Plenty for Everybody
The Japanese “research” whaling program is a farce: it’s all about food, and probably a substantial amount of it is pet food. Well, pet’s have to eat, too, I suppose. Still, the arguments put forward by Minoru Morimoto, Japan’s commissioner to the IWC, are largely just an attempt to recast the argument, making out Australia as irrational and out-of-step with a substantial international community, who all, quite reasonably, kill and eat marine mammals, including whales. Do Australians eat much dolphin? No more than Canadians are stuffing themselves silly with seal burgers. But what’s really getting up Morimoto’s nose is Australia’s insistence on claiming a 200-mile area of prime whale breeding grounds off Antarctica, and the High Court’s decision that any whaling by Japan in that zone would be a crime, albeit a crime without any recourse to justice, as well as the successful chase by Greenpeace of the Japanese fleet (and now the outcry over the hostages).

If Japan was honest about their intentions, then we might really be able to make progress towards an end to commercial whaling. Instead, they play Simpsons-esque tobacco giant games to ensure a steady demand and to drum up support for their fleet and activities, while claiming it’s all about the science. “We now know more about . . . whale biology than at any time in history”, Morimoto says, and I’m sure that’s true, as far as it goes, but what did we learn this year different from last year or in the last ten years that’s actually helpful to anyone, let alone helpful to whales themselves? That they’re delicious deep-fried? I think someone already worked that out, besides which, there are many other things also delicious prepared that way.

We’ve got a positive result in the High Court, and maybe we can translate that into something bigger. Meanwhile, Japan’s behavior gets more intransigent.

5 Years
Rounding out the ex-pat experience, I made the trip back to the States, making sure to experience the full range of U.S. culture, including domestic air travel, as noted earlier (although that was only the half of it). Christmas in Buffalo with the Counsellor, who’s the one with the kids, which makes all the difference, included snow on the ground, until global warming caught up and melted it all the next day.

Travelling down to North Carolina included a stop-over in D.C. for some federal entertainment: training drug-sniffing dogs. Well, why not? My flight was already delayed, so another fifteen minutes to watch the enthusiastic puppies sniff the agents planted around the terminal and jetway couldn’t hurt. Not that they asked anyone if we’d mind.

NC itself was sere. They’re having a bit of a drought there right now, so added to winter, pretty much only the golf courses show much green. The weather was disappointing only insofar as I had hoped for cold throughout my visit, so as to store it up against my return to high summer. (The humidity here even in the air conditioned airport was like a smack in the face.) Mom & Dad didn’t make a scene of my prodigal return, but their friends did. A little. We also made the traditional visit to a cinema for New Year’s Eve, and I can recommend Enchanted. It was very entertaining. I don’t know much about Amy Adams, but she was very good.

From a number of perspectives, the highlight of the trip was California, visiting my brother the chef and his wife the jazz musician, very notably the culinary experience. T.’s career has been varied, and I’d heard he was doing take-out lunches as “some sushi bar,” but that’s such an inaccurate gloss.

Oco Time, in Ukiah, deserves to be central to anyone’s experience of Nor Cal. It’s hella good, as the expression goes. This isn’t just sushi, this is Japanese dining at it’s very best. While Australians visiting the West Coast are likely to stick to Los Angeles and San Francisco, Ukiah is redwood country, only three hours north of SF, and worth a trip just for dinner.

While I didn’t think it would be possible to exceed the Oco Time experience, we made the trip down to SF and hit The Slanted Door for Vietnamese food. That’s an inaccurate description, too. Calling this food simply “Vietnamese” pigeonholes it. It’s far more. While I’m sure SF is full of many wonderful restaurants, this one made me think I’ve either got to either move back to the States or import my brother to start something like it (or Oco Time) here. There must be restaurants like this in Sydney, and I’ve been to some that are close, but, well, wow.

As much fun as I had, and as pleasant as it is to travel on two passports (like Jason Bourne), the flights were gritty. I’ll do it all differently next time, probably in three years, when the Counsellor’s two youngest have their respective university and high school graduations, approximately, and with less hopping around, although the flight delays coming in helped me adjust from jet lag and leaving from California provided a relatively minimal return folded into coach. For now, if the weather clears, it’s time to get back some of the vitamin D I left in the northern hemisphere’s winter.

Blues Bros. Blues
Stuck in Chicago. United Airlines' incompetence leaving Sydney got me into SFO forty minutes late, which meant my luggage couldn't be rechecked. Which meant I couldn't board the plane either. So they put me up in the cheapest dive hotel as far from anything they could find, which I left at 5 a.m. for the connection, originally to D.C., but rebooked to Chicago. Which meant getting caught in the bad weather here. Now, if they'd just said at 7 that there wasn't going to be a shot, I'd have tried for Amtrak, but the just kept leading me on and on, until here I am in another hotel, but this time, mostly at my own expense. Never United again. Never Christmas, either, at least not if it means connecting through Chicago.

Security Jet Lag
As anyone who spends any time on the internet can tell you, airport security is a joke. X-raying carry-on luggage doesn’t help. Taking off our shoes doesn’t help. Confiscating 13 million disposable lighters doesn’t help. So why are we doing it? I’m about to board an international flight for the first time in five years. Most of the security restrictions we hear about have been implemented in that time. In addition to the twenty hours I’ll spend in the air just getting to my destination, add hours at the airport just for the initial boarding, and hours for the layovers. I still arrive the same day I leave, which is a nice bit of Einsteinian physics, but I used to be able to arrive before I left, whereas now it’ll take an extra eight hours. And I forgot to get those dried cherries.

There’s a Movie About This
Make that a lot of movies: Japanese government believes in UFO’s. No reports on Mechagodzilla, though.

Validation
Guinness really is good for you.

Apologies, but no Excuses
CNN and others can’t excuse Osama/Obama errors. They are inexcusable among people who claim to be professionals. Wolf Blitzer and every other idiot who makes this on-air error, as well as every technician in charge of composing the on-screen banners and tags and hearing-impaired transcriptions similarly serially screwing up, ought to be fired. They are incompetent and dangerously insulting.

Warming Up
Over in Bali, the latest round of climate-change talks have been getting essentially nowhere. It’s nice we’ve got an agreement to have more talks, in 2009, but really it’s no more than agreements-in-principle. Still, I’m happy enough that Australia has pulled its head out and signed on to reduce its emissions. But the best moment has to have been when the U.S. delegation got called on its continued intransigence: “Lead or get out of the way!” Maybe an email campaign directly to Bush on this and other issues?

Look for Me at the Duty Free
The problem I have with the various no-carry-on rules is that the airlines can now steal from their passengers. Swiss Army knife? Now it’s theirs. Litre of vodka? Well, there’s a way around that, if you don’t mind a little alcohol poisoning.

Yes, he had the liquor with him prior to the security screening, so he was, essentially, forewarned that liquids in excess of a set quantity were prohibited. Still, if they’re not going to make provision to return your personal items to you either at the other end of your flight or when you get back, how is it not stealing to confiscate whatever material they happen to find objectionable? I actually am a little concerned about this, since I fully expect to make use of my duty free allowance to bring in some nice whiskey on my trip to the States, but don’t know if (a) purchases made post-security can be carried on during the second, State-side leg of my trip, or if (b) the duty-free shop will be open at my terminus terminal. If (a) isn’t going to be allowed, how can legally purchased material be confiscated?

R.U.R. Update
There’s my robot. My God, it even pours for you. Reminds me of someone (and not the obvious someone, either).

Advances Australia
There are a panoply of Australian inventions that we can point to with great pride, chief among them the cochlear implant, Australian Rules Football, and Tim Tams. And now, a wash-and-wear wool suit.

The Eye of the Beholder
If a bad self-image is a brain glitch, what about when someone really is ugly?

Fantasy and Reality
I heard a lot about the Philip Pullman trilogy, mainly via the internet-as-word-of-mouth, and at the height of the Harry Potter phenomena. They were often touted as a kind of next-Narnia, both for their controversial theological content and for their alternative universe settings. My sister, something of a connoisseur of the fantasy genre, didn’t seem overly impressed with them, and I had no particular interest myself, although, eventually, I did get around to reading them. Well, the first one, anyway. It wasn’t until the middle of this year that I finally read the other two volumes. The first, which is soon to be released in the cinemas, The Golden Compass, put me off with its “daemons” and “steampunk” technology and mannered dialog. But I’m something of a completist, and couldn’t leave it alone. The second volume, The Subtle Knife was better, but not by much, but it’s the third, climactic book, The Amber Spyglass, where all the present controversy should really be focussed. All the hoopla is really pretty much just anticipatory. Pullman is stabbing viciously at the heart of organized religion, European, Christian religion, and how it’s poisoned our lives, particularly as children and how children are raised, and he’s got a point. The concept of “original sin” is pretty pernicious, and I can’t say that child baptism strikes me as anything more than a medieval hold-over from the days of much higher infant mortality and an organisational, cultic perspective on building up the believer base. The books, and, I’m sure, the movies – and it seems pretty certain the other two will have their time and ticket sales – will mute some of this, focussing instead, as much as possible, on the fantasy and adventure elements. I expect the armored polar bear fights to be pretty cool, and the flights of witches, etc., etc., but the books, the movies, are no Last Temptation or Passion, let alone “Piss Christ” or any of the other usual pop culture stuff that gets up the noses of believers. At least no one will go to jail or be beaten or threatened with death, no matter how ugly the rhetoric gets.

Moving
Don’t you love (un)natural phenomena? The sliding rocks of Racetrack Playa (via Kottke.org) are explained as the result of strong winds, maybe, but I think I saw something about this on ”The Outer Limits”, when I was a kid: they’re alive, and if they ever get out of the desert, they’ll take over the world. Where’s a scientist with a steel plate in his head when you need one? Or one with a video camera and some weather station equipment.

No Pets
For those without, cybercat. Not quite the same, is it?

(via Metafilter, of course.)

R.U.R
Across from the office, the ASIMO show is being set up. For the last three days, workers have been slowly assembling the tent where Honda’s robot will dance around for the delight of school children impressed by such things. I’m more impressed by the vacuum cleaner robot, but I don’t know a lot about what ASIMO does these days. Runs, I hear. Bet he can’t build a car. Well, it’s bad enough robots are taking over factory jobs, but they’re infiltrating aged care, too. Actually, that’s pretty impressive. I mean, tomato sauce and toast, not so much, but maybe he’d bring me a beer.

Frankenfood Lurches Closer
NSW will allow farmers to grow genetically modified canola crops, a decision that’s sure to stir up controversy, even if mainly from other states not yet on the GM bandwagon. Segregation of GM and non-GM crops sounds good, but is unlikely to achieve anything. Cross-pollination is a near certainty, which I’m sure will help Monsanto out no end. While I’m sure there’s nothing in the plants that would be harmful to humans, and genetic modification is only a high-tech method of selective breeding, I still have questions and don’t trust politicians to ask the right ones themselves. Using the genetic material of a disease-resistant soy bean to produce a likewise resistant corn makes me wonder what other, unidentified characteristics might be transmitted at the same time? Soy bean to soy bean breeding programs differ in that they’re not transgenic. So what’s being done with the canola? How many generations of regrowth have been studied? What nutritional implications are there?

I’m still waiting for my heirloom tomatoes to start producing, but it’s starting to look like I need a bigger garden.

We’ll All Be Rooned!
Well, interest rates haven’t gone up yet, so I guess we’re still waiting for the new world order to kick in, with labour union thugs fronting up at the local fish ‘n’ chips shop or dry cleaner’s to demand small business owners hire drug addicts and dole bludgers. . . .

Yea! Kevin Rudd is the new PM, and not only did Saturday night see the first Labor government in 11 years, but it saw the sitting PM lose his own seat, the first time since 1929. And Sunday saw Howard’s heir apparent, Peter Costello, resign his portfolio, consigning himself to the back bench and political obscurity for the remainder of his career. (I always thought he was a chicken – no bottle to mount a challenge, and now he can’t even take up leadership for three years in opposition; I guess it’s one thing to respond in question time with jeers, sneers, and smears and another thing to have to come up with the questions.) This puts Malcolm Turnbull in an excellent position to position himself to lead the Liberals back into government in three (or six, or more?) years, although he hasn’t had the party support previously. Downer and Abbott, the other potential contenders, seem too demoralized at the moment, and probably aren’t viable, anyway. Downer’s a pathetic joke of a fop, and Abbott’s role as attack dog just makes his viciousness obvious to everyone.

Labor has given us Australia’s first female deputy PM, Julia Gillard, and promises to tackle all the things Howard ignored throughout his reign. Climate change is on the agenda, for one, and we can expect to see an honest effort at reconciliation, too. Will Rudd say “sorry” right away? Probably not, but it’d be pretty cool if he did.

The Terrorist Tattoo
The gym I go to is out in the western suburbs, in Parramatta, and it’s attended largely by men of Middle Eastern heritage. Like most men in gyms, they’re there to work with the weights. Body-building as body beautiful. There’s one guy, big, muscled, sculpted, who weaves through the place exuding threat, a tough guy. Body-building as weapons deployment. I was, however, taken aback one day to notice he had “al qaeda” tattooed down one arm, in English, no less, using gothic script, even. Obviously, he is not displaying affiliation, membership, just sending a message, a message of intimidation, anger, hate. Arabic characters would say one thing about him, Roman lettering says another.

He’s a serious creep, and an idiot.

So what’s with Martin Amis? Christopher Hitchens splits hairs and counts angels to form a defense, and generally practices the typical denial tactics of the committedly anti-Muslim. (“In which known world” do antiwar protesters become al Qaeda sympathizers? I hear about it quite regularly. Perhaps Mr. Hitchens needs to read more broadly or get out more often.)

We need to be able to talk about and to each other. To take Hitchens’ point about discrimination, we need to be able to distinguish between the good and the bad without being misunderstood. This is where Amis’ remarks and subsequent clarifications have failed and where the defense from Ian McEwan and Hitchens also fails. They attempt the fine distinctions but disingenuously, obscuring Amis’ failure to discriminate and communicate in a manner that progresses the debate instead of allowing it to continue to degenerate into polarization and police-state bedwetting.

I’m not about to ask “al qaeda” boy at the gym out for a coffee to discuss the matter. He’s too clearly on the muscle; I’m too much a soft old fat white man to get away with it, and I’d likely end up with a broken nose for my effort. But in the public debate, I have to be able to say Muslims are killing others in terrorist actions and it has to stop. It’s not every Muslim, and stopping every person of “Middle Eastern appearance” or disallowing women to go veiled isn’t going to help anything. I’m not intimidated by the burqa or hijab any more than I am by sidecurls and yarmulkes or little gold crosses on a necklace. I also don’t want to have to be on the lookout for unattended baggage or to be forced to take my shoes off at the airport or disallowed from carrying toothpaste in my carry-on luggage. I do blame Muslims for this – the ones who want to blow me up, anyway, equally with the hysterical politicians whose do-nothing approach these last six years have left us all so vulnerable and debased the conversation we have to have.

“al Qaeda.” What a moron.

King for a Day
One more day, anyway.

John Howard tries on new glasses.
(Image lifted from ABC News, AAP Paul Miller)

”Alla Akba”
Not only is retiring Liberal Senator Jackie Kelly’s husband a creep, a bigot, and a plain idiot, so is she. "Pretty much everyone who's read [the fake flyer] chuckles." Sorry, you fool, but we’re laughing at you, not with you.

The handbill, purporting to be from a (non-existent) Islamic radical group supporting Labor for the federal election, is full of the kind of divisive, rate-hate inciting rhetoric typical of the most egregiously red-necked Liberal supporters. Calling it a drunken prank isn’t going to excuse it for any but the most recalictrantly stupid of the same group, ignoring as it does the effort required to compose, print and distribute it, let alone the sheer hatefulness of it conception.

Are senior Liberal Party members truly involved? I sincerely hope not, but this kind of political dirty trick should not be excused by anyone, including Jackie Kelly, and has no place in a supposedly modern country.

Interest
I understand that all party advertising is to have stopped by midnight yesterday, although I don’t know if that includes, for example, union ads advocating ALP positions, but I’m looking forward to never having to hear the awful, negative, vitriolic ads – generated from either side – that have been bombarding me with increasing force and frequency, but particularly the Liberal ads, which, when they focus on the Labor leadership, pretty much just recycle the campaign attacks from 2004 – interest rates and “learner” leaders.

Interest rates have increased six times since the last election, when the Coalition ran on the promise that rates would “always be lower than under a Labor government,” a meaningless promise, if only because the independent Federal Reserve sets the rates, let alone that the Labor government was purely hypothetical.

And while all governments can be – and have been, including Howard himself – tarred with the “learner” brush, that doesn’t mean there’s any substance to the accusation. In fact, under the parliamentary system, the opposition establishes a “shadow” government, developing alternative policies, as necessary, albeit without the full public service resources of the government proper, and debating policy and proposing legislation (insofar as it’s possible – Howard’s double majority, in the House and Senate, has precluded the possibility of any but Coalition-initiated acts moving through).

So while the remaining Liberal ads have been about union “thugs” taking over every small business in the country by force (entertaining little fictions) and the Labor ads have focussed on the lack of future-minded policies from the Liberals (other than the [potentially “non-core”] promise that Howard will retire and crown his successor, voters with serious intentions will already have been focussed on whatever substantive material has been available. Most of that has come from the ALP.

The Liberals have relied on the message, “hey, it’s us; we’re just going to go on like this forever.” This ignores so many important longer-term areas of concern, not least among them climate change, which the Coalition has ignored for the last 11 years, and the eventual need for the economy to end its reliance on the resources boom. Making industrial relations unfair to workers doesn’t position the economy into flexibility, but entrenches businesses while allowing employee exploitation. Labor has offered more in both areas and with an awareness that these are not matters for merely the next three years, but the next thirty.

Howard’s reign has been all about power, a lesson he learned from childhood: the top is only the top if you can keep everyone else beneath you. This is what he has done with his colleagues, first among them his perpetual heir-in-waiting, Peter Costello, and with the Australian public, who have allowed their own interests to dominate their lives and re-elected him to see to the preservation of a increasingly tenuous status quo. I think enough of us have finally seen through that self-interested veil to Howard’s real motivations and will, like me, vote Labor on Saturday.

Surge Protection
So it seems the troop escalation is starting to have an effect, in Baghdad, at least, although many questions remain, and will do so, for some time to come. What is the true source of the reduction in violence? Is this because the number of troops increased, or is it the result of Iran backing off, perhaps hoping to take some of the international heat off so they can keep working on their uranium enrichment program (which seems to be headed in a new direction as well, with Iran potentially outsourcing the process)? Are the Iraqi troops managing a front line role more now? What about the rest of the country? When the British pulled out of Basra, didn’t the violence there go down, too, in which case, how can troop increases have the same result as decreases? And to say that the number of bombings or the number of other attacks or the number of persons killed is at the lowest level since 2005, 2006, etc., doesn’t itself seem to mean very much if the attacks, bombs, murders continue, does it? I want to believe progress is being made, but it’s hard to know for sure what’s happening, or how long it will last.

More Like a Rodeo Clown
So-called “maverick” Senator, Barnaby Joyce, says he won’t try to stop a Rudd government from ending WorkChoices. But Joyce says a lot of stuff and is rarely to be counted on for follow-through. His maverick status comes only at the price of having a big mouth, so there’s no reason to trust him on this one.

This Is Why I’m Voting Labor
Howard’s just locked in my vote for the opposition, with his assertion that a Coalition win would ensure WorkChoices would be enshrined forever in Australian law, which I knew already, of course. This retrograde law, designed mainly with the intention of destroying unions and all other forms of collective relief, as well as to reduce protections from unfair dismissal, has already damaged employer-employee relations, and must be rescinded as soon as possible. This can only happen with a Labor win. Go Rudd!

Call It “The Clinton Factor”
After Bill played sax on MTV, the need for [leadership] candidates to appear on pop talk shows was established, and this requirement has spread to Australia, where opposition leader and current Prime Ministerial favorite, Kevin Rudd did his duty on Rove Live last night. Now, Rove is entertaining, more or less, but his show’s interviews are often the weakest part, consisting largely of product-placement, a difficult trick for someone not having a CD or concert tour to promote. Rudd came off o.k., a bit stiff, and there was a moment of hysterical panic over the ear wax incident (you don’t want to know). He managed a couple of fair one-liners, didn’t get out anything substantive, and basically weathered the experience. The biggest selling point the segment accomplished was that John Howard declined to accept Rove’s invitation (fair enough, he’s a sitting PM, and Rove mocks him mercilessly). And so we go into the final week, with Labor polling to take 2 more seats than the 16 they need to swing to form a government, including the PM’s and that of potential Liberal leader Malcolm Turnbull. For all the lack of storm or substance in this campaign, it’s turning out to be nearly interesting.

Dead Pool: Literary Edition
1. Norman Mailer
2. Ira Levin
3. ? (Maybe Philip Roth should be careful crossing the street? Or Judith Krantz?

Visionary
Similar services are available in the States, but after my last pair of glasses cost something like AU$400, with very little rebate from my private cover, when I heard about Glasses Online, I had to try it out. Admittedly, picking a frame style isn't quite the same as trying on frame after frame in a shop, and, upon arrival, I was surprised at the narrow depth, but the prescription's right, the look's good (enough; it's not like I'm particularly vain), and the price was easily half what I'd pay in an optometrist. I'll submit the invoice to my private cover provider and see what comes back (because I also bought - in a shop - some new sunnies, I don't expect anything, or much, anyway). Overall, this is a highly satisfactory consumer experience.

Crimeyness
According to the latest information from the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics, I’m living in one of the most across-the-board safe neighborhoods in the city. It’s a little peculiar, however, that the local government area in the study ends at the western border of my suburb, when Camperdown is not part of the same council district as most of the rest of those in the study, but instead in Marrickville Council. So I’m left to wonder what the rest of my true LGA would look like, and therefore what suburbs are worth considering for a home purchase (not that that’s the only consideration, or even the primary, given the recent spate of interest rate rises and those likely to come over the next few months, particularly once – if – Labor takes the federal election). It should be noted that many of the southern suburbs are less than felicitous, because that’s where the airport is. I already feel like I’m back in Queens, living in the LaGuardia flight path.

Advances in Science
Via Arts & Letters Daily, an analysis of paranormal phenomena that disproves the existence of ghosts, vampires, and zombies. Except that the two physicists have failed to do so, due to having incompletely understood the governing “rules.” Ghosts, for example, can walk up stairs because they’re not walking. They’re floating. They appear to walk because the ghost, as a being trapped in the physical plane by their inability to accept their transition to the spiritual realm, emulate their own past behaviors. Vampires would not overrun the earth, or haven’t already, because the assumption here, that being bitten by a vampire creates a vampire, subtracting a human, is incorrect. Vampires are created when humans consume the blood of a vampire and then die, whether from being “drained” by the vampire or otherwise. Not all victims so partake, so the vampire population is not exponentially increased, neither is the human population exponentially decreased. Zombies of the “28 Days Later” or “Night/Dawn/Day of the [Living] Dead” variety are not the same as traditional zombies, per the discussion of the case in Haiti. Modern movie zombies are more akin to vampires, and, as per that discussion, don’t exist, because their bite, or body fluid transmission, invariably infects the victim, and would therefore cause an exponential population dominance transfer, as depicted in the example movies. However, traditional zombies may yet be considered as possible, since these are brain-damaged persons, whether by the malicious infliction of drugs or by disease, who fall into the control of unscrupulous persons, who treat them as slaves or as agents of terror.

I mean, really, if you watch the movies, the rules aren’t that hard to figure out, and the traditional explanations are pretty clear after all this time. Scientists, go figure.

Viral
Yeah, I set up a Facebook page, and had a bit of fun with it, but it’s pretty boring, now, so I don’t spend an inordinate amount of time on it, building “networks” – i.e., joining groups – or adding applications – i.e., on-line toys and games.

It was probably in the cards before Microsoft’s buy-in, but Facebook is expanding its advertising capabilities. You’ve heard of “viral” marketing, the kind of advertising that spreads by word of mouth without necessarily acknowledging that an ad. The Carlton beer “big” ad was one, and even that Rube Goldberg car ad, which I think was Honda’s. More applicable to Facebook’s move, however, is the still largely underground practice of having people attend trendy nightspots and events who then take every opportunity to chat up strangers with how much they like product x. Facebook, similarly, will “allow” users to identify as fans of a product. Advertisers will pay to create groups, and users will join them. Advertisers can pay more and have actual advertising content appear on users’ pages.

This is all very good for Facebook, whose revenues – and profits – are sure to increase, perhaps even dramatically. There are plenty of people out there who really are fans of particular products, and they’re pretty certain to sign on to display their preferences on Facebook. It increases their own profile, after all, and these social networking sites are all about the friends list. But users won’t benefit, as the program’s structured presently, in any monetary sense, that is, they won’t get paid for advertising products on “their” pages. Fair enough, I suppose. The pages really belong to Facebook, not the users. But Google’s Adsense program, where Google puts ads on your blog or website, regardless of whether you’re paying for the site or not, pays for “hits” and pays more if those hits translate into sales. This seems a bit more fair to me, but then I’m not likely to sign up as a fan (or tool) or anyone’s anytime soon.

Are the Favorites Sneezy & Wheezy?
Poor critters, hardly time enough to recover from the flu, and it's The Race that Stops a Nation, this year "marred" by scratches among the top contenders.

Cinema
Well, movies, anyway. . . . M. and I went to Death at a Funeral on Saturday. It’s a pretty typical British farce, with a simple, limited set of jokes stretched nearly to their limit, a few big but obvious gags, all performed by a serviceable cast, some of whom are vaguely familiar, but probably only better known to a U.K. audience (which is not a criticism, since it helps, as far as I’m concerned, when movies are not overly beset by Stars). Fun, but, really, we should have gone to see Ratatouille. (Or Day Watch, but I haven’t seen Night Watch yet.)

Changes
The election campaign is going strong, with announcements seemingly every day from every side. The Liberals promise one thing, Labor promises the same thing, the Democrats or Greens promise something else. Labor promises something, the Liberals promise the same thing, and the Democrats or Greens promise something entirely different. Mostly what it amounts to is promises of billions and billions of dollars spent on things that the present government, over the last 11 years, hadn’t been spending on, but with the Reserve Bank tipped to raise interest rates yet again tomorrow, you’ve got to wonder about the economic credentials of any of these people. The Liberals have managed the government mainly by not spending up big, except at elections or on advertising for policies the public generally despise, so hearing that Labor is going to spend similarly would seem to be one of the big influencers in the Reserve Bank’s decision-making process.

Meanwhile, at least there’s some entertainment to be had. Over the weekend, we had Peter Garrett making an ill-advised joke to one reporter in front of another, the latter of whom, a notorious shock-jock (whose wife is a Liberal Party staffer), duly reported the remark as a serious statement regarding all Labor’s policy announcements. Way to shoot your boss in the foot, Pete.

Previously, however, we had the always entertaining Tony Abbott turning up late for his own debate, by half an hour, without so much as a phone call to warn the National Press Club, let alone his Labor opponent. When called on his bad behavior, Tone had the class to swear at his interlocutor. Lovely guy. And all this on the heals of questioning the motivations of an asbestiosis sufferer regarding his campaign to get necessary drugs on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme. Classy.

Three weeks to go.

Weather Wars
John Howard is a known climate change sceptic, but is promising AU$75 million for the development of renewable energy technology. Meanwhile, Kevin Rudd, who says he’ll sign on to Kyoto if Labor takes government in November, is promising AU$489 million for solar panels in schools, at AU$20,000 per school. I’d kind of like to see the numbers switched. Even if we take the number of schools as 24,450 (489 million divided by 20,000), AU$75 million would provide just over AU$3,000 per school. If this was added to the existing rebate scheme, it would make up about half the cost of a fairly large installation. O.k., not really enough, but I’ll bet selling a few candy bars would make up the rest. Around where I work, it seems like they’re always on sale.

How’d I Miss This?
Wait, she’s Judy Giuliani? It’s Rudy-and-Judy? And he’s still the GOP front-runner? That won’t last.

You Throw Like a Girl
And now, for just $25, you can prove it. (Via Josh Rubin’s Cool Hunting.) But do not whack it with your personalized Louisville Slugger.

Spending Money
Child care is a contentious issue here. It’s expensive and there aren’t many providers or places. Labor is offering to increase the child care tax rebate from 30% to 50% and to pay it quarterly instead of annually. The fear, naturally enough, is that this will only increase the cost. It might, too. But it might also mean that there’s more money to be made by opening more child care centers, increasing staff. Most businesses will expand to meet demand, so long as it’s reasonable to expect the increased revenue to also increase profit. If Labor gets in and enacts this change, and I was running a chain of child care centers, I’d already be looking at where else I could open. In fact, if I was a private education provider, I'd think about expanding my client base.

From the Homeland
The Opera House was full up for Laurie Anderson last night, and she put on a good show. The material was often political, but with her characteristic wry humor. The verse about Al Gore, pretty clearly expanded to take recent events into consideration, got a good laugh, but I got the distinct impression that the song about snow wasn’t a grabber for most of the audience (perhaps because it’s already so hot here). Anyway, unlike the last few of her performances I’ve seen, she had additional musicians on stage – keyboards, viola, bass guitar – and focussed more on songs than stories, and only using “the voice” once. Definitely a lot of fun, but all the better because, for an encore, and in honor of the twenty-fifth anniversary of her debut album, Big Science, she did “Let x = x” (which happens to be my favorite from the record).

Tax Reform
On the face of it, with just an outline in the news, Labor’s tax plan doesn’t sound bad at all. One particular element of the announcement stood out to me, the idea that we need to build national prosperity beyond the resources boom presently carrying the economy. This is something I haven’t heard from John Howard, although I’ve been able to glibly argue it as his intention in the WorkChoices legislation. I’d like to know what the thresholds are for the three rates proposed, and I’d also like to know what Mr. Rudd’s got planned if “national and international economic circumstances” change. It has to go through the PM to the treasury for costing – although I’d expect Labor to have done that themselves already – but it’s a start, and might allow Labor to regain some of the momentum they appear to have lost (in just the first 5 days of the campaign).

No Room at the Inn
World Youth Day, the Roman Catholic jamboree, is in danger of not finding a home in Sydney. I can’t for the life of me figure out why Randwick Racecourse was deemed the appropriate venue for the event. They’re expecting hundreds of thousands of teenagers from around the world, which would exceed even the capacity of Telstra Stadium, out at the Olympic Park. I’ve seen the racecourse, and no way is it going to outdo the stadium. (Of course, with the Rugby and AFL matches there, it might just be a matter of conflicting dates, but maybe the Pope’s a fan?) Is the Darling Harbour Convention Centre booked out? It would be just as convenient as Randwick, and there are plenty of backpacker dorms in the area. “Don’t scare the horses” seems a pretty lame excuse, and so’s the problem with the trainers. What, they sleep in the stable, too? It’s about money, who wants it, who’s going to spend it. The NSW government wants all those RC tourists spending it, to offset it’s own AU$20 million outlay, but no way can Randwick charge admission, and I guess the Cardinal figures he’s laying out enough already.

(Meanwhile, fun reading out of Hansard, especially toward the end, from about when the WYD logo is discussed.)

Cane Toad Redux
Imported species of plants and animals have a habit of getting out of control. So when you’ve got lantana spreading like kudzu, what do you do? Issue a 457 visa for a South American fly? (As if there weren’t enough flies in Australia.) How does that song go?

More with Less
Mario Batali says more pasta, less sauce; and Mark Bittman, of the NY Times, says more sauce, less pasta. I says it’s really only going to work Batali’s way if you’re using fresh pasta. The dry stuff’s never going to hold up without plenty of sauce, so most of us should follow Bittman’s advice.

November 24
It’s on, and if you’re not enrolled yet, you’ve only got until Wednesday, due to the rules changes recently passed.

I kind of thought Howard might have pushed for a later date, but 24/11 has been tipped for a while now, and it was only the Man of Steal (oops, “Steel”) playing games that left it so uncertain so long. Picking up the Sunday paper to see he’d flown down to Canberra might only have meant he was going early for the recall of Parliament, instead of meeting with the Governor General for its dissolution, although the headlines made it quite clear what to expect by lunchtime.

Since the campaign’s been underway for some weeks already, it’s going to be interesting to see what happens next. How negative will it be? The Liberal party brochure is surprisingly full of stabs at Labor, rather than focussing on the accomplishments of the Coalition and outlining policy for a return to government. But the technical issues are just as interesting to me, as a new(ish) voter. After all, despite the polling on “preferred Prime Minister,” when we vote, we mark the ballot for the preferred party.

I reckon Howard’s in real trouble. The Coalition may retain government, but Howard’s own seat is imperilled. And the polling is substantially in favor of Labor overall.

Making Nice
But still not saying “sorry.” That’s our PM. On the plus side, a referendum on reconciliation is a good thing, although long past due, but why now? Of course it’s the election. Howard’s been in power 11 years, and could have done this at any time. Although he’s continuing to stonewall on calling the election, claiming that the Liberals are busy governing, this is only something he’ll do if he’s re-elected. He could put it to a vote next week, when (if) Parliament is recalled. There’s plenty of time before he has to name a date for the referendum to be drafted and voted on, so this is a stunt, meant to deflect attention from the failures of the Northern Territory intervention and the fact that the government really doesn’t have anything to run on worth voting them back in.

Mind Games
Weird. Initially, the dancer spun counter-clockwise, but, as the article points out, you can switch it with a little concentration, so I got my right hemisphere engaged - somehow. Oddly, when I began the keystrokes to copy the URL for this post, the spin reversed, presumably because my right-brain kicked back in to accomplish this task. Don't you love science?

Caught on Camera
There’s a fair bit of whinging in the popular (read: Murdoch) press about speed cameras in NSW, the latest of which is about how the government’s “robbing” tollway motorists to the tune of $10 million, over and above the $41 million for other speed traps and $200 million in tolls. It’s fairly hilarious to hear the complaining, regardless of whether the money is earmarked for road safety programs or just going into the general budget. “Blatant revenue-raising” is the charge made by the Opposition leader. The focus of this particular article on the revenue from toll roads implies that paying a toll entitles drivers to violate speed limits, but when 15,000 fines are issued in a six-month period for a single stretch of tunnel, you can see there’s a problem. Sydney drivers are very aggressive, but beyond what’s already being done, there’s little the government can do to alleviate the problem. Drivers garner demerits and have their licenses suspended eventually, even revoked, and still they speed, run lights, tear through pedestrian crossings. I’m very happy with the cameras. I’d like more. If you don’t, well, don’t speed.

Structural Investigations
What fun pets are. Over the weekend I ended up with Police Rescue attending my home, extracting Felix from the crawlspace under the house. In the end, I suppose I could have managed it myself, but it would have had to wait for me to buy a couple of new tools at the hardware store, leaving poor pussy down the well overnight. As it was, his plaintive, but-I'm-hungry meowing was more than I could stand. I'll get the tools anyway, because I have no idea where he gained access, so he's pretty sure to get stuck down there again.

I did get a fairly good look at the underlying structure of the row of terrace houses; there's a lot more room under there than I would have thought. Basically, it seems that if you can get in under one, you can get in under the whole row. Nice, if you want to attempt underground burglery, although ultimately access would depend on the renovations to the interior that may have been conducted and whether there's any furniture in the way. I've got a thousand-pound t.v. in front of the access panel under the stairs (or that's what it felt like moving it around), so I feel pretty safe.

The cops were very nice about it, probably because it was an operation that didn't involve blood or trauma, and, after all, he's a very handsome cat.

Aww

Look, they think they're people. I mean hairbrushes.

Give Me Your Educated
Not to be outdone, the U.S. has unveiled a new citizenship test, and I don’t do well on the sample. I was off by one on the number of amendments to the Constitution, but I was way off on the number of legislators in the House. I also would have failed on describing the amendments on voting and the privileges of citizenship (too vague), and the authors of the Federalist Papers. You have to get 6 out of 10 to pass, and there’s a language component, where, I suppose, even if I do more often spell “color” as “colour” these days, I’d still get through o.k., not that it would matter, since I’ve failed the civics test already.

I shouldn’t admit these kinds of things so publicly.

Anyway, an outline of the new requirements, including a breakdown of the civics test questions is available from immigration.

Opening Closed
The Burmese situation continues to deteriorate, although, as Foreign Minister Alexander Downer so helpfully noted, we don’t yet see tanks in the streets (isn’t he sweet?), so the problem outside Myanmar remains as it has for the last 30+ years: how do we change their society? Economic sanctions have been in place between the U.S. and Burma for some time now, to one degree or another, but little has changed. Frequent diplomatic pressures have been applied, again to no particular effect. Australia’s trade with Burma is limited only in respect to weapons, but exports to Burma well exceed imports, so without full participation in a system of trade sanctions, the government sees no utility in cutting them off. (Besides, we get a lot of prawns for the BBQ that way.)

Seriously, sanctions are problematic. Look at South Africa: it took decades of official and unofficial sanctions before they finally dissolved apartheid. The U.S. blockade of Cuba was of limited duration, and the imposition of trade restrictions did nothing, since the rest of the world was only too happy to buy their sugar and cigars. The UN oil-for-food program of sanctions against Iraq was a laughable effort, easily rorted, even by the sanctioning nations, let alone the dictator himself. Trade between the USSR and the USA and its allies, although carefully limited on either side, probably did more to open up the former and depose communism than not selling them wheat and Levis and Pepsi would have (which isn’t to deny that the arms race didn’t have a significant effect, insofar as it ultimately bankrupted the economy of a bankrupt economic system, although the personality stakes between Reagan and Gorbachev also probably helped, insofar as Ronnie came off more willing to act on disarmament unilaterally than did his counterpart, whose half-measures, Perestroika and Glasnost, were more late-night joke fodder than they were newsworthy steps towards normalization).

So what, then? Sanctions on the poor? Or cut free trade? There are already those calling for military intervention, but that’s Bush-style regime change more than it’s anything resembling the Timorese intervention.

On Strike
Garret Keizer suggests a general strike across America on Election Day 2007. Sounds good. In fact, I suggest we do the same thing here, in Australia, until John Howard calls the election. (Found on Metafilter.)

The Nuremburg Offense
Peter Phelps, the Chief of Staff for the “Special Minister of State,” Gary Naim, attended a public forum recently and criticised a Labor candidate’s service as a soldier in Iraq as incompatible with ALP policy, which is to withdraw Australian troops, should the Opposition take government at the next election. In response to Colonel Mike Kelly’s response that he did what he was order to do, Mr. Naim invoked the Nazis: "Oh, like the guards at Belsen perhaps? Are you using the Nuremberg Defence?" Mr. Naim has faxed an apology to the Colonel. (Faxed? Couldn’t make a personal apology, could he? Couldn’t even make a public apology.) Labor has responded by calling on Mr. Naim to sack Phelps, but he has resisted these calls, claiming Mr. Phelps was attending the event in his capacity as a private citizen.

This wouldn’t be notable, particularly, although I think such comparisons are odious, except that it illustrates a significant problem in the Liberal Party: they refuse accountability. Mr. Phelps cannot attend an event hosting the Opposition candidate for his bosses’ seat as a private citizen, because he’s Chief of Staff to the sitting member, but if he wishes to attempt to avoid any appearance of conflict of interest, he should at least keep to a more modest behavior than attacking the usurper. Mr. Naim should indeed sack Mr. Phelps; in fact, Mr. Phelps should be removed by John Howard from whatever position a “Special Minister of State” may be.

Where have we seen this before? Didn’t read the AWB memos that revealed their bribes to Saddam Hussein in the lead-up to the present war? Well, that’s no biggie. Didn’t reveal and discharge stock holdings in companies whose business was under the oversight of your portfolio? You shouldn’t lose your job over something so picayune, should you? Knew all along that nobody was throwing their children overboard but said so anyway? Re-elect that man!

It’s all gone on long enough, and yet the Coalition trails Labor by only 10% in the opinion polls. Their approval ratings ought to be in the gutter, right along with their actions.

All Bets Are On
Is it strange that the NSW government – Labor – have decided to authorize Keno games in hotels now, although the ALP Federal Opposition Leader, in the lead-up to the national election, is calling for a review of poker machine licensing, in respect to weaning state governments off that revenue source? Maybe not.

Meanwhile, mad props, as they say, to the Rabbitohs, who are planning to scrap the pokies from their club. As the inner city Leagues club, long located in Redfern, this is a socially responsible move, a signal to the community that I’m sure will be widely recognized and welcomed.

Send Michael Crichton
Mystery meteorite malady plagues Peruvians.

Surveillance
If the Mr. Lee CatCam comes with auto-flash, I might just spring for one, given the tuxedo cat’s new (ish) tendency to stay out late. Maybe it’d be worth two, so that I can find out if his brother follows him around, or if they go their separate ways. Still US$60, while cheap enough for a digital camera, is a lot just to follow the cats around when I’m not home.

Buoyancy
There was an episode of the Mary Tyler Moore show when the staff were charged with writing celebrity obituaries and, in a recklessly flippant mood, said of Raquel Welch “at least we know she didn’t drown.” This came to mind – and I admit my own mental health reservations as a result – when I heard the news about the Australian navy paying for breast jobs.

I swear I’ve heard this story before, but maybe it was cosmetic surgery in the U.S. armed forces. It’s pretty silly, all the same, but perhaps it will revive one of the most revered advertising campaigns of all time.

Manufacturing Loyalty
After the Gonzales debacle, and now approaching his final year as President, you might think Bush would use some other method than cronyism or extremist partisanship in selecting a new Attorney General, but there’s no evidence he will. Theodore Olsen doesn’t sound like he should still be admitted to the bar, let alone take on the top spot at the Justice Department. And George Terwilliger? Doesn’t anyone in the White House watch The Simpsons?

Our Expanding Universe
Remember that bit in Annie Hall where the young Alvy Singer tells the doctor why he won’t do his homework anymore? “What’s the point?” he says, “the universe is expanding.” That’s kind of my reaction to the news that the Earth may survive the sun’s demise. Oh, no, wait; I’m more like the doctor: “It won’t be expanding for billions of years yet.” Also, since all life on the planet would be wiped out, am I expected to retain some proactive nostalgia for a big rock? Only a physicist could be that sentimental, apparently.

Six Years
ObL’s putting out more video than Britney, and the best we’ve got is speculation on what his beard means?

Black and White and Red All Over
Pedestrian safety is a problem in Sydney, as Sydney City Council is now aware. Despite red light cameras, “zebra” crossings, and other measures designed to ensure a foot-friendly city, from Circular Quay to the Blue Mountains, drivers here are among the most aggressive I’ve ever seen. O.k., it’s not the kind of chaos you see in Asian metropolises or the wild-style driving of Rome, but it also isn’t volume or just carelessness. Admittedly, jaywalking is an issue, although far less so than Professor Gehl seems to be suggesting, but I don’t have a problem with traffic buttons at the crosswalks (if they work; usually they’re just there for a placebo effect). Whether or not Sydney is “like a doughnut” is debatable. There was a long period of time when commerce essentially drove out residences, which is a shame, since the result has been that after dark there are only a few venues hosting events or otherwise having any value in attending – you can go out for a night on the piss anywhere, so you might as well do it close to home, instead of spending premium prices for the same result; meanwhile, how many nights do you want to spend at the Opera House, when for a fraction of the price you can go see The Bourne Ultimatum or rent a DVD?

(By the way, Matt Damon is Jason Bourne, and those movies are better than drugs; you come out feeling totally jazzed, fast and alert, your brain buzzing with the theme music. What a trip. Who cares if the ending is implausible?)

I’ve noted before, however, that Amsterdam closed its CBD to traffic, and London’s got (and NYC wants) a CBD toll. Reports from London suggest that measure has been very effective, reducing time stuck in traffic significantly, something on the increase in Sydney, notably on weekends. Apparently, traffic during the week is so bad, people are waiting for Saturday to come into the city, with the result being massive jams building up seven days a week. As the population builds in the western suburbs, without the commercial enterprises to support them locally, whether in employment or entertainment, they’ve all got to funnel into the center, so there’s just one more factor at work.

Melbourne famously kept its tram system, whereas Sydney lost ours decades ago, so its last 15 years of transformation may have been more easily accomplished than what we can manage. I’ll be interested in hearing what the professor comes up with, if anything, or the Council – our Lord Mayor, Clover Moore, is no stranger to taking on the lightning rod issues, so she may go for broke on this one – and also hearing what happens after he’s spent time in my hometown, where he’s off to next.

We Didn’t Start It
Howard uses the ‘s’ word: ”Sorry you’ve been inconvenienced,” he says, but it’s not his fault, or the fault of the NSW government, or the police. No, it was all the fault of people who “would threaten to resort to violence” - would threaten, notice; because there was no explicit threat, just the usual fear-mongering. Besides, it was only ever about Bush, wasn’t it? Does anyone think for a minute that downtown Sydney would have been fenced off if Bush hadn’t been visiting?

Meanwhile, while the police reject out of hand that they went over the top on security, reports of their actions, particularly regarding the demonstrators, are pretty unambiguous. There were only 18 arrests, including a man on his way to brunch with his children, and four of whom were released without charge, one who threw a dart at a cop, and one who squirted ketchup at a pro-Bush demonstrator and hit a nearby officer. Some reports have indicated that leaders of the Stop Bush protest march were targeted after their demonstration from a list held by police, indicating that although they complied with the terms of the march dictated by police and under court order, the police went after them anyway.

(Stop Bush is pretty useless, since he’s only got a little more than a year left in office, the protestors are pretty much all Australians and therefore unable to influence him or his party or American politics generally. Stop Howard, I say.)

Police in this country have a long, troubled history. Rampant corruption, with multiple scandals subject to Royal Commission investigations, a predilection to “verballing” suspects (i.e., making false statements to back up an arrest or ensure a conviction), and a documented tendency towards heavy-handed and even brutal tactics whether dealing with individuals or groups, all contribute to fostering the divide between the police and the community, and become self-reinforcing. Law and order is necessary for a functioning society, but we’re also supposed to be a democracy. None of this is helped by a complicitly quiescent press.

APEC was just a dog-and-pony show, but the excess security and police actions will further damage Howard’s standing in the polls.

Ghost Town
One good thing about APEC is that so many people have left town, getting a seat on the bus and train isn’t an issue.

I was home with the flu for Bush’s arrival and first press conference, but I shouldn’t have watched. That man’s tone of voice drips with insult. The substance of what he says is more or less reasonable, but he comes off as a bully. Of course, he is a bully, so it’s not really a surprise, but it’s still annoying. That, and he won’t answer the question posed, although most politicians refuse to provide a direct response.

The pictures of the “exclusion zone” are remarkable. The security fencing and the massive police presence are clear evidence of just how far democracy has degenerated. I accord a fair share of blame to those “black hat” protesters who attend these events with the intention of inciting the police (although I also note that the police commonly use provoking tactics, and even agents provocateurs, themselves) and committing acts of violence or property damage; there’s no excuse for them. My main complaint remains, however. We have given in to fear – or our leaders have – to such a degree that significant numbers of Sydney residents have left town for the duration, and great swathes of public land, including major tourist attractions, have been set aside, reserved for APEC delegates, most of whom will spend very little time anywhere near them. Bush’s calvacade was embarrassing. Hundreds of Secret Service agents accompany him and his party. Snipers are deployed on rooftops and in helicopters. Police cruise the foreshore in boats and on jet skis. Does anyone think any of this would be in place if Bush wasn’t attending?

Surveillance cameras and special emergency warning systems have been set up throughout the CBD. Special police powers of arrest have been granted. Along with the CBD fence, how much of this will be reversed, and when? The fence went up quickly, but will it come down as fast? I suppose it will, as businesses are already being seriously damaged throughout both the exclusion zone and the “declared zone” (an area where free passage is allowed, but where the police have more leeway in their actions than otherwise).

APEC is one of those events, like an Olympics, where the benefit to the city hosting it is highly touted by the government, but where that benefit will never accrue, offset as it is by the immediate costs. In this case, in addition, many businesses are actually suffering, due to necessary deliveries not taking place or because access by customers is prevented. Also, many delegates support staff have cancelled, so the “tourist” influx won’t have happened, hotel rooms will be empty that wouldn’t have been otherwise, restaurants won’t get their expected bookings, and so on. There will be no trade agreements signed, and any promised economic cooperation that does eventuate will take decades to show any benefit. It’s a farce, more about selling coal and uranium than anything else.

Resign or Be Prosecuted: How Quaint
Never forget that Alberto Gonzales is the man who drafted the legal opinion that authorized torture. He should never have been allowed to resign. He should have been impeached. I hope, however, that he managed to put some money aside for retirement: anyone who hires him will be revealing their own moral deficiencies in doing so.

Who Wrote These Questions?
In the sample 20 (of 200 possible) questions for prospective citizens, I’d do pretty well, but I truly wonder about the phrasing. Look at question 5, for example, “What is the floral emblem of Australia?” Floral emblem? You mean “national flower,” maybe? Who talks like that? Question 7 reads “In what city is the Parliament House of the Commonwealth Parliament located?” What pedant wrote that? Q17: “In Autralia, everyone is free to practice the religion of their choice, or practice no religion: true or false?” How does one practice no religion, watching football on t.v. instead of going to church? Maybe being able to parse the questions is part of the test.

Whose Sky Is It?
Sydney residents will be issued black-out glasses during APEC to ensure they cannot watch the fireworks display, exclusive to attending delegates.

Hosed
During APEC, in addition to a fence, nearly 3 meters high, surrounding parts of the CBD (and including some of the major tourist attractions of the city), police will be equipped with a water cannon and busses converted to serve as mobile detention centers. Security is a concern, naturally enough, and it’s important for the police to be prepared. It’s a little suspect, civil liberties-wise, that 200 beds are to be freed up in local jails by allowing some criminals home detention. This suggests the expectation of mass arrests beyond mere readiness, and the arguments in favor currently popping up on blogs always hark back to previous protests where “black hat” activists have turned up to derail otherwise peaceful protests. The presence of George Bush and the “globalization” agenda of the conference are nearly certain to ensure some disruption.

Those justifying such police-state interventions, however, are often the same self-styled libertarians decrying the “nanny state.” Of course, what they mean is only that they object to being taxed and seeing that money spent on poverty relief. The diminishment of civil rights is far more concerning to those less selfish.

Over the decades of my life, there has been an eruption of personal freedom, but also a concerted effort by reactionaries and power-seekers to reverse the trend. At the Munich Olympics, in 1972, global terrorism made itself most pointedly felt, and for some years, planes seemed to be hijacked quite regularly, yet we were never made to feel such fear so thoroughly as we are now being bullhorned into. Such measures as are being enacted in NSW serve to add to irrational anxiety, as well as to add one more and one more and one more cut to the thousand-cuts death democratic societies the world over seem to be suffering.

Christopher Hitchens had a piece in Slate not long ago, talking about “Rage Boy,” the iconic face of Islamic anti-Western protest. He makes a good point. “Rage Boy” doesn’t scare me, but he does scare others, a lot of others, and it’s become typical to respond to that fear by figuratively locking up the women and children and valuables, i.e., giving the police the power of indefinite detention, reducing the right of suspects to legal representation, authorise warrantless wiretapping without judicial review, and, as in Sydney, for September 7-10, removing the presumption of bail for anyone arrested in any police action around APEC.

This latter is not unlike what Bloomberg accomplished during the last Republican National Convention, and those cases are still clogging up the courts, as is likely to happen for any similar arrests here, two weeks from now.

It’s wrong to commit vandalism, and violence begets violence. McDonalds may be a symbol for some people of what’s wrong with capitalism, globalization, or the World Bank, if you can manage to stretch that far, but throwing a brick through the window of a franchise isn’t going to help you get your point across. Arresting 200 (or more) protestors, well, that does send a message: we’re in power; you’re not. Shouldn’t we be spreading freedom, instead of constantly trying to bury it? No wonder some many people in the Third World don’t trust our motives. We’re constantly betraying them.

Making Housing Affordable
The proposal to provide a tax deduction on first-home purchases isn’t bad, although Peter Costello thinks so. The problem with the Treasurer’s objection, however, is its short-sightedness. He claims that sales would be subject to capital gains as a result, but that isn’t necessarily so, since it’s entirely reasonable to impose a turnover time limit, whereby only sales occurring within the precluded period would be subject to taxation, and, like the tax deduction itself, apply the rule only to the primary residence.

I think there’s a lot more involved than tax deductions, but I wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss the idea.

Policing the Bardo
No reincarnation without authorisation. Or maybe China’s just worried you don’t need a passport to move the next Dalai Lama into the U.S.

Standardized Cool
School children across the country, both public and private, already wear uniforms, including hats, so why not sunglasses? Will the kids be able to pick out the style they want, with frames in the school colors, or will they be standard-issue models? Even then, uniforms vary in style from school-to-school, with the ritzier private schools kitting out the kiddies in straw boaters on the North Shore versus public school tykes in foreign-legion style headgear out west. Will the Wollstonecraft boys and girls get mirrored shades while the Windsor kids rely on non-polarised plastic from the chemist? I shouldn’t make fun; it’s a sensible thing to do. Most of us, by the time we’re adults, have already suffered some eye damage.

Dead Pool
First Tammy Faye Baker, now Leona Helmsley. Didn’t they cell together? Maybe Martha Stewart should be careful crossing streets for the next little while.

Own Goal
You might get away with it if you’re just a State pollie, or a Council member, and even then only if the press doesn’t have an issue with your performance, or your party’s for that matter, but once you’re in Canberra, I’d suggest not hitting the piss too hard when you’re on a junket, and especially, I’d recommend not going to any bar called ”Scores.” I suppose it’d be a simple enough error in judgment that would let you think it’s a sports bar, but that’s the same error that sees you going into a bar advertising “dancing” because you thought it might be a disco, instead of a topless dive. And offering “I’d had a lot to drink” as an excuse probably isn’t going to help you any more than “I called my wife as soon as I got back to the hotel.” Peter Costello’s assessment that his program would have been too full to have time to go out to ogle the girlies is fatuous wowserism, but I’m not at all surprised that the NY Post reporter, Col Allen, who warmed to Rudd so well, didn’t invite Pete for a similar excursion. Petey’s a dullard.

No Guests
Security is a natural enough concern, with so many international politicians coming to town, so I guess having the police check out your balcony for assassination sight-lines makes a little sense (but very little; common sense arguments abound). Still, can they really outlaw guests? Maybe I’ve been planning a big dinner party for the September 8-9 weekend, all my friends and relatives on their way, invitations sent, RSVP’s received, wine chilling in the fridge, deposit down with the caterer. . . . You’re really going to cancel my party? Are you worried a guest might bring an RPG? Play at Lee Harvey Oswald?

Inserting APEC into my living room is pushing the friendship.

(When Al Gore was visiting the 92nd Street Y, I had a phalanx of motorcycle cops sitting under my window for about two hours, running their engines, until the fumes were more than even I could stand - and I was a smoker back then. When I went out to complain, I was subsequently prevented from re-entering my building until Al had moved on. I got a very polite apology from the Secret Service in the end. And probably a case file.)

Graduation
Christopher Hitchens is right about Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, but, as he also is, with tedious frequency, he’s wrong, although it’s largely a matter of his inability to simply enjoy something without reference to himself. I’ll give him make-up points, though, for not introducing any major spoilers.

The final volume was a lot of fun, although the camping did get dull. J. K. Rowling has considerable skill in weaving a compelling plot across 759 pages. I was up until 2 a.m. finishing the book, simply because, having reached a point where I felt I might put the book down, there was enough impetus to read on that I gave in at every turn.

Yes, much of the resolutions to difficult problems did end up being a little too Star Wars, Return of the Jedi for me, and I never did think much of Harry as a wizard per se, and Ron and Hermione are never much more than secondary characters at best, but none of it matters. The books did, in the end, what they always promised to do. It would have been easy enough for Rowling to have wrapped the whole thing up in one book, to move on to other literary efforts, but the conception of the 7-book series, to see HP through High School, essentially, puts a close to the adventures no other method could have achieved. Harry would not stand up in adult fiction, and we’ve seen every inch of his maturation. These may not be books I’ll ever go back to, but they’re vivid enough in detail to stick around anyway.

Records
Barry Bonds is the new king of baseball, home runs, anyway, but will his record come with an asterisk? When Hank Aaron broke Babe Ruth’s record, for years all you heard was the dead ball/live ball debate. And when Roger Maris hit his 61-in-a-season, he really did end up with a footnote, because the season was longer in his day than it had been in Ruth’s day. What do we make of baseball’s pumped-up players, then? This year’s Tour de France saw drug scandals galore, toppling the leader just days before the end of the race, after all. Next year’s Beijing Olympics will surely raise the issue of China’s team-building practices again, although, admittedly, the focus there will be on what might be called “athlete farms.” The time will surely come when drug use and other, more or less risky practices come to be the norm. Already, professional-level sport performance is out of the question for the vast majority of us, so maybe it could be an equalizer. Just think of what some high-plateau training could do for your initial marathon entry, let alone a little blood-doping. Drugs and medical intervention techniques are extending our healthy lives well beyond what we might once expect, so it wouldn’t be anything really new, would it, if some 80-year-old grandpa took gold in the not-so-distant future.

More Money
Interest rates are up again, and everybody’s got something to say about it. Opposition leader, Kevin Rudd, Prime Ministerial hopeful, says PM Howard’s bluster over past high interest under Labor show’s he’s out of touch, unconcerned with the reality of the effects. But the PM, recently shown poll results characterizing him as dishonest and arrogant, rejects such criticism, as he does any criticism, for that matter. (Arrogant, moi? I reject that.)

Mortgages will be well up over 8% now, and likely to rise further still, perhaps even before the next election. Keep in mind, only the PM knows when that will be, but most people are tipping November. That’s about when the rates would be likely to rise, too, just in time for Labor to take over the government. If we’re headed for an economic downturn of any duration, let alone – and God forbid – a recession, the rates will go up even more under the next government, regardless of who’s in the Lodge.

If it’s Labor, it will cement their reputation for economic mismanagement and we can look forward to a swift return of the Liberals, and by that time, much of the present crop will have retired or at least been relegated to the back bench. While that itself might seem a good result, keep in mind that Mr. Howard has empowered the far right wing of his party, much as Reagan did in the States, so we’d be looking at a George W-style leadership coming to power.

Labor’s best hope to manage the economy is to act in consultation with the civil service, a practice Howard decided to abandon, in favor of his own brilliance. That’s why I feel a little leery over this latest 2.0 promotional effort from Rudd: Kevin 07. It’s a little “presidential,” don’t you think?

2.0
Yeah, yeah, I’ve got a Flickr account, and Googlepages, and a blog, and a Twitter profile, and, now, a Facebook entry, but to be honest, most of this stuff is just junk, a waste of ones and zeroes. Fickr’s o.k., if you want to sign up for a “professional” account and store all your photos online, but I hit the limit and haven’t had much cause to upgrade; I get more value out of Moo calling cards, but don’t want any calendars, stickers, or prints, and have no use for U.S. postage made from my photos. Twitter was fun for all of five minutes, but frankly, I’m not that busy, or too busy to be sending up 140-character updates with any frequency. And Googlepages offers little more than the kind of static “homepage” people were playing with back in the 1980’s, although I can see some measure of utility in setting up a “portal” to my various other Web 2.0 efforts.

There was so much fuss over Facebook lately, however, that I had to have a go, and now that I have, I can see it affords a level of interactivity that other applications don’t, but it’s all self-promotion, really, like piling up “adds” on MySpace. And the applications don’t work nearly as well as would make them of any substantial utility. I thought, for example, that the Visual Bookshelf feature would allow me to catalog my books, but there’s no organizational capability, and the “recommendations” feature keeps offering me books I’ve already added. Amazon must have that technology locked up.

I’ve heard that Facebook is being used or developed towards a more professional networking site, but the limits imposed so far prevent anything substantial being done. You’ve got to be a member of a group in order to join a group, unless it’s an open group, like “Australia”. Great. That’s helping.

Still, it’s keep up or fade into the Luddite past. Maybe I ought to get an iPhone. When they reach Australia next year.

Darfur Force
I can’t believe this didn’t make the front page of any of the on-line newspapers I read, but the UN is sending 26,000 troops to Sudan, at last. Everybody else is more concerned with Murdoch’s take-over of the Wall Street Journal. Now, China’s still managed to impose some use-of-force caveats, and the troops will only move if Sudan holds up on their end, and there’s still the composition of the forces to be managed, itself, I’m sure, a logistical nightmare, all the more so because the U.S. can’t be in much of a position to help out. But good on Gordon Brown for getting this started.

So Much for Happy Hour
I suppose there will be those who cry into their beer tomorrow. Perhaps I’ll stop for a schooner on the way home tonight.

A Win
Maybe George Bush should be put in charge of soccer in the U.S. – look what he did for Iraq. Or not.

No Cats on the Bed
So what does it mean if the cats want to curl up with you? It may not be a good sign. I’d figure there’s an element of learned behavior involved, as well as the more easily concluded sensory explanation. I can also imagine that some of the nursing home residents would be a little leery of sharing their bed with this cat.

Look, Up in the Sky
It’s a bird!
It’s a plane!
It’s a frog!

Not bird, nor plane, or even frog, it’s just little old me: Underdog.

I may wait for the DVD.

Debt Relief
Although personal debt is at all-time highs in Australia, and continuing to grow, the government sees the bright side: There’s $5 in assets for every $1 in debt, according to our PM (recently reckoned a very poor Treasurer, when he held the post, by his own Treasurer, Peter Costello; now we can see why). I’m sure it’s true, but I’m also sure that those assets consist largely of the home people are living in, the car they drive, and so forth. My net worth, on paper, has always exceeded my debt. That never meant that I didn’t struggle over bills.

Embracing the New
Everybody’s doing it: setting up MySpace pages, that is, including Australian politicians. I’m intrigued that Mr. Howard doesn’t have an individual page, just Howard Government (L’etat, c’est moi?), and that his only friends are six of his fellow Liberal party members – only two of whom are on the front bench – the “How to Vote” page, and Tom, a resident of California, who, with 190,943,913 friends, may be the most popular person on the internet, or just the most amiable. Meanwhile, over at the various Labor politicians’ pages, the friends keep building, as does the overall response. Even the Greens are doing better at making friends (Bob Brown lists the Dalai Lama.

Combating Terrorism One Case at a Time
Dr. Mohammed Haneef leaves England for a job in Queensland. He hands his pre-paid mobile phone SIM card to a relative; why not? It won’t work in Australia and still has a couple of pounds sterling on it. The card turns up in the car used in one of the failed attacks. England asks that Australian Federal Police investigate. Haneef heads to the airport the next day, with a one-way ticket to India, where his family is, including his wife and brand-new baby. He’s arrested. He’s held for days while the police continue investigations. He’s charged and granted bail, his passport confiscated and a requirement that he check in with the authorities every couple of days. But instead of going to the home the police tore to shreds during their search, his visa is revoked and he’s off to Villawood detention centre. Or he could stay in jail, if he’d rather. Immigration Minister, Kevin Andrews, says Haneef “failed the character test”, and I guess there’s an argument to be made that his “reckless” support of a terrorist organisation (here, take my SIM card; I can’t use it), does show him to be undesirable, but how is justice seen to be done here? He hasn’t been tried, let alone convicted, and that’s a fairly long bow to draw in court, although a jury trial seems a fairly foregone conclusion in the current climate. Isn’t this just a way of subverting the legal system? And yet, PM-in-waiting, Kevin Rudd, will keep the current anti-terrorism laws that allow all this. If Haneef is convicted, that’s one thing, but he deserves his time in court, just like anyone else.

Update, 27 July: It's unclear whether Dr. Haneef will still be deported, now that the Department of Public Prosecutions has dropped the case against him, but I'd say it's likely. It's also not clear from the initial report whether the case was dropped because the AFP made it too difficult to achieve a conviction or because there just wasn't enough behind the charges in the first place.

Chinese Food
The summary justice meted out to China’s former food-and-drug agency director doesn’t inspire me with confidence (besides my categorical rejection of the death penalty), and if I were an Olympic athlete, I’d be bringing a sandwich to the games next summer.

Serenity Now
Stuck for something interesting to rent, I picked up the entire series of Firefly, Joss Wheadon’s post-Buffy endeavour. Just sixteen episodes, but I can see why it didn’t go any further, or any further than the movie (which I’ll have to rent again, I suppose, as it’s supposed to be the culmination of the series). First, cowboys in space just means lots of shooting and cheesy accents, regardless of Gene Roddenberry’s characterisation of Star Trek as “Wagon Train in space,” so making the joke explicit doesn’t mean you’re making the next Star Trek. The idea of drifters working the edges of a galactic empire borrows from Star Wars, but maybe not the best bits, which were in the conflicts between the two groups or their representatives. More importantly, however, is that the characters never do much to drive the series as anything other than a collection of episodes, so the producers learned nothing from Buffy’s success. In that series, everybody grows, so even if each episode can largely stand alone, there’s usually a threaded storyline throughout, driving to the end of the season, where what’s been learned can be applied. Not so, in Firefly. Finally, and most importantly of all, is the clear impression left that while the producers may have had a goal for these characters, particularly the doctor’s mysteriously brain-damaged sister, they took fourteen of the episodes to even start hinting. It’s just not going to hold anyone’s interest, especially not in the era of the multiple-plot series. Remember Hill Street Blues, ER, etc.? More characters, maybe, but pretty much everyone gets something to do, often affording parallels and linkages, but forcing audience attention. Missed that, too. Oh, well, I suppose it would be wrong to write off Wheadon at this point (he’s busy with the Astonishing X-Men at the moment, as well as a Buffy comic), but I’ll be more cautious in the future.

Climate Change
Winter’s setting in, and I appear to be adjusting to life in the antipodes: I’m cold. Funny, but with overnight temperatures in around the 40’s, I ought to be quite comfortable. At least, that’s the way I remember life back home. Of course, I’ve always had heat wherever I’ve lived, even if in some places it was kept quite low, to save on cost. So waking up, it’s tough getting out of bed lately, to face the chill in the bathroom before the shower adds some steam. And there’s the other sign of my acculturation: I’m whinging about the cold.

Independence Day Visitors
The Kitty Hawk’s in town, and Sydney will see a fair few American sailors around town, particularly down in the Rocks, around Circular Quay, and, of course, up to Kings Cross. I’m grateful to be out in the Inner West now, as I’m sure Oxford Street’s vicinity will also see an increase in activity, which is pretty much never a good thing, but I won’t be surprised if a few tars show up at the Hampshire Hotel anyway. Meanwhile, it’s also a good time not to live in Woolloomooloo, as the NSW Police use their newly enhanced powers to lock the suburb down. Hooray for freedom. (Just wait until APEC, in September.)

Doctors?
What kind of doctors set off car bombs?

Weasel
I didn’t expect Bush to pardon Libby; I figured Bush to be too chicken to try it on. And, whaddya know? He found a different expedient: commuting the prison term. Libby’s still a convicted felon and owes a quarter million in fines, but he walks, and Bush gets his cake and eats it, too.

There’s no way Bush thought this up on his own. This is a Rovian move if ever there was one. But, look, in all the years as governor of Texas, with all the death-row appeals that came across his desk, how many commuted sentences did Bush make? How many even just commuted to life without parole? Yeah, Libby didn’t kill anyone, but he committed a serious crime, arguably more serious in his case, as a lawyer, than perjury might otherwise be considered. The sentence was just, and Bush’s weaselling him out of serving time subverts justice.