Horse 2101 - Schrödinger's Election - We Are On, Or Not On

Bang a gong, we are on. It's the bout to knock the other out. It's the great spill to decide the king of the hill. It's the Top Hats versus the Hard Hats. It's the constitution, it's Mabo, it's the vibe.
The Senate has officially rejected the ABCC bill and in a stunning turn of events, has handed the Turnbull Government an election trigger, which means that we are almost certainly heading for a double dissolution election. It's the only time that there is smoke before the gun has been fired. We have entered a period of Schrödinger's Parliament: it might already be dead but no one has opened the chamber to find out.

In the Blue corner, we have the Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull who probably should have called an election within a fortnight of winning the premiership to lock down his legitimacy but for reasons known only to the cats of Australia, he did not.
In the Red corner we have the Opposition Leader Bill Shorten who is known for his skilled knife work and whose most famous moment was standing around looking sad, at the top of a hole, during the Beaconsfield Mine collapse.
Neither of our two protagonists have led their parties to an election before and the last time that this happened was all the way back in 1900.

The two things which make this election uniquely unique (which is a tautological tautology) is that during the period of the election campaign there will be the Federal Budget handed down (which has the potential to itself trigger an election should Labor win the election and then decide not to pass it) and the minor detail that it will be a seven week campaign rather than five (assuming that it happens in the first place).

Probably the Liberal Party will attack Shorten over the failure to pass the ABCC legislation and accuse him personally of being a pawn of the union movement but given that this failed in the Victorian state election which brought Dan Andrews to the premiership of that state, it might not necessarily be all that effective. This argument is something of an unexploded ordinance in that Turnbull could accuse Shorten of being involved with the unions but Shorten's response would be that this is obvious. Shorten first came to national prominence as the union representative during the Beaconsfield mine collapse. This sort of attack might be akin to accusing Shorten of being a member of the Labor Party.
Malcolm Turnbull can project a more positive stance by suggesting that the Liberal Party is better at economic management, which is a narrative which still seems to resonate with the electorate, even though the then Labor Treasurer Wayne Swan led Australia admirably through the Global Financial Crisis. Swan has been remarkably absent in politics for a while and I think is still the best candidate for Treasurer. In contrast, Turnbull could run a frontal campaign directly on Labor's promise to hold a Banking Royal Commission by painting it as undermining confidence in the banking sector.

Now that the Senate has failed to pass the legislation and we wait for the election trigger to be pulled, then the only action that remains for this session of parliament is the handing down of the budget in May. This in itself has an interesting set of circumstances surrounding it, which I do not understand. I don't for instance know if the Opposition Leader Bill Shorten gets a right to a reply speech on the Wednesday immediately following. I also assume (because I honestly don't know) that it will be for the new parliament to vote on the Appropriation Bills which form the budgetary legislation. If Labor wins government on July 2, one can only think that they'd think about passing a new budget. Of course I also don't know what would happen if say Labor was in government and they faced a hostile Senate. If they couldn't pass their own budget, would the Appropriation Bills which formed the previous Turnbull Government's budget still be in play and does that mean that the clock is ticking? What I'm asking is, does the future result of the election mean that we're inadvertently sleepwalking towards another double dissolution in November, under the same set of circumstances that led to The Dismissal in 1975?

If Bill Shorten loses the election, then I think that it's safe to assume that the Labor Party will probably fire him as leader. It is usual for an Opposition once they have lost an election to go into disarray and run side to side like brainless sheep. Of course that would invoke a mostly untested process, which was instituted after Kevin Rudd left party leadership and that could mean that the Labor Party is technically without a leader on the floor of the chamber until the rank and file of the party finally get around to voting for Albo (you know it's going to happen).
If the Coalition loses the electron, then Malcolm Turnbull would more than likely stay on as leader but it is highly likely that there will be a leadership challenge on the horizon in late July. Barnaby
Joyce would almost certainly stay on as the leader of the National Party because let's face it, the Nationals are too small to have highly vocal factions.

As of this morning, we have a case of Schrödinger's Election. The election is both on and not on July 2 and there is a thing inside a chamber which has the potential to kill or has already killed off a parliament. The only way whether or not you can tell if there is an election on or not, is when the chamber is opened after a division. The cats of Australia have made their choice; we just don't know what it is yet.
One thing we do know is that whatever the outcome and whoever wins, they won't suffer the same fate as Dutch Prime Minister Johann de Witt. In 1672, an angry mob killed and ate him, after lynching him and ripping his body to pieces. We might have knifing of leaders in Australia and we might pull election triggers but we don't resort to out

Horse 2100 - Never Say Sterben

Liverpool 4 - Borussia Dortmund 3

Mkhitaryan 5'
Aubameyang 9'
Origi 48'
Reus 57'
Coutinho 66'
Sakho 77'
Lovren 91'

I can not point out how ridiculously happy this makes me.

After Mkhitaryan's goal went in after 5 minutes, I was disappointed. After Aubameyang's goal doubled the lead after just 9 minutes, I was positively livid. Liverpool in the league have been directionless for some time, they lost 2-1 against West Ham in the FA Cup back in February and after losing against Man City in the League Cup on penalties, the Europa League which is basically the "second chance, thanks for showing up" cup, was their only hope at taking anything away from this season at all. Nine minutes into this fixture against Borussia Dortmund, they appeared to have thrown than away as well.

After the half time break, Origi undid some of the damage by scoring his fourth goal in three games for Liverpool but Marco Reus looked to have put the knife to Liverpool's throat by scoring Dortmund's third because of a defensive brain explosion by Mamadou Sakho played him onside.

At 3-1 down, hope seemed to have been lost until Coutinho fired in a bullt from just outside the 18-yard box; to bring the score back to 3-2.
Thirteen minutes from the end though, as Dortmund turned to a defensive stance in order to shut the match down, Sakho went from villain to hero when he lowered his head to turn in a corner from Coutinho and at 3-3, Dortmund only dug in deeper.

Perhaps the game was destined to go to extra time and penalites but a slice of brilliance and cleverness made sure that this fixture ended, after a free-kick, which led to Sturridge's back heel to Milner, who crossed it onto the head of Dejan Lovren in the 91st minute.

I know that this sounds ridiculous but already, I was think of a fixture from eleven years ago, when Liverpool were 3-0 down at half time, scored 3 goals in the second half and won a piece of silverware. This time around, they scored 4 goals in the second half and whilst they haven't yet won a piece of silverware, surely the memory of the dream of the impossible must be flooding back.

During the league season, Liverpool have been on occasion seemingly unable to score. I don't know if this is because tactically, manager Jürgen Klopp likes to keep all his eggs in one basket but on this occasion, it looked like both Borussia Dortmund and Liverpool had all their eggs in the same basket - and all of those eggs were being violently smashed all over the place in pursuit of one overly egged omelette.
Considering that this was against Jürgen Klopp's former club and that they would have had at least a fair idea of how he operates, then perhaps they should have made good on their earlier killer blows. The strange thing is that Liverpool actually remain undefeated by German opposition at Anfield; even if it took a German manager to preserve that record.

We now look to the Semi Finals, where Liverpool will meet either Sevilla, Shakhtar Donetsk or Villarreal.

Horse 2099 - No-One Cares About The Stairs

There's a lady who's sure all that glitters is gold and she's buying a stairway to heaven.
This is not it.

More than likely this is one of the most boring photographs which has ever appeared on this blog.
You and I and everyone can see that it is nothing more than a photograph of a set of stairs. "Ahah!", you don't hear me say, for this is a text based medium and sounds do not travel via the medium of text. This is a photograph of something special; a world which has long past out of view and which will again hide itself away from prying eyes.

Wynyard Station in the Sydney CBD has been in desperate need of renovation for far too long. The reason for this is that in terms of passenger traffic, it is easily in the top three in Sydney. Every morning when the city breathes in, because of Wynyard's proximity to the financial and business district, it is the point through which most of the joyless business types pass. Likewise in the afternoon, it becomes the point from which the city vomits them all back into the suburbs. At five past five in the afternoon, you can sometimes barely move on the platforms for all the crowds that accumulate. At midday on the weekend though, it turns into a ghost town, with only the memories of the working week before, left to inhabit it.

These stairs though, are remnants of a past which only the observant are reminded of. They are the reminder of what once was. Currently, Wynyard Station has four platforms; they are numbered 3 and 4 upstairs and 5 and 6 downstairs. These stairs are for the permanently closed and deleted platforms 1 and 2.
Once upon a time in the lands of the past when Sydney had the largest tram network in the world, Platforms 1 and 2 served as tram platforms. The trams that headed northbound, went up the North Shore and to places like Mosman and the zoo. Platforms 1 and 2 would have been like the other platforms and breathed passenger traffic in and out. These stairs serviced those platforms.
The obvious question of why they still exist has two possible answers for me. The first is the more likely one, in that simple apathy and dereliction of care is why they were never demolished. Nobody saw a need to and so nobody could be bothered. I have a more hopeful answer though. My hope is that they were saved just in case they were needed again at some point in the future. I hope that the reason that they didn't suffer the indignation of the jackhammer is that someone was and is looking ahead to a time when once again, it will fulfill a useful purpose.

Directly above these stairs and where Platforms 1 and 2 used to be, the tunnels which once saw trams pass through are now filled, rather uselessly, with cars which are parked there. Trams which could move fifty and sixty people at a time, have been replaced by cars which remain static most of the day and given that they're likely to be driven by even richer and even more joyless business types, they will more likely than not be ferrying only a single occupant. It's probably reasonable to estimate that the former tram tunnels now have less people pass through them in an entire week than what would have passed through them in ten minutes. Someone appears to be making money though. I went upstairs to look at the car parking rates and saw that a day rate cost $48 - that's more than I currently pay for a week's worth of public transport usage, or more than I'd pay for a month's worth of lunches.

The scary thing is that these car park expenses are almost certainly being counted as business expenses; which means that you and I are in effect subsidising this inefficient waste of what could be useful infrastructure to the tune of as much as $14.40 per car per day in tax which has been foregone.
Most of the people who walk past this construction site don't know and don't care about these stairs and wouldn't even think to look at them; much less consider what could you been. Once upon a time in the land of the past, these stairs would have been dressed with wooden handrails and possibly with advertisements for Walton's, Mark Foy's, Brylcream and Bonox, in the rises. Right now, the cry out to be used again but face a future of again being hidden behind walls or destroyed entirely.

For me they are a reminder of what was stolen from this city by a past government who didn't consider the future at all and a series of following governments who haven't made good on restoring that which was lost.
The renovation of Wynyard Station is a reparation of degradation yet doesn't change the situation of devastation wrought by past impatience. In the shiny future of tomorrow when Wynyard has been rebuilt anew, these stairs will again be unseen; reminding no-one of what should be.

This is where those stairs should lead to. The fact that they do not, is the result of abject stupidity on the part of a government past and the refusal of all subsequent state governments to fix what they destroyed.

Horse 2098 - Zoom Zoom Zoom Is "Childish"

http://www.autoblog.com/2016/04/07/new-mazdaspeed3-mazdaspeed6-delayed/
According to a Motoring interview, Mazda doesn't intend to build high-performance versions of the latest Mazda3 and Mazda6. 
...
Moro is already thinking about the direction for the future performance vehicles. He calls the previous Mazdaspeed3 "childish" and thinks it's time to go a different way. "Mazda brand has become more mature, more upscale, more sophisticated, and we have a new transition of the brand to relate that direction," he said.
- Chris Bruce, Autoblog, 7th Apr 2016

Mazda's North America CEO, Masahiro Moro, announced last week that Mazda would be discontinuing their Mazdaspeed label and with it their MPS label, deriding them as "childish" and that it wasn't unbefitting of a mature motor car company.
I have seen almost universal incredulousness displayed by motoring journalists, the garagistas and keyboard warriors on social media. I can understand these people throwing their hands up in the air and going berko but I honestly think that once you move outside the echo chamber of motorphiles, the general public doesn't give even a single turn of the key. It makes zero difference to them. Mazda may just have announced that they were changing their postal address for all the difference it made.

In some respects I understand Moro's line of thinking. It's more than likely that someone in the accounting department ran the numbers and came to the conclusion that the existence of the Mazdaspeed line as a point of difference was entirely pointless. I have often thought this way about the various marketing divisions of the various motor companies in America. GM ran at least six brands at one point and quite rightly both Oldsmobile and Pontiac have bitten the dust. Ford has come to its senses and finally killed off Mercury, as has Toyota which also sent Scion to the metaphorical wrecker's yard and Honda has hinted that Acura might also be soon for the chop. If Mazdaspeed was treated internally by Mazda like one of these, then its removal is rational.
It is also possible that someone at Mazda looked at the Mazdaspeed and MPS badges and decided that they were writing coolness cheques that they couldn't cash.

 Mercedes-Benz' AMG division led the revival of the Silberpfeil as a sporting identity in the early 1990's, following an official absence from motorsport of 35 years after the 1955 Le Man's disaster which killed 82 people. AMG were the division which led the company through sports car and touring car racing and they currently run the World Championship winning Formula One team.
Nissan's NISMO division has been running their Japanese touring car and sports car team for nigh on 30 years, Toyota's TRD team ran their World Rally Championship effort, then a sports car team and then played in Formula One for a while and closer to home it could be argued that HSV from Holden has been one of the headline acts of Australian touring car racing since 1988. Subaru's star has been falling lately as its famed WRX and STI badges shone in the World Rally Championship and after they pulled out, there isn't anything to back up the desired image.

This is the problem for Mazdaspeed and MPS. Quite apart from the obvious fact that they couldn't even agree on a unified identity across markets, there isn't really much of a marketing point for them.
Mazda won the Le Mans 24 Hour race in 1991 after struggling for a decade and then being a little bit lucky when it came to some rule changes. Their efforts almost immediately started to dwindle and they haven't been back since. Apart from a brief foray into touring car racing in the early 1980s and a few 12 Hour wins in production car racing in the late 1990s, Mazda haven't really done much in the way of motorsport and that's a problem. You can't really market a sporty badge if you don't compete in sport. It's a bit like going a shopping mall and seeing people who have obviously never done a day of sport in their lives, walking around in sportswear. This is probably what Moro has noticed.

There is an alternative though, the company could start making good on the coolness cheques that it's trying to cash and actually go out and compete in motorsport. The way you get to have your posters on the walls of ten year olds is by racing. And yes, that does sound childish but the thing to remember about most men in particular is that part of us never grows up at all; we only get taller.
A lot of the psychology of branding has to do with trading on the memories of the past. People remember catch phrases and jingles for a long time after the ad campaign has ended. I can't even remember the last time that I ate a bowl of Frosties but even I remember Tony the Tiger's opinion of them. I can tell you what "the real thing" is and what "things go better" with, despite both of those ad campaigns ending before I was even born. Jaguar and Alfa Romeo have a brand image which results from their efforts in the 1950s and earlier, so it's not like the marketing needs to be current to have an effect.

As the owner of a Mazda 2, I can tell you that we didn't buy the car because of brand loyalty or even because of some perceived image. Brands like BMW, Audi, Mercedes-Benz and Lexus trade heavily on that sort of image but Mazda can't really do that. It could be taken that Moro's comments were supposed to be seen as a positioning statement but it still only really tells part of the story. The truth is that Mazdaspeed and MPS actually are irrelevant and that this is a rational action, or that they should be consolidated and or replaced with something that genuinely does show sporting intent. Basically if Mazdaspeed and MPS can't cash coolness cheques then it should stop writing them, or start banking coolness so that it can.

Horse 2097 - Rollo, MP for Jollity West

During one of the afternoons at work where the radio was on and there was talk about politics, the inevitable question arose about whether either of us would have ever gone into (or in my case go into) politics. My boss said that he just didn't like the idea of sitting through endless meetings just to achieve anything and I kind of jokingly said that I'd never get elected because the sort of political outcomes that I would want to achieve would have been considered to be boring in the 1960s but so far massively to the left today that I'd never rise through the party ranks; which would be necessary to be elected.
I mentioned that I once accidentally got some votes in an election once, and that that would be the most likely route if I was ever going to enter serious politics (which itself isn't likely).

When I was in Year 11, there was the obligatory election for School Captain, as is every school's wont to run a literal popularity contest for some hitherto unknown reason. Twenty years later I have no idea who our School Captain was but I do remember that because I'd run a campaign of "Don't Vote For Anyone", somehow I'd managed to win some votes despite not actually contesting the election and not even appearing on the ballot paper. I even made some campaign posters on the photocopier in the library, using pictures that I'd found in a book about Lech Wałęsa's Solidarność movement in Poland.
Looking slightly ahead in time, I'm pretty sure that had I been involved in student politics in university, I would have been in some anarchical society. I don't mean that I like left or right wing anarchical politics, rather that the whole thing strikes me as being dead naff and a colossal waste of time. I probably might have joined something like a Pirate Party and contested elections as a joke candidate; which in my opinion sums up the entirety of student politics to a T, or rather an Rrrr!
Unless people really are dyed in the wool supporters of a political party (this usually applies to the sort of people who'd join the Young Liberals) then the only reason that I imagine that people would want to be involved in student politics is that they think that it will look good on their CV; when in actual fact no employer really cares which political team you barrack for in the grand shouting match.

In a roundabout way, this brings me to the subject of the 2016 Australian Federal Election. I'm sorry to announce that unless you out there in Internet Land can raise the $1000 deposit needed for me to run as a candidate, then it ain't gonna happen.
In 2013 I had the mad idea of looking into how much it would cost to stand as a candidate and run for Parliament. The writs were written and the registrations closed by the time that I got round to it but this time around, I've had plenty of warning and have still come to the conclusion that it just isn't worth the effort.
Provided you are over the age of 18 and hold Australian citizenship, then if you want to become a candidate then you need to jump over two hurdles which although aren't massive, are at least arduous enough to discourage many people from running for Parliament and making the ballot paper massive (I'm talking about the House of Representatives ticket here). Firstly as an unendorsed candidate who isn't affiliated with a political party, you need to collect at least 100 signatures from the general public. Then you need to pay the $1000 deposit. This is usually enough to stop most wing nuts and weirdos from getting a spot on the ballot paper.
Of course once you have been registered as a candidate, you are then entitled to get a spot on the billing on the hustings in the debate which usually takes place in the various town halls about a fortnight before the election.
In order to qualify to be reimbursed for your expenses of the campaign, you need to achieve 4% of the first preference vote. I worked out that it you were particularly lucky wing nut who ran in an electorate with not very many candidates, then you probably might be able to pick up a few protest votes but it more than likely wouldn't be enough to claim that 4% and win your money back. Running for Parliament just doesn't seem like a very profitable proposition to me.
In the Division of Chifley which I live in, the chances of anyone other than a Labor candidate getting elected are slim to asthmatic at best. For me to consider a challenge is futile and stupid.

The begging question is why would I run for Parliament in the first place. I think that most of the people who enter politics are the same dyed in the wool supporters who joined the perpetual shouting match in university and have spent so long in yelling "Hooray" and "Boo" that they're more concerned with the game of politics than the actual job of governance. Why would I want to enter that? The truth is that I don't (maybe).

As a spectator who is watching the shouting match from the sidelines, the actual chance that I have of entering the arena is close enough to may as well be zero. Even if you do join a political party, in order to even be considered to be placed on the ballot paper, you either have to dislodge the incumbent member of win the internal squabble to get that endorsement from the party. Locally that means pulling the levers and operating the necessary mechanics to not only dislodge our local member Ed Husic but also dissuade anyone else from running as well. After all of that, the task then involves convincing the electorate to vote for you and then if you want to make a career out of it, going through the whole process again in three years' time. Once you do manage to secure the job, you then have to listen to what the electorate wants, answer correspondence, nut out and vote on legislation and then plunge into the perpetual shouting match just to get anything done. That all just seems like an expensive way to apply for a job which you're not guaranteed to hold and can be fired because of the actions of other people. For someone who already likes the idea of running as a joke candidate, that seems like an unfunny joke with a terrible punchline.

That's not to say that democracy itself is a joke. The system we've inherited from our forebears is incredibly stable and whilst I think that there are some decisions which have been incredibly cruel, some which I think have been culpable and bordering on treasonous, on the whole the fact that we largely don't notice our governments is if nothing else an indication that they work.

So you're not likely to see me thundering from the backbenches as MP for Jollity West unless I somehow get a massive cashiplasty in the wallet department. In the meantime I'll just have to continue to be a spectator and yell "Hooray" and "Boo" at the radio like everyone else and maybe even "Arrr!".

Horse 2096 - No Quarter Given At Close Quarters

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw/royal-australian-mint-releases-oneoff-australian-quarter-coin-to-honour-war-veterans/news-story/029540dda9620ea0a96eb0195f5bb7f4
For the first time Australia will get its own 25 cent coin, but you’ll probably have a better chance of finding one in a collection than in your change at the local corner shop.

The Royal Australian Mint will produce more than one million “quarters” in an exclusive one-off release and although they will be legal tender, the unique gold coins are unlikely to end up in circulation as general currency.
- Daily Telegraph, 27th April, 2016.

Owing to the fact that the United States introduced decimal currency at a time when most of the world was still using fractional currency, the US Quarter is as far as I can tell, the only 25c coin in circulation anywhere in the modern world. Britain has from time to time issued Crown sized coins which are denominated at 25 pence but they never circulate and Austria did have a 25c coin but that was more than a decade and a half ago, before the invention of the Euro.

These new 25 coins, which have an effective markup of just over 1700% (assuming that the Daily Telegraph which you need to purchase in order to get them is worthless), have a chance of being circulated which is so close to zero that it may as well be zero but in principle it is if nothing else, a good idea to test the public's attitude towards currency reform.

Let's be honest, the coins which currently circulate are not really fit for purpose anymore. The 5c, 10c and 20c coins have their basis in the British Florin (two shillings) of 1849 and that planchet size is still in use as our current 20c coin. If we assume that the average rate of inflation since then has been running at 4% then that works out to be the equivalent buying power of $139.82. That sounds idiotic until you realise that Victorian Britain had coins all the way down to fractions of farthings; so a two shilling coin would have been something which would almost never have even been seen by the majority of the population. At the time of the introduction of decimal currency in 1966, that calculation puts the 20c coin at the equivalent buying power of $1.40 and if that sounds stupid, just think of how idiotic it would be to tell the people of 1966 that the Daily Telegraph now costs 15 shillings.
As I see it, the 5c, 10c and 20c coins in their current form out outlived their usefulness and worn out their welcome. Usually I'd be calling for the abolition of just the 5c coin and maybe the 10c coin but I have seen the light. We should dump all of the cupronickel coins currently in circulation, that is the 5, 10, 20 and 50 cent coins, and introduce the Quarter to replace the whole cursed lot.

On my recent trip to the United States, I was convinced of the usefulness of the quarter because of the utter idiocy that is the persistence of the penny, nickel and dime. Pennies are stupid and should have been gotten rid of years ago. Nickels are an annoyance. Dimes are too small and are often forgotten. Quarters though, are the principal coin in circulation and provided you can wrap your head around them instead of 20c coins, they are a good thing.
If we just did away with all of the cupronickel coins in Australia, then the only things that you'd need to worry about would be quarters. We already have no trouble with rounding up or down when it comes to handling currency and to be fair, in a world where EFTPOS is commonplace nobody even worries about exact change when computers lovingly whizz numbers beneath our feet and above our heads through the internet at the speed of light.

The United States made the mistake of introducing the dollar coin and running it along side the dollar note. The general public haven't really taken a shine to the coin because the dollar note is more acceptable to vending machines but Australia which already replaced the dollar note with the coin and ditched the 1c and 2c coins, has already learnt a valuable lesson. It is the government who controls the issue of the currency and if the government wanted to impose currency reform, then they could just do it. Although the public might whinge a little bit, in six months' time it will be so much of a non-issue that they won't care. It isn't even a case of like it or lump it, it's just lump it.

I've seen restaurant menus that already ignore 5c coins and quote prices to only a single decimal place. In due time, even 10c coins will be mostly pointless and so I think that the jump straight to quarters would be like future proofing the system. A price of $¾ might look odd to us now but given enough time it would be completely normal. New Zealand has already done this and the net effect on inflation (if that's the biggest worry about this issue) was undetectable. If there were any ill effects, they didn't show up in the official inflation, unemployment or any other official figures. On a far larger scale, most of Europe changed from their old currencies to the Euro and already some countries have got rid of the 1 and 2 eurocent coins.
If all of this is a bridge too far then can we just please please please consign the 5c coin to the scrapheap already, make the rest of the coins smaller and introduce a $5 coin in place of the note? I really hate that I'm currently carrying $2.85 in cupronickel coins, which had their planchet sizes fixed in the century before last and weigh exactly the same as twenty-eight and a half shillings because that's what they are. Obviously we'd need the new Quarter to be some manageable size; I suggest borrowing the blanks for the New Zealand 50c coin.

See a penny, pick it up and all the day you'll have good luck? No! All the day you won't have good luck because you've already suffered the misfortune of picking up a coin which has failed at the only purpose for which it was designed and that is to facilitate commerce. Our 5c, 10c and 20c coins are already an inconvenience, the 50c coin is a big metal nonsense and we'd all be better off if we were rid of them.

Horse 2095 - The 2016 Presidential Race So Far - In Haikus

Seven men start out
Nomination G.O.P.
They are all hopeful

Jeb Bush is a man
With an exclamation mark
And rich family

Santorum started
And then ran out of money
His race ended quick

Marco Rubio
Was in for a bit of time
He dropped out as well

Doctor Ben Carson
Separated conjoined twins
Also failed as well

Then came John Kasich
Also failed quite miserably
But hangs on to spoil

Ted Cruz seems to be
Only one to still hang on
And stand up to Trump

Everybody knows
Donald Trump is a train wreck
Who might win the game

Donald Trump has said
Horrid things about people
But they do not care

People vote for him
Even though it makes no sense
For democracy

Then Wisconsin came
Trump campaign in disarray

Outright disappears

When the G.O.P.
Meets for its big convention
It will be brokered

Then we all shall see
It will be a perfect storm
All hell will break loose

All the delegates
Duke it out upon the floor
Who they want for Prez

On the other side
Hilary should walk it in
Then comes angry man

Bernie Sanders is
An old angry Jewish man
Running from Vermont

Hilary assumes
Help from the establishment
Get her to the line

But if old Bernie
Keeps on being popular
He still has a chance

Hilary has lost

Six of the last seven states

She must look forward

Everybody waits

For a grand New York showdown

On April Nineteenth

Horse 2094 - The Acceptable Price of Autonomous Cars

I heard recently about an autonomous Google car which was involved in an accident¹ where it ran into the back of a stationary bus. Admittedly, I have been on a bus which has been in an accident where a flesh and blood meatbag driver ran drove into the side of a stationary bus; so it's not like this was a unique phenomenon caused by an automated thing. Insurance companies regularly report that most accidents are caused by human error, either as a result of being distracted and/or consuming alcohol or other drugs. In fact I'd say that automation is likely to reduce both the number and average severity of accidents significantly but I can still see a time in the future where people who have been brought up in an environment where they don't drive their own cars, will be incapable of doing anything when automation fails.
When Air France Flight 447 went down in the Atlantic Ocean after leaving Rio, a simple case of icing of one of the sensors caused the autopilot to change modes and when the pilots found themselves in a stall, they were either incapable or incompetent (or both) to correct the stall, even though had they done nothing at all, other autopilot systems would have saved the aircraft and everyone on board².

This is something of a paradox of automation. Human error necessitates the need for automation and automation begets incompetence and that incompetence necessitates the need for more automation.
We already live in a world where perhaps the majority of drivers on the roads can not operate a manual gearbox. If autonomous vehicles become the norm in say ten years, then are we likely to find ourselves with a new norm where the majority of drivers can not operate manual controls like the brakes, accelerator and steering wheel? If incompetence can cause a passenger aircraft to ditch into the sea, killing hundreds of souls, then surely it's possible that on a rainy day on a motorway somewhere, a similar kind of incompetence could also kill many souls in an accident. Just exactly what are the passengers in an autonomous vehicle supposed to do if a pedestrian suddenly steps in front of the vehicle and they do not have manual controls in front of them. There aren't a lot of moving things to hit at 29,000 feet but down here on the ground, there are all sorts of animals, people, shopping trolleys in carparks and many multiples of other vehicles which are moving.

As I write this on the train to work in the morning, there are probably at least a thousand other people travelling with me and all of us are blissfully unaware of the work being done by the drivers and guards on the train. I have been on a completely autonomous train and I can tell you that the experience as a passenger is identical. The difference between an autonomous train and an autonomous car though, are many many levels of complexity required to make it work. Quite obviously a railway train runs on a set of tracks, which means that the route is also fixed. Systems have been put in place which can mechanically stop a train and once a train has stopped, can switch off power to other trains within that particular block. Autonomous cars though, would not travel on fixed routes and because they'd all operate under their own power, installing a system which could shut down many of them all at once would be far more difficult to invent and far more difficult to control if it were to fail. Combine that with increased levels of incompetence and helplessness of the flesh and blood meatbags being carried along by all of these autonomous vehicles and the potential for disaster, must also increase somewhere.

The question is whether or not these are acceptable trade offs for society. When I was a wee lad, textbooks warned of the possibility that we'd run out of oil by 2010. That has not happened but at some stage it's pretty likely. That being the case, legislators in the future might like to consider banning petrol powered motor cars and if we find ourselves driving electric vehicles, the systems needed to shut those down and switch them off in case of impending disaster is simpler and easier to make a reality than for petrol powered cars. Legislators just might find it easier to coerce the public into autonomous vehicles through taxation and registration costs and so it might not be society which ends up making that choice consciously.
In addition to this, insurance companies with their armies of accountants and actuaries might also coerce the public into autonomous vehicles if the costs of insurance end to being significantly lower. This would become an economic decision rather than an emotional one, in the same way that horses and carriages disappeared from the roads in the opening decades of the twentieth century.

This then is the beast that shouted "me!" at the heart of the argument. Accidents will inevitably happen because even the most excellently designed systems will fail due to reasons of wear through use. Even an autonomous system with no human input at all will require maintenance which might not be carried out as well as it should, or eventually stop working because of grit, gunk, dust and dirt, and so at some point things will fail and break. Even though autonomous vehicles will still cause accidents in the future, I can still imagine that they will be better at driving us around than we can currently do for ourselves, and even though we might resent that we as blood and flesh meatbag will collectively become incompetent and helpless when something does go wrong, the day will come when that will be an acceptable price to pay and so we'd better get used to it and just step out of the way.

¹http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-35692845

²http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-14342877

Horse 2093 - A Brief, Incomplete and Mostly Wrong, History and Future of Income Tax In Australia

Before we begin, here is a brief history lesson on Income Tax in relation to Australia.
In 1770, Captain James Cook sailed around the world, looking at the transit of Venus across the sun, and stealing countries through the cunning use of flags. Terra Australis, the great southern land, was declared empty even though there were people obviously living in it but because they didn't have a flag, the "Rule Britannia" was invoked where "Britannia rules the waves" and "no flag, no country, you can't have one" were enforced.

In 1773, the Americans decided that they'd had enough of British rule and despite paying less than 2% in levies for goods like tea and corn, they had a war with Britain to throw off their colonial masters. Fast forward six years and Britain realised that it had nowhere to dump its knaves, rogues and ne'r-do-wells and decided to dump them all in Australia; which was out of sight and pretty well much out of mind.
In 1779, Britain found itself embroiled in a war with France and so imposed it's first income tax. This remained in place until 1812, was reintroduced in 1813 and ended again after it had ended its war with Napoleonic France.

The first "modem" Income Tax was imposed in 1842 under the premiership of Sir Robert Peel, from whom we get two nicknames for policemen "Bobbies" and "Peelers", when government and society generally was asked to do things in the name of "improvement". Innovations such as postage, actual proper sewerage, and public institutions such as the fire brigade and the police, began to be provided by the government. Peel's government needed a way to pay for it all and the income tax which was first imposed in 1842 was levied at 7d./£ for incomes over £150 (which is less than 3%).
From the 1850s onwards and after the discovery of payable gold in New South Wales, the six colonies in Australia were each granted responsible government of their own and they each imposed their own Income Tax. People in Australia were subject to both the Income Tax from Britain as well as their own colonial Income Tax and this remained in place until just after federation. The British Government charged the six states for residual services until the end of the tax year ending 5th April 1902.

The Australian Federal Government found that it had to fight every year to collect it's income from the states, from 1901 until 1936 when it passed the Income Tax Assessment Act, and for a brief period of time, citizens of Australia were again subject to two sets of Income taxes but from 1942, during the height of the Second World War, the states agreed to let the Federal Government be the only collector of Income Tax in Australia and that arrangement has been in place ever since.
Since 1942, there has been an annual bunfght at the Council of Australian Governments meeting (COAG), where the state governments have whinge that some states get more from the Commonwealth in services than their citizens pay and get gypped because of it.

This week, Treasurer Scott Morrison has put forward the totally unoriginal idea that the states should be allowed to again impose and collect their own Income Tax. This would have  the net effect of removing costs from the Federal budget; which fits in nicely with the Liberal/National Party's narrative of reducing the size of government.
The problem in principle with this is that the only people who would actually like this idea are the Federal Government, the State Government, businesses which cross borders and who would be able to find arbitrage and other opportunities to spin a profit because of differences in state Income Tax and people like accountants, auditors and financial advisors, planners, knaves, rogues and ne'r-do-wells. The vast majority of people for whom lodging tax returns of any sort is already about as much fun as haemorrhoids, would hate the idea of having to lodge a second Income Tax Return because the state governments are both crying poor and can't work together.

I personally think that the underlying driver behind Mr Morrison's hint that the states should impose their own Income Tax is ultimately about lowering tax rates and eroding government services.
Income Tax and in particular a progressive income tax is hated by business and the rich generally because they increasingly find the idea that government should fund things that they don't immediately benefit from, an anathema. Lower class people tend to derive most of  their income from wages but as you move upwards in Income, more income is derived from rent, dividends, interest and wages which come from financial and managerial employment; so as less to do with producing actual real work. Progressive Income Tax mostly has the effect on taxing income which has come from other people's work. The resentment arises mainly because of transfer payments to poorer people who they deem as not worthy recipients. The biggest item in the 2015 Federal Budget was Social Security and Welfare at $154bn and most of those payments were direct transfer payments; mainly to old people.

Actually, when it comes to general assistance to the States and Territories in terms of revenues paid to them, it only amounts to $57.7bn or just 13.2% of all Commonwealth outlays. This figure is almost identical to the revenues collected by the Commonwealth through GST receipts; so really if the states want to get together and have a giant collective whinge, they may find themselves being asked to take care of a few things that the Federal Government does, in return for their ability to take in their own Income Taxes.

Ultimately I think that the meal served up by Treasurer Scott Morrison to the states is unpalatable and I would be surprised if if wasn't spat out almost immediately. It seems like a bitter thing for the states to swallow as none of them are particularly well equipped to handle the administration required to collect such a thing. If the idea survives beyond the end of budget season, I will be well surprised.

Horse 2092 - Kruse Control Advances Australia

Australia 5 - Jordan 1
Cahill 25'
Mooy 39'
Cahill 44'
Rogic 53'
Luongo 69'
Deeb 89'

Australia moved one step closer to World Cup Qualification with a resounding 5-1 win over Jordan last night; which kept them atop Group B and means that they will be a seeded team going into the next round.
The opening goal came in the 25th minute when Robbie Kruse penetrated deep into Jordanian territory, cut a pass through the back four and Tim Cahill tapped the ball into the goal from just outside the six yard box.
Fourteen minutes later, Kruse again supplied a ball for Aaron Mooy by running through the defence and turning it outwards to Mooy with what appeared to be an unsighted pass. Mooy duly took one step, looked up, gave himself another step and shot the ball past the keeper, from the left hand side to just inside the opposite post.
One minute before the end of regulation time in the first half, Kruse again became the provider when he made run down the left hand side of the pitch and turned in a lofted cross, which Tim Cahill headed into the goal.
After the half time break, the one way traffic resumed and as Australia continued to push, there was a defensive log jam and Tom Rogic virtually passed the ball into the goal from eight yards away.

At 4-0 down and with no real hope of getting anything from the match, Jordan ceased to maintain their discipline and their defence descended into farce. Perhaps in response to Kruse supplying the passes for the first three goals, in the 65th minute, Rawashdeh Yousef made a challenge on Kruse that can at best be called cynical and at worst assault. Yousef went in with both legs airborne into the calves of Kruse; and I think that it would be hard to argue that his intent was anything other than a deliberate attempt to hurt Kruse. There was certainly zero likelihood that he'd win the ball in the challenge. If I'd been the referee, I'd had given Yousef his marching orders but the referee could only find a yellow card.

Australia found a new sense of urgency and following a short period of camping inside the 18 yard box, they were awarded a throw in. On the end of a confused and frantic couple of seconds, Massimo Luongo who had only recently come on as a substitute, scored Australia's fifth goal in the 69th minute.

From here on in tiredness gradually began to take over and even though Baha' Faisal brought down Tim Cahill in the 77th minute, Bailey Wright took out Mustafa Baha in the 80th minute and both incidents saw yellow cards being issued, the free kicks which followed, provided no goals.
Yousef again became the villain when he tripped up Chris Ikonomidis but even though this probably should have been adjudicated to be his second cardable offence, he got away with only conceding a free kick.

Tom Rogic went flailing into Ibrahim Al-Zawahreh with a clumsy challenge in the 89th minute which should have made him see yellow as well but again the referee was reluctant to pull out a card of any colour.
Jordan did finally get a consolation goal in the 89th minute when Abdallah Deeb fired a brilliant strike past the goal keeper Matt Ryan; which marked the first time in almost 400 minutes of football when an Australian keeper was even required to make a save and the first time that anyone had scored a goal against Australia since October last year.

With a result of 5-1, Australia can't really say that they were tested all that much but there are still things which can be learned from this.
Firstly that Australia plays better when it pushes forward. One of the simplest things to keep track of as a fan who is watching from the other side of a television screen is how many times the ball enters the 18 yard box. Australia dominated on this statistic by 51-18. Now admittedly it doesn't say how efficient the play is, or even what a side does with the ball once they get it up there but it does give an indication of how aggressive a team actually is, as well as the obvious information about where the ball spent most of its time.

One thing that I didn't like about the Australian attack last night was the lack of variety of attack. It was almost as if there was some sort of operations and procedures manual which dictated that the ball should be taken to the edges of the 18 yard box and turned in from about 12 yards away from the goal line. The 5-1 score disguises the fact that this can be tactically worked out and if a system becomes regular enough, then any manager who is looking at match footage from previous fixtures, should be able to design a set of defensive strategies to counter it.
Australia which played a 4-3-3 formation, looked strong while pressing but also looked somewhat vulnerable at the back once the midfield had been cleared. Even though Australia topped Group B with seven wins from eight matches, their resolve and skill will be more thoroughly tested in the next round when they meet stiffer opposition like South Korea, Japan and surprise package Thailand who topped their group.

Horse 2091 - ISIS and Ireland - 100 Years But Not Poles Apart

One of the things that we've been hearing a lot of in the news of late is not only the hundredth anniversary of the Easter Rising in what would eventually become the Republic of Ireland but how that is to be reinterpreted in a modern context. Unlike other conflicts such as the First World War, where the past is in the past, the "troubles" in Ireland still extended deep into the then future. There were still bombings by the IRA even in my lifetime.

I make mention of the Irish Question because the answer (which still hasn't been adequately resolved in my opinion) is at its heart, a question about power: who has it and how should it be exercised? The current disaster, tragedy, conflict and whole sort of general storm of cussedness which is being waged across Syria and Iraq; between more sides than one can keep track of and where there are really no "goodies" and everyone are "baddies" (as if this was even a morally clear cut conflict), also has at its heart that same question; the question about power: who has it and how should it be exercised? The problem is that the question is being answered as though power were the means and ends to itself; while the vast majority of people suffer under it. Essentially, the refugee crisis which has followed the trail of destruction wrought by the Assad regime, ISIS et al, is normal people's response to the answer of how power is being used. Fleeing a situation where you are powerless to respond and where the exercise of power has left physical destruction, to the point where what has been left behind is rubble and rubbish, is a perfectly rational response in my opinion and if I was given that set of circumstances, I would respond identically.

As far as I can make out, the intent of ISIS is to establish a caliphate and rule the country that they have carved out. The word caliph presumably comes from the Arabic "kalif" which means a successor. The problem that I see with that, based on my limited reading of the Quran, is that the one who they intend to be a successor of (Mohammed), didn't really intend to establish a physical country at all. The idea of jihad, that is the idea of a struggle, seems to me to be more of an internal one, where individuals struggle against their own nature in order to please Allah.
The establishment of a caliphate, seems to me to be the taking of power for its own end and then using religion as the justification after the event. This is identical to a regime change where a dictatorship is established. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to take power, power is taken and then a dictatorship is established after the event in order to keep and maintain it for its own sake.

I find it interesting, especially considering that it is the Easter weekend, that Christians celebrate not only the death and resurrection of Christ but the beginning of his kingdom. This kingdom actually doesn't talk about the taking of power at all; indeed Paul wrote to the church in Rome, that they were to submit themselves to the authority of their government, knowing full well just how brutal the Romans could be.
This idea that the church and the state should be utterly disentangled and separate was well established in the Christian and existing Jewish tradition. Christ himself when quizzed, asked people to give to Caesar what is Caesar's and to give to God what is God's and long before that, Jewish Law as laidd out in the Torah specified that the Priesthood and the administration of the state were kept separate and distinct. Kings couldn't be priests and priests couldn't be kings.

I know that this is going to sound incredibly insensitive but if you remove the emotional Aspen of the situation, then what I'm about to say sounds reasonably logical. The troubles in Ireland of a century ago, are in essence the same troubles of Syria today. Although the Irish Question is painted over with the colours of Protestants and Catholics, in reality it had nothing to do with religion at all. Those colours may have provided hues and tints with which to paint the conflict but at no stage was either side actually concerned with the spiritual well-being of then citizenship. Strip back the painted veneer of religion and all that you're left with is a naked grab for power. One hundred years later and the conflict between the Assad regime, ISIS, et al, is another naked grab for power, however either side chooses to paint over it. Not once have I heard of even a single instance where ISIS has built a mosque, or established a masjid; so it's little worse that I think that their name of the "Islamic" State is an outright lie. I also think that it's brutally unfair to blame Islamic leaders and followers on the other side of the world for the actions of people they are unconnected with.

When ISIS attacked and vandalised the ancient city of Palmyra, it did so, not because it found the religion of a nation which had functionally been dead for 1600 years offensive but because it wanted to give a giant one fingered salute to the world, through a display of power. When shots were fired in Dublin in 1916, it wasn't really because the Irish people had decided they they didn't like Protestantism but because they wanted Home Rule of Ireland and ultimately to be an independent Republic, which was free from the rule of London.
The biggest difference between Ireland and ISIS is that the Irish had a pretty good idea of what would be done with power once they got it; ISIS seems to exist only to acquire power and keep it for its own sake.

Horse 2090 - I Love The Interstate

One of the things that I found immensely enjoyable about being in the United States recently, was doing something which practically everyone seemed to hate because they had been inoculated against it; that something was driving on the freeway. Be they California state highways or the Interstate, driving on an American freeway is an immensely pleasurable and satisfying experience.
I could state the well worn and hackneyed phrases to do with freedom and or speed and what not but I know that the reason why I love America's freeways is something far more mundane than that. It isn't the wide ten lanes of disciplined and orderly traffic and it isn't the very gentle curves which mankind has willed upon the landscape. No. The biggest reason why I love America's freeways, is its road furniture.

I love Britain's blue motorway signs and it's brown signs which tell you when something of historical import is close by. I love the blue signs of the German autobahn, upon which  they and indeed the rest of Europe's motorway signs were based. America's freeway signs are something else entirely though; they are boldly and assuredly different.

The Interstate Shield is itself an icon. Maybe it drew inspiration from the existing US Highway Shields which began to appear before the Second World War but even if it did, it stamped its authority down with confidence.
The  Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways came into the world in 1956; in a unique period of history when two superpowers were entwined in a strange dance which involved an arms race for nuclear weapons. Both countries possessed enough power to blow civilisation off the planet and kill every single living thing within hours.
With dreams of rockets and the jet age whizzing through people's heads, in an act which borders outright corruption, the ex-President of General Motors, Charles Erwin Wilson, was able to convince President Eisenhower that America needed a system of interstate freeways to move troops and supplies around in a hurry, just in case either the Russians or even themselves should be the bringer of nuclear fire upon the world. Eisenhower agreed and Congress approved the construction of the single biggest public works program in the history of humanity. Don't like socialism? Well right there - bam! More socialism than the world has ever seen.
In branding their new multi billion dollar baby, the Interstate was given a very American red, blue and white shield. This gives the Interstate an almost patriotic look about it. If is an American thing to do, to be driving down the Interstate.

There's a second and more practical reason why I love American freeways and that is that they are properly signposted. For every exit, there are ample warnings before it comes up. There are also arrows which inform you of how many lanes there are available.
The latter of this is absolutely unheard of in Australia. Instances where there might be two whole lanes for an exit, are rarer than hen's teeth. In America though, having two lanes is common and even three is not unheard of. Not even on the Light Horse Interchange in Sydney's west which connects the M4 and the M7 and which is the largest motorway interchange in the southern hemisphere, are there anything other than single lane slip roads to connect the two motorways.
On top of this, there are signs which indicate which direction you are going on an expressway. Signs will actually display useful information like 163-South, 5-North, 94-East and 54-West. Again, nothing like this exists at all in Australia. If you do happen to approach a freeway on ramp in Australia, there will be a sign which has the route number and where its going and that will be it. Hard luck to you if you know you need to be heading North but the sign only says "Richmond".

Interstates generally are well signposted across America. A really helpful thing about the Interstate system is that the north-south highways are all odd numbered and east-west highways are all even numbered, and that spurs off of highways are numbered with a prefix number. Interstate 805 in the picture above is a spur of Interstate 05 (all interstates for the purposes of the act are two digits).
In addition to this, there are trailblazer signs and route confirmation markers everywhere. This means that someone could use the Interstate and know with confidence where they were going, even if they'd been on a plane for 19 hours.

Confident, informative, helpful, patriotic: these are words which describe the road furniture of the American Interstate Highway System. I think that its one of the icons of America; even though most Americans and especially if they are stuck in slow moving traffic, are oblivious to.

Horse 2089 - Side Effects May Include Death

The reason for the lack of communication on this blog for the past few weeks is because I went to my sister-in-law's wedding, in the land of the free and the home of the brave. For a week and a bit, I saw not Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II looking to the right on the back of the coins but people like Jefferson, Washington and Lincoln. I also saw freeways with adequate signposting, prices as though everything was permanently on special and bizarrely, a multitude of advertising for various drugs.

One of the fun things about visiting a foreign country and even one which isn't really that foreign like the United States is that you can see things which are similar but oh so slightly different. Television, the drug of the nation, in the United States, is already really similar to what we have in Australia because we import so much programming from that country. What we do not import, are the advertisements and other media furniture like interstitials and title cards (though admittedly, Channel 7 does use NBC's news fanfare "The Mission" for its news programs). Advertising though, is not imported into Australia for multitude of reasons.

Australia like the vast majority of the industrialised world has a universal health care system in the vehicle of Medicare. Even though general practices are privately owned and many specialist medical services (and even a few hospitals) are also privately owned, the fact that the state owns the majority of hospitals and furnishes the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme means that government is able to negotiate far better prices for drugs and medical procedures due to factors such as economies of scale and greater bargaining power.
The United States however, doesn't really have a universal health care system to speak of and because the system is largely private and profit driven, the actors within the system need to compete for business. In consequence, adverts for health insurance companies, health management organisations (HMOs) which run hospitals and clinics, and the drug companies themselves, appeal directly to the public in the search for business. And how they search!
At least in San Diego where we stayed, the three most common business sectors touting for business on television were the Auto Manufacturers, Insurance Companies and Drug Companies; in that order.

A typical drug advert will start out with a sad looking person who has some sort of disease and then gives a short testimonial about how the drug being advertised changed their life. Invariably there will be the phrase "Ask your health care professional if Example Drug is right for you" before a list of side effects is reeled off. This is where we enter the realm of the strange and pass through a rather broken looking glass.
The list of side effects listed in a lot of drug adverts make you wonder if the cure is worse than the disease. A list of side effects might include things like:
Irritability, change in mood, suicidal thoughts, dry mouth, bad breath, increased appetite, decreased appetite, weight gain, weight loss, involuntary limb movement, decreased limb movement, skin discolouration, sneezing, runny nose, inflammation of the sinuses, decreased liver function, decreased kidney function, increased urination, loss of bladder control, insomnia, blurred vision, hearing loss, rectal bleeding and death...

... yeah "and death". Like that sounds like a side-effect that isn't really going to affect you. Remember, death isn't the handicap it used to be in the olden days, right?

What's also rather sadly prevalent, are adverts asking people to join class actions against drug companies because of the side effects of various drugs. It only happened once but I saw an advertisement for one particular drug and the very next advertisement was for a class action against that very same drug.

In Australia we see very few advertisements for prescription only medicine because when you have the state itself as the biggest customer, then the pharmaceutical companies just deal directly with them. Companies who do business directly with the state put more effort into winning tenders for supply than wasting money on advertising.
In America though, where you have drug companies selling their wares on a more direct basis to the general public and to HMOs, then the advertising dollar seems like the path of lesser resistance to achieve the same ends; which is profits.

I personally think that there's something a bit scurrilous about turning a profit on the basis of exploiting the sick, especially when I consider that the chap who invented the polio vaccine (X), released that into the world and deliberately made it public domain. Whilst I do think that in principle that business should be allowed to chase profit because that does encourage innovation and development, that doesn't mean that the unfettered chasing of profits is necessarily best for society.

Drug adverts on television in the United States seem strange and weird to me because they actually are strange and weird. I'm thankful that for the moment that here in Australia we don't really have them on television. The fact that they are so common and prevalent in the United States is symptomatic of a system which is diseased and needs to swallow its own bitter pill or else risk killing the patient.

Horse 2088 - Col-gate: The Savicol Scandal

I went to the doctor earlier this week to see if I could do something about treating extra-oral halitosis due to post-nasal drip. The suggested treatment which my doctor suggested was a course of Zyrtec which is a second-generation antihistamine and a product by Colgate called Savacol antiseptic mouth and throat rinse.
Mrs Rollo has reported that my breath has turned to a neutral smell but that has come at a cost - complete and utter Ageusia. To put that into regular English: I have lost 100% of my sense of taste. It is awful.

After the initial burning sensation which I experienced after the initial use, because the active ingredient is chlorhexidine gluconate which binds to the same receptors which give quinine that bitter sort of taste, with continued use that sensation went away.

According to Colgate's website:
Chlorohexidine gluconate interacts with the bacterial cell wall, inhibiting dental plaque formation. It can also help treat halitosis.¹

I feel however that the cure is worse than the ill. The bottle states that one of the side effects which can occur is "Alteration in Taste Perception"; however I think that there's a distinct difference between an alteration in taste perception as opposed to a total loss therein.

Eating food that you can not taste is not fun. Mechanically it is identical but it has effectively rendered my tongue to that of being just an eleventh finger. I can still detect things like how wet something is, or what something feels like but that is exercising the sense of touch; not taste.

Eating chocolate with no sense of taste is a deeply unpleasant experience. When all you can sense is textures, eating chocolate is like putting something hard in your mouth; which over time, gradually turns into grease. In all honesty, would could give me a bucket of Pennzoil 707L Red Wheel Bearing Grease to eat and it may as well be exactly the same.

I tried tasting wine last night, which was pointless because without a sense of taste it would have been functionally identical to water except that there was an alcohol burn afterwards. I recreated that similar effect by placing a drop of Dettol on the tip of my tongue.

The act of eating a bowl of Kellogs Nutri-Grain, which I usually enjoy because of its malty flavour, was a strangely interesting act of minor torture. It combined the absence of sensation of taste with the sense of touch. In this case it was like rubbing sandpaper across your tongue but with the feeling of wetness.

Most of the time when I'm not eating or drinking anything, there is a sort of default taste which I can only assume is due to that centre of my brain being left with nothing to do, having unused computing power and just making stuff up. I can only describe it as the taste of what I imagine Domestos flavoured bubblegum might be like; it is like a chemical that I cannot identify and feels kind of like an aftertaste of sorts except that you can't then wash it out with water.

Worst of all, my ability to taste tea and coffee is gone. I like having a nice cup of tea but thanks to my current state of Ageusia, there is no point at all because tea and coffee now taste exactly the same as water; that is to say like nothing whatsoever. The only advantage to this was that I boiled a kettle of water and felt no need to add anything to it because it wasn't like I was going to taste anything anyway.

Horse 2087 - Day 4 - The Weather (March Photo Hunt)

One of the facts that conjurers an magicians exploit is that we essentially live inside a lie which has been constructed by our senses. For this reason, illusionists are able to misdirect people's attention and implant suggestions of things that were never there. The same is true for our own senses. Basically we sense things and then our brain reconstructs reality about a tenth of a second later. The most obvious example of this is the exploitation of persistence of vision where twenty-four still pictures are strung together by our brains to create moving pictures.
The other noteworthy thing is that lenses lie. Our eyes are able to bring things incredibly close despite having only a very short focal length. Colours are often manipulated in our brain and even the effects of parallax are played with, which is why we only see one picture of the world despite having two optical inputs.

When I saw today's prompt several days ago, I thought of lots of ideas around the idea of the subject matter of "the weather", including a trip to Sydney Observatory but all of these plans came to naught. Today's picture, is the exploitation of a lie; trying to make best use of the rather horrid little camera on my phone (I say horrid but really it's a piece of engineering genius).
The dominating colour in England, provided the sunshine is out, in the middle of summer is a glorious viridian. Across the border in the vanquished Principality of Wales and although it has a similar shade of green when the sun is out, the colour that I remember most is grey. In a place like California which is drenched in saffron, they like to peddle the myth that it is the "Golden State" but for most of Southern California, everything is washed on and bleached and blues aren't as blue as they should be and gold becomes lemon.

The colour temperatures in the city of Sydney (that I live in) are such that most of the time, everything does appear washed out and bleached like California but with the exception that skies are bluer because we're further south than SoCal is north. What Sydney does do excellently though, is sunrises and sunsets. Sydney's sunsets especially are gorgeous and we don't think that Sydneysiders realise how blessed we are to see the myriad of colours lazily dribbled across the sky, every evening from September to May. Only artists with a hyper real set of colours are able to begin to paint with the same palette that the sky uses each an every evening, for even the best cameras can not.
Even on a camera which has a lens which is literally smaller than my fingernail, I am able to get neat things like lens flare but I still can not approach the level of loveliness that my eyes already give me (and I am red-green colourblind). The camera lies to you because it as an unthinking and undeceiving machine, can only give you the objective view of what its single limited sense can produce.
The truth is that Sydney's weather spews forth evening after evening after evening of sheer gorgeousness and beauty that it is only after Sydneysiders leave the confines of this conurbation of four millions that we realise what we have here.

The weather, the generator of those skies, is actually pretty predictable in Sydney. Sydney's weather is the result of either a high pressure or low pressure system wandering eastwards across the continent of Australia and depending on the relative position of those pressure systems, winds either blow from the continent dry, or from the oceans moist. Occasionally a tropical cyclone will meander south and turn into a rain depression but that's it. The changing of the seasons only really changes the operative parts of weather such as dew points and condensation temperature but other than that, the weather in winter works by the same mechanics as it does in summer, in Sydney.
This photograph could have been taken in any of the four seasons but the time would have been different. Except for the long tendrils of sunset, the view an hour or so before the sun thinks about going away, is practically the same. I honestly think that someone would be hard pressed to tell the difference between a 24° day on July 7 or December 18 at the point where the sun hangs at exactly the same point in the sky.

Many of us who are stuck in traffic which stretches on for miles, are often too grumpy to look the 30° upwards to see the masterpiece being painted for us, writ large each and every evening across the vast canvas of the skies. People in Sydney who's job it is to produce nothing expect moving numbers around and extracting profits because the value of housing went up again, will often spend vast sums of money to buy views of the harbour and then waste the effort by not looking at it. In Sydney, a house which is 55km away from the CBD and costs a tenth of some of those properties, still has that fantastic masterpiece, forever changing and forever new, rolled across the easel of the sky, for free.

The grand list can be found here: http://fatmumslim.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/PHOTO-A-DAY-MARCH-16-1024x1024.jpg
This is how to play along: http://fatmumslim.com.au/how-to-play/

Horse 2086 - Day 3 - Art (March Photo Hunt)

The broadest possible definition of "art" is a piece of work which demonstrates creative skill.
We usually think of the visual arts like painting, sculpture, photography, computer graphics but equally the theatre, film, television, dance, music, architecture, radio are also good things to include in that broad of the arts.

On the lower floor of our offices at work, hangs this picture which was painted by someone of whom I have no idea who they are. Apart from the painting "Defeat of the Spanish Armada, 8 August 1588" by Philippe-Jacques de Loutherbourg, I think that this painting in our offices is one of my most favourite paintings in the whole world.
It isn't as grand or as technically brilliant as a Dutch master but I really love its slap dash approach and the playfulness about it.

Having worked in the rarefied air of the Commonwealth Law Courts, I have seen many judges and barristers of this ilk. These are wizened and weather-beaten gentlemen who have seen the worst of all life's ne'er-do-wells and knaves, pass before them; in wood panelled rooms where the law and justice is dispensed.
Sometimes they spend years listening to tales of horror and woe and sometimes they are troubled by the perpetual serpent twisting of law and into infinite boredom. It is little wonder that they are seen as out of touch with society; yet in actual fact have probably stared at the very worst that society has produced at eight yards.

It is unclear if these two gentlemen, seen poring over the bound copy of a text from a Royal Commission (which intriguingly has the title on the wrong cover), with arthritic knuckles, collars, cuffs and wigs, are sneering with glee or disdain for the text in front of them. We don't know what this Royal Commission would be looking into but we can guess that must be of great importance to warrant calling for one and we can guess that it must be howling of controversy.

Even though the chap on the left is sans moustache, they very much remind me of those famous hecklers from The Muppet Show, Statler and Waldorf. I can imagine that this picture had it been a photograph, might have been taken in the private lounge; on the other side of the wood panelling where the public never treads and where the smells of sherry, whisky and hundred year old cigar smoke fill the air. Perhaps they are recalling old cases like  Jarndyce and Jarndyce, or the utter tediousness of similar cases like Barstone, Carstone, Darstone and Farstone.

Their wigs are dirty and unwashed and the vagueness of the background gives a timelessness to this, which means that it could be in 1811, 1911 or even 2011. They are so interchangeable with the legal heroes of the past, that even in the present they are indistinguishable.

There is another painting downstairs in the office of a beach scene but the perspective is rubbish and it just looks like the sort of painting that you put in an office so that the walls aren't bare. This painting though, is just ace because even though there are loads and loads of paintings that I've seen (even at Mosman Art Gallery) which leave this behind in the dust in terms of technique and execution, not many do as well as capturing that cheeky spark which this one throws to the world in buckets.

I know virtually nothing about art. I can't tell you what's good, bad or indifferent and maybe my taste in art is like McDonald's is to cuisine, but if a piece of art makes me think something or feel something about it, then it's done its job; and I think that this painting has done precisely that.

The grand list can be found here: http://fatmumslim.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/PHOTO-A-DAY-MARCH-16-1024x1024.jpg
This is how to play along: http://fatmumslim.com.au/how-to-play/

Horse 2085 - Day 2 - Good (March Photo Hunt)

Good, Better, Best. We will never rest.
'Til our good is better, and our better, best.

I am not entirely sure where this rhyming couplet comes from but for some reason I am tempted to think that it is what was cast into the end plates of Furphy & Sons' water carts; as used by the Australian Infantry Forces at Gallipoli and the like. I may have misremembered this entirely and I could very well be speaking a complete furphy but if I am correct then the following photograph represents today's prompt excellently.
Today's Photo Hunt challenge is "Good".

This is Boronia House in Mosman. Usually I find that Mosman with its trappings of wealth, finds ways to display that wealth that are vulgar and ugly. I admit that I don't like the Audi Q7s and BMW X5s that slowly Bob around the suburb, ferrying children to school and then idle chattering people to the overpriced coffee houses that litter suburb but when Mosman does find ways to beautify itself, it does pretty well (money helps). Money doesn't spontaneously buy taste and class but occasionally, it does renovate it.

I have no idea what Boronia House used to be. I have no idea of its history, or who owned it, if it was the estate house of some large landholding, if it was a hotel: I know nothing. What I do know is that its current function of being a tea house and a high tea house at that, is an apt function that befits its grandeur.
I like the wrought iron filigree work, I like the columns and their capitals, I like the finials and I like that the tables have clean linen tablecloths and that there are superfluous and abundant flowers. Someone has taken due care and diligence and shown the building the respect and love it deserves. It is a joy to look at.

Naturally if we're talking about a tea house, then at some point the subject of tea seems appropriate. I am convinced that one of the reasons that Britain simply had to go into the world and carve out an empire, through the process of stealing countries with the cunning use of flags, is that Britain is a dreary dreary island. Had the British won the lottery of geography and started out on the Mediterranean Sea, then there would have been no need for any of it. But because Britain was a rainy little tin top island which was only mildly protected from the Atlantic by Ireland, then the impetus to become a seafaring band of ruffians was baked into the very dough of Britishness.
Naturally, after having acquired India with its lovely spices, Britain simply had to make tea time a very British thing and thanks to historical accident, I live in the shadow after the passing of empire and tea time is still a thing.

There are few things in this world that are as good as a lovely cup of tea. America having ceremonially dumped its tea in Boston Harbor, forged itself as a coffee nation and while coffee is the drink of industry, the enlightenment and business, tea is the drink of calm, peace and serenity (so much serenity).
You can have 'nice' cups of coffee and there are coffee snobs who want single origin artisan coffee but only a cup of tea can be described in the way that Mrs Rollo has suggested: 'magical'. I like to say that it's always time for tea time and truth be told, even if it's overly strong builder's tea, I could drink loads of the stuff.
It is only tea that comes with a full set of paraphernalia it is only tea that we name not one but two breaks during the day after - it is Morning Tea and Afternoon Tea. Morning Coffee merely sounds like that thing that people have before they stare at the 156 emails that have arrived since last night.

It seems to me that the most goodest things are often the simplest; there's very little that's more gooder than a nice cup of tea. Sometimes a nice cup of tea can be improved by serving it in fine china, with jam and scones; on a sunny afternoon, in a pleasant tea house.

"It is a mark of insincerity of purpose to spend one's time in looking for the sacred emperor in the low class tea shops."
- The Wallet of Kai Lung, Ernest Bramah Smith (1900)

I question why one would even bother looking for the sacred emperor in the low class tea shops. I question why one would even bother looking for anything other than tea in the low class tea shops. Tea shops are for tea.
A good cup of tea is about the goodest thing I can think of; I can't think of much more gooder.

The grand list can be found here: http://fatmumslim.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/PHOTO-A-DAY-MARCH-16-1024x1024.jpg
This is how to play along: http://fatmumslim.com.au/how-to-play/

Horse 2084 - I Am Old (But Not Old Old)

As I was standing on the 243 bus to Neutral Bay this on Friday afternoon (Friday 26th), a lady who looked far too young to be having children, told her son to get up so that a man could have the seat. I was expecting to see some chap with a walking stick and didn't find anyone and it immediately became apparent that the man that she was giving her seat up for, was me.

Now apart from the fact that even at the age of 37 (I had to calculate that because it's so irrelevant to me) I still find being called a "man" somewhat jarring, the fact that I was considered old enough for someone to consider giving up their seat for is nothing short of mind blowing. Seriously; like wow man, what is going on?
Mathematically speaking, I were to die at exactly twice the age I am now (which would be 74 years old), then nobody in particular is going to think that would be some great tragedy. A 74 year old man who dies is utterly normal. Furthermore if you were to triple 37, you get 111 (I know this because of the game Dive¹). Someone aged 111 is well old; therefore I’m definitely into that middle third.

Okay, time's pesky little urchins have arrived and have spray painted my temples in grey, my close up eyesight is on the verge of fading out to a blurry mess and hæmorroids have come to visit but I honestly didn't think that I was 'old'. If the average life expectancy is 84, then that means that I technically entered the middle third of my life as many as seven years ago and am thus 'middle aged',  so that can only mean that I've been living in the county of Denial for a long time. That just means that I have a more complete mailing address for my terrace house on Pedant Corner, Grumpy Towers, Dunny-On-The-Wold (what is a Wold² anyway?).

I've already found that modern music has berm annoying for quite some time, my radio mainly stays on ABC News Radio, Radio National and 702 ABC Sydney, I would rather go somewhere quiet than a place full of noise and it is true that tweed is starting to look interesting to me but surely I can't be that far down the line, can I?
The fact that I left high school almost twenty years ago, that I've been waiting for Liverpool to win the league for twenty-six years, that I can remember the days before the internet, before the GST, and that I've started to use phrases like "I can remember" and "kids today", aught to have been enough to give me the idea that I'm old but maybe I'm just adding forgetfulness and stupidity together to get senility.
By your powers combined, I am Captain Old Git. Even my cultural references are old hat and withering on the vine.

I've already done that thing where you walk into a room and forget why you walked in there. Kinder people would suggest that this is to do with efficiencies in the brain; dumping old information as the head that it is contained in, passes across a threshold an across a memory horizon. There's probably some fancy pants pseudo-scientific name for it but really it can be described with those three little words "sad old git".
I'm not so old that I need to know where the nearest lavatory is at all times but I do like the idea of having adequate reading material on hand before one does enter the smallest room in the building and become enthroned upon the Royal Doulton. On that front, I like the works of Quentin Letts, Jeremy Clarkson, George Orwell or Seneca because in a weird sort of way, I like to be reminded of melancholia whilst performing what should be a serene action. It's also worth remembering that Mama Cass and Elvis Presley dies whilst on the lav. History records that they probably died of a heart attack but the most logical explanation that I can think of is that someone must've walked in on them. Ten Thousand Thundering Typhoons, what d'ya think you're doin', man?

I will admit to watching television and conveniently having darkness descend as I am watching, then waking up two minutes before the end and wonder what the point of staying out on the couch was. I'll also admit to lying awake in the middle of the night, worrying about the results of a football match that I can't watch and running around the four walls of my mind like some confined beast. How is it that I'm able to invent the most fantastic devices and designs in my head, only to have them all flit away at the first remembrance. Also, can someone tell me the point of waking up at 02:27am to remember a thing from five weeks ago that I couldn't recall at the time? What's the point of that?

Fair enough, this whole blog post has been something of a ramble where I've forgotten half way through what the point was; so maybe that does prove that I'm probably closer to grave than what I thought but does that mean that I'm so old that someone thinks it worthy enough to give their seat on the bus? Actually... I'm old enough that I could have been her dad. In her mind, maybe I am old enough. That's just scary.

¹Dive – a pretty neat game http://alexfink.github.io/dive
²A Wold is a woodland – as in the Cotswolds or Stow-on-the-Wold

Horse 2083 - Day 1 - Green (March Photo Hunt)

I only remembered about this late in the day; when I realised that BJD would more than likely attempt another go at compiling a set of photographs for the month of March. I followed the links to last year's set and lo and behold I found that a list for 2016 had been compiled¹.
Maybe B will post his photos to the website this year and hopefully, get beyond Day 9² like in 2015.

This brings me to today's photograph - Green.

If the colour red can to be associated with labour politics at the end of the nineteenth century and then communist and socialist politics in the opening chapter of the twentieth century, then the colour green might occupy a similar sort of role as it has come to symbolise environmental politics at the end of the twentieth and beginning of the twenty-first century. Green Parties are found in most of the parliaments of the world's industrialised nations with the obvious exception of the United States.
It is through the efforts of green political parties that the environment is even remotely considered. From the actual inclusion of environmental legislation, to the protection of certain wilderness areas, to thinking about what mankind's impact is on the natural world,  the use of the colour green is a powerful symbol in the abstract of an entire set of policies.

Oh the layers of abstraction here.

If there was the Stone Age, the Bronze Age, the Iron Age, the Dark Ages, the Middle Ages and the Steam Age, the we are not living in the Space Age or even the Silicon Age but the Carbon Age.
Carbon chemistry underpinned the steam age as coal was burned in factories and steam trains but it has been the rise of the petrol and diesel combustion engines as well as the widespread use of plastics which has really come to define the last 100 years. The first proper plastics arrived in the 1930s and plastic is so ubiquitous, that it's hard to imagine what the world would look like without them.
Plastic though is not without its problems. There are the environmental issues surrounding its manufacture and another equally vexed set of problems when these goods finally come to the end of their useful life. Sure, some plastic can be recycled but because we're so good at the engineering that goes into creating plastic products, after they are thrown away, they tend to degrade very slowly indeed. The idea of a green plastic bag is tenuous at best and because plastic does survive for so very long, it's likely to still be in the environment well after its consumer has died.

The individual story of how this particular plastic bag came to be here is quite mundane. Presumably it was a carrier bag which came from a supermarket, and judging by the array of coffee cups and other wrappers which I could see in there, it was probably used as a bin liner in an office.
Thus, the short life of this plastic bag has come to its logical end. Having served two dull tasks, it now suffers an ignoble end and will become landfill in a rubbish dump. Although it has such phrases as "Return To Earth" and "Helping To Save Our Planet" printed on it, this somewhat remarkable product of long-chain hydrocarbon organic chemistry, has been cast aside. The technology to produce such a thing didn't even exist 80 years ago and yet here it is being cast aside as a piece of refuse.

There is something almost ironic about the fact that the colour green which is the colour of plant life, is itself sort of hijacked to make products which are demonstrably bad for the environment, seem nicer than they otherwise would be. I have seen leaves and plant badges on various motor cars to indicate the 'Eco' model. Nissan even goes so far as to call its electric car the Leaf; which although it doesn't have any tailpipe emissions, because of the cadmium in its batteries, presents an even more challenging disposal problem when they finally become unserviceable, than had it been a conventional car.

¹That list can be found here: http://fatmumslim.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/PHOTO-A-DAY-MARCH-16-1024x1024.jpg
This is how to play along: http://fatmumslim.com.au/how-to-play/
²BJD's website http://bjd.id.au/

Horse 2082 - Some Days That Did Not Exist, Weird Days That Do Exist.

Continuing my obsession with the calendar, there are some even stranger stories which need to be told.
Most people know about the fact that the Julian Calendar will slowly drift by one day every 128 years. This posed a problem for someone like Pope Gregory XIII; so he was able to convince the Catholic church to change its calendar to his eponymous system which is the one we currently use.

Add a leap day as February 29 on years that are divisible by four (like 2016)
Unless they are also divisible by 100 (like 1800 or 1900).
Unless unless they are also divisible by 400 (like 2000).
Hence the reason why 1900 didn't have a February 29 but why 2000 did.

This was all very nice until you realise that some countries like England who were not very Catholicy at all (owing to Henry VIII who was cranky all the time) and the countries who had Eastern Orthodox churches also didn't like the pope, all told Pope Gregory XIII in no uncertain terms that he was wrong.
Eventually though, these countries did fall into line; with England finally doing so in 1752, Russia in 1918 and Greece being the last in 1923.

In the case of England. New Year's Day used to be April 25 which was Lady Day, or rather the Feast of the Annunciation of the Virgin Mary. In 1752, the calendar was punted forward by 11 days and the Wednesday 2nd September 1752 would be followed by Thursday 14th September 1752.
One remaining vestige of this is that the tax year in the UK which used to begin and end on April 25, was also punted forward by 11 days to April 6.

Sweden who was still using the Julian Calendar and who was in the middle of a 21 year war called the "Great Northern War" with Russia, added two leap days in 1712 and thus the year 1712 in Sweden had both a 29th and a 30th of February.
Sweden would adopt the Gregorian Calendar in 1753, when the 16th of February was followed by 1st March.

Russia on the other hand was still happily using the Julian Calendar right through the First World War. After it did finally adopt the Gregorian Calendar in 1918, the first day in February 1918 was February 14th.
This caused its own silliness, with the October Revolution of 1917 which had begun on October 25, now being celebrated on November 7th.

One of the days which I found that didn't fit into anything described here is what the Chinese Government politely refers to as the political turmoil between the Spring and Summer of 1989. This event is more commonly known as the June Fourth Incident or more bluntly as the Tiananmen Square Massacre.
I have seen this referred to as the May 35th incident as a way of subverting internet censorship in China.

One of the accounting programs that I use does better than all of these. It uses 40 days in every month and 15 months in the year. Those extra days and months are there for you to throw through journal entries without upsetting individual months.
They are labelled Undecimber, Duodecember, Trescember which are confusingly named because they are the 13th, 14th and 15th months. The 37th of Trescember (37-15-2016) isn't a normal date for most people but in the accounting world, it's allowed.