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.

The Answer - Smaller "NIMBY" footprint!!!

AHA. So what was the question? Why would a green-ly inclined Premier build a desalination plant in Sydney? The alternative of another dam involves incalculable number of "Not In My Back Yard" ers. The other answer is how the "culled" trees get treated. For general expansion of Sydney all trees are killed humanely (ie. chopped down quickly) and the animals which relied on those native trees could move on (a bit like the early settlers thought about aboriginals). With a dam being built, the imagination is that basically everything gets drowned - a slow and painful death.

This is also why Hydro-electric schemes get fought tooth and nail by environmentalists, despite the incredible number of carbon credits over a number of centuries of likely operation. Meanwhile, fossil fuel powered schemes just find an existing industrial complex to attach themselves to WITHOUT A SINGLE PROTESTER!
ACT LOCALLY - yeah right, as long as no big ugly dam, wind turbine, solar generation stack, farm etc. doesn't end up in my back yard!

When I lost Faith in all environmental activists

It was in third year University, at the refectory, watching a debate about a hydro-electric dam proposal somewhere in North Queensland. My primary interest was that because it was the World's most popular and effective type of renewable energy, we may turn the corner and have a bias towards these type of projects and away from coal and gas powered stations. I was sadly mistaken. The local environmental speakers pointed out that we should be reducing demand by using less electricity in the home by turning off lights etc. etc. and not building new power stations (oh yeah, and not needing them anyway). The scheme was shelved - Not one single hydro power project has been built in NQ. Several gas power stations have been built. Coal fired stations that had been out of commission for years were re-started. Meanwhile, electricity demand has increased steadily by about 8% per year. Since that time I would estimate our (NQ) CO2 emmissions have doubled. Meanwhile at the university, virgin wilderness surrounding it has been built on for new accommodation and general expansion. Surely the environmental activist movement could have picked a different project to pick their fight on. Environmental activists are still aiding fights against wind farms, tidal energy projects and the list goes on. Any project that is "big" and "new" is automatically seen as bad and fought tooth and nail - but the gradual but certain expansion of existing facilities is completely ignored.

Evil market-distorting subsidies come good - Exception that proves the rule

The amazing force for good that high petrol prices have shown to be, even made a previously insanely counterproductive Brazilian ethanol subsidy almost return a break even after all those years of being a junk bond investment. High petrol prices also help our sugar farmers, only due to the Brazilian swing production status which connects the two. The advent of carbon trading has made Uranium more financially desirable. It is time to make a global pollution emissions trading system. Radiation emissions/waste products trading for instance, should be trialled to counter the "carbon bias" of current environmental regimes. Nasty coercive regulation should be contrasted with "minimum necessary regulation" which is better than self-regulation or free for all. Flexible regulation involving trading of the "commons" resource is good if it can prevent the tragedy of the commons, which is what we should be fearing. Technologies that "can" save the world are useless if there is no individual incentive to research and apply them.




evildrclam says:Hooray for rising petrol prices! Rising petrol prices are a much better engine to drive the development of sustainable energy resources than nasty coercive regulation or evil market-distorting subsidies: rising prices focus pressure precisely where it is most needed, while government intervention spreads the burden with majestic impartiality over the just and the unjust alike...

'The rain it falleth on the just, and also on the unjust fellow;
But chiefly on the just, because, the unjust steals the just's umbrella.'

And, I am doing the responsible thing what you told me to, and reading the Skeptical Environmentalist. This means that sooner or later I will have to go to the trouble of constructing a great big post pointing out the errors in sites pointing out the errors in discussions of Bjorn's pointing out the errors in speeches of Al Gore's... Curses!

Is there really an alternative to price gouging?

The howls from people complaining about higher petrol prices around easter are getting very annoying. If there is an increased demand prices will go up. The alternatives may always involve either queues, rationing, or high and/or highly unpredictable public finance cost. The only exception is when there is supply side collusion where there are no obvious other supply/demand constraints. Why is there not an outcry with highly fluctuating fruit/vege prices? Is anyone complaining about the extremely high profits being made by some lucky banana farmers in Mareeba?

Live by the sword - go ahead

The US seems to have countered Iran's policy of "We're not building any nuclear bombs" with "Oh, we're not going to attack with nuclear bunker-buster bombs". Will the bad cop get results where the good cop of Europe etc. didn't? It is nice to have both cops fully operational for once. This is a real upping of the ante one way or another.

Invisible argument

So, the new IR laws went active over the last few weeks, to the howls of employee advocacy groups everywhere. Lo and behold, unemployment rates hit *30 YEAR LOWS*. Coincidence? I THINK NOT!! I cannot believe the pace at which competing businesses to mine switched from a policy of "import where possible" to "employ where possible", citing reduced fears of employing people. What is more important? Individual instances of employee disgruntlement (be it the number of them), or the number of people having jobs that want jobs. Nobody is counting the former, just blaming them on the laws, and the latter is finding new highs. Unemployment rate of 5% was laughed at just a few years ago. Latest statistics should be mindblowing if anybody was actually looking at them rather than saying - Statistics always lie - or something like that.

Does not play well with others :-(

I am struggling with a diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) on my youngest boy Zac. We casually dismissed thoughts of him being autistic until his first week in Kindy. If he had have been born 40 days later than he had been, he wouldn't even be in kindy until next year. However, his behaviour in a group setting has stuck out as being the odd one out. Stuff like lying on his back facing the other way while everybody else dances to the wiggles music, climbing adventurously by himself while everybody else is doing an outside group activity. Reacting to instructions of a change in activity by screaming (loud). Talking in gestures and single words rather than sentences. We just thought he was a little bit behind and a little younger than the others, but the other evidence is starting to become a little compelling.
The thing that is frustrating me the most is that the diagnosis was rather forced on to us by what I can only describe as special education economics. Every diagnosis of ASD is a ticket for more funding for the Kindy, special education units, parents etc. If I could have helped it, I would have avoided the diagnosis because it does come with so many attachments, including possible stigma. However, denying the diagnosis would have denied him and us the best possible outcomes and supports. I am struggling with this whole concept. Ten years ago, there would have not been this kind of economic push for a diagnosis.

Devine's Intervention

This Sydney article - Enough whingeing by Miranda Devine has created quite a stir in NQ. It is basically an opinion piece based on a selective scan of articles which were themselves selective in looking for the few negative feelings out there. There is no whingeing going on at all. The quotes come from people at their lowest point having barely spared with their lives, but newly destitute. I hope Miranda catches a rare disease that could have been easily prevented with nutrients available only in avocadoes and bananas! That would be Devine Justice.

Contrast Hurricane Katrina with Cyclone Larry - discuss

Mayor of New Orleans "Hey mr President we need some help". Bush - "We've got a whole army with experience in Iraq and Afghanistan - they can come in overnight, guns blazing". Mayor - "aah, give me a few days". Bush - "What! To think about it". Mayor - "No - We'll need to wait until they REALLY get desparate so they'll take any help they can get"

Mayor of Innisfail - "Johnny, Pete, we need help". Howard - "Well, we've got this army unit in Townsville with experience in rebuilding East Timor, Banda Aceh and Kashmir. It costs just as much for them to do nothing, but they'd rather do something useful again." Mayor - "but you're always at the Games watching the Netball, who's going to lead the effort?". Premier Beattie - "Me - Or maybe I should look for someone better?"

Don't do it for yourself - do it for the children!

I know selfish interests may come into it. Wanting bananas to be available in the shop, have them at a reasonable price, and wanting to help Innisfail get back on its feet. But think of the hundreds of thousands of children in Australia that rely on the humble banana for sustenance! It is one of the few "fruits" in existence that have quantities of all necessary vitamins. By refusing imports we deny these children healthy meals for several months. I know we could ration them out or let prices skyrocket such that the desparate can still get the local product, pricing everyone else out of the market, but surely there is a better way. Banana growing families in the Phillippines (etc.) need to feed their children as well. Wouldn't it be better to buy their bananas at this stage rather than doling out aid?


THINK OF ALL THE CHILDREN - Free trade in bananas can help them all!

We need free trade in Bananas NOW!

Now that our entire Australian Cavendish banana crop is out of commission, can we buy Philippine bananas please?!!! I'm sure that in other years they'll be yearning for ours because of their own cyclone disasters. As Howard said to Bush's offer of money- we don't need the money but just make it as quick and easy as possible for us to buy the things we need. FREE TRADE RULES!

IS ANYONE LISTENING?

TRADE NOT AID!

Larry's coming over and he's bringing us a flood apparently

Looks like the cyclone is going to bring us here in Townsville the rain without much of the wind. I suspect flooding rain, cut roads, power outages, trees down. Should rival the flood of 98 (night of Noah floods) if the reading of the fabled cactus flowers (made a week ago incidentally) are anything to go by.

Dismal scientific world view

It was useful to my own self-analysis to compare a scientific world view to a religious world view. I tend to slip into an Economic world view often enough to confuse any philosophical argument. Economics is often labelled (even by economists) the "dismal science" in the sense that broad approximations have to be made with any model, and this leaves it open to the type of criticisms which just wouldn't fly with any other science. The more complex the model, the more useful it can be, but the less likely a lay person can understand it enough to agree with it. Thus people's concept of an economy in some circumstances, can be completely wrong because of the model used.

Thus the same concept I have for a world view. Religions as various models describe reality imperfectly but usefully. So what of my (non)belief in God? What, if not God is tracking the absolute morality which I believe exists regardless of people believing it exists? Well, an all-seeing God is useful but imperfect model therefore.

What I've been doing

I haven't posted for a while and it has been mainly other obsessions keeping me busy. Generally, my philosophy is to put this kind of thing in my sidebar and save the main area for philosophical discussions/wars. I'll get to that. I've been playing correspondence chess as a beta tester on ChesSos, which has been taking up most of my idle net time. I've been reading this book "America - the book" - a citizen's guide to democracy inaction - Very, very funny and also somewhat educational to someone who wasn't brought up on US history. I've also busied myself with worrying about work - to little avail. Even less work (or leisure for that matter) gets done until the object of worry gets improved.