Steven Moffatt has killed Dr Who

This is my considered opinion after the first 20 minutes of the awful opening episode of the new Dr Who.

As far as I'm concerned, lurid quasi science fiction with a large children's audience is not a place to compulsively go on about sexual politics.  It now does so pretty much continuously, and is ludicrous, boring, not funny, and only worth viewing to see how bad it has become. 

Time slip government

Guy Rundle writes amusingly in The Saturday Paper about a strange aspect of the Abbott government:

Good political fun with out-of-touch ministers. Traditional, except for one thing: the hopeless targets of this stuff are usually relics of a bygone age. Joe Hockey is 49, Christopher Pyne 47. They were toddlers in 1969 – the year of Woodstock and equal pay for women. They are products of a post-’60s Western world, bound within it, but their mindset comes from somewhere else. It’s as if they’ve had a Philip K. Dick-style mind implant from an earlier era.

Perhaps the whole frontbench got a bulk deal on such, for what can explain this government’s unique inability to understand the real-life impacts of many of the measures it is proposing? The Howard government had the basic nous to refrain from antagonising low-income people who voted for them on culture-war grounds. There seems to be none of that on display in the Abbott government. Indeed it is worse. They seem to have no conception of the life-world of those on low incomes, the everyday structure and texture of existence for those in precarious or poor situations.

What else can explain Joe Hockey’s remark that the $7 Medicare co-payment is no more than a “couple of beers”? Quite aside from the inherent anachronism – it’s barely one beer in a pub – it suggests Hockey is unaware that many people on benefits have to budget with the expectation that they will spend the last two to three days of a fortnight with no ready cash at hand. How else to explain the six-months-on/six-months-off dole scheme for the under-25s, which would make it impossible for a dole recipient to, among other things, rent a flat with a standard 12-month lease. How are they then supposed to move to areas of lower unemployment to seek work, as they have been urged to do? The scheme is meticulously designed to punish initiative and reward stasis. It is anti-brilliant. You don’t have to come from a low-income background to understand these demands. You only need to buy a pie and a Coke at a convenience store – close to $10 – to realise that it constitutes about 10 per cent of a week’s discretionary income on benefits, or the part-time wage of a worker who needs a full-time job.

While I don't disagree...

....that the militarisation of the US police forces has become ridiculously over the top (and note that a significant part of it is due to Congress and the Pentagon thinking that recycling military equipment is a thrifty and useful thing to do), I find myself a bit chagrined when those Americans of a libertarian bent get upset about it, because of their support of the other side the ledger (the public) being armed to the back teeth.

Mark Steyn's recent column, for example, quotes with approval the tiny number of police shootings in other Western countries compared to the US.   Yet this is him talking before about his home State:

New Hampshire has a high rate of firearms possession, which is why it has a low crime rate.  You don’t have to own a gun, and there are plenty of sissy arms-are-for-hugging granola-crunchers who don’t.  But they benefit from the fact that their crazy stump-toothed knuckle-dragging neighbors do.  If you want to burgle a home in the Granite State, you’d have to be awfully certain it was the one-in-a-hundred we-are-the-world panty-waist’s pad and not some plaid-clad gun nut who’ll blow your head off before you lay a hand on his seventy dollar TV.

Is it such a stretch for Steyn to imagine that police in a place where (as he thinks is fantastic) nearly every household has a gun (or on the street, anyone might be carrying a concealed gun) might be more inclined to shoot first in many situations?

Wayne talks Kevin

This is the full extract from Swan's book in last weekend's SMH.

Don't get too carried away with your bacteria

Microbiology: Microbiome science needs a healthy dose of scepticism : Nature News & Comment

I forgot to mention that Catalyst last week was the start of a 2 part story on microbiome science, and was very good.


But perhaps my "time travelling doctors who change history with fecal transplants" series needs to wait.... 

Black market continues

Black market boom lays bare a social divide in Colorado’s marijuana market | World news | Guardian Weekly

Yeah, yeah, it's early days yet, but this article about the black market reaction to legalisation of marijuana is interesting.   (One odd thing I have noticed in other articles too - the amount of medical marijuana sold in that state seems astronomical.) 

I would add one other observation - the issues with what happens to a black market for this particular drug is probably very, very different to the experience with alcohol and prohibition for the simple reason that making your own, good tasting and consistent quality alcoholic beverage is not as simple a matter as growing a dozen plants in your backyard.  The ease with which the black market can produce a "quality" product probably helps ensure it does not go away when the legalised, highly taxed, version becomes available. 

About the metadata freakout...

I find it a bit hard to understand the metadata privacy freakout, given that surely everyone should assume that any old bored 21 year old working late at an ISP could be looking up the browsing or message history of any customer he's interested in.   As for what the metamind of Google knows about what you were up to last night - well, what they don't know is probably easier to answer.

A key point I was interested in was "how long do ISPs currently hold metadata anyway?"  and according to the ABC, the answer seems to be this:

What Telcos/ISPs are doing?

There has been a proliferation of ISPs in Australia in recent years – there are now more than 200.
There are variations between each company on what data they store and for how long. Industry retention patterns vary from "months" to "years".
There has been a trend towards telcos/ISPs holding metadata for shorter periods of time.
Some telcos already hold data for seven to nine years, government officials say. Those companies would not be affected if the Government proposes a mandatory two-year retention of metadata.

and this:

What would be different for telcos/ISP with mandatory retention of metadata?

Nothing, if they are already holding it for more than two years.
Some telcos/ISPs who hold for shorter periods would be affected if the Government seeks to "standardise" a two-year retention period.

So, privacy freaks, is this another case of you  blithely living with something that hasn't had an effect on your life for like, 10 years or so, but now that the government wants to regulate it a tiny bit more it's full blown panic mode?

And as for Topher, a professional Tosser in my books, it is rather ridiculous to be suggesting that it is the ISPs themselves who want the change.

Update:   to be sure, if the argument was about who within the government metadata was being released to, and whether it was with or without warrant, and the purposes for which it was being sought - that's fine if there are outrageous cases, but I can't say I've seen such examples within Australia being publicised.

But the mere fact that the government is seeking to set a minimum standard for how long it is kept, when an unspecified number of ISPs are already keeping it for that long or longer,  well that's a minor issue when the main one is "how is it accessed".

Fan news

RET worries

I see that IPA aligned economists are getting all aroused at the prospect that, having lost out on the fake and hysterical free speech crisis they tried to whip up because Andrew Bolt wouldn't apologise for mistakes made in a column, they may have an Abbott government "win" on the Renewable Energy Target.   (The rumour being that key figures in the government are wanting to have it killed off entirely.)  Julie Novak, for example:



From what I can make out, the economics of electricity production in this large country are rather complicated, and in an ideal world, all countries would price carbon with consistency and at realistic levels to wean the planet off burning carbon, and all electricity production, retail and transmission would work the same across our own country, and you genuinely could have a situation where you let energy companies work it out for themselves without the need for the additional spur of a government mandated RET.

However, given the world (and Australia) is not so simple, the RET is one element of a multi-pronged approach to energy, and letting it stay does not represent an economic problem of any significance.   Removing it now that it has been in place for so long is actually a lot more trouble than it is even theoretically worth. 

And one thing is clear - given that the free marketeer economists aligned with the IPA have no problem at all with it actively promoting pubic and political disbelief that there is even a problem to address regarding climate change, their opinion on the merit of the RET is not worth a pinch of poop. 

Julie Novak is, of course, completely and ludicrously wrong in this morning's tweet, in response to a rare column in The Australian supporting the RET:



Get real, Julie.  

A good Gittins column

Abbott and Hockey: Why poor people don't matter

A bit of Wittgenstein

Wittgenstein,Tolstoy and the Folly of Logical Positivism | Issue 103 | Philosophy Now

Given all the World War 1 talk going on at the moment, it's apt to remember one philosopher's participation in it.  The above piece here from Philosophy Now reminded me about Wittgenstein's war, and how his one famous book was written during it.

It made sense...

Stop Making Sense 30th anniversary: David Byrne and Jonathan Demme talk about how the movie got made (VIDEO).

Yay.  Slate has a short story up about the 30th anniversary of Stop Making Sense, with a couple of videos.

I'll post this one:



because it illustrates how David Byrne now comes across as a very witty, relaxed and normal person, in contrast to the image of of an eccentric young geek that you got from his interviews at the peak of Talking Heads (as well as in the movie.)   I don't think Aspergers was a condition anyone talked about back then, but if he acted in interviews now as he did as a young man, I'm pretty sure some people would wonder about it.

What I'd like someone to ask him one day is whether he really was different back then, or whether there was a large element of performance in his interviews and public persona.  (I wouldn't really care if there was - he was so interesting to watch anyway - I'd just like to know.)

And this all reminds me, I haven't visited his website for some time.    I see that (like me) his elderly mother recently died, and he has an interesting and charming post talking about her life.  Lovely.

The week that was

Not sure that I am up to resuming my daily blogging routine just yet - I still have a large backlog of work that I started making progress on last week, and the number of books that I haven't started or finished reading  from the last couple of years of visits to the Lifeline bookfest (and gifts from my family) is just ridiculous.

Anyhow, the week that was deserves some comment:

The sad:   Robin Williams, of course.  I liked him most for his spontaneous work, whether that be from (early) Mork & Mindy, or virtually any chat show or television interview he did.  But as a movie star - well, I have to say I was never entirely swept away by any role or movie he did.  He could be competent as an actor, but he was one of those people who had such a distinctive persona in one field that I could never quite shake it out of my mind when watching him in another.  (For Australian readers - it's a bit like watching John Doyle trying to be himself after years of identifying his voice as Rampaging Roy Slaven.)  But apart from that, I just didn't care much for the type of material he generally went for in movies.

That said, I always had the impression that he was a very empathetic man, and generous.   It's rather incredible that a couple of right wing boneheads in the US could make politically tinged comments about his death, given his long support of American soldiers, which was something I had forgotten about until this week.  The Guardian listed some of this other notable charity work and advocacy.  The upset you could see in many show biz personalities talking about his death indicates he was genuinely liked and admired. 

And one other point:  my frequent visitor Homer - shame on you for taking up the "suicide is cowardice" line on your blog.  As many, many people have said this week, it's not as if the depressed are thinking straight when they only see a tunnel of blackness ahead of them; in fact, they can think they are doing not just themselves, but their family, a favour by exiting now.

As for the other Hollywood death this week - well, if you had asked me, I would have guessed that Lauren Bacall had already died, but she was very entertaining in the role of Cranky Ageing Glamour Star Who Regrets the Passing of Old Hollywood.  From The Guardian:

In old age, Bacall raged against what she saw as the mediocrity of contemporary Hollywood, as represented by everything from the career of Tom Cruise to the Twilight movies that her granddaughter dragged her to see. “She said it was the greatest vampire film ever made,” Bacall recalled. “After the film was over, I wanted to smack her across the head with my shoe.” 

The Good:  The Brisbane Exhibition visit this year calls for my (almost annual) duck in a cage photo:

(He/she was already standing like that before I approached the cage, honest.)   And the type of carnival entertainment that I seek to highlight this year is the high dive team that climb up a ridiculously flimsy looking tower:

and sometimes descend from it while in flames:

Don't ask me why - there must be easier ways of making a living - but entertainment can take many forms.

As usual, I continue to be impressed when I see immigrants at the Show - this year I noticed some Muslim families, and given the extremely bad PR their religion is currently, deservedly, suffering, I am encouraged that attendance at this rather old fashioned, very Western, form of entertainment is at least some indication of assimilation.

As for Guardians of the Galaxy:  yes, I agree with the critics' consensus - it's a terrifically entertaining film.  I liked pretty much everything most reviews liked - an unoriginal type of story (just how often since Lord of the Rings have we seen the dangerous, quasi mystical object with incredible destructive power?)  but which is nonetheless very well scripted and funny; characters that have charm and wit; a somewhat retro  but gloriously colourful and vivid visual look; and enough plot leads at the end to pique interest in a second instalment.   

As usual with many films of its genre now, some of the effects laden scenes (especially of space battle) are too busy for their own good, but it's a small reservation on a film that has its heart in the right place.

The bad:    radical Islam continues to disturb everyone, but I did notice the increased effort Saudis are making to fight it (well, not that they are willing to put their actual soldiers in harm's way - in fact, when did we last hear of that country actually putting its own lives at risk instead of paying other countries to do it for them?)   From the New York Times:

Increasingly worried about the spread of Islamist militant extremism reaching its own doorstep, Saudi Arabia donated $100 million to a fledgling United Nations counterterrorism agency on Wednesday and expressed hope that such an infusion — 10 times what the Saudis gave to help create the agency three years ago — would strengthen its abilities and set an example for other donor countries.

The money was the second big contribution by Saudi Arabia to the United Nations in the past few months, largely in response to crises caused by the ascent of radical Sunni Islamist militancy in the Middle East. On July 1, Saudi Arabia provided $500 million to United Nations humanitarian relief efforts in Iraq, where hundreds of thousands of people have been uprooted by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, a marauding force that many counterterrorism experts now regard as a leading threat.

With its vast trove of petroleum wealth, Saudi Arabia’s Sunni monarchy has also provided grants and loans worth more than $1 billion to help strengthen Lebanon’s armed forces, which have recently battled ISIS fighters on the Syria-Lebanon border. The Saudis are also huge financial underwriters of Egypt’s new anti-Islamist government and have been somewhat silent about Israel’s war against Islamist militants in Gaza. 

Puts fears of a "clash of civilisations" somewhat back into perspective, doesn't it?   But nonetheless, I am happy to see our government giving our own Islamic ratbags a hard time.

Politics, politics:    The government continues to have no idea how to convince the public that a Budget that pleases no one actually deserves to be passed.    There is some interest in years to come as to who to blame for its concept - haven't I read before that it was genuinely the work of Abbott? - yet I'd be willing to bet there will be a memoir and ABC interview fuelled circle of finger pointing in the future.

By the way, Insiders was especially entertaining yesterday.  

The mad:   I see Catallaxy is actually accelerating its descent into unfathomable, eccentric, unpleasant and ideologically driven nonsense of all kinds, with recent contributions including Sinclair Davidson ("What?  'Ape' can be a racist insult? - well I never") saying that the Abbott proposed constitutional recognition of aborigines is racist and akin to apartheid*; and Steve Kates, who I think any prospective economics student with sense would recognise as an advertisement against studying at RMIT, telling us this morning that he keeps an open mind on the question of whether water really is made up of hydrogen and oxygen.  That's the scientific thing to do, apparently.



*  I'd be particularly pleased with a constitutional amendment if it meant there could  be a reduction in the number of meaningless acknowledgements of original owners and custodians of land at the start of meetings.

Also on aboriginal issues - it appears beyond doubt that Noel Pearson, in private, carries on as an offensive, swearing attack dog against anyone - politician or journalist - he perceives as standing in the way of his ideas for aboriginal betterment.  Another great choice by Abbott for a special adviser, hey?   Does he not believe in climate change too, as that seems to be the qualification for Abbott's other advisers?.   (Actually, I see that last year he was supporting Abbott's Direct Action plan, so he's half way to being a non believer, it would seem...)

Too busy

This should be a big week - off to the Brisbane "ekka"; should be able to see Guardians of the Galaxy next weekend; four work days in which many people are waiting for me to finish stuff.

So, I expect no posts til next weekend - unless tomorrow's Newspoll is even worse, in which case I will drop in to celebrate.

In the meantime, a couple of recommendations for harmless diversion:

*  I can strongly recommend "the lion" on this page as a good paper airplane.   I was flying one successfully yesterday (with my daughter) until a passing car ran over it.

*  Wacom has released the Bamboo Paper app for android, and it has a pleasing set of pens for doodling on a tablet.

Antarctic blogs, Hurrah!

The news that a British Antarctic station lost its power this week leads to yet another cool photo or two of futuristic architecture, which I always like to see:

Happily, it has also led me to a few blogs being run by people down there at the moment.  (I have previously tried to find blogs that have a reasonable post rate from down that way, but it seems a combination of their relatively poor internet accessibility and busy-ness means they don't spend much time blogging.)  But Anthony Lister's blog has links to some other Antarctic blogs, and that makes me happy.

Lister (I wonder if he gets sick of people telling him he reminds them of Red Dwarf?) writes rather charmingly of the power down:

I don’t really want to add any detail about what has happened down here (it’s nowt exciting honest!) but would just like to reiterate that we are all healthy, in good spirits and are busy setting about getting, and keeping the station in as good an order as possible. No-one here on station is responsible for the technical issues we are having and we are all working extremely hard.

Tea making facilities are still going strong.

On a happier note, despite the difficulties I really am still loving the place. Having made mention of how Antarctica can take things to another level just when you think you have seen something truly beautiful, well, I’ll have to say it once again. To prove that every cloud has a silver lining Halley, during the time without any power, was the clearest I have ever seen. This, coinciding with the loss of the small amount of light pollution we have, made the night-sky of the power-down the most beautiful I have ever seen – or probably ever will. the whole galaxy in its majesty, brighter than ever – going outside was almost a religious experience!

 He has good photos at his blog too:

Beautiful.

I think my blog roll needs to add him...

Um, can we have a double dissolution first?

Medical payments to go private

This sounds like a very dubious proposition to me:

In an advertisement in today’s The Australian Financial Review, the Department of Health calls for com­panies to express interest inproviding claims and payment services for the Medicare Benefits Schedule (MBS) and Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS), the second-biggestresponsibility of the Department of Human Services after welfare payments.

It follows the allocation of $500,000 in this year’s budget, largely unnoticed, for market testing.

“We’re determined to put into place a 21st-century payment system that will be more efficient for patients and doctors,” Health Minister Peter Dutton said. “It will reduce red tape for doctors and streamline their administrative processes and, we believe, deliver a ­saving to the
taxpayer.”

The contract is likely to be highly complicated. The new providerwould have to be capable of processing a ­collective $29 billion of claims from 600 million transactions a year conducted for the Department of Health, and nearly $2.5 billion in claims from 33 million transactions for the Department of Veteran’s Affairs.

The size of the job and requirement for a physical shopfront presence means few existing Australian companies would be capable of carrying out the task. But it could provide an extremely lucrative and stable revenue stream for successful candidates.

The suggestion seems to be that the Post Office might take it over (!).  So all of those franchised post offices will need to find new, larger premises and scores of extra staff, taught about health and veteran's benefits processing?

As the report notes further:

In its recommendation, the audit commission run by businessman Tony Shepherd warned that outsourcing national payments would be a “substantial and potentially high-risk undertaking” requiring careful consideration.

 I imagine this will be a rather unpopular move, if it proceeds.

In many respects, this Abbott government resembles the Rudd Mk 1 government - they both cruised into office because of "the vibe", but with next to nothing in the way of specific, useful policies to pursue.   Rudd tried to "solve" this by calling together a bunch of people to bask in his greatness and  workshop motherhood statements on butcher's paper, with predictably little result.  He then hurriedly pulled dubious ideas out of his own backside (a laptop for every student! - yay!) and the resulting programs naturally had major problems.

Abbott couldn't do the Rudd "love in" thing - he knows most educated people* (and certainly arts industry people) actively dislike him.  Instead he had to rely on getting a few ex pollies and business mates with the right attitude ("climate change - ha! As if") to do rushed and dubious reports full of all sorts of small government daydreams.  But their ideas are at least as equally poorly thought out as Rudd's, and seem rarely to be based on solid examples of success in other countries.   They have the added quality of being potentially much more destructive of existing competent delivery of services than Rudd's ideas.

Can we just get the double dissolution over with now?   Everyone has already decided Abbott is a failure.

*  save for a handful of greedy Vice Chancellors.

Losers giving money to losers noted

Good, too, to see that so much effort was put into the design of the ad, which featured about 90% empty space, fellas.

Still, blowing some money on an ad that will clearly have no effect on politicians, but satiate your anger that your think tank's attempt at bullying them into changing a law which the public were actually happy to keep  failed gives you some sense of satisfaction, I presume.   Not the type of satisfaction that people get from donating to a charity that actually helps the sick or the poor, or just anyone other than rich, male, white, bloviating media figures; but a kind of satisfaction nonetheless.

For an actual decent take on why the s.18C amendment went no where, see Gay Alcorn's column in The Guardian about it.  I liked the last bit in particular:

Bolt himself seemed to grasp at least in part that to have him at the centre of a battle for “freedom” was always fatal.

“To associate it with me meant so many people of the left thought that any law that could be used against me must be pretty good, and I think that’s poisoned the debate,” he told radio station 2GB.

Yes Andrew, it did poison the debate. But the “left” didn’t make it all about you. You did, and so did the government.

Hey, look everybody...

...it's Drawn Fraser.

Update:  this post seems underappreciated.  I'll have to continue work on "Pony Abbott", but photoshopping a face onto the appropriate end of a horse is trickier than I expected.

Update 2:   Oh look...it's "Pony" Abbott:  

 (Forgive me, it was a rushed job.)

An interesting take on marijuana use

Marijuana decriminalisation: High times in Amsterdam and Boulder | The Economist

See, I don't just post negative stories about marijuana experiences.  Sometimes I link to stories by people who are happy casual users - and then point out why they are wrong.

Really, the interesting thing about the story in the Economist was the oft repeated point that Holland has less cannabis use than America, despite its long term legal availability in certain venues.  (And how the main users of the pot cafes are tourists, and how some people find these cafes are pretty unpleasant places to smoke.)  But, as I have noted over the years, the Dutch are an odd mix of relative conservatism with their liberalism - the best example other than drugs being the explicit and detailed sex education their kids get from a very young age at school, yet the teenagers wait longer before having sex and have way fewer pregnancies than their American or English counterparts.

People say this good outcome is because of the sex education; but really, how do you separate out its effect from the social milieu generally?  As I noted in a post a long time ago, it is said that government policy is not to be overly generous with welfare benefits to young single mothers, and people just accept that accidentally falling pregnant is a silly and embarrassing thing to do; so they do (largely) successfully avoid it.  And take marriage and family life pretty seriously.

The same with drugs legalisation - its hard to draw uniform lessons from one society to another, and the Dutch experience may well not translate well elsewhere.  If you legalised marijuana overnight in Japan, for example, I have my doubts that its use would soar immediately.  They are very, very happy with their drinking culture (too happy, probably), and public interest in other ways to get uninhibited (or off one's face) is (I think) very very low.

The thing is, I suspect (but could be wrong) that American culture is not one that is going to find legalisation results in less use, or that the population is primed to just settle into a natural rate of use similar to what has been in place for some decades.  If anything, the entrepreneurial streak that runs through the country will see that legalisation means increased usage, quite potentially to levels where it is clearly seen as a societal problem affecting the economy.

But we shall see...

Discouraging pollution news...

Pollution triples mercury levels in ocean surface waters, study finds | Environment | theguardian.com

Particularly discouraging because it affects some of the tastier fish species.

Update:  The report in Nature reads even worse than the Guardian's:

But study co-author Carl Lamborg, a marine geochemist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, says that the deep water's ability to sequester mercury may soon be exhausted. Humans are on track to emit as much mercury in the next 50 years as they did in the last 150 years, he notes.

“You're starting to overwhelm the ability of deep water formation to hide some of that mercury from us, with the net result that more and more of our emissions will be found in progressively shallower water,” Lamborg adds. That increases the odds that mercury levels in key food species will rise, increasing humans' exposure.