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.

The Bush Court
We’re really starting to see the effects of GWB’s appointments now, aren’t we? The latest decisions roll back the clock on affirmative action, anti-trust, the separation of church and state, campaign finance, and free speech. It’s almost a surprise that an insanity defense got a death penalty sentence overturned. These decisions, and many more to come, will stand for generations. The consequences of eight years of George W. Bush will not be easily overcome.

New Geography
Via Rebecca Blood, the Strange Maps blog collects and comments on unusual maps, whether fantastical or, in the case of this 1838 map of Australia reorganized into ten states (rather than the present 6 states & 2 territories).



I like that Guelphia includes both Melbourne & Sydney, as it would perhaps help reduce the inane “rivalry” and help promote the acceptance between the two of the alternative football codes (rugby in the present NSW and Australian Rules in Victoria).

Ultimately, this reorganisation has to fail. Renaming Tasmania in itself is not a bad thing, returning it to its original Van Diemen’s Land, but then sticking a new Tasmanian state far from the Tasman Sea just confuses things. I get Carpentaria and Torresia, but where does “Guelphia” come from? And does “Dampieria” have anything to do with the swagman’s campfire bread “damper”?

Also fun is this GDP comparison, where Australia comes in as equivalent to Ohio. Which is why we’ve got John Howard, I’d guess.

Classy
According to the NY Times, depending on whether I categorize myself as being in Human Resources or as a computer support worker, I’m either in the 79th percentile or the 88th, assuming, of course, that my income there would be the same as my income here, in a straight dollar-for-dollar conversion. Interestingly, income has only about a -5% effect on my class standing when I factor in the exchange rate.

Techentropy
Being more or less in the business myself, I enjoyed reading this list of Top 10 Dead (or Dying) Computer Skills. It had particular meaning for me in that I’m currently stuck using #2 on the list, a non-relational database. Coming from a SQL background, having to figure out how to use this kludge drives me up the wall. There are resources for higher-skilled users, but nothing for beginners, like me.

Funnily enough, I had an interview recently with a company using another non-relational database, even though the company had purchased the full suite of Oracle ERP dbms. I think I didn’t get the job because I said I’d push to move over to Oracle right away. The main reason the article requires the caveat “(or dying)” in its title is that users tend to cling to the technology they know, rather than learning something new, even if it’s better.

This is why COBOL is only now looking at the downward curve. A lot of significant systems were built in that language, but it worked so well, requiring highly structured, careful coding, nobody needed to learn it anymore after a while, until the Y2K debacle. Interestingly, many of the programmers brought in to fix the code prior to the millennium were from Russia and India, where the language was still in current use.

The other suggestions are often hilarious, not to mention nostalgic (Turbo Pascal – how well I remember how hot that once was), but I’d argue that documentation by programmers is not a dead or dying skill but mythical in the first place.

Twitchy
I never had a name for it, all the years I’ve suffered from it, but it’s called “Restless Leg Syndrome,” and it seems to be a real medical condition. Well, if you can believe the rather equivocal encapsulation on Yahoo! Health. (And why is it listed under depression?)

It first manifested itself on long car trips, and I found that massaging my leg or stretching as much as the cramped back seat would allow relieved the sensation that would, if left alone, make my leg twitch uncontrollably, with a kind of itchy tingling behind my knee. Later, as an adult, I’d often get this when I was trying to sleep, and doing stretches or lightly keeping my foot moving would relieve the urge, almost always restricted to my right leg. Eventually, I noticed something else: it would strike most often during the early days of a period when I wasn’t running regularly, or after I’d started back up again. In either case, after a couple of weeks, it would ease off, only happening rarely. My father-in-law, a former naturopath prescribed an increase in magnesium. I can’t say whether it helped, but it’s been a while since I was taking any in supplements, and the exercise-related pattern seemed to persist, anyway.

Then I found out Mom had it, too, which reinforces some of what’s presented in this article: it runs in the family, and mothers with multiple children may find it persists beyond pregnancy. I’m not anemic, so that’s not the problem, but could I have some kind of dopamine issue? How would I know?

In addition to its use in treating Parkinson’s, to assist patients in controlling involuntary motion, which is the applicable purpose for RLS, there are other functions affected by dopamine in the brain. My memory stinks, so there’s that, but I don’t breastfeed, so that’s not an issue, but I’ve always been a bit shy, so maybe there’s a relationship after all.

Next time I talk to my doctor, perhaps I’ll inquire about trialling some ropinirole or something. Of course, I could just drink more water or ensure I’m running every day.

Sorry
When the subject of widespread child sexual abuse in Aboriginal communities was first raised, many months ago, there was much tutting and argument and the usual lack of agreement or action. Now we have a thorough assessment and the impetus to action. The PM has taken the lead and will send in some police, maybe some of the army, and the first thought going through many heads was “Stolen Generation.”

The Stolen Generation was the result of paternalistic practices whereby the government forcibily removed Aboriginal children from their parents and placed them in white homes or orphanages to be raised without their language or culture, to ensure the assimilation of the indigenous population, eradicating it, in effect. This was still taking place into the 1970’s. The effect continues, and has a part in what we’re now seeing in the Northern Territory and elsewhere, what we’re now having to fix.

The first thought going through most heads was “thank God someone’s doing something; better to act swiftly and decisively than not at all.” True enough, as far as it goes, but what we need to think about is how to avoid the mistakes of the past, because when you look at what’s being proposed, what you see is power being exercised over the powerless in much the same fashion as has been done before and for much the same rationale.

It’s true we have to send in the police and social welfare service providers and monitors now, but we also need a bigger plan, a more long-term approach. David Tiley at Barista provides an excellent summary of what’s happening and what should be. What should be happening, essentially, is taking effective, immediate measures – banning alcohol and porn (and I’d add getting that unsniffable petrol in sooner), controlling access to Aboriginal communities, medical assessments and assistance, the abuse reporting desk (but what’s all this about 5-year leases?). Great care, however, should be taken over the issue of controlling welfare payments. And greater care needs to be taken in drafting the legislation, because the point, ultimately, would be in creating a plan for building Aboriginal communities positively, rather than furthering the breakdown. Stripping more power away from powerless people forces them into further dependence. Building power where it’s needed is a medium- to long-term project, and I’m just not hearing anything from either side of Parliament to suggest that’s where we’re going. I don’t expect it from Mr. Howard, so I can only hope that opposition leader Kevin Rudd will do more than just support the government’s plan, and come up with something more for when – if – Labor next takes over.

Reconciliation redux is something we must avoid.

The Cheese Factor
Please: Celine Dion? That’s what Hillary’s campaign theme song’s going to be? “You and I”? A Canadian? A cheesy Canadian? A strident, cheesy, Vegas-act Canadian? Celine freakin’ Dion? Yes, my mind reels so thoroughly that no analysis is possible, no coherent commentary. I’m freakin’ out, man. And the video clip, aired on the news here last night, complete with Sopranos comparison clips, how cheesy was that? And is there any synergy between HBO gangsters, Celine Dion, and running for President? Oh, I can hear the moonbats already. O.k., so the Dixie Chicks would have – maybe – been a problem, due to their “we’re ashamed to be from Texas” crack about Bush a couple of years ago, and the Smashmouth song is a cover of a Monkee’s number and probably just a little too obvious. I’ll have to go back to my Temptations compilation CD and listen to “Get Ready”, but that has to have been a better choice – Motown, after all, so it could grab off some African-American soul cred from Obama (whose only song so far is the one some fan put up doing a Marilyn Monroe-style tribute). Oh, I’m voting Edwards for sure, now.