Southerly Buster

the Nanjing Atrocity and the War on Terror

2007-12-14T07:56:00.000+11:00

I just read a brilliant article on the Nanjing atrocity. Japan persuaded itself that China was not a unified nation-state and therefore Chinese soldiers and civilians did not enjoy the protection of international law. By the time they extended the war on China to include nations they did recognise they had a an army accustomed to carrying out atrocities that could not be retrained or restrained.

The parallels are uncanny. Not only did japan use the same legal fiction: 'Our enemy is not a nation-state so international law does not apply', they also used the same cover-up: 'Our troops were out of control and there only isolated incidents' when in fact the imperial army repeatedly ordered the commission of war crimes. Japanese conduct at Nanjing was so appalling that the Nazi German consulate in Nanjing denounced it to Berlin as a war crime.

Such considerations shed light on three major underlying causes of the Nanking Atrocity. First, contempt for China as a modern nation led to a deficient concern for applying international law toward it. Just as serious fighting in northern China began, an undersecretary in the Army Ministry sent a notice dated 5 August 1937 to the China Garrison Army’s Chief of Staff: “It is inappropriate to act strictly in accordance with various stipulations in ‘Treaties and Practices Governing Land Warfare and Other Laws of War’.” Similar notices went out to other units as well. The message can only be construed as: “there is no need to obey international law.” Second, this overweening attitude diluted concern for protecting Chinese civilians, as well as foreign diplomats and residents, from the horrors of war. The CCAA was formed haphazardly on 7 November 1937. Since it was not supposed to move far west of Shanghai, it had no supply-and-support units to provision troops, who could only rely on plunder to sustain themselves en route to Nanking. This increased their frequency of contacts with, and opportunities for violence toward, civilians. The SEA and the Tenth Army had no liaison staff or units trained in diplomacy; so those armies’ relations with Japanese diplomatic officials in China were bad, to say the least. Troops viewed diplomats as a thorn in their side; diplomats who tried to stop army brutalities exposed themselves to danger. A third and related underlying cause of the Atrocity lay in the CCAA’s disregard for upholding troop discipline and morality. It had no specialized military police (MP) units, and the few individual MPs who were on hand could not possibly maintain order. As one attached to the Tenth Army bewailed, “With less than 100 of us to control 200,000 men in several divisions, what could we do?”

There may be a WWII precedent for the Bush administration's approach to the conduct of war, but it is certainly not Churchill.

the jellies that ate Bondi

2007-11-23T03:26:00.000+11:00

Well, not quite or at least not yet. Before Southerly Buster stopped blowing for a while, I posted about the exciting saga of the giant jellyfish, a product of ocean acidification, invading Japanese waters Well, according to Shifting Baselines, a swarm of jellyfish, dense pack of about 26 square kilometres and 11 metres deep, yesterday attacked a salmon farm in Northern Ireland and ate US$2 million worth of salmon.

Ocean acidification, driven by global warming and chemical pollution, including agricultural runoffs is having serious effects much closer to home than Northern Ireland. So hum the theme from Jaws next time you surf. But think jellies, not jaws.

slouching towards Bethlehem

2007-11-22T00:05:00.000+11:00

This morning's AM described the Coalition's best case scenario:

CHRIS UHLMANN: Well Tony, that the most likely outcome is a Labor victory. But - and it is a fairly significant "but" - that a Coalition win is not out of the question, and it certainly hasn't given up.

Now, that's based on them sandbagging all of their marginal seats and making it difficult for Labor to take some or all of the 16 that it needs and having to go higher up the tree, if you like, for the low-hanging fruit that's available.

And the way that that would work would be Labor … sorry, the Liberal Party holding the line in Victoria. Now, they need five per cent to take Deakin there, and the seats above it.

And it appears that Labor has stalled in Victoria at around about 4.5 per cent of the vote. So, if that happens and they can just lose three seats in South Australia, two in Tasmania, maybe pick up one in Western Australia, hold the line in the Northern Territory, then the Labor Party is forced to find all of the seats it needs, pretty much, to win government in New South Wales and Queensland.

So, it would be a difficult task, but as I said, that's the masking tape and bailing wire Coalition victory. It could come apart at the seams.

I applied these assumptions to the ABC's election calculator. The first figure shows the Coalition assumptions with no change in NSW or Queensland. I think the outcome is hopelessly optimistic because, out side Western Australia, the polls continue to show a decisive Labor lead. If I were drawing a true picture of what I think will happen outside New South Wales and Queensland I would give Labor 1 or 2 more seats, with the possibility of a major swing in South Australia throwing the calculation completely.

The Coalition battle plan has Labor searching for 13 seats in New South Wales and Queensland. I assigned 8 seats to NSW and 5 to Qld and then adjusted the election sliders to find what swings would bee needed in those states to produce a Labor victory f 76 seats. That gave me my second figure.

I find it hard to see how Labot can win less than 76 seats. Within the 2 states I think Labor will do well in aspirational seats on the edge of Sydney where both Work Choices and interest rates are biting hard. I'm told Labor feels very good about North Queensland where there are 2 marginal seats to be had, and Brisbane where Kevin Rudd is the favourite son. I'm also told Labor is very encouraged by polling in Bennelong and North Sydney. In 1983 many seats went Labor in the bush because it's hard for rural voters to support government candidates when their towns are collapsing in the face of prolonged drought and where I suspect climate change is suddenly a very live issue indeed. Last year I travelled around rural NSW for a week and it was hard to get anyone to talk about anything but the drought and climate change in pubs from Jindabyne to Dubbo.

If the swings in SA, NSW and Qld go far above the numbers in figure 2 then we are looking at an earthquake, not a landslide.

National security finally hits the election

2007-10-23T12:27:00.000+10:00

The AbC's reporting that Howard and Cheney did a deal over Hicks. When this was first raised, months ago, ABC Insiders pooh-poohed the whole idea by saying there was no way for Cheney to communicate the the military commission hearing Hick's case. Later that week we learnt that the sentencing agreement was reached with the chief military prosecutor of the commission, an old Cheney staffer, not the military judges themselves.

Now we have a report from someone present at a meeting between Howard and Cheney. The Age has the anonymousquotes:

"One of our staffers was present when Vice-President Cheney interfered directly to get Hicks's plea bargain deal," the unnamed officer told a contributor for Harper's magazine.

"He did it, apparently, as part of a deal cut with Howard.

"I kept thinking: this is the sort of thing that used to go on behind the Iron Curtain, not in America.

"And then it struck me how much this entire process had disintegrated into a political charade.

"It's demoralising for all of us."

Amazing how well-informed the nameless military source is about Australia. Howard long ago turned national security into a political charade, one that may be about to come home to roost. Howard's bee good at fooling people. It's hard to think of a worse time for one of his charades to come unstuck.

aspirational justice

2007-08-25T16:13:00.000+10:00

The Man of Steel's prime ministerial sermons are gutting increasingly silly and more and more all they do is excuse a group of Australians and banish them beyond the pale. Australians in remote indigenous communities do not get asked about intrusive government measures that will not reduce the incidence of child abuse and are contrary to what the authors of Little children are scared recommended. Australians worried about nuclear power do get asked. Australians worried about local council amalgamations do get asked.

The expanding reach of the Man of Steels passion for talking about anything and everything but his own record has now touched on criminal justice. Australians who protest are clearly not part of the nation either.

More than that, they're guilty of offences they have not yet committed.

Haneef transcript

2007-08-22T16:18:00.000+10:00

The Haneef transcript is in the public domain, where it should always have been. Now we all know that Western civilisation as we know it faces a threat more dire than the invasion of the Mongol hordes under Batu Khan in 1241. So dire a threat that we need an ever-vigilant Federal police to keep us safe in our beds.

That's why I'm a little alarmed to read at least one of our vigilant defenders has a small gap in his technical awareness.

HANEEF: No sometimes I use Skype.

AFP: How does that work?

HANEEF: That's just an Internet calling.

AFP: Okay, I'm unfamiliar with that, that's all. What do you need for that?

I'll read on, as soon as I've carried out my civic duty of telling the AFP about the highly secretive and dangerous Internet technology known as Skype. The highly-trained AFP interrogator also appears not to know what a Yahoo chat is, what years Indians attend school, what a medical intern is, or even the basic geography of Bangalore or the state of Karnataka. In the alternative, the AFP interrogator may know all these things but decided they're so secret they had to be kept from Haneef and his lawyer at any cost.

If this is the best the AFP can do, we should all invest in rubber bed sheets. And while we're at it, we might like to recall the French state was so busy framing Dreyfus they allowed the real spy, Esterhazy to escape.

How many Libs does it take to change a lightbulb?

2007-02-23T15:56:00.000+11:00

In the dismissal election of 1975 the Libs ran on the slogan 'Turn on the lights!', a slogan they stole from the British Labour party which had used it during the UK general election of 1974. Typical Libs! First they want us to turn the things on, now they want us to turn them off!

Send a third stage guild navigator to meet with the prime minister

2007-02-23T09:35:00.000+11:00

Here is a recent file picture of Prime Minister Howard meeting with Vice-President Cheney.

In other news from Arrakis, the discoverer of the extra-solar planets HD 209458 b and HD 189733 b reports that that they appear to have even less water than the Murray-Darling basin. The scientist comments:

...some of those silicate clouds they found may have been belched up by Shai Hulud

We're yet to learn what tribute the prime minister will be required to pay the vice-president.

trafficking in permits

2007-02-23T08:55:00.000+11:00

Sydney is an undisclosed location since Cheney flew in last night. The usual suspects in the Howard government are naturally milking the Cheney trip for all its worth. I suspect they're going to find Cheney a fairly dry teat.

Earlier in the week, the Queen Mary 2 and the Queen Elizabeth 2 were both in Sydney at the same time. The result was gridlock around the harbour and an abject apology from Premier Maurice Iemma and various other state officials for not foreseeing the gridlock. I suspect that's got a lot to do with the weird decision-making on the issue of granting a permit for the demonstration against Cheney last night.

The police refused the permit. The demonstrators threatened to march down George St anyway. The police eventually allowed the demo to walk down the side of the street as long as they did not block traffic. 10 people were arrested in between refusing the permit and effectively granting the permit.

Demonstrating is part of the right to free speech.

Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Article 20.
(1) Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association.

That right should really not be suspended because the government blew the planning for the arrival of two ships and the premier went into panic mode. Sadly, I think we'll see the panic mode get recycled a few more times before the state election on 28 March.

retest

2007-02-21T10:35:00.000+11:00

testing 7, 8. 9...

PS Dear google,

Try not to respam this blog, at least for a couple of days.

test

2007-02-16T10:30:00.000+11:00

testing, 4, 5, 6...

Save us from controversial Bills

2007-02-08T02:41:00.000+11:00

The Nautilus Institute backgrounds the Fiji coup.

Commodore Bainimarama explained his actions by saying that the Qarase Government was "unable to make decisions to [save] our people from destruction." He said the deposed Prime Minister had "already conducted a 'silent coup' through bribery, corruption and the introduction of controversial Bill[s]".

The Qarase governments' practice of bribery and corruption remains an open question. The 1997 constitution provides for independent watchdog bodies and practices that allow corruption to be addressed. A self-serving military coup is not one of the constitutional options. If governments that bring in controversial bills deserve to be overthrown, then perhaps coup leader Bainimarama should read some of the controversy his emergency regulations, which purport to suspend the constitution, have generated.

Fiji reveals the gap at the heart of Howard's policy. Howard says nothing about human rights and does little about human rights. The Howard government has certainly condemned the coup and imposed sanctions, but a military take-over apparently does not trigger the Howard doctrine. I've argued the whole deputy sheriff thing was never intended for anything more than domestic consumption, but it's hard to see what would trigger the Howard doctrine if the overthrow of an elected government does not. Terror, perhaps, is in the eye of the beholder.

Incidentally, there's a weirdness. Bainimarama spent Christmas 2005 at Turtle Island in the company of several guests, including the Republican frontrunner for president, US Senator John McCain. It'd be nice to know what advice McCain gave him about preserving, protecting and defending the constitution.

Well, I'm shocked

2007-02-07T13:57:00.000+11:00

The model train industry is having a fair in Nuremberg.

One new item in the Viessmann company's catalog is called "Sexy Lovers in Motion." A man and a woman are having sex on a red blanket, in the missionary position. The man moves his buttocks and needs between 14 and 16 volt to do so, AC or DC.

On second thought, if some enthusiast uses an overstrength battery, I guess the man on the blanket may a bit shocked too.

auditors with guns

2007-02-06T10:40:00.000+11:00

I'm rereading Joseph Stiglitz's Globalization and its discontents.

There are at least two reasons why the IMF should consult widely within a country as it makes its assessments and designs its programs. Those within the country are likely to know more about the economy than the IMF staffers - as I saw so clearly in the case of the United States. And for the programs to be implemented in an effective and sustainable manner, there must be a commitment of the country behind the program, based on a broad consensus.

Stiglitz' advice to the IMF stands equally valid for the Prime Minister of Australia. The Howard policy in the Pacific has been hat imposing crude Washington Consensus one size fits all policies is the direct path to a Pacific paradise. When the Man of Steel talks capacity-building he seems to mean covering the Pacific with Australian auditors and police singing the happy refrain: 'I'm from the Australian government and I'm here to help you.'

The policy is an abject failure. PNG's supreme court quite rightly rejected the idea that Australian police and auditors should be immune to the process of their courts. The Solomon Islands rejected the 'Australian' nominee for prime minister. Nuku'alofa's Chinatown went up in flames. Howard refuses to even think about a guestworker program or rescuing the inhabitants of entire states that may be destroyed by global warming. And then there's Fiji.

The abject failure of Australian policy in Fiji is best captured in a recent post from intelligentsiya:

Yesterday, Chief Intelligentsiya got a call from an Associated Press reporter in Australia who was doing a story on intelligentsiya and freedom of speech in general in Fiji.

He asked if we were afraid the military would get to us. Now, we hope the military doesn’t think we are irritating enough to haul up to Queen Elizabeth Barracks. But we probably think they will detain us, once they find out who we are. But in the meantime, we’ll continue to publish.

Howard's policy is an abject failure because, like much of his politics, it's all about how and never about why. Pacific states lack capacity because they have not, in most cases, developed a broad consensus on what they want to be. Without that, development is going to stay uneven, unstable and unfair. Howard's policy also, just quietly, assumes total Australian dominance in the region, a dominance which China and Taiwan are increasingly eager to challenge. Pacific peoples, quite reasonably, want something more, and no amount of bean counters with guns is going to give it to them.

It's really no surprise that Howard's Pacific misadventure is an inflexible and uninformed policy whose results are uniform failure. All he's really doing is trying to run the Pacific the way he runs Australia, by insisting there's no alternative. He's King Canute in a lae.

Yes, Sorry, there is a Virginia

2007-02-06T10:24:00.000+11:00

Virginia has apologised for slavery and its treatment of Native Americans.

"The General Assembly hereby expresses its profound regret for the commonwealth's role in sanctioning the immoral institution of human slavery, in the historic wrongs visited upon native peoples, and in all other forms of discrimination and injustice that have been rooted in racial and cultural bias and misunderstanding," the resolution states.

The resolution was sponsored by Democratic Delegate A. Donald McEachin, whose great-grandfather was born a slave. Although he initially wanted an outright apology, McEachin said the final version of the House resolution "doesn't sugarcoat the matter either."

McEachin said it marked an important step in the state's effort to move beyond its history of stormy race relations, which included governmentsanctioned resistance to integration during the 1950s.

"There is some pain at first, but there is a beautiful product at the end," McEachin said of his colleagues' decision to embrace the resolution. "Virginia had nothing to do with the end of slavery. It had everything do with the beginning of slavery."

That makes it official. The Man of Steel is now behind the former seat of government of the Confederate States of America in his willingness to apologise for past wrongs. The idea of redress for past wrongs is apparently even more foreign to him.

Cheney in Oz

2007-01-31T12:09:00.000+11:00

from the Man of Steel's website

I am pleased to announce that the Vice President of the United States of America, The Honorable Richard B. Cheney, will visit Australia from 22 to 27 February.

The Australia-US alliance is of enduring importance to both countries and makes a significant contribution to international security. Australia and the United States continue to work together toward our common goals. We are cooperating closely to fight terrorism, address global environmental challenges and enhance energy security, prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and promote an open international economic order. Vice President Cheney’s visit will be an important opportunity to reinforce the strong bilateral relationship between the United States and Australia and to consult on major international issues such as regional security challenges, Afghanistan, Iraq and the war against terrorism.

Vice President Cheney is no stranger to Australia. He visited previously when he was US Secretary of Defense and several times in a private business capacity.

Perhaps the prime minister and the vice-president can discuss:

how the Iraq insurgency is in its last throes
how the multinational force is having enormous success in Iraq
when David Hicks will finally be charged with something and whether the penalty for the charges, if they ever happen, will include 5 years plus

It's just ridiculous for the prime minister to announce this as if Iraq were the cakewalk he was told it would be, although Cheney's desire to get away for a few days is understandable.

PS oddly enough, this press release from the Prime Minister of Australia is spelt as if it had been written by an American ('honorable', 'defense'). The words were spelt 'honourable' and 'defence' on 23 January. Maybe the world changed on 26 January.

Update
If the commenters at the conservative Wall Street Journal's blog feel like this, what is the rest of the country saying?

the other side of Chickenhawk Mountain

2007-01-30T11:01:00.000+11:00

I've blogged before (the sad state of blogger's block that hit me a while ago makes it really easy to find) that I think Bush and Cheney will probably not serve out their terms. Shoving that argument firmly to one side a moment, let's say that's true. After all, in 1974 no-one really expected Agnew to bite the dust before Nixon. Especially, no-one expected Agnew to bite the dust over a separate scandal completely unrelated to Watergate.

Anyway, the situation is all neatly covered (or not) by the US constitution. You'd really wonder how those Democrats seeking the nomination for 2008 would feel if they woke up one morning to watch President Pelosi being sworn into office. We'd probably be able to hear the gnashing of teeth all the way cross the Pacific.

Germany v Downer

2007-01-30T08:01:00.000+11:00

After the hors d'oeuvre he touches on the German army's mission in Afghanistan. But it isn't until the main course is served that Steinmeier asks: "Do you want to talk about it now?" After a rundown of the world's crises he knows it's time for him to turn to his own personal trouble spot: The case of Murat Kurnaz, who spent four and a half years in detention at Guantanamo Bay where he was mistreated.

Steinmeier is earnest and seems a bit irritated but is by no means defensive. He insists that he feels deeply troubled by Kurnaz's story. But then he adds that, as head of the German Chancellery, it was his job to look out for German security -- and, shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, Kurnaz was considered a security risk.

What if Kurnaz, after returning from Guantanamo, had been involved in an attack, he asks? "You have to imagine what would have happened," he says, answering his own question, "if there had been an attack and it later turned out that we could have prevented it." Steinmeier is a calm person but at this point he talks himself into a rage. "I wouldn't decide any differently today," he says.

It's a strong sentence by someone who is intent on sticking to his position. Rather than make proclamations of repentance, Steinmeier wants to convince critics that his actions were necessary.

A committee of the German parliament is investigating their government's response to the War on Terror. The investigation has found that Steinmeier, now the foreign minister and then head of chancery (roughly a minister assisting in our terms) took a decision not to accept an offer of release for a Guantánamo detainee in 2002. Now that David Hicks' unlawful detention at Guantánamo has passed the five year mark, someone should ask our foreign minister and our government if they received a similar offer. It'd be strange, if not impossible, if the US was less generous to Australia than Germany.

Perhaps the government could refer the question to a competent US psychologist, since it seems they consult competent US jounalists on psychological questions.

The next question to the Australian government, if they tell us there was a US offer to Germany but not Australia, is: 'Why not?'.

Don't drink the bollocks!

2007-01-27T02:07:00.000+11:00

Eau, no: Clean, healthy and pure? Hardly. Bottled water is killing the planet

Bob Geldof said: 'Bottled water is bollocks. It is the great irony of the 21st century that the most basic things in the supermarket, such as water and bread, are among the most expensive. Getting water from the other side of the world and transporting it to sell here is ridiculous. It is all to do with lifestyle.'

Dr Michael Warhurst, Friends of the Earth's senior waste campaigner, said: 'It is another product we do not need. Bottled water companies are wasting resources and exacerbating climate change.

'Transport is the fastest growing source of greenhouse gas emissions, and transporting water adds to that. We could help reduce these damaging effects if we all simply drank water straight from the tap.'

According to the EPI report, tap water is delivered through an 'energy-efficient infrastructure', whereas bottled water is often shipped halfway across the world, burning huge amounts of fossil fuels and accelerating global warming. In 2004, for example, Finnish company Nord Water sent 1.4 million bottles of Helsinki tap water to a client in Saudi Arabia. In the same year, producing the plastic bottles that delivered 26 billion litres of water to Americans required more than 1.5 million barrels of oil - enough to fuel 100,000 cars for a year.

Bottled Twaddle

Apparently we would. In March 1999 the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) published the results of a four-year study in which they tested more than 1,000 samples of 103 brands of bottled water, finding that "an estimated 25 percent or more of bottled water is really just tap water in a bottle--sometimes further treated, sometimes not." If the label says "from a municipal source" or "from a community water system," it's tap water.

Even more disturbing, the NRDC found that 18 of the 103 brands tested had, in at least one sample, "more bacteria than allowed under microbiological-purity guidelines." About one fifth of the waters "contained synthetic organic chemicals--such as industrial chemicals (e.g., toluene or xylene) or chemicals used in manufacturing plastic (e.g., phthalate, adipate, or styrene)," but these were "generally at levels below state and federal standards." The International Bottled Water Association issued a response to the NRDC study in which it states, "Close scrutiny of the water quality standards for chemical contaminants reveals that [the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's] bottled water quality standards are the same as [the Environmental Protection Agency's] tap water standards." Well, that's a relief, but in paying exceptional prices one might hope for exceptional quality.

One problem is that bottled water is subject to less rigorous purity standards and less frequent tests for bacteria and chemical contaminants than those required of tap water. For example, bottled-water plants must test for coliform bacteria once a week; city tap water must be tested 100 or more times a month.

If bottled water is not safer (a 2001 World Wildlife Fund study corroborated the general findings of the NRDC), then surely it tastes better? It does ... as long as you believe in your brand. Enter the water-wars hype. Pepsi introduced Aquafina, so Coke countered with Dasani, a brand that included a "Wellness Team" (meet Susie, Jonny and Ellie, the "stress relief facilitator," "fitness trainer" and "lifestyle counselor," respectively) on its Web site. Both companies charge more for their plain water than for their sugar water.

BOTTLED WATER: Pouring Resources Down the Drain

In contrast to tap water, which is distributed through an energy-efficient infrastructure, transporting bottled water long distances involves burning massive quantities of fossil fuels. Nearly a quarter of all bottled water crosses national borders to reach consumers, transported by boat, train, and truck. In 2004, for example, Nord Water of Finland bottled and shipped 1.4 million bottles of Finnish tap water 4,300 kilometers (2,700 miles) from its bottling plant in Helsinki to Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia can afford to import the water it needs, but bottled water is not just sold to water-scarce countries. While some 94 percent of the bottled water sold in the United States is produced domestically, Americans also import water shipped some 9,000 kilometers from Fiji and other faraway places to satisfy the demand for chic and exotic bottled water.

Fossil fuels are also used in the packaging of water. The most commonly used plastic for making water bottles is polyethylene terephthalate (PET), which is derived from crude oil. Making bottles to meet Americans’ demand for bottled water requires more than 1.5 million barrels of oil annually, enough to fuel some 100,000 U.S. cars for a year. Worldwide, some 2.7 million tons of plastic are used to bottle water each year.

After the water has been consumed, the plastic bottle must be disposed of. According to the Container Recycling Institute, 86 percent of plastic water bottles used in the United States become garbage or litter. Incinerating used bottles produces toxic byproducts such as chlorine gas and ash containing heavy metals. Buried water bottles can take up to 1,000 years to biodegrade. Almost 40 percent of the PET bottles that were deposited for recycling in the United States in 2004 were actually exported, sometimes to as far away as China—adding to the resources used by this product.

In addition to the strains bottled water puts on our ecosystem through its production and transport, the rapid growth in this industry means that water extraction is concentrated in communities where bottling plants are located. For example, water shortages near beverage bottling plants have been reported in Texas and in the Great Lakes region of North America. Farmers, fishers, and others who depend on water for their livelihoods suffer from the concentrated water extraction when water tables drop quickly.

So let's see. Bottled water is expensive, (largely because of branding issues) bad for the planet, bad for you, and most of us can't tell it from tap water. Doesn't seem like a hard decision, really.

How not to recount an election

2007-01-26T23:29:00.000+11:00

Ohio election workers convicted of rigging 2004 presidential recount

Jacqueline Maiden, elections coordinator of the Cuyahoga County Elections Board, and ballot manager Kathleen Dreamer each were convicted of a felony count of negligent misconduct of an elections employee. They also were convicted of one misdemeanor count each of failure of elections employees to perform their duty.

��Prosecutors accused Maiden and Dreamer of secretly reviewing preselected ballots before a public recount on Dec. 16, 2004. They worked behind closed doors for three days to pick ballots they knew would not cause discrepancies when checked by hand, prosecutors said.

��Defense attorney Roger Synenberg has said the workers were following procedures as they understood them.

��Ohio gave President Bush the electoral votes he needed to defeat Democratic Sen. John Kerry in the close election and hold on to the White House in 2004.

Convictions in Ohio Recount Tampering Case

Why would they do such a thing? Does this mean that the election really was stolen after all?

No.

The prosecutor in the case didn't allege that the recount was rigged for political reasons. Rather, it appears that the officials did so in order to avoid having to manually recount over 600,000 punch card ballots. Had they really selected the 3% of ballots at random, it's likely that the hand and machine counts wouldn't have matched. Remember that Cuyahoga was using punch card ballots. An inherent problem with this equipment is that hanging chad can get pressed back into place when put through the machine. Sometimes, chad can actually come out during the recounting process. A truly random recount would likely have meant that all the ballots in Cuyahoga County would have to have been recounted. As I mentioned at the time the indictment came down, I wouldn't be surprised if the allegations are true. In fact, I suspect that officials in Ohio's other counties did the same thing.

To be clear, this isn't at all to excuse the conduct in which these officials engaged, or to deny that they deserve to have been convicted. Where the law prescribes a particular procedure, it's critically important that those procedures be followed -- even when it's certain that the outcome won't be affected. The failure to follow prescribed procedures will only contribute to public distrust of the integrity of our election system, something that nobody wants (except that small cadre of pundits who have made a career out of spinning conspiracy theories about stolen elections). The crimes of which these officials have now been convicted are therefore serious ones ... even though they didn't affect the outcome of the 2004 election.

Okay, the Kerry Administration stays in the realm of alternate history, but it's ridiculous that election laws can be blatantly ignored, there's no way to test that by a proper recount, and the only form of review is a criminal prosecution 2 years after the election. Even if the Ohio case had shown now that Kerry should have got Ohio's votes, that would not undo the count in the electoral college where Ohio's votes elected Bush.

How to elect an opposition leader

2006-12-04T18:48:00.000+11:00

Strangely enough, Canada and Australia both elected opposition leaders within 24 hours. Kevin Rudd was elected by a closed caucus of MHRs and senators by a vote of margin of 49 votes to 39. Stéphane Dion was elected by an open convention chosen for the purpose by party members. The election ran to four ballots, with the lowest candidate eliminated at each ballot. Dion trailed in the first ballot but gained enough votes as others dropped out to pull ahead of Michael Ignatieff and win the position. The final vote was 2,521 votes (54%) to 2,084(45%). Leadership candidates in Canadian parties run their own websites and appeal directly to party members in a way that would cause most Australian politicians considerable disquiet.

Australia's political parties, with the notable exception of the Australian Democrats are famously closed institutions with most powers exercised by the party leader or (occasionally) the caucus. Our political parties are also suffering dramatic declines in membership and participation. Opening them up with a system of primaries would do a lot to cure that problem. Canadians take the principle of party democracy so seriously that there are proposals to enshrine it in law. For instance in New Brunswick, the Commission on Legislative Democracy recommended this amendment to the province's electoral act.

2.1 All of a party’s general election candidates must be endorsed by a vote of eligible party members, in a vote that is open to all eligible party members.

2.2 To be eligible for party membership, a person must meet the same eligibility requirements to vote in a provincial election.

2.3 To be eligible to vote in a leadership or nomination contest, a person must belong to the political party at least seven days prior to the nomination contest and be a member of the party at the time of the vote.

2.4 If fixed election dates are adopted, riding associations must hold a vote of their members for the purpose of choosing their general election candidate no more than 120 days prior to the date of the general election.

2.5 Parties must advertise the date, time and location of a leadership or nomination contest at least seven days prior to the closing date for eligible membership.

2.6 Parties shall not charge a membership fee greater than $5 annually.

I have problems with both conventions and exhaustive ballots. In Australia, if we ever got this far, I suspect we'd go for a direct vote and use preferential voting. The electoral commission runs union elections. There's no obvious reason they cannot run party elections just as well.

It begins

2006-11-11T22:42:00.000+11:00

Background Brief On The Case Against Rumsfeld, Gonzales And Others Filed In Germany On November 14, 2006 (PDF)

From Donald Rumsfeld on down, the political and military leaders in charge of ordering, allowing and implementing abusive interrogation techniques in the context of the “War on Terror” since September 11, 2001, must be investigated and held accountable. The complaint alleges that American military and civilian high-ranking officials named as defendants in the case have committed war crimes against detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and in the U.S.-controlled Guantánamo Bay prison camp.

The complaint alleges that the defendants “ordered” war crimes, “aided or abetted” war crimes, or “failed, as civilian superiors or military commanders, to prevent their commission by subordinates, or to punish their subordinates,” actions that are explicitly criminalized by German law. The U.S. administration has treated hundreds if not thousands of detainees in a coercive manner, in accordance with “harsh interrogation techniques” ordered by Secretary Rumsfeld himself that legally constitute torture and/or cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, in blatant violation of the provisions of the 1949
Geneva Conventions, the 1984 Convention Against Torture and the 1977 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights – to all of which the United States is a party. Under international humanitarian treaty and customary law, and as re-stated in German law, these acts of torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment constitute war crimes.

I don't seriously expect that Rumsfeld or any other member of this grisly gang will ever find themselves on trial for crimes against humanity or war crimes. I do expect they may find it advisable to drop any travel plans to a nation that recognises universal jurisdiction to punish such crimes. Strangely enough, the recent US legislation to give legal cover to torture may exacerbate the position of potential defendants. Similar immunity laws enacted by the Chilean junta were cited as reason for the House of Lords to grant extradition in the Pinochet case in

a little more celebration

2006-11-09T07:03:00.000+11:00

The US also held elections for many state governors and legislatures. the picture there is the same as the Senate and House elections. All states except Nebraska have a state senate and assembly. (The names of the state assemblies vary from 'House of Delegates' to 'General Court') Nebraska is unicameral, like Queensland.

As of 7 a.m. MT, Democrats control both houses of the legislature in 23 states; Republicans in 15, and nine are split. Final counts aren't available yet for three chambers in two states: the Montana House and Senate and the Pennsylvania House. This adds up to 49 states because Nebraska's legislature is nonpartisan.

Before the election, Republicans controlled 20 state legislatures; Democrats 19, and 10 were split.

.

I'll round up the governorships and the referendum results some time today.

What a rum result

2006-11-09T06:32:00.000+11:00

The first executive casualty has already fallen on his sword. Bush has announced Rumsfeld's resignation and replacement by a former CIA director. I doubt Runsfeld will be the last. I do not see George Bush as a guy with a lot of ticker.

The defence appointment takes away a Democratic nightmare, winning 51 seats out a hundred in the Senate, seeing Liebermann accept the post of secretary of defence, and then seeing the Republican governor of Connecticut (Liebermann's state) appoint a Republican to replace Liebermann in the Senate. The US has no equivalent of the rule in our constitution, Section 15, that senators must be replaced by a senator from the same party.

The US congress has he same structure as the Australian parliament. (No accident. Large slabs of our constitution run word for word with theirs) States get equal numbers of senators and proportionate-to-population numbers of representatives. The Senate is a tad strange. Half the Australian senate face election every 3 years. One third of the US senate face every 2 years, meaning that not all states vote for senator at each election.

The results are now fairly well-known, although I was surprised that their famous voting machines seem, if anything, to produce results at a much slower rate than our paper ballots. It's also strange to an Australian that there's no electoral commission to provide a neutral, uniform, professional electoral service on a nation-wide level. I guess that's another story.

The US media are still treating the Senate results in Virginia and Montana as open, although they're projecting Democratic wins and I suspect Australian election commentators would have already shut up shop and gone home for the night.

Last time I looked Webb, the Democrat was leading by more votes than there are left to count in Virginia. Montana, a very small state, is down to thousands of votes, but Tester, the Democrat has led every stage at the count and the chance for his opponent to overtake him is now vanishingly small. If both win, and I think they will, the numbers will be 51/49 in favour of the Democrats. 50/50 would be a Republican win because Cheney had a casting vote if there's a tie.

Bush will not be able to govern in the same way. He's already invited Speaker-designate Nancy Pelosi to the White House for lunch and the Rumsfeld resignation is further evidence. I think more's happened than just the Karl Rove 'revolution' coming to an end.

Rove and Bush thought they'd set up a permanent Republican majority. That prospect is now dead. A couple of fairly startling numbers. 1/3 of white evangelicals, the base of all bases to the Bush administration, voted Democrat. In a wide zone from Maine to Indiana the Republicans were defending 21 marginal seats and lost 21. In the Senate as a whole, the Republicans were defending 13 marginal states and lost 11. The Democrats have not lost a single senator, governor or representative. Democrat representatives and senators have been elected, especially in the West from places that yesterday were counted as solidly Republican. The very small and very Republican state of South Dakota threw out a restrictive abortion law in an initiative referendum. Arizona threw out a referendum to ban gay marriage. Perhaps they felt Mark Foley and Ted Haggert should have the right to marry.

The only significant Republican win of the night was Scharzenegger's re-election as governor of California and it's notable that Schwarzenegger ran on a very unBush platform. This is the kind of election it can take decades to recover from.

I think this means that one or both of Bush and Cheney will face impeachment in the next 2 years. I do not think the Democrats who now control Congress are setting out to impeach. I do think their new investigative powers are going to reveal incompetence, corruption and deception on such a massive scale that impeachment now become unavoidable.

In talking about US politics, it's been a truism for several years that the party of Abraham Lincoln, the Republicans, has become the party of Jefferson Davis, who was the confederate president during the Civil War. Nixon set up the southern strategy, a dog-whistle appeal to southern working class whites to vote Republican. Since 1968 the Solid South has gone from solidly Democratic to solidly Republican.

On the other hand, maybe the country, if not the party, of Lincoln remains the same. You really cannot fool all of the people all of the time.

a tale of two energies

2006-11-02T02:07:00.000+11:00

Comparing Emerging Technologies: Techno-Economic Assessment of Power Generation Options for Australia, August 2006

Solar thermal appears to be the most promising technology for large scale, baseload electricity generation from renewable energy. The technology is unique in that efficient energy storage as heat (a cheaper option than storing electricity) reduces the cost of electricity. Australia has one of the most promising solar resources in the world for this technology

Howard comparing emerging technologies in the House of Representatives, 31 October 2006

Are we going to say to ourselves, ‘We deny our nation the opportunity of taking advantage of that?’ You will never—and I have no greater authority on this than the member for Batman—be able to replace power stations, dirty or clean, with solar, wind or wave power. It is just not possible. Baseload power can only be generated in the foreseeable future by the use of fossil fuels or nuclear power. You cannot hope to use renewables in order to do that; so, if you are going to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, you inevitably face a comparison on baseload generation between cleaner coal, which will be dearer, and nuclear power. The point at which those two cross each other is, at this stage, impossible to precisely determine. When we have Ziggy Switkowski’s report, we may have a better idea of where the two relate to each other.

Really, who are we to believe? And while we're at it, has anyone told Howard about the water usage of most nuclear reactors?

Solar thermal energy

Nuclear energy

Dinosaurs trotted like emus

2006-11-01T18:10:00.000+11:00

from the ABC

[Breihaupt] presented the latest on emus as proxies for dinosaurs at the recent Geological Society of America in Philadelphia.

The search for a modern animal to act as a proxy for dinosaur tracks started, says Breithaupt, because he was getting a little impatient with all the speculation about the tracks.

There was too much of what he calls 'prehistoric hyperbole'.Families of dinosaurs once walked here. But no-one knows what they looked like, as there are few fossils from this era. So after passing on ostriches, which have only two toes, and rheas, which have three-toes but overly rambunctious personalities, emus were the best alternative. Plus there was an emu ranch just across the state line in Colorado.

Breithaupt and his team now think that the Red Gulch dinosaurs were probably human-sized meat eaters, or theropods, travelling along in groups.

Somehow, Jurassic Park will just never be scary again to anyone who's ever seen an emu running. Now if they'd proposed that theropods behaved like cassowaries we'd all be in deep doo doo.

A Casualty of Globalization: Death of the Unions

2006-10-28T13:58:00.000+10:00

Der Spiegel

The following is an obituary.

The death, though, was never publicly announced -- and the tragedy is compounded by the fact that the closest relatives are keeping it a secret. But that does not alter the truth: Trade unions, as we knew them, are dead. The protector of the underdog is no more. What passes for a union today does not have the power to provide shelter.In fact, even the estate executors need protection. Unions once saw themselves as a buffer against the whims of the executives. They made sure that wages were fair. They also functioned as the political voice of society. Today, such unions are a thing of the past.

The development of a global job market, the appearance of 1.2 billion new workers and the readiness of millions more to work at any cost has robbed the job brokers of their once-powerful position.For decades, they had access to unparalleled treasures: The well-educated industrial worker was irreplaceable; the industrial robot was not yet intelligent enough; and the masses of today's competitive jobseekers were trapped behind walls and barbed wire, and sometimes simply hidden in the morass of Asian slums. These people were denied participation in Western job markets, a state of affairs which kept the price of Western labor high.

It was child's play for union negotiators to force employers to pay higher wages. The factory owner had no choice but to buy labor from the unions, because while there was a national and -- in the best case -- still a Western job market, there was no global job market that could provide the industrial skills necessary. Workers were scarce after both World Wars, and unions had a virtual monopoly on the commodity. They milked it for all it was worth.

Der Spiegel is posting these extracts from a new book War for Wealth: The Global Grab for Power and Prosperity. It's uncomfortable reading, especially in an Australia where Howard clearly believes that social democracy is about to join the Leninist state and planned economy in the trashcan of history.

On the other hand, if Howard really were surfing towards destiny, he might be able to tell the truth occasionally and not need to constantly scare us into wetting ourselves before we re-elect him.

Cue Saruman, despatching his fighting uruk-hai:

A new power is rising! Its victory is certain! March to Helm's Deep! Leave none alive!

War on Tuskers

2006-10-28T13:32:00.000+10:00

An Elephant Crackup?

I'd have considered it a wise policy even at a more peaceable juncture in the course of human-elephant relations. In recent years, however, those relations have become markedly more bellicose. Just two days before I arrived, a woman was killed by an elephant in Kazinga, a fishing village nearby. Two months earlier, a man was fatally gored by a young male elephant at the northern edge of the park, near the village of Katwe. African elephants use their long tusks to forage through dense jungle brush. They've also been known to wield them, however, with the ceremonious flash and precision of gladiators, pinning down a victim with one knee in order to deliver the decisive thrust. Okello told me that a young Indian tourist was killed in this fashion two years ago in Murchison Falls National Park, north of where we were.

These were not isolated incidents. All across Africa, India and parts of Southeast Asia, from within and around whatever patches and corridors of their natural habitat remain, elephants have been striking out, destroying villages and crops, attacking and killing human beings. In fact, these attacks have become so commonplace that a new statistical category, known as Human-Elephant Conflict, or H.E.C., was created by elephant researchers in the mid-s to monitor the problem. In the Indian state of Jharkhand near the western border of Bangladesh, 300 people were killed by elephants between 2000 and 2004. In the past 12 years, elephants have killed 605 people in Assam, a state in northeastern India, 239 of them since 2001; 265 elephants have died in that same period, the majority of them as a result of retaliation by angry villagers, who have used everything from poison-tipped arrows to laced food to exact their revenge. In Africa, reports of human-elephant conflicts appear almost daily, from Zambia to Tanzania, from Uganda to Sierra Leone, where 300 villagers evacuated their homes last year because of unprovoked elephant attacks.

Still, it is not only the increasing number of these incidents that is causing alarm but also the singular perversity - for want of a less anthropocentric term - of recent elephant aggression. Since the early 1990s, for example, young male elephants in Pilanesberg National Park and the Hluhluwe-Umfolozi Game Reserve in South Africa have been raping and killing rhinoceroses; this abnormal behavior, according to a 2001 study in the journal Pachyderm, has been reported in "a number of reserves" in the region. In July of last year, officials in Pilanesberg shot three young male elephants who were responsible for the killings of 63 rhinos, as well as attacks on people in safari vehicles. In Addo Elephant National Park, also in South Africa, up to 90 percent of male elephant deaths are now attributable to other male elephants, compared with a rate of 6 percent in more stable elephant communities.

The elephants hate us, not because of what we do, but because of who we are. They want to establish an elephantocracy reaching from Capetown to Hanoi. There is only one solution...

test

2006-08-22T08:36:00.000+10:00

Posting 1, 2, 3, ...

All hail Emperor Ming II

2006-01-10T01:13:00.000+11:00

Once upon a time Australia slumbered happily through the 50s and 60s under the benign neglect of Sir Robert Menzies. Menzies made himself famous for eccentricities such as reciting excruciatingly bad poetry to Elizabeth II, wanting the new decimal currency called the royal and insisting his surname rhymed with 'fling'.

To my amazement the Liberal Democrats in Britain are about to elect Sir Menzies Campbell their new leader, and he exhibits the same eccentricity about how to pronounce 'Menzies.' Australia has already had a supreme ruler known as Ming the Merciless. Can the UK Liberal Democrats be far behind?

War on Christmas

2005-12-22T14:06:00.000+11:00

When Santas go bad

A group of 40 drunken people dressed in Santa Claus outfits went on a rampage through New Zealand's largest city, Auckland, robbing stores, assaulting security guards and urinating from highway overpasses.

Auckland police are searching for men of Christmassy appearance. The Australian parliament may be recalled in a rare holiday session to ensure the Anti-Terrorism Act 2005 includes threats to the extravaganza of consumer spending.

Beware the echizen kurage, my son

2005-12-17T12:53:00.000+11:00

Giant jellies attack Japan

They are 6ft wide and weigh 450lb (200kg), with countless poisonous tentacles, they have drifted across the void to terrorise the people of Japan. Vast armadas of the slimy horrors have cut off the country's food supply. As soon as one is killed more appear to take its place.

Finally, the quarrelsome governments of the region are banding together to unite against the enemy.

I'm just waiting for the shots of masses of people running across bridges while sirens sound in the background.

Buffy fans invade Kuiper Belt

2005-12-15T09:18:00.000+11:00

'Buffy' challenges solar system theories

Buffy is the temporary name given by the team for the object, whose official designation by the Paris-based International Astronomical Union (IAU) is 2004 XR 190.

Its orbit is in a relatively narrow range of between 52 and and 62 astronomical units (AU) from the sun.

An AU is a standard measurement, being that of the distance between the Earth and the Sun, of approximately 150 million kilometres.

By comparison, another 'extended scattered disk' member called Sedna swings out to as far as 900 AU before coming as close to the sun as 76 AU.

I've seen from fairly explosive exchanges between Buffy fans and Xena fans. Is it responsible to give these tribes rival territorial claims in the outer solar system?

Cronulla

2005-12-13T04:11:00.000+11:00

I hated seeing the Australian flag being waved by a violent mob.

Sadly enough, this week's Background Briefing (no transcript yet, although they do have audio) carries any number of thoughtful voices from Muslim youth in Australia. Sunday's riot is obviously indefensible as is the conduct which allegedly provoked it. That should not mean it's open season in the blogosphere for anyone of 'Southern Beaches' or 'Middle Eastern' appearance.

Flashmobs are not all that rational, and if you wait until the mob has formed (and got itself drunk on a hot day) you've already lost the plot. A week of inflammatory nonsense from talk-back should have rung alarm bells. There really was not all that much work left for the usual white supremacist trash. Carlyle said nothing was as unexpected or as predictable as the French Revolution.

Now we're seeing revenge attacks across the southern beaches and rumours are getting texted across the city faster than they can be answered. People were hurt tonight and there's an unconfirmed rumour of a fatal shooting. There are some signs of hope, like the meeting between Keyser Trad and Koby Abberton. Hopefully, next Sunday the pubs will be shut and perhaps Cronulla's mobile phone transmitters should be shut down for the day.

I was amazed by the Man of Steel's statement, that this is not a racist event, was absurd. The straight line being drawn by people on radio between terrorism and the Lebanese community says the government has a way to go in making its terror campaigning more responsible. The Man of Steel might like to look at the mote in his own eye before he does too much more preaching.

torturing the truth

2005-12-08T23:18:00.000+11:00

Condi's trail of lies

'As a matter of U.S. policy, the United States' obligations under the CAT [U.N. Convention Against Torture], which prohibits cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment -- those obligations extend to U.S. personnel wherever they are, whether they are in the United States or outside of the United States,' Rice said at a press conference with Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko.

The press should stop asking if the US tortures prisoners. The US will always say no, but they will be using their own tortured definition.

The press should ask if the US waterboards. prisoners.

Equally there is no point asking about extraordinary renditions.

The press should ask if the US holds prisoners without charge or trial.

There is no point asking such questions in Australia. Holding prisoners without charge or trial is the law here, a law passed with Labor's support.

Apophilypse Now

2005-12-08T06:27:00.000+11:00

It's called Apophis. It's 390m wide. And it could hit Earth in 31 years time

In Egyptian myth, Apophis was the ancient spirit of evil and destruction, a demon that was determined to plunge the world into eternal darkness.A fitting name, astronomers reasoned, for a menace now hurtling towards Earth from outerspace. Scientists are monitoring the progress of a 390-metre wide asteroid discovered last year that is potentially on a collision course with the planet, and are imploring governments to decide on a strategy for dealing with it.

Nasa has estimated that an impact from Apophis, which has an outside chance of hitting the Earth in 2036, would release more than 100,000 times the energy released in the nuclear blast over Hiroshima. Thousands of square kilometres would be directly affected by the blast but the whole of the Earth would see the effects of the dust released into the atmosphere.

'Space tractor' to avert asteroid ArmageddonOnline

No need to send Bruce Willis into space with a nuclear bomb: The best way to deal with a killer asteroid hurtling towards Earth could be a 'gravity tractor'.

Two NASA astronauts, gently mocking the solution offered in the Hollywood blockbuster Armageddon have come up with a deceptively simple plan to pull asteroids off course.

Dr Edward Lu and Dr Stanley Love propose in today's issue of the journal Nature that a rocket be launched into space, effectively to act as a giant magnet.

Landing on an asteroid, which is no more than a spinning pile of rubble, is very difficult to achieve.

Instead, the gravity tractor would hover alongside the asteroid, with its thrusters pointing outwards so the exhaust does not affect the surface.

The tractor would then gradually pull the asteroid off course, using nothing more than the gravitational pull between the two bodies.

'This saves you from having to land on the asteroid and then trying to stabilise yourself on a flying pile of rock and debris which is spinning all the time,' Dr Love said.

In Armageddon, a doomsday asteroid is on a collision course with Earth and the only way to knock it off course is to drill into its surface and detonate a nuclear bomb.

Instead, the scientists calculate that, with sufficient warning, a 20-tonne gravity tractor could safely deflect an asteroid 200 metres across in about a year of towing.

I doubt the Guardian's derivation of the name. There is more than one Apophis around and about the time of an unofficial push to name 2003 UB313, the putative tenth planet and its moon Xena and Gabrielle the discoverers named the asteroid formerly known as 99942 after an Apophis, apocryphal or not.

Still, demon of the ancient world or Goauld system lord, it's a relief we won't need Bruce Willis to save us.

Brokeback Mountain

2005-12-07T13:57:00.000+11:00

The New Yorker has a free download of Annie Proulx' short story, but only for a week. Lot's better than the Penguin price of a single short story for $16.95.

Update
Bookslut has An Interview with Annie Proulx on the short story and the movie. The New West Network calls it Best Contemporary Realistic Western Ever?

march of the Phytoplankton

2005-12-06T08:31:00.000+11:00

About 34 million years ago, the Earth's climate transitioned from a 'greenhouse climate' to the 'icehouse climate' of today, forming a massive ice sheet on the Antarctic continent. A new study by Linda Anderson, an ocean sciences researcher at the University of California, Santa Cruz, suggests that oceanographic features in the Southern Ocean--the intensity of current flow and the amount of stratification (the formation of distinct layers at different depths)--may have played a key role in the transition.

Anderson will present her findings this week at the Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco.

Anderson analyzed the chemical properties of seafloor sediments laid down millions of years ago to piece together a picture of how Southern Ocean circulation may have looked deep in the past. The periods covered in her study include the transition from the Eocene to the Oligocene epochs about 33 million years ago and a similar transition between the Oligocene and Miocene epochs about 23 million years ago. These transitions coincided with a configuration of Earth's orbit around the Sun that facilitated ice growth. Some additional factor on Earth, however, amplified the climate response during these transitions.

The geological record suggests that this additional factor was a reduction of greenhouse warming due to a decrease in atmospheric carbon dioxide. The Southern Ocean may have played a role in the drawdown of atmospheric carbon dioxide through its influence on the global carbon cycle, Anderson said.

Her study suggests that, unlike today, the mixing of the Southern Ocean around the time of the climate shift was neither as intense nor as deep as it is now. As a result, the ocean was more stratified and regional characteristics of deep and intermediate waters were maintained. This layered structure may have had important consequences for global carbon cycling, setting the stage for the transition from greenhouse to icehouse.

Phytoplankton--tiny plants growing in the surface waters--use carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and transform it into organic carbon. When the plants (or animals that feed on them) die and decompose, most of the organic carbon is recycled but a small amount is buried within the deep ocean. In a layered ocean, dead organisms can drift into the deeper layers before they decompose, effectively burying the organic carbon in the depths.

Shifting continents have gradually changed the Southern Ocean over the past 30 million years so that water now whips around Antarctica in a strong current known as the Antarctic Circumpolar Current. The strength of the current blocks the influx of nutrient-poor surface water and, as this current squeezes through the narrow passage between South America and Antarctica, it mixes the water from top to bottom. As a result, most of the organic carbon formed within the Southern Ocean today is oxidized before it can be buried.

The impact of organic carbon burial on the atmospheric carbon dioxide depends on the relative burial of organic carbon to total carbon. The types of organisms that fix organic carbon are important, because some form shells of inorganic carbon in a process that releases carbon dioxide. Regional characteristics of the water affect which organisms are favored ecologically by controlling the nutrient content of the surface ocean. The integral relationship between biology (the organisms that fix the organic carbon) and the physical structure of the ocean (both the delivery of nutrients and removal of organic carbon for burial) ultimately control the atmospheric carbon dioxide, Anderson said.

Currents in Climate Change

But that doesn't mean that climate change isn't happening--ice core data stretching back 650,000 years show that current greenhouse gas levels of 380 parts per million (ppm) are about 80 ppm higher than any other level in that period, and still rising. And it doesn't mean that the results of such a weakening in currents couldn't have a profound impact. Between 12,800 and 11,500 years ago, the Earth experienced a temporary setback in its warming up after the last ice age. The creation of the St. Lawrence Seaway filled the North Atlantic with an excess of cold, fresh water, preventing North Atlantic salt water from achieving the density needed to sink. As a result, the conveyor belt shut down and Western Europe and North America became colder and drier. We may need that dramatic sweater mission after all.

All this just makes the international effort unfolding in Montreal this week even more important. In that freezing cold, Francophone city, diplomats from 157 countries continue to discuss climate change and what to do about it. Already last week, they ratified the Kyoto Protocol--our first, timid attempt to cut the greenhouse gas emissions associated with global warming--despite the best efforts of the U.S. and its allies to derail the global treaty. Next up for consideration is what to do after Kyoto runs out in 2012. After all we've got 80 ppm or more to shed from the atmosphere, a process that would take hundreds of years if we stopped all emissions today. The U.S. and others are adamant that such effort is not needed--or, at best, misguided, something I shall address in more detail in a future post. Indeed, some of our illustrious leaders have called climate change the 'greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.'

Climate change is not a hoax, nor is it a conspiracy. It is a giant scientific experiment human beings are running on the only planet we currently have: What will happen when we bring greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere to prehistoric levels and beyond? Perhaps nothing, perhaps inundation of low-lying parts of the world, perhaps a flood of environmental refugees, perhaps an increase in disease, or perhaps the loss of oceanic currents that help regulate the present conditions of our world. Maybe all of the above and more. We can't control the outcome of this experiment. We can, however, choose not to run it.

Scary thought that the likes of Bush and the Man of Steel are experimenters-in-chief.

the morrow after today

2005-12-03T06:28:00.000+11:00

Alarm over dramatic weakening of Gulf Stream

The powerful ocean current that bathes Britain and northern Europe in warm waters from the tropics has weakened dramatically in recent years, a consequence of global warming that could trigger more severe winters and cooler summers across the region, scientists warn today.Researchers on a scientific expedition in the Atlantic Ocean measured the strength of the current between Africa and the east coast of America and found that the circulation has slowed by 30% since a previous expedition 12 years ago.

The current, which drives the Gulf Stream, delivers the equivalent of 1m power stations-worth of energy to northern Europe, propping up temperatures by 10C in some regions. The researchers found that the circulation has weakened by 6m tonnes of water a second. Previous expeditions to check the current flow in 1957, 1981 and 1992 found only minor changes in its strength, although a slowing was picked up in a further expedition in 1998. The decline prompted the scientists to set up a 4.8m network of moored instruments in the Atlantic to monitor changes in the current continuously.

Yikes. I'll just have to shut my eyes really tightly, clench my fists and incant: 'Global warming has no economic impact" six times quickly.

somebody tell the Man of Steel and the shadow attorney-general

2005-12-02T16:36:00.000+11:00

Constitutional Court of South Africa

The exclusion of same-sex couples from the benefits and responsibilities of marriage was not a small and tangential inconvenience resulting from a few surviving relics of societal prejudice destined to evaporate like the morning dew. It represented a harsh if oblique statement by the law that same-sex couples are outsiders, and that their need for affirmation and protection of their intimate relations as human beings is somehow less than that of heterosexual couples. It signifies that their capacity for love, commitment and accepting responsibility is by definition less worthy of regard than that of heterosexual couples. The intangible damage to same-sex couples is as severe as the material deprivation. They are not entitled to celebrate their commitment to each other in a joyous public event recognised by the law. They are obliged to live in a state of legal blankness in which their unions remain unmarked by the showering of presents and the commemoration of anniversaries so celebrated in our culture.

If heterosexual couples have the option of deciding whether to marry or not, the judgment continued, so should same-sex couples have the choice as to whether to seek to achieve a status and a set of entitlements and responsibilities on a par with those enjoyed by heterosexual couples. By both drawing on and reinforcing discriminatory social practices, the law has failed to secure for same-sex coupes the dignity, status, benefits and responsibilities that it accords to heterosexual couples. Although considerable progress has been made in specific cases through constitutional interpretation and by means of legislative intervention, the default position of gays and lesbians is still one of exclusion and marginalisation.
Sachs J stated that Judges would be placed in an intolerable situation if they were called upon to construe religious texts and take sides on issues which have caused deep schisms within religious bodies. In the open and democratic society contemplated by the Constitution there must be mutually respectful co-existence between the secular and the sacred. The function of the Court is to recognise the sphere which each inhabits, not to force the one into the sphere of the other. The objective of the Constitution is to allow different concepts about the nature of human existence to inhabit the same public realm, and to do so in a manner that is not mutually destructive and that at the same time enables government to function in a way that shows equal concern and respect for all.

Acknowledgement by the state of the right of same-sex couples to enjoy the same status, entitlements and responsibilities as marriage law accords to heterosexual couples, is in no way inconsistent with the rights of religious organisations to continue to refuse to celebrate same-sex marriages. The two sets of interests involved do not collide, they co-exist in a constitutional realm based on accommodation of diversity. Granting access to same-sex couples would in no way attenuate the capacity of heterosexual couples to marry in the form they wished and according to the tenets of their religion.

The silent obliteration of same-sex couples from the reach of the law, together with the utilisation of gender-specific language in the marriage vow, presupposes that only heterosexual couples were contemplated. The common law and section 30(1) of the Marriage Act are accordingly inconsistent with sections 9(1) and 9(3) [equality] and 10 [dignity] of the Constitution to the extent that they make no provision for same-sex couples to enjoy the status, entitlements and responsibilities they accord to heterosexual couples.

The full judgment (large PDF) is available as well. The sections of the South African Bill of Rights the Court speaks about are:

Equality

9. (1) Everyone is equal before the law and has the right to equal protection and benefit of the law.

(2) Equality includes the full and equal enjoyment of all rights and freedoms. To promote the achievement of equality, legislative and other measures designed to protect or advance persons, or categories of persons, disadvantaged by unfair discrimination may be taken.

(3) The state may not unfairly discriminate directly or indirectly against anyone on one or more grounds, including race, gender, sex, pregnancy, marital status, ethnic or social origin, colour, sexual orientation, age, disability, religion, conscience, belief, culture, language and birth.

(4) No person may unfairly discriminate directly or indirectly against anyone on one or more grounds in terms of subsection (3). National legislation must be enacted to prevent or prohibit unfair discrimination.

(5) Discrimination on one or more of the grounds listed in subsection (3) is unfair unless it is established that the discrimination is fair.

Human dignity

10. Everyone has inherent dignity and the right to have their dignity respected and protected.

It's obviously a dangerous business, putting equality and dignity into the law.

death in Singapore

2005-12-02T12:13:00.000+11:00

Nguyen hanged in Singapore

Masses have been held in cities around the country to mark the execution.

In Melbourne, the bell tolled 25 times at St Ignatius Catholic Church in Richmond - once for each year of Nguyen's life.

Members of Victoria's Criminal Bar Association gathered outside the County Court in Melbourne to observe a minute's silence for Nguyen.

Stephen Shirrefs, the vice-chairman of the association, says they support the fight against the mandatory death penalty.

'We are here to demonstrate our opposition to capital punishment, as a mark of respect to the family of Van Nguyen and as a mark of solidarity for two of our members who in the fine tradition of the Victorian Bar have acted pro bono and for the last three years fought to save the life of Van Nguyen,' he said.

At Martin Place in Sydney, a Vietnamese gong also sounded 25 times.

A crowd gathered and maintained a silent vigil.

Churchgoers in Brisbane have also prayed for Nguyen and expressed hopes the events of today are not taken for granted.

Fr Peter Dillon led the congregation at St Stephen's Cathedral in a prayer calling for an end to executions.

Fr Dillon says he fears today's execution will have little impact on the drug trade.

'I sadly think, unfortunately, and this is the insidiousness of the drug culture, I think it's just another dead body for the drug world. And there's thousands of them everyday, so I don't think they're going to be moved by all this,' he said.

This is desperately sad for the country as well as Van Nguyen's immediate family. That the most Singapore can bring itself to allow is for Nguyen's mother to touch him through a wire grill speaks volumes about the degree of compassion they have exhibited.

Singapore is entitled to its own laws. So is Australia. In future dealing with them, especially on criminal matters, the Australian government should remember that Singapore maintains this repugnant law. Capital punishment is wrong in itself. Capital punishment as a mandatory sentence should shock the conscience of everyone. Singapore has not ratified the International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights.

ICCPR Article 6

1. Every human being has the inherent right to life. This right shall be protected by law. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his life.

2. In countries which have not abolished the death penalty, sentence of death may be imposed only for the most serious crimes in accordance with the law in force at the time of the commission of the crime and not contrary to the provisions of the present Covenant and to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. This penalty can only be carried out pursuant to a final judgement rendered by a competent court.

3. When deprivation of life constitutes the crime of genocide, it is understood that nothing in this article shall authorize any State Party to the present Covenant to derogate in any way from any obligation assumed under the provisions of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

4. Anyone sentenced to death shall have the right to seek pardon or commutation of the sentence. Amnesty, pardon or commutation of the sentence of death may be granted in all cases.

5. Sentence of death shall not be imposed for crimes committed by persons below eighteen years of age and shall not be carried out on pregnant women.

6. Nothing in this article shall be invoked to delay or to prevent the abolition of capital punishment by any State Party to the present Covenant.

The federal parliament should make laws to prohibit police assistance where capital punishment is a possibility or where the other country has not signed and ratified the ICCPR. Article 6 is now the minimum standard in any decent nation. Article 6 should be the only standard on which we will extend criminal assistance to other nations and Section 8 of the Mutual Assistance In Criminal Matters Act 1987 should be amended accordingly. Anyone using Optus or Singapore Airlines should find another company that is not owned by executioners.

12 other Australians face the possibility of execution in Bali, Vietnam and Kuwait.

pass the methane

2005-12-02T06:52:00.001+11:00

Scientists cook up cure for cow flatulence

Cows belching and breaking wind cause methane pollution but British scientists say they have developed a diet to make pastures smell like roses, almost.

"In some experiments we get a 70 per cent decrease (in methane emissions), which is quite staggering," biochemist Dr John Wallace told Reuters.

Dr Wallace, the leader of the microbial biochemistry group at the Rowett Research Institute in Aberdeen, says the secret to sweeter-smelling cows is a food additive based on fumaric acid, a naturally occurring chemical essential to respiration of animal and vegetable tissues.

A 12-month commercial and scientific evaluation of the additive has just begun, but he says if it proves successful it could be a boon to cutting down on greenhouse gas emissions.

"In total around 14 per cent of global methane comes from the guts of farm animals - it is worth doing something about," he said.

Other big sources of methane are landfills, coalmines, rice paddies and bogs.

Scientists in Australia and New Zealand have also been working to develop similar products amid growing concern about greenhouse gas emissions from cattle and sheep.

In New Zealand the Government in 2003 proposed a flatulence tax, with methane emitted by farm animals responsible for more than half the country's greenhouse gases.

I always wondered how NZ tax inspectors planned to sniff out evasion of that tax.

a taste of paradise for a penny a slice

2005-12-02T06:44:00.000+11:00

Passing the pineapple

In his “Essay Concerning Human Understanding”, John Locke asserts the impossibility of knowing the taste of pineapple before you have actually tasted it. This is not just a throwaway remark; he returns to the point in several drafts and in several places. In 1671, Locke wrote that the man who has never had pineapple, that “delicate” fruit, “in his mouth” cannot have a true or “new” idea of it. He can only have an amalgam of “old” ideas based on the descriptions of travellers. Later, he wrote that “we see nobody gets the relish of a pineapple, till he goes to the Indies, where it is, and tastes it”. To think that you could relish a pineapple without really experiencing it was like imagining you could see colours in the dark. The person who “from his childhood, never tasted an oyster, or a pineapple” does not know the particular taste of these things. And again: “let him try if any words can give him the taste of the Pine-Apple, and make him have the true idea of the Relish of that celebrated delicious Fruit”. For Locke, who had never tasted a pineapple himself, this was impossible. Only first-hand sensory experience could give knowledge of the taste – the quiddity – of pineapple.

Locke’s choice of the pineapple to make his point was not random. In a sense, the structure of his argument would have worked just as well had he chosen apples instead of pineapples. But who in England in the 1670s was not acquainted with the particular “relish” of an apple? The pineapple, by contrast, was the ultimate in inaccessible luxury fruit. Unless you were close to royalty, or a traveller to the West Indies, you were very unlikely to have been anywhere near one. Moreover, those who had tasted its yellow flesh, described it as peculiarly complex and elusive. Richard Ligon, in a history of the Caribbean, claimed that “nothing of rare taste can be thought on that is not there”. Some thought it musky. Others thought it combined all that is “most delicate in the Peach, the Strawberry, the Muscadine Grape and the Pippin”. John Evelyn, the courtier and salad expert, disagreed. When he tasted chunks of pineapple cut up by the King himself in 1668, he felt the flavour fell short of the “ravishing” descriptions he had read, having a “grateful acidity” but tasting more of “the Quince and the Melon” than anything more delicious. This illustrates Locke’s argument. The earliest European tasters of pineapple could only describe it by reference to other fruits. They could not summon up its full flavour either in words, or in the mouths of others.

The taste of pineapple, however, is only a part of its charm, as Fran Beauman’s engaging “biography” of the fruit amply shows (for once, the application of “biography” to an inanimate object seems justified). As soon as they saw it, men were wowed by the pineapple’s looks, its mathematically perfect golden shell and its outrageous green spikes. In 1535 the Spanish writer Oviedo confessed, “I do not suppose there is in the whole world any other [fruit] of so exquisite and lovely appearance”. In 1702, a Portuguese Franciscan compared the skin of the pineapple to a “brocade of pinecones” and the green top to a “royal crown”. The appearance of the pineapple, so bizarre it seemed to many observers as if it was artificial, would in turn inspire human artifice and architecture, notably the wonderfully absurd jutting stone pineapple at Dunmore Park in Stirlingshire, constructed some time after 1761, which this splendidly illustrated book contains a photograph of. From Georgian times onwards, there were pineapple gateposts and pineapple follies; pineapple mirrors and pineapple beds. Wedgwood made pineappleware, cream-coloured earthenware, knobbly like the body of a pineapple and glazed in green and yellow.

After this, I may never threaten anyone with the rough end of the pineapple again.

the Canadian dissensus 1

2005-12-02T05:10:00.000+11:00

According to Elections Canada:

The number of electoral districts is based on the formula described in the amended section 51 of the Constitution Act, 1867. This formula assigns seats to provinces in proportion to their population, assuring them the minimum number of electoral districts they had prior to March 6, 1986. In addition, each of the territories is entitled to one electoral district.

The results are:

Canada 308
Newfoundland and Labrador 7
Prince Edward Island 4,
Nova Scotia 11
New Brunswick 10
Quebec 75
Ontario 106
Manitoba 14
Saskatchewan 14
Alberta 28
British Columbia 36
Yukon 1
Northwest Territories 1
Nunavut 1

Eastern and Western Canada divide at the Ontario/Manitoba border. The Northern region comprises Yukon, the Northwest territories and Nunavut. There are also significant differences within Eastern Canada which is usually divided into 3 more regions – Ontario, Quebec and the Maritimes/Atlantic Canada. The best way to measure the importance of regions is to look at seats won by the two major parties in Eastern and Western Canada.

Total 213 Eastern ridings, 92 Western ridings, 3 Northern ridings
Liberal 118 Eastern ridings, 14 Western ridings, 3 Northern ridings
Conservatives 31 Eastern ridings, 68 Western ridings

There are 4 parties in parliament:

Liberal 135 seats, 36.7% popular vote
Conservative 99 seats, 29.6% popular vote
Bloc Québécois 54 seats, 12.4% popular vote
New Democratic Party 19 seats, 15.7% popular vote
Other 1 seat, 1.3% popular vote

The voting system is single member plurality. This forces tactical voting and explains why the Bloc can get less votes than the NDP and win more seats. The Bloc only contests seats in Quebec while the NDP is spread across the country. NDP voters have to choose between voting NDP and perhaps allowing the Conservatives into power, or voting Liberal and keeping the Conservatives out.

The Senate (which I describe only out of a deep-seated pedantry) is appointed by the Governor General on the advice of the Prime Minister. Senators serve until 75. The composition at least shows how long the Liberals have dominated the federal government. The province of Alberta once held an election for an Albertan senate vacancy but the federal government refused to appoint the elected candidate.

Liberal 67
Conservative Party 23
Progressive Conservative Party 5
New Democratic Party 1
Independent 5
Vacant 4
Total 105

If Paul Keating was ready to call the Australian Senate 'unrepresentative swill' and 'proof of life after death' one shudders to think what he would have said about the Canadian Senate.

Tomorrow I should have a pendulum done and I'll talk about the parties and issues.

Canada to polls

2005-11-29T13:16:00.000+11:00

The Canadian Liberal government lost a no confidence vote 171/133 about an hour ago. Outgoing Prime Minister Paul Martin told his caucus to get fitted out for snowshoes before launching a fairly blistering (by Canadian standards) attack on the Conservatives and New Democrats.

Election day will be fixed by the governor-general when Martin sees her tomorrow. All 308 ridings (electorates) in the House of Commons are up for grabs. I'll go into a little more detail tomorrow when I've worked my way through the lay of the land when it comes to which seats are at risk. Relatively few ridings are expected to change hands. That would explain why 70% of Canadians believe the most likely outcome is another Liberal minority government.

The last time an Australian government resigned after losing a no confidence vote was 1941. Malcolm Fraser lost a no confidence vote in 1975 but refused to resign. The CBC has a useful backgrounder on How to bring down a government which, given the numbers, would work in Australia.

a cold election in hell

2005-11-25T00:31:00.000+11:00

Harper unveils no-confidence motion

The binding motion appeared on the House of Commons order paper on Wednesday.

It's to be tabled Thursday by Conservative Leader Stephen Harper.

The House of Commons is expected to vote on the motion on Nov. 28. It is expected to pass because it has the support of all opposition parties.

That would mean Prime Minister Paul Martin's minority Liberal government would fall, triggering an election call on Nov. 29 and a campaign during the holiday season.

The motion reads: 'The House condemns the government for its arrogance in refusing to compromise with the opposition parties over the timing of the next general election and for its 'culture of entitlement,' corruption, scandal and gross abuse of public funds for political purposes and, consequently, the government no longer has the confidence of the House.' The motion stems from a plan to oust the Liberals that came out of talks between Harper, NDP Leader Jack Layton and Bloc Québécois Leader Gilles Duceppe on Nov. 13.

This one will be interesting. The Canadian Liberals have been in power since 1993. It strikes me that a winter election in Canada will not necessarily make the opposition parties all that popular.

semiglobal warming

2005-11-18T07:04:00.000+11:00

News in Science - Global warming models 'biased' - 17/11/2005

What's wrong?
The largest global climate models today, called Earth system simulators (ESS), are so big they can only run on supercomputers.

The first UK-based simulator showed, for example, that as warming of the atmosphere dries the Amazon, vegetation dies off and carbon is released from the trees into the atmosphere.

How will the southern hemisphere cope if ocean currents, shown here, are disrupted? Scientists say we don't have enough good data to tell (Image: NOAA)Love says the Amazon has global effects on climate that are akin to 'getting hit between the eyes with a mallet', which is why climate scientists in the northern hemisphere have included it in their models.

But, he says, the Amazon is the only area in the southern hemisphere that the current models have detailed information on.The impact on climate of vegetation changes in Australia have not been modelled in detail, he says.

'Unless the vegetation change in Australia will change the climate in the UK then they are not interested,' says Love.This means current simulators are of limited use in modelling what happens at a regional level in Australia.

What about warm currents?
The scientists hope their new model will also shed more light on thermohaline circulation, which helps to deliver warm water from the south to parts of the northern hemisphere.

Current models warn that if this system collapses, due to an injection of cold water from the melting Greenland ice sheet, this could plunge places like Western Europe into a mini ice-age, like the one in the movie The Day After Tomorrow.

But, says Love, we don't know what impact such a collapse would have on the Pacific Ocean because current models lack good data on circulation in the Southern Ocean that connects the Pacific and Atlantic.

The CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology promise a southern hemisphere model in 2 years time. Maybe by then we will have a government that takes these things seriously.

happy happy! joy joy!

2005-11-17T00:37:00.000+11:00

Harriet has another claim to fame

KERRY O'BRIEN: Imagine being born in 1830 and still being around to celebrate your birthday. Next week, the Australia Zoo on Queensland's Sunshine Coast will celebrate the 175th birthday of the world's oldest known living animal, a Galapagos tortoise named Harriet that weighs almost 150 kilograms. But Harriet has an extra claim to fame. According to folklore, Charles Darwin adopted her as a personal pet during the historic voyage of HMS Beagle and studied her while working on his theory of evolution. Peter McCutcheon reports.

ROBIN STEWART, AUTHOR, 'DARWIN'S TORTOISE': She's an amazing creature. You've got to see her to get this incredible sort of presence from her.

PETER McCUTCHEON: This giant Galapagos tortoise known as Harriet, has been on the move for nearly 175 years. But being recognised in the Guinness Book of Records as the world's oldest living animal, isn't Harriet's only claim to fame. Many believe this reptile was once the personal pet of the man who pioneered the theory of evolution.

ROBIN STEWART: I believe that Harriet was Darwin's tortoise and that the story is true.

KELSEY MOSTYN, CURATOR, AUSTRALIA ZOO: She's certainly in the right age bracket to fit the story of meeting Darwin, definitely.

PETER McCUTCHEON: But not everyone is convinced. NOEL HALL, HISTORIAN: Personally, I never let the facts get in the way of a good story.

PETER McCUTCHEON: What is known for sure is that British naturalist Charles Darwin took several young Galapagos tortoises with him back to London in 1835 after his famous voyage on the Beagle. Also on that voyage was a young naval officer, John Clements Wickham, who later took up a post as police magistrate in what is now the city of Brisbane. So the story goes, Darwin gave the tortoises to Wickham.

Before anyone tries to revoke my citizenship for celebrating Harriet's birthday, instead of something else, I actually cried when Aloisi's goal hit the net. And jumped up and down a lot. But then, Harriet was born before there was a World Cup.

things to make your toes curl

2005-11-16T18:45:00.000+11:00

Grand Canyon West

The Hualapai Tribe is sharing their private land with visitors from around the world, so guests can join them in experiencing its uniqueness and untouched beauty. As owners and protectors of one million acres of land throughout the Grand Canyon's western rim, the Hualapai's main goal is to keep a balance between form, function and nature, while protecting the tribe's culture and values, which are deeply engraved in the canyon walls.

The Skywalk will be the featured attraction once it opens to the public in January 2006. Visitors will be able to walk around the first-ever cantilever shaped glass bridge that will be suspended more than 4,000 feet above the Colorado River and extend over the edge of the Grand Canyon. Located adjacent to The Skywalk visitor's center at Eagle Point, The Skywalk Café will feature outdoor patio seating on the edge of the canyon. The visitor's center will also offer private indoor meeting facilities.

'The Hualapai Tribe is looking to protect and care for its future generations,' said Sheri Yellowhawk, CEO of Grand Canyon Resort Corp. 'The Skywalk will be an attraction unlike any other in the world, but to get a true experience of the Hualapai legacy, visitors must encounter the entire destination.'

The floor will be glass. No doubt George Bush will want one of his own as soon as possible.

Man of Steel or drama queen?

2005-11-06T20:41:00.000+11:00

Sooner or later the government will run out of new ideas for laws against terrorism. The latest will in due course be endorsed by the opposition leader, but only if there's an amendment empowering the shooting on sight of all persons thought to be showing anything other than a small target. At the rate the government is inventing dire threats and direr laws I expect to read about the opposition leader endorsing summary execution for MPs suspended from parliament by about next Thursday. As is customary, the opposition will insist on not seeing the laws before agreeing to pass them. Clearly, these laws have no purpose except testing the opposition's ticker to see if they'll ever actually oppose any restriction of liberty.

I would've thought a Man of Steel would have better things to do than stampede the country into abolishing traditional liberties that have endured for some hundreds of years. Australia faced considerably more serious threats during the Second World War. No-one then proposed the nation would fall unless it passed a Reichstagsbrandverordnung forthwith. It's instructive to recall the text of that decree:

1. Articles 114, 115, 117, 118, 123, 124 and 153 of the Constitution of the German Reich are suspended until further notice. It is therefore permissible to restrict the rights of personal freedom (habeas corpus), freedom of opinion, including the freedom of the press, the freedom to organize and assemble, the privacy of postal, telegraphic and telephonic communications, and warrants for house searches, orders for confiscations as well as restrictions on property, are also permissible beyond the legal limits otherwise prescribed.

Fortunately for the significant danger of falling into a Howard=Hitler argument, there is no bll of rights for Howard to suspend. Austraia's case is worse.

As Justice Nicholls writes

In considering this proposed legislation, it is important to remember that in Australia there is no effective human rights framework surrounding the new anti-terrorism legislation. Unlike other western democracies, we have no Bill of Rights and therefore no check upon extreme legislation of this type other than what can be found in the Constitution.

Similarly, unlike European countries including the UK, we are not party to any binding international instruments such as the European Convention on Human Rights and its five protocols, which enable European citizens to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights if domestic legislation or law is thought to be in breach of that Convention.

Additionally, the UK has passed human rights legislation of its own as have Canada, in the form of a constitutional Charter and New Zealand. The US has its own 18th century Bill of Rights, which nevertheless continues to provide real protection against governmental excesses.

There are differing models to be found of this type of legislation but the better models enable the court to read down legislation so as to be compatible with human rights requirements, or if this cannot be done, strike down the legislation.

Given a choice between a bill of rights and the sterling defence of Australian freedom by an opposition noted only for simultaneously being strident and supine, I think I'd take a bill of rights any day.

What do bears and Republicans do n the woods?

2005-10-27T18:04:00.000+10:00

A breathless New York Times tells us that the White House is testing talking points to smear the special prosecutor if the grand jury indicts Rove and Libby. No doubt the subtle plan is to leak the prosecutor's wife to the media. In other news, the NYT also reports the astounding fact that bears sometimes shit in the woods.

decline and fish of the Roman empire

2005-10-24T21:24:00.000+10:00

I'll have the fish, thanks

US restaurant menu prices back 150 years, for instance, chart sometimes inexplicable swings in tastes and prices of seafood including swordfish, lobster, abalone, oysters, halibut, haddock and sole.

'Back in the 1860s no one wanted to eat lobster,' says Professor Glenn Jones, a researcher at Texas A&M University at Galveston, who leads the menu project. Giant lobsters weighing 9 kilograms were common in New England.

Considered a trash food in colonial times, a lobster meal cost about US$5 in the 1880s before surging to about US$25 in the 1920s, roughly matching 2005 levels, after it became a delicacy and stocks suffered.

Food was so scarce for the Pilgrim Fathers in the 1620s that they lamented they sometimes had to feed the spiny crustacean to guests. Servants in colonial times negotiated contracts to limit lobster meals to two a week.

And the size and number of huge vats used by the ancient Romans to make a popular fish soup indicate that they were overfishing many Mediterranean species 2000 years ago, even though human populations were a fraction of 21st century levels.

'The Romans ate fish in vast quantities,' Holm says. 'Overfishing in medieval Europe was a very real problem in the days of William the Conqueror and Leonardo da Vinci.

'The impacts of early fisheries on pristine stocks can be quite severe,' he says.

Concentrations of small fish bones found in some Medieval rubbish dumps by the North Sea indicate that the big fish had already been caught and stocks were suffering.

Is it really rocket science that over-fishing causes depletion?

Catalyst on ID theory

2005-10-21T07:23:00.000+10:00

Catalyst did a reasonable job on Intelligent Design last night. I say reasonable because they got caught up in the antiphonal debate theory where you doing good journalism if you let both sides have a say, even if one side is actually badly wrong.

There's a poll crying out for you to go and vote. Brendan Nelson's support for the teaching of ID theory in science classes raises a lot of questions. Why do Australian conservatives pick up the latest silliness from the US right as if it were (ahem) Gospel truth? How does a medical practitioner reconcile his knowledge of life science with endorsing ID theory as scientific? And was the world really designed by an intelligent Flying Spaghetti Monster?

game, set, match

2005-10-20T10:11:00.000+10:00

Bush whacked Rove on CIA leak

An angry President Bush rebuked chief political guru Karl Rove two years ago for his role in the Valerie Plame affair, sources told the Daily News.

'He made his displeasure known to Karl,' a presidential counselor told The News. 'He made his life miserable about this.'

Bush has nevertheless remained doggedly loyal to Rove, who friends and even political adversaries acknowledge is the architect of the President's rise from baseball owner to leader of the free world. As special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald nears a decision, perhaps as early as today, on whether to issue indictments in his two-year probe, Bush has already circled the wagons around Rove, whose departure would be a grievous blow to an already shell-shocked White House staff and a President in deep political trouble.

Asked if he believed indictments were forthcoming, a key Bush official said he did not know, then added: 'I'm very concerned it could go very, very badly.'

George W. Bush 30 September 2003

QUESTION: Yesterday we were told that Karl Rove had no role in it. . .

THE PRESIDENT: Yes.

QUESTION: Have you talked to Karl and do you have confidence in him . . .

THE PRESIDENT: Listen, I know of nobody -- I don't know of anybody in my administration who leaked classified information. If somebody did leak classified information, I'd like to know it, and we'll take the appropriate action.

It's an extremely good thing that Bush did not have oral sex with Rove at the same time, because of course lying about sex with an aide is an impeachable offence. Fortunately, it appears that Bush only lied about knowing Rove had disclosed the identity of a CIA WMD specialist.

Update
I think updating blog items is evil, but on the other hand, via Steve Gilliard...

Patrick Fitzgerald Bio

Fitzgerald is certainly an interesting investigator for this case. A little background:
The full damage caused by the leak isn't yet knowable (at least without the clearance). But Valerie Wilson's CIA front, Brewster-Jennings, was reportedly tasked with tracking the smuggling of explosive materials in the Middle East, so that crap like the 1993 WTC attack, the embassy bombings in Africa, and 9-11 wouldn't be even worse next time. (That's the operation apparently shit-canned by this White House for their own political gain. So you can see why the CIA lifers pushed the case for criminal investigation, and why people are throwing the word 'treason' around so much.) The 1993 WTC attack was prosecuted by... Patrick Fitzgerald.

Fitzgerald was then assigned to prosecute, yes, the Al-Qaeda bombings of U.S. embassies in Africa. Fitzgerald was building a case against Osama Bin Laden five years before 9-11.

This job, one concludes, involved a certain appreciation for intelligence people studying the illicit movement of explosives by terrorists.

If there's a single prosecutor in America who fully understands what the Plame case is about -- a reckless compromise of national security for political interest -- it's this guy. If there's a prosecutor in this country who groks the background and context of the specific operations destroyed by this crime, it's this guy. And if there's a single prosecutor capable of pursuing a conspiracy case no matter where it reaches, it sure seems like it's this guy.

Given a choice between being chased by Patrick Fitzgerald and a pack of hungry zombies... I'm guessing the zombies would look pretty good right about now.

Then read The Blog | James Moore: The Most Important Criminal Case in American History

Patrick Fitzgerald has before him the most important criminal case in American history. Watergate, by comparison, was a random burglary in an age of innocence. The investigator's prosecutorial authority in this present case is not constrained by any regulation. If he finds a thread connecting the leak to something greater, Fitzgerald has the legal power to follow it to the web in search of the spider. It seems unlikely, then, that he would simply go after the leakers and the people who sought to cover up the leak when it was merely a secondary consequence of the much greater crime of forging evidence to foment war. Fitzgerald did not earn his reputation as an Irish alligator by going after the little guy. Presumably, he is trying to find evidence that Karl Rove launched a covert operation to create the forged documents and then conspired to out Valerie Plame when he learned the fraud was being uncovered by Plame's husband, Ambassador Joseph Wilson. As much as this sounds like the plot of a John le Carre novel, it also comports with the profile of the Karl Rove I have known, watched, traveled with and written about for the past 25 years.

The ball's in play. I doubt this one is going back over the net.

rigging the vote I

2005-10-19T05:14:00.000+10:00

Georgia's Voter Identification Law Barred

A federal judge Tuesday blocked Georgia from enforcing a new state law requiring voters to show photo identification at the polls.

In issuing the preliminary injunction, U.S. District Judge Harold Murphy said the law amounts to an unconstitutional poll tax because the state is not doing enough to make ID cards available to those who cannot afford them.

The requirement "is most likely to prevent Georgia's elderly, poor and African-American voters from voting," Murphy wrote. "For those citizens, the character and magnitude of their injury - the loss of their right to vote - is undeniably demoralizing and extreme."

So far, the law has been used only for local elections. The injunction could prevent its use during municipal elections Nov. 8.

Voter and civil rights groups sued over the new law, which eliminates the use of other forms of voter identification, such as Social Security cards, birth certificates or utility bills. Supporters, including Republican Gov. Sonny Perdue, argued that the measure would help prevent fraud.

Inquiry into the Conduct of the 2004 Federal Election and Matters Related Thereto

Recommendation 25
The Committee recommends that, at the next Federal Election, those wishing to cast a provisional vote should produce photographic identification.

Voters unable to do so at the polling booth on election day would be permitted to vote, but their ballots would not be included in the count unless they provide the necessary documentation to the DRO by close of business on the Friday following election day. Where it was impracticable for an elector to attend a DRO’s office, a photocopy of the identification, either faxed or mailed to the DRO, would be acceptable. Those who do not possess photographic identification should present one of the other forms of identification acceptable to the AEC for enrolment.

Recommendation 29
The Committee does not support the introduction of proof of identity requirements for general voters on polling day at the next election.

Instead, the Committee recommends that the AEC report to the JSCEM on the operation of proof of identity arrangements internationally, and on how such systems might operate on polling day in Australia.

Recommendation 30
The Committee recommends that, at the next Federal Election, the AEC encourage voters to voluntarily present photographic identification in the form of a driver’s licence to assist in marking off the electoral roll.

This is just an extra obstacle that will fall disproportionately on the poor, the elderly, and the marginalised - people unlikely to vote for the Coalition. The committee produces no evidence to show that fraud has effected voting.

The sad truth is that the JSCEM report is really not much more than a Coalition attempt to introduce US Republican party techniques for suppressing the vote. Australia has the fairest enrolment and voting system in the world. It follows, as simple logic, that the Coalition now wants to import the worst features of the US electoral system, features that, without exception, favour the Coalition.

The report contains a number of other recommendations that attack the right to vote. I'll deal with them over the next few days.

Australia is the only remaining democracy without a bill of rights. The right to vote is entirely in the gift of the federal parliament. There is no way for an Australian court to protect the people in the way the US court has done.

depressive economics

2005-10-17T23:44:00.000+10:00

Future failings

This finding was recently replicated, in some respects, suggesting there is something to it. However, there remains a major reason for scepticism. If genes are so important when combined with adverse environments, why are there huge fluctuations in the prevalence of most emotional problems, like depression and violence? Since it takes millennia for genetic change to occur in a population, genes could not be the cause of these variations. In Britain, violence against the person has increased 45-fold since 1950. Equally, there can be dramatic drops in the amount of violence that can have nothing to do with genes: rates of homicide in America have almost halved since 1993.

'Bit of both', nature-nurture exponents would argue that it just goes to show that dodgy genes only get expressed if environments activate them. But that could not explain such huge changes. Far more probable is that genetic vulnerability explains none of a 45-fold change in such a short period - that an awful lot of people with no genetic susceptibility are made, rather than born, violent or non-violent, depending on their society.

Even if it emerges that genes are always involved to some degree, one of the most striking implications of such studies is that emotionally benign environments are crucial: if you want the minimum of depression or violence, they make an overwhelming case for having a minimum of poor people and abusive parents, rather than societies making tiny minorities super-rich.

One wonders how socially benign Australia is these days between the mountain of personal debt and the impending industrial law changes. One also wonders how the Bush administration train wreck is going to rebound on the Man of Steel's drive to make us all feel relaxed and comfortable.

tear gassing Rove

2005-10-17T23:26:00.000+10:00

Protest at Rove Prison ends with tear gas Somehow I misread this as a story about US politics...

Neolithic noodles

2005-10-13T22:16:00.000+10:00

Slurping first: China invented noodles

A decades-long wrangle as to which culture gave birth to the noodle has finally been settled - the winner is China.

Italians, through the explorer Marco Polo, and Arabs had been the other claimants to a culinary staple that has been around for at least 2,000 years.

But a team of archaeologists, reporting in the British journal Nature, say there is now incontrovertible proof that China was faster to the pasta.

They discovered 4,000-year-old long, boiled strands of noodles protected by an upside-down bowl, embedded in a fine, brownish-yellow clay on a terrace of the Yellow River at Lajia, north-western China.

The site, on a flood plain whose sediments are three metres thick, has been under careful excavation since 1999.

The age of the find comes from carbon dating of the sediments in its lay.

The Neolithic noodles show no trace of the durum wheat, bread wheat or barley that usually make up today's pasta.

Instead, they are made from millet, one of the first grass plants to be farmed in the semi-arid plateau of north-western China.

I don't actually think this is incontrovertible proof at all. Noodles do not have to get invented only once and all this proves is the antiquity of noodles in East Asia. It tells us nothing about the great question of whther noodles were diffused or infused in other regions.

Beware the jabbervarch culicivora, my son

2005-10-12T08:34:00.000+10:00

African Spider Craves Human Blood, Scientists Find

Although many spiders have relatively poor eyesight - those that use webs to trap prey have no need for acute vision, Nelson says - jumping spiders are an exception.

'Salticids are predators that actively search for prey and mates and typically do not build webs,' she said. 'They have evolved eyes that support high-acuity vision suited to their active lifestyle.'

Spiders don't have the skin-piercing mouth parts needed to feed directly on human blood, but the mosquito-munching jumping spider appears to have got around this. The strategy has other advantages as well, Nelson points out.

'Blood-feeding is a dangerous activity,' she said. 'Animals that are bitten have a swatting response, and often the insect is killed.'

By eating mosquitoes, the spider avoids the risk of being squashed by an unwilling blood donor.

The study team suspects a blood meal is also biologically important to E. culicivora.

They say spiders expend a lot of energy breaking solid food down into liquid by injecting their prey with digestive enzymes.

'Perhaps blood is a ready-made, nutrient-rich liquid meal,' Nelson said.

I plan a moral triumph by posting this without a single joke about the resemblance between E culicivora and the contemporary conservative. And they're probably not either slithy or brilling.

Merkeling through

2005-10-11T03:48:00.000+10:00

Germany is to have a new Chancellor. Angela Merkel, will head a black/red grand coalition of Christian Democrats and Social Democrats. In return for the chancellorship, the Social Democrats get 8 ministries (including foreign affairs) and the vice-chancellorship. It will be an interesting test for consensus politics. Apparently, the second of two jokes in the campaign has been asking 'Wer wird Kanzlerin?' or 'Who is the (female) chancellor going to be?'

Merkel will be the first Bundeskanzlerin in Germany's history. It's not clear if the present chancellor, Gerhard Schroeder, will be vice-chcancellor or even a member of the new government.

Vanstone not to blame Howard

2005-10-08T00:11:00.000+10:00

This headline surprised me a lot.

The Commonwealth Ombudsman, fresh from having completed a scathing report on the wrongful deportation of Vivian Alvarez, has revealed that he's now investigating the case of someone who was detained by the Immigration Department for more than three years. The Ombudsman, Professor John McMillan, says yesterday's was the most damning report he'd ever prepared.

Vanstone has, after all, blamed almost everyone else.

sometimes a citizen says it all

2005-10-07T14:14:00.000+10:00

Hear Joe Frost, 20, speaking during the ceremony of remembrance at Sacred Heart Cathedral, Newcastle, last night:

For a lot of us here tonight, these have been the toughest days of our lives.

This kind of thing always happens to someone else. I've heard many people say that over the last few days and I've said it myself. But the reality is that bomb hit us that night, and it's hit our whole community, and so tonight we come here and as we said in the homily, we come with questions. Now one question on my mind is: why did this happen?

And apparently it's about religion. Apparently these wild, radical, whoever they are have decided that what we were doing was offensive to them. But we were eating dinner on the beach with our friends and families. Who does that offend? Who doesn't eat dinner with their family and friends? It's the most common thing in the world.

And now the cowards who planned and who advocate and champion this horrific act say that they are heroes and that the people who did it are heroes. But what's heroic about murdering the innocent and leaving families ruined?

But having been broken open, our hearts have been exposed, and the support and the strength that has been shown by the group who were together in Bali, while we were in Bali, was amazing.

We all leaned on each other and we all stayed positive. We even managed to make a few jokes. I managed to be the brunt of most of them because when the bomb went off it blew off my pants and I spent the night walking around in my undies.

(laughter from congregation)

Since coming home we tried to see each other every day, and as JK said, we're a family now.

But we've been bolstered by community support. I know for my family we got home on Monday and we found that our fridge was so stocked with groceries that there were some people who'd gone out and bought eskies so that there was more room to put the food in, and we had a bakery on the end of our table. And I was so grateful and proud to be a Novocastrian.

These are our darkest hours, the worst days of so many of our lives. This sad and sickening act has torn us open. But we'll stand together and we'll make it through.

audio here

ID book shows sneaky design

2005-10-07T01:47:00.000+10:00

Book thrown at proponents of Intelligent Design

The early versions of the book were displayed to the court by expert witness for the plaintiffs and creationist historian Barbara Forrest of the Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond. She suggested that they were strong proof that ID is indeed creationism by another name.

Forrest compared early drafts of Of Pandas and People to a later 1987 copy, and showed how in several instances the word 'creationism' had been replaced by 'intelligent design', and 'creationist' simply replaced by 'intelligent design proponent'.

"Forrest's testimony showed that ID is not a scientific theory, but a Trojan horse for creationism," said Eric Rothshild of Pepper Hamilton in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, an attorney for the plaintiffs.

Leaving aside the important question of whether the big-I Intelligent Designer is the Judeo-Christian or Pastafarian deity, or indeed Kang and Kodos, isn't there something against fibbing in the Old Testament?

We hold these domain names to be self-evident...

2005-10-04T07:56:00.000+10:00

Rally for less U.S.-centric Internet gains momentum

The politicization of Internet control has intensified as the European Union made clear at the latest meeting on the one hand of its backing of the ITU and the United Nations, as it argued that other governments and international agencies must work together with ICANN when it comes to assigning domain names.

In part given the fact that the head of the ITU is a Japanese national, the Japanese government too has made clear its support for the U.N.-led initiative, thereby siding its support for the EU proposal. Given that Japan is the world's second-largest Internet user following the United States and the EU and Japan combined make up a significant part of global Web use, their joint opposition to continued U.S. dominance could well be the single-biggest source of friction at the upcoming Tunis conference. At the same time, while there are 13 principal routing servers that ICANN is connected to worldwide, only three are based in Japan and Europe, while the remaining 10 are located across the United States alone.

The Japanese media has pointed out that the existing domain-naming system has reached its limit, especially as many point out the need to come up with new names such as .asia to meet the ever-changing needs of Internet users worldwide without having to resort to the United States as the final arbiter of whether or not such names are appropriate.

In addition, the financial daily Nihon Keizai Shimbun pointed out that a U.S.-led Internet naming system inevitably becomes focused on the English language, whereas much of the growth seen in the World Wide Web these days comes from non-English-speaking developing countries. Certainly, objection to the dominance of the English language on the Web, particularly in assigning domain names, is a common complaint from both developing and industrialized countries alike where English is not the native tongue.

For its part, the United States has made clear its opposition to changing ICANN's role in naming domains as it continues to argue that now is not the time to change the system as it could lead to confusion while arguing that the United Nations would simply not be able to handle the responsibility.

Meanwhile, the ITU's Utsumi stressed the need to reach a consensus at the upcoming conference, stating that 'if we wish to build a just and equitable information society, this summit cannot be allowed to fail.'

Australia's going to find itself in a cleft stick between a rock and a hard place. !. The Howard government has always argued they should control the .au domain. 2. Their foreign policy has consisted of a string of quick emails to the White House asking for instructions. Logically they should support internationalising the Internet, and that is what various Asian governments will expect us to do. On the other hand that may not be what the White House email says. The weird bit is the confusion between the top level domain, .com and the like, and the country level domain .us. You'd expect US companies to want to badge themselves by using the .us subdomain instead of the generic top level domain. It just hasn't happened.

Bali hit again

2005-10-02T01:58:00.000+10:00

One Australian killed in Bali blasts

At least one Australian is among 19 people killed in explosions in the popular Indonesian resort island of Bali, Foreign Affairs Minister Alexander Downer said.

Up to four explosions rocked tourist areas of Kuta and Jimbaran Beach, wounding 51 people, including three Australians.

One hospital official said at least 35 wounded foreigners were taken to the main hospital on Bali.

Mr Downer says he is finding it hard to get detailed information.

'There are reports that there could be between 30 and 40 injured and some reports are suggesting that there are nine or so dead but these numbers are very early and they could change significantly,' he said.

'We know from experience the numbers unfortunately could turn out to be a good deal higher than that.'

Daniel Martin, a tourist in Bali, says there was chaos after the blast in Kuta Square.

'There was thick smoke for a few minutes afterwards but there didn't seem to be any fire,' he said.

'People were clambering onto the roof of the restaurant. It's about a three storey building so people were climbing out and screaming and jumping down to the street.

'It was pretty harrowing stuff.'

Phonelines between Bali and other parts of the country were overloaded, as people struggled to contact friends and relatives in the area.

Peter Holden of Gosford on the central coast of New South Wales says he received an SMS message from his daughter Donna, who lives in Bali, telling him about the explosions.

Mr Holden says his daughter has reported several fatalities.

'There have been at least two bombs gone off in Jimbaran in restaurants and those kind of restaurants are restaurants populated by tourists in the main,' Mr Holden said.

'And then a more recent report just a moment ago that there's also reports of another bomb in Kuta Square. That's a pretty busy tourist area,' he said.

The blasts come almost exactly three years since two nightclubs were bombed in Bali's famous Kuta Beach in October 2002, killing 202 people, including 88 Australians.

Deadly blasts rip through Bali again

Explosions rocked�the Indonesian tourist island of Bali last night, leaving at least 23 people dead and dozens wounded.

Witnesses said they saw body parts, including a severed head and a leg, and hospitals filled with injured.

Many foreigners were�among those killed. The Foreign Affairs Minister, Alexander Downer, said at least one Australian
was confirmed dead.

The blasts at Jimbaran beach and a bustling outdoor shopping centre in downtown Kuta "were clearly the work of terrorists'',
Police Major General Ansyaad Mbai, a top Indonesian anti-terrorism official, told the Associated Press.

Komang, a receptionist at the Graha Asih Hospital, close to Jimbaran Bay, said there were at least eight people in the morgue and that doctors were treating at least 13 wounded. "It's a horrible scene,'' she said. "Some people have had their heads blown off.''

The bombs went off almost simultaneously at�about 7.30pm local time (9.30pm Sydney time).

The blasts hit two restaurants that were packed with foreign and Indonesian diners.

Wayan Kresna said he witnessed the first bomb at a seafood restaurant on Jimbaran beach. He counted at least two dead and said many others were taken to hospital.

Update
Australian agencies to consider Bali response

This attack comes almost three years to the day after terrorists killed 202 people, including 88 Australians, in a similar attack on two Kuta bars.

Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has condemned the blasts as a criminal act.

Anyone who has relatives or friends in Bali is advised to try to contact them directly before calling the DFAT hotline on 1800 002 214.

Here we go again. Reported fatalities have risen from nil to 23 over the last hour.

NZ final election result

2005-10-01T12:58:00.000+10:00

NZ Electoral Commission

Labour Party 41.10%, 31 electorate MPs, 19 list MPs, total MPs 50 (+1 since original count)
National Party 39.10%, 31 electorate MPs, 17 list MPs, 48 total MPs (-1 since original count)
New Zealand First Party 5.72%, 0 electorate MPs, 7 list MPs, total MPs 7
Green Party 5.30%, 0 electorate MPs, 6 list MPs, total MPs 6
Mâori Party 2.12%, 4 electorate MPs, 0 list MPs, total MPs 4
United Future New Zealand 2.67%, 1 electorate MPs, 2 list MPs, total MPs 3
ACT New Zealand 1.51%, 1 electorate MPs, 1 list MPs, total MPs 2
Jim Anderton's Progressive 1.16%, 1 electorate MPs, 0 list MPs, total MPs 1

Despite claims that the special and overseas vote favour the Nationals, the only change since the original count is to transfer one list seat from National to Labour and to reduce the house frm 122 to 121. Both results favour Labour.

Don Brash, the National opposition leader, has now conceded the election and Helen Clark is finalising negotiations to form the next government, putting her on course to become New Zealand's first Labour prime minister to serve a third term.

somebody tell the president!

2005-09-29T19:26:00.000+10:00

Scientists perfect sandcastle recipe

A lesson learned by centuries of beachcombers has been distilled to a physicist's formula: to make the perfect sandcastle, use eight parts sand to one part water.

The physicists' study, released before publication in the journal Nature Physics, is entitled, rather grandly, 'Maximum angle of stability of a wet granular pile'.

While it deals with sandcastles, it could also help determine the stability of retaining walls and the material they hold back, one of its authors said.

This study and those that follow on this subject might have implications for those preparing for or recovering from a watery disaster like a hurricane, physicist Arshad Kudrolli said.

'Our study is the first step, in some sense, in trying to understand what's the most stable angle that one can build, say, a retaining wall,' he said. 'And if it fails, where would the material end up? How much part of the land will give way?'

Inspired by childhood memories of the seaside, the study's authors worked on a simple model of what makes for the most stable construction involving liquid and particles.

In the case of a sandcastle, builders need to use roughly one-eighth the water to the amount of sand, though Mr Kudrolli said there is a range of possibilities that would work.

Quicksand myth exposed

Quicksand is not the bottomless pit portrayed in Hollywood films that sucks in unsuspecting victims and swallows them whole. It is true the more people struggle, the deeper they sink into the soupy mixture.But its buoyancy makes it impossible to be completely submerged, scientists report today in the journal Nature. 'Everybody thinks, thanks to Hollywood, that you can drown in quicksand. Basically if you do a simple buoyancy calculation, the Archimedes force, it is immediately evident that you can't drown completely,' says Professor Daniel Bonn, a physicist at the University of Amsterdam.Quicksand consists of salt, water, sand and clay. It is the water content that makes quicksand, which is found near estuaries, beaches and rivers, so dangerous.

This important research has significant rhetorical, domestic and foreign policy implications. George Bush, despite charges that he's all hat and no cattle, loves Western metaphors, like getting Osama bin Laden dead or alive (give or take a delay longer than separates Pearl Harbour and VJ Day). He also loves saving money on flood protection. Now if you can't drown in a quagmire... And if you can build a levee bank that's 8 parts sand...

one ape to rule them

2005-09-29T19:02:00.000+10:00

Peter Jackson is obsessed with King Kong. He's also obsessed with making sure we get to know all about the making of his ape movie. Do we have to wait for the documentary on the special features DVD? Nope, just sign up to his RSS feed at Kong Is King.

Katie Kouric just doesn't cut it

2005-09-27T17:44:00.000+10:00

The Australian Electoral Commission has just posted its report on the 2004 general election. The Parliament's joinst standing committee on electoral matters is conducting its own review, as it does after every election.

Behind the Scenes - Election Night

National Tally Room Preparations
The NTR for the 2004 federal election was located at Exhibition Park in Canberra. It took about two weeks to build, three days to dismantle and many months of detailed planning to organise.

Transforming the empty hall into the central point on election night was a massive logistical exercise. The AEC had access to the building from 27 September when the work began on:

laying the temporary floor
building the 35 metre x 7 metre tally board
allocating space to the media, parties and television networks
organising the electricity supply, air conditioning, telecommunication lines and computer cabling.

Elaborate security arrangements were in place during the building of the tally room and on election night. To ensure the smooth running of the NTR the AEC also conducted a rehearsal on the Thursday before election day to test the computer system and to provide training for the casual staff employed on the National Tally Board and in divisional offices throughout Australia.

The NTR cost approximately $650 000 to organise. This included the hire of venue, communication and computing facilities, equipment hire, casual staff wages and security. The television networks met the costs of constructing their own sets.

National Tally Room Logistics
The NTR included:

700 members of the media
four major and two minor purpose-built television studios
100 political party workers and Members of Parliament
160 international and other official guests
150 AEC and other NTR workers
2 400 members of the public (a maximum of about 300 at any one time).

On the technical side there were:

84 terminals, four printers and 7 separate data feeds
six kilometres of telephone cables
8.5 kilometres of computer cabling
two mobile telephone repeater stations
in excess of 300 mobile and 150 static telephones
up to 650 amps of electrical load (enough to power a small town).

The US does not have a more perfect electoral system, despite their more perfect union. Having a public tally where nation-wide results get collated and posted would make a big difference. For that matter, having a single election management body that (subject to judicial review) administers elections transparently, impartially, and professionally would be a good thing too.

Arthur C Clarke on the space elevator

2005-09-27T07:30:00.000+10:00

The Times Online guest contributors Opinion

Today's communications satellites demonstrate how an object can remain poised over a fixed spot on the Equator by matching its speed to the turning Earth, 22,300 miles (35,780 km) below. Now imagine a cable linking the satellite to the ground. Payloads could be hoisted up it by purely mechanical means, reaching orbit without any use of rocket power. The cost of launching payloads into orbit could be reduced to a tiny fraction of today's costs.

The space elevator was the central theme in my 1978 science-fiction novel The Fountains of Paradise (soon to be a Hollywood movie). When I wrote it, I considered it little more than a fascinating thought experiment. At that time, the only material from which it could be built – diamond – was not readily available in sufficient megaton quantities. This situation has now changed, with the discovery of the third form of carbon, C60, and its relatives, the Buckminsterfullerenes. If these can be mass-produced, building a space elevator would be a completely viable engineering proposition.

What makes the space elevator such an attractive idea is its cost-effectiveness. A ticket to orbit now costs tens of millions of dollars (as the millionaire space tourists have paid). But the actual energy required, if you purchased it from your friendly local utility, would add only about a hundred dollars to your electricity bill. And a round trip would cost only about one tenth of that, as most of the energy could be recovered on the way back.

Once built, the space elevator could be used to lift payloads, passengers, prefabricated components of spacecraft, as well as rocket fuel up to Earth orbit. In this way, more than 90 per cent of the energy needed for exploration of the solar system could be provided by Earth-based energy sources.
Looking even farther ahead, one could see the virtual elimination of the rocket except for minor orbit adjustments. By extending the elevator, it would act as a giant sling, and payloads could be shot off to anywhere in the solar system by releasing them at the correct moment. Of course, rockets would still be responsible for the journey back to Earth – at least until elevator/slings were constructed on the other planets. If this ever happens, the most expensive component of travel around the solar system would be for life support – and inflight movies.

As its most enthusiastic promoter, I am often asked when I think the first space elevator might be built. My answer has always been: about 50 years after everyone has stopped laughing. Maybe I should now revise it to 25 years.

Clarke (who predicted the communications satellite many years before the first one was launched) also speaks about the 1911-12 Antarctic expedition and the more than 40 years it took to return there and stay. I could think of much better things to do wth the NASA budget than another Apollo Program and a human-crewed Mars expedition. Building a space elevator is one of them.

why the PR-is-evil snowclone lives on

2005-09-27T02:01:00.000+10:00

Via Make My Vote Count

MMP: saner and safer, but don't you miss the blood?

Yes, the spectacle of the two major parties slugging it out brought to mind the old system. And yet, curiously enough, the result looks like precisely the kind of outcome MMP encourages a shifting balance of power around the notional centre, where all must take into account the position of the other, not dismiss them as irrelevant. To paraphrase another commentator, this is the opposite of Geoffrey Palmer's famous 'unbridled power'.

If First Past the Post lingers anywhere it is in the mindsets of certain journalists and politicians. Elections are still reported as though they are rugby tests, and there is an almost tangible desire for a close result to mean instability or potential chaos.

Perhaps this is due partly to the journalistic instinct for avoiding boredom. Where Helen Clark plainly revels in the Scandinavian torpor of policy negotiation and strategic alliance building, we hacks would prefer it all to descend into bitching and scratching because it makes better headlines and obviates the need for anything more than superficial analysis.

Attempts now to blame MMP for delivering a supposedly unjust outcome, as Richard Prebble has argued, can perhaps be attributed partly to the Right's lingering distaste for a system that by design precludes absolute minority rule and 'reform' by decree. As Prebble also observed, Brash fought a good First Past the Post campaign. It's just that history has moved on.

The other snowclone well past its meltdown date is the alleged considerate conservatism of Barnaby Joyce. The senator from St George seems to spend an awful lot of time waving his sword at the dragon but somehow always whips it back in the scabbard just before it's time to vote.

Rita floods NOLA

2005-09-24T04:09:00.000+10:00

Water pours into Ninth Ward

Hurricane Rita-driven winds pushed floodwaters from the Industrial Canal into the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans and Chalmette as water topped a section of the levee that was under repair, Secretary of Transportation and Development Johnny Bradberry said Friday.

Bradberry said the flooding was waist-deep near the levee.

He said there have not been any reports of flooding in other parts of the area, such near the 17th Street Canal or the London Avenue Canal, two troublespots during Hurricane Katrina.

This is really, really bad because it looks as if the floodwall system itself may be flawed.

Experts Say Faulty Levees Caused Much of Flooding

Louisiana's top hurricane experts have rejected the official explanations for the floodwall collapses that inundated much of New Orleans, concluding that Hurricane Katrina's storm surges were much smaller than authorities have suggested and that the city's flood- protection system should have kept most of the city dry.The Army Corps of Engineers has said that Katrina was just too massive for a system that was not intended to protect the city from a storm greater than a Category 3 hurricane, and that the floodwall failures near Lake Pontchartrain were caused by extraordinary surges that overtopped the walls.
Workers repair a section of the levee at the 17th Street Canal, which breached and caused flooding.

But with the help of complex computer models and stark visual evidence, scientists and engineers at Louisiana State University's Hurricane Center have concluded that Katrina's surges did not come close to overtopping those barriers. That would make faulty design, inadequate construction or some combination of the two the likely cause of the breaching of the floodwalls along the 17th Street and London Avenue canals -- and the flooding of most of New Orleans.

Meanwhile back at the fort the White House was insisting they'd be much more focused on Rita, not they weren't focused on Katrina, but...

White House Briefing: Reporters Wonder About President's New 'Focus' on Hurricanes

Q So the lessons learned from Katrina will be applied in the case of Rita?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, in terms of Katrina, that was a storm that was unprecedented in size and scope and devastation. It is something that we want to make sure all the lessons possible are learned, and we want to make sure that we know exactly what worked and what didn't work. And that's why we are working closely with Congress as they move forward on their investigation. That's why the President has tasked his Homeland Security Council to make sure that there is a comprehensive review of the preparedness and response relating to Katrina, so we're doing that.

Now, in terms of Rita, I just talked about the steps that we're taking. And we're going to make sure that we are doing everything we can to have the strongest possible coordination with state and local governments as we prepared and respond to Hurricane Rita.

Q Well, Scott, continuing with what Steve said, how is what you're doing for Rita different from what you did from Katrina?

MR. McCLELLAN: Sure. A couple of things -- one, the President is focused on making sure we have the strongest possible coordination with state and local governments in the path of Hurricane Rita. We hope Rita is not devastating, but we must be prepared for the worst. Coordination at all levels needs to be seamless, or as seamless as possible, and that's what we're working to do.

Homeland Security and FEMA officials are working closely with state and local governments so that resources can be targeted where they are most needed. They are redoubling efforts to make sure we have a full understanding of what the needs are so that we can make sure that those needs are met. And I went through several steps that were already taken to address these issues.

Q So that's -- you think that that's going to be an improvement over what was done in Katrina?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, again, in terms of Katrina, we're still focused on the immediate needs of the people in the region and working to make sure that they are getting back up on their feet, that we're moving forward on the recovery, that we're moving forward on the rebuilding to help people rebuild their lives and rebuild their communities. We are determined to learn the lessons of Katrina, and that's why we have been assessing what's been working and what hasn't been working and taking steps to address those issues. That's why we're also working closely with Congress, and the President is committed to making sure that there's a thorough investigation so that we can learn those lessons.

Q Well, can you distinguish what you're doing differently?

MR. McCLELLAN: Yes, I just talked to you about where the President's focus is and what we are doing. We want to make sure that we're --

Q And these are things you didn't do in Katrina?

MR. McCLELLAN: We want to make sure that we are better prepared and better positioned to respond to Hurricane Rita and that's what we're doing. That's why I outlined the several steps that we are taking. And that's why I just told you that the President is focused on making sure that we have the strongest possible coordination with state and local officials, and that we have --

Q Which you didn't have before, right?

MR. McCLELLAN: -- as seamless as possible coordination with state and local officials.

Q In other words, better than the last time?

MR. McCLELLAN: I think I just answered that question, Bill.

Q No, not really.

And someone forgot to evacuate the poor. And someone forgot a million people in cars need quite a lot of petrol.

the supposed evils of PR

2005-09-24T01:14:00.000+10:00

The Australian media, which barely noticed the New Zealand election, seems to have reached a firm consensus view that the election shows that proportional representation is a messy and undesirable business that leads to hung parliament, ineffective government, and other evils. Sadly for them, we can test the hypothesis. New Zealand elects 69 of the 122 MPs by first past the post in single member districts. We can count them and come up a suitably butch, Anglo and decisive result.

Labour Party - votes 40.60%, electorate MPs 31
National Party - votes 39.76%, electorate MPs 31
New Zealand First Party - 5.86%, electorate MPs 0
Green Party - votes 5.09%, electorate MPs 0
Mâori Party - 1.95%, electorate MPs 4
United Future New Zealand - 2.74%, electorate MPs 1
ACT New Zealand - 1.52% electorate MPs 1
Jim Anderton's Progressive - 1.21%, electorate MPs 1

You'd have a parliament of 69, neither major party would have a majority, and they'd be negotiating a coalition.

Martin Stabe has done the same calculation for Germany.

Germany: don't blame proportional representation

Only half of the Bundestag owes its seats to state party lists and proportional representation. The other half of the chamber are actually British-style constituency MPs. A quick glance at the official results released by the Federal Returning Officer shows that an entirely first-past-the-post election would have led to more or less the same outcome.

If we simply ignore the half of the Bundestag that is elected by PR, and concentrate on the 299 MdBs elected by direktmandat (ie, the first-past-the-post constituency MPs), the composition of the new Bundestag would look like this:

SPD: 145 seats
CDU: 105 seats
CSU: 44 seats
Greens: 1 seat
Left: 3 seats
FDP: 0 seats

I guess you could argue that the fact of PR makes people vote differently, but that argument actually gives the game away. Since people are obviously freer to decide their vote under PR, it follows that more decisive systems are actually not decisive at all. Blair got 35.3% of the popular vote and 55.2% of seats. Clark got 40.6% of the popular vote and a 40.9% of the seats.

There's a whole separate argument about the political effects of SMD, suggesting that it encourages winner-take-all no-compromise results, but I'll go there another time. Our hairy-chested media analysts tend to confirm the theory when they insst that PR parliaments are weak-kneed and lily-livered on economic reform.

north/south red/red grand coalition

2005-09-20T23:22:00.000+10:00

In praise of ...

Uncertainty reinforces the Churchillian view of democracy as being the worst form of government apart from all the others. In the meantime, the obvious answer to the problem would be for Germany's SPD party to form a grand coalition with New Zealand's Labour and rule both countries - New Zealand did once rejoice in a 19th-century nickname as 'the Prussia of the Pacific'.

What did they call us in the the 19th century? The Pacific's Bavaria? Burgundy? Champagne? And what was so Prussian about New Zealand?

mainchance chancellor

2005-09-20T16:57:00.000+10:00

New election looms as Greens reject Merkel

He [Joschka Fischer, the Green leader] told the Guardian: 'Can you really see Angela Merkel and Edmund Stoiber [the leader of the CDU's Bavarian sister party, the CSU] sitting round the table in dreadlocks? This is more our style. It's impossible. I don't see that.'

On issues such as atomic energy, taxation, social policy and Turkey's membership of the European Union, the conservatives and the Greens had nothing in common, he added.

Both Mrs Merkel and Mr Schr�der failed to win an outright majority for their parties in Sunday's election, which Mrs Merkel had been widely expected to win. Her CDU party got just 35.2% of the vote - one of its worst results ever, and far less than opinion polls had predicted. Mr Schr�oeder's Social Democrats won 34.3% of the vote.

Mrs Merkel's coalition partner, the FDP, won 9.9%, with the Greens on 8.1% and the recently formed Left party on 8.7%. Under Germany's constitution, the country's new parliament has to elect a new chancellor when it meets next month. But with Mrs Merkel unable to command a majority in the Bundestag, she is unlikely to win in a secret ballot of MPs.

After three rounds of voting, the country's president, Horst Koehler, could then invite her to form a minority centre-right government. But he is unlikely to invoke this option, which would almost certainly lead to the new government's swift demise and further humiliation for an already weakened Mrs Merkel. Instead, constitutional experts believe, Mr Koehler will dissolve parliament.

Until this happens, Mr Schroeder will carry on as chancellor until Germans go to the polls again, probably in January.Asked who was likely to win the face-off between Mr Schroeder and Mrs Merkel, Nils Diederich, a professor of political science at Berlin's Free University, said he had his money on the chancellor: 'There is now a poker game going on, with Schroeder playing for very high stakes. The reason he was so relaxed on election night is that he knows he is now in a favourable position.'

It's getting more and more obvious why Joschka Fischer is widely regarded as the only German politico who spaks with any fire or wit.

President Koehler does not have a lot of choice about a new election. The Basic Law says:

Article 63 (Election and appointment of the Federal Chancellor)
(1) The Federal Chancellor is elected, without debate, by the Bundestag on the proposal of the Federal President.

(2) The person obtaining the votes of the majority of the members of the Bundestag is elected. The persons elected must be appointed by the Federal President.

(3) If the person proposed is not elected, the Bundestag may elect within fourteen days of the ballot a Federal Chancellor by more than one-half of its members.

(4) If there is no election within this period, a new ballot shall take place without delay in which the person obtaining the largest number of votes is elected. If the person elected obtained the votes of the majority of the members of the Bundestag the Federal President must appoint him within Seven days of the election. If the person elected did not receive this majority, the Federal President must within even days either appoint him or dissolve the Bundestag

The conservatives simply do not have the numbers to elect Angela Merkel. If the SPD/Green combination can get the support of either the FDP or the Left they can elect Gerhard Schoeder.

All in all, this seems to be somewhat of a trend, although the neoliberal right did better in New Zealand and much, much worse in Norway.

Dresden votes on 1 October. The new Bundestag meets to elect a chancellor (with 14 days to do it) on 10 October.

Radio Australia casts its pods on the waters

2005-09-20T16:21:00.000+10:00

Pacific Beat now has a podcast. Asia Pacific has been available for a while. They're both excellent programs, but somehow I was never listening to the radio at the right time. Podcasting has changed that.

not seeing the rain for the trees

2005-09-20T04:30:00.000+10:00

Tropical Deforestation Affects Rainfall In The U.S. And Around The Globe

Now, a new study is offering insight into the long-term impacts of these changes, particularly the effects of large-scale deforestation in tropical regions on the global climate. Researchers from Duke University, Durham, N.C., analyzed multiple years of data using the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies General Circulation Computer Model (GCM) and Global Precipitation Climatology Project (GPCP) to produce several climate simulations. Their research found that deforestation in different areas of the globe affects rainfall patterns over a considerable region.

Deforestation in the Amazon region of South America (Amazonia) influences rainfall from Mexico to Texas and in the Gulf of Mexico. Similarly, deforesting lands in Central Africa affects precipitation in the upper and lower U.S Midwest, while deforestation in Southeast Asia was found to alter rainfall in China and the Balkan Peninsula. It is important to note that such changes primarily occur in certain seasons and that the combination of deforestation in these areas enhances rain in one region while reducing it in another.

This finding contradicts earlier research suggesting deforestation would result in a reduction in precipitation and increase in temperature in the Amazon basin, but carry no detectable impact on the global water cycle.

I guess the Howard government will all breathe a collective sigh of relef that Amazonia's deforestation only impacts the Americas. And the Bush administration can always stop the impact of deforestation by invading Guyana or something.

Dresden gets to decide

2005-09-20T03:46:00.000+10:00

German Election: Will Dresden Decide Germany's Next Chancellor?

In truth, it is the complicated permutations of the German electoral system that have turned Dresden into such a hot button area. Although only one representative will actually be elected in the district, Germany's 'second vote' system -- in which individuals vote for a party they want to see in parliament -- could produce three extra parliamentary seats for Dresden. These are known as 'overhang' seats and are created to reflect more accurately and more democratically a party's true support. And it is these seats that are being eyed by the politicians. The current breakdown of seats in parliament is SPD 222, CDU 225. So those three seats could make a big difference and transform Dresden into the German kingmaker.

and:

Indeed, there are already murmurings of a new Dresden "poker game" in which the Left Party might be convinced to encourage its voters to vote for the SPD. Its own candidate, Katja Kipping, is already assured a parliamentary seat due to the second vote system. So that leaves the party and its voters free to maneuver.

The Dresden electorate has one deputy and last time the CDU won it with 33.8% of the vote. That could change if, for instance the Left Party or the Greens asked their people to vote SPD. The electorate will also, effectively generate 1 or more extra deputies through its list votes. A huge turnout for the SPD or the Left could feasibly generate a third seat. It's where a whole lot of bets break down and the great weakness of MMP, using first past the post to elect district MPs, suddenly comes into play.

I am beginning to suspect the new Bundestag may play out without electing a chancellor. If they cannot do that within a fixed time the Federal President has to dissolve them and call another election.

German election result

2005-09-19T02:42:00.000+10:00

Live News Blog: The Latest News on Germany's Parliamentary Elections

Public broadcaster ZDF and Forschungsgruppe Wahlen have released their first exit poll:

CDU - 37%
SPD - 33%
FDP - 10.5%
Greens - 8 %
Left Party/PDS - 8%

In Germany only the lower house, the Bundestag is elected. Voting is by MMP as in New Zealand. The system was developed in postwar Germany as a reaction to the 'excessive' proportional representation in the Weimar Republic. The makers of the German constitution believed Hitler's rise was partly explained by the instability caused by a multiplicity of small parties in the Reichstag. I suspect it had more to with roughly 1/6 the of MPs being communists and anther 1/6 being rightists. If you're trying to find half the deputies and 1/3 of them are unacceptable life gets tough. You end up with the President appointing chancellors by decree, which is what Hindenburg resorted to with the results we now know.

The Bundeswahlleiter still has no official results up.

The BBC has a rundown on the German parties. That exit poll would leave the CDU/ThisFPD with 47% of seats where they need 51%. The SPD/Greens have 41%. How the Left/PDS will jump between abstaining and supporting the SPD/Greens is literally anybody's guess. This is a much messier result than New Zealand, especially when the CDU went into the campaign with a 20% lead.

Live News Blog: The Latest News on Germany's Parliamentary Elections

(6:32 p.m.) Cheers for SPD-chairman Franz M�unterfering, but otherwise restrained reactions in the Willy-Brandt House at the SPD's election party. With the weak results for their own party, the members are calculating that the crisis won't run too deep. Cheers break out whenever a new low number gets reported for CDU/CSU. 'The Union has lost,' is the tenor among the party faithful. And: more and more people are talking eagerly about a 'stoplight' (Red-Green-Yellow between the Social Democrats, Greens and FDP) coalition.'

A CDU/FPD coalition would have been a black-yellow government. There is some chance of a black/red grand coalition, which would translate into Australian terms as a Howard/Beasley government. Who says contemporary politics lacks colour?

The Bundeswahlleiter is still strangely silent.

Der Bundeswahlleiter:

WIESBADEN/BERLIN - As reported by the Federal Returning Officer, 41.9 percent of the persons entitled to vote have exercised their voting right until 2 p.m. (CEST) at today's Bundestag election. The votes cast by postal voters have not been included yet.The Federal Returning Officer has ascertained voter participation in co-operation with the Land returning officers on a representative basis for the entire Federal Republic of Germany.In the 2002 Bundestag elections, voter participation until 2 p.m. was 42.8 percent; total voter participation was 79.1 percent.The Federal Returning Officer asks all persons entitled to vote who have not voted yet to exercise their right to vote. The polling stations will be open until 6 p.m.

There are seat projections floating round the international and German media, but they're all based on exit polls at this stage. The CDU is now speaking about a black/red grand coalition with some enthusiasm. Deutsche Welle has a live radio feed.

Live News Blog: The Latest News on Germany's Parliamentary Elections

(6:48 p.m.) The head of the Free Democratic Party, Guido Westerwelle, sees his party as the 'victor of the day.'

The FDP is saying they will not join a stoplight coalition with the SPD and Greens. They plan on heading for opposition if the black/yellow coalition does not get an absolute majority.

From Deutsche Welle's audio feed at 7:44 local time. Schroeder just claimed victory. Merkel, the CDU candidate for chancellor, claimed victory at 7:01 pm German time.

Pope Stimulates Election Betting

Germany isn't exactly known as a den of gambling addicts, but after betting and winning that native son Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger be elected to the seat of Peter, more Germans than ever have been drawn to gambling on this Sunday's federal elections.

Well, it's an ill wind... The pope's brother confirmed that His Holiness, still enrolled in Bavaria, will not vote in this particular conclave.

Live News Blog: The Latest News on Germany's Parliamentary Elections

(7:26 p.m.) Despite his party's poor showing, Chancellor Gerhard Schr�der of the Social Democrats told party supporters Sunday night that he should remain chancellor. 'I feel this validates ... that in the next four years, the country will have a stabile government under my leadership.'

Schroeder and Merkel are both now saying they will negotiate with everyone except the Left/PDS.

The Results feed from the Bundeswahlleiter is interesting because the show the CSU, a Bavarian regional party usually counted as part of the CDU, as a separate party and they also show shifts in support from the last election. Yahoo has a self-updating version. Schroeder is using the alleged separateness of the CSU to claim the SPD as the alrgt party and threfore the legitimate candidate for the chancery.

Essentially, this election marks the failure of MMP. It was designed to avoid the Weimar problem of finding a majority government from only 2/3 of the deputies. The Left Party is held together by opposition to globalisation and economic change. In a sense it is an exact analogue to One Nation, although its formal positioning is left-wing rather than right-wing. Their polices are about as realistic as One Nation's were. All other parties refuse to negotiate with the Left Party, an amalgam of former SDP members and East German ex-communists. This means that today's Germany faces the Weimar problem all over again - finding a majority government from 90% of the deputes. The results would have been quite different under STV, but I'll go into that in more detail in another post.

The Vote in Germany: Preliminary Results Show Schr�der, Merkel Stalemate

Sunday's results are not yet final. The results from 220,000 voters in Dresden will not be known for another two weeks -- votes that could be vital for the final outcome. Last week, far-right candidate Kerstin Lorenz of National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD) died of a stroke while giving a campaign speech, meaning that ballots there had to be reprinted and the vote delayed until Oct. 2.

Why do I feel the people of Dresden will see an amazing level of plitical camapigning in the next few days?

A lot of it is now only historical (except in Dresden) but Deutsche Welle has an English language election podcast.

the dunes! the dunes! I mean the wires, are alive with, um

2005-09-17T22:23:00.000+10:00

Dune tunes...the greatest hits

It might not knock Coldplay or Kanye West off the top of charts, but physicists who say they have cracked the riddle of 'singing' sand dunes are compiling a CD of sand music. The team say their new theory allows them to predict the notes that different dunes will make.

Sand dunes in certain parts of the world are notorious for the noises they make as sand avalanches down their sides. Some emit low powerful booms, others sound like drum rolls or galloping horses, and some are even tuneful. These dune songs have been reported to last for up to 15 minutes and can sound as loud as a low-flying aeroplane. Physicists know it is the avalanches that set the grains humming, but the precise mechanism has remained controversial.

St�phane Douady of the French national research agency CNRS and his colleagues shipped sand from Moroccan singing dunes back to his lab to investigate. They found that they could play notes by pushing the sand by hand, or with a metal handle. That put to rest one theory that the noise was the result of the entire dune resonating.

You might think that orchestrating a sand dune is the height of musical eccentricity. You would be wrong...

NZ election results

2005-09-17T20:42:00.000+10:00

At 11:42 in New Zealand the count, on 99.9% of polling places, was:

Labour Party - votes 40.60%, electorate MPs 31, list MPs19, total MPs 50 (52)
National Party - votes 39.76%, electorate MPs 31, list MPs 18, total MPs 49 (27)
New Zealand First Party - 5.86%, electorate MPs 0, list MPs 7, total MPs 7 (13)
Green Party - votes 5.09%, electorate MPs 0,, list MPs 6, total MPs 6 (9)
Mâori Party - 1.95%, electorate MPs 4, list MPs 0, total MPs 4 (0)
United Future New Zealand - 2.74%, electorate MPs 1, list MPs 2, total MPs 3 (9)
ACT New Zealand - 1.52% electorate MPs 1, list MPs, total MPs 2 (9)
Jim Anderton's Progressive - 1.21%, electorate MPs 1, list MP 0s, total MPs 1 (2)

The bracketed numbers show the seats held by in the old parliament. Roughly, the minor parties of the right have haemorrhaged support to National and many New Zealand First voters appear to have transferred to the Maori Party. National have almost doubled their seats, but largely at the expense of smaller right-wing parties.

The Australian media are carrying fairly inaccurate reports that the election result will not be known for days. That is wrong. It will take some time to form a government as the two major parties negotiate for support, but it's hard to see how anyone but Helen Clarke can emerge as prime minister. The election result, however, is likely to be very close to these results and should be finalised within 72 hours.

Labour and National correspond fairly closely to the ALP and the Liberals, although NZ Labour is a long way to the ALP's left and National is probably slightly to the Liberals' right. New Zealand First is essentially a personal vehicle for Winston Peters who was formerly a National MP. The Green Party needs no explanation. The Maori Party broke with Labour over the foreshore and seabed controversy and because they felt Labour was attacking Maori rights. United Future New Zealand is a centrist and Christian Party that, in some ways, resembles Family First. ACT New Zealand and Jim Anderton's Progressives are personal vehicles led by former Labour MPs representing, respectively Rogernomics and opposition to globalisation.

Clarke starts from a base of 50 seats and needs 12 for a majority of 62. Clarke has an existing coalition with the Greens which leaves her looking for 6 MPs. New Zealand First said before the election they would support the largest party which is 7 more, although United Future say they will not support a government with Green MPs. It is impossible to see the Maori Party supporting Brash's project to abolish the Maori seats and end any special standing for the Maori people. A Green/UFNZ/Maori Party arrangement gives Clarke a majority of 63 without New Zealand First.

Brash starts from a base of 49 and needs 13 to govern. His only certain partner is ACT New Zealand and that leaves him 11 short. Even if Winston Peters, the head of New Zealand First, persuades himself (as he has on past occasions) to support a National Party government Brash is still 4 short and looking for Green support. Even if Brash cobbled together a New Zealand First/Act New Zealnd/United Future New Zealand arrangement he would still need one more MP. Where would he find them? The Greens, the Maori Party and Jim Anderton all stand to Labour's left.

The unicameral New Zealand parliament is elected by the Mixed Member Proportional system used in Germany and other countries. The parliament comprises 63 electorate MPs, 7 Maori MPs and (usually) 51 list MPs. The electorate MPs and Maori MPs are elected in single member districts by first past the post. Every New Zealander gets an electorate vote and a list vote. Maori can decide to enrol in the local electorate of in one of the Maori electorates. The list votes are counted in a single electorate comprising the whole country. The list MPs are elected in proportion to the party's share of the list, but their party has to to either win an electorate or get more than 5% of the national vote. The number of list MPs varies slightly according to the performance of the party in the electorate vote. Any Australian journalist who begins an election report with a complaint about the complexity of the system is only telling you they're too lazy to do any research.

All in all, this looks like a famous victory for Helen Clarke who has almost certainly won a third term as prme minister. I'll update the results tomorrow but I do not expect them to vary much from now.

Update
The comments at John Quiggan include some misguided souls who say the way the NZ parliament is elected is better than STV. I may post some thoughts on MMP v STV tomorrow, after I've tracked down some detail on the German election.

Update 2
At 12:05 am on 18/09/2005 NZ time, the results in terms of numbers of seats had not changed. there are 35000 overseas voters on the roll, and it's not clear from the Electoral Commission website how many of these have been counted. Special votes, by electors not on the roll with a claim to vote, are in the sme situation. 25000 ovrseas votes are unlikely to change this result, but we'll know more tomorrow.

There's been some really bad reporting on Wnston Peters, leader of New Zealand First. Natonal defeated him in his electorate of Tauranga. However, his party won list seats and he is the number 1 candidate for those seats so his election as a list MP is assured.

I'll update again tomorrow when the situation with special and overseas votes should be clearer and I've worked out what the Bundeswahlleiter is reporting in Germany.

the ostrich in the greenhouse

2005-09-16T16:51:00.000+10:00

Warming world blamed for more strong hurricanes

Worldwide since the 1970s, there has been a near-doubling in the number of Category 4 and 5 storms %u2013 the strength that saw Hurricane Katrina do such damage to the US Gulf coastline late in August 2005.

Peter Webster of the Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, says the trend is global, has lasted over several decades and is connected to a steady worldwide increase in tropical sea temperatures. Because of all these factors, it is unlikely to be due to any known natural fluctuations in climate such as El Niño, the North Atlantic Oscillation or the Pacific Decadal Oscillation.

"We can say with confidence that the trends in sea surface temperatures and hurricane intensity are connected to climate change," says Webster's co-author Judy Curry, also of the Georgia Institute of Technology. The team looked at the incidence of intense tropical storms and the study results are the strongest affirmation yet that Katrina-level hurricanes are becoming more frequent in a warmer world.

The study finds there has been no general increase in the total number of hurricanes, which are called cyclones when they appear outside the Atlantic. Nor is there any evidence of the formation of the oft-predicted "super-hurricanes". The worst hurricane in any year is usually no stronger than in previous years during the study period.

But the proportion of hurricanes reaching categories 4 or 5 - with wind speeds above 56 metres per second - has risen from 20% in the 1970s to 35% in the past decade.

"This trend has lasted for more than 30 years now. So the chances of it being natural are fairly remote," says Greg Holland of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) at Boulder, Colorado.

Moreover, says Webster, natural fluctuations tend to be localised. "When the east Pacific warms, the west Pacific cools, for instance. But sea surface temperatures are rising throughout the tropics today." The surface waters in the tropical oceans are now around 0.5C warmer during hurricane seasons than 35 years ago.

The International Panel on Climate Change and Australia's own Greenhouse Office both make certain predictions about what the greenhouse world will be like.

More super-hurricanes? Check. More bushfires? Check. More droughts? Check. Greater intensity in all three? Check. Urgent government action to minimise the harm greenhouse will do the planet? Um...

America's Sorrow

2005-09-09T22:27:00.000+10:00

The Confucian and Daoist parties at the court of the Emperor Han Chengdi debated the best way to control the flooding of the Yellow River, already known to them as China's Sorrow. Although the Daoists, led by Engineer Jiarang, triumphed at a court conference held in 8 BCE, their success was short-lived and by 58 CE the Confucians were using levees to control the floods. The river deposited silt between the levee banks and after some centuries the bed of the river was higher than the surrounding plains. Sadly the US Army Corps of Engineers had no access to the records of the court conference. and the Mississippi suffered the same fate as the Yellow River.

Role of the Yellow River Basin in Chinese Culture and History

This deep connection between Chinese culture, the Yellow River and flood control can be seen in the Legend of Yu. The Great Yu (c. 2,000 BC) was one of the three early, probably mythical, leaders of China and was known for taming the Yellow River floods using a strategy of channel clearing rather than dike construction. While it is unlikely that Yu, or anyone else, successfully controlled Yellow River flooding by any strategy, the story continues to be told, in part because it carries with it the moral analogy that adverse human nature can be better corrected by guidance (clearing a path) than punishment (constructing a barrier). More fundamentally, the channel-clearing versus dike-construction can also be seen as a reflection of a general philosophical debate in river management which has continued in China for more than 2,000 years between Taoists, with their emphasis on letting nature, human or otherwise, follow its own path and Confucianists, with their desire to channel behavior through virtuous moral codes (Needham 1956).4 The dichotomy of approach can still be seen in the modern debates on Yellow River management. In fact, both the historic and modern debates form part of a broader, and in many ways uniquely Chinese approach to river management predating Confucianism and Taoism of using the river to tame itself.

Differences between ideals and practice not withstanding (Rhoades 1967; Tuan 1968; McNeill 1998), the value of recognizing the role of philosophy in Chinese water management, and the role of water management in Chinese philosophy and culture, is not simply for academic exercise. Rather it highlights a more historically robust and broadly defined concept of integrated water management than exists in the West in which concern is placed not only on basic science, engineering and appropriate management units, but also on a philosophical understanding of man and nature. For example, current Yellow River managers approach the problem of environmental requirements with a Chinese perspective of the interrelationship between man and the environment, and so, define environmental water uses differently than may typically be the case elsewhere. In general, the concept, if not the practice, of environmental water use in China can be considered to contain not only the maintenance of biodiversity and natural ecosystem function, as emphasized in the West, but also the maintenance of the landscape as a place for human habitation and livelihood.

Okay, it was an undergraduate epiphany that all politics is about dike building and channel clearing. It is not an undergraduate epiphany that the Mississippi problem is an issue of the human landscape and not just a question of engineering technique.

The Chinese saw flood disasters as a mark of dynastic failure and the inevitable passage of the mandate of Heaven to a new dynasty. At one level this is just folklore about the anger of Heaven. On the other hand, a failing dynasty usually lost so much revenue to the aristocracy and to corruption they could not maintain the levees. Mengzi argued that: 'Bad rulers suffer not because they get worse weather but because they do not deal properly with the weather they get. A discussion with King Hui of Liang illustrates Mengzi’s view. The king describes how if the year is bad in a certain area, he moves the people elsewhere and he sends grain to the affected area. In spite of this, his people do not increase, and the king complains that Mengzi’s advice – that if you are virtuous your kingdom will benefit – is false. Mengzi responds by saying the king is not good enough, and that praising himself over other rulers is like a deserting soldier who laughs at those who run a little further away. Mengzi affirms the connection between virtue and reward by claiming the king is not virtuous and thus not rewarded.' and wrote:

Dogs and pigs eat the food of people, but you do not realize it is time for gathering, and when men drop dead from starvation by the wayside, you fail to realize that it is time for distribution. People die from starvation on the roads, and you do not issue the stores for them. People die and you say, “It’s not me; it’s the year.” In what way is that different from killing a man by stabbing him, and then saying, “It’s not me; it’s the weapon?

Too Many People in Nature's Way

The more advanced the nations, the bigger the blow may be. Terry Jeggle, a U.N. disaster-reduction planner, cites the New Orleans levee system -- dependent on pumps that run on electricity produced by fuel that must be transported in. One failure will lead to another along that chain.

"Complex systems invite compounding of complexity in consequences, too," said the Geneva-based Jeggle.

Experts fear more is to come.

The scientific consensus expects global warming to intensify storms, floods, heat waves and drought. Climatologists are still researching whether climate change has already strengthened hurricanes, whose energy is drawn from warm ocean waters, or whether the Atlantic Basin and Gulf are witnessing only a cyclical upsurge in intense storms. Computer models of climate change in the decades to come point to more devastating Category 5 storms.

The prospect of more vulnerable populations on a more turbulent Earth has U.N. officials and other advocates pressuring governments to plan and prepare. They cite examples of poorer nations that in ways do a better job than the rich:

No one was reported killed when Ivan struck Cuba in 2004, its worst hurricane in 50 years and a storm that, after weakening, killed 25 people in the United States. Cuba's warning-evacuation system is minutely planned, even down to neighborhood workers keeping updated charts on which residents need help during evacuations.

Along Bangladesh's cyclone coast, 33,000 well-organized volunteers stand ready to shepherd neighbors to raised concrete shelters at the approach of one of the Bay of Bengal's vicious storms.

In 2002, Jamaica conducted a full-scale evacuation rehearsal in a low-lying suburb of coastal Kingston, and fine-tuned plans afterward. When Ivan's 20-foot surge destroyed hundreds of homes two years later, only eight people died. Ordinary Jamaicans also are taught search-and-rescue methods and towns at risk have trained flood-alert teams.

A couple of memes are floating down the river of spin pouring out the White House in an apparent attempt to dam a flood of water with a flood of words. The Bush administration's performance does not compare favourably with much less advanced nations. Only last month, China successfully evacuated almost a million people in the face of Typhoon Talim. The nonsense, since disproven, that Louisiana's governor did not declare a state of emergency or request federal help is disproven. The President, Secretary of Homeland Security Chertoff and Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Brown were all warned by the National Hurricane Center well before Katrina's landfall. Why the relief effort was bungled matters, because it will control how the relief effort, and beyond it the reconstruction effort is executed. The only interesting question is why, if the White House has a true excuse, they have resorted to infantile and risible lies.

The White House is now pushing a particularly disastrous idea that FEMA should manage the reconstruction.

Talking Points Memo

Even if FEMA were still a model government agency, as it was by most accounts in the 1990s, this would still be a really, really bad decision. As the title says, FEMA is an emergency management agency, not a reconstruction agency. It doesn't have the organizational structure or competence to run the economy of a significant chunk of the United States for the foreseeable future, which is what this amounts to.

Failed leaders pushing a failed policy through a failed agency, and hoping failed lies will hide their failure.

God blew and they were scattered

2005-09-07T04:04:00.000+10:00

Letters from Voltaire, 24 November 1755, describing the great Lisbon earthquake

This is indeed a cruel piece of natural philosophy! We shall find it difficult to discover how the laws of movement operate in such fearful disasters in the best of all possible worlds-- where a hundred thousand ants, our neighbours, are crushed in a second on our ant-heaps, half, dying undoubtedly in inexpressible agonies, beneath débris from which it was impossible to extricate them, families all over Europe reduced to beggary, and the fortunes of a hundred merchants -- Swiss, like yourself -- swallowed up in the ruins of Lisbon. What a game of chance human life is! What will the preachers say -- especially if the Palace of the Inquisition is left standing! I flatter myself that those reverend fathers, the Inquisitors, will have been crushed just like other people. That ought to teach men not to persecute men: for, while a few sanctimonious humbugs are burning a few fanatics, the earth opens and swallows up all alike. I believe it is our mountains which save us from earthquakes.

Personally, I suspect God wanted to encourage the Enlightenment so he flattened Lisbon in order to seed Europe with disbelief.

Boiling Over

Apart from what it revealed of human depravity, Mr. Barry says, the flood of 1927 changed America. It put Herbert Hoover in the White House, even while his duplicity in dealing with blacks helped begin the shift of black voters from the Republicans to the Democrats. It inspired Congress to pass a law putting responsibility for the Mississippi in Federal hands, making it easier for both Congress and the public to accept an even larger Federal presence during the New Deal years. And the pressures the flood brought to bear on the delicate racial fabric of the Deep South caused tears that could never be mended.

Altogether, then, ''Rising Tide'' stands not only as a powerful story of disaster but as an accomplished and important social history, magisterial in its scope and fiercely dedicated to unearthing truth. What the book doesn't do, doesn't intend to do, is to give us much reason to think that humans are ever going to control the river for any length of time (as the floods of 1993 demonstrated once again). The river's power is too great and our dreaming too small (and perhaps too ignoble) seriously to impede the course of what Mark Twain called ''the great Mississippi, the majestic, the magnificent Mississippi rolling its mile-wide tide along.

Octavio Paz on the politics of the 1985 Mexico City earthquake

One of the most significant results of the [1085] earthquake was autonomous action outside of the PRI and the government.

We are in the process of a transformation that began in 1968 with the student revolt. While the student revolt was a leftist revolt, its main demand was welcomed by the Mexican public: democratization.

That revolt instigated the Echeverria 'apertura,' the Lopez-Portillo political reforms and now De La Madrid's proposed changes for more seats in the legislature for the opposition parties. I wrote in 1968 that either we are going to have serious upheavals or we are going to move toward a more modern democracy. Although the effort is too slow for me, I am happy to say that democratization is happening, little by little. We are on the verge of change.

One of the great obstacles to democratic progress in the past has been the weakness of the opposition parties. Now we have
a new phenomenon in Mexico: the democratic right is more powerful than ever before, mainly in the north.

Apocalypse in the USA

The rest of America has rallied. Despite the Lone Ranger rhetoric of freedom, amazing reserves of solidarity bind US society. It starts with neighbourliness, swells into civic pride, and becomes patriotism. My university opened its classes to students displaced from the Gulf Coast, helping to lead a similar movement around the nation. Schools where refugees have taken shelter have done the same. Disaster relief has become a national, rather than a federal, effort. The government is outdone, engulfed and isolated by a wave of sympathy for fellow citizens in distress.

Regional authorities in the Mississippi Delta who failed to foresee the tragedy are, for the moment, escaping most of the resentment. Governor Hailey Barber of Mississippi disarmingly confesses failure while wanting to make up for it. His popular touch comes naturally, where the President's always seems scripted. People believe Mr Barber when he promises that "we're gonna hitch up our britches". Mr Bush, meanwhile, keeps promising a better future, when what the victims want is present relief. His uneasy optimism seems reflected in the gleaming eyes of fat-cat friends, already prowling around for prospective reconstruction contracts.

When the terrorists struck on 9/11, Mr Bush could make any number of mistakes, and still gain in popularity, because there were aliens on hand to hate. He could launch and mismanage wars with impunity, counting on the electorate's fidelity in the face of the foe.

This time Mr Bush cannot rail against God or, with his environmental record, make an enemy of nature. He cannot bomb the sea or invade the wind. God and nature are on the same side; and they no longer look like America's coalition partners. Even in the context of a natural occurrence, where there is no real enemy, people still need to hate and long for vengeance. Slowly, inexorably, with a chilling uniformity, the accusing gazes are focusing on the White House.

Bush could lie his way into Iraq because it is far away and little understood. When he brought the big lie home and tried to privatise social security he was arguing against his own supporters' direct experience and the spin did not work so well. When Spin does not sway the Fox network, the Bush administration, in his father's immortal phrase, is in deep doodoo. Historical crises destroy, they do not strengthen, rulers. Historical crises where the relief effort is a manifest failure can bring down entire elites. Robert Frost said it a lot better than I'm ever going to:

The Flood
Blood has been harder to dam back than water.
Just when we think we have it impounded safe
Behind new barrier walls (and let it chafe!),
It breaks away in some new kind of slaughter.
We choose to say it is let loose by the devil;
But power of blood itself releases blood.
It goes by might of being such a flood
Held high at so unnatural a level.
It will have outlet, brave and not so brave.
weapons of war and implements of peace
Are but the points at which it finds release.
And now it is once more the tidal wave
That when it has swept by leaves summits stained.
Oh, blood will out. It cannot be contained.

The death toll will be horrendous and there is not going to be any way to prevent comparison with other hurricanes and other disasters unnecessarily. In particular, the death toll of those who died unnecessarily, because the relief effort moved so slowly, will take more than cute word tricks like Bush condemning an effort he headed and directed. Blood will out.

transit of Greenwich

2005-09-02T01:25:00.000+10:00

Tick-tock goes the atomic clock

Australia's clocks officially go atomic from today.New national laws, which come into effect from 1 September 2005, have moved Australia to a new time standard based on the super-accurate atomic clock.

The system, known as co-ordinated universal time (UTC), replaces Greenwich Mean Time (GMT).

GMT is based on the average time it takes the Earth to rotate on its axis from noon to noon, a standard that is becoming increasingly unsatisfactory as more sophisticated technology demands more miniscule units of time.

UTC is based on the vibration of caesium atoms as a pendulum, which make it accurate to a nanosecond, or a billionth of a second. Because the Earth's rotation is relatively imprecise, GMT can be out by several thousandths of a second, and can be affected by tides, currents in the Earth's molten core, seasonal change or major tectonic movements.

Irregularities can have implications for global positioning, high-speed computing, astronomers, security networks and electronic transaction time records.

The move to UTC brings Australia in line with New Zealand, Singapore, some US states and most of the European Union.

Losing GMT cuts us off from one part of our history. Timekeeping brought the British empire into the Pacific.

Transactions of the Royal Society

1768, with the rank of lieutenant, he [James Cook] was appointed to the command of the Endeavour, accompanied by Mr. Green, astronomer, to observe the transit of Venus at Otaheite, in the South Seas; and an account of their observations on that occasion is given in the article above. Along with them also sailed Mr., now Sir Joseph Banks, and Dr. Solander. After the transit was discovered, Mr. Cook sailed on a voyage of discovery, in which he discovered and visited a number of new lands; as the Society Islands, New Zealand, Nevis Holland, Botany Bay, &c. In June, 17, 1771, he arrived in England, and was appointed a commander in the navy, an account of the voyage being published by Dr. Hawksworth.

James Cook and the transt of Venus

The size of the solar system was one of the chief puzzles of 18th century science, much as the nature of dark matter and dark energy are today. In Cook's time astronomers knew that six planets orbited the sun (Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto hadn't been discovered yet), and they knew the relative spacing of those planets. Jupiter, for instance, is 5 times farther from the Sun than Earth. But how far is that … in miles? The absolute distances were unknown.

Venus was the key. Edmund Halley realized this in 1716. As seen from Earth, Venus occasionally crosses the face of the Sun. It looks like a jet-black disk slowly gliding among the Sun's true sunspots. By noting the start- and stop-times of the transit from widely spaced locations on Earth, Halley reasoned, astronomers could calculate the distance to Venus using the principles of parallax. The scale of the rest of the solar system would follow.

But there was a problem. Transits of Venus are rare. They come in pairs, 8 years apart, separated by approximately 120 years. Halley himself would never live to see one. An international team did try to time a Venus transit in 1761, but weather and other factors spoiled most of their data. If Cook and others failed in 1769, every astronomer on Earth would be dead before the next opportunity in 1874.

On his way back to London from Tahiti, Cook discovered and claimed the east coast of New Holland and the rest is, as they say, history.

Montreal Convention succeeds

2005-09-02T00:48:00.000+10:00

Changes In Ozone Layer Offer Hope For Improvement, Says Team Of Scientists

Analysis of several different satellite records and surface monitoring instruments indicates that the ozone layer is no longer declining, according to a study by scientists working with the Center for Integrating Statistical and Environmental Science (CISES) at the University of Chicago.

In some parts of the world, the ozone layer has increased a small amount in the past few years, although it still well below normal levels.

The results will be published Aug. 31 in the Journal of Geophysical Research and follow 18 years after an international agreement, the Montreal Protocol, was established to limit the production of chemicals determined to be harmful to the atmosphere.

The work, funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency, is a collaboration between atmospheric scientists and statisticians through CISES. "The work of this team of scientists and statisticians is widely recognized as some of the most authoritative in the statistical analysis of stratospheric ozone," said Michael Stein, director of CISES at the University of Chicago.

"These early signs indicate one of the strongest success stories of international cooperation in the face of an environmental threat," said retired Navy Vice Adm. Conrad C. Lautenbacher, Ph.D., undersecretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere and NOAA administrator.

For the past few years, studies have focused on ozone declining in the topmost layer of the atmosphere where there is naturally very little ozone. However, this study addresses the total ozone column layer that has significant impact on how much ultraviolet radiation is coming through the atmosphere, said Betsy Weatherhead of the University of Colorado.

"Our work focuses on the thickness of the ozone layer and is therefore relevant to the amount of harmful ultraviolet (UV) radiation reaching the surface of the Earth," said Weatherhead, a co-author on the paper.

The Montreal Convention worked. We will never know if the Kyoto Convention could work just as well because Australia and the US refused to ratify Kyoto.

Seven finds a way to exploit Katrina

2005-09-01T23:38:00.000+10:00

Unbefuckinglievable! The Seven Network is showing imagery of flooded cities and fallen oil rigs to advertise Oil Storm for prime time Sunday 11 September.

Hurricane Katrina

2005-08-29T17:40:00.000+10:00

Monstrous Hurricane Heads for New Orleans

For years, forecasters have warned of the nightmare flooding a big storm could bring to New Orleans, a bowl-shaped city bounded by the half-mile-wide Mississippi River and massive Lake Pontchartrain.

As much as 10 feet below sea level in spots, the city is as the mercy of a network of levees, canals and pumps to keep dry.
Scientists predicted Katrina could easily overtake that levee system, swamping the city under a 30-feet cesspool of toxic chemicals, human waste and even coffins that could leave more than 1 million people homeless.

"All indications are that this is absolutely worst-case scenario," Ivor van Heerden, deputy director of the Louisiana State University Hurricane Center, said Sunday afternoon.
Jefferson Parish President Aaron Broussard said some who have ridden out previous storms in the New Orleans area may not be so lucky this time.

"I'm expecting that some people who are die-hards will die hard," he said.

For those who were evacuated, it wasn't an easy trip. Traffic backed up bumper-to-bumper on many highways. Three nursing home being bused to a Baton Rouge church died, one aboard the bus, another at the church and the third at hospital, the local coroner said Sunday.

"These folks are pretty fragile when they're put on these buses," said Don Moreau, of the East Baton Rouge Parish Coroner's Office.

Katrina was a Category 1 storm with 80-mph wind when it hit South Florida with a soggy punch Thursday that flooded neighborhoods and left nine people dead. It strengthened rapidly in the Gulf of Mexico as it headed for New Orleans.
By 1 a.m. EDT, Katrina's eye was about 90 miles south-southwest of the mouth of the Mississippi River and 150 miles south-southeast of New Orleans. The storm was moving toward the north-northwest at about 10 mph and was expected to turn toward the north. A hurricane warning was in effect for the north-central Gulf Coast from Morgan City, La., to the Alabama-Florida line."

The US National Weather Service states:

DEVASTATING DAMAGE EXPECTED

AT LEAST ONE HALF OF WELL CONSTRUCTED HOMES WILL HAVE ROOF AND WALL
FAILURE. ALL GABLED ROOFS WILL FAIL...LEAVING THOSE HOMES SEVERELY
DAMAGED OR DESTROYED.

THE MAJORITY OF INDUSTRIAL BUILDINGS WILL BECOME NON FUNCTIONAL.
PARTIAL TO COMPLETE WALL AND ROOF FAILURE IS EXPECTED. MANY WOOD
FRAMED LOW RISING APARTMENT BUILDINGS WILL BE DESTROYED. CONCRETE
BLOCK LOW RISE APARTMENTS WILL SUSTAIN MAJOR DAMAGE...INCLUDING SOME
WALL AND ROOF FAILURE.

HIGH RISE OFFICE AND APARTMENT BUILDINGS WILL SWAY DANGEROUSLY...A
FEW POSSIBLY TO THE POINT OF TOTAL COLLAPSE. MANY WINDOWS WILL BLOW
OUT.

AIRBORNE DEBRIS WILL BE WIDESPREAD...AND MAY INCLUDE HEAVY ITEMS SUCH
AS HOUSEHOLD APPLIANCES AND EVEN LIGHT VEHICLES. SPORT UTILITY
VEHICLES AND LIGHT TRUCKS WILL BE MOVED. THE BLOWN DEBRIS WILL CREATE
ADDITIONAL DESTRUCTION. PERSONS...PETS...AND LIVESTOCK EXPOSED TO THE
WINDS WILL FACE CERTAIN DEATH IF STRUCK.

POWER OUTAGES MAY LAST FOR WEEKS...AS MANY POWER POLES WILL BE DOWN
AND TRANSFORMERS DESTROYED. WATER SHORTAGES WILL MAKE HUMAN SUFFERING
INCREDIBLE BY MODERN STANDARDS.

THE VAST MAJORITY OF NATIVE TREES WILL BE SNAPPED OR UPROOTED. ONLY
THE HEARTIEST WILL REMAIN STANDING...BUT BE TOTALLY DEFOLIATED.

In harm's way

Hurricanes are a common heritage for Louisiana residents, who until the past few decades had little choice in facing a hurricane but to ride it out and pray.

Today, billions of dollars worth of levees, sea walls, pumping systems and satellite hurricane tracking provide a comforting safety margin that has saved thousands of lives.

But modern technology and engineering mask an alarming fact: In the generations since those storms menaced Champagne's ancestors, south Louisiana has been growing more vulnerable to hurricanes, not less.

Sinking land and chronic coastal erosion — in part the unintended byproducts of flood-protection efforts — have opened dangerous new avenues for even relatively weak hurricanes and tropical storms to assault areas well inland.

"There's no doubt about it," said Windell Curole, general manager of the South Lafourche Levee District, who maintains a hurricane levee that encircles Bayou Lafourche from Larose to the southern tip of Golden Meadow. "The biggest factor in hurricane risk is land loss. The Gulf of Mexico is, in effect, probably 20 miles closer to us than it was in 1965 when Hurricane Betsy hit."

These trends are the source of a complex and growing threat to everyone living in south Louisiana and to the regional economy and culture:

The combination of sinking land and rising seas has put the Mississippi River delta as much as 3 feet lower relative to sea level than it was a century ago, and the process continues. That means hurricane floods driven inland from the Gulf have risen by corresponding amounts. Storms that once would not have had much impact can now be devastating events, and flooding penetrates to places where it rarely occurred before. The problem also is slowly eroding levee protection, cutting off evacuation routes sooner and putting dozens of communities and valuable infrastructure at risk of being wiped off the map.

Coastal erosion has shaved barrier islands to slivers and turned marshland to open water, opening the way for hurricane winds and flooding to move inland. Hurricanes draw their strength from the sea, so they quickly weaken and begin to dissipate when they make landfall. Hurricanes moving over fragmenting marshes toward the New Orleans area can retain more strength, and their winds and large waves pack more speed and destructive power.

Though protected by levees designed to withstand the most common storms, New Orleans is surrounded by water and is well below sea level at many points. A flood from a powerful hurricane can get trapped for weeks inside the levee system. Emergency officials concede that many of the structures in the area, including newer high-rise buildings, would not survive the winds of a major storm.

The large size of the area at risk also makes it difficult to evacuate the million or more people who live in the area, putting tens of thousands of people at risk of dying even with improved forecasting and warnings. The American Red Cross will not put emergency shelters in the area because it does not want to put volunteers or evacuees in danger.

The Army Corps of Engineers says the chance of New Orleans-area levees being topped is remote, but admits the estimate is based on 40-year-old calculations. An independent analysis based on updated data and computer modeling done for The Times-Picayune suggests the risk to some areas, including St. Bernard and St. Charles parishes and eastern New Orleans, may be greater than the corps estimates. Corps officials say the agency is studying the problem with an updated model.
It all adds up to a daunting set of long-term economic, engineering and political challenges just to maintain the status quo. Higher levees, a massive coastal-restoration program and even a huge wall across New Orleans are all being proposed. Without extraordinary measures, key ports, oil and gas production, one of the nation's most important fisheries, the unique bayou culture, the historic French Quarter and more are at risk of being swept away in a catastrophic hurricane or worn down by smaller ones.

Why did no-one listen?

"Prescience sucks." So a very wise person told me yesterday, in reference to my three month old piece (now much cited, of course) about the catastrophe that could befall New Orleans from a direct Cat4 or 5 hurricane strike. I must say, I agree whole-heartedly with this individual's assessment.

But if prescience sucks, the lack of reasonable foresight is a far, far worse flaw. And I think that at least in part, the tragedy now playing itself out must be blamed on this very human shortcoming. Let me explain.

In writing my own piece about New Orleans' vulnerability I interviewed, among others, LSU hurricane expert Ivor van Heerden, one of many scientists who has been thinking about this disaster-waiting-to-happen. When you talk to van Heerden, he tends to put things in very stark terms. He has been doing so for years.

Now, even CNN has finally gotten around to talking to van Heerden, in the process of spinning out worst case scenarios for New Orleans. Here's what the scientist says:

"This is what we've been saying has been going to happen for years," he said. "Unfortunately, it's coming true."

It is tragic, truly tragic, that someone like van Heerden now has to say, "I told you so." But the fact is that he did tell us so, and so did many others.

As always, Wikipedia is the best place to go for updates. Beyond feeling for the people of New Orleans, we really need to find out not what else out there are we ignoring in the same way. President Bush remains on vacation.

the Habsbush empire?

2005-08-28T23:59:00.000+10:00

Chapter 2: A History of Spain and Portugal

There are certain intriguing parallels between the circumstances and historical patterns of tenth-century Al-Andalus and sixteenth-century Spain. Both empires were launched, as is customarily the case with expansionist systems, before their respective societies had reached their fullest cultural development. Both emphasized imperial expansion and foreign issues to the detriment of internal problems. Neither achieved a fully integrated civic entity: the Umayyad caliphate was not effectively integrated, and the Habsburg monarchy was pluralistic, revealing centrifugal tendencies. Both strongly emphasized religious issues in mobilizing for expansion; religious orthodoxy was later stressed by both in their periods of political decline. The renewed assertion of reorganized military power marked the last generation of strong government and the prelude to civic decline (compare al-Mansur and Olivares). The full flowering of Andalusi culture came after the collapse of the caliphate; that of Habsburg Spain, at least in esthetics, after the apogee of politico-military power under Felipe II. A major difference between the two was that the economic prosperity of Al-Andalus survived the passing of the caliphate. Seventeenth-century Spain exhausted its economy in war; the Muslim taifas never organized the military strength that their economies could have supported.

The precedent is not exact, but then it never is. Comparisons between George Bush and Felipe II are not unknown in the Spanish-speaking world. If anything the Habsbush project is even more hapless than Habsburg Spain. The Habsburgs never made it their business to occupy a country in order to hand it over to a Habsburg enemy.

ABC calls a spade a pick axe

2005-08-23T16:33:00.000+10:00

DFAT defends efforts to help Aussie jailed in Fiji. 23/08/2005. ABC News Online

The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) is rejecting claims it is doing nothing to help a man from Warrnambool, in Victoria, being held in Fiji on gay sex crimes.

Thomas McCusker is serving two years for charges relating to homosexual acts, after he had a relationship with a Fijian man whilst holidaying in the country.

Under Fijian law, sex between two men is illegal.

I would have thought it's quite a long way from consenting sex to the schlock horror phrase 'gay sex crimes'. Almost as far, in fact, as the treatment of Schappelle Corby who is charged with acts that actually are crimes under Australian law, as pposed to McCusker, who would be innoncent under Australian law.

As a passionae promoter of good governance in the Pacific, Jhn Howard could be expected to passinately promote observance of Section 38 of the Fiji Constution:

(2) A person must not be unfairly discriminated against, directly or indirectly, on the ground of his or her:
(a) actual or supposed personal characteristics or circumstances, including race, ethnic origin, colour, place of origin, gender, sexual orientation, birth, primary language, economic status, age or disability; or

Washington rorted the ISG interim report

2005-08-20T10:57:00.000+10:00

The Bush administration has justified the greatest intelligence failure of modern times by blaming it the intelligence bureaucracy for misleading intelligence. Bush came into office committed (if not publicly) to invading Iraq. He demanded intelligence from the CIA and other US security agencies. They gave him intelligence which supported his policy. Mysteriously, Bush is now horrified that they gave him in the intelligence he wanted. The Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade has now dealt with the issue of what Australia knew and when we knew it.

As usual, information known to the Departments of Defence and Foreign Affairs mysteriously failed to reach any minister. They really should beef up their management skills. After all, it's not as though the Howard government would have objected to being told about US efforts to interfere with the ISG report. The Man of Steel would certainly have mounted the nearest pig and flown to Washington to make an immediate protest.

Iraq really seems to have generated an unusual level of mysterious failures.

4.7 Mr Barton explained that the external pressure being applied on the team was to prepare a report that did not honestly reflect the evidence they had gathered—that matters were not to be included in the report because they were 'too politically difficult'.5 He told the Committee:

I was responsible for the coordination and oversight of the March report. It was circulated to capitals for comment, and I received feedback from Washington, London and Canberra. The comments from Canberra were constructive and largely editorial and caused me no difficulty. London, however, suggested that we add certain material. I believe these additions were designed to leave the impression that WMD might yet be found. This would have been contrary to our views. The CIA also sent suggested amendments. Many of these were quite useful, but there were two amendments that were blatant attempts to change our findings.

To the credit of Charles Duelfer, the head of the ISG, these attempts at changing the nature of the report were rejected. Nevertheless, it was still a poor report in that it did not say what by this time we knew… In my view the report was symptomatic of a wider malaise in the ISG. At that time there was no real objectivity in the investigation and it seemed to me that a lot of the direction, particularly in the chemical and biological areas, was coming from Washington.6

Barton was one of several protest resignations over US interference in the interim report. We are asked to believe that the resigning officers did not tell the government why they were resigning. The committee found:

4.28 In addressing the terms of reference, the committee is unable to find sufficiently strong evidence to suggest that the ISG was unable to report frankly and fearlessly on what they had found. Mr Barton's evidence indicates that there were attempts to influence the ISG but there is no corroborating evidence.

4.29 From the evidence, it is clear that Mr Barton and Dr Gee discussed their concerns about the work of the ISG with the Australian Representative and Mr Quinn in Baghdad. Evidence also shows that Mr Barton raised concerns about the function of the ISG and its March report with government officials on his return to Australia in March 2004.

4.30 According to the evidence, it is likely that Dr Gee may also have alerted officials to similar concerns on his return a few weeks earlier. Dr Gee would not appear before the committee to confirm, deny or comment on Mr Barton's claims and would not provide the committee with a copy of his letter of resignation which allegedly referred to his dissatisfaction with the influence being exerted on the ISG. Government officials similarly refused to comment on Dr Gee's letter of resignation or on the meetings held between Dr Gee and the Minister for Foreign Affairs and between Mr Gee and the Secretary of Defence and other officials regarding his letter of resignation.

4.31 It is unclear how the Department of Defence or the Department of Foreign Affairs responded to information provided to them suggesting that influence was exerted on the ISG when preparing its March report. The silence from both departments indicates that there was no follow–up.

Just another footnote to the strange history of how the Global War on Terror mysteriously turned into the Global War to establish an Islamic Republic of Iraq.

star names

2005-08-20T08:30:00.000+10:00

Alun (great name, pity about the U) is serialising Star names and their meanings, a learned tome from 1899. I started reading because my favourite cousin has the good luck, or whatever, to be named after Alpha Scorpii. On the other hand, if I hadn't found it I'd be missing out on vital knowledge like:

In the year 1252 Europe resumed its old position in astronomical work by the compilation of Los Libros del Saber de Astron0mia, the celebrated Alfonsine Tables, by Arabian or Moorish astronomers, at Toledo, under the patronage of the Infante, afterward King Alfonso X, El Sabio, the Wise, and the Astronomer, of Leon and Castile, who” abandoned the crown for the astrolabe and forgot the earth for the sky.”

These Tables and their Latin translations are strongly Arabicized, as plainly appears in our modem star-titles drawn from them; while the whole work is in the main only copied from Ptolemy with some necessary correc tions. But it probably fairly represents the science of the Middle Ages, and was in use until at least the 16th century; for Eden,[2] in 1555, quoted from Gemma Phrysius’ On the Maner of Fyndynge the Longitude: ” Then eyther by the Ephemerides or by the tables of Alphonsus . . .” Various editions have been printed: the first in 1483, two hundred years after Alfonso’s death; again, in 1492 and 1521, all at Venice and in Latin; in 1545 at Paris; in 1641 at Madrid; and, lastly, splendidly reproduced there in 1863 -1867, in the earliest accessible Spanish text, with illustrations, supposed copies of the original.

It was this Alfonso who has so often been condemned for his remark:

Had I been present at the Creation, I would have given some useful hints for the better ordering of the universe;

but as he was speaking of the absurd Ptolemaic system, it does not seem so irreverent now as it did before Copernicus’ day. Carlyle quoted it in his History of Friedrich II of Prussia,

that it seemed a crank machine; that it was pity the Creator had not taken advice!

and said that this, and this only, of his many wise sayings is still remembered by mankind.

a warm day in Siberia

2005-08-12T13:34:00.000+10:00

Climate warning as Siberia melts

The world's largest frozen peat bog is melting. An area stretching for a million square kilometres across the permafrost of western Siberia is turning into a mass of shallow lakes as the ground melts, according to Russian researchers just back from the region.

The sudden melting of a bog the size of France and Germany combined could unleash billions of tonnes of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere.

The news of the dramatic transformation of one of the world's least visited landscapes comes from Sergei Kirpotin, a botanist at Tomsk State University, Russia, and Judith Marquand at the University of Oxford.

Kirpotin describes an 'ecological landslide that is probably irreversible and is undoubtedly connected to climatic warming'. He says that the entire western Siberian sub-Arctic region has begun to melt, and this 'has all happened in the last three or four years'.

What was until recently a featureless expanse of frozen peat is turning into a watery landscape of lakes, some more than a kilometre across. Kirpotin suspects that some unknown critical threshold has been crossed, triggering the melting.

Western Siberia has warmed faster than almost anywhere else on the planet, with an increase in average temperatures of some 3 degrees C in the last 40 years. The warming is believed to be a combination of man-made climate change, a cyclical change in atmospheric circulation known as the Arctic oscillation, plus feedbacks caused by melting ice, which exposes bare ground and ocean. These absorb more solar heat than white ice and snow.

Similar warming has also been taking place in Alaska: earlier this summer Jon Pelletier of the University of Arizona in Tucson reported a major expansion of lakes on the North Slope fringing the Arctic Ocean.

The Climate of Man

Traditionally, the men in Shishmaref hunted for seals by driving out over the sea ice with dogsleds or, more recently, on snowmobiles. After they hauled the seals back to the village, the women would skin and cure them, a process that takes several weeks. In the early nineteen-nineties, the hunters began to notice that the sea ice was changing. (Although the claim that the Eskimos have hundreds of words for snow is an exaggeration, the Inupiat make distinctions among many different types of ice, including sikuliaq, 'young ice,' sarri, 'pack ice,' and tuvaq, 'landlocked ice.') The ice was starting to form later in the fall, and also to break up earlier in the spring. Once, it had been possible to drive out twenty miles; now, by the time the seals arrived, the ice was mushy half that distance from shore. Weyiouanna described it as having the consistency of a 'slush puppy.' When you encounter it, he said, 'your hair starts sticking up. Your eyes are wide open. You can't even blink.' It became too dangerous to hunt using snowmobiles, and the men switched to boats.

Soon, the changes in the sea ice brought other problems. At its highest point, Shishmaref is only twenty-two feet above sea level, and the houses, many built by the U.S. government, are small, boxy, and not particularly sturdy-looking. When the Chukchi Sea froze early, the layer of ice protected the village, the way a tarp prevents a swimming pool from getting roiled by the wind. When the sea started to freeze later, Shishmaref became more vulnerable to storm surges. A storm in October, 1997, scoured away a hundred-and-twenty-five-foot-wide strip from the town's northern edge; several houses were destroyed, and more than a dozen had to be relocated. During another storm, in October, 2001, the village was threatened by twelve-foot waves. In the summer of 2002, residents of Shishmaref voted, a hundred and sixty-one to twenty, to move the entire village to the mainland. Last year, the federal government completed a survey of possible sites for a new village. Most of the spots that are being considered are in areas nearly as remote as Sarichef, with no roads or nearby cities, or even settlements. It is estimated that a full relocation will cost at least a hundred and eighty million dollars.

People I spoke to in Shishmaref expressed divided emotions about the proposed move. Some worried that, by leaving the tiny island, they would give up their connection to the sea and become lost. 'It makes me feel lonely,' one woman said. Others seemed excited by the prospect of gaining certain conveniences, like running water, that Shishmaref lacks. Everyone seemed to agree, though, that the village's situation, already dire, was likely only to get worse.

US: climate deal complements Kyoto

US today insisted that its surprise announcement last night of a new pact over clean energy technologies with other five countries was not a threat to the Kyoto emissions treaty.

A deal between the US, Australia, China, India, South Korea and Japan was announced late yesterday in a statement by the US president, George Bush. The news prompted widespread surprise - not least in Downing Street.

Details of what the pact involves were still sketchy today but its explicit aim was to promote the invention and sale of technologies ranging from "clean coal" and wind power to next-generation nuclear fission with the aim of reducing pollution and addressing climate concerns.

The announcement of the New Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate received a mixed reaction, alarming many environmentalists. Critics noted that the partnership, which apparently comes after a year of secret talks, is not binding and sets no targets for reducing pollution.

By contrast the Kyoto protocol, signed by 140 countries to cut emissions of carbon dioxide, which experts believe contribute to global warming, is legally binding.

Some time, hopefully quite soon, alleged conservatives, whose real position is that the market rules everything by magic, are going to have to confront real tipping points, not the shibboleths they keep announcing as sure signs of victory in the Iraq side-show. The balance sheets are going to look fairly grim as these positive feedbacks, which the UN Clmate Change Panel has not yet incorporated into its models, start kicking in. The going rate on a wrecked planet is fairly steep. The Bush administration is extremely good at announcing these US-led initiatives. Actually doing something is less their style.

cosmic beatup

2005-07-04T09:58:00.000+10:00

Charles Sturt University has a video feed of the Deep Impact Nasa/ESA mission. The plan is to bang a heavy projectile into a comet and force it to give up the secrets of its interior.

Ask not for whom the turd blossoms...

2005-07-03T04:44:00.000+10:00

MSNBC Analyst Says 2nd Source Confirms Karl Rove as Plame Leaker

'I revealed in yesterday's taping of the McLaughlin Group that Time magazine's e-mails will reveal that Karl Rove was Matt Cooper's source. I have known this for months but didn't want to say it at a time that would risk me getting dragged into the grand jury.

'McLaughlin is seen in some markets on Friday night, so some websites have picked it up, including Drudge, but I don't expect it to have much impact because McLaughlin is not considered a news show and it will be pre-empted in the big markets on Sunday because of tennis.

'Since I revealed the big scoop, I have had it reconfirmed by yet another highly authoritative source. Too many people know this. It should break wide open this week. I know Newsweek is working on an 'It's Rove!' story and will probably break it tomorrow.'

If it gets confirmed this is going to generate a blogquake. Karl Rove, also known as Bush's Brain, is the second most powerful figure (after Dick Cheney) in the US administration. His loss is going to be a crippling political blow. I expect RSS feeds to melt down within the next 11 seconds or so.

The Martians are us

2005-07-02T10:32:00.000+10:00

The War of the Worlds: Book 1, Chapter 1, The Eve of the War

And before we judge of them too harshly we must remember what ruthless and utter destruction our own species has wrought, not only upon animals, such as the vanished bison and the dodo, but upon its inferior races. The Tasmanians, in spite of their human likeness, were entirely swept out of existence in a war of extermination waged by European immigrants, in the space of fifty years. Are we such
apostles of mercy as to complain if the Martians warred in the same spirit?

Somewhere between the ads and the final credits, it's probably worth remembering that the Tasmanian genocide provided one of the models for HG Wells' Martians.

more perfect unions

2005-07-01T17:10:00.000+10:00

Spanish MPs legalise gay marriage

The Spanish parliament voted yesterday to legalise gay marriage despite protests by Roman Catholic clergy and conservative groups. Spain is now one of only four countries in the world that grant gay couples the same status as heterosexuals, and is the only traditionally Catholic country to do so. It joins the Netherlands, Belgium and Canada, which approved gay marriage on Wednesday. 'Today Spain is a more decent country, because a decent society is one that does not humiliate its members,' the prime minister, Jos�Luis Zapatero, told parliament after the 187-147 vote, which was followed by loud applause, hugs and tears of joy by gay activists.

'This law will not engender evil,' he continued, referring to church opposition, 'it will save human suffering'.

Canada approves gay marriage

Canada last night became the third country in the world to approve gay marriages when MPs passed a historic bill granting same-sex couples equal rights to those in traditional marriages.

The bill was passed by the Canadian House of Commons despite strong opposition from religious leaders and conservative MPs.

Gay marriage is already legal in seven provinces in Canada, but the new legislation grants same-sex couples the same legal rights as heterosexual couples nationwide. The Netherlands and Belgium are the only other countries to allow gay marriages.

The bill - drafted by the minority Liberal party government of the Canadian prime minister, Paul Martin - has been hailed as a step forward for human rights.

"We are a nation of minorities," Mr Martin said. "And in a nation of minorities, it is important that you don't cherry-pick rights. A right is a right, and that is what this vote tonight is all about."

The legislation split the Liberal party, with 158 MPs voting to pass the bill and 133 against. The junior cabinet minister Joe Comuzzi, responsible for development in northern Ontario, resigned on Tuesday rather than voting on the issue.

Hasta mañana

It is possible for major political parties in western democracies to enact equality on their own intiative without suffering a loss of public confidence.

This may sound obvious, but there remain hundreds of Australian politicians who do not understand it.

And why?

Because the leadership of Australia’s LGBT community has failed in its duty to educate decision-makers and the public about the merits of reform, and about how it can be achieved.

I say “failed” because recent polling in the LGBT community in Victoria shows overwhelming support for marriage equality, greater even than for de facto relationship equality.

An LGBT leader who does not represent this aspiration to their fellow Australians is not doing their job.

In 2004 Australia joined the US in moving in the other direction. Last year's marriage inequality bill would not have become law without the votes of Labor senators. It is a grave pity that Mark Latham did not discover the need for Labor to stand for something until after he had assisted the Man of Steel to enact 'No Poofters!' into law.

the I-word

2005-07-01T15:10:00.000+10:00

Zogby poll

President Bush’s televised address to the nation produced no noticeable bounce in his approval numbers, with his job approval rating slipping a point from a week ago, to 43%, in the latest Zogby International poll. And, in a sign of continuing polarization, more than two-in-five voters (42%) say they would favor impeachment proceedings if it is found the President misled the nation about his reasons for going to war with Iraq.

The Zogby America survey of 905 likely voters, conducted from June 27 through 29, 2005, has a margin of error of +/-3.3 percentage points.

Just one week ago, President Bush’s job approval stood at a previous low of 44%—but it has now slipped another point to 43%, despite a speech to the nation intended to build support for the Administration and the ongoing Iraq War effort. The Zogby America survey includes calls made both before and after the President’s address, and the results show no discernible “bump” in his job approval, with voter approval of his job performance at 45% in the final day of polling.

I hope the US Congress has the courage to include the Nuremburg offences of crimes against peace and war crimes.

Tip via Left Coaster.

By Sappho, out of Oxyrhynchus

2005-06-24T19:19:00.000+10:00

Weekly book reviews and literary criticism from the Times Literary Supplement

Parts of three of her poems are represented. As usual, all are in a fragmentary state. But the second one, it turned out, had been partially known since 1922 from an Oxyrhynchus papyrus of the third century ad, and by combining the two texts we now obtain an almost complete poem.

When we had only the Oxyrhynchus portion, we had only line-ends, preceded and followed by line-ends of other poems, and it was not clear where one poem ended and the next began; the left-hand margin, where this would have been signalled, was missing. That question is now settled. We have a poem of twelve lines, made up of six two-line stanzas. The last eight lines are virtually complete. The first four are still lacking two or three words each at their beginnings. But we can make out the sentence structure and restore the sense of what is lost, if not the exact words. Here is the poem in my own restoration and translation. The words in square brackets are supplied by conjecture.

'[You for] the fragrant-blossomed Muses' lovely gifts
[be zealous,] girls, [and the] clear melodious lyre:

[but my once tender] body old age now
[has seized;] my hair's turned [white] instead of dark;

my heart's grown heavy, my knees will not support me,
that once on a time were fleet for the dance as fawns.

This state I oft bemoan; but what's to do?
Not to grow old, being human, there's no way.

Tithonus once, the tale was, rose-armed Dawn,
love-smitten, carried off to the world's end, handsome and young then, yet in time grey age
o''ertook him, husband of immortal wife.'

Meanwhile, it seems that Narcissus actually came t a fairly sticky end.

The ugly end of Narcissus

Narcissus was so beautiful that vast numbers of men (not Echo and other females, in the newly discovered poem) fell in love with him. However, such was his egocentricity that he spurned them all, leaving a trail of heartbreak behind him. Finally, a rejected suitor persuaded one of the gods to deal with him. Narcissus was made to stare for ever at his own image, reflected in a pool of water. The more he stared, the more desperately he fell in love with himself.

According to Ovid, Narcissus - pining from a broken heart - wasted away and died, whereupon he turned into the world's very first narcissus flower. However the earlier version has now revealed that the original myth probably had a less peaceful, more violent denouement, ending in bloody suicide.

The papyrus fragment is one of tens of thousands that were found in the late 19th and early 20th century in ancient rubbish dumps at Oxyrhynchus in Egypt. These dumps, now fully excavated, are the world's largest source of ancient writings, accounting for 70 per cent of all known literary papyri. Many are kept at Oxford but the majority have still not been fully transcribed and translated. It was during work on these remaining manuscripts that the Narcissus fragment was found.

Dr Henry thinks it likely that its author was Parthenius of Nicaea, a Greek from what is now western Turkey. He appears to have been born sometime around 100 to 90 BC and was taken prisoner by the Romans during a war in Anatolia in around 73 BC. He ended up in Italy, where he became the Roman poet Virgil's tutor.

Narcissus either worked for the Bush administration or wrote an ancient blog.

The Onion 2056

2005-06-22T17:44:00.000+10:00

The Onion 2056

CANBERRA, AUSTRALIA Following months of terror at the hands of hot-rod-piloting punks, Australian Prime Minister Kellen O'Neill handed power to Lord Humongous, nominal warlord of the leather-clad marauding barbarian horde Monday. 'Just walk away!' said Humongous, the official 'Ayatollah of Rock 'n' Roll-ah,' speaking through his vehicle's PA system from the smoking ruins of the city center. 'I will spare those of you who surrender your possessions and your precious juice. Just walk away, and live.' Humongous is expected to share at least a portion of his dominion over Australia with midget genius The Master, who several sources said 'runs Bartertown.'

I'm confused. I thought Lord Humongous seized Canberra in 1996.