Cyberwarfare Begins

It appears WWI of cyberwars has begun. It seems to be a fair fight, with weapons of choice being Distributed Denial of service attacks. The main casualties will be financial in nature, but will deeply affect how the world will operate in the future. The expectation of "complete" privacy has been eroding considerably, and can only be considered a transient phenomena (this conversation is secure for now - if I don't record it, it loses usefulness. If I do record it, there is an unknown probability that it may be leaked somewhere in the future - hopefully it won't bite us too hard, and will fall in the hands of our friends and not get exclusively sold to our enemies without our knowledge)

This is also the dillemma I (or anyone) has with their own private and intimate emails to friends. I have got into the habit of self-censorship just as much with my private emails as I do with FB or this Blog. There are still a few things I say and talk about verbally that I would not put into writing.

Top ten reasons why I (we) are having six children.

1) We has done some naughty stuff and deserve to get punished.

2) 6 is a perfect number (ie. the sum of its factors other than itself {1,2,3} add up to itself). The next one after 6 is 28.

3) With all these boat people coming in, we have to even the odds by having as many home grown children ourselves- to try our best to balance the numbers.

4) We need to have children in the age group to bridge the gap between our children and future grandchildren - so there will be always slightly older children to help one, and slightly younger children to help down the track.

5) We are going to keep having children until we get one that we like.

6) We wanted to make complete a grand experiment to see whether it is better to raise children early (20's) later (30's) or really later (40's)

7) We want a play mate for our 5th quite close in age.

8) We are sick of having a family with a respectable number of children.

9) The couple who gets to menopause with the greatest number of well-adjusted children wins!

10) They are soooo... cute!

Let me introduce myself

Hi, My name is Marco - I have five children, three dogs, a worm farm and a pregnant wife - And I've just turned forty. So much is happening in my day to day life that is interesting, but I have absolutely no time to reflect. I am quite tempted to switch to posting updates to facebook, because Ironically, when I post to my blog that can be accessed globally by anyone... no-one reads it, but when little odd tidbits get posted on facebook, many strangers as well as most of my friends find out one way or another.

My friends need to speak up about what they think I am doing wrong in my life!

I find it a commonly occuring theme that people blame themselves for not speaking up when a friend or relative acts in a way that is obvious to an outside observer to be ruinous to their own well-being. If your friends/family are too afraid to speak up, then who will?

In balance, I find it an equally occuring theme that one believes their friends are blaming one for ruining their own lives without offering anywhere near enough support and loving advice.

In my view, life is a balancing act for all of these types of issues, but I find it is very obvious to an outside observer where ones life is dangerously out of balance, while one is often too busy or too obsessed with other aspects (which are not out of balance) to notice.

Truth be told, I am not really sure where my life is out of balance, and the only "advice" I have been getting is that I have too many children to adequately meet their needs (to achieve excellence?) - That my autistic boy, is in part that way due to a lack of time devoted talking/interacting with him - that my work/family balance is tilted too far one way or the other (depending who I'm talking to)

If the viewpoint is framed as "loving advice" rather than "blame for what went wrong" I am encouraging more friends/family to give me advice, and equally, that I am not showing enough care if I don't mention something that is obvious to me about them, if it is framed properly. Email is the best avenue to mention these things.

Global warming - just polite conversation while we are waiting for real news

From: business spectator article

Perhaps it’s all just different ways of politicians who are under pressure from rising unemployment trying to appear to be doing something about global warming, while not doing anything at all.Europe’s method is to have a cap and trade scheme that doesn’t work. Australia’s method is to propose one that does not happen.


Back in 2007, I said:
When there are no "World" wars to talk about, no "great depressions" happening, the conversation will almost always turn to the weather :).

Maybe this slide into deep recession worldwide is just a symptom that the world has nothing interesting left to discuss other than the weather.

Two's and Nines

Pretty ordinary day, other than delivering your own child in the delivery-ward shower before breakfast.

Some Photos:
Dry and warm at last



Name: Abigail Talia
Date: 09/02/2009
Time: 08:15 am
Weight: 3540g
Hair: Dark







Video:

The real ten-year plan

I must admit I was being a little tricksy with my previous ten-year plan entry. I had a ten year plan already and I was waiting for the right opportunity to mention it. I decided to have a "surprise" birthday party for myself. I planned the party - the guests (all close family) got the surprise. During grace I thanked God for birthdays and then told everyone I had talked K into having another baby. Being one that "Likes the rollercoaster" (Parenthood movie quote) I am delighted at this new adventure we are embarking on.

No cliches please - and if anyone mentions Doris Lessing Horror Fiction to K they're a dead man!

A new "Ten Year Plan"

Back in 1992 I was playing a round of golf with "The Groose" and Andrewww. I asked them where they wanted to be in ten years time. I can't remember what they said, but I knew that I wanted to be back in Townsville with a stable life with plenty of family support and perhaps an interest in the family business. When me & K decided to have kids, we had a secret pact to space our children about three years apart and to have a maximum of two boys. Once Z was born, our ten year plan was complete, and ever since, I have been struggling to have a vision of where I want to be in ten years time. The truth is, any ambitions I had as an individual are no longer relevant eg. - to become a great tennis/trumpet player. Ambitions I had vicariously for my children have come up against the barrier of their own free will being at odds with what I believe they *should* wish to strive for. I seem to have lost the steering wheel to my life and I'm just relying on accelerator, break, gears and momentum for any control at all. Any ideas?

It's the Balance duh

When raising children, there is so many competing obsessions related to the child's well being that it really is a minefield. eg:

Food health - obsess that foods they eat are the healthiest possible.
Fitness health - make sure these kids get enough excercise.
Dental health - make sure that teeth are brushed, water is fluoridated etc.
Sun safety - sun exposure between birth and 20 yo means high risk for melanoma.
Money management - kids must learn to manage money early so they don't risk debt traps etc.
Social learning - obsess with kids able to interact one on one and in group situations.
Stranger danger - recognise dangers with strangers.
Abusive relationships - recognise dangers with non-strangers.
Academic learning - achieve as well as possible academically.
Clean room - learn how to manage one's own space tidily and usefully.
Smoking/drugs - Avoid the trap of getting hooked and counter peer pressure with solid knowledge.
Alcohol - moderation.
Disease - Up to date immunizations and good hygene.
Road safety - Bike helmets, seat belts, alertness.
Swimming safety - avoid the toddler killer of drownings.

So often one sees children of parents obsessing in one (say academia) and so obviously has ignored another (say, weight gain). The examples I have seen are endless, and some such as fitness are notoriously hard to balance with others such as sun safety for instance. It is quite easy to see as an outsider of the failures of these obsessions, often with some being overdone and others seemingly completely ignored. I urge everyone to aim for the balance - see which ones your children are weak in and concentrate on those for a while. Are we spending too much effort on diminishing returns? Walk the fine line, dear friends.

What to Blog... What to blog

The US election stuff bores me to tears, and I have no interesting opinion about the candidates.

I was going to talk about the local council elections, because I feel violated in that preferential voting was thrown out the door, and no explanation nor correspondence was entered into. First past the post significantly devalues votes for anybody other than the front contenders. I would reccommend throwing out the state Labor government but it appears a near certainty anyway.

Kevin Rudd appears to be in his element on a diplomatic world tour. He is uniquely placed to bring up the issue of Tibet appropriately. Meanwhile Julia Gillard can knuckle down getting that unemployment rate back up from its continuing record lows.

I was going to say more about brass banding, but all I've got is that I was offered a trumpet part in "Thouroughly Modern Milly", a local theatre production, and I turned it down.

Life lessons

When I was young but starting to control my own food choices, I used to have a great time teasing my mother by choosing foods with artificial colours (flavours etc.)She was one for believing all artificial substances in foods should be considered "bad" and to be avoided, even if all available research pointed to them being 100% safe. I would be into jelly, cordial, soft-drink, lollies and all those things that I was deprived of as a young child. This extended into my own children, where it would give me pleasure to feed them froot loops just to annoy my mother. That was until Zac came along. We were quite sure some foods were making him hyper-active. The before and after drinking creaming soda at Sizzler was quite stark. He liked banana lollies, so we moved towards using them as "bribes" like we did for the other children to help control behaviour. Lo and behold, his behaviour got distinctively worse when we tried that tactic. Then one day we had fed all the kids froot loops, and Zac too since he would have been jealous if he had missed out. Not long after he started being particularly loud and got cranky at the slightest provocation. We were having a party later that day (he was about 2 and a half years old then) but he refused to get dressed, insisting he stay naked. He wasn't much into clothes and we had a lot to do, so we moved on after a half an hour of screaming. When relatives arrived for the party they mostly felt his nakedness to be unacceptable, which led to another round of screaming for 30 minutes at a time as various relatives thought they knew Zac behaviour and felt they could convince him otherwise. The behaviour, if anything, intensified and the screaming started happening with any interaction. The party was a complete disaster, but Zac hadn't quite finished with us. The screaming and hyperactivity kept going and going through the evening. It stopped only when Zac crashed to the ground in complete exhaustion and fell asleep suddenly. As can be expected, the froot loops hit the bin. We converted to the all natural confectionary company, which has been a bit of a godsend. We made a mental note of every single food-stuff which triggered hyperactivity, to determine the additives and commercial foodstuffs to avoid. Things like artificial banana flavour, bright blue and red food colouring, some preservatives. Confectionary is a minefield of probable triggers. At home we stock only the all-natural lollies and that is working quite well. There are a raft of complications outside of home, with friends, teachers, parents etc. casually unaware of the risks.
It is easy to generalise, and put the blame of other's hyperactivity on artificial additives, but it is a lot more complicated than that. That said, additives are a significant contributing factor to a scary proportion of diagnosed hyperactive and autistic cases. It is impossibly hard to narrow down triggers when they are different for every individual, and behaviour profiles are often a lot more subtle and there are time delays, and for some behaviours, diet can have a residual effect that lasts weeks, and is not necessarily isolated to artificial substances. One rule of thumb is that it isn't the sugar that gives a sugar high, but the artificial stuff that goes with it. Zac can have sugar all day and still be in control.
Suffice it to say that this issue has gone full circle for me, and now I obsessively check every food we buy for additives. We avoid them for the whole family. If they have this much effect on Zac, surely they can't be that good for the rest of us either!

20th reunion (nearly)

Haven't changed a bit

I climbed that

Best ever hitched ride
Sign says do not climb loose volcano ejecta
How to lose your bag over the cliff at the grand canyon
Florence Duomo dare
Christian singlet says "Show me your TITHES"











Dude. Did you find the trip photo album ?

Regards
The Groose

Yes as a matter of fact

School Holidays - Ho Hum

Belinda has taken off to Italy with the School Tour. As of this moment she's in a nunnery in florence (or something). Kylie is still mad at me for not taking her (when we were last in Italy) to the places that the Belinda's tour is visiting (Pisa, Pompeii etc.), but that's life. We're busy re-watching West Wing seasons 1 - 6. It's the kind of thing that I'm enjoying more the second time around. West Wing works on a number of different levels. In part it is educational about the technical aspects of US politics. It clearly dwells on only the drama that can potentially happen, like any good drama, but it is believable enough to get you thinking about what is happening in reality.

Blog Etiquette

I don't really know if it really exists; bloggers just write what they feel like writing. However when it comes to naming names, it freaks some out, and I get the feeling that trust becomes lost in a mesmerising field of aliases. Of course if one states a real name of someone else, that becomes googlable - with unknown future consequences.

As an example, mentioning my children by their names is a double edged sword. My daughter's teenage friends found her mentioned here to her great embarrassment. Luckily, I can usually edit any misleadingly embarrassing or revealing information.

Sometimes when I quote someone here from somewhere else in the WWW, this is where it gets found more often in different contexts. This seems to be positive, especially if they were quoted in an optimistic light. People often get googled after a job interview, partly as a character reference. Be aware of this if you are the kind to get people angry habitually. Revenge is spreading info about various dishonours or disrespects. Flattery is ever greater when mentioned in published print.

Thinking... Thinking.... Thunk!

As usual the my spur of the moment environment entries attract comments while my entries on cosmology and budget get completely ignored. What is it about the internet. Posts labelled under "Darwinism" have generated most of my hits lately - go figure.

Got Blogger's Block

Several times I have intended to post but got stuck after reading a bit and thought the better of it. I was going to come up with a brilliant personal example of how in the modern world, one can have a detailed discussion daily with friends that left town decades ago, yet never chat to old friends that live in your suburb still, that in fact you are still friends with. One in particular I see every week because our children go to the same kindy, and had been in the same group as my wife back in Senior camp. Yet I can't demonstrate the irony I feel without divulging more about the people involved than is appropriate in this blog.

Dissecting articles from Realclimate.org

WSJ Editorial Board: Head Still Buried in the Sand
Filed under: Climate Science RC Forum— group @ 8:38 am
While the rest of the world has basically accepted the conclusion of the latest IPCC report, one small village still holds out against the tide - the Wall Street Journal editorial board. This contrasts sharply with the news section of the paper which is actually pretty good. They had a front-page piece on business responses to global warming issues which not only pointed out that business was taking an interest in carbon reduction, but the article more or less took as a given that the problem was real. However, as we have pointed out before, the editorial pages operate in a universe all their own.

I will start with their latest headline piece - It is very typical anyhow. As far as the title goes, using a metaphor is a form of "proof by ridicule". What exactly they are trying to prove is not obvious to start with, but the means they are using is attacking an opinion piece. To falsify a scientific statement you must use science, to falsify an opinion you must use ridicule. Fairly obvious, but they are not really showing their hand.

The first sentence uses the terms "village" and "Tide". I am not sure if this is subliminally pushing the "sea is rising" fear triggers, but is the tide public opinion? Public opinion of what? The tide is of pro-environmentalism and the village is of dissenting opinions published in news & magazines. Almost all magazines (including "the Economist") have stopped publishing dissenting views (whether they be scientists or whatever). I am not really sure why that is, but for instance, the Economist has not recently written anything at all from Bjorn Lomborg, while a couple of years ago, they backed him up in almost everything he said.

The third sentence mentions business responses and interest, and the taking as a given that the PROBLEM is REAL (by the front page article). The science demonstrates beyond reasonable doubt that there is global warming and that humans are the predominant factor. That it is a "problem" is a much less scientifically tested assertion. Proving that there is global warming and that it is caused by humans does not prove that there is a problem in itself. Also, there is the assertion that it is the most significant environmental problem. This assumes a prioritised list, but prioritised lists have been rejected as presumptious.

The fourth sentence is again criticising the opinion piece, and again ridiculing it. I have found this type of tactic in operation with groups of evangelical christians. It was exceedingly effective when used in groups of majority christians and a minority of uncommitted youths. They would ridicule (say) evolution, and attack the inconsistencies of darwinism and any proven errors any Darwinist has ever made. It is difficult for an uncommitted person to resist this kind of peer pressure. I think this is what is happening in Realclimate. There are a majority of readers which are "converted" and a minority of uncommitted and recalcitrant, which is a perfect environment for winning over the uncommitted.

Letter to the editor of the World Wide Web

Self publishing has certainly changed the way we state our opinions and how we are censored. So many times when I was young and foolish I would want to write a letter to the editor but I had twin worries of whether I would be published and if I did, how it would make me look. I like blogs because there is certainty in publishing and freedom of expression within your own self-censorship. The weigh-up between anonimity and non-anonimity is still there, and I have decided for good or ill to go with complete non-anonimity. I have decided that this influences my self-censorship little, while making me more likely to be taken at face value. I still have never written a letter to the editor of a newspaper, and only once an email to "the Economist" (not published...).

The Universe insists I Blog

But in the meantime look for my comments at RealClimate:)

I Blog because nobody listens

I just want to say what a great game of beach volleyball I had on thursday. It was the third last game that I will have for a long time. It has been over 6 years that me and Sandor have been faithfully playing week after week. This last game we had some very memorable rallies, including one "Impossible" hit that I made on the third shot after a second that hit the net and fell straight down. Somehow, I punched it with some topspin and it curved over the net beautifully from practically ground level with a dive. We lost the point eventually, but I feel our fighting spirit demoralised them.