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Tuesday, October 7th, 2008
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Edit: 2.28am:
Edit: 3.33am (and going to sleep!)
Fuck. There's only been one 'easy' essay all semester. Holidays have evaporated in stress and chaos and steamy tea as I struggle to understand what the crap Clifford Geertz means about ideology as a cultural system, whether or not it's impartial, and if that's a good thing or not.
Interesting as this has been and all, I'm a bit down on courses which throw in esoteric 30% research essays which are barely related to the course content. And I'm down on ten weeks without a holiday. And I'm down on finding out that White Knights aren't vegetarian. I think I'm going to have to take up hard drugs to stay awake in class and during the long nights of essaying from now on.
What's good? I'm home, and I've missed this place. I haven't had loads of time to hit the city - thanks, Ideologies essay, no really - but the time I did get to spend was delightful. Plan to pack an awful lot of catching up into these last few days, so you all better be ready. I'm not even hating the Small Town anymore. I've spent long enough away that I know I can leave, and it's a little bit reassuring in short bursts. You know your car's not going to get broken into, and it's a little bit like living in the Cheers theme song. Sometimes you do want to be where everyone knows your name.
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Comments: Add Your Own.
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Monday, September 8th, 2008
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Current Booklust, in no particular order. Many of these I've meant to get around to for a while. It's a busy time at uni, so I probably won't get around to them for a while, but it's nice to fantasise, and have a list to go secondhand hunting on the holidays. You should all make me some recommendations to add to this list.
George Orwell - Books v. Cigarettes
Terry Pratchett- Nation (rel 11.9)
-Folklore of DW (11.9)
Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451
Kurt Vonnegut - Slaughterhouse 5.
Haruki Murakami -Kafka on the Shore
Sylvia Plath - The Bell Jar
Markus Zusak - The Book Thief
Dickens - Great Expectations
Henry James - Portrait of a Lady
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Comments: Read 1 or Add Your Own.
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Saturday, July 19th, 2008
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http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,24036602-25717,00.html
I really thought this one had been well and truly mythbusted. Anyone who saw the debunking of The Great Climate Swindle already knows these graphs are just the latest in an impressive attempt to play spin games with the science. It's Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics all over again, or maybe just an a cynical attempt to score some more points for the flat-earthers on a Friday, at the end of the media cycle, when the chance of a decent rebuttal is lessened.
Let's look at the first graph, the one Bolt has optimistically headed "(1) Actually, the world isn't warming". Some key things to note about this graph, aside from the header. First, ever important when dealing with potentially dodgy columnists, is the source. In this case, it's the Hadley Centre. The Hadley Centre is part of the British Meteorological Office, so it has credibility in spades (unlike our columnist friend). But wait - data only on the last 9.5 years? That's not particularly long in terms of global climate trends. If this sounds familiar, you've probably seen this debunked before. For some reason or other, this ten year period continues to be presented as evidence that the world is not warming. It's certainly a convincing representation of a downward trend - until, like most things taken out of context by people pushing an agenda - you look at where the information has come from. In this case, it's not too difficult to head to the Met Office's website and find the graph, which in its unexpurgated form extends as far back as 1850. It's extracted for you below:
If you look to the far right, you will see Mr Bolt's graph. It represents a tiny proportion of the available information, and shows an anamolous dip in what is a clear and sustained upward trend. Furthermore, it's interesting to note that the segment of the graph taken out of context represents the highest average temperature on record. In short, Mr Bolt has taken the hottest decade of the last century and a half, isolated it, and claimed that it shows that the world isn't warming.
If you want to read the rest of Bolt's column on this - which is inadvisable, since it may potentially lead to an overall increase in global ignorance levels - you'll notice he makes a series of other claims which fall somewhere on the spectrum between unsupported assertion and complete fabrication. A classic line of Bolt's is that the 'Hockey Stick' has been discredited. I think it's form of primitive religion, wherein he hopes if he repeats a false statement often enough, it will become true (I'm a real journalist, I'm a real journalist, I'm a real... now tap your heels and think of home). I'll just briefly deal with it here, so that in future the responses can be copy and pasted.
"And, please, can we drop that old fiction that the world was never warmer? It’s a false claim made popular by a 2001 report of the IPCC, the United Nations’ climate group, which ran a graph, shaped like a hockey stick, claiming there was no warming for millennia until humans last century gassed up their world.
In fact, that “hockey stick” is now discredited, and last year Dr Craig Loehle, of the US National Council for Air and Stream Improvement, argued that using tree rings to work out past temperatures was clearly unreliable. "
Ah. Sure. Except 1) No one is claiming the world was never warmer. Straw man much? There have been plenty of times the globe probably had higher mean temperatures than we're currently experiencing. It's just that the globe wasn't sustaining the kinds of life we're familiar with in those times. Does this mean climate change isn't anthropogenic? Look out your window. The buildings you'll see are probably made predominantly of minerals like stone, glass, things which naturally occur in certain geological conditions. It doesn't mean, though, that humans weren't responsible for creating them. Similarly, yes, the Earth's had periods of high volcanic activity, for example, which produced high levels of greenhouse gases and a corresponding temperature rise. Volcanoes had nothing to do with the industrial revolution, however.
2)The 2001 IPCC reports provided considerably more evidence of a global warming trend than the hockey stick. Even if Bolt were right in saying it's discredited (and he's not), there's three volumes of the most significantly peer-reviewed, co-operative scientific research by experts from across the United Nations that the 'skeptics' have not yet truly addressed.
3) The Hockey Stick formation appeared the data which produced the hockey stick was not actually based solely on tree-rings, but on a number of different sources, all of which produced a similar graph. Bolt insinuates that his lone scientist's argument that tree rings are unreliable discredits the Hockey Stick. Even if it's the case that tree-rings are not an accurate way of measuring past climate - and again - consider the source.- the Hockey Stick is not 'discredited', and anthropogenic climate change is not 'disproven'. What Bolt fails to mention here is that the US National Council for Air and Stream Improvement is a think-tank for the 'forest-products industry'.
For some more credible comment on the Hockey Stick stuff, the best place to turn is realclimate.org (http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/myths-vs-fact-regarding-the-hockey-stick/) who offer a fairly substantial, scientifically credible analysis. More generally, realclimate offers fairly up to date and moderately accessible information for journalists and the general public on developments in climate research, as well as testing the theories of climate skeptics and defending substantial, peer-reviewed science against attacks by oil-company research dollars and conservative flack-jobs.
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Comments: Read 2 or Add Your Own.
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Saturday, March 8th, 2008
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Wednesday, October 31st, 2007
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| Time: | 6:22 pm. |
| Mood: |  glowy. | | Music: | Cat Empire- Panama. |
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While there's perhaps something quietly lamentable about relying on The Times Online to send you love letters, I have to admit that they've really been something to look forward to this week.
The love letter is a lost art, one that disappeared with the advent of the text message, the decline of the written word 'RU Up4it?', and a quiet dignity that seems to have evaporated, replaced by a sort of convenience store romance. Today's was a deliciously sinister offering from Neil Gaiman, whom you may have heard me ranting about in connection with Good Omens. He's got quite a beautifully quirky style. If you hurry up and sign up now, you might be in time to get a love letter from Leonard Cohen tomorrow...
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Monday, October 8th, 2007
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Tonight I made roasted pumpkin soup and sago pudding and tried not to feel the life ebbing away as I contemplated yet more bureaucratic tangles in a diplomatic light. I think I began with the idea that, with patience and energy, one could still get somewhere whilst working through the stiflement of meetings, emails, consensus and otherwise. I'm not disillusioned yet, but well on the way. I'm more than happy to do the work and take no credit, in fact, I prefer it. I want no one to notice my work - I'd feel more like I'd have succeeded in something if the ego of names was totally left out of it, and it could have been written by anyone in the group. At least then consensus would be a less difficult stage. Everything's all tangled up in trying not to be objectionable to anyone, trying to make connections, caring about the issues but not the schematics.
The first person to speak real sense all weekend told me I was living in an Albert Camus novel. Existing with such total awareness of the absurdity of absolutely everything that blind passion must become an affectation. I find I am once again metaphorically overtall, seeing both sides of the fence and pretending in Chinese walls.
I woke up crying today, and I realised that I don't even remember what date she passed away on.
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Tuesday, August 21st, 2007
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| Time: | 1:20 am. |
| Music: | me first and the gimme gimmes. |
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Have to love Bob Brown and his snappy grabs:
"Four years ago, Kevin Rudd got drunk and took himself into a strip club," Senator Brown said.
"Four years ago, John Howard, sober, took Australia into the Iraq war. I think the electorate can judge which one did the more harm," he said.
Not that I think that'll be the end of it - it seems the only way to get mass Australian interest in a political issue after ten years of conservatism and non-core promises -(AWB means what?)- is to have sex involved in some way - case in point, fairfax's top story of the day was Defence Minister Nelson admitting that he, too, has been to a strip joint. Ooher. In his twenties, of course. Beattie's words seem to have hit some nerves, no one wants to look like they're sanctimonious and can't relate to Australian stripjoint frequenters. Guess someone remembered that they vote, too...
Downer and Team Howard are denying that the allegations are part of a smear campaign - one would argue that Howard is experienced enough in smear campaigning that if this is his work, he's gotten sloppy. What this means if it is government work - and Downer's office seems to be the source - is that either they've got something much better than this stowed away, and this is testing the waters. Or that this year's election will be sooner rather than later. Laurie Oakes practically has money on Gillard being the nect target, in either case.
Either way, Rudd's weathered the media teacup storm reasonably well. Admitting he made a mistake and pointing out that admitting when one has made a mistake is a sign of responsibility and decency is a nice way to remind us all about the Coalition's failures in terms of ministerial accountability. '07 might well be the year of the Kevin.
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Comments: Read 7 or Add Your Own.
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Monday, August 13th, 2007
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Particularly for those who did VCE English in 2004 with The Third Man:
"In Italy under the Borgias they had 30 years of murder, bloodshed, warfare and produced indigestible pasta, boring operas, and the Fiat. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did they produce? The Swiss bank account, the best cheese in the world, and Heidi."
--Pinky & The Brain in </i>The Third Mouse</i>
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Comments: Read 3 or Add Your Own.
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Friday, August 10th, 2007
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Hate ironing.
Just destroyed shirt I like, burned hole in sleeve.
Stupid stretchy material crap.
Ironing is world's most stupid thing. What's so offensive about creases?
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Comments: Read 10 or Add Your Own.
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Thursday, July 26th, 2007
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This 'Keep Warming the Globe' movement is possibly one of the most moronic response to climate change yet, and that's coming from someone who's lived in Andrew Bolt & John Howard's Australia in the 1990s. Guys. Stop whinging about the fact that political activism uses some forms of electricity in order to get the message across. Not only does it look like a knee-jerk reaction, it looks like a knee-jerk reaction which is total ignorance of the facts of the situation. Yes, using domestic energy -lights, phones, electric hot water systems, computers, refrigerators – pretty much universally contributes to the burning of fossil fuels and thus carbon emissions into the atmosphere. To say then that people worried about global warming should stop advocating their message over the internet seems to have a form of logic to it. Until we look at some central facts to the issue, that is.
Firstly, energy itself is not the problem, but rather the fossil fuels which are used to provide certain kinds of electricity. Possibly the only way to begin to affect larger scale change is not to turn into a luddite, but to choose alternative energy providers - the 'green' option on your power bill, which funds the introduction/increase of supply to the power grid of alternative energies (wind, solar, etc). If the national grid were to be fuelled more by wind/solar energy, people could pretty much use all the electricity they wanted without it having a warming effect.
Secondly, if you look at the comparative difference of industrial versus domestic power usage, people using computers and telephones to spread the word about global warming, you'd notice that the industrial levels are way higher, and subject to fewer restrictions, particularly under Howard's new ideas on internal carbon trading. Yes, it's nice to use energy saving bulbs, and it makes a difference. But without industry coming to the party and being prepared to make some big changes in order to become more efficient, it's pretty much feel-good educative changes which have as much effect as dropping a bucketful of water into Melbourne's emptying reservoirs – a change, but comparatively, a barely measurable one. Further, the sort of changes we're basically being asked to make in our households – turn off lights when you're not in the room, water saving showerheads (which reduce emissions by using less hot water per shower, hence, if you've got an electric hot water heater, less energy), more efficient light globes, insulation – all pretty much things which in terms of climate change, we ought already be doing, as they really don't cost us much in the way of lifestyle sacrifice, and therefore it's somewhat politically mischevious to attempt to trade off 'carbon credits' generated in this way -rather like saying “Hey, I won't piss in your water suppply, but that means I have a unit of 'clean water credibility' to sell to you'” - great, but there wasn't really a need to pee into the water supply anyway, so it's essentially an empty credit.
In short, you want to disbelieve, in the face of all the evidence, that climate change is happening, feel free. People have had whackier beliefs in the past- Elvis' Second Coming, fairies at the bottom of the garden, John Howard's inherent honesty and decency. But I know I'd probably listen to your arguments a bit less dismissively if even one of you 'climate sceptics' showed me that it's not just a rebellion against the mainstream view. Read some of the science – read the IPCC reports. Read RealClimate.org.
I'm seriously affronted by these sort of crazy right-wing theories about it all being a climatologist conspiracy. I spoke to one senior meteorologist at the Bureau of Meteorology about allegations that someone was paying our scientists to be green. He pointed to Australia's number one export, coal. He pointed to the government subsidies to that industry, and the fact that large chunks of the money Howard's government has spent on 'climate change research' has gone on the junk science of geosequestration. As a government employee, like many of the senior climatologists in this country, he said: “Paid to be green? Certainly not. In fact, they'd love to pay me to be black.” He gestured once more to the coal export figures, and explained that as a scientist, he has no agenda other than providing his government with the best possible information he can provide, so that they can set the agenda. But as a person, he's rather going to miss citrus fruit and skiing in the Victorian alps when those things become less and less possible.
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Comments: Read 2 or Add Your Own.
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http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/other/hca/transcripts/2002/S126/1.html
CALLINAN J: Mr Jackson, it seems to me that clearly the people at the party, including Ms Joslyn and Mr Berryman, went out with the intention of getting drunk.
MR JACKSON: It would be a big night, your Honour, big night.
CALLINAN J: With the intention of getting drunk and they fulfilled that intention.
MR JACKSON: Well, your Honour, young people sometimes - - -
KIRBY J: I just think “drunk” is a label and I am a little worried about - it is not necessary to put that label. It is just that they were sufficiently affected by alcohol to affect their capacity to drive.
MR JACKSON: Yes.
KIRBY J: “A drunk” has all sorts of baggage with it.
HAYNE J: Perhaps “hammered” is the more modern expression, Mr Jackson, or “well and truly hammered”.
MR JACKSON: I am indebted to your Honour.
KIRBY J: I do not know any of these expressions.
McHUGH J: No, no. Justice Hayne must live a very different life to the sort of life we lead.
KIRBY J: I have never heard that word “hammered” before, never. Not before this very minute.
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Comments: Read 6 or Add Your Own.
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Saturday, July 21st, 2007
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http://www.homeonthestrange.com/view.php?ID=169
(Warning: May, very possibly, in some weird, freakish, alternative universe, contain Harry Potter Spoilers. One would hope it's quite unlikely, however. Certainly they won't have the bit where Harry wakes up and discovers the whole marvellous adventure was merely a crack-fuelled dream.)
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Thursday, July 19th, 2007
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Howard Contributes to The Global Discussion on Climate Change
Kevin Rudd as 'The Saint'
'Hey Kiddies, look How Hip & Cool I am!'
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Comments: Read 1 or Add Your Own.
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Wednesday, July 18th, 2007
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http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/haneef-in-solitary-confinement/2007/07/18/1184559846785.html
This is quite enough. Where's the word 'suspect'? How about 'alleged'? The man should NOT be treated as a terrorist, but rather as someone in remand awaiting trial. Why is it that the media is required to put 'alleged' before the charges against people who rob, murder, rape, abuse - but when it comes to terrorism, we don't need to give someone a fair trial before we can call them a terrorist? Is this an admission that we don't give fair trials to alleged terrorists? That we intend to prejudice everything against them before we start?
This is not my Australia. I am ashamed.
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Comments: Read 3 or Add Your Own.
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"First they came for the Communists,
and I didn't speak up, because I wasn't a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up, because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I didn't speak up, because I wasn't a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn't speak up, because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me,
and by that time there was no one left to speak up for me."
-Rev. Martin Niemoller, 1945
News update
Gah. Poor Dr. Mohamed Haneef has been set up to be the next TAMPA. The Anti-Terror laws are an abomination of justice, and the events of today only expound that. He was held in custody without charge under Bill. No 2 as a 'terror suspect', and when the most evidence they could find against him was circumstantial at best, they stuck him with possibly the most ludicrously irresponsible criminal charge ever conceived of -"recklessly providing support to a terrorist/terrorist organisation", with an up to ten year prison sentence. This law will be tested by his case, as some barristers have been declaring that giving a mobile phone sim card to a relative whom one does not know may be engaged in a terror plot is a stretch, and that conscious effort to support terrorism is required. The use of the word 'reckless' in the bill seems to do away with that ambiguity, so we will have to see.
I have little faith that the government is prepared to play fair - they do not want anything to succesfully challenge the anti-terror laws, and an acquittal would do that. It's not just my extreme cynicism this time, either. Within hours of Haneef being released from remand (Bail was granted at $10,000 since he had willingly surrendered his passport and was judged by the magistrate not to be a flight risk), Kevin Andrews had his working visa revoked and he's off to Villawood Immigration detention as an illegal immigrant - having, according to Andrews, "Failed a character test" due to his association with terrorists- you know, the central issue of the case that has yet to be heard. Way to prejudice any potential jury pool, hey? If a journalist were to make such a comment, or allude so heavily that someone yet to appear before court were guilty, they could be sued in defamation and jailed for contempt of court.
( more angry news-inspired ranting )
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Comments: Read 5 or Add Your Own.
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Yes, the newer graphs do not have such a clear 'Medieval Warming Period' shown.
That's because the science has progressed and we now know more about the weather of the time. It's all rather a bit like declaring that the airlines are swindling us, and you can walk to New Zealand from Australia, because you're using a prehistorical map showing the supercontinent of Pangea before it formed the landmasses we now know.
Strikes me as faintly ludicrous for someone making a fuckload of money out of making controversial documentaries to do the things that Martin Durkin admitted to doing.
~Slotting in unchecked graphics 'at the last minute' and using that to justify some monumental errors, all of which exaggerate and support his rather weak hypothesis.
~Misrepresenting the views of his sources.
~Editing to correct a series of ludicrous claims - there should not be a situation in which a documentary is revised at least 4 times post-release, and there's still misleading information, misrepresentation, etc.
~Retrieving unsupportable facts and using them to rebuff valid arguments. Barely justifiable in an interview, but in a considered documentary? Gah.
~Declaring that, because all of the available and current data does not support your position, that the current data is wrong. That's pretty much the anti-science.
Massive kudos to Prof. David Karoly. I've been saying for a long time that science has needed someone who can explain the issues to the public, who is media savvy and likeable, because the sceptics are much better at the soundbite or headline-grabbing press-release, which is largely why the community is so divided when physicists, climatologists, etc are not.
Kudos are due also to Tony Jones. It's nice to see what can happen when journalists do their research. I know science and technical subjects often leave reporters out of their depth and uncomfortable challenging interviewees, and it was nice to see Durkin called on it.
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Comments: Read 10 or Add Your Own.
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Wednesday, June 27th, 2007
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Okay. So I'm home from Canberra, back where I know where I'm going and people understand the road rules, and I would desperately love to see the kind of film I can't check out in Woden Hoyts.
It's called Change of Address, and it's in wanky french and stuff, but don't worry, they'll probably have subtitles. I could be artsy and crap and go by myself, but honestly, I'd rather not. So - anyone interested? We could make an afternoon out of it, there could be coffee and other good things. If you're in, let me know when you're free. Work knows I'm home but will probably be tight bastards and not call me, so your time is doubtless infinitely more valuable than mine, which is currently being spent spruiking overpriced comic books on eBay. Thank the universe for people who're frightened of going into comic book stores where such things are freely available for cheaper.
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Comments: Read 15 or Add Your Own.
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My pirate name is:
Mad Dog Bonney
Part crazy, part mangy, all rabid, you're the pirate all the others fear might just snap soon. You can be a little bit unpredictable, but a pirate's life is far from full of certainties, so that fits in pretty well. Arr!
Get your own pirate name from piratequiz.com.part of the fidius.org network
Long time no updatey. Has been a wild ride that I'm quite ready to either step off of, or chunder into a paper bag due to. I hit the Bourne on the 21st, sometime in the lateish afternoon. Oh! Also, Orange saw fit to entrust me with a shinier phone than I currently have - something to do with the tax year and selling my soul to them instead of Telstra- so new phone. Fun and games with the Sim card transfer has meant that, although my number is the same, many of yours didn't come across properly, or came across wildly flawed. So now is probably a good opportunity to randomly message me: 0438674793 with your name and anything else you feel you'd like to tell me. Or, you could exclude your name, and there's at least a fifty fifty chance I'll think you're someone else, so you could alternately just try to be the anonymous insulty person.
Now. I'm off to spend my last day of study baking chocolate fork biscuits, cursing the Scanner demons, and finding out what the exam's about. Then I'll probably have to go to work. yuck.
Take care all, be sure to message me before 5 tomorrow if you can think of a canberran souvenir you'd like brought back to you.
Postscript: Drummond? It still okayish to deposit some passenger love at your house on Thursday? It's possible my olds will meet me in Brunswick anyway, they wanted to Ikea it up and were worried about my mental state after 7 hours of driving... they can bring the turntable and speakers, too, if you'd like.
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Comments: Read 6 or Add Your Own.
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Anyone want a free combination recordplayer from the 80s? It needs a new head, but those are cheap and it is otherwise perfectly functional.
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Comments: Read 1 or Add Your Own.
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Hooray! No need to be sad or studying, it's Fireworks weekend in Canberra!
(Places to buy fireworks spotted today- middle of shopping centre display, and video store. all is freaky and awesome.)
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Comments: Read 17 or Add Your Own.
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