow? This air of mystique about it being a so-called "national carrier" is nonsense. Alan Joyce as the responsible officer took a responsible decision in line with that demand for profit motive. If almost 70,000 people happened to get stranded because of that decision, then they should complain to Qantas and the Unions which caused the mess, not the government. Alan Joyce made the decision, blame him.

I suppose that the Daily Telegraph is entitled to its opinions however self-contradicting they appear to be but I'd like to point out the utter cowardice of hiding behind an editorial without signing a name to it. Unlike myself who doesn't hide behind the cloak of a masthead (and am fairly transparent in my identity), the Daily Telegraph doesn't attribute its articles to any particular writer. I assume therefore that just like Alan Joyce is the CEO if Qantas, that the responsible officer at the Daily Telegraph must be the Chief Editor, Paul Whittaker. Perhaps he'd like to explain the apparant cowardice of the newspaper. Or maybe he thinks that that should be the reponsibility of Stephen Conroy.

Certainly the Opinion Page Editor for The Australian, Rebecca Weisser, the Daily Telegraph's stablemate seems to disagree with the point of view taken by the Daily Telegraph:

http://www.abc.net.au/tv/qanda/txt/s3346934.htm
Alan Joyce had a choice. He either had to face death by a thousand cuts with low-level strikes, threats of strikes, threats of go-slow, leaking to the media, all sorts of things we’ve seen over the past few weeks and months have been very damaging to Qantas and he could either put up with this and for it to go on and on or he could bring it to a head.
...
People who work in the private sector and people who do the sorts of jobs that Alan Joyce is doing, I think it’s an extremely tough job and I think he would have earned every cent of his pay managing this deal.

Basically she's agreed with my conceit that Alan Joyce as the responsible officer, made a decision in that position; in fact she's even suggested that he has earnt the right to be paid as much as is because of it. I also note that in today's Australian the Political Editor, Denis Shanahan seems to tow the line drawn by the Daily Telegraph. Either this is collective hypocrisy on the part of News Ltd generally or willful ignorance on the part of the Editorial team at the Australian (seemingly forgetting what their Opinion Page Editor said less than 18 hours ago) but either way, on one hand they appear to be trying to tell the Government what to do and then in the same breath tell them not to do it.

MAKE UP YOUR MIND!

Horse 1241 - The Point of the Commonwealth

2011-10-31T22:35:00.000+11:00

With the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting being somewhat spoiled by the industrial actions of Qantas and the Unions, I thought I'd ask the wider question of "Just what is the Point of the Commonwealth anyway?"
In the 21st Century, the Commonwealth of Nations appears to be little more than an historical accident, it would appear that the only common thing linking the Commonwealth is the freak of history of all being ruled by one small dinky island at some point. Is there more to it than that? Should there be?

If I take a potted look through history to find the longest continuously sitting parliaments, I find in order:
The Isle of Man which has been sitting since 930, Newfoundland 1855, New South Wales since 1856, Victoria 1856, Tasmania 1856, South Australia 1857 and Queensland 1859.
I do realise of course that Britain herself has had its Parliament in its current form since 1701 with admissions and modifications but it didn't sit during World War II, and the United States and every State within the Union which I've found, either ceased sitting during the Civil War from 1861-1865 or held erratic sittings and a situation of martial law existed.
Given that the children of Westminster ("the Mother of all Parliaments") appear to be the most stable forms of government in the world, surely there is a common underlying reason for this. What is it exactly? I think that it's Common Law and the Law of Equity.

Common Law which is also the law of precedence or case law, assumes that the decisions of judges, courts and similar tribunals are binding on future decisions. Common Law says that it is unfair to make differing decisions if the facts in a particular case are similar to something which has gone before. The law itself assumes and tries in spirit to be consistent and more important just. As far as Common Law is concerned in all countries which have an English Common Law tradition, Common Law begins on 6 July 1189 which is the end of "Time Immemorial"

The point of Common Law as it applies to the Commonwealth and why it appears to be such a stable basis from which to run a legal system, is that it does not change. There is something to be said about the benefits of a Westminster style legislature, but given that the UK doesn't elect the Upper House, Queensland and New Zealand don't even have an Upper House, and Ireland and India (the latter which somehow amazingly manages to hold together 21 major languages and 212 major tribal groups), I don't think that it is the defining feature which causes stability within Commonwealth countries.

Britain's Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, William Hague in a speech to CHOGM said that:
"The case for reinvigorating the Commonwealth is abundantly clear and Britain whole-heartedly supports the recommendations of the Eminent Persons Group.
In particular, we welcome their focus on promoting the values of the Commonwealth."

It's curious, but the thing which most closely binds the Commonwealth isn't the style of parliament (even though I like Westminster parliaments) and it isn't even the monarchy. I think that it's the tradition of Common Law, and the stability which flows from that.

Horse 1240 - The 1% Must Win

2011-10-27T11:02:00.000+11:00

The Occupy movement which has manifested itself around the world (and in some cases in violence), I fear has overlooked one rather important detail as to why wealth with always concentrate into the hands of the few; that is the whole process of Wealth Condensation.

Wealth Condensation is the phenomenon which causes wealth to naturally accumulate into the hands of the few because ultimately, the economy performs a positive feedback loop and will always reward those people who are already wealthy.

If we look at the basic factors of production, namely Land, Labour, Capital and Enterprise, we also note the rewards for controlling those factors - Rent, Wages, Dividends and Profit. It's worthwhile to consider the conditions of the people who control those factors.

Poorer people tend to control only their Labour and as such, the only reward from production that they receive are wages. As people become richer, they tend to proportionally spend less of the rewards on keeping themselves alive. As people become richer, they have a portion of their rewards left over and naturally they want to put those rewards to work in the form of investment.
The thing is though, that investment really is nothing more than purchasing more Land, Labour, Capital and Enterprise; so we'd expect that as people become richer then they're deriving rewards from more than just Wages. Richer people also start to begin collecting rewards in the form of Rent, Dividends and Profits; naturally they want to put those rewards to work in the form of investment which purchases still greater Land, Labour, Capital and Enterprise.

You also need to remember that ever since about 1978 when real wages peaked, there have been two rather largish shifts in Western Economies.
Firstly there has been active steps taken to punish Labour through the destruction of workers ability to campaign for higher wages. One only needs to look at the policies of Thatcher and Reagan to see that. In Australia we had the Price and Incomes Accords under Hawke and Keating and finally under Howard there was the Workplace Relations Act 1996 and the Workplace Relations Amendment Act 2005, which was deceptively called "WorkChoices".

Secondly, because firms naturally want to decrease input costs for their products to increase profit, there have been active measures to shift production to countries where wages are less. Consequently and as markets have been freed up due to deregulation, there has been an improvement in the Financial Sector at the expense of most other sectors in the economy. Apart from mining which is experiencing a boom because really it does little than to help production in countries where wages are less (specifically China), the area of the biggest increase of wealth in Western economies is the Financial Sector. Guess what? The Financial Sector mainly derives its income in the form of the rewards of Dividends and Profit.
The Financial Sector like everyone else wants to put those rewards to work in the form of investment which... you guessed it, purchases greater Land, Labour, Capital and Enterprise. Ho Hum.

So then to the 1%, because Rent, Dividends and Profits naturally flow to them, they'll continue to re-invest that wealth into more Land, Labour, Capital and Enterprise and generate still further Rent, Dividends and Profits. That's more or less why they got there in the first place and why the 1% must win.

Whoever has will be given more, and he will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him.

Horse 1239 - What Happens When a Club Disappears?

2011-10-26T09:45:00.000+11:00

A thousand people met at the Campbelltown RSL last night to attend a rally on the subject of the Federal Government's proposed Mandatory Pre-commitment Scheme for Poker Machines. Also in attendance were 2GB Radio's morning talkback host Alan Jones and the Leader of the Opposition Tony Abbott.

Having heard the news on both the ABC and 2GB this morning, I frantically scribbled down some notes.
Alan Jones asked the question:
"What happens when the local club is gone? The social repercussions of mandatory pre-commitment are enormous."

I wonder what would happen if a local club disappears... If you logically think this through and use the same social benefit analysis which the clubs themselves seem to be using, I think that the community might be better off.

Ostensibly the clubs suggest that social programs and sporting teams would be in jeopardy. Is that really true? Maybe sporting teams which are directly attached to the Clubs might suffer but is the community going to be worse off?
Maybe without a local Club, people might have extra money that they wouldn't have ploughed through poker machines in the first place and actually use that money to fund sporting teams.

What of the cost that comes about due to extra police which have to be employed as a result of alcohol fueled violence at the weekends? If a local club disappears then that is a net saving to the community.

More importantly, what about the children of people who otherwise would have been problem gamblers. Without the encouragement to needlessly waste money for zero return, we might see a marked improvement in family life. Without money being wasted on nothing, suddenly the children of those people would find themselves comparatively better off; if that happens then the knock-on effects are enormous. How many of those children when they grow up, would be more productive in society instead of being socially dysfunctional. We as taxpayers pay for that socially dis-functionality through increased welfare payments, not the Clubs; I don't see them apologising to me for paying for the social mess caused by them.

I bet that if you were to do a serious analysis of Clubs actual Cash Flow statements and Profit and Loss accounts, the actually net benefit to the community pales into insignificance as compared with the revenues taken in by Clubs and the social costs paid for with real money by the rest of the community.
Of course Clubs won't allow their books to be scrutinised that closely, and being "not-for-profit" organisations, they're under legal protection from that scrutiny.

To suggest that the Clubs provide social programs and sporting teams as a defence to them benefiting from taking the food from people's tables is a little like pouring water into a glass and then offering people a drink by running around and spilling the water in the process.

Personally I think that an organisation which only survives because of the revenues from poker machines, is a social disaster and morally bankrupt; such an organisation is pathetic.. I wouldn't feel sorry for them if they were forced to close because of a Mandatory Pre-commitment Scheme.

Addenda:
The ABC have published a news report on this: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-10-26/abbott-predicts-pokies-repeal/3600604/?site=sydney

Horse 1238 - TV and Old People

2011-10-25T16:14:00.000+11:00

As the days of my youth quickly retreat into an obsolescent format for which the player which could have played them either is no longer available, or now appears in a museum as an antique or curio, I thought I'd look at the abuse of Old People on Television.

Not content with treating children as mindless idiots which have to have a parade of colours pass before them as though there was an explosion in a sweets factory, television seems to take the opinion that anyone over the age of about 45 is either doddery or mournful.

TV companies should be mindful of the fact that during the day whilst the majority or people aged 22-62 are probably at work running on the treadmill of monotony which keeps the economy ticking over so that men in suits can strip cash from the wallets of people and at the same time slowly drip feed the same wallets just so those same people go back to work to continue the cycle, the remainder of TV audiences are either the unemployed, mothers who are run off their feet (and arguably who work far harder than the rest of the population) and older people who quite frankly have earnt the right to take a rest and live their retirement in peace.
How does TV view these people? Well... it doesn't.

TV broadcasts messages on an almost continuous basis that the ideal age is 22. Not content with parading actual 22 year olds and their vapid; ill-informed (and by ill-informed I actually mean "completely ignorant") opinions in front of the camera, it then proceeds to flog products to the rest of society to make them want to somehow recapture those days of youth either through the application of slimy goop, or through selling some other product.
If you happen to be aged 62 and older, TV more or less gives up entirely. It makes no effort whatsoever to produce intelligent programming and when someone older than the age of 62 actually appears on screen, they're either portrayed as doddery or mournful, and thus the cycle begins anew. The obvious reason for this is that apart from groceries, what can the medium of TV sell older people? Not much really. People by about their mid-50s are already pretty predictable when it comes to their spending patterns even on a case by case basis (largely because we are creatures of habit), and so as far as TV is concerned, bothering to produce programming for people aged 62 and older is a waste of time and more importantly money.

Maybe it's reflective of society generally that over the last 100 or so years we've lost the respect for older people and the wisdom which they've accumulated. Someone far wiser than me proclaimed that there is nothing new under the sun, and whilst I look across the Occupy movement which is basically a replica of the protests of 1968, or the "Global Financial Crises" which is a facsimile of the Great Depression (which by the way was also caused by idiots in suits who also didn't have to pay for it), I wonder whether or not something can and should have been learnt from the wisdom of older people, be it how to be thrifty, or how to capture a proper spirit of community or even how to act decently to other people; all three of which seem to be sorely lacking in society. Having said that, those things aren't very useful in selling products either.

Maybe that's why TV ignores older people. My advice would be... BUY STUFF!

Horse 1237 - Bank Fee Rage

2011-10-12T22:05:00.002+11:00

Why do I have to pay to use an ATM? I'm essentially paying to get MY money back which I've lent the bank in the first place. When you bear in mind that they've already taken my money and pooled it together with other people's money into a giant clump and then collected the interest on it either by lending it out to other people or on the short-term money market, it seems slightly unfair that if I have the gall to try and get it back (and in most cases because they've closed a branch) they make me pay for it.

On that last note, once upon a time banks at least maintained the facade of being safe places with big stone buildings but now they've decided that the general public are patsies and their wallets are free for the taking, this is the justification for closing branches and instead of paying a teller a proper years wages, instead of assuming those savings they pass extra costs onto us.

Internet banking... sure the promise is that we can move our money about but in reality all the banks have done is made us do the same job that a teller used to do and because it's all on the internet, the whole thing is done at an implied reduced sense of security where we now are forced to assume responsibilty for security and are liable if something goes awry.

On top of all this the Commonwealth Bank's CEO was paid (and I shirk at the term "earned") more than $16 million, ANZ's CEO was paid $10.9 million, Westpac's CEO was paid $9.5 million, and NAB's CEO was paid $7.7 million.

Salaries in these ranges aren't determined by the forces of supply and demand and but because of the rules of corporate disclosure, want what everyone else has got (even in the case of the United States where they've even been bailed out by the US Government). Of course they'd merely point to the bottom line and suggest that the bank's "success" justifies the largesse.

Well I have a suggestion, I'll work for a mere 10% of the pay that the Commonwealth Bank's CEO is paid, and with the rest I'll employ 130 tellers at $75000 a piece. Better yet, start hacking out the obscene salaries of the rest of the executive and we can start putting back tellers into branches.

Of course it's all too hard. Last year the big four banks extracted $11.1 billion in bank fees in 2008-09 and only $4.0 billion in 2009-10.

And all of this so I can pay to get MY money back?

Horse 1236 - The Right to Free Speech

2011-10-10T22:51:00.001+11:00

Under the Australian Courts Act 1828 which provides that all laws and statutes in force in England at the date of the enactment of the legislation shall be applied in the courts of New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania) so far as they are applicable (and which includes Victoria and Queensland), and the Statute of Westminster 1931 which provides a logical end to future British law applying, the Bill of Rights Act 1689 applies in Australia.

Admittedly the Bill of Rights Act only explicitly spells out that: the freedom of speech and debates or proceedings in Parliament ought not to be impeached or questioned in any court or place out of Parliament, it does reinforce that the right exists at law.

Consequently the Right to Free Speech exists at Common Law and this was given with a few caveats as defined in James vs Commonwealth of Australia 1936:

"'Free' in itself is vague and indeterminate. It must take its colour from the context. Compare, for instance, its use in free speech, free love, free dinner and free trade. Free speech does not mean free speech; it means speech hedged in by all the laws against defamation, blasphemy, sedition and so forth; it means freedom governed by law."
[James vs Commonwealth of Australia 1936 (2) AER 1449 at 1473 PC]

The right doesn't need to be spelled out in the positive because it already exists in Common Law and expressed in the negative - we have a right to say anything that is not prohibited.

The idea that there needs to be an explicit statement is nonsense.

Horse 1235 - Why "Occupy Wall Street" is Doomed to Fail

2011-10-10T16:18:00.001+11:00

No doubt you will have by now heard of the movement called Occupy Wall Street. Their website can be found here http://occupywallst.org/ Although they have a pretty loudish sort of rhetoric and have even been likened to the "left's version of the Tea Party", I think that just like the Tea Party, the whole Occupy Wall Street movement will prove to be a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and will be heard no more; full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Duverger's Law suggests that in a plurality voting system, over time it should produce a tendency towards two-party politics (This makes for interesting reading). Really the only way to upset the system is to form a new party with sufficient clout to upend one of the existing two.
Especially in the United States where there is no direct opposition to the President in the mechanics of government (because he doesn't sit in the congress), it means that the job itself will only be a revolving door between two parties.

Small groups like the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street although they might help to colour the political discussion and may on odd occasions might see their ideas adopted by the exiting two majors, never can do much beyond that unless there is a seismic shift in the political landscape. The Lib Dems in the UK could have done that if Clegg hadn't been such an ultimately weak leader; in practice in the short term they'll occupy the same niche as the National Party does in Australian politics over the next few election cycles.

Currently in the US House of Representatives and the Senate there are ZERO "third" voices. Third Parties do exist but they contribute virtually to political discussion without solid representation because they don't have voices on the floors of houses.
Seemingly the American Public even if they complain, are through their current voting actions fine with this. If they weren't they'd do something concrete.

Certainly the consequences of Duverger's Law and two-party politics is quite an adequate explanation as to why it's so rare for someone who isn't a Republican or a Democrat to be voted to the Congress, or why there hasn't been anyone but a Republican or a Democrat who has been voted into the Presidency since possibly Johnson.
The deck is currently stacked in favour of the existing two and the party machines and the rather drawn out process of the primaries more or less ensures that the status quo is maintained. I can't forsee anyone but a Republican or a Democrat taking up either the Presidency or a seat in the Congress for a very very long time.

That's why I don't see groups like Occupy or the Tea Party having very much influence at all. It's putting people into seats that actually changes real policy in the long run; since it isn't likely in the short term, I fear that the movement is futile.

Horse 1234 - Kewell is Still Rubbish

2011-10-08T20:36:00.001+11:00

I have had a somewhat dismal view on Harry Kewell now for about 8 years after he whinged his way into Liverpool's No.7 kit in 2003, the same No.7 which "King" Kenny Dalglish wore.
Kewell proceeded to spend the best part of 5 years finding excuses not to play for his nation (including claiming that his foot would explode if he got on a plane) and the low point was in the 2005 UEFA Champions League Final when he was substituted in the 23rd minute for Vladimír Šmicer (who he stole the No.7 from) and who incedentally went on to score a goal and the winning penalty. But I digress...

Suffice to say, the Melbourne Victory is not my favourite team in the A-League. Sydney and Melbourne have had sufficient bad blood pass between them, that this "derby" for want of a better word has the potential to turn spiteful.

But turning back to Kewell, I imagine that he'll be playing up front and will be playing a similar sort of role to his days when he was back at Leeds Utd. Kewell's most productive season was back in 1999-2000 when he scored 20 goals, however that was 10 years ago and to be honest, Kewell's best days.

Kewell in the A-League will I think be playing out a similar sort of career as Juninho Paulista did for Sydney FC in 2007/08. He'll put bums on seats but probably fail to score even a single goal. Coincidentally, like Juninho he'll also be wearing the No.22 kit for Melbourne Victory.

As I write this the final seconds tick out on Melbourne Victory and Sydney FC in their opening match. Not suprising it is still scoreless in the 93rd minute and Kewell has failed to make an impact.

Horse 1233 - Death by 4WD

2011-09-30T15:20:00.001+10:00

Before I started out writing this piece, I had a hard time finding the exact article I was looking for. Quite frankly I was shocked, dismayed and rather disappointed at what I found. The results below should show why:

http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/toddler-killed-in-driveway-accident-20110614-1g1z9.html
A 16-MONTH-OLD boy died last night after being run over by a reversing utility in the driveway of a Mornington Peninsula home.
The boy, from Red Hill, suffered critical head injuries when he was hit by the Toyota utility shortly before 4.30pm at Prossors Lane
- The Age, 15-06-11

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-07-03/toddler-killed-in-driveway-accident/2780986
A two-year-old girl has died after she was run over in the driveway of her parents' house south of Perth.
- ABC Perth, 03-07-11

http://north-shore-times.whereilive.com.au/news/story/toddler-killed-in-driveway-accident-lindfield/

A two-year-old girl has died after she was hit by a car in a driveway in Lindfield.
Emergency services were called to Milray St, Lindfield at about 5.15pm after reports the girl had been run over in her driveway.
- North Shore Times, 22-09-11

This was the actual news story I was looking for:

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/third-toddler-in-a-week-killed-in-driveway-tragedy/story-e6frg6nf-1226150185542
POLICE have urged parents to be vigilant when driving near young children following the death of a toddler yesterday after he was run over by the family car, the third such case in a week.
The three-year-old boy died after his mother accidentally reversed the family's BMW 4WD over him at their home in Rushcutters Bay, in Sydney's east, yesterday.
The tragedy came within a week of two similar accidents.
- The Australian, 29-09-11

Are you noticing a trend here? I am.
What's also shocking is that every single one of these tragedies which have no doubt ruined their respective families was ultimately avoidable. In Horse 1155 I wrote something about Four Wheel Drives in the city; my view is unchanged. They're big but they're not clever.

I think that it's worth reiterating this report from the Queensland Injury Surveillance Unit:
http://www.qisu.org.au/MODCORE/PREVIOUSBULLITEN/BACKEND/UPLOAD_FILE/ISSUE076.PDF
In Australia pedestrian crashes are responsible for half of all transport related deaths of children aged under five years. Of these fatalities half are the result of a low speed driveway run-over.

A recent study examining driveway run-over deaths of young children in Australia found that most fatalities involved toddlers being reversed over by a large 4WD vehicle in the driveway of their own home by a member of their immediate family.

Nearly 80% of the cases were described as occurring at home with 60% taking place in the driveway or garage/carport. Forty per cent of runovers occurred on a Saturday or Sunday while 40% took place between 3pm and 6pm in the afternoon and 32% between 8am and 12pm in the morning.

I understand totally that people who but these vehicles probably do so because they're under the impression that their family will be safer. Admittedly there have been vast improvements in the safety ratings of big 4WDs over the past ten years, but on the whole they still lag behind "normal" sedans and hatches in terms of safety.
Also, it's generally true that in an accident between a big thing and a small thing, the laws of physics will dictate that the big thing generally wins. Unfortunately when that big thing is a 4WD and the small thing is a child, the rule also applies and the results are tragic.

I don't want to diminish the sadness of what has happened but when children are killed by a car in their own driveway, this indicates a serious problem and I think that it's very fair to lay the blame squarely at 4WD vehicles themselves.
By their nature they are built to have a higher ground clearance (though in some cases like Mercedes' ML series this is debatable) and the reason for this is that a 4WD vehicle is ostensibly designed to travel over rough surfaces. If you happen to be living on a farm, or in the country where you need to be regularly driving on dirt roads or paddocks, then a 4WD vehicle is obviously the perfect choice but if you are living in the city, then quite frankly you're not using the vehicle for the purpose for which it was intended.
Because big 4WD vehicles are suspended higher above the ground than "normal" cars, the view out of the rear window can be as much as 1000mm above the view that you get out of a "normal" car. Unfortunately whilst the car might be taller, children aren't. A child who might be visible out of the back window of a Honda Civic, might not be visible at all out of the back window of a big 4WD vehicle.
There is more than a hint of tragic irony in that presumably a vehicle which was bought to protect the precious occupants, is the same instrument which brings death.

Some portion of the blame for these sorts of tragedies must lie with the regulations which allowed them to be sold to people in the first place.
As the law stands, it is possible for someone to get their full Driver's Licence by the age of 21 and never ever be tested ever again. This doesn't even allow for the fact that at age 21 most people are driving smaller and cheaper cars; by the time that they reach 40 and have a family, the cars that people are driving, are far far bigger behemoths weighing more than two tonnes.
You need to get a special permit to drive a forklift; you need to get a special permit to work in a confined space, so why is it that you don't need a special permit to drive a vehicle which kills with alarming regularity?

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/sydney-nsw/their-darling-harry-will-be-missed-forever/story-e6freuzi-1226152272738
Police said it was most likely that Harry had chased the soccer ball behind the moving car and his mother simply didn't see him.
"It is just a horrible, horrible accident that is any parent's absolute worst nightmare," a police spokeswoman said yesterday. Officers investigating the accident said Mrs Blencke had "done everything right".
- The Daily Telegraph, 30-09-11

Done everything "right"? How can something like this be considered "right"? The Telegraph has understandably written a very emotive piece but doesn't even think of suggesting that steps to avoid this sort of situation should be taken in the first place. Why not?
How come no-one ever suggests that there might be something "wrong" with driving unsuitable vehicles in the city? How come no-one ever suggests that there might be something "wrong" with having untrained people driving said vehicles in the city? Until something drastic changes in the law or the way it is administered, we're going to continue to read stories like this in the newspaper; basically because people think that big 4WDs are cool.

Horse 1232 - The Real Villian of The Lion King

2011-09-23T16:29:00.001+10:00

No dount you would have seen the adverts for Disney's "The Lion King" which has been recast as a 3D release.

Who is the real villain of the picture?

Sure, Disney would like us to think it's Scar what with the parade of hyenas looking like something from Nazi or Stalinist Russia and being played by Jeremy Irons (because British people evil), but is the real villain someone else?

Notwithstanding the obvious fact that Scar did basically contribute to Mufasa's death by causing him to fall into a stampede and get trampled, which I suppose is akin to pushing someone in front of a train and the subsequent lying and manipulation of Simba's emotions, but if Simba survived and Mufasa didn't because of the operation of chance, then Scar's actions are more criminally negligent and causing harm, than actually causing harm itself.

That aside, I think that the real villain of the picture is Nala.

What?! You've got to be kidding me?

It is normal for Lions when asserting dominance over a pride to attack each other. When Scar takes over, then this is perfectly normal within Lion society. Simba would normally be forced to leave the pride at age 2 or 3 anyway.

Nala upon realising that she has the opportunity to ascend Lion society, manipulates Simba into returning; citing that the kingdom is a terrible place to live under Scar. There actually appears to be no other reliable witnesses other than Zazu to corroborate her story. Unlike say Animal Farm where the animals are directly oppressed under the reign of the pigs led by Napoleon, there isn't really any evidence that the animals in the Pride Lands are being oppressed either.
There is a point made in the story suggesting that Scar turned the land from a lush paradise to a barren wasteland but given that lions do not engage in farming or industry, is that even technically possible?

Basically Nala's story is similar to Lady Macbeth, in that she goads her mate into going through with an act of regicide; perhaps motivated by her own wish to ascend through Lion Society which would happen as a result of a new king taking over. From Simba's prospective he is motivated by revenge, which scarcely seems better than Scar's original lust for power in the first place.
Nala however rather than acting on her own, motivates Simba to act out that course of revenge; thereby leaving her with no blood on her hands (paws) at all.

The moral to Nala's story is that manipulation and entrapment are acceptable methods of getting what you want; likewise Simba teaches us that revenge is an acceptable justification for regicide.

And you all thought it was a nice G-Rated story... have I just ruined your childhood?

Horse 1231 - News Ltd - A Company By Any Other Name

2011-09-22T10:51:00.001+10:00

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/phone-hacking/8778424/Rupert-Murdochs-News-Limited-to-change-name-after-phone-hacking.html
News Limited, the Australian arm of Rupert Murdoch's media empire News Corporation, is to change its name in the wake of the phone hacking scandal.
A 41-page advertising pitch leaked to Australian news website Crikey.com discloses that the company plans to rebrand itself as News Australia, in an apparent bid to distance itself from the damaging fallout following the closure of the News of the World.
The document acknowledges that in Mr Murdoch's native country, News Limited, which controls a large part of the newspaper market and owns the only national newspaper, is viewed as an "arrogant newspaper company" that is "difficult to deal with".
- The Daily Telegraph (UK), 21 Sep 2011.

'Tis but thy name that is my enemy;
Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.
What's Montague? it is nor hand, nor foot,
Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part
Belonging to a man. O, be some other name!
What's in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet*;
- Juliet, Romeo and Juliet, Scene II, Act II. William Shakespeare 1600

Is changing the name of the company going to make a lick of difference to how it is perceived? Surely the public's perception of a company or indeed any entity, person or thing isn't determined by what they're called but by how they act.
If News Limited is viewed as an "arrogant newspaper company" that is "difficult to deal with", then the reason why it's viewed as such is because it has acted as an arrogant newspaper company that is "difficult to deal with, surely?

I think quite rightly that the public views News Limited more as the "Murdoch" media empire; this is known as a metonym, where a thing stands for the whole, in much the same way as "Canberra" would be understood by the public to encompass the whole political process. The subject of metonymy in this case also helps to explain why the public views News Limited more as the "Murdoch" media empire.

News Limited's newspaper have long thrown partisan support behind political parties where it suited them. Usually in Australia this means the Liberal Party, in the UK the Conservatives, and the US the Republican Party but in all three cases the company shifts its stance as it sees fit.

Particularly in Australia where News Limited dominates 70% of the newspaper market, the company is seen to have a very big sway over public opinion. By its nature a newspaper helps to psychologically block out the rest of the world for a short time as people are engaged with it; this means that the messages of the newspaper are quite powerful.
Demographically the people who tend to buy newspapers are usually richer than the general populace and because of this they actually have a greater degree of say within the economy by exercising their buying power. It's therefore no accident that in a very closed market like newspaper ownership in Australia both News Ltd. and Fairfax Media Ltd. are both broadly centre-rightist publications.

In all honesty I think that over the next ten years its all academic anyway. Newspapers generally around the world are losing circulation and the convergence of media means that people are now able to get news from a wider viewpoint should they choose to do so.

But I think that the biggest change the News Ltd will happen when Rupert Murdoch himself dies. He was born in 1931 and is now 80 years old. Taken today Rupert has a life expectancy of 8.09 years which means that he is likely to die in 2019. When that happens, I think that the nature of News Ltd itself will change because of a change in leadership.
There is also the possibility that News Ltd will spin the newspaper group out of the company. Personally I think that the only reason why News Ltd retains a newspaper business at all is because Rupert himself likes them as things to play with.
For whatever reason once/if/when News Ltd does divest its newspaper group, a change within the editorial stance of the corresponding newspapers is quite likely, just like before when the London Times newspaper shifted from being a stuffy newspaper of record, or when The Wall Street Journal changed to being more "popularist".

Basically a change in News Limited newspapers requires either a real change in News Limited itself or a change in ownership of the newspapers. In short it means the end of Rupert at the top.
Merely changing the name is unlikely to do anything at all.

*It has been suggested that The Rose was a rival theatre to Shakespeare's Globe and that it had less than perfect sanitation. Maybe The Rose by any other name would still stink.

Horse 1230 - Palestine and the UN

2011-09-21T16:35:00.001+10:00

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-14970558
"The Palestinian people and their leadership will pass through very difficult times after the Palestinian approach to the United Nations through the Security Council,"
- Mahmoud Abbas, President of the Palestinian National Authority.

I'd like to preface this piece by making a general statement that I think that Palestine as a nation has the full right to Self-Determination. I would suggest that any people group wishing to form their own nation provided they do so in a peaceable manner, have a perfectly reasonable right to their Sovereignty.

Except Palestine is different.

Mahmoud Abbas is the current Chairman of the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organisation). The PLO itself was founded in 1964 when Syrian and Palestinian fedayeen basically called for a rematch of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, basically in which the Arab states basically rejected Israels right to exist. The PLO itself was considered a Terrorist Organisation until 1991 by the UN.

Mahmoud Abbas as the President of the Palestinian National Authority is also leader of the political party which holds government, Fatah. Fatah has as it's stated goals:

Article 12: Complete liberation of Palestine, and eradication of Zionist economic, political, military and cultural existence.
Article 13: Establishing an independent democratic state with complete sovereignty on all Palestinian lands, and Jerusalem is its capital city, and protecting the citizens' legal and equal rights without any racial or religious discrimination.
I wonder if that's before or after the total eradication of Zionist existence though.

On the other side of the political divide in Palestine is Hamas. Hamas is a sort of offshoot of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and was formed in 1987 during the First Intifada. Hamas is an openly violent organisation and frequently claims responsibility for terrorist attacks on Israel.
Hamas has within its charter:

http://www.fas.org/irp/world/para/docs/880818a.htm
On the Destruction of Israel:
"Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will
obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it." (Preamble)

Rejection of a Negotiated Peace Settlement:
"Peace initiatives, and so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement... Those conferences are no more than a means to appoint the infidels as arbitrators in the lands of Islam... There is no solution for the Palestinian problem except by Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are but a waste of time, an exercise in futility." (Article 13)

Taken together it means that both sides of the political divide in Palestine are committed to the eradication and destruction of the Israelli state if not also its people. Going back to my initial caveat that I think that people groups have a full right to Sovereignty provided they do so in a peaceable manner, I very much fail to see how granting Palestine recognition by the UN is going to make the process any more peaceful.
When both both sides of politics are ultimately committed to the wholesale destruction of certain people, I really question why the world should even allow them to exist, let alone grant them international recognition.

I can see parallels with Sinn Féin and the IRA. History has more or less proven that Sinn Féin was more successful at the ballot box than they ever were with the Armalite.
I also think of the world's newest nation South Sudan. South Sudan was formed following some truly bloody fighting and hideous violence; after which a referendum was held for independence. Although the President Salva Kiir Mayardit was the former head of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement which in effect caused the bloodshed, in his innaurgual address as the new President he said:
"We have been maimed, enslaved and treated worse than a refugee in our own country. We will forgive but we will not forget."
That last remark that they will forgive is most noteworthy. I just don't think that there is room for forgiveness within Fatah or Hamas.

As much as I think Rick Perry (current Governor of Texas and hopeful Presidential Candidate for 2012) is a wignnut, I fear that he may be right:
"The Obama policy of moral equivalency, which gives equal standing to the grievances of Israelis and Palestinians, including the orchestrators of terrorism, is a dangerous insult."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-14997936

Does the recognition of Palestine help to legitimise a government and parliament of terrorists? I think that the people of Palestine should be able to form their own Sovereign nation should they choose to do so, but I'd very much like to see it happen without the involvement of Fatah or Hamas.

Horse 1229 - Euthanasia Debate II

2011-09-20T11:22:00.001+10:00

Following last night's episode of QandA on ABC1, the question was asked about whether there should be a robust debate about euthanasia. Some panelists made the commment that religion should be kept out of it (which I think amounts to a deception in logic), and that the debate should be framed in terms of logic.

In framing the question of euthanasia, the first question is to do with wether or not the person is "compos mentis". Compos Mentis is a good Latin phrase which at common law means having command of one's mind.
I would like for someone to first establish a definitve and authorative test of whether someone contemplating being euthanased actually is or even can be compos mentis. Generally if a person is contemplating suicide then they're hardly in a state to be making permanent decisions. There have been cases at law where a will has been held to be invalid because the person was not in a fit state of mind to write it; I think that this situation is rather similar.
Also, if someone wishes to be euthanaised then how exactly is this different to a state of duress? Duress is undue pressure to perform an act to which someone would not normally do. Someone either contemplating suicide or wishing to be euthanaised is considering something which clearly is not "normal".

The word euthanasia itself derives from two Greek roots. "Eu" which is "good" and "thanatos" which is "death". Can anyone honestly provide proof that there is such a thing as a "good death"?
Since death itself is not only the last journey one can undertake, it's also a journey once it has been undertaken, that nobody reports back from. Personally given the basic state that everyone has a basic survival instinct, I fail too see how that journey can actually be "good". Simple Common Sense let alone any Christian values I might be informed by, suggests that all death is bad. The thing is that I've never heard anyone actually disprove this (because presumably they can't), so in the interim my standpoint is immutable.

Secondly I question whether or not a so-called "Right to Die" can even be held to exist in the first place.
At Common Law a right is either a legal, social or ethical principle of freedom and or entitlement. Currently in no State or Territory in Australia is there an entitlement to terminate one's own life.
Also, how can one be said to extend or enhance one's freedom by extinguishing it entirely?

In NSW murder is a defined crime under section 18 of the Crimes Act 1900. Section 31A of the Crimes Act 1900 was abrogated which does in fact strike off suicide as a crime, but just because it's a struck off crime doesn't infer an entitlement at law. A tort at Common Law requires no legislation to exist, it might not be charged but it doesn't remove it.*

Can you really make the distinction between both a person as a subject and the owner of their own body at law? If you actually do then does that mean to say that a person's body is their own property? Euthanasia then becomes a property rights issue; if so, is someone's life their property to destroy?

Article 3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that: "Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person." Since the Article defends the right to liberty and security of person, does that include the defence against one's self?
Also, Article 6 of the UDHR says: "No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.". I argue that death generally is degrading and certainly inhuman. Again, since no-one comes back from the journey then there is no-one who can disprove this; again in the interim my standpoint is immutable.

Simple common sense tells me that death is bad. Christian doctrine informs me that it isn't the way the world was intended to be. I understand and can sympathise that there are people close to death who are in tremendous pain and might wish to die but because no-one can guarantee that the experience of death itself isn't worse, then it's a gamble where the odds are not known. Legal policy should not be written based on unknown gambles.
There is certainly a role for Palliative Care and every person I've ever met in such a role at least in my experience, does their level best to care for people. If the highest and best standard is the care of other people, then I fail to see how terminating someone's life even if they request it achieves this.

*Common Law in this respect agrees exactly with Romans 5:13

Horse 1228 - Rollo's $1 Offer To Toyota

2011-09-16T10:58:00.002+10:00

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/breaking-news/strike-action-shuts-down-toyota/story-e6frf7ko-1226137794165

On Tuesday, Toyota Australia president and chief executive Max Yasuda warned that continuing industrial action would hurt Australian operations and the cars could be produced elsewhere.
He said the company was already at a disadvantage due to the strong Australian dollar, high local costs and reduced volumes.
"If Australian operations are uncompetitive and perceived as unreliable, these cars can be made at another Toyota plant," he said.
- Herald Sun, Sep 16, 2011

Dear Toyota,

Get Lost.

Love,

Australia.

I really do not feel sorry for the Toyota Motor Company. As far as the Australian economy goes, they have in the past already received subsidies for car which they were already selling, been in disputes with the Australian Taxation Office for shifting profits overseas to avoid tax and on more than one occasion.

Admittedly Toyota are a corporation which does mean that like every other corporation, they are self-interested in profit which of itself is perfectly reasonable but (and I do happen to feel sorry of the people working in the plants who have felt the need for industrial action) with an attitude which defeats one of the factors which produces the product you sell in the first place, I just don't see how this is useful.

Assuming Toyota does decide to pull its Australian operations, the effects would go far beyond the few thousand people working just at Toyota plants. There are all sorts of related industries making componentry, brakes, paints, glass, plastics mouding etc etc etc which would also suffer.

Three years ago I suggested something daft and to be perfectly honest, I'd be willing to do it again.

I have been overseas on a number of occasions and the thing that strikes me about looking at cars in other countries is that even if you have an "identical" car, the Australian version of it seems to be better built and holds together longer; you can actually prove this emempirically.
The average age of cars in Australia is 9.7 years, where as in the UK it's 6.8 years and the US it's 7.7 years. If you look at the average life of cars built in Australia is 15.7 years whereas for all imports it's only 13.0 years.
To reiterate what I said in Horse 878, I have faith in Aussie workers to build a better car than the rest of the world and statistical data suggests that that faith is well grounded.

So why would I tell Toyota to get lost? To put it bluntly, I have more faith in the workers at Toyota plants than I do in the Toyota Motor Company.
If Toyota do want to leave, then goodbye, thanks for coming. I'll make the same offer to Toyota as I did to Mitsubishi.

I'm willing to offer $1 in exchange for the Australian Operations. and I'm laying it on the table now. There's your offer. I know that I could have Australia's biggest car company in five years for the simple reason that Australian workers building cars for Australian conditions do a better job, and I think that the general public appreciates this.

People are willing to pay a premium for a properly built motor car. Look at the success of Mazda and VW of recent years. If you look back over the past 60 years, Holden and Ford built their positions as the then market leaders on precisely this principle.

$1 - There it is.

Horse 1227 - That One Day In September... in October

2011-09-06T12:32:00.001+10:00

I can safely say that the 2011 AFL season has probably been the least remarkable season I have seen in a long time.
If you look through the playing rosters for both the top two of Collingwood and Geelong, there aren't any real standouts; that I think has been the biggest fundamental shift in the game generally over the past five years. You have to go back to 2006 before you find a Grand Final which didn't have either Collingwood or Geelong; so that must indicate something.
I think that what this season has proved more than any other in a while, is that when a team retains possession, they're likely to go on and win matches.

If you look through the matches for 2011, Collingwood tended score most of their points from the Half-Forward line. This is reflected in the fact that if pressed they tended to drive even further forward to score even more goals. Collingwood won most of their matches comfortably, and on 7 occasions easily broke a 10 goal margin.

Geelong on the other hand although held possession through the midfield, still had a tendency to push on to the Full-Forward line and have drives broken, only to recover the resulting counter breakout back in the midfield again. Geelong had 7 matches in 2011 which turned on less than two kicks.

Even so, Geelong's 186 thumping of Melbourne (Geelong 37.11 (233) def. Melbourne 7.5 (47)) does show that if on top, Geelong are prepared to keep on pressing to the point of utter ridiculousness.

Looking at the way the Finals Series is set up, this is how I think that September will play out:

QF1. Collingwood def. West Coast
QF2. Geelong def. Hawthorn

EF1. Carlton def. Essendon
EF2. St.Kilda def. by Sydney

SF1. Carlton def. by West Coast
SF2. Hawthorn def. by Sydney

PF1. Collingwood def. Sydney
PF2. Geelong def. West Coast

GF. Collingwood def. Geelong

Depending on what sort of start Geelong get against Collingwood on that "One Day In September" (Actually October this year), they'll find out how easily Collingwood can diffuse their Full-Forward lines. If they don't push through early, Geelong will spend the rest of the match trying to wrestle the ball in the midfield, and then find that the Pies will still be able to muster short kicks to their menacing Half-Forwards.

If in the unlikely event that either Collingwood or Geelong don't make it to the Grand Final, then the other one is very likely to smack seventeen kinds of black and blue into their opposition and we're going to see yet another one-sided final.

Horse 1226 - Rollo's New And Better "Enterprise Solution"

2011-09-05T10:36:00.001+10:00

The Gillard Government currently has a problem with off-shore processing of asylum seekers. Having failed to get the "Malaysian Solution" through the High Court and the "Nauru Solution" looking shaky, I have an entirely new solution. I call it the "Enterprise Solution".

Under my brand new scheme, Australia would buy the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise (CVN-65) from the United States which is scheduled for retirement in 2013 anyway. Then we do a major refit.

The ship currently has enough living quarters for a maximum of 5,828 but if we removed the capacity to carry 70 aircraft then I'm sure that a few more could be put on board and the standards of living on board ship can be quite nice indeed, provided the ship is appointed properly. Anyone who has spent time aboard a cruise ship can attest that living quarters are quite reasonable. If the Chinese can do it with the former Soviet carrier "Kiev", then why can't we?

This would mean that there would be no requirement to change the Migration Act; no High Court defences. Because the ship itself would be Australian Territory, you could effectively have on-shore processing in the middle of the ocean. Also, because you could fly a number of small transport aircraft from the ship, people could be flown to Australia once processed.

If a more immediate solution was required, the USS Independence (CV-62) and USS Constellation (CV-64) are already in mothballs and don't need to be decommissioned. The Australian Government could just buy them this afternoon and then refit them.

Honestly, if I can think creatively about this then why can't our elected representatives? And of course there is a great irony to the problem of so-called "boat people" by having a solution using another boat.

Horse 1225 - Charlie And The Error Factory

2011-09-02T14:46:00.001+10:00

I was flipping through a copy of that perennial favourite children's book "Charlie And The Chocolate Factory" when I've either noted something of a continuity error, or perhaps something deliberate.

In the edition I'm looking at now on page 51, Grandpa Joe gives Charlie a sixpence to go out and buy a Wonka bar so that he might win a Golden Ticket. Just 7 pages later on page 58, Charlie finds a fifty-pence piece on the ground which he then uses to buy the Wonka bar which ultimately does yield a Golden Ticket.

Spot the error?
Why on page 51 do we have a pre-decimal 6d, but on page 58 a decimal 50p?

The front of the book tells us two dates for publication. The book was originally published in 1964, and the second edition was first published in 1973.

If in the 1973 edition we are told that Grandpa Joe hadn't gotten out of bed in years, then it's entirely feasible that he might have a pre-decimal sixpence, considering that Britain went Decimal in 1971. Decimal coins though started finding their way into circulation in 1968 and pre-decimal coins were supposed to be demonitised in 1971.
What I'm wondering is was this a deliberate inculsion in the 1973 edition or was it an oversight?

It also leads me to ask what Charlie found on the ground in the 1964 edition. Presumably he would have found a half-crown (2/6) but having never seen a 1964 edition I don't know. Certainly Roald Dahl would have had no way of knowing that in seven years time, the half-crown would not be in use.

I also wonder what sort of game Roald Dahl was playing at in 1964. After looking through the archives at the Mitchell Library this afternoon, I can tell you after looking in a copy of The Times, that in 1964 a Mars Bar should have cost threepence; if Charlie paid sixpence, he was being ripped off.
I also looked through a 1973 copy of The Times and found that a Mars Bar was worth 8d. Now the old Shilling became 5p, which also means that the old Sixpence was only worth 2½p and wouldn't even come close to buying a chocolate bar.

In either time period, the amount of money which Charlie spends isn't true to life; on top of this the book isn't even consistent with itself.

Still, I suppose I shouldn't expect much from a piece of fiction which is 47 years old and in which in the 1964 edition had instead of Oompa-Loompas had "Black Pygmies" working in the factory in what amounts to slave labour.

Horse 1224 - When Was Israel Saved? (A Brief Look at Covenant Law)

2011-09-02T00:51:00.003+10:00

In my local church we have been taking a potted survey of the Book of Exodus. Our pastor Tony, last Sunday left us with three "homework" questions:

http://westview-baptists.info/pages/resources/audio-recordings/sermons.php
From: 22mins 08secs

If we took Israel as a person, when was he or she saved?
When did Israel become a Christian?
When were they delivered?
...
It may teach us something about our own salvation.

I wondered about this this week and didn't really come up with much of an answer until I cam across the following gem from the Master Tax Guide.

"A CGT event has not happened until a thing which causes a CGT event to happen has happened"

At first glance this sounds like doublespeak, it almost sounds like a case of gibberish and it also appears to be totally unconnected to the questions at hand. Nevertheless, I think that it illustrates a useful point.
For some "things" to happen at law, they first must be executed in the proper manner; that is also to say that a thing hasn't happened unless it has happened. Merely the fact that a contract or covenant has been written, is not to say that it has happened.
All legislation, trust deeds, company constitutions, contracts and covenants are not said to have taken effect unless assent has been given (almost always with a written signature). For someone to be "saved" requires the execution and assent of a covenant. That last item is of particular note.

A covenant is an agreement at law. Covenants exist throughout the world in the context of international treaties, certain legal rights and promises in connection with property, there are even covenants which restrict people from engaging or performing certain acts such as property damage.

A covenant exists between Christians individually and the church collectively and is In the simplest possible terms basically "I will be your God and you will be my people". The Hebrew "Berith" and Greek "Diatheke", both of which mean a covenant, are used more than three hundred times throughout the Bible.
Christ himself pretty much spelled out the terms of the covenant during the Last Supper:

Then he took a cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, saying, “Drink from it, all of you. This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins."
- Matthew 26:27-28

Here we have a short explanation of the settlement sum of the covenant, the method of payment and even how it is to be executed.

Now obviously it is somewhat difficult to collect a signature from a noncorporeal God, however since Christ has died, it can be taken as fact that his assent has been given. Our assent to to the covenant is spelled out in this form:

"If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved."
- Romans 10:9-10

Okay, all of this is fine with us who live in a post crucifixion period, but what of the nation of Israel. What about those people?

God established a covenant with Abraham in Genesis 17 in which the same terms "I will be your God and you will be my people" is made. Considering that Israel as a person or as a nation did not yet exist, then we need to go onwards.

We can see in Exodus 6:6-8 terms of a covenant spelled out, but verse 9 records that "Moses reported this to the Israelites, but they did not listen to him because of their discouragement and harsh labor." This appears to be a rejection of terms of the covenant. Is Israel as a person saved? Not yet.

Actually to be perfectly pedantic, actual assent to the covenant on the part of Israel doesn't actually occur until Exodus 19:8 "The people all responded together, “We will do everything the LORD has said.”"
That then is the answer I think. Although Israel's covenant ultimately would be replaced with the new covenant, I think that it can be taken that Israel wasn't a "Christian" until then. It is at that point that a covenant is not only established but executed.

Horse 1223 - If You Don't Like Your Job, Quit!

2011-08-30T09:36:00.001+10:00

@rperrett recently retweeted a link to an article from a website called Lifehacker. The article in question was by someone called David Fuhriman who appears to be some sort of Venture Capitalist and Entrepreneur.

You can read through the article if you like but I'll provide a few select paragraphs:
http://lifehacker.com/5834025/if-you-wouldnt-do-your-job-for-free-then-quit

What did I love enough that I would do it for free? I figured that if I was actually willing to do it for free, then that would be a good start. So I explored taking the CFA or CAIA certifications- maybe I would like to do more security analysis. No. I started looking into commodities and opened up a margin account, funded it with some money. But that wasn't it. Did some real estate analysis, properties in the mid-west have attractive cap-rates. No.
I ended up coming back to what I used to do: helping small companies grow. This time I wanted to grow something scalable- with national or international scope. I started attending tech events, reading everything online, buying books, and discovered something I love doing for free- and what I do really well. I am very good at working in the space between Technology and Business. I ended up quitting my job to work on these things full-time. I discovered there are two reasons to only work in a job that you would do for free.

Curiously of the 14 replies posted on the website and the 8 replies via Twitter, only 2 seem to be in agreement where as the other 20 are downright antagonistic. This is a selection:

- So forgive me if I'm not super-on-the-train with mr. startup-venture-capitalist, because I seriously doubt he's ever had to worry about making rent a day in the past twenty years of his life.
- That's not sound advice, it's airy-fairy bull****!
- If you don't have a family to support, or like to eat occasionally, perhaps.
- That's the worst advice I've ever heard if you've got a family to feed and aren't an independently wealthy entrepreneur.
- Haha, I can only imagine what small % that would be of people
- Is David Fuhriman going to pay my mortgage for me?

Do we see a trend emerging here?

Although I can understand the rationale for suggesting that people seek a job which they're ultimately going to find satisfying, there is a distinct difference between intangible ideals and very very tangible real life.

Firstly the article starts with the premise of a lie: "What did I love enough that I would do it for free?". Does this chap then back up those words by volunteering for anything? Of course not; not a bar of it. It's obvious that people like to receive rewards for the work they do (usually monetary). Not only do people like to receive rewards for the work they do but the vast majority of workers rely on the monetary rewards for the work they do.
Suppose that I was actually to carry through on this quite frankly irrational advice. Is my Landlord also likely to provide my housing for free? What about the electricity company, the phone company or even the grocery store? A chap still has to eat.

Secondly there is something altogether terse in the attitude "if you don't like it, quit". This is just a suggestion but maybe if employers started creating an agreeable and harmonious environment in the workplace, so that people didn't hate their job, maybe they wouldn't? This "if you don't like it, quit" attitude does little more than inspire mistrust and dare I say it hatred in employees for their employers.

By way of background I note that Mr Fuhriman happens to live in San Diego.This might be a gross generalisation but there is a great sense of free enterprise in the United States and a nebulous thing called the "American Dream", which is basically the ethos of success and prosperity. It's all very well to suggest that people simply quit but does this make any sense at all in the real world?

Maybe Mr Fuhriman hasn't read the San Diego Union-Tribune lately but last time I checked, the unemployment rate in the United States was 9.2%; meaning that some 14.1 million Americans are out of work. I would suggest that the vast bulk of them would jump at the chance to do even a lowly job if it meant that the bill-collectors were kept at bay. Clearly Mr Fuhriman has either never known hardship or poverty; for him to speak with such tones speaks volumes of his insincerity and callousness.

I also note that as an "Entrepreneur" and/or Venture Capitalist, it is in fact in Mr Fuhriman's interest that people quit their jobs and employ him during the initial start-up phase. Maybe it's willful blindness on his part but the fact remains that about 80% of all businesses fail in the first three years; I can say with almost 100% certainty that he would still collect his fees even if those businesses which he works with fail. So much for doing it for free.

Maybe it's his overriding belief in the American Dream which is what is driving him. There has to be a point though where you stop dreaming and wake up.

Probably the vast majority of people wouldn't just quit their jobs unless there was another better offer on the table, or the conditions in their existing job were so terrible that they felt that they were forced to. Given a very tight employment market, simply quitting your job, is not only irresponsible but downright idiotic and I think that the wave of invective which has followed is totally justified.

Horse 1222 - Kia K9 - Woof Woof

2011-08-25T13:57:00.002+10:00

Currently known by its prototype number, the Kia K9 I think probably represents the car which Kia are likely to enter in the V8 Supercar Championship come 2013.

It replaces the Kia Opirus and compliments the Kia Cadenza (K7 in Korea) and would likely be marketed with the 3L Theta V6 or the 3.5L Lambda V6 which both come from parent company Hyundai.

What I find curious is that Hyundai also have a 5L V8 called Tau which currently sits in the Hyundai Genesis.

It's worth noting that Hyundai saw as its direct competitors for the Genesis (and by inference the K9) in the United States are/were the Ford Taurus and the Pontiac G8. The Ford Taurus will more than likely replace the Ford Falcon come 2016 and the Pontiac G8 was the Holden Commodore. See any coincidences yet?

If this week's Auto Action magazine (24Aug-31Aug issue) rumours are anything to go by, then if Kia is "considering" entering the V8 Supercars Championship then the K9 with the Tau V8 just might be the final few pieces to fall into the jigsaw. Certainly Kia would be looking to market their new car and the V8 Supercars Championship would be a very good platform to do that in.

Kia already run a Pro Cee'd in the Belgian Touring Car Championship and a Forte (Cerato) in the Chinese Touring Car Championship. Let me say that I think that the Kia Pro Cee'd looks very cool indeed.

Holden, Ford & Kia? Bring it on.

Heck I'll even drive for Kia, I've got no reputation that can be damaged. Send your mail to:

Give Andrew Rollason a V8 Supercars Drive

Kia Motors Australia

PO Box 7506

Silverwater NSW 2128

If they contact me, i'll be very surprised indeed.

Horse 1221a - Mr Abbott Will Accept The Results of The Plebiscite Now?

2011-08-23T09:49:00.001+10:00

http://www.skynews.com.au/national/article.aspx?id=652975&vId=
Opposition Leader Tony Abbott has told parliament he'll abide by any plebiscite on a carbon tax.
He's put forward a private member's bill for a non-binding poll on Labor's planned tax to be conducted no later than the last Saturday in November.

Given that the official stance as posted on the Liberal Party website was that if the result didn't go the way Mr Abbott wanted, then it would be ignored, does this mean to say that Mr Abbott's promise is now binding even though a plebiscite is a non-binding poll?

I should point out at this point that Mr Abbott should remember during his time as both the Minister for Employment under it various guises and also the Manager of Government Business in the House of Representatives that when the Labour Party opposed Work Choices (which by the way the Liberal Party also lied about prior to the 2004 election: much the same way as he now accuses the Gillard Government of doing over the Carbon Tax), they didn't go to a plebiscite but fought the 2007 election, won Government and subsequently repealed it.
That's the way things can and should be done in a Westminster Parlianment. Legislation is tabled before the House, not wheeled before the people who's input could be ignored anyway.

Before we do have a plebiscite, I think we should have a plebiscite to decide if the people want a plebiscite; it would be non-binding of course.

Horse 1221 - Why The Plebiscite is a Waste of Time and Money

2011-08-22T13:54:00.001+10:00

Tony Abbott has put before the parliament a bill calling plebiscite on whether Australia should have a carbon tax; by his own admission, it will be a waste of time and money and it will be HIS fault.

http://www.canberratimes.com.au/news/local/news/general/convoy-protest-begins/2265581.aspx

Opposition Leader Tony Abbott has introduced a bill calling for a plebiscite on whether Australia should have a carbon tax.
He said the vote should be held by November.
“I am giving the Prime Minister an opportunity to redeem herself. I am giving the Prime Minister an opportunity to make an honest woman of herself … to overcome the honesty deficit that she currently displays,’’ he said.
This would mean there could be a vote on the carbon tax without an election.
“We can have a vote on the carbon tax without necessarily a change of government. I am making it easier with this bill to have this matter put to the people. By proposing a plebiscite I am allowing this matter to go to the public for a vote, as it should … wI am giving the Government and other members of this Parliament an opportunity to restore faith with fewer adverse consequences for themselves than would otherwise be the case.’’
- Canberra Times, 20 Aug 2011

Why is Tony Abbott even bothering to get the parliament to force a plebiscite?

The truth of the matter is that on June 20 on Melbourne's 3AW, that if he was successful in forcing a plebiscite and the result found that the Australian public were actually in favour of a Carbon Tax, that he would rescind the legislation if he became Prime Minister.

Where do you find such information? Published on the Liberal Party's website for crying out loud.

http://www.liberal.org.au/Latest-News/2011/06/20/Tony-Abbott-interview-with-Smith-and-McCallum.aspx
Oh yes, absolutely. I mean, my position on a carbon tax is that I am against it in opposition and I will rescind it in government.

Here we have a man who continually attacks the Prime Minister for "lying" about not introducing a Carbon Tax, yet actually promises to violate the wishes of the Australian people should he become Prime Minister.

Perhaps a reminder of Section 51 of the Constitution is in order; specifically:
The Parliament shall, subject to this Constitution, have power to make laws for the peace, order, and good government of the Commonwealth...

I often wonder about those words "good government". Can "good government" include a promise to deliberately act in bad faith? Admittedly actually holding a plebiscite doesn't bind the parliament but acting in good faith which is arguably the basis of "good government" at very least should demonstrate a commitment to the compliance of the will of the people, no?

Again, why bother to force a plebiscite if you have not an iota of intent to listen to it if you disagree with it? What is the point?
Or to put it another way, Mr Abbott has promised to willfully waste taxpayers money on a stupid non-binding question which he'll ignore anyway.

I LIKE PAYING TAX FOR NOTHING!!!

Horse 1220 - Is Cricket Really Going Through A Bad Patch?

2011-08-22T11:08:00.000+10:00

Going into Day 5 of the Fourth Test against India, England have a commanding lead having declared at 591 for 6, with India bowled out for 300 and now being "invited" to follow-on are 129 for 3; still requiring 162 to make England bat again.

On ABC Local Radio this morning, a discussion was had which basically suggested that the only reason that England were on top at the moment was because that cricket generally is going through a bad patch.
What rot!
Accusations of this nature weren't made when Australia were on top smacking all and sundry, or when India reached the summit of Test Cricket. So why is it that when England gets to the No.1 ranking does it suddenly become a case that cricket is going through a bad patch?

Largely because Britain had an empire and was genuinely horrible to other peoples more than 60 years ago and because Britain has a tradition of being able to laugh at itself, Britain and by inference England has becomes an unwritten case of an Acceptable Target.
England is seen by the cricket world as the Upper Class Twits, the Aristocrats, maybe the Gentry and "Old Money", despite the billions of Dollarpounds now flowing into Indian cricket.

It was the same when England won the Rugby World Cup in 2003.
The England Rugby team in 1998 had suffered the "Tour From Hell" including a 76-0 loss against Australia and then set about changing the structure of the RFU. The fact that England had spent five years rebuilding the team from the ground up was totally overlooked but pundits and commentators when England won the World Cup in 2003; Rugby must have been generally going through a bad patch because the thought that England might have actually through hard work and effort built a world-class team was totally unacceptable.

So it is with the English Cricket team.
England in 2006/7 suffered a five-nil whitewash on the tour of Australia; then had a disastrous ODI World Cup in the West Indies in 2007. The coach Duncan Fletcher resigned, and have steadily rebuilt the squad into what it is today.

Can it really be the case that England is the best in the world because they actually are the best in the world finally? Maybe it's because we're used to seeing season after season of poor performances that there is just some sort of emotional discord that makes it impossible to believe.

England No.1? Yeah right, cricket must be going through a bad patch.

Wheels Magazine - Scoop - 11 Months Late!

2011-08-19T11:11:00.000+10:00

The September 2011 edition of Wheels Magazine, boldly has the Ford Taurus splashed all over it's cover, citing it as the replacement for the Ford Falcon when that comes to the end of its model cycle.

Hang on, I could have told you that! In fact, I DID in Horse 1110 and Horse 1175.

If I'm a hack and only have sources which are pretty well much accessible to everyone already, then why did take Wheels Magazine 11 months to report on this? Does this mean to say that I as an unpaid hack, am a better journalist than the paid monkeys at Wheels Magazine? I think so.

Awesome Anagram

2011-08-16T08:52:00.002+10:00

It is very rarely that I will use the word "awesome". Awesome means to inspire "awe". Awe itself is an very deep feeling of reverence, admiration, fear, etc., produced by that which is grand, sublime, extremely powerful, or the like.

The following anagram won the award for the best anagram of 1999 at http://www.anagrammy.com/ I think that it's probably the single best anagram I have ever seen. Maybe it's because of my nerdulence but upon seeing this I was in a state of very deep admiration; I think this is surely the greatest anagram ever developed.

Firstly it takes the names of thirty chemical elements:

hydrogen + zirconium + tin + oxygen + rhenium + platinum + tellurium + terbium + nobelium + chromium + iron + cobalt + carbon + aluminum + ruthenium + silicon + ytterbium + hafnium + sodium + selenium + cerium + manganese + osmium + uranium + nickel + praseodymium + erbium + vanadium + thallium + plutonium

=

nitrogen + zinc + rhodium + helium + argon + neptunium + beryllium + bromine + lutetium + boron + calcium + thorium + niobium + lanthanum + mercury + fluorine + bismuth + actinium + silver + cesium + neodymium + magnesium + xenon + samarium + scandium + europium + berkelium + palladium + antimony + thulium

But there's more: if we replace each element by its atomic number (position in the Periodic Table), there is still equality:

1 + 40 + 50 + 8 + 75 + 78 + 52 + 65 +102 + 24 + 26 + 27 + 6 + 13 + 44 + 14 + 70 + 72 + 11 + 34 + 58 + 25 + 76 + 92 + 28 + 59 + 68 + 23 + 81 + 94

=

7 + 30 + 45 + 2 + 18 + 93 + 4 + 35 + 71 + 5 + 20 + 90 + 41 + 57 + 80 + 9 + 83 + 89 +47 + 55 + 60 + 12 + 54 + 62 + 21 + 63 + 97 + 46 + 51 + 69

=

1416

Whoa. That's some freaky stuff, that is.

Horse 1219 - Everyone Has Religion... Everyone

2011-08-12T12:32:00.000+10:00

On Census night (9th August) we had the opportunity to give the Government and future generations a chance to take a statistical snapshot of the nation.
In particular there was a question to do with what religion someone is. Rather than giving people the opportunity to make a postive statement that they were Atheist or Agnostic, the option given was "No Religion". I happen to think that this is a logical impossibility.
Further research confirms my suspicion that it is a logical impossibility.

In Horse 1128 I gave what I thought was a pretty solid sort of definition for Religion:

"Religion for want of a better word is a set of practices based on or that follow as a result of one's faith. To put it more simply: Faith is where and what you believe in; Religion is what you do about it."
As far as I'm concerned it is a case perfect definition, since this describes all people in all circumstances.

I then thought I'd look in a Etymological Latin dictionary to find where the word came from.
religio - Latin, accusitive singular - noun: conscientiousness, scrupulousness
As far as I can make out the word itself was coined by Cicero in his work De Officiis (On Obligations) in 44BC. Most likely the word comes from two roots: re - to go over, and lego - read. Taken together re-lego probably should mean something like "consider carefully", which fits in nicely with the Latin dictionary defnition that I've found.
The problem is that it doesn't really describe anything useful in relation to what people believe.

Then I thought that I'd go to be Bible to find instances of related words. As far as I can tell, the word only appears in two distinct places in the Bible. If so, then this is worth investigating to find out how the word is used in context.

Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said:
“People of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. So you are ignorant of the very thing you worship—and this is what I am going to proclaim to you."
- Acts 17:22-23 NIV

Then Paul stood in the midst of Mars' hill, and said,
"Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious.
For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you. "
- Acts 17:22-23 KJV

Where the NIV uses the word "religious" the KJV uses the word "superstitious". So what's going on here?

The Greek word in question is the monster "deisidaimonesterous"; it means something like "more afraid of demons" or "sprits". Given that according to verse 16 "the city was full of idols", the people of Athens obviously did something about what they feared.
Does my definition still hold that Religion is "is a set of practices based on or that follow as a result of one's faith"? I think so.

The only other place where the word Religion appears is in James' letter:
Those who consider themselves religious and yet do not keep a tight rein on their tongues deceive themselves, and their religion is worthless. Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.
- James 1: 26-27 NIV

The word which is used here is either "threskeia" or "threskos", they are derivatives and mean a "ritual". Since a ritual is something you do because you believe in something, does my definition again still hold that Religion is "is a set of practices based on or that follow as a result of one's faith"? I still think so.

I will admit at this point that I actually cheated before coming up with this. There already is a storehouse of words, and that is the Oxford English Dictionary. It says:

religion: n.
2 - a particular system of faith and or practices (OED3)

In the broadest possible sense, everything that people do is based on what they believe. If I go to the train station and buy my weekly ticket for $48, I have faith that my $48 will be accepted as a form of exchange and so does the ticket seller (look up the word "fiduciary" and tell me that it's got nothing to do with faith), since religion is what you do, then by doing something based on what I believe, I prove my faith.

The Atheist Foundation of Australia which ran a "No religion" Campaign during the run up to the 2011 Census, did so because they believe that there is no God. By the fact that they're running the campaign in the first place, they were in fact doing something based on their faith (in this case that there is/are/were no God/god/s).
Again I ask the question, do the Atheist Foundation of Australia by their actions show that they are exercising their religion, considering that is a "set of practices based on or that follow as a result of one's faith"? Yet again I think that the answer is "Yes".

Even someone who chooses to disagree with me and/or write a comment, does so because they believe something to be true.

I think that for anyone to have absolutely no religion at all is a logical impossibility by virtue of the fact that everyone does something. It might not be organised, or formally recognised but it's still something.

Horse 1218 - In Defence of Progessive Taxation

2011-08-08T12:30:00.000+10:00

I apologise in advance because this is primarily written for an American audience.

One of the questions which has been raging as a result of the US Debt Crisis is the underlying problem that collectively the American people do not pay enough in tax.

As I mentioned in Horse 1215 the US Govt collects about $2,300bn a year in taxation receipts; spends $225bn just on interest of previous debt, $2,108bn on "Mandatory" spending and a further $1397bn on "Discretionary" Spending. Even in the US Federal Government cut all "Discretionary" Spending to ZERO, there'd still be a shortfall of about $333bn.

There are several major problems with raising additional taxation:
- How do you design a system which is fair?
- How do you design a system which is efficient?
- Who should the burden of taxation fall on?

Quite a lot of people are in favour of switching to an entirely Consumption Tax based system. The problem with this is that the burden of payment of a Consumption Tax mainly falls on poorer people by virtue of the fact that they spend a higher proportion of their income.
I have also heard it suggested that a "Flat Tax" is the fairest system. Although this sounds reasonable at first, upon closer inspection, it doesn't really seem all that fair at all.

These then are the main reasons why I think a Progressive Taxation is "fairer".

1. Due to economies of scale, the larger an investment is the higher the likely return on that investment. Since governmental policy is largely shaped by either trying to attract investment or through forces to do with political donations, it follows that the wealthiest people in society also have the greatest degree in shaping governmental policy.

"Inequality impacts politics. Economic power tends to beget political power even in democratic and pluralistic societies. In the United States, this tends to work through campaign contributions and access to politicians that wealth and money tend to buy. This political channel implies another, potentially more powerful and distortionary link between inequality and a non-level playing field. It may also create pathways from inequality to instability, because both the economic and political implications of inequality can create various backlashes."
- Daron Acemoglu, The Economist 23rd Jan 2011
http://www.economist.com/economics/by-invitation/guest-contributions/economic_power_begets_political_power

2. People on lower incomes have a higher marginal propensity to consume. Their incomes are already more likely to be directed to private firms through retail spending. By giving people on lower incomes a concession, the economy is effectively permanently stimulated.

3. As incomes increase, the marginal utility of money decreases along with the marginal propensity to consume. Because the marginal utility of money decreases the actual burden of taxation is less as incomes increase.

To illustrate this, assume a Flat Tax of 10%.
Someone on Ÿ10,000 a year is always going to miss that next dollar than someone on Ÿ100,000 a year. Although the tax on Ÿ10,000 is only Ÿ1000, for the person on Ÿ10,000 that Ÿ1000 take is very much likely to eat into their quality of life, whereas for someone on Ÿ100,000 the take of Ÿ10,000 doesn't have anything like the same impact. Needless to say that someone on Ÿ1,000,000 if they have Ÿ100,000 taken out in tax they still won't feel it as much as either the persons on either Ÿ10,000 or Ÿ100,000 a year.
(Income in Economics equations is almost always shown as a Y to avoid confusion with I for Interest or the number 1. Ÿ is a good symbol for Income Monies).

As I said in Horse 1024:
"But we'd also have to assume that as people's income increases, then obviously they can spend more right? Well almost, but not quite. For as people's income does go up, although they might buy nicer things, their absolute capability of buying stuff stops at some point. No-one for instance can fill the car with petrol anymore than full. No-one can buy more groceries than they can fit in their house."
- Me, 13 Aug 2009 (Is it plagiarism if you quote yourself?)

4. If things like the Department of Defence are seen as a collective insurance system, then the stability of the economy should also be seen as a collective insurance system. People who benefit the most from the economy's stability, should therefore be liable for the greatest proportion of premium because they derive the greatest benefit from the stability of the economy.

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/fields/2172.html

A Gini Co-Efficient of 45 would indicate that in the United States, has a very high degree of income inequality.
Although the calculation to work out what percentage of the population derives what proportion of incomes, it can be taken that:
- The top 20% earn 49.98% of all income
- The top 8% earn 28.50% of all income
- The top 3% earn 17.50% of all income
Also:
- The bottom 80% earn 50.02% of all income

To design a "fair" taxation system would logically require that the top 20% would pay 49.98% of all income taxes and that the bottom 80% would pay 50.02% of all income taxes, no? However, if you look though the actual statistics from the IRS, the top 20% only paid 25.80% percent of income taxes because of tax concessions for the rich whilst, the bottom 80% actually paid 74.20% percent of income taxes despite only earning 50.02% of income. How is that fair?

To address the three questions of fairness, efficiency and who the burden should actually fall on, since there is only one set of taxation codes rather than individual taxation codes for each individual (which would be undoubtedly more fair and make the burden fall where it should, but be less efficient), then that set of taxation codes needs to be more generalised.
To that end a Progressive Taxation system at least makes an attempt to address the above issues whereas a system based on either a Flat Tax or an entirely Consumption Tax based system do not.

Horse 1217 - 2013 Chevrolet Malibu... Next Holden Commodore?

2011-08-02T10:33:00.000+10:00

I think that you're probably looking either at the next model of the Holden Commodore, or else it's replacement. Wonder why? Well I think it's because of something to do with flagging sales and the initial development costs of the Commodore's replacement.

The following is a short sales review:

2002 - 88,478 - VY
2003 - 86,553 - VY
2004 - 79,170 - VY-VZ
2005 - 66,794 - VZ
2006 - 56,531 - VZ-VE
2007 - 57,307 - VE
2008 - 51,093 - VE
2009 - 44,387 - VE
2010 - 45,956 - VE-VEii

Sales for the Commodore peaked back in 2002 with the previous Third Generation model VY and they've been on the slide since then. The Commodore which has a derivative of GM's LY7 V6 engine seems to be a little too large in size for the market these days.

The Eighth Gen Malibu sits on the same platform as the Opel Insignia which won European Car Of The Year for 2009 and the ill-fated Holden Epica which is horribly unloved by the marketplace.
Currently the Epica gets a 2.5L in-line 6 which puts out a paltry 115kW. The thing is though, that we know that the platform can take a 2.8L Supercharged V6 like it does in the Insignia, or a 3.9L V6 as it does with the American Chevrolet Malibu. Holden if they're smart or indeed forced to would shut down their Australian manufacturing operations and simply purchase American spec-engines.

Since the Malibu/Epica is a slightly smaller car than the current model Commodore, it would make sense to use that as the next model. Holden has already lowered the engine capacity of the Commodore twice from 3.8L to 3.6L and then 3.0L which means to say that even they think that the car is too large.
The Commodore itself has grown twice since the nameplate was first used. From VB-VL (1978-1988) it grew to a bigger platform for VN-VZ (1988-2006) and again with VE in 2006. The current Malibu/Epica is actually a bigger car physically than the VB-VL Commodore and even the HQ-HJ-HX-HZ range of Kingswoods from 1971-1980.

On a slightly related topic, this is the reason I suspect why the V8 Supercars are travelling to Austin, Texas in 2013. Think about it, there is already talk about rebranding Holden's as Chevrolet's whilst over there; I wonder if it might not be permanent.
Holden already sell the Chevrolet Spark, the Chevrolet Aveo, Chevrolet Cruze and the Chevrolet Captiva under its label. Holden already is almost a Chevrolet shelf company and whence the Commodore comes to the end of its model cycle circa 2014-15, are they going to want to spend another $1bn in development like they did with VE?

Holden already appears to be something of a backwater with it's previous two attempts to sell into the US market being totally thwarted. The Monaro was sold as the Pontiac GTO before the whole line was pulled, and the Commodore was sold under the Pontiac G8 badge before the whole Pontiac badge was shut down admist the GFC.

If it comes down to a street fight between Detroit and Elizabeth, I think I know who'd win.

Horse 1216 - T20TwentyTwontyTwoonty, Who Cares?

2011-07-29T17:16:00.026+10:00

It would appear that the organisers of the KFC T20 Big Bash League have started up using precisely the same formula as the A-League did for its first season.
Let me put this in perspective for you. Unlike the A-League which became the highest level of club football in Australia at its inception, the new T20 Big Bash League will become one of three cricket competitions at domestic level in Australia.
Apart from the national side, the Sheffield Shield competition which is the Four-Day game and the 50 Over competition struggle to gain crowds. The old T20 competition although it fared a little better, still struggled to capture the public's imagination.

Of course the obvious question is then, why does the KFC T20 Big Bash League exist in the first place? Presumably it won't gain a lot of crowd support, and at least a few players including Brad Hodge of Victoria have suggested that the competition will blur the lines and weaken the existing State based competitions.

I imagine then that the domestic T20 competition in Australia is nothing more than a monetary hedge. I honestly think that the reason that it does exist, is to sell TV rights into India. If this is the case, then I start to wonder, why Australia needs to bother with it at all. Wouldn't it just have made more sense to push for more teams in the IPL and get them all to play in a proper home and away league rather like the English Premier League?

Better yet, how about about just abandoning the domestic T20 league althogether in Australia and just let the players play in the IPL if they want to. Let's just admit that it's money which runs the game, so why not open the doors to the cash, the same way that the English Premier League did back in 1992-3?

Since I think that Test Cricket is still the highest form of the game and that Test Cricket in particular will carry on as it always has done and into eternity (amen), why not let the kids coming up into the game decide where they want to specialise and be done with it?
Don't make some hoo-haa about a manufactured competition which no-one will care about anyway... full of sound and fury signifying... nothing!

Horse 1215 - Dancing On The Ceiling

2011-07-28T14:47:00.001+10:00

For your entertainment, I now provide this handy little cartoon:

Bear in mind that was back in 1996, and so the numbers might be different. The same monster still lives there though.

The thing to remember about the Debt Ceiling is that the only reason it exists is because of the operation of legislation. The Second Liberty Bond Act of 1917 and the 1939 and 1941 Public Debt Acts are the instruments which determine the aggregate limit on the total value of US Government bonds that can be issued.

The Debt Ceiling is established by the Congress and is actually quite independent from the US Federal Budget. The US Federal Budget is produced by the Executive Branch and specifically the Department of the Treasury. It's almost as though the Treasury develops the budget without working out how to pay for it.

The Debt Ceiling it should be noted has been raised 74 times since the last time it was actually lowered back in 1962. This so-called "crisis" is dubious at best and is little more than a political smokescreen to hide the far worse underlying issue - a huge debt hole.

As of now the US Govt rakes in about $2,300bn a year. The Interest bill on previous debt comes in at about $225bn and "Mandatory" spending is worth about $2,108bn a year. Right away even in the US Federal Government cut all "Discretionary" Spending to ZERO, there'd still be a shortfall of about $333bn.

In fact the last time a genuine surplus was achieved, that is when Taxation Receipts exceed Government spending was back in 1958.

If you are looking for someone to blame then blame Presidents
Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama, everyone who's sat in the Congress since 1958 and every single American Citizen who has been alive since 1958 for not holding 11 successive administrations and the Congress to proper account.

As for government debt issues, even if the United States were to cut all government spending to ZERO, which includes all "Mandatory" spending, you'd still need to collect enough in taxes to fund existing debt and interest responsibilities.
At less than 15% of GDP, tax receipts for the US Federal Govt were the lowest they'd been as a percentage since 1962.
Assuming the 2008 level of taxation before the GFC and Government Spending of ZERO it would still take until 2018 to eliminate Government debt.

Faced with such a flood of fearful, formidable, frightful and furious foulness, could such a "crisis" happen here in Australia? The answer simply is... No.
1. Because the Executive and the Legislative Branches co-exist in parliament, they wouldn't disagree with themselves.
2. Budgets in Australia aren't really any different to any other Bill placed before the Houses. If a Budget Bill was rejected three times, Parliament would shut down, we'd have an election and the first action of the new Government would be to pass a new Budget.
3. Australia has no Debt Ceiling in the first place.

Really the only thing that will happen with this artificial crisis, is that the Republicans and Democrats will yell at each other like a couple of Rangers and Celtic fans for 90 minutes and then go home. Nothing will have been solved and the underlying debt problems will persist. Oh well.

Horse 1214 - The Right To Privacy

2011-07-27T10:24:00.000+10:00

http://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/

Last night's episode of Media Watch on ABC1 raises the question over whether or not a Right To Privacy should be enshrined in law, following the wake of the News Of The World phone hacking scandal.

According the the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, although Australia has ratified and adopted the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, "The Universal Declaration is not a treaty, so it does not directly create legal obligations for countries."¹
Obviously then question then is, if not, why not?

Framers of the Australian Constitution were careful not to include a Bill of Rights in the document for fear of limiting the rights that citizens have to the bullet points within the document. Notwithstanding the fact that there was already a Bill of Rights Act (1689) which is legally binding because it existed as statute law before 1901 has hasn't been formally repealed.

So then, we reach a tricky situation where there is a Right to Privacy according to the UN but there isn't actually a legal standing for that right. The right is explained in Article 12:
"No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks."²

Maybe the right itself doesn't need to be spelled out in as many words, though there is certainly a case to be made to enshrine into legislation, then ethical standards for parties who wish to infringe on people's privacy.
I don't think that the Right as contained in the UDHR only just applies to government's infringements. By the word "universal".

The legal trick is to conflate the various digital concerns into a new form of property right: a general tort against invasion of personal privacy akin to someone breaking into your property or a home invasion. Conventional private property rights are a foundation of a democratic market economy. But a property right over individual privacy necessarily intrudes into a more basic foundation of an open society: free speech.
- Michael Stutchbury, Economics Editor , The Australian, 26th July 2011.³

I find it really curious that in yesterday's The Australian (26th Jul, 2011) the front page led with an article by Peter Van Onselen the Contributing Editor, asking the question of what poltical parties do with personal data and with a small graphic bump "Protecting Your Privacy" yet the editorial on page 13 by Michael Stutchbury, Economics Editor suggests that the tort of an invasion of privacy somehow negates the Right to Free Speech.

Seeing as both the Right to Privacy and the Right to Free Speech both exist in the Universal Declaration on Human Rights as Articles 12 and 19 respectively, I would like to know if The Australian as an entity thinks itself of having a higher and nobler purpose than the astute diplomats and statesmen who founded the document in 1948 after having passed through the bloodiest conflict the world has ever seen, with the intent of making the world a safer and better place than they left it.

The way I see it, the issues of Privacy and Free Speech are separate. I think that what constitutes the line around which the issue of Privacy is drawn is pretty obvious. If someone has written something, or posted photographs to MySpace, Facebook, Twitter or elsewhere on the internet then those items have been published voluntarily. An invasion of privacy is where information which includes photographs taken in an invasive process or without permission implies that that information was not published voluntarily. An invasion of privacy is tantamount to theft.

I think that the Right to Privacy is an extension of someone's basic Right to Human Dignity. Whether you believe that that is a result of having it endowed by your creator (as I do), or as a result of the commonality of Human existence is moot but the point remains that all Human Rights are an extension of someone's basic Right to Human Dignity.
I think what we've seen particularly in the wake of the News Of The World phone hacking scandal and the reason why people are so offended is precisely because that Human Dignity has been violated.

I also reject outright this claim by Michael Stutchbury.
"The new digital technology also reduces the gatekeeper role of the traditional media: anything seems to go in social media."
Well, no it doesn't. Most journalists belong to the Australian Journalists Association; members are required to follow a code of ethics.
Guess what? Ethics also extend from the basic Right to Human Dignity. Please don't forget this.

¹ - Link: http://www.hreoc.gov.au/human_rights/UDHR/what_is_UDHR.html
² - Link: http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/index.shtml#a12
³ - Link: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/commentary/lawsuits-no-way-to-defend-privacy-or-free-speech/story-e6frgd0x-1226101597493

Horse 1213 - David Hicks Sells Books, The DPP Wants Money

2011-07-21T22:17:00.001+10:00

From Sky News - http://www.skynews.com.au/local/article.aspx?id=640649&vId=
David Hicks could be deprived of tens of thousands of dollars reaped from his Guantanamo, My Journey book, after the DPP served him with a notice.
Hicks's book, Guantanamo, My Journey, was published last year by Random House, and is based on his time as an inmate in the US prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba from 2001 until 2007.
Under the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002, he is legally unable to profit from his Guantanamo ordeal, which has resulted in 30,000 book sales, The Australian reported on Thursday.
A restraining order he was issued with by the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions on Wednesday will be followed by an application to seize profits made from the book under the Commonwealth Proceeds of Crime Act, the paper said.
An Australian Federal Police spokeswoman said the matter would be heard by the NSW Supreme Court on August 3.

Whilst I acknowledge that it's probably safe to assume that David Hicks was in fact training to be a terrorist. I also acknowledge that he confessed to doing as much.
However, for the Director of Public Prosecutions decides to prosecute under the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002, I think this sets a disgusting precedent.

Firstly Hicks was never tried in a recognised court. Let's be perfectly frank here, it was a kangaroo court organised specifically designed because it was in a legal grey area. For an Australian Court to recognise the findings of that so-called court, is to undermine the legal framework of this country.
Even the US Supreme Court in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld in 2006 declared that this pathetic excuse for a court was unconstitutional. Why then if the United States legal system doesn't the court, should an Australian court recognise its decisions?
What point does it stop? If the courts recognise the decisions of a court which was legally and morally vague and certainly without due jurisdiction, then does this mean that the NSW Supreme Court by inference actually endorses those decisions? I hope not.

Secondly, if the DPP appeal is upheld, then in effect the NSW Supreme Court will uphold a confession obtained under torture. Australia is a signatory to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (which I should point out that the United States ISN'T), of which Article 5 states:
"No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment."
http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/
Are we to suggest therefore that in upholding a decision we should negate existing law?
I would hope that the laws on this country are at very least based on or recognise Human Rights law and upon failing that human dignity. If not, then what is the point of law itself?

Thirdly, technically the proceeds which result from book sales aren't the proceeds of crime but the proceeds of book sales. Book Sales aren't the direct proceeds of crime under the s.124 definition contained within the Act.
Admittedly the DPP probably have lawyers who are prepared to argue all sorts of defnitions at law and my knowledge of the actual operation of the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 is not as robust as the legal profession, but it still doesn't change the fact that law can and should be read at face value.

If the NSW Supreme Court does uphold the DPP's request, then I think it will be a failure in the legal process. Whilst I don't like the fact that Hicks was bascially training to kill people en masse, I don't think that the rule of law should be bent because we happen to be morally offended. The thing is that because out legal system is in part based on the principle of precedents, if the law is bent, then the precedent is set to do so in the future.

As an aside, I would have thought that the best way for this to go away and thereby negate any media capital which Hicks could have generated, would be simply to let the book go on sale, and sale very few copies. Does the DPP, by going to court actually generate more media hype to surround Hicks in the first place and thus defeat their own cause?

Horse 1212 - The Mining Tax Is Just and Noble

2011-07-20T15:20:00.000+10:00

Thomas Paine whose most famous work "Common Sense" of which it can be said helped to spark the American Revolution, also went on to write "Rights of Man" in 1791 and suggested that when a government does not safeguard its people or their rights, that they are then permissible to incite a revolution. This was probably inspired from his own experiences in America as well as the then recent goings on in France which resulted in the opening of the French Revolution.

It is Paine's 1797 work "Agrarian Justice" which I now draw something from. "Agrarian Justice" was written as a treatise to discuss how to fund the fledgling American republic, but there are some things contained within it still worth considering even today, some 214 years later.

"It is a position not to be controverted that the earth, in its natural, uncultivated state was, and ever would have continued to he, the common property of the human race. In that state every man would have been born to property. He would have been a joint life proprietor with the rest in the property of the soil, and in all its natural productions, vegetable and animal.
But the earth in its natural state, as before said, is capable of supporting but a small number of inhabitants compared with what it is capable of doing in a cultivated state. And as it is impossible to separate the improvement made by cultivation from the earth itself, upon which that improvement is made, the idea of landed property arose from that inseparable connection; but it is nevertheless true, that it is the value of the improvement, only, and not the earth itself, that is individual property.
Every proprietor, therefore, of cultivated lands, owes to the community a ground-rent (for I know of no better term to express the idea) for the land which he holds; and it is from this ground-rent that the fund proposed in this plan is to issue."

- Thomas Paine, "Agrarian Justice" 1797

I don't think that it is a difficult leap to suggest that not only "vegetable and animal" but indeed mineral produce should be included in all of the earth's "natural productions".

Paine viewed private property as necessary and that production which originally came from the earth should by rights belong as common property to the people. In effect if people took profit from this common property, it is akin to having stolen it from the general public who have been otherwise deprived of it.

If the general public does in fact have a claim to the produce of the earth as Paine suggests, then it makes sense that the Mineral Resource Rent Tax as proposed by the Gillard Government like the previous Resource Super Profit Tax proposed by the then Rudd Government is a noble tax because it attempts to return some of the benefits of the produce of the earth to the general public who should be rightly entitled to it.

If a mining company takes something out of the ground that otherwise should by rights belong to the people of Australia and do not return a portion of the profits back to the people of Australia, the logic of Thomas Paine suggests that the mining companies are in effect stealing from YOU.

The following is also worth considering:

BHP Billiton as a percentage of profit paid only 13% tax for 2009/10.
Rio Tinto as a percentage of profit paid only 13% tax for 2009/10.
Newcrest Mining as a percentage of profit paid only 17% tax for 2009/10.

Last time I checked, the corporate tax rate on profit was 30%.

THEFT!!

What I find particularly insulting is the series of adverts on telly at the moment, which are trying to curry favour with the Australian people; saying that they're "part of the community".
Well if the mining companies are part of the community, hadn't they better start paying the same rate of tax as the rest of us?

Stealing from us once because we should be rightly due a share of the produce of the country is bad enough; stealing from us twice because they aren't paying even the proper base rate of tax is reprobate. Further to this, suggestions by West Australian Mines Minister Norman Moore that WA should secede and rely on China for its defence needs, is bordering on treasonous.

Let him that stole steal no more? Maybe.

2011-07-20T11:50:00.003+10:00

This rating was determined based on the presence of the following words:
- hurt (5x)
- death (4x)
- dead (1x)

Horse 1211 - John 10:30 - ΕΓΩ ΚΑΙ Ο ΠΑΤΙΡ ΕΝ ΕΣΜΕΝ

2011-07-14T12:40:00.001+10:00

This morning I was on the train reading through the Gospel of John when someone got on and sat next to me at Strathfield; this particular chap dressed in a grey suit and tie said that he was a Jehovah's Witness and that he was curious as to what I was reading.
I assume that he either wanted to make me doubt the validity of what I was reading or rather unlikely he was questioning his own faith, I don't know exactly.

I find it incredibly curious that I had been reading John 10, which from verses 1-21 likens Jesus' followers to his sheep and that he is the shepherd watching over them; and protecting them. Verses 22-42 deal directly with Jesus claim that he was God.

Contained within John 10 is the direct claim that Jesus is God in Verse 30 and it is the only verse which I know in the original Greek:

ΕΓΩ ΚΑΙ Ο ΠΑΤΙΡ ΕΝ ΕΣΜΕΝ
ego kai ho pater hen esmen
I and the Father one we-are(ing)
- John 10:30

The reason why I find this morning to be curious is that Jehovah's Witnesses not only do not believe in the divinity of Jesus but they also make the claim that he was a created being.
If you assume that this standpoint is correct, then logically the next three verses make no sense:

"Again his Jewish opponents picked up stones to stone him, but Jesus said to them, “I have shown you many good works from the Father. For which of these do you stone me?”
“We are not stoning you for any good work,” they replied, “but for blasphemy, because you, a mere man, claim to be God."
- John 10:31-33

If Jesus is not God, then his opponents are in fact correct and Jesus is a liar. If however Jesus' claim that he is God is true, then their claims are unjustified. It's worth noting that the claims of both Jesus' opponents in John 10 and the Jehovah's Witness are identical but I suppose that they do not see that.

The thing which makes John 10:30 so useful, is that not only are all the nouns in the Greek in the nominative case, but the verb "esmen" is a first-person plural. It means that it is impossible to draw any other conclusion from the Greek text at all.

Related is the claim at the beginning of John's Gospel that Jesus or "The Word" is God. If you look elsewhere at John 1:1 the New World Translation which the Jehovah's Witnesses use, sneakily adds an "a".

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."
- John 1:1 (NIV)

"In [the] beginning the Word was, and the Word was with God, and the Word was a god."
- John 1:1 (NWT)

The addition of that one word "a" substantially changes the meaning of the sentence. The thing is though, that it's not above the Jehovah's Witnesses to alter the bible where they don't like it. In doing some research for this, I find that they've completely removed or fiddled with 47 verses in the New Testament.*

I suppose that if you really want to attack the divinity of Christ, then the best way to do it would be to attack either the translation or attack the text itself. This does however create a problem in that if Christ is not God and is a created being, then He would have had to have created Himself, which is a logical impossibility.

Also if John 1:1 is to be taken at face value in the NWT then if the Word is only a God and there is only one true God, then Jesus must be some sort of false God, which means to suggest that any faith in the Gospel is based on a lie. This makes me very much wonder what sort of faith Jehovah's Witnesses actually have. If they make out that Jesus is a liar, then what hope do they have in any of the Gospel at all? Why then do they even bother?

I'm hoping that this particular Jehovah's Witness gets around to reading this, because I certainly do not doubt the validity of what I was reading.

*Aside: Maybe we should though. I'm finding that the latest versions of the NIV are also leaving out stuff:

Matthew 18:11
"For the Son of man is come to save that which was lost."
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%2018&version=NIV
Matthew 18:11 Some manuscripts include here the words of Luke 19:10.

Matthew 23:14
"Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees. Hypocrites! You devour widows' houses, and for a pretence make long prayer: therefore you shall receive the greater damnation."
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%2023&version=NIV
Matthew 23:14 Some manuscripts include here words similar to Mark 12:40 and Luke 20:47.

What is Bible Gateway doing? This appears to be an act of barbarism; and if it's the NIV's fault, then what are they doing? The way I figure it, if it was important enough to go into the original Greek text, then it's important enough to go intoa modern translation of that text. Leaving stuff out is as bad as making stuff up.

Horse 1210 - Hyundai V8 Supercar... Can I Have A Go?

2011-07-12T12:25:00.000+10:00

http://www.autoblog.com/2011/06/21/2012-hyundai-genesis-5-0-r-spec-first-drive-review
Hyundai isn't interested in knocking shields with the likes of the BMW M guard, the Audi S line or even the Mercedes-Benz AMG legion with its 2012 Genesis 5.0 R-Spec. Instead, the newest addition to the Genesis line is out to offer buyers an extra helping of power and slightly sharper dynamics without all the motorsports pretense of its haughty German rivals.

Why the heck not?

I for one would love to see Hyundai create some motorsport street cred. Maybe it doesn't need to "knock shields" with the Germans but that doesn't mean it can't have a go against Ford and Holden does it?

I think that a Hyundai Genesis 5.0 R-Spec going against the Holden Racing Team, 888 Vodafone and Ford Performance Racing might look pretty cool if done properly.

The Korean International Circuit just outside of Yeongam in South Korea has already hosted a round of the Formula One Championship, which means that the facility already exceeds any standards which the V8 Supercars might set.

If Hyundai were to run their Genesis against the Commodores and Falcons, it would give them an advertising platform not only in Korea but other markets around the world. When the V8 Supercars travel to Texas in 2013, Hyundai which is already a very big player in America, would find themselves very well placed indeed.

Because of the Car Of The Future which will rollout in 2012, Hyundai wouldn't need to develop a whole suite of racing parts. They could just buy the bits developed for COTF and bolt the shell of the Genesis on top, which is after all the whole point of the program.

If no-one wants to sully their reputation by driving a Hyundai, then I can even find a driver for this hypothetical program... ME. Yep, I'll drive a Genesis in the V8 Supercars if you'd like; I won't even care about my reputation being damaged at all. YEAH!

Horse 1209 - King of the United States of America

2011-07-06T14:20:00.000+10:00

Legend has it that George Washington was offered the title of King of America in 1783 and thought that the idea was abhorrent, however there doesn't seem to be any evidence for this. We do know that George Washington didn't pass into a third term of the Presidency but that's more because that by that stage he was 65 and probably a very tired man. His retirement only lasted two years and closed with his death just 33 months into his retirement.
But I wonder what would have happened had he been made king.

George married Martha Dandridge Custis in 1759 but because George had fought off a case of smallpox in 1751, they were unable to have any children. Most of George's estate passed to his nephew Bushrod Washington, whom he was very close to.
Admittedly the line of succession appears very muddy but thankfully someone at Ancestry.com has already looked into this and we have a sort of incomplete line:

http://c.ancestry.com/offer/learning-center/king-of-america/koa-kp-tree-large.jpg

House Of Washington

George - 1776 - 1799
William I - 1799 - 1810
Bushrod I - 1810 - 1831
Spotswood I - 1831 - 1865
Bushrod II - 1865 - 1918
James - 1918 - 1924
Spotswood II - 1924 - 1948
William II - 1948 - 1994
Paul - 1997 - date

Presumably the United States would have probably adopted a parliamentary democracy mirroring that of the United Kingdom. Maybe the US House of Lords would have been elected, maybe not, though it's fair to assume that the executive of the nation would have been formed in the US House of Commons and not directly appointed by the head of state as is the case now.

It is a real irony that in spite of a deep-seated fear of kings and of papacy; one only needs to read Thomas Paine's 1776 treatise "Common Sense" (and I think extremely poorly researched) to see this; that the President of the United States in terms of the exercise, has wielded far more actual power than any monarch from George III onwards ever has. The Declaration of Independence itself is a constant attack on the person of George III, even though he probably gave nary a thought to America at all.
In the capacity of Commander-In-Chief of the armed forces, the President of the United States has declared war 10 times, been authorised by Congress to make war a further 12 times, been funded by Congress to enable military engagements 7 times and has acted without any express authorization from Congress on at least 125 times. In the United Kingdom, even though the Monarch has the power to declare War, not even once since 1776 have they done so; with it all being done by the parliament or the Prime Minister.
Maybe if the executive of the nation and specifically the power to commit the nation to war had been held by the parliament, then maybe the character of the nation would have been different.

The logical comparison of what the Kingdom of the United States of America would have looked like is either Canada or indeed Australia. Australia elects its Upper House whereas Canada does not and Australia does employ a system whereby the seats try to give an equal say to the states.
Bills of Supply, that is monetary bills and the budget, would still pass through the parliament in the normal fashion, though I suspect that unlike now, the tendency for filibustering would not show itself quite so much.

Obviously where one stands depends on where one sits and the animosity for having a king was bitter following the events of 1775–1783. I can't help but feel though that the United States as a nation would have projected a softer and dare I say it, kinder, shadow into the 19th Century. We shall never know though.

Horse 1208 - Build the NBN... in 1999!

2011-07-05T14:00:00.000+10:00

I love the world of pure speculation because it allows me to dream of what might have been and what we should have had.

I keep on hearing with reference to the National Broadband Network ,that Fibre-to-the-X is not "future proof" and as such it is a waste of funds to invest in such technology. Malcolm Turnbull as shadow Shadow Minister for Communications and Broadband seems to suggest that the project is best left up to private enterprise, and Andrew Robb told ABC Radio that a "Coalition return to power would see the government's fibre-to-the-home broadband network halted and either sold off or incorporated into its broadband vision where appropriate." How iniquitous!
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/australian-it/telecommunications/opposition-pledges-to-offload-nbn-internet/story-fn4iyzsr-1225902288136

Let's imagine for a second what would have happened if Telstra hadn't been privatised. The accounts for 1996/97 show Telstra making an $8.1bn profit. If Telstra had been allowed to continue as a single government owned entity, then the profits would not have had to have been distributed and they could have been ploughed into reserves.
If Telstra's profits had performed at worse than average inflation and only achieved a progressive 3% per year, then by the end of 2010/11 it would have accumulated $150.6512bn. Finding $40bn to build a FTTX network would have been child's play.
Assuming Telstra had maintained world's best practice and commenced building the network in 1999, then this debate over NBN Co would have never have existed.

Is such a thing possible? Are they comparable projects? Nippon Telegraph and Telephone (NTT) did build such a network and although uptake was slow initially, by 2008 FTTX networks eclipsed DSL as the main carrier networks of internet traffic in Japan.
Real world speeds in Japan work out to be about 66 Mbit/s in the country and 78 Mbit/s in the 23 Special "Cities" of Tokyo.

Malcolm Turnbull of all people should have appreciated the benefits of having a national broadband network when he was CEO of OzEmail. Service providers would use the network like private users currently use the road networks. No-one seems to complain in-principle about access fees to using public highways do they? So why is it different for a National Broadband Network? Would he have argued for NBN Co in 1999 as CEO of OzEmail?

The point is that if I can see this via hindsight, then how come this isn't being looked at with the same broad vision looking forwards. I agree with the current Government's standpoint that broadband networks will be like the railways of the 21st Century. A properly executed national plan and infrastructure network is therefore obvious isn't it? And if it's obvious now, why wasn't it obvious back in 1999?

FTTX would have been "future proof" back then for now. Now we're trailing behind in the Digital Dust.

Horse 1207a - Mr O'Farrell Replies

2011-06-30T19:34:00.000+10:00

A Tweet worth mentioning:

barryofarrell Barry O'Farrell

@rollo75 there are no such plans - InfrastructureNSW is about new infra not existing systems

I must admit that I was a little surprised by this. I can't say for certain if this was Mr O'Farrell himself, or someone from his office but maybe it illustrates a worthwhile point. We live in a democracy and are free to say whatever we wish, we also have the repsonsibility to hold our leaders to account. If we say nothing though, our voices will never be heard.

Horse 1207 - Selling The Railways Mr O'Farrell?

2011-06-30T13:56:00.000+10:00

http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/sell-the-trains-more-toll-roads-bring-it-on-says-ofarrells-goto-man-20110629-1gr9u.html

THE man hand-picked by Barry O'Farrell to drive the future of NSW transport and infrastructure is in favour of privatising the state's rail system and supports congestion charges to get drivers off the roads.
Paul Broad, named the first chief executive of Infrastructure NSW this week, is an unabashed fan of Jeff Kennett's reforms to the Victorian transport system and believes NSW would benefit from something similar.
...
Asked if he would support more private involvement in Sydney's rail system, run by the government-owned RailCorp, Mr Broad said: ''I don't want to pre-empt it, but obviously a personal thought about that is that you would. I think that the private sector in Victoria has done extremely well in part of their rail network. So I do think there's opportunity for that.''

I was severely incensed when I heard this on the radio this morning. Just like everything else that governments have sold off in this country never to return to public hands, I fail to see how any proposal to sell off the railways is any way shape or form approaching "good government".

The views expressed by Paul Broad the new chief executive of Infrastructure NSW, I think are at odds with the position to which he has been appointed. The media release from Infrastructure NSW says that:
http://www.transport.nsw.gov.au/sites/default/files/releases/110628_broad_ceo_final.pdf
“NSW has been crying out for a body like Infrastructure NSW – for the first time this State will have an independent body laying out a strategic direction for infrastructure delivery.
No longer will any area of NSW be taken for granted – or be promised projects as pre-election bribes that are never delivered - as Labor did for 16 years.”
Yet within two days of Paul Broad's appointment, he's already talking about selling off the railways. This would be a joke if it wasn't so pathetically tragic and scandalous.

Fixing the transport network of the state was one of the issues which brought the O'Farrell Government to power in the first place. I suspect that Mr O'Farrell recognised this when he named himself as Minister for Western Sydney. The people of the West and especially the North West have been crying out for decent public transport now for 40 years.

As for Mr Broad's comment that NSW would benefit from something similar to the Victorian experience, did Victoria really benefit from selling the railways and tramways? Not in the slightest.

http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/12bn-sting-in-the-rail/2006/04/08/1143916767672.html

PRIVATISATION of Melbourne's public transport has cost taxpayers $1.2 billion more than if the system had remained in public hands, according to a analysis by transport experts.
And if Connex and Yarra Trams are given franchise extensions, taxpayers will pay $2.1 billion more by 2010 than if the system were publicly owned.

Clearly not.

Perhaps I read Mr Broad's comments incorrectly. What does he mean exactly?
"I think that the private sector in Victoria has done extremely well in part of their rail network. So I do think there's opportunity for that."

Well, on reflection I would agree with him. The private sector in Victoria has done extremely well. They have gashed open the wallets of Victorians for more than $3 billion since the transport system went into private hands. As for the people of Victoria? Well, they've been left with a slightly worse service and pay more in rail fares.
I guess the people of Victoria don't matter then do they?

"I actually admire what Kennett did. And I think we did a fair bit of that in Nick Greiner's time"

Can I just remind Mr Broad of "what Kennett did" and apparently what he "admires"?

During Kennett's time as Premier of Victoria, 350 public schools were closed, $29 billion of state assets in gas and electricity alone were sold to private enterprise (and as a direct result the price of electricity and gas more than tripled in the four years that followed), 66,000 public servants lost their jobs and after the imposition of a poll tax in 1992, the biggest strike in Australian industrial relations history occurred when 4.5 million people stayed home.
Yet Mr Broad thinks that this is admirable? Even today you can still see the evidence of Mr Kennett's legacy. The town of Kennett River to this day consistently has the name Kennett crossed out with spray paint within hours of a new sign being erected in their town.

Well done... just well done.

Dear Barry, if this is your attitude to the people of NSW then I severely hope you are deposed from office before your term and you never darken the doors of Parliament House again.
One of the biggest symbols of the City of Sydney is the Sydney Harbour Bridge. It was completed during the Great Depression and still to this day shows the vision that governments had almost 90 years ago.
When Francis de Groot upstaged Premier Jack Lang in 1932 when the bridge was opened, he did so "in the name of the decent and respectable people of New South Wales." Policitians would do well to remember this. The decent and respectable people of New South Wales are in effect your employers. We do hold the power to install and remove governments; that is worth thinking about should we wish to retain your services beyond 28 March 2015.

Horse 1206 - Philip Morris Threatens to Hold the Australian People to Ransom

2011-06-27T22:57:00.000+10:00

Prize cancer and death merchants Philip Morris have threatened to take the Australian Government to court for damages if it suffers a loss of business as a result of the introduction of plain packaging of cigarettes. Now whilst I tend to agree with the argument that they will suffer a loss of business as a result of the loss of brand identification, I personally take umbrage at the fact that they intend to sue the government.

"Failing that, we aim to go ahead with a compensation claim for the loss to our business in Australia that would result from plain packaging,"
- Philip Morris Asia spokeswoman, Anne Edwards

I really don't like it generally when people sue "the government". "The Government" in this sense is usually seen as some sort of nebulous concept, but we need to remember that the government sector takes its revenue from us as taxpayers. To make up the shortfall because some multi-national corporation has got it in its craw and seeks damages will mean that that money has to be taken from somewhere, and the only two options are that the government sector spends less or that we taxpayers pay more in tax.

PM Julia Gillard has said "We're not going to be intimidated by Big Tobacco's tactics, whether they're political tactics, whether they're public affairs kind of tactics out in the community or whether they're legal tactics," ; I wish her all the goodwill I can muster in this issue.

I also object to the utterly stupid adverts being peddled at the moment, decrying the so-called "Nanny State". Take note at the end when they're forced at law to admit that the adverts have been authorised by Imperial Tobacco. Is this honestly how Imperial Tobacco views the public? As a bunch of borderline morons? What do they take us for? Seriously!

I really hope that Philip Morris loses the court case and that they have to pay hideously expensive court costs. As a taxpayer, I object to being taken for a ride by filchers, racketeers and shysters.

To Philip Morris: You are not worth another word, else I'd call you knave!

Horse 1205 - Aint Worth A Hill Of Beans

2011-06-27T10:51:00.001+10:00

Quite recently my boss was on the telephone to a client and remarked that a particular report which someone had submitted "wasn't worth a hill of beans", that is, it was worthless.
I pondered this for far too long to be honest and this post is the result of my question to find out what a Hill of Beans is actually worth.

P.G. Wodehouse in his 1921 novel "Indiscretions of Archie" from 1921 wrote:

“Here have I been kicking because you weren’t a real burglar, when it doesn’t amount to a hill of beans whether you are or not”.

Perhaps the most famous us of the phrase comes from the 1941 film "Casablanca" in which Rick Blaine (played by Humphrey Bogart) says:
"Ilsa, I’m no good at being noble, but it doesn’t take much to see that the problems of three little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world”.

The first question we need to address in finding out what a hill is worth, is to find out what constitutes a hill.
As discussed in the 1995 film "The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill But Came Down a Mountain", a mountain is a hill which is taller than 1000ft; by inference a hill is less than 1000ft.

Interestingly I can't seem to find a common law definition of what a hill is; not even the Ordnance Survey Act of 1841 defines a hill. The definition of a "top" though appears to be "all elevations with a drop of at least 100 feet (30.48m) on all sides and elevations of sufficient topographical merit"
Certainly if you were to create a pile of beans 100 feet tall, that would probably be "of sufficient topographical merit" and so this is the working definition I've chosen.

This was backed up by a comment which I'd recieved on the topic from a forum board:
"It would depend if you are including hillocks in your definition, in which case pretty much any height you like. Exclude hillocks and I'd suggest you're looking at ~100ft / ~33m.

However, the problem you'd face is getting your beans to form a hill shape without a suitable container. They'd naturally tend to form a lake, rather than a hill. So maybe the movie needs to be remade or at the very least re-dubbed with the phrase "lake of beans".
- Dave Brockman, 22nd Jun 11.

This last point was quite instructive I must say. Obviously it stands to reason that if you were to build a hill of beans, you'd want a self-supporting pile.
Experiments with tinned baked beans led me to believe that beans in tomato sauce do react differently depending on how hot the liquid sauce is. In general, the viscosity of a simple liquid decreases with increasing temperature, so it stands to reason that if you're cooking baked beans on a stovetop, they will have a greater propensity to form a lake. Likewise at colder temperatures, baked bean sauce will tend to coagulate.

Fortuneately, the Commission Internationale du Genie Rural or CIGR, has already conducted studies into the shape of a pile that beans take:
http://www.cigrjournal.org/index.php/Ejounral/article/download/1700/1397
Of course you tend to ask "why" such a study needs to be made in the first place.
The answer has to do with bulk handling of cargoes. Bulk handlers of foodstuffs and minerals need to be aware of the shape of piles they build with their bulk cargo; it's also important when building things like silos, railway hoppers and conveyor belts.
The shape of of the cone made by a pile is described by something called the "Angle of Repose". This report from the CIGR indicates that the Angle of Repose for coffee is 35° and for Baked Beans in tomato sauce it's 25°. Always wanting to check my figures I emailed H.J. Heinz Company and SPC Ardmona and they both have confirmed the figure of 25°.

The next question is how much it would cost to build a 100ft pile of beans. Again Dave was rather helpful:

If you were intending to use them for construction rather than sustenance I would suggest that you use Tesco Value, which are 28p for 420g, according to mysupermarket.co.uk

28p/420g works out to be A$1.01348/kg

Interestingly I find this to be the cheapest source of baked banes in the world. Franklins No Frills baked beans which cost 77c for 425g comes to A$1.83333/kg and nowhere in the US, NZ or South Africa, came out as cheap.

WARNING:

The next section involves maths. If you want to skip this bit, then please just scroll down:

To find the radius of the cone requires simple trignometry. A cone can be described as solid formed by a rotating right triangle through 360°.

A/sin a° = B / sin b° = C / sin c°
A/sin 65° = 100 / sin 25°
A = 214.4506920 feet.

Volume of a Cone (the hill of beans) : V = 1/3πr²h
V = 1/3 x π x 100ft² x 214.4506920ft
V = 4,815,968 cubic feet
V = 136,373,027.625L

Beans however are not sold by volume but by weight.
If you assume that beans are not compressible, then if follows that they pack into a tin at the same rate as they would into a pile. After measuring several baked bean tins in the supermarket, I find that the standard baked bean tin is 75mm across and 110mmm tall.

Volume of a Cylinder (a bean tin) : V = πr²h

V = π x (75mm)² x 110mm
V = 154,687.5mm³
V = 0.1546875L for 420g
V = 0.368303514L/kg

This means to say that at 0.368303514L/kg in a volume of 136,373,027.625L there are 50,226,666kg of beans.

At the Franklins rate of $1.83333/kg a Hill of beans would cost:
A$92,082,220

If the hill was made of Tesco Value at A$1.01348/kg, the Hill of beans costs:
A$50,903,721

Going back to Rick Blaine's comment in Casablanca that "the problems of three little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world" then this is probably true.
Gail Kelly the CEO of Westpac is reportedly on a salary of A$9.5m a year. It is estimated that she has a net worth of A$32.9m.
It probably follows that the problems of three "little" people, ie people of low net worth, don't amount to the value of a Hill of Beans. However if you were to take three people like Wayne Rooney, Michael Schumacher and Gail Kelly, then you might be exceeding the value of a hill of beans.

On reflection a hill of beans is actually worth a considerable amount of money. I wouldn't fancy climbing it though as you'd get Tomato Sauce in your socks.

That's a nice Tnetennba

2011-06-21T17:09:00.000+10:00

Tnetennba: Noun.
A word whose function is purely to attract traffic to a website; a gratuitously used keyword whose presence is aimed at attracting the search engines attention and improving the website’s placement in search results.

Horse 1204 - Is Facebook Killing English?

2011-06-21T09:02:00.000+10:00

This question came from a forum board which I frequent:
Do you think the advent of social networking (Facebook etc) has killed the forum boards or is it a more specific decline based on subject matter? Or is it that people aren't as good as writing as they were?

I don't necessarily see this as a specific problem to do with forums but a symptom of a far-wider ranging miasma of declining rates of functional literacy generally.
I will attribute some of the blame at the feet of Twitter, MySpace and the Book of Faces because where once were pieces of text in which some degree of thought used to be employed, there are now shorter grabs of 140 characters or less in some cases. However I don't think that social media by itself at fault but society as a whole.
This is the distilling of a process which has been going back hundreds if not thousands of years.

The Bible records in both the book of Nehemiah (chapter 13) and the letter to the Hebrews (chapter 9) that "all of the law was read to the people". Now I'm assuming that probably refers to "the law" as contained in the Book of Leviticus, so "all of the law" amounts to 27 chapters which have to be read in a public place.
In the New Testament, the apostle Paul rambled on for so long that one poor chap fell asleep and fell out of a window (Acts 20).
If you look at the great age of the novel, books like Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace, Austen's Mansfield Park, Charles Dickens' Bleak House or even James Joyce's Ulysses, are all hefty tomes which are vastly more complex than the radio serials which began in the 1930s or television programs which all fit nicely into half-hour blocks.
Whereas once people would be content to stand out in a field and tend livestock, watching as each day told a unique story (I earnestly believe that it was shepherds who invented the game of cricket), people's attention spans which used to last hours now barely last seven minutes, and 140 characters of a twitter post is a logical extension of this whittling away of patience.

I think that because people generally don't have anything like the same amount of patience that people had in the past, coupled with the fact that they simple aren't engaged to anywhere near the same degree as they once were with the written word, that people's language skills have suffered as a result.
I work as a forensic accountant and so deal with legal firms on a semi-regular basis and it staggers me at just how poor so-called "professional" correspondence has become. I see errors in spelling and grammar which should make the average 8th grader cringe (but sadly doesn't) and whilst I will accept that English might not be the first language of some people and concede the fact that the language does evolve, it is still not an excuse for the hideousness which I see quite often in written English from people who should know better and especially from people who's very profession lives in the realm of producing and gleaning information from written English.

A poor standard of English has even infected mainstream media. There has been a noticeable decline in the quality of writing in “newspapers of record” like The Times and The Daily Telegraph etc. and I’m willing to bet that that is consistent across the Anglosphere.
In Australia, our own Sydney Morning Herald has been on the slide in my lifetime but I'm glad to say that Sydney's Daily Telegraph has actually improved in quality since the days that it merged with The Daily Mirror, though I think that that has more to do with the influence of AAP than anything else.

George Orwell decried "ugly and inaccurate" English in his 1946 essay “Politics and the English Language” and although he was more concerned about media and politicians using language to conceal their intent and advocated the use of Plain English, I take his point to some degree but also disagree with him on other points.
I happen to like using florid language partly because I take joy in "the flower of English". I like the ability to select and mould paragraphs to change the colour and tone of meaning. So in that respect I differ from Orwell quite strongly but I totally agree with him in that if you don't properly craft your pieces of writing, then the language itself suffers a ever so slight devaluation; if you multiply that by the billions of poor pieces of writing being produced, is it little wonder we're floating in a sea of fetid stench?

There is also the fact that we live in an increasingly Post-literate Society in which people no longer read for pleasure as much as they used to. As a result of this, I suggest that people are voluntarily choosing to become more stupid, through laziness and a refusal to learn anything, which includes the ability to use the written word properly. I also note a decline in numeracy to the point where a lot of people find long division difficult. This is encouraged by a distinctly anti-intellectual, commercial and hedonistic media sludge.

So in answer to the original question, I don't think that "the advent of social networking (Facebook etc) has killed the forum boards" but rather that this an expression of a systemic failure of wider society of which forum boards are a very small cross-section... and the real tragedy is that because society is generally more stupid than it used to be, they won't understand what I just said.

Horse 1203 - What Does The England Test Side Believe About Itself?

2011-06-20T22:39:00.000+10:00

The thing that really bothers me about the current England Test Team is that even after defending The Ashes by beating Australia 3-1 in Australia and outclassing Sri Lanka to the point where Sri Lanka have looked slightly less than apalling, England still seems to lack self-belief and confidence in themselves as a Test side.

The worst innings that England has had in the current series is 335 for 7 declared. Making 335 is a reasonable score in the first place but this isn't even a proper close of innings, this was England declaring early so they could have a fighting chance at winnning a match; even then Ian Bell was scoring at a strike rate of more than 130 when the declaration came.
Jonathan Trott made 203 in the 1st test at Sophia Gardens in Cardiff and took 1/5 in the 1st test at Lord's. There have also been centuries to Cook Bell and Prior in the series, whilst Sri Lanka have only deposed all of England's wickets in an innings once. Chris Tremlett's 6/48 in the 3rd test at The Rose Bowl is the only five wicket haul by bowler in the series but that's because wickets are being spread around rather than faulty bowling.
At least one batsman is performing per innings and the bowling is entirely adequate. Normally this should instill hope into a squad but remember, this is England we're talking about.

This is an England side which is obviously in a state of confusion. England hit the bottom in 2006/7 with a disastrous tour of Australia losing 5-0, and since then they've risen like the phoenix and have turned into a Test side which whilst it might not be full of any real stand-out stars in particular, it is a very good side which I don't think has quite figured that out for itself.
Especially over the last 20 years, England in just about every sport has been rubbish. When England won the Rugby World Cup in 2003, we didn't know what to do about it exactly and now that the England Cricket is looking competent and winning matches with alarming regularity, neither the team itself nor the fans quite know how to react to this.
Just to remind you again, this is England. England isn't supposed to win anything! England is the nation which invents and codifies sports, gives them to the world and then sits and mopes when everyone else in the world practices them and gets better than them. For the England Test Cricket side to start winning matches, cuts against the veyr principles of being English, namely standing about complaining about the weather and going in at teatime to knock off a plate of Jaffa Cakes.

Thankfully the scent of failure is just over the horizon.

I predict that India will start the tour by smashing county sides to pieces on relatively small grounds like Taunton, and that the England Test team will be looking at this and then have the wind taken out of their sails.
Players like Gambhir and Dravid will have scores which are over-inflated (150-190) and when they come to Lord's on 21st July, I'm worried that Finn and Broad will be scared into a state of... being the England Test Team that we've come to know over the last 20 years because of the dark shadows that those scores will cast.

Maybe England will select John Bull himself to play for them in the First Test against India but I think it more likely that when faced against India, England will just collapse like a flan in a cupboard and it will be just like old times again.

Horse 1202 - Pravda

2011-06-20T10:13:00.000+10:00

"people should just calm down about some of the media frenzy around this"
- Anthony Albanese, to the ABC, 20th Jun 2011.

How can people calm down if they're constantly being told to worry about it?

Mr Albanese is of course talking about the continuing media stupidity that surrounds Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd and the PM Julia Gillard. Despite repeated attempts to tell the media that there is no leadership spill, no-one seems to be getting it and I think that this is because of a case of bad faith by the people running the newspapers in Australia.

Consider the following:
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/party-wont-stand-rudds-mind-games/story-fn59niix-1226078106992
"both Sydney's The Daily Telegraph and Brisbane's The Courier-Mail featured the same piece on the re-made Rudd. "A year in her shadow" was the sting for the magazine piece in the Telegraph, pushed along by Gillard's unhelpful anniversary interview comments where she repeated why she had, in the words of the Telegraph headline, "knifed Rudd"."

This came from this morning's Australian which is a News Corp newspaper; it speaks of a piece which featured in both the The Daily Telegraph and The Courier-Mail (which are also News Corp newspapers) and basically it admits where its story came from. In case you missed it:
"in the words of the Telegraph headline"

Not a piece of investigative journalism, not a leaked memo and not a press statement. News Corp papers in this case have simply made something up where it suited them to do so.

Fairfax newspapers are just as guilty for doing this. The Sydney Morning Herald, Melbourne's "The Age" and the two online Fairfax newspapers the Brisbane Times and WA Today all ran this story with the following headline:

Rudd muses in church over 2010 sacking
http://news.theage.com.au/breaking-news-national/rudd-muses-in-church-over-2010-sacking-20110619-1g9k9.html

Yet if you read through the article itself we find the following quote from Kevin Rudd himself from the radio station Hope 103.2:

"I was musing in church ... the key thing is not to sit around and mope. The key thing is to get out there and make a difference with the resources that you have at your disposal today.
Whatever your calling and whatever your lot is in life, to take those talents and take those abilities and use them to the utmost. That is what you try and do.
None of us are perfect and we all fall short of the glory of God."
- Kevin Rudd, played on Hope 103.2, 19th Jun 2011.

I was listening to the radio when this came on and this in context had nothing whatsoever to do with a supposed leadership spill. Although Fairfax media may have used an exact quote, they tried to make it say something which it never did.

On one hand you have News Corp openly admitting to just making stuff up and on the other you have Fairfax misusing someone's words. Either way both of the major newspaper companies are engaging in something even older than they are... LYING. We may as well be living in Stalinist Russia because at least everyone knew that Pravda was lying.

Of course it makes you wonder why the media is putting so much effort into trying to destabilise the Labor Party and the Federal Government. What is the real story going on?

The simple thing would be to look at media bias.
Both Fairfax Media and News Corp are roughly right leaning conservative news outlets. Fairfax generally favours the Liberal Party and although News Corp doesn't come out in Australia and directly say it, they do openly support the Republican Party in the US and the Conservatives in the UK, so it follows that they should also do likewise in Australia.
The real issue is what is the biggest concern of right leaning conservatives in Australian poltics at the moment? The answer to that is the Carbon Tax.

To put it mildly, both major newspaper companies have an audience which would oppose any increase in taxation except maybe The Daily Telegraph whose readers have the average IQ of a tin of baked beans.
By openly making stuff up and/or lying about the context of what is going on, the act of destabilising the Government is not only an act of defiance but also embodies another adage which goes back more than two thousand years: Divide et Impera, divide and rule.
Caesar, Napoleon, Sun Tsu, Boccalini and Machiavelli have all written about this law and if it was good enough for them, it is good enough for Fairfax Media and News Corp... but it doesn't serve the people of Australia.

So then, to Fairfax Media and News Corp on this the 20th of June, 2011:

STOP LYING YOU MISCREANTS!

Horse 1201 - LA LA LA I'M NOT LISTENING

2011-06-16T10:12:00.000+10:00

Malcolm Turnbull who appears to be the champion of sticking his fingers in his ears and yelling "LA LA LA I'M NOT LISTENING" has yet again written an article in the Business Spectator arguing why the Australian Government should collectively do nothing, citing South Korea as an example of why governments should continue to do nothing.

http://bit.ly/iXl599

But the idea that bandwidth supply creates its own demand is a vast oversimplification. It completely ignores the critical role of other factors such as price, quality of service, availability of applications and competition among providers.
And it turns out it is exactly these factors that in Korea are proving more powerful than mere availability of high speeds.
The latest figures from Korea Telecom reveal that after five years of rolling out fibre-to-the-basement (a far less costly version of NBN Co’s fibre-to-the-home architecture), demand for the highest bandwidth plans it enables has gone pear-shaped.
- Malcolm Turnbull, the Business Spectator, 16th Jun 2011

Holding a double degree in arts and law, it's obvious that Turnbull does not understand several important things which are critical to his position as Shadow Minister for Communications and Broadband. Namely anything to do with the technical details of the position, nor anything to do with the economic principles which he is arguing against.
Also being a firm member of the Liberal Right, he simply refuses to believe that governments as rule are capable of delivering anything but at the same time doesn't understand the basic concept of market failure.

Market Failure is a concept whereby the allocation of goods and services is not efficient; obviously there is nothing more inefficient than a total failure to provide any goods and services at all.

Telstra by it's own admission stated in a pamphlet in it's "BACK" Campaign in 2006 that it didn't want to invest in high speed broadband because Federal Government rules didn't allow it to. Whilst this was never tested in court, I suspect that this may have been a blatant lie because there wasn't even a hint at a suggestion as to what laws it would be infringing.

At the time the then Executive Phil Burgess, said that:
"Today we have a Minister for Communications who says there's no reason why we should be too concerned about broadband, after all 80 per cent of the people can get eight megabytes. Eight megabytes isn't enough."
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/03/01/1860795.htm

The Minister for Communications at the time was Helen Coonan. Right through her tenure as minister from Jul 2004 to Nov 2007, Coonan was attacked and badgered by both Telstra and Optus in the media. Yet somehow through all of this, not a single yard of cable was laid with any capability approaching anything like the sorts of speeds which Telstra had complained about.
This is a perfect example of Public Infrastructure not being provided and illustrates exactly the concept of market failure.

Just this morning the final National Broadband Network agreement with Telstra is being hammered out as this post is being written and will be sent to Telstra's board for approval within the week and to Cabinet next week.

I think this also illustrates the point that for a project of this scope and size, only a government department has the capability of rolling it out; yet Malcolm Turnbull as the Shadow Minister appears to be willfully ignorant of what is going on before his very eyes. "LA LA LA I'M NOT LISTENING"

The truth is that in countries which are more friendly to having governments build things, real progess is being made.

French President Nicholas Sarkozy has promised that 70% of France will get 100Mbps Internet within 10 years. The thing is though, you don't have idiots like Malcolm Turnbull or even prize chump Tony Abbott to oppose the plan. When France says that it will build something on this scale IT GETS DONE.
One only needs to look at SNCF and their TGV trains which speed across France at more than 500km/h on regular services to realise just how stupid the stance by Turnbull actually is.

Even Spain despite its sovereign debt problems is aiming to build a national broadband network from scratch which will deliver a baseline of 1Mbps to all households within 24 months.

Heck even the United States which surely is the stalwart of free enterprise has "The National Broadband Plan" and although they might argue about Universal Health Care, even they recognised the need for Universal Service to broadband.

So important is The National Broadband Plan that the first point of the plan is:
"At least 100 million U.S. homes should have affordable access to actual download speeds of at least 100 megabits per second and actual upload speeds of at least 50 megabits per second by the year 2020."
http://www.broadband.gov

To be totally honest the US endeavours on rolling out its National Broadband Plan make our own NBN Co look hideously pathetic and small.

The truth is that Broadband will be the major networks and highways of the 21st Century, and yet somehow Mr Turnbull actively wants to keep Australia behind the rest of the world.

S.51 of the Constitution says:
"The Parliament shall, subject to this Constitution, have power to make laws for the peace, order, and good government of the Commonwealth with respect to:
(v) postal, telegraphic, telephonic, and other like services;"
I think that we should hold people like Mr Turnbull to account and ask him precisely WHY he wants to defeat the peace, order, and good government of the Commonwealth.

I suspect that his answer would only be "LA LA LA I'M NOT LISTENING"

Horse 1200 - Please Build a Legend, Holden

2011-06-14T23:12:00.000+10:00

I do realise that this is a gratuitous excuse to put a picture of a BMW M3 GTS on this blog because to be perfectly blunt, I do think that it does look quite cool, however this post addresses something a little bit more than this. It's the big letter M on the door I'm concerned with. That M stands for Motorsport and that's something more important than how cool the car looks. Motorsport as a rule actually improves the breed.

If I look back through the mysts of time and try to pick the two coolest touring cars in Australian motor racing history, there are two obvious stand outs: namely the Ford Falcon XC Coupe and the Holden Torana A9X hatchback.

These two cars were both modified versions of cars you could buy from a showroom at any time. If you had the cash spare, you could very easily walk into a Ford or Holden dealership, plonk your money on the counter and drive away with a car that wasn't that far removed from the road car.
With a modern V8 Supercar, the cars are so far removed from the road-going versions that apart from the bodyshell in the case of the Falcon and not at all in the case of the current V8 Supercar Commodore, the cars they race are pretty well much prototypes; hence the reason why I mentioned the BMW M3 GTS in the first place. The M3 GTS is a development of sorts from the regular M3 and vicariously the 3-Series rep-box. Admittedly it's far far far removed from sat a

The M3 GTS has forced the hand of development at BMW. Faced with challenges to make the cars last 24 hours, BMW has over the past few years turned a relatively "fragile" car into a robust racer.
The V8 Supercars have been playing the same basic formula now since 1993, and in principle haven't really undergone anything like the developmental process that the BMW M3 GTR has, and nor are they really "pushing the envelope" that far either.

It seems to me that Holden and Ford in Australia are playing with dinosaur technology. Basically the single-cam pushrod V8 from Holden dates in principle from GM's "small block" V8 of 1968 and the Falcon's Windsor engine dates from 1962.
Why in 2011 are they still playing with engines more than 40 years old?

I think that the Le Mans 24 Hours would provide a proper challenge for Ford and Holden. Holden "tried" with their 427 Monaro to have a go at a 24 Hour Race but it wasn't really a proper test because the rules were bent to allow it to compete... and win. Ford on the other hand haven't really made a proper effort at Le Mans since the GT40 of 1969.

As it is, Craig Lowdnes was racing for Team Joest in an Audi of all things; at Bathurst no less in the 12 Hours this year. The first Ford across the line was an FPV Falcon GT in 13th and the first Holden was an HSV spec Astra. An ASTRA?! What is this? Being beaten in your own backyard is disgraceful.
If an Audi R8 can come to the Bathurst 12 Hour, what's to stop Holden from going over to Le Mans and having a go in the 24 Hours?
I think that there is a case to be made to send three 7L HSV Maloos to Le Mans to try and beat the BMW M3 GTS and the Corvette C6. I think that it would help to rekindle the flame of competition and even if it wasn't all that successful, the coolness factor and the legend which would result from Utes at Le Mans would stretch on for years to come.
Obviously you could draw from the existing componentry of V8 Supercars for the suspension and drivetrain etc. and maybe develop a bit of a long-tail body kit for it to give you the downforce to cope with Mulsanne, but I know that the potential is there just waiting to be unleashed.

If someone is from Holden and you are reading this*, then please do it. Get the HRT or 888 to build them for you. Heck even send Bob Katter as an ambassador with them with his big hat, whatever happens, we'd all win.

*If you are from Ford and you're reading this, then I have less faith in FoMoCo generally to support motor racing. Sorry, but that's the way the cookie bounces... or the ball crumbles.

Horse 1199 - BMW X1

2011-06-10T09:21:00.000+10:00

My boss drives a BMW 3-Series (E46) which has come to the end of its respectable life and is to be replaced. The problem is that the current 3-Series (E93) costs more than $50,000 and so has priced itself out of the market.
Consequently was I asked to go and test the 3-Series' cousin which sits on the same platform but costs more than $7000 less, the BMW X1 (E84).

Admittedly I am sort of prejudiced against SUVs generally and my first impression of the X1 was the same as most of them; that is, it is a jacked up estate car. However even this is a little deceptive.

The X1 has a boot which is 420L-1350L in capacity; this compares the normal 3-Series estate which is 460L-1385L. Again the question of why not simply pay for the estate and again the answer of $15,000 savings springs to mind.
The engine choices for the X1 aren't as varied as the 3-Series but most people will opt for the 320i anyway and the engines are similar enough to be irrelevant.

If BMW pride themselves on being "pure driving pleasure" then I'm afraid that the 2011 X1 hasn't really done anything different at all to the E46 from 13 years ago.
It is a very smooth car indeed but unlike the Peugeot 206 which I drive or even the Mini which is also built by the BMW Group, it just doesn't feel dynamically exciting at all; certainly does not live up to the "pure driving pleasure" tag. No, this is the car for driving home in traffic in an "I don't care about driving" sort of way.

I didn't bother to put my foot down all that hard because the man from the dealership sat along side me but it did all the normal things you should expect. It takes off smartly as you'd expect from a rear wheel drive car and stops without being jarring.
The grip levels I assume should be excellent in the wet considering that the particular model that I drove sat on 35-spec, 17 inch wheels. Those are the sorts of wheels and tyres which you used to only find on high performance sports cars and yet somehow the engineers at BMW have still managed to give you a smooth ride. I would suspect though that the damper rates must be set pretty soft to do that and it makes me wonder if they'd need replacing more often because of it.

The BMW X1 is probably the best car in the small SUV class as it should be for that sort of price but to be totally honest, it doesn't anything which any competent 2L hatchback can't do for a better price.
The X1 will probably find its market amongst people who either want a small SUV because they like that sort of car, or by people who simply want a car with a BMW badge on it. For those people I would suggest buying a BMW 120i because they'd be getting exactly the same engine in an easier to drive car.
The point is that it doesn't quite confirm my hypothesis that most SUVs in general are jacked up estate cars, because it doesn't even fulfill that role as well.

If you are considering an X1 and don't really care about the badge buy a Volkswagen Golf 118TSI wagon. It will do the job better and will leave a further $13,000 in your pocket.

Horse 1198 - Pay-As-You-Drive - A Poor Solution

2011-06-08T09:54:00.000+10:00

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/sydney-nsw/pay-as-you-drive-on-roads-scrap-rego-and-fuel-tax/story-e6freuzi-1226071264175
Snippets:
THE man who brought Manchester its congestion tax said Sydney needs a road pricing system - starting with green hybrids and electric cars which avoid a fuel tax.
Jack Opiola, who has had Barack Obama's ear as a pioneer for GPS road tolling, said registration and fuel tax should be scrapped and motorists charged depending on how much they drive and when.

Mr Opiola, who will address government and private roads industry groups at the Roads Australia conference in Sydney today, said the revenue could be invested back into roads instead of being lost in government coffers.

"Everybody pays their fair share. And we are starting (in Portland, Oregon) with vehicles that are not,"

"It would make people conscious of their trips, and in that way it is a good substitute for the gas tax, you could vary the price by time of day or by zones for the city where there can be a higher charge in the peak periods,"
- Daily Telegraph, 8th June 2011.

I sincerely hope that Mr Opiola who has suggested scrapping the Rego and Fuel Taxes is ignored and goes back to America having changed nothing. Whilst the idea of turning motoring into a completely user pays system sounds like a good idea, I wonder if Mr Opiola has actually thought about the implications of specifically whom the tax is going to hurt and who the burden of such a tax falls on.
I would further suggest that Mr Opiola being an American also has little grasp of either the culture or infrastructure of Sydney and that his idea is grounded in ignorance.

Sydney and its environs sit in a great basin bounded on three sides by mountains and on the fourth by the ocean. It stretches roughly 80km north to south and another 80km east to west. However, the provision of the types of infrastructure throughout that broad square is vastly different across the map.

In the eastern suburbs and towards the City of Sydney in the first 100 postcodes (2000-2100) there is a concentration of the provision of public transport. There are far more buses, train lines and ferries within these postcodes than in the rest of Sydney. Also because these suburbs are closer together, the distance which people would need to travel by car to get to where they are going would also be less.
The further you go to the west, north, south, north-west and south-west of Sydney, the provision of buses, train lines and ferries is either restricted to corridors ribbons or else is entirely non-existent.
Coincidentally there is a distinct correlation of household incomes to the provision of more buses, train lines and ferries. People who live further to the west, north, south, north-west and south-west of Sydney, do so because their wages are less and because the distances they need to travel to get to where they are going is also more.

If a tax is imposed directly on the distance that people drive, it is unashamedly borne by the poorer people of Sydney, who because of the hideous incompetence of governments stretching back more than 50 years, have been forced by virtue of the lack of provision of services, to drive further in the first place.
And what does Mr Opiola suggest that the revenue raised from a pay-as-you-drive tax be spent on? Not more public transport which would encourage people to drive less but more roads! Rather than addressing the problem, this jacked up nincompoop actively suggests to perpetuate the problem.
I can understand where he is coming from. Being an American, which is the land of "free enterprise" and where the provision of public transport quite frankly languishes in the 1890s, he has never lived in a situation which encourages anythigng else other than the use of the motor car.

All one needs to do is look at the example of Paris in which one is never more than 500m from a Metro station, or the French national rail corporation SNCF (Société Nationale des Chemins de fer Français) to see how fast and efficient train services can be run. SNCF run regional trains called the TGV which stands for Train à Grande Vitesse or Train of High-Speed and they are. TGVs in some parts of France peak at speeds of 500km/h and average speeds of 275km/h. Such a speed means that you could go from Sydney to Melbourne in a little over three and a half hours, which is even faster than current air travel. But does Mr Opiola suggest that this is where the revenue from a pay-as-you-drive tax be spent on? Not a bar of it.
The worst thing is that this self-appointed guru, keeps on touting his rubbish all over the world. Governments will tend to want to be seen to be doing the "right thing" over the next 20-40 years as climate change becomes more of an issue, yet Mr Opiola's solution to a 21st Century problem is stuck in the 1980s.

I never thought I'd defend Rego fees but here I go. Rego fees as a roughly flat tax across the population of motorists, represent an "access fee" to use the system. They are already charged a usage fee via the taxes contained in the price of petrol. The current system already addresses the issues which Mr Opiola has identified and in a better way because it charges motorists for the access of the road system even if they don't actively use it.

Bet you never thought of that Mr Opiola.

Horse 1197 - "Meowgate" and "Schoolyard Politics"

2011-06-03T11:39:00.003+10:00

http://www.twitvid.com/NKGFR

In case you have been living on Mars (and even then you would have picked up the TV and Radio transmissions), Senator Penny Wong quite rightly put Senator David Bushby in his place after he made a "meow" noise during a Senate estimates committee hearing and accused her of being sensitive.

"You meow when a woman does that ... that's a good idea. It is just extraordinary.
The blokes are allowed to yell but if a woman stands her ground, you want to make that kind of comment. It's sort of schoolyard politics, mate."
- Penny Wong, 1st Jun 2011.

Now whilst sexist remarks are obviously a bad thing, would it have been OK if say Julie Bishop had made the remark?

"When people are carrying on in Question Time and getting personal and vicious, it's just a little thing I do. It's . . . suggesting the girls should put the claws away."
- Julie Bishop, as quoted in The Daily Telegraph, 03 Dec 2008
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/national/cats-claws-are-out-in-parliament/story-e6freuzr-1111118206988

Would the comment have been allowable if the situtation had been reversed, with Senator Penny Wong criticising Senator David Bushby's manliness or lack thereof?

In both cases it sits squarely in the realms of an Abusive argumentum ad hominem attack and I'm afraid that these sort of things have been employed in parliament since the day it began.

Former Prime Minister Paul Keating virtually made a political career out of it, and would quite often attack anyone whom he didn't agree with, like these two attacks on the then Opposition leader John Howard:

"But I will never get to the stage of wanting to lead the nation standing in front of the mirror each morning clipping the eyebrows here and clipping the eyebrows there with Janette and the kids: It's like 'Spot the eyebrows'."
"I am not like the Leader of the Opposition. I did not slither out of the Cabinet room like a mangy maggot..."

Even during what is arguably the single most famous speech in Australian political history, we have what amounts to an abusive ad hominem:

"Well may we say "God save the Queen" because nothing will save the Governor-General. The proclamation you have just heard read by the Governor-General's Official Secretary was countersigned "Malcolm Fraser", who will undoubtedly go down in Australian history from Remembrance Day 1975 as Kerr's Cur."
- Gough Whitlam, 11 Nov 1975

Heading back even further into the realms of political history we can find abusive ad hominem attack in the British Parliament as well. British PM Benjamin Disraeli said of Robert Peel that:

"The Right Honourable gentleman is reminiscent of a poker. The only difference is that a poker gives off the occasional signs of warmth."
- Benjamin Disraeli

If you really want the ultimate example of "schoolyard politics" though, you need to look at Oliver Cromwell who whilst as Member of Parliament for Cambridge had a pillow fight in the House of Commons and after he had signed the warrant for King Charles I's execution had an ink fight with Henry Marten with the quills they'd been using (It's true, look it up).

Senator David Bushby's remarks were uncalled for but the truth is that before this event, he was a nobody in Australian politics and will probably return to being a nobody. As far as insults go, it wasn't even particularly creative either. Maybe he should have started a food fight or something... Brendan Nelson almost did...

... well not really.

Horse 1196 - Life of the Party

2011-06-02T15:15:00.000+10:00

http://www.abc.net.au/tv/qanda/txt/s3224649.htm

That's right but Fairfax never gets told up so and - well, they don't tend to share our stories with us. And I think the interesting thing, though, about the Punch and Judy Show, and it is this, and I think this is the damning indictment on both major parties, is that in each of them, Labor and Liberal, you have a person who is overwhelmingly, in poll after poll after poll, judged to be the most capable, competent, desirable and visionary person to lead the party and in both cases that is the one bloke who in no circumstance will ever be allowed to lead that party out of personal envy and spite for purely personal political - personal political reasons and that is, of course, Kevin Rudd in Labor and Malcolm Turnbull in the Liberal Party and they're being locked out of the leadership out of pure spite, when they are clearly the most well equipped to lead either party.
- Joe Hildebrand, Q And A, ABC1, 31st May 2011

On Monday night's Q And A on ABC1, Joe Hildebrand made the above comment which I think is basically sort of true. As it stands neither Rudd or Turnbull are allowed to lead their respective parties because of something as petty as personality and factionalism.

Political parties in the modern sense didn't really start to make sense until about the time of George Canning and Robert Peel in the 1830s. Members of the cabinet were selected on the basis of their ability to do the job.

Such an idea in today's parliament would be unheard of, and when you have factions within parties, it becomes even more convoluted.
Of course this then begs the question who who the best theoretical people are for the various portfolios, assuming you could install any member to any position you wanted. I thought about this and came up with the following:

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Kevin Rudd - Foreign Minister:
Kevin Rudd is the best communicator in the Parliament. This is the prime reason why he was made Opposition Leader going into the 2007 election, and has been displayed again and again during his time as Foreign Minister.
Clearly Kevin is the sort of chap you want to project the character of the nation. Now whether he does that better in the capacity of Prime Minister or Foreign Minister is debateable, but the point is that if you want someone in a position of vision rather than minutae, Kevin is your man.

Malcolm Turnbull - Finance Minister:
If you look back over his career we find that he's been chairman of OzEmail, Goldman Sachs Australia, Axiom Forest Resources, FTR Holdings Ltd and is the only politician on BRW's 200 richest list. He's been Treasurer before which begs the question why would I have him as Treasurer again.
Here I think it's a case of what's best for the country, and one of the remits of the Minister for Finance is reviewing governmental spending programs, tendering, and government financial accountability.
As the best political brain in the parliament and also clearly the sharpest head for business, Turnbull is the person you want if you want to ensure the viability of government programs.

Wayne Swan - Treasurer:
Swan proved himself more than capable during the height of the global financial crisis, and though the $900 "cash splash" was seen as perhaps wasteful, it did mean that Australia was the only country in the OECD not to go into recession during the GFC.
His book "Postcode: The Splintering of a Nation" (2005) is a pragmatic but chilling sort of read which suggests that this rather understated man, not only has the mind for being Treasurer but he's also concerned for the well-being of the citizens of the nation; that is so incredibly rare amongst politicians, that it would be scandalous to waste.

Julia Gillard - Minister for Health and Education:
I think that Ms Gillard is in a curious position as PM. Somehow I think that a major reason why she was placed there was because her opposite number in parliament is Tony Abbott. Before the 2007 Julia was Shadow Minister for Health; again as opposite number to Tony Abbott who was the minister. During the First Rudd Ministry she was also Minister for Education.
Gillard is basically a creature of the Labor left (which is odd considering that she was installed as PM by the Labor right); as such, she'd be best suited to a position also of the left. Health and Education are portfolios of social policy and since this is about finding a fit for the job, Ms Gillard is best suited there.

Which leaves the position of Prime Minister itself vacant. Does there even need to be such a position? The phrase "First among equals" is a good way to describe the Prime Minister and the Constitution doesn't even define the position at all.
It makes logical sense that there should be a chair of business, and ideally such a person should have some force of personality but it's also worth noting that the Prime Minister is a minister without portfolio, so it might be best to find someone who has a broad view.
Of the current crop I'd pick...

Joe Hockey - Prime Minister:

For the budget reply speech it is usually customary for the Shadow Treasurer to deliver the reply, but this was done by Tony Abbot and not the Shadow Treasurer Joe Hocker nor the Shadow Andrew Robb. Why the heck would I pick Hockey for PM then?

The best response I can suggest is the words of Mr Hockey himself with regards leaked emails from the Liberal Party whips:
"I would say to people they should put their ambitions for the nation ahead of their own ambitions.
This is not about individuals, it is about giving Australia real leadership and, from my perspective, I believe the best way to do that is as a team; to put aside individual aspirations and focus on what is in the best interests of the team."

Now of course you could suggest that this is just Mr Hockey trying to protect the interests of the party but isn't that what you want from a leader of the nation, someone who'll hold the cabinet together?

I think that Joe Hockey has a similar sort of character to that of Robert Menzies who if he wasn't Australia's best PM, then was No.2 behind Curtin.
Hockey is certainly more conciliatory than Tony Abbott ever will be and has a robust understanding of political history in Australia as this shows:

http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2010/s3024449.htm

So for my money Joe Hockey would be the PM, though given "envy and spite for purely personal political reasons" which seem to be endemic of the house at the moment, I don't think it likely in the short term and certainly with the conditions I've just stated, it's impossible.

Horse 1195 - The Carbon Tax Will Hurt Families... Duh!

2011-05-31T16:30:00.001+10:00

Labor and the Greens want it; the Liberals are too chaotic to decide if they want it; the European Union has had one in place since 2005 and in Canada, Stephen Harper has been returned as PM by running a campaign of railing against it. So then, what is the point of a Carbon Tax anyway?

Whether or not you call it an Emissions Trading Scheme, a Carbon Tax or a direct price of carbon emissions, whatever form the proposed tax takes will ultimately be resolved through the operations of the market. Just like a tax on Cigarettes, Alcohol or Petrol, the whole point is that the tax is essentially a punitive one for the simple reason that unless the system is either punitive to discourage certain behaviours, or incentivised to encourage other behaviours, then there is no motive for the market to do anything whatsoever.

Let me put this another way. When the price of oil goes up, oil companies merely raise their prices. If the tax on petrol goes up, oil companies merely raise their prices. Either way, oil companies don't chuck a massive whinge because of the operation of market forces, all that happens is a shift in prices.
If a Carbon Tax is introduced, then it makes little difference upon whom it is imposed. If it is imposed on the "big polluters" then they'll pass that on with higher prices. If it is imposed on consumers directly, then that also results in higher prices. It really makes three-quarters of diddly-squat who the tax is imposed on, a punitive tax will raise prices.

So called "sin" taxes have another name, namely a Pigovian tax. An economist called Arthur Pigou published several papers; one of them being on the subject of "negative externalities", or costs which are not transmitted through the mechanism of price.
A good example of an externality is that of traffic. If car owners use the roads, they impose costs to other drivers through increased traffic flow, leading to congestion and other costs like increased insurance premiums because of higher accident rates.
A Pigovian tax in this case would be to raise the tax on petrol to discourage car usage.

This argument that imposing a Carbon Tax will raise prices and "hurt families" is to state the obvious. DUH! That's the point!
The whole point of a Carbon price is to change people's behaviour. Carbon Pollution is a negative externality as a result of producing goods and services, so it's ultimately the consumer's fault anyway for buying goods and services in the first place.

What is the alternative? Merrily going on to create an even bigger externality of things like rising sea levels and flooding, the total destruction of people's homes, farms and livelihood, and even weirder weather leading to greater food insecurity, famines and wars?
It seems to me that a punitive tax as a means to let markets sort out the problem is only the first in many steps and whilst political parties of all colours dither and do nothing, it brings the deadlines only ever closer.

People and corporations will not generally change their behaviour unless acted upon by an outside force. A classic example of this is the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire (look at the link, it's scary). Because there wasn't any incentive to provide adequate fire escapes in the building, no-one did so and as a result 146 people were trapped inside the burning building and died.
I'm not prepared to debate whether or not climate change is or isn't caused by humans, the point is that it does exists and is caused by humans, and if you don't agree you are an idiot, pure and simple.

Something has to be done. The point of a Carbon tax in whatever form it takes will hurt the consumer, because if it doesn't, nothing will be done at all.

Orderly Anarchy

2011-05-26T12:03:00.000+10:00

Yeah! I'm so Underground!

Will passengers please stand behind the yellow line for their own convenience and safety? Thank you from London Underground.

Horse 1194 - Would NFL Be Safer Without Helmets?

2011-05-26T06:19:00.000+10:00

I've just been watching the first State of Origin Rugby League match between NSW and Queensland for 2011 and was wondering about this though experiment proposed by the Wall Street Journal in 2009; namely:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704402404574527881984299454.html
This football season, the debate about head injuries has reached a critical mass. Startling research has been unveiled. Maudlin headlines have been written. Congress called a hearing on the subject last month.
...
But before the debate goes any further, there's a fundamental question that needs to be investigated. Why do football players wear helmets in the first place? And more important, could the helmets be part of the problem?

Watching the Rugby League tonight, it was startlingly obvious to me that the hits taken by players in a Rugby League match are nowhere near as rough as they are in a game of NFL, and I tend to wonder if helmets are part of the problem.
I also find it a little curious that the NFL season only lasts 17-weeks, and the matches are only 60 minutes of actual game time, as opposed to 80 minutes in a game of Rugby League and 120 minutes in an Australian Rules Football match.

The British Medical Association came to the conclusion in one of their reports, that the risk of serious injury and death caused by head trauma was actually lower in the days of bare-knuckle boxing. Because boxers would feel their own punches more without gloves they'd tend not to hit as hard. There are reports of prizefights lasting beyond the 6 hour mark. The link is below:
http://www.bma.org/ap.nsf/AttachmentsByTitle/PDFboxingdebate/$FILE/TheBoxingDebate.pdf

Then there is the curious tale of the Munich Taxicab Experiment, in which half of a fleet of taxicabs were fitted with ABS and half not. The drivers were then let loose but not told which cabs they had.

Among a total of 747 accidents incurred by the company's taxis during that period, the involvement rate of the ABS vehicles was not lower, but slightly higher,
...
Subsequent analysis of the rating scales showed that drivers of cabs with ABS made sharper turns in curves, were less accurate in their lane-holding behaviour, proceeded at a shorter forward sight distance, made more poorly adjusted merging manoeuvres and created more "traffic conflicts".
http://psyc.queensu.ca/target/chapter07.html

I'm wondering then, if NFL players didn't have helmets on, whether they'd be as likely to use their heads as battering rams the way they can do now, and whether or not the game would be made safer as a result?

This idea I imagine falls into the same sorts of questions as Risk Compensation, Risk Homeostasis and the Peltzman Effect, all of which are more to do with insurance risk questions than anything else, but it's still a good question.

Would NFL Be Safer Without Helmets? I wonder.

Horse 1193 - Geek Pride Day - Bonus Post

2011-05-25T16:36:00.000+10:00

1. Is Unity and is therefore interesting.

2. Is the only even Prime number and is therefore interesting.

3. Is both Prime and a Triangular number and is therefore interesting.

4. Is a square number and is therefore interesting.

5. Is a Prime number and is therefore interesting.

6. Is a Triangular number and is therefore interesting.

7. Is a Prime number and is therefore interesting.

8. Is a Cubic number and is therefore interesting.

9. Is a square number and is therefore interesting.

10. Is a Triangular number and is therefore interesting.

11. Is a Prime number and is therefore interesting.

12. Is the first Abundant number and is therefore interesting.

13. Is a Prime number and is therefore interesting.

BUT

14 has nothing particular interesting about it at all. 14 is a boring boring number. Thierry Henry played in the 14 kit for Arsenal, which is a boring boring team and he is a boring boring player.
If 14 is so boring, does that make it interesting? I think not. 14 you are a boring boring number. Go and play with the other boring numbers.

Horse 1192 - The Use of Syrup in Coffee

2011-05-25T09:05:00.000+10:00

Yesterday my boss went for a jaunt into the City where we had a meeting and during the course of the meeting we went to a certain franchise coffee house, where five out of the six of us had coffee with added syrup except me who ordered my usual "long black". Nobody else seemed to mind about the quality of their coffee, but mine was utterly horrid. As a result of this, there is only one conclusion that I can come up with - This franchise coffee house uses rubbish coffee but masks it with syrupy badness.

I can see a parallel with this and the reasons (I suspect), for the use of a lot of spices in certain kinds of cooking. If meat had gone off or was beginning to turn, by spicing the meat to the point of utter ridiculousness, people could no longer taste that the meat had gone off.
Coffee is made from the seeds or pit in the middle of the fruit of the coffee plant, technically coffee is a cherry of sorts so I suspect that like every other fruit, that if it is left out for a long time, it's probably likely to go bad.

There might be some degree of truth that maybe this particular franchise coffee house either keeps its coffee in storage for a longer time, or it could also be the case that in the chase for ever greater profits, they're simply using a cheaper grade of coffee.
I already object to coffee houses milking and frothing up coffee in an effort to justify charging so much for their coffee. Adding syrup is just extra addition which can be marked up 500%, thus sending even more money into the hands of Franchise Coffee House™ Inc.

One thing I found in the United States was that because of the prevalence of Franchise Coffee House™ Inc. many smaller operators simply couldn't play the margins any more and shut down. Some hotels even boasted about having Franchise Coffee House™ Inc. either on their premises or even in the room. Admittedly I never stayed in any of these hotels, but I found generally that either because most of the coffee in the United States was drip coffee (which itself should be a crime), or Rival Franchise Coffee House™ Inc., one could never find a decent cup of coffee anywhere.

I have travelled through France and Italy and I can tell you from first hand experience, that the best coffee (and even from poor quality beans to begin with) is made by baristas who have turned it into an art. Even in the UK, you can still find greasy spoons where the coffee might not be world class but the atmosphere is cosy and warm instead of being blasted with the latest chart entry.

There is hope though. Franchise Coffee House™ Inc. closed two-thirds of its "stores" in Australia with some market analysts citing that they failed to understand the "European coffee culture" in Australia. I however think that the reason is far more obvious than this. The point being that if you sell a product which is horrid, then less people will want to buy it in the first place.

Horse 1191 - OneHD's Coverage of Formula One... or Rather Not.

2011-05-22T22:40:00.000+10:00

In Horse 1187 I complained that One HD's coverage of Formula One online was woefully inadequate. At the next GP in Spain the coverage completely dropped out and didn't restart until lap 8, meaning that if you were relying on the online stream for live coverage, you got diddly-squat and missed the start.

In the meantime, I was following Twitter and counting the number of complaints that were sent to the @OneHD twitter account. At the time of this posting, we were up to 2523 tweets all singing together in their general grumpiness about the poor TV coverage.

It also made me think about how badly this reflects on OneHD's main "sponsors" of the F1 coverage. Vodafone are trying to push their Infinite 45 plan, and there are adverts for Mercedes-Benz online. Now admittedly I can't afford a Mercedes-Benz so I won't be buying one of those, but just suppose you were trying to use the "Desire HTC" on Vodafon's Infinite 45 plan to watch the Formula One coverage, just what do you think you would have seen for the those first 8 laps of the race? NOTHING.

I have resigned myself to the fact that if I want to watch Formula One, for yet another season, it's not going to be live because I will be forced to watch it on Channel 10 after they play NCIS, Hawaii-Five-O, and Masterchef. But at least I can say this...

Because of you One HD and your owners Channel 10, I will deliberately not consider Vodafone for my next mobile phone and will cancel my existing phone contract. I will also delierately try to avoid NCIS, Hawaii-Five-O, and Masterchef out of spite and sincerely hope that the 2012 season of Formula One goes to someone part way compotent like Channel 7 or Channel 9.
How was it that in 1987 we could see all 16 races LIVE but in 2011 we can't manage to see any at all?

I'll leave you to ponder that whilst I watch Doctor Who on ABC iView. Heck even the ABC can live stream ABC News 24 without any problems.