If you quote someone on your weblog, they may find you!

This has happened to me. Appropriately with the Industrial relations changes happening in parliament, this person is a champion of the working mother. She has worked tirelessly to improve the lives of lower socio-economic disadvantaged recent migrants. She has done it by attacking certain unhelpful law provisions that were proposed. Ironically, she is now being made to work up to 18 hours a day by her employer just to try to make a better life for her children. The system that allows this to happen is not being challenged......


Her employer is of course *herself* - The system that allows unlimited work hours is *EBAY*, the unhelpful law provisions she was attacking was the "fairwear" ones, which I also attacked - and migrants from a lower socio-economic status often have industrial sewing skills, children, and are perfect for helping out our sewer shortage, if only they were "free" to work from home, where they could be with their children. Vanthida Lao - You are a champion. Stop by my weblog anytime.

Evolution as a ladder

The entire evolution vs special creation debate as I have researched it, has been completely hijacked by people who refer indirectly to evolution as a ladder with amoebas (or whatever) at the bottom and humans at the top. Creationists arguments often centre on there being "missing links" (on the chain from bottom to top) , that the transformation from random jumbles of molecules to sentient beings breaks fundamental laws of entropy in a natural process. On the other side of the argument, David Attenborough's "Life on Earth" show moved episode by episode up the ladder. Even Carl Sagan's "Cosmos" (ok. these are 80's shows but I haven't seen much change) had one episode where they were calculating the approximate probability of life on other planets - by calculating the probability of life moving up the ladder of creation to sentient beings.

Role of the catholic church

This Economist article has an interesting slant on the pope's reign and the church's future direction. However because it focuses on foreseeable consequences of policy, rather than moral principles of right and wrong: to be kind, the economist is showing fairly extreme moral contextualism - hinting that contraception and abortion policy may have to be more liberal in some contexts for the greater good of the world.

Kashmir

I had commented sometime last year that I was not confident of a solution in Kashmir for peace without some serious bloodshed. I also commented how the Tsunami in Aceh had improved the prospects for long term peace there. I suspect the inevitable international relief effort due to the earthquake in the disputed areas would improve the chances of successful mediation leading to possible compromises. The bloodshed has basically already happened now.

Why am I mysteriously confident in ethanol?

It's not the technology - there has been no breakthrough in the burning of ethanol in an internal combustion engine.

It's not the economics. Even if the current high oil prices are prolonged, the economics of bio-ethanol is still marginal.(Although the future is hard to predict in this regard)

It's not the environment - I would be happy if we exclusively used fossil fuels until we had to mine Mars (Earth first! We'll strip mine the other planets later)

My reasoning is entirely "evolutionary". There is clearly going to be fragmentation of the fuel market as fossil-based fuels becomes less and less convenient over time. Which fuels become somewhat successful will depend on how we get from "here" to "there" - "Here" being little or no economies of scale to "There" being generally available at service stations. This is where ethanol is advantageous - Due to the economies of scale developed by Brazil (a huge loss making venture by its government so far) there is good availability of flex-fuel engines and ethanol producing capacity. Add in the fact that blends can be adapted to take advantage of price differentials between oil, ethanol and sugar, and ethanol blends can be increased when the price of oil is high, decreased again if need be, self regulated by the market, temporary shocks in oil price changes can be spread out to a few other commodities at the very least, and if oil becomes scarce permanently the market will allow for 100% ethanol to overtake fossil fuels.

Australia's lost ethanol opportunity

A couple of years ago, there was a plan to introduce broad scale ethanol blended fuel Australia wide. The plan hit a hiccup because there was just not enough domestic industrial production of ethanol in Aus. One avenue open was to import ethanol from Brazil as a stopgap until such time as local production could increase. However the (local) sugarcane lobby was feared by the government and the whole project got put in the back-burner. Because blended fuel then became a niche, car problems started being blamed on ethanol. This would not have happened if we had started to import heavily from Brazil. The sugar price may well have increased with the extra demand from cars, helping our farmers. We could be importing ethanol technologies while exporting sugar cane technologies.

Why evacuate Houston?

I know the saying once bitten twice shy, but it made sense to me for Darwin to be completely evacuated *after* Cyclone Tracey struck, and I agree that New Orleans ideally would have been completely evacuated *before* Katrina - but Houston is almost all above sea level, so floods may come, but they would quickly go. It would be a lot easier to manage if most people stayed holed up in their homes, and just higher risk areas evacuated - such as Galveston, low lying suburbs and perhaps those exposed coastal areas. I know there is high labour mobility in USA - but such a sudden dispersal of huge numbers of people would have a negative impact on the economy.

Katrina again

Dr. Clam said...
You can't avoid (3) without tearing up the Constitution and jumping up and down on the pieces. The United States still operates on a Federal system, to a much greater extent than Australia, and the states concerned in particular have a long tradition of telling the Federal government to bugger off and leave them alone, to the extent of being reduced to rubble over it. Normally this decentralisation of power is a good thing: in this particular case it was a bad thing. But a counterfactual that says 'don't inolve the states' is as silly as a counterfactual that says 'send in the cloned super-soldier penguins to rescue survivors'.

This is the whole point of "State of Emergency". Emergency powers have been abused in some countries, it's true; however, surely there are provisions for it in the US constitution. Levee breach in New Orleans = temporary suspension of decentralisation of power, just as I would hope it would have been had Cyclone Katrina hit us after Sid.

Incidentally, I have seen research regarding storm surges, and the figure was, any particular point on the tropical East coast of Aus gets a storm surge of average 4 m once in every three hundred years, based on geological time scales.

Why the Katrina response was wrong

The response to the hurricane Katrina disaster was so obviously pathetic, that everyone is criticising it. Here I am putting my two bits worth. I will occasionally compare with Australia's response to Tracey in Darwin.

1) George W should have cancelled whatever he was doing when it became certain Katrina was going to make landfall. (He was on holiday or something)

2) He personally should have declared a state of emergency the very minute that he heard the levees had been breached. It was an absolute no-brainer that full scale military command and control was going to be required, requiring emergency laws.

3) Since several states were struck, it was absolute nonsense to involve state governments in any way whatsoever.

Contrast what happened in the aftermath of Tracey. Australia's top military commander was given carte blanche on Christmas Day, holiday of holidays. Communications and electricity being out, he had to make blind guesses as to the state of Darwin. Buses to evacuate the tens of thousands out were sent in from thousands of kilometers away. Proportionally to Aus population at the time, this was quite equivalent. The city was evacuated within a week.

All this argument over Bush going to war over Iraq, yet, I believe this is Bush's real shame.

Pax Americana vs alternatives

Dr. Clam has claimed in the past that the Pax Americana is the only show in town, and at some level that is true. However since the end of MAD, both the US and the UN have been artificially raised in stature and influence. I don't think it's about US vs UN as which is going to have primacy. They will both coexist and have certain specialties for generations to come. So much for the Pax UN - what about the Pax EU,or the Pax Islam, or the Pax China. Each sphere of influence will continue to exist indefinitely, with just the rules of co-existense to be fought over. This is where Pax Australiana comes in. We have a nice sphere of influence in the Pacific, and we are very well connected with the Pax Americana and the Pax China: and because of our free trade, we have generally good international connections with everybody. In the future Australia will have influence disproportionate to our GDP or population, mainly due to good overall policy.

Side bar done

That's it for the side bar. My next writing will involve pax america vs alternatives.

My sidebar will include this

Pills I'm ingesting: acidophilus, disprin direct for pain, panadeine for strong pain, sudafed for colds, Claratyne for hayfever, Robotussin for coughs, Selenium and multivitamin supplements.

Things I'm obsessing about : Selling on EBAY (look me up)

Interesting things that happened lately: Got hit in the head by a kookaburra while driving around a corner in my van with the window open.

DVD's I'm watching - Bob the Builder, Thomas the Tank engine, Bewitched (original 60's series) Harry Potter (with the kids).

TV I'm watching: Big Brother, Landline.

Good food I'm cooking: Curry with Jasmine rice

Economics and Terror

It is non premium content so this link should work to the great style of article which mixes science, economics and politics in interesting ways which is almost unique amongst popular magazines. In this other cut article Rules of engagement the mathematical differences and similarities between terrorist campaigns and more conventional wars is demonstrated.

Trenchant political analysis???

All I've got to say at the moment about politics is that I read some great articles in recent editions of "The Economist". One about the mathematics behind terrorism, another about population's reaction to the fear associated with terror, and an insight into how China runs the world economy. Otherwise I am trying not to distract myself from work.

"May contain traces of Buddha-Nature" polos

I have 1 size L and 2 size XL left I am selling for $5.00 + postage, since they didn't work out so well.




Otherwise look HERE ON EBAY.

ZeiTgeist

Following some advice form Lexifab, and Anotherblog (and another etc..), I am starting a new line in trendy young person's shirts with witty quips. Just to start with, I'm just going to put them straight up onto Ebay, and let the market set the price. I have just put in the order to print 5 polos with "May Contain Traces of Buddha nature", which, with luck should be ready within a week. They are 3 size Large and 2 size XLarge. If there are any particular size requests I will put them in the next order.

Why Unfair dismissal laws increase unemployment

I have been asked "How in God's green Earth would removing the protection against unfair dismissals possibly reduce unemployment?", by left leaning family members. What counts, to me is not the logic, but that it is statistically verifiable, which it is. The logic is that employers, not having perfect information, don't know exactly the level of employees they should have to make the most money. If they 1) underestimate, they may lose significant opportunities due to lack of staff. If they 2) overestimate, they will lose money due to having redundant employees on their payroll. Given that they are very unlikely to actually make a loss choosing 1), and that terminations are quite expensive anyway, the added fear of an unfair dismissal lawsuit is the clinching factor making employers invest in capital over investing in extra staff. A followup question is "Why are employers afraid?" implying that it is only "unfair" dismissals which warrant payouts and that employers are allowed to dismiss where it is fair to do so. The real problem is that the burden of proof is entirely on the employer: legal precedents usually favour the employee, and particular test cases scare the death out of even me. However, as an employer, therefore, it is an advantage for our business for there to be unfair dismissal protections. This is because all our competitors are disproportionately conservative, giving us real opportunities for growth. There are also a reasonable number of qualified unemployed, with other employers being this cautious. However, as a citizen of this country, it is a disadvantage to have such protections. Having overly cautious employers puts our whole country at a competitive disadvantage, and increases unemployment.

Ebay good - Happy tenth birthday

I am selling this on ebay 

Click on this link here to place a bid - come on, I dare you to!

This is a spare rugby jersey manufactured in Townsville, Australia. It is made from very tough Polyester cotton blend used for players of Rugby union. The colours are knitted stripes of Dark blue, mid blue and white. It was made originally for seniors of Pimlico State High School and has their school logo embroidered on the left breast. It is a size XL (Cueldee sizing 22) and is designed to be worn as a jumper over other clothing. It has long sleeves with knitted rib cuffs. The collar is made from cotton drill.

I'm a Rice Expert, Apparently

Ever since I read a background to some "Study of Rice Starch Structure" research at UNE, I have been extremely sensitive to the type of rice that is used for various home cooking dishes. I will no longer tolerate long grain rice in my risotto (nor my rice pudding for that matter); I will complain at arborio rice being used in fried rice etc. etc. Today, I was asked (because apparently I am now a rice authority) if one should wash the rice before or after cooking. Quite clearly the answer is that one should do neither. The whole point of cooking it in the first place is to kill any remaining organisms in it, and otherwise make it edible and delicious.
The result of my oversensitivity to rice type usage is that whenever I eat a dish with rice in it that someone else has prepared, everyone looks expectantly at me for a reaction.

Australia and Nuclear power

I feel compelled to talk about this issue because for some reason this entry regarding the subject is the one that had been cached by Google. The issue had also been raised (perhaps half jokingly) by Dr. Clam as a possibly left wing assertion that we should build lots of Nuclear reactors to avoid the horrible environmental desecration of our environment by Hydro-electric schemes. Of course the failure of the Gordon/Franklin Hydro power project back in the eighties completely convinced me that the environmental movement and their casual supporters had lost all sense of priority.

As far as it goes, Australia is already the worlds largest supplier, and has the worlds largest reserves of Uranium. Now I don’t think that Uranium can be treated like any other mineral, in the sense that we should allow for the fact that it is an important ingredient in making the worst weapons imaginable. However most of the consumption of Uranium has to be assumed to be for electricity generation. The Uranium that goes into making bombs will hopefully never be used, such that it can be a nuisance for the stupid country that thought it was a good idea to have these weapons lying around for “deterrence”. The reality is that much less a deterrent than an encouragement for an enemy country to use theirs against you, or organise a nasty accident with your own using a few suicide agents. Like buying guns for protection (statistics show that they are a hundred times more likely to kill a family member than an intruder), nuclear weapons are only good for risking ones own citizens.

It would seem silly to start generating loads of electricity using Uranium when prices are at an all time high, so I don’t see any reason to build lots of them. It would be a shame to waste the fact that we’ve got so much of the stuff, however. If only we could show the rest of the world really responsible ways to use Uranium as a resource! I think we should import a huge amount of nuclear expertise from USA, add in a large dollop of our own research, and develop a prototype nuclear electricity generator. It would be failsafe, could not be used for bomb making, and include a full lifecycle disposal system so that the end products could be buried and be no worse for the environment than the stuff that was dug up in the first place. I believe that technology (in this case) can come up with a clean, green and economical (when including the full lifecycle) electricity generation system. Once this technology is perfected, we could be exporting the design of the system. Hopefully, technology could find a way to export the Uranium such that it could only be used in these kinds of generators, and could not be made weapons useable.