1987-1988 Itinerary

click to enlarge
While tidying up looking for old stuff came across this itinerary. I still haven't worked out where all the old photos are though.

Mathematics

My eldest daughter recently competed in her first Westpac Mathematics competition late last month. Of course this is very exciting for me, as just recently, she had got 100% in a maths exam, putting her at the top of her class. She has since been put into the group A maths class, such that she is now studying with the other top maths students. The results for the WMC take forever to come back, but I was talking to her and I am not so sure she shares my excitement. She tells me that she actually hates maths classes, and the only reason she entered the maths competition was that she got to miss out on some other lessons she didn't like hmmm.. Anyway, I'm not going to get my hopes up too high. I am proud of her no matter her results. Next year all my kids will enter.

What Australia Can do to progress the middle east situation

I promised I would actually put something down along these lines, but it is quite difficult to get all of my thoughts straight. So I'll try to put something in point form.

* As a small country, and not say the leader of the free world, it is not what we do per se that makes the most difference, but the example we display.

* Our actions around the Pacific are the main thrust of this. We have shown the right way to involve our military. We have made our forces extremely accessible in situations in the Solomons, East Timor, Bougainville, Aceh, Bali, PNG just to name a few, and most importantly, have not placed any conditions and have asked for practically nothing in return.

* In the Middle East, we have punched well above our weight. We were pretty much bound to act alongside the US for the most part, however. For a long time, we have had way less fatalities and accidents than the norm. Partly, this is because our forces tend to attract less attention, and they tend to be more specialised.

* Things like knowing Arabic language, being more disciplined than the Americans, showing compassion for the ordinary citizen rather than complete fear of everyone amongst them. These are attributes which would make a helpful example to others.

Yes, build it up higher! (the Burdekin dam that is)

The one minor consolation that I got from the sad news that no hydro station was being built up in the rainforest mountains up north, was that the environmental groups acceded that the Burdekin Dam stage two should be used for hydro instead. There apparently is less ecologically important land to be flooded. The only thing was that the extra storage capacity entailed was way overkill, and even the storage as it is was a resource waiting for possible extra uses. It has been handy for water security here in Townsville of course. It seems that with the talk of South East Queensland wanting a pipeline for their water security, stage 2 is becoming much more likely. Of course, the Burdekin is a river where siltation is a big long term problem compared to the rainforest areas, but by the time the pipeline is built, hydro will almost certainly be part of the deal anyway (to power the pumps?) together with all its carbon credits and peak loading power supply advantages. The possible problems with this vision? Pipeline cost may be in the billions of dollars.

Cowards?

The Iranian government, after supplying, bankrolling and otherwise funding Hezbollah, isn't exactly bravely entering the conflict in its own right. Instead, it offers safe haven for its leaders (and presumably other Iranians who might be in Lebanon), a steady flow of money and arms when they are required, and trained and ready suicide bombers or access to terrorist training.
Like-wise Israel, knowing full well that the real problem lies over the border in Syria and Iran, is mercilessly targeting Lebanon, even letting its own citizens think that it is hitting at the root cause of their problem. Attacks that might engage enemy states don't even seem to be on the table. Even an accidental foray or an empty threat to those countries would more effectively engage them. Fear (or cowardice) seems to make this a path they won't take.

Is it good for the democratic pincer movement?

Looking back st my Januarydemocracy in palestine post, my model would dictate that an economically destitute Lebanon would be bad for its democracy in the medium term. This would entrench the non-democratic regimes of sponsoring neighbours for a while, making a greater satan, little satan steamroller more effective than constant democratic pressure from their own citizens for regime change.

Lebanon, Iraq, Palestine

I feel it would be remiss of me not to revisit my opinions on the middle-east given recent escalation.

1) There was a point in time with quite a bit of optimism on three fronts - Democracy in Palestine and Iraq, Syria pulling troops out of Lebanon, and Australia and Japan working together in Iraq. Well as I expected, democratic palestine is as hopeless as totalitarian palestine, Syria pulling out of Lebanon was almost completely useless without a disarming of Hezbollah, and Japan took the opportunity to pull out at about the time we were harrassing them about the Whales (I don't believe in co-incidences). However, the current blood-thirst and chaos in Lebanon is making Iraq look stable, secure and connected to the outside world in comparison, as well as democratic.

2) This Israeli escalation is not indicative of an overall escalation, as Arab forces that were to attack in Iraq will be diverted to attack in Israel and surrounds.

3) Syria and Iran may become more vulnerable to attack, and the diplomatic cost of doing so seems to have lessened.

Euthanasia

A recent decline and death of a very old relative has again got me asking questions about the morality and details of euthanasia. Some careful but private observations about this particular case has answered some for me.
1. If you were a doctor in a similar position to make decisions, would you make the same decisions? Yes, I probably would.
2. Do you consider the treatments completely legal? Yes. Everything was done by the book for palliative care.
3. Do you consider the treatment observed of very ill elderly patients as moral? No. It seems to me that most decisions were most likely to hasten decline rather than extend a comfortable but bed-ridden life. If these decisions were made on a much younger patient with the same ailments, at the minimum the doctors would be guilty of gross negligence, if not murder.

The real question is why I am satisfied at a system that gives the doctors power over life and death like this? This is basically because of limited resources and priority to use them. Also there are diminishing returns with the very elderly. Hastening death in declining patients leaves more beds and resources for patients with better long term prospects, like people my age. This is why I will refuse to go to hospital when I am old.

The sentient beings of Proxima Centauri are laughing at us

In their Hydrogen powered 'lighter than air' aircraft while we here start to worry about
Aircraft Emmissions of the CO2 sort. We are constantly thinking of ways to use Hydrogen on the ground, but still have the taboo against Hydrogen power+levitation of the air. This is singularly attributable to the Hindenberg. Similarly, Hydro power is also taboo at least for green groups that spent decades fighting against them. What green group would suddenly turn araound and say, gee.. if we consider the carbon credits, maybe Gordon-Franklin wasn't such a bad idea! If the first hydrogen powered bus crashed and burst into flames, would we never consider hydrogen power for road vehicles again?

Thermodynamics - It's more than just a good idea. It's the LAW

I do think that the 2nd law of thermodynamics is one of the fundamental rules of the universe. In some ways it defines the direction of time. Other fundamental rules (such as the first law) and laws of relativity and gravity distort perceptions and models of time. In some ways I don't really want to get into the mathematics of it all as to whether it excludes a continually existing universe. I can either take the cosmologists word for it that they have done their science right and accept what they come up with as a consensus, or I can just latch on to whatever dissenting view there is and claim the question as an unknowable.

So, what about Geothermal energy

Well, it's a pretty handy power supply. Already now it is being used in the most favourable locations (geothermal vents + cold weather which hot water can be used for heating and greater temperature differential for power generation). I can only surmise that it will grow as a proportion of energy sources. But it really will follow a trend of all power sources, surmised as follows:

Hey, gee it's windy here -> Let's build some wind farms.
By golly there's a lot of cheap sugar source here -> lets make ethanol fuel.
Gee there's three spectacular gorges here -> let's build some hydroelectric dams.
Hey we're near the equator and near some deep water -> lets build some ocean thermal differential power-stations/desalinators/cold water airconditioners.
Does the sun ever stop here? -> Let's build some big solar power generators.

Already, service stations have to supply auto-gas, unleaded, diesel, ethanol blends etc. They will just have to make more options.

When I sent my daughter to a Catholic school

I didn't think that I would have to help her research information on the Big Bang theory.

Cosmic origins

It's not global warming

It's civilization's practice run for the rare but certain future catastrophic events. A warm-up run if you like. If we can't handle everything that global warming throws at us, how can we ever hope to cope with the next asteroid strike etc.

It's like my previous post. If we're too afraid to get ourselves embroiled in local minor conflicts, how are we ever going to cope with the big ones.

I think this is the strongest argument for listening to young Bjorn and lower our priority of counteracting greenhouse gases over other environmental concerns. Unless of course that means we won't build any more hydro or nuclear power stations :)

Lonely sherrif

Policing the pacific is something Australia is doing well. I would argue that it isn't really costing us in the long term. What better possible training can an army get than policing a small neighbouring country. Relatively moderate risk operations like this mean that almost all of our army (including reserves) has experience in overseas conflict situations. Neighbouring Asia/Pacific countries' armies/police end up further and further behind in their deployment effectiveness as they continue to refuse to give any more than token help. Money invested in such neighbourly peacekeeping deployment is extremely well spent. Australia's army recruitment is working in overdrive again and plenty of ordinary people are tempted to join.

I unashamedly prefer Hydro-electric power

The simplicity, permanence, renewable status and engineering advantages at economically suitable locations speak for themselves. The environmental "costs" are all one off's.

Happy Environment day or whatever

Planet Ark made a series of statements on the Sunrise show that separately are based on current conclusions from environmental researchers; but balance any against another brings either contradiction or super-optimism in ad-hoc choices. For instance, in adjacent sentences he mentions global warming as the highest priority to address, then suggests that gas power stations are a better next step than nuclear. If global warming really was the highest priority, his next sentence does not follow from the last. Later, he states that Australia should sign on to the Kyoto protocol, yet if it is binding, drastic unpopular measures may or may not be required which environmentalists are loth to take credit for if other environmental factors are played off (eg nuclear,hydro,wilderness encroachment) Last he states that Hydrogen will be the future energy format. As usual, environmentalists lean on "the devil they don't know" as the panacea. In the past Nuclear was touted in its infancy as a clean fuel. Wind farms and tidal energy are already falling foul of green groups when their issues become discovered as they become large scale. Large scale Hydrogen fuel infrastructure will certainly be seen as environmentally damaging if it ever happens. Plus it denies the certainty of severe fragmentation of the energy industry, with horses for courses energy and all formats considered, started and continued without the ending of others.

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.

MYOB and CBA have colluded uncompetitively

For 18 years now, I have used and loved the accounting package MYOB (Mind Your Own Business), and in the last two years have used their so-called M-Powered services. These pay-per-use services allowed our business to accept payment methods such as BPAY, @Post billpay etc., with the supplied software generating the required numbers. However, to use this service, we essentially were forced to open up merchant services with the CBA (Commonwealth Bank of Australia) for the virtual EFTPOS terminal which does the back end clearance of funds. Now this would be all well and good if the CBA charged at about the market rate. They don't - their fees are well above the rates I got offered by another bank for doing the back end stuff. The problem is, the absolute most basic things that MYOB software would have to do to make it easy to change banks, they refuse. They have intellectual property rights on the generation of the check digit generation code they use for the Customer reference numbers, so they cannot be used with any other bank. Basically, the software company and the bank are colluding to keep their charges higher than the market would dictate. One thing that I hate more than being ripped off is anti-competitive behaviour. I would recommend people to avoid M-Powered services, and arrange biller BPAY services directly with the bank, and find ways to enbed Customer Reference numbers within each customer's details with whatever accounting software is available. After several days of effort I am finding ways around this fortress, and can generate my own CRN's and sooner or later I can tell MYOB and CBA to stick it, and perhaps help others to do the same.

Update September 06 - They have improved slightly their (CBA) fees which is already a help, especially for large payments. However, MYOB fees of $2.00 per transaction is still highway robbery given that we are talking essentially about electronic transactions. Any non-electronic aspects of these transactions are extremely minimal. The fact is, that reducing these per-transaction fees, they would actually make more money because businesses would more readily join this fairly easy to set up and maintain process. A level of about $1.00 per transaction may even get me back to actually praising MYOB again, and consider using this service also.

If you want to reduce food miles, tax the food truck

I don't believe local food markets reduce the environmental burden of bringing food to our plate, although it may well be healthier and a good social outing. My back of the envelope calculations are that if there is less food to carry, the extra energy will be used bringing fertilizer for the local growers; extra fuel for the people who make a special trip to the food market etc. Infact, it really is impossible to tell whether it makes any difference, but it sure makes everybody feel better about it. Being pro-active doesn't require proof that it is making any difference. Contrast this to a simple carbon tax. Everyone gets punished or rewarded depending on how much they use/save. It is all proportional. Put the carbon tax high enough and the food markets will generate themselves if they really do reduce CO2 emmissions.

Does the carbon tax then give an overall burden on the economy? Not if there is no exemptions. The money that goes to the Government can be used for whatever purpose we feel necessary. If there are exemptions, the exempt will have more options and more incentive to consume carbon, and more of it available because the non-exempt are saving it for them.