Out
The predicted swing to the Liberals showed Labor the door in a big way, but nothing for the Greens, not even their expected win in Marrickville, although Jamie Parker remains neck-and-neck with Verity Firth, so maybe one seat. Nice to see Clover Moore, who also serves as Lord Mayor of Sydney, retain her Independent seat. Honestly, her departure from the Labor ranks ten years ago should have been our first warning that the factionalism was out of control. Can Barry O'Farrell make the trains run on time? And cheaper? We'll see.
Shame about Kristina Keneally stepping down as Labor leader. It gives credence to the tale of her being nothing more than a puppet, and the party could have done worse than to support her in attempting full-scale reform of how they operate.
Speaking of women in politics, Geraldine Ferraro has died. Her selection as VP candidate in 1984 stands in stark contrast to John McCain's choice in 2008 of Sarah Palin. Although scandal involving her husband was a big part of what sank the Democratic ticket, she herself was capable and competent. She opened the way for Hillary Clinton to mount a credible campaign for the Presidential nomination, and we could do worse than to hope for more like her.
27 March 2011
26 March 2011
You Pad
On Friday, I passed the Apple store on George Street, to find a line of people camped out waiting to buy the iPad2. The line extended around the block, and by six, when I left work, had gone even further. Appple guardians were managing the crowd, which I found beneficial. I had to come to work on Saturday, too, and the line was still there, if smaller. Interestingly, because it was raining, Apple had provide umbrellas to those without. I didn't ask if they'd have to give them back, but they looked like those special wind-proof umbrellas, and I'd guess they weren't gimmies.
But I don't get it. What's the iPad got that's so essential? It's bascially a hypertrophic smart phone, as far as I can tell, and only half a laptop, if that. There must be something that makes it worth such attention, but if I can't upload to it or download from it, it's just eye candy and Facebook updates.
Whatever.
On Friday, I passed the Apple store on George Street, to find a line of people camped out waiting to buy the iPad2. The line extended around the block, and by six, when I left work, had gone even further. Appple guardians were managing the crowd, which I found beneficial. I had to come to work on Saturday, too, and the line was still there, if smaller. Interestingly, because it was raining, Apple had provide umbrellas to those without. I didn't ask if they'd have to give them back, but they looked like those special wind-proof umbrellas, and I'd guess they weren't gimmies.
But I don't get it. What's the iPad got that's so essential? It's bascially a hypertrophic smart phone, as far as I can tell, and only half a laptop, if that. There must be something that makes it worth such attention, but if I can't upload to it or download from it, it's just eye candy and Facebook updates.
Whatever.
16 March 2011
Nuclear Safety
The situation in Japan continues to be worrying, and you’d have to wonder what can be done and what’s next. Reading about six-inch thick steel containment vessels and explosions capable of damaging them shows both how much effort has gone into safety and how much can still go wrong.
Power generators are dealing with tremendous forces, and things can go badly wrong with any of them, nuclear or otherwise. The BP Gulf spill is evidence that just dealing with the substances is risky enough, let alone refining them, and then utilising them.
Granted 9.0 earthquakes and tsunami incursions of over 4 kilometres aren’t common, but if a building designed to withstand a direct hit by an airliner in a country with earthquake building codes second to none can fail as dramatically as these reactors, the question of how safe is safe has to be asked. Are we really prepared to continue using nuclear power? Is this just an old, flawed design that has been superseded elsewhere, even in Japan – where one of the reactors was already scheduled to be decommissioned?
I hope for the best, that the situation gets under control soon, and without catastrophic radiation release.
Elsewhere: Germany is now thinking ahead.
The situation in Japan continues to be worrying, and you’d have to wonder what can be done and what’s next. Reading about six-inch thick steel containment vessels and explosions capable of damaging them shows both how much effort has gone into safety and how much can still go wrong.
Power generators are dealing with tremendous forces, and things can go badly wrong with any of them, nuclear or otherwise. The BP Gulf spill is evidence that just dealing with the substances is risky enough, let alone refining them, and then utilising them.
Granted 9.0 earthquakes and tsunami incursions of over 4 kilometres aren’t common, but if a building designed to withstand a direct hit by an airliner in a country with earthquake building codes second to none can fail as dramatically as these reactors, the question of how safe is safe has to be asked. Are we really prepared to continue using nuclear power? Is this just an old, flawed design that has been superseded elsewhere, even in Japan – where one of the reactors was already scheduled to be decommissioned?
I hope for the best, that the situation gets under control soon, and without catastrophic radiation release.
Elsewhere: Germany is now thinking ahead.
15 March 2011
News
When I was in the US in January, a lunatic shot a member of the House, down in Arizona. For the next 48 hours, that was the only topic presented on the 24-hour cable news stations, Fox, MSNBC, and CNN, notably. Broadcast national news took a wider view, if only just, and if only because with 30 to 60 minutes available had much less disposable time than that required to run a day-long news cycle.
Mind you, the news was that Gabrielle Giffords had been shot, that a judge and a nine-year old girl were among the killed, the number of wounded, and that the perpetrator had been arrested. In the following hours, the news grew to include the prognosis of Representative Giffords and, to be honest, very little else. Yet the analysis – no, that’s too strong – the discussion never stopped. If I switched on the television, I would learn nothing new. But why did I expect to?
This is the 24/7 news program’s trap. You keep hoping to hear something you missed, something that would make sense, would add to your store of knowledge, that would help determine a course of action or imbue a sense of progress. This is what they are selling, little different from the endless news “updates” that are nothing more than advertisements for a program that will have little content in the end beyond what you’ve already gleaned from the ad or from an earlier program.
And now we have Japan’s 9.0 earthquake and the devastating tsunami that followed. This is certainly producing a lot of valuable new information, especially in regard to the nuclear power plants situations. Anyone paying even the least attention to these events and their development is eager to receive new information.
Typically, however, we have an opportunistic attempt to deride the Australian national broadcast company’s relatively recent launch of a 24-hour news channel. And, as usual, it’s coming from the Murdoch empire.
Mr. Blair lists the programming content of ABC News 24 on the Saturday following the destructive events in Japan, up until 5:30 p.m.. He makes no mention of any coverage they did offer during this period or afterwards, so maybe he just wasn’t getting his tsunami jones satisfied.
Why? Because he’s been led to expect non-stop coverage of whatever major event has occurred in the last 24 to 72 hours, regardless of whether there’s any new information? Or because it’s the ABC, a public service that he’s decided is fair game so long as Labor is in government, rather than the Coalition? It can’t be that, because during the Howard era, when Mr. Blair got his start as a semi-public figure and now a columnist in the tabloids, he’d be just as critical whenever a story or program aired critical of the Liberals.
I want to know what’s happening in Japan, because it’s important. It’s important on many levels, not least to the Japanese themselves, who are presently undergoing, for me, unimaginable hardship and trauma. But it isn’t something I’m interested in so I can play the tall poppy card in a one-sided political smear campaign, and that's what appears to be the intention. There are bigger things than the ABC, whether you think it’s working to its job description or not.
When I was in the US in January, a lunatic shot a member of the House, down in Arizona. For the next 48 hours, that was the only topic presented on the 24-hour cable news stations, Fox, MSNBC, and CNN, notably. Broadcast national news took a wider view, if only just, and if only because with 30 to 60 minutes available had much less disposable time than that required to run a day-long news cycle.
Mind you, the news was that Gabrielle Giffords had been shot, that a judge and a nine-year old girl were among the killed, the number of wounded, and that the perpetrator had been arrested. In the following hours, the news grew to include the prognosis of Representative Giffords and, to be honest, very little else. Yet the analysis – no, that’s too strong – the discussion never stopped. If I switched on the television, I would learn nothing new. But why did I expect to?
This is the 24/7 news program’s trap. You keep hoping to hear something you missed, something that would make sense, would add to your store of knowledge, that would help determine a course of action or imbue a sense of progress. This is what they are selling, little different from the endless news “updates” that are nothing more than advertisements for a program that will have little content in the end beyond what you’ve already gleaned from the ad or from an earlier program.
And now we have Japan’s 9.0 earthquake and the devastating tsunami that followed. This is certainly producing a lot of valuable new information, especially in regard to the nuclear power plants situations. Anyone paying even the least attention to these events and their development is eager to receive new information.
Typically, however, we have an opportunistic attempt to deride the Australian national broadcast company’s relatively recent launch of a 24-hour news channel. And, as usual, it’s coming from the Murdoch empire.
Mr. Blair lists the programming content of ABC News 24 on the Saturday following the destructive events in Japan, up until 5:30 p.m.. He makes no mention of any coverage they did offer during this period or afterwards, so maybe he just wasn’t getting his tsunami jones satisfied.
Why? Because he’s been led to expect non-stop coverage of whatever major event has occurred in the last 24 to 72 hours, regardless of whether there’s any new information? Or because it’s the ABC, a public service that he’s decided is fair game so long as Labor is in government, rather than the Coalition? It can’t be that, because during the Howard era, when Mr. Blair got his start as a semi-public figure and now a columnist in the tabloids, he’d be just as critical whenever a story or program aired critical of the Liberals.
I want to know what’s happening in Japan, because it’s important. It’s important on many levels, not least to the Japanese themselves, who are presently undergoing, for me, unimaginable hardship and trauma. But it isn’t something I’m interested in so I can play the tall poppy card in a one-sided political smear campaign, and that's what appears to be the intention. There are bigger things than the ABC, whether you think it’s working to its job description or not.
State of the State
On a national level, I consider the Liberal Party increasingly modelled on the Know-Nothing basis. Opposition Leader Tony Abbott standing up in public to declare that carbon dioxide is not the villain it’s portrayed as in the “[unsettled]” science of global warming is fatuous disingenuousness. How long Abbott can last in his role is unknown. The Liberals appear to like having a vicious unprincipled attack-dog as leader, but when the next election is called, will they still want him, or will they go for someone more measured?
The question is sort of more acute at the State level, insofar as New South Wales is less than two weeks from going to the polls, with the Liberals highly touted to take the government out of Labor’s hands. In their case, I can’t say as I’ve heard much from their leader, Barry O’Farrell, either before the election was announced or since. I have started to see some attack ads on television, but only one where O’Farrell himself stands up to say anything about policy, and I find his statement regarding the proposed Federal Carbon Tax hard to fathom. (If the tax is implemented nationally, how can a State Premier rescind it?) Regardless, despite the silliness in the advertising, O’Farrell has been very different from Abbott, mainly as he hasn’t been much of a presence at all, and when he does show up in the news, hasn’t got much to say. Well, the big stuff gets done in Canberra, anyway, I guess, not Macquarie Street.
I’m pretty well convinced that the Liberals will take government, though, and not looking forward to it. Although Labor have undeniably been inept, my own experiences don’t suggest they’ve been as bad as the newspapers and television programs say. I ride the buses and trains and travel throughout the city pretty extensively, and it all works well enough often enough. I haven’t had any bad experiences with the hospitals, although the horror stories that occasionally surface are pretty horrible. The MP for my area, Verity Firth, hasn’t been bad (although her husband getting picked up buying a tab of ecstasy was pretty stupid, especially for his timing), so I don’t have any motivation to vote Greens, let alone Liberal. So if Labor have been bad, it’s been mostly literally political. Their leadership spills, portfolio hand-offs, various scandals and, more recently, abundant resignations have tainted the brand. Is there any reasonable expectation that it won’t be much the same for the Liberals?
There’s an opportunity for the Greens, which I doubt will come to any substantial gain, let alone the government (which I have my doubts they’re ready for). Out in the western suburbs and rural NSW, the Greens are evil institutionalized, so their only shot exists in the eastern and inner west suburbs. The east will vote Liberal, is my prediction, and the inner west, often safe seats for Labor, will stick it out or go Liberal, but I anticipate that any gains made by the Greens will be here. Newtown, Marrickville, Glebe tend to lean harder left than other suburbs. If Verity gets dumped from her seat of Balmain, it’ll be because of her individualized campaign slogan: “Keep Verity” (i.e., Labor is awful but it’s not Verity’s fault). I know it motivates me.
But I’ll have to live with whatever government we do get, nevertheless.
On a national level, I consider the Liberal Party increasingly modelled on the Know-Nothing basis. Opposition Leader Tony Abbott standing up in public to declare that carbon dioxide is not the villain it’s portrayed as in the “[unsettled]” science of global warming is fatuous disingenuousness. How long Abbott can last in his role is unknown. The Liberals appear to like having a vicious unprincipled attack-dog as leader, but when the next election is called, will they still want him, or will they go for someone more measured?
The question is sort of more acute at the State level, insofar as New South Wales is less than two weeks from going to the polls, with the Liberals highly touted to take the government out of Labor’s hands. In their case, I can’t say as I’ve heard much from their leader, Barry O’Farrell, either before the election was announced or since. I have started to see some attack ads on television, but only one where O’Farrell himself stands up to say anything about policy, and I find his statement regarding the proposed Federal Carbon Tax hard to fathom. (If the tax is implemented nationally, how can a State Premier rescind it?) Regardless, despite the silliness in the advertising, O’Farrell has been very different from Abbott, mainly as he hasn’t been much of a presence at all, and when he does show up in the news, hasn’t got much to say. Well, the big stuff gets done in Canberra, anyway, I guess, not Macquarie Street.
I’m pretty well convinced that the Liberals will take government, though, and not looking forward to it. Although Labor have undeniably been inept, my own experiences don’t suggest they’ve been as bad as the newspapers and television programs say. I ride the buses and trains and travel throughout the city pretty extensively, and it all works well enough often enough. I haven’t had any bad experiences with the hospitals, although the horror stories that occasionally surface are pretty horrible. The MP for my area, Verity Firth, hasn’t been bad (although her husband getting picked up buying a tab of ecstasy was pretty stupid, especially for his timing), so I don’t have any motivation to vote Greens, let alone Liberal. So if Labor have been bad, it’s been mostly literally political. Their leadership spills, portfolio hand-offs, various scandals and, more recently, abundant resignations have tainted the brand. Is there any reasonable expectation that it won’t be much the same for the Liberals?
There’s an opportunity for the Greens, which I doubt will come to any substantial gain, let alone the government (which I have my doubts they’re ready for). Out in the western suburbs and rural NSW, the Greens are evil institutionalized, so their only shot exists in the eastern and inner west suburbs. The east will vote Liberal, is my prediction, and the inner west, often safe seats for Labor, will stick it out or go Liberal, but I anticipate that any gains made by the Greens will be here. Newtown, Marrickville, Glebe tend to lean harder left than other suburbs. If Verity gets dumped from her seat of Balmain, it’ll be because of her individualized campaign slogan: “Keep Verity” (i.e., Labor is awful but it’s not Verity’s fault). I know it motivates me.
But I’ll have to live with whatever government we do get, nevertheless.
12 March 2011
05 March 2011
V-v-v-video
O.k., so that's a reference to Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, but even if that's an Australian movie damaged by Hollywood, it's still kind of iconically Australian, and so is The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, which after all this time I've finally seen. What a good movie, and what a cast. Hugo Weaving, Guy Pearce, and Terence Stamp, with Bill Hunter for good measure, and maybe they're camping it up a little much, but the emotional realities, the strengths and weaknesses of the characters, play out so real, even if it is, by now, a period piece. The reality of the bigotry faced down could have been stronger, but for now, today, particularly (Mardi Gras!), it'll do.
O.k., so that's a reference to Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, but even if that's an Australian movie damaged by Hollywood, it's still kind of iconically Australian, and so is The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, which after all this time I've finally seen. What a good movie, and what a cast. Hugo Weaving, Guy Pearce, and Terence Stamp, with Bill Hunter for good measure, and maybe they're camping it up a little much, but the emotional realities, the strengths and weaknesses of the characters, play out so real, even if it is, by now, a period piece. The reality of the bigotry faced down could have been stronger, but for now, today, particularly (Mardi Gras!), it'll do.
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