Dumb Wars

Former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating is definitely one of the great Australians. He had a tremendous vision for aboriginal australia, and was a reforming and inspirational leader with a brilliant mind and an extraodinary wit - last year I laughed for a week when he described the soon to be ex-PM John Howard as a "dessicated coconut" and the soon to be ex-treasurer Peter Costello as "all tip and no iceberg". I applauded his lacerating comments about millionaires in"tupperware boats" racing around Sydney Harbour "at the expense of everyone else's quiet enjoyment.Every small boat is capsized by it and now they've been given a signal that 30 or 40 knots is really quite slow, you can do a couple of hundred..."

Yesterday at a book launch, he made some more typically uncompromising comments, this time about Gallipoli, comments that are sure to enrage the shock jocks and typical talkback radio callers. Cant wait to read the tantrums they'll probably ellicit from the ghastly Miranda Divine and the tedious Gerard Henderson, right wing whingers who both write in the Sydney Morning Herald. Anyway this is what Keating is reported to have said about Australias involvement at Gallipoli

"Dragged into service by the imperial government in an ill-conceived and poorly-executed campaign, we were cut to ribbons and dispatched" He added he was disappointed some Australians still held the view Australia was "born again or even redeemed" at Gallipoli, and that those who visited there on Anzac Day were "misguided.An utter and complete nonsense," he said.

If ever there was a sacred cow of Australian cultural history, this would have to be it, and now Keatings put a hand on it, like he put his hand on the Queens arse when she was here a few years back, provoking an indignant moral outrage from royalists and Howard groupies. Already our current PM Kevin Rudd has announced Keating is "absolutely 100% wrong. I, for one, as prime minister of the country am absolutely proud of it.''

Personally I find this Anzac thing nauseating. To me every time we remember Anzac we teach and relearn the completely opposite lesson from the one we should be learning from it - it should be about what a shocking blunder that campaign was, and how ghastly and inglorious and degrading war is, and what an apalling failure it is when so called leaders allow wars to happen. Instead we glorify the war, we celebrate the battles at Lone Pine and Chunuk Bair and and tell ourselves all those wonderful brave young men who died were heroes, we sing hymns to the Christian God of Love and Peace and Turning the other Cheek, and engage in an hysterical orgy of drum beating flag waving and whipping up of nationalistic fervour. Isnt it sickening how the political masters of history have buried one of their greatest disasters in a cloak of glory and triumph? And how they are still doing it right now in Iraq? And soon it will be Afghanistan where next theyll proclaim Victory.

Those brave young men who went and died there so horribly and so far from home and for something that had absolutely nothing to do with them and their lives in Australia were victims of a political agenda, and were sadly blinded by the jingoism and the hysterical nationalism that politicians like to use to dog whistle the working class into line. When is it ever going to end?

Well there is one small ray of hope - or maybe I am clutching at straws - but read this quote from a speech made in 2002, just as the horror of Iraq was about to commence at the hand of George Bush, and see if it excites you a little, like it did me, when I realised who said it:

"I kn0w that Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States or his neighbours; the Iraqi economy is a shambles; that the Iraqi military is a fraction of its former strength and that in concert with the international community he can be contained until in the way of all petty dictators he falls away into the dustbin of history.

I know that even a succesful war against Iraq will require a US occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost with undetermined consequences. I know that an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the Middle East, encourage the worst rather than the best impulses of the Arab world and strengthen the recruitment arm of Al Qaeda. I am not opposed to all wars, I'm opposed to dumb wars"

Next week with a little luck, the Senator from Illinois who made such a wise prediction will be the next President of the US. Barrack Obama.

Beauty is there if you look

I went for a walk around the garden this morning and took these photos. I had been thinking about how easy it is to forget to look at the world as we rush by, and how we miss seeing so much of the wonder and beauty of nature. And the warm fuzzy muzzle of the ponies who rush up to the gate whenever they see us outside.

The Sun and Global Warming

Ive been frightening myself all week by reading "Climate Code Red: the Case for Emergency Action" by David Spratt and Phillip Sutton. On the back cover it says "This meticulously documented call-to-action reveals extensive scientific evidence that the global warming crisis is far worse than officially indicated- and that we're almost at the point of no return" Whats really frightening is that things appear to be changing more rapidly than was predicted even as recently as last year when the IPCC Report was issued, but it is that IPCC Report which Governments like our own here in Australia are using as a guide to plan their response to Global Warming.

On the websites and Blogs that Ive been trawling all week for material for my next Blog, I frequently came across Warming Denialists who rubbish the IPCC saying its just a political body and couldnt produce anything other than whatever its masters deemed was politically correct, so they breezily dismiss its recommendations. But what is the IPCC?

The IPCC (The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) was established by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) to assess scientific, technical and socio-economic information concerning climate change, its potential effects and options for adaptation and mitigation. Its first Report was issued in 1990. Its assesment reports are written by hundreds of scientific experts from many fields, and represent over 40 countries. These reports are required to be Policy "Neutral" and contain no recommendations. Each report takes more than 3 years to prepare and goes through multiple stages of independent expert and government review, "the most thorough review process undertaken for any scientific assesment" acccording to Professor David Karoly, Professor of Meteorology in the school of Earth Sciences at the University of Melbourne. So Governemnts are right to take the IPCC Report seriously - it is an important and authoritative document - except for one thing: its Five years out of date! Its out of date because it takes a year or two to do the research, another year or so to get the research published and then another three for the IPCC to scrutinise it and analyse it along with all the other material and eventually write a report that everyone agrees on. There are many environmentalists who regard this process as not only too slow but too subject to the need for consensus and compromise resulting in a report that is too weak. Hence the need for books like Climate Code Red which attempt to speed up that process.

What I was going to do was condense some of the central issues into a few blogs - but I realise now that its an impossible task- for me at least - the issues are huge and interconnected and there is much thats unresolved. Instead I submit this Introduction and link to an excellent Review in New Scientist called " Climate Change: A Review for the Perplexed

"Our planet's climate is anything but simple. All kinds of factors influence it, from massive events on the Sun to the growth of microscopic creatures in the oceans, and there are subtle interactions between many of these factors.
Yet despite all the complexities, a firm and ever-growing body of evidence points to a clear picture: the world is warming, this warming is due to human activity increasing levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and if emissions continue unabated the warming will too, with increasingly serious consequences.
Yes, there are still big uncertainties in some predictions, but these swing both ways. For example, the response of clouds could slow the warming or speed it up.
With so much at stake, it is right that climate science is subjected to the most intense scrutiny. What does not help is for the real issues to be muddied by discredited arguments or wild theories.
So for those who are not sure what to believe, here is our round-up of the most common climate myths and misconceptions.

Hitler and Global Warming

Years ago I read somewhere that if you write a book and want it to sell well, put a picture of Hitler on the front cover! That wasnt the only reason I mentioned Hitler in the title but I did want your attention! Ive decided to post a series of blogs about Global Warming because the more I read about it the more I realise that it is the Biggest Issue of our time - it is truly a greater threat to the future of mankind than anything that's ever happened in human history - Hitler included - yet as I write those words I hear a voice inside me saying "you're an idiot". Maybe I should do what Rene Rivkin is reported to have done whenever he thought about getting some exercise -just have a lie down and wait for that panicky feeling to pass.

Maybe that's what you re thinking too, but consider these words from "Climate Wars" by Gwynne Dyer, a book only just published that I bought on Saturday:

"Runaway climate change threatens to sweep away our stable, familiar world and replace it with a terrifying chaos of famine, mass migration and war that could cut the human population to a fraction of its present numbers by the end of this century"

This book isn't a discussion of the science of climate change but an analysis of what will happen as result of it. Take Pakistan and India for example - a 2 degree world temperature rise (which is not an extreme scenario) will reduce Indian food production by 25% leaving a quarter of a billion Indians without food.(This happens because a greater part of India will become too hot to grow crops) So to increase production elsewhere they might extract much more of the water from the rivers that pass through India to Pakistan, and then what will Pakistan do? These two countries are nuclear powers and they've already been to war over petty border disputes.

Their neighbour Bangladesh will be literally disappearing under the sea, creating 60 million homeless starving people - who is going to feed them and where are they going to go? Similar problems of starvation, disease and mass migration will happen in Africa and central America- these people are going to head north - so there'll be border disputes and wars. How will Europeans deal with millions of starving Africans wanting food? Put up walls to keep them out? Share what they have? They wont have the money to buy it! Maybe they'll just take it, figuring its the West thats created much of this mess, now they can pay for it.

Frankly I get the feeling that chaos and disaster are almost inevitable because politicians and big business and much of the popular media don't yet take it seriously enough - an obvious example is everyone grizzling about petrol prices and politicians promising to keep them down, reassuring everyone that their lazy polluting dependance on cars wont have to change. And yet what possible reason can there be for anyone to own a Hummer, a grotesque example of western materialist excess if ever there was one - or even a 4 wheel drive? Surely thats exactly where we are going to have to start? The reality is that pain and restrictions and sacrifice and massive alterations in our lifestyle and expectations about the future are inevitable - they may be forced upon us by an unfolding calamity or else we could move now to embrace radical change and perhaps save the world- like our parents generation did when Hitler threatened the free world with Nazi destruction. Its a big call but I think thats where I am headed. I'll write more about it in the next few blogs.....

Pastors and Priests

For the last couple of years an influential youth pastor at Hillsong Church in Sydney has had terminal cancer. He wrote a song about it that sold well and he appeared on stage at their church services with an oxygen tube to help him breathe. Guess what happened next? He died ? They prayed for him and he got better? No, not exactly - actually last month he was found to be a porn addict and was faking the whole illness! Tearful confessions all round a la Jimmy Swaggart ( for those too young to know who he was, or too lazy to Google him, he was an American Televangelist who was discovered to have been doing kinky things with sex workers when he wasnt on TV telling everyone about Jesus and getting them to send money to him - theres always money when it comes to Televangelism! - anyway he famously went back onto his TV programme and confessed everything - well not explicitly- with tears streaming down and ruining his makeup) And then there was Jim and Tammy Faye Baker - they had a multimillion dollar Televangelism empire that crashed when Jim went to gaol for massive tax fraud that was uncovered just after he had first been discovered cheating on Tammy Faye.

So what is it with religious leaders and sex? Reminded me of the Pastor of the last church I went to, back in Dunedin in the "80's - the unmarried Sunday School teacher broke down one day and told everyone that this pastor was the father of her two kids,and it was his idea to spread the story around that they had been conceived in Australia when she went there on holiday and fell into sin. Twice! And we later heard that Frank Houston, the pastor of the Auckland Assembly of God Church had been molesting boys like a regular old catholic Priest. So the circle is almost complete because Franks son is Brian the Pastor at Hillsong!

What I always find amazing when these scandals are exposed is how quickly the congregations rush to the defence of the crooks whove been lying to them and ripping them off.Even more amazing perhaps is the way in which they refuse to allow these scandals to count against the reality of their religious experience.You would think they would be shocked that they couldnt tell the difference between the genuine article and these fakes and conmen. I presume they wouldnt want to suggest that if their service is conducted by a fake cancer sufferrer living a lie and addicted to porn its the same as if the service was conducted by say Mother Theresa - yet thats what it is. To put it mathematically:

Fake Cancer Sufferer+Porn Addiction = Mother Theresa + God.

Work that out!

Climate Change denialists are so Wrong

There was a debate on TV last year about climate change and afterwards on the Internet you could log on and ask the scientists questions. One post said something like "I'm a 15 year old student and even I can see that the professor is wrong about Global Warming because we 've just had the heaviest frost ever and how can that mean theres global warming?" More recently Ive had conversations with sensible educated adults whove been equally ignorant about climate science but nevertheless expresssed equally sceptical views about it, rubbished Al Gore and his movie "An Inconvenient Truth" and repeated stuff they'd heard somewhere about how many cars he owns or claimed its just a scientific hoax or else its just part of the natural cycle of atmospheric events or whatever - this is actually no better than the ignorant 15 year old thinking he knew better than the learned professor - but just sounds a bit more impressive. Now I had seen the movie and been impressed by it but like most of us didnt really know anything else about Climate Science other than what I might have read in the papers and seen on TV. So I didnt feel qualified to disagree with the climate change sceptics and deniers - I felt pretty ignorant too. So Ive done a bit more reading and searching, and what Ive concluded is that Al Gore is right.

The first thing I realized was that Climate Deniers are an extreme minority, but they make a lot of noise, make arguments that are simple and sound plausible to most of us, and thereby create an impression that there is still an argument going on about whether or not Global Warming is happening and is a threat. The trouble is most of us are not scientists, and we can easily be impressed by glib arguments and have no way of knowing if theyre really valid. The same thing happens with creationists who try to give the impression that in Science there is still room for doubt about the fact of evolution : there is none - but which of us is actually qualified to know that, for example their often repeated claim that evolution must be wrong because human and dinosaur footprints can be found together is simply not true? There are also people who still believe that the Earth is Flat - its not- but try to unravel the arguments they make! There are others who believe that "9/11" was a US Government Conspiracy- try and argue against that monstrous lie and see where you get against fanatics whose agenda is not about Truth but about being Right!

As far as Global Warming is concerned, among scientists there are still many differences about specifics of Global Warming, but on one fundamental point there is near perfect unanimity : the main cause of a 0.75 degree rise in global temperature over recent decades is CO2 released from fossil fuel. The Chief scientific adviser to the British Government Sir David King wrote in the book "The Hot Topic " anybody who tells you differently either has a vested interest in ignoring the scientific arguments or they are fools"

So is the core of the issue for us non-climate scientists whether or not we can trust what the scientists are telling us? Well that at least is the way Climate denialists want us to view the issue, basically saying we shouldnt trust them, that rather we should listen to a tiny minority who insist that they are the only ones who really know whats going on. The odd thing of course is that most of us do trust what the Scientists have been telling us, and we've been doing it all our lives in just about everything that is part of modern life. So we live much longer and are much healthier because science discovered germs and identified diseases,worked out how the human body works, discovered blood groups and anaesthetics, insulin and penicillin and worked out how to make drugs to treat diabetes and hypetension and epilepsy. We use the phone, listen to the Radio, watch live sports from the other side of the world on TV, and cook dinner on the stove and the microwave because it was science that discovered electricity, radiowaves , satellite technology, microwaves and television; we travel all round the world because science discovered the jet engine, radar and the manmade materials that hold the planes and cars together; it was science that taught us about the history of the planet and the universe and the mysteries of the human body, and at the same time liberated us from the bonds of much ignorance superstition and fear. So forgive me if I declare my love of Science and my huge admiration for scientists and the scientific endeavour and what it has achieved in the last couple of centuries. The reality is that science works, and we demonstrate our faith in it everytime we answer the phone or turn on a light.

So what are they saying about global warming? Well this sounds extreme and unbelievable I know - but if nothing at all is done about carbon emissions, climate change will effectively destroy the entire human race before the end of this century. I'm going to repeat that : if nothing at all is done about carbon emissions, climate change will effectively destroy the entire human race before the end of this century. Lets say that one more time " IF NOTHING AT ALL IS DONE ABOUT CARBON EMISSIONS,CLIMATE CHANGE WILL EFFECTIVELY DESTROY THE ENTIRE HUMAN RACE BEFORE THE END OF THIS CENTURY"

The trouble with such a statement is that its too outrageous to be believable, yet climate change has resulted in mass extinctions before: the Permian-Triassic Mass Extinction over 250 million years ago wiped out 96% of marine species and 70% of terrestrial life. So no matter how shocking and unbeliveable it seems, its happened before and the science is telling us that its about to happen again. This means that a baby born today could witness the end of human civilisation! Thats how close it is, and is why in many circles there is a growing realisation that massive changes are going to be necessary to avoid such a crisis, the greatest crisis in the history of humanity- yes the GREATEST crisis in human history.

I might mention the Myths and misinformation the Climate denialists write about some other time. Its a massive topic. As is trying to work out what the hell we should be doing to try and get out of this mess. But I'm leaving the last word to a guy that posted a comment on a Denialists Blog :

The hundreds of tree hugging scientists are just plain wrong!We should be looking to the experts at Exon Mobil, OPEC, and the American automobile industry. All of them have done way more research and found that there is no such thing as global warming! Don't let a little bookworn, brainiac, geek like Al Gore scare you!

This ones not for Everyone

For the last couple of weeks Ive been struggling with the fact that something I did has resulted in a man going to prison for six years. Also I'm feeling pretty pissed off with everything, and I was thinking about how religion has so much to do with whats so wrong in the world, that Ive decided to write about one of my Topics for the Future - "Being a Jesus Freak".I was amazed to read what Wikipedia had to say on the subject:

"Jesus freak, while initially a pejorative term for those involved in the Jesus movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s, was quickly embraced by them and soon broadened to describe a Christian subculture throughout the hippie and back-to-the-land movements that focused on universal love and pacifism, and relished the radical nature of Jesus' message. "

I was amazed because that seemed like quite an accurate summing up of what being a Jesus Freak was all about for me and my friends back then. Particularly the bit about the radical nature of Jesus message, something I took so seriously that I renounced all my worldly ambitions and left school and home on a search for the Truth, a search for God and the Ultimate meaning of existence.

My mother described one of my mentors at the time as "the man who destroyed my son" but at that stage the story was only just beginning. The thing that got me through and stopped me from being destroyed was that more than anything I really wanted to find out "the Truth" about everything. Thats why in the end, though my journey took me deep into fundamentalist christianity, and along some embarrassing detours, in the end I came out the other side, having learned a lot, but most importantly that "The Truth" was definitely not anywhere in that direction. I think its important that I was a radical christian not a moderate one, because , to use a yachting analogy I took my religion out into the deep sea and gave it a thorough testing, whereas the moderates paddle around in the shallows where faith never gets properly tested, and the cracks and faults never get a chance to leak. So I still have a kind of respect for Fundamentalists of any kind because they at least have the courage of their convictions and are prepared to let the radical beliefs of their religion correspond to radical action in their lives. In that, they have integrity.

The problem is that all religious explanations fail, especially once they moving away from a vague sort of mystical view about the human spirit and start filling in details like which kind of animal you can eat and what should be done with the foreskin or facial hair, or womens clothing. The crazy thing is that every religion, every variety and subset and sect of every religion proudly declares that everyone elses silly rules are all wrong but their ones are right. Dont drink that tea! Cover your face! No Blood transfusion! All these ridiculous stories, apalling rules and silly rituals make religion look as if its really about people - and particularly men - controlling other people - particularly women - but also gays and everyone else who's not in the In Crowd- and the reason it looks like that is because thats exactly what it is. No sensible Creator would be bothered with all that nonsense. Or ask us to believe it as a sign of devotion to "It"


So believers lose my respect however in their abandonement of that greater search for Truth, preferring dogma and blind allegiance to one narrow explanation of reality over the continuing quest for knowledge. These are people who are not interested in the Truth but in being right. And they'll argue and even fight and kill to prove it. Hence the mess the world is in today. And its not just war, its the whole failure of much of humankind to turn away from blind faith and look for a greater vision, maybe one with fewer answers but at least more compassion and tolerance and understanding.

But back to the man I sent to Prison for six years. The ironic connection between him and being a jesus freak, is that one of the Big Problems I eventually could not reconcile with christian religion was the problem of sufferring, the Problem of Pain as the CS Lewis' book that I read called it. I'm afraid the scenario I often saw in my mind was an innocent child being abused,raped or sodomised behind closed doors and happening right now - yes actually right now at this very moment as you are reading this, there are countless hundreds, maybe thousands of little girls and boys being abused in this way, raped and abused - and the Christian God supposedly all knowing and powerful watching this horror and doing nothing. I always said that if it was in my power to do something I would, I could not stand by like the christian God who acording to christian apologists is making a stand on some principle of individual liberty and the price of free will and doing nothing - if I had the power I would stop it.



The thing is about a year ago I did exactly that to a man on a Sydney street. He was exposing himself and physically sexually molesting a 5 year old girl and I leaped out of the car and stopped him. I took his wallet off him and dragged him down to a house and called the Police. And he's been behind bars ever since, and was sentenced last month to 6 years. And while Ive been thinking about this whole tragic scenario it occurred to me that the christian god didnt just abandon the little girl - he abandoned that poor damaged abuser, probably also a victim himself. And I also wondered why anyone can believe that god chose not to create a world where such things never happened , where sexual urges were not so violent and difficult to control or subject to corruption, a world where innocent children at least were safe from this ghastly fault in the human makeup. Its not that impossible to imagine we could have been made a little differently- after all humans dont have the ability to hear sounds that dogs can hear, so if hearing could be different why not sexuality? Given the world that we have, one wonders how it can be that people believe not only that the christian god chose to create it that way, but that god is a good one.


So what are the answers? I'm still looking and wondering...

Update

Update 1: Congratulations to the fabulous All Blacks and Richie McCaw who must be NZ Man of the Year. The decider last Saturday night was nail biting stuff, and a great win - the Tri Nations for the fourth year in a row and the Bledisloe for Five in a row.

Update 2: The unvaccinated baby remains unvaccinated, now a month old and the parents arent in hiding any more. They had a celebratory lunch the other day, the father quoted as saying the Doctors concern for the baby was "just garbage", and the Herald headline was "Vaccine Victory for Rebel Parents with a Cause" A spokeswoman for the Australian Vaccination Network - an extremist antivaccination lobby group - Meryl Dorey said the case was "a sign that justice can win out" The final outcome will not be known for a few years of course - I just hope the crazy gamble these people have taken with the life of their child doesnt go pear shaped and the kid die with liver failure - if it did you wouldnt hear about it from the Australian Vaccination Network and Spokeswoman Meryl Dorey, but shouldnt they be held accountable in some way?

Update 3: Tim Johnston the Firrepower conman has stayed well away from Australia. Apparently he's in London trying to set himself up doing what he knows best : ripping gullible people off.

Update 4: Tony Wood the antidrugs campaigner who was going to stand in the Local Council elections that were held last weekend, has disappeared without trace. His name was not on the Ballot paper for Warringah Council, and I cant find any further references to him in the Press. Maybe he pulled out once he realised his single issue campaign was never going to get off the ground. But there has been so much in the news about the war on drugs all round the world about police and soldiers killing and being killed, about the massive amount of money being spent on this futile endeavour which could be eliminated almost overnight if we just let adults be free to make whatever choices they wanted to about such things. Yep, heaps of them would make dumb choices but then thats what growing up is all about. Society would mature and get over it eventually, but it never will this way.

Update 5: The Bali Bombers have not been executed yet, but there was an item in the paper the other day saying they had said their last farewells to their families and the end was near....

Update 6: I am still going to Post on Global Warming.Its a HUGE issue...watch this space Folks.

The Event of the Century

I've been trying to decide what was the most significant event on planet earth in the last 100 years. I'll explain why later. Anyway firstly I looked up Time Magazine because every year they nominate a person or idea which "for better or worse has most influenced events in the preceeding year", and found results of a Poll they took in 2000 on the "Event of the Century" . And Elvis got the most votes! Really!

Fortunately the Time Editors werent quite as shallow as the rest of the USA. They decided that in a century dominated by Science, the Person of the Century must be the pre-eminent Scientist, the man whose work gave rise to the Atom Bomb, the Big Bang, E=MC2,quantum physics and electronics, the really huge stuff in science : Albert Einstein. Just about everything else that happened, from the moon Landing - which was runner up in the Poll - or the discovery of Penicillin, or Television,the jet engine and airtravel,transistors and computers and the internet were all ultimately dependent on that great explosion of scientific discovery and endeavour. Lots of people thought Hitler should have been the man of the Century but the consensus was that time would steadily diminish the impact of his monstrous lifes work, whereas Einsteins would remain for ever.

There were heaps of other incredible things that happened that century : the civil rights movements, world war one and gas warfare, world war two and the Holocaust, Stalin, Mao Tse Tung, Idi Amin, Mahatma Ghandi, Winston Churchill, Margaret Thatcher, helicopters,the Beatles,the Cold War, the Korean War, Vietnam and Agent Orange, Fidel Castro, the rise and fall of communism, JFK, discovery of the coelacanth,heart transplantation, the atom bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki,insulin,Watson and Crick discovering the Double helix structure of DNA, discovery of Blood Groups, the immune system and antibodies, Teflon,plate tectonics,the Polio vaccine, the erradication of smallpox,the invention of nylon and PVC plastic, AIDS,radiocarbon dating, Bob Dylan,the Rolling Stones, Madonna,Woodstock, drugs for leukemia and schizophrenia,the Human Genome,lasers,Nelson Mandela,mobile phones, personal computers....on and on it goes.Has there ever been a greater century?

And for me personally,the most important thing that happened exactly one hundered years ago, while all this was waiting to happen, was that in Scotland my Dad was born on 9th September 1908.

Three things I wasnt going to Buy

Leaf Blowers, car GPS navigation systems and widescreen TV's - to me these were commodities that were made before there was a market for them and then the advertising agencies and glossy mags got going and created a demand, which in all cases has taken off. So now everyone has one. Or is being persuaded to get one for fathers day.

But me ? Well I heroically get out the old Broom (remember those quaint old fashioned cheap sort of stick thing with a whole lot of hairy stuff at one end - and much bigger than a tooth brush - ) and would labour away on the drive and turning circle in front of the garage, get rid of all the eucalypt leaves and sticks that blow in constantly and have a very nice clean drive at the end of it. And then I could go round all the verandahs and do the same. Good exercise, great to be out in the fresh air, didnt wake up the neighbourhood or pollute the atmosphere...yup,environmentally PC. And then Sue just went and got one, which I refused to use of course, noisy petrol powered plastic and junk metal chinese thing. Except that one day I really needed to clean up the drive in a huge hurry and I used it. And in five minutes I had cleaned the entire drive, the turning circle, the verandahs and the cobwebs, the detritus and half rotted litter clagging up the garden, the old hedge clippings and dried duck poo, and it all looked fantastic!

As for the widescreen TV well we already had three old TVs that worked. Admittedly the one we usually watched responded only intermittently to the remote - yes Ive used the remote for years but there was a time...- and for a second or two every few minutes the sound would stop but we hardly ever watch TV anyway. So Sue went and got a widescreen TV - shes great like that, very pragmatic. And now I watch TV like I used to watch TV when it first came in, in the 60"s, just to watch it and to marvel at the crystal clarity of the images and the sound, the realistic life-like colour, the feeling that you really are looking at reality rather than at a TV image, .....

And as for the In Car Navigation systems, whats wrong with the old "Gregory"s" - the inch and a half thick Aussie softcover road atlas book that everyone has in their car glove box? Most of us only ever drive to and from work, or the same shops or the same relations and friends, the same Pub and footy ground and only rarely ever venture out into new territory - and we always got by with the Road Signs, the Gregorys and the occasionaal winding-down-of-the-window-and asking-a-chap-walking-along-the-street-how-to-get-to-wherever.

It wasnt important that the chap usually didnt know where it was either, or if he did the instructions were too confusing and you got lost again and had to ask someone else. The point was you're out there, its one of lifes challenges and you're using your brain for once to work it out, youre meeting people and interacting with them, and at the end you get that huge proud sense of achievement when you finally arrive. Who cares if the wedding is already over?

No way am I ever getting one.

Parents on the Run

Last week the parents of a newborn baby boy were told that if they took him out of hospital without getting the vaccination against Hepatitis B the Government would take the child away from them. So they left the hospital and went into hiding, saying they believed that aluminium in the vaccine was more dangerous than the disease. Welfare workers couldnt find them, so the saga then became even more "David and Goliath" when the Supreme Court of Australia issued an injunction requiring the parents to get the vacination done, but they still refused. Today the Government has given up because there's no point in giving the vaccine once the babys five days old. So I daresay tonight the antivaccination lobby are rejoicing that they outsmarted Big Brother.

I wonder what the little boy will be thinking? We know for certain that without his vaccination he has an almost 50/50 chance of becoming a chronic carrier of hepatitis, and if he does, a 30% chance of getting cirrhosis of the liver or liver cancer and dying from it before he's an adult. In other words at least 1 chance in 8 of a miserable debilitating existence that will end in death from liver failure before he's an adult. And the benefit of not being exposed to aluminium in a vaccine? Well the antivaccination lobby propose all sorts of dire effects of aluminium from alzheimers disease to autism, but there is absolutely zero credible scientific evidence to back up their claims. In any case, Autism is really rare - 1:1000 - and is not lethal, so why on earth would you prefer a 1:8 chance of death from cancer at a young age, over a 1:1000 chance of Autism or Alzheimers in 60 or 70 years? So is this a case of child abuse? Or do the rights of parents overrule the rights of their children ?

This really just highlights the completely confused and unbalanced approach these people have about vaccination. I dont think anyone doubts that on a very rare occasion a vaccination can produce serious side effects. But even Penicillin can be fatal to the rare individual with an extreme hypersensitivity, yet no one disputes that it has saved literally millions of lives in the last 80 years and is right near the top on the Top Ten List of Greatest Discoveries of All Time. And no-one would dispute the possibility that on a rare occasion, someone might have survived a road smash if they hadnt been using a seatbelt. But the balance of benefit versus risk greatly favours our continuing to use penicillin and seat belts, and the same is true of vaccines. Only a conspiracy theorist could deny this.

Biomagnetic Therapy

If you saw the ad that I saw on TV the other day you would swear that what they were selling was a magnetic device that would give you incredible relief from chronic pain. The device was an amazing underlay containing hundreds of magnets that you put on your bed. The underlay can be wool or cotton and is available in a variety of sizes, and you can also get a pillow. "How amazing" I thought and decided to check out the website. On their slick website the same impression is created but look again : when you read the actual words, there is not a single statement that is anything like a direct assertion that this product actually does anything at all. Its a masterful example of how advertising can be designed to create an impression - you know the old classic blond bombshell draped over say an outboard motor! - suck you in, relieve you of your cash and then be able to deny any liability for the product turning out to be useless. The Website has the personal story from "chronic pain to welcome relief thanks to Biomagnetic therapy"of Craig Trinder, an Australian Champion Motorcyclist who, when you read the story closely, is actually the owner of the company. "Welcome relief" - OK so what exactly is that? It doesnt even dare say pain relief but links the two ideas together in your mind. Now, he may indeed have had miraculous and welcome relief - of whatever - using biomagnetic therapy, and then decided to make a business out of promoting it, but on the other hand you would have to say theres a clear conflict of interest involved and you might expect him to talk it up. Actually when you look a bit further, you discover that he certainly had been talking it up, so much in fact that Biomagnetic Therapy and Craig Trinder were investigated by the ACCC - the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, a government agency whose function is to monitor commercial activity and try to protect consumers from being ripped off. Heres a bit of their report:"Biomagnetic Therapy and Craig Trinder have admitted that prior to 2002 some of the claims made in regard to their therapeutic magnetic products may have been, or had the potential to be, false, misleading or deceptive, in contravention of sections 52, 53(c), and 53(g) of the Act although they have advised it was never their intention to do so."
I thought it was nice of the ACCC to include that bit about "it was never their intention to do so" "Yeah right" was my thought! Later in their judgement they extracted the following undertaking:

"Biomagnetic Therapy and Craig Trinder will not make any claims regarding therapeutic magnetic products unless they are able to demonstrate that there are reasonable grounds for making the representation, for example, reliable scientific evidence. '

Of course none of this necessarily means that Biomagnetic Therapy doesnt work. But when theyve been ordered not to make claims unless they can back them up, and they then dont make any but just use advertising tricks to create impressions in the minds of vulnerable people with chronic pain, it makes me wonder.

All Blacks 19 Springboks Nil

And the Springboks were lucky to get Nil according to one commentator!Heres what someone else said:

What New Zealand achieved with this victory was to make a statement. It told the new world champions that it is the All Blacks, not the Springboks, who remain the benchmark for world rugby. The South Africans may have won the World Cup last year, but two wins out of three against the Springboks in this Tri-Nations speaks volumes for the All Blacks' ability to regather, to reorganise and revive.

I didnt watch this game because we dont have Pay TV and the Pubs are taken over by bands and live music by 11pm local time when this game was on last Saturday night. I spent ages trying to find an Internet Radio site that was broadcasting the game and eventually came across a Sports radio station in Capetown that would cross to the game from time to time but it was very frustrating - at half time I went to bed.

Not being in New Zealand I dont have a feel for what the mood there is in relation to the Olympics but I suspect Kiwis would much prefer an All Black win against the Springboks in South Africa than even a small handful of Olympic Gold Medals !!

Go the All Blacks!!

I nearly killed myself again

This time I was racing back from Sydney in Friday afternoon traffic - I'd been up there taking the boat around to Adam,the shipwright at Balmain Boatyard so he could do some work on her over the weekend. After an hour creeping along at 0 to 10 kph we squeezed in single file past a pile up where a truck had rear ended a car and slammed it into the two cars in front of it - amazing wreckage - and then everyone sped up to top speed. I was momentarily distracted and when I looked up everyone was screeching to a halt and I was headed at high speed for the back of a truck in front of me - slammed on the brakes and screeched to a shudderring stop with literally centremetres to spare. Those ABS brakes are amazing - they lock and unlock the wheels at high speed so the car doesnt slide - it judders and shudders and shakes and you feel a powerful vibration through your foot which is trying to push the brake peddle out the other side of the car!

Theres so many things I want to write about - theres a debate tonight that you can watch on http://www.smh.com.au/ - the Sydney Herald web site - at 1845hrs local time - the subject is "The World would be a Better Place without Religion". Its one in a series of debates, an earlier subject debated was "China is not fit to host the Olympic Games".

Another subject I want to write about is Global Warming. There was a great Australian Story on ABC TV last night - which you can also watch on the net at www.abc.net.au/austory/ - about a wealthy 62 year old Melbourne businessman who got so concerned about Global Warming last year that he quite his job and launched his own private campaign against the Prime Minister, having decided that the best way to get something done would be to get rid of John Howard.

I'm also working on a blog about the use of magnets for various therapeutic benefits they are supposed to have. I saw an ad on TV for something called Bio Magnetic Therapy and did a bit of reading about it.

Really this Blog today is just to let all my fans know I havnt forgotten you. I would hate it if you both stopped logging on and checking out my site. I'm off to work now but keep reading folks, theres more to come.

Time for a Laugh

Ive been really stressed and busy at work lately, which might explain why I nearly killed myself tonight - laughing that is ! - at these one liners of an american comedian called Red Skelton. According to Wiki he was really popular on Radio and Film and as Stand Up Comedian from the 1940's to early 70's. His first career move was as a Clown. His life was pretty sad - he had a breakdown after the war, he had a son who died from Leukemia, one wife committed suicide...amazing how he could be so funny.

Hope you laugh like I did....

1. Two times a week we go to a nice restaurant, have a little beverage, good food and companionship. She goes on Tuesdays, I go on Fridays.

2. We also sleep in separate beds. Her's is in California, and mine is in Texas.

3. I take my wife everywhere....but she keeps finding her way back.

4. I asked my wife where she wanted to go for our anniversary."Somewhere I haven't been in a long time!" she said. So I suggested the kitchen.

5. We always hold hands. If I let go, she shops.

6. She has an electric blender, electric toaster and electric bread maker.She said "There are too many gadgets, and no place to sit down!" So I bought her an electric chair.

7. My wife told me the car wasn't running well because there was water in the carburetor.I asked where the car was. She told me, "In the lake."

8. She got a mud pack, and looked great for two days. Then the mud fell off. 9. She ran after the garbage truck, yelling, "Am I too late?" The driver said "No, jump in".

10. Remember: Marriage is the number one cause of divorce.

11. I married Miss Right. I just didn't know her first name was Always.

12. I haven't spoken to my wife in 18 months.I don't like to interrupt her.

13. The last fight was my fault though. My wife asked, "What's on the TV?" I said, "Dust!"

Let the Games Begin

This is a really hard one for me, because in 1981 I was one of the Protestors who marched in New Zealand against the SpringBok tour of New Zealand. Back then I felt it was impossible to separate Sports and Politics, and many of us believed that the All Blacks that we all love and revere, should not give comfort to the representatives of the dark Apartheid regime of South Africa by playing with them. In those days Nelson Mandela was in prison and was described by our Prime Minister, Mr Robert "Piggy" Muldoon as a terrorist. Now of course Muldoon is a discredited blot on the history of New Zealand politics, but Mandela is universally regarded as one of the greatest, most loved and admired leaders of all time. So I am proud of my involvement as a protestor, for having marched down the streets in Dunedin with my home made protest banner, for being in a group that sat and blocked a main road, even for invading the hallowed "House of Pain" the famous Carisbrook Rugby ground and burning a Rugby Jersey and a Ball and an effigy of "Piggy". But what now of the Games in China ? Should we now ignore Politics, ignore the litany of chinese human rights abuses and the opression of Tibet and just play Sport?

The other thing that makes it hard for me is that Ive always been fascinated by China and Ive been there three times and found it wonderful. At High School I was known by everyone as "Mao", such was my obsessional interest in everything Chinese. I had a lump in my throat when I first stood at that very spot where Chairman Mao stood at the Gate of Heavenly Peace overlooking Tien an Men Square and Proclaimed the establishment at last of the Peoples Republic in 1949.

In fact the differences between the politics of Apartheid and of the Peoples Republic of China are vast. I would still boycott a regime whose very foundation was based on a racist lie, and whose entire political structure was designed to oppress and disenfranchise the vast majority of its citizens. But that is not China.

China is a place of extraordinary historical, social and political complexity. When I was a child it was known as a place of terrible poverty, and viewed with fear and suspicion, but since then much has changed, and almost all of it for the better. I think the Beijing Olympics will help the world to better understand this wonderful place, and help China to better understand the rest of the world and the concerns we have about some of the things that happen there. Let the Games Begin !

All Blacks 39 Wallabies 10

I havent been enjoying work lately, our heating at home packed up and we were cold and after the All Blacks loss last weekend was dreading the replay at Eden Park yesterday - it was getting to be a bit like the Americas Cup where all the Kiwi sailors joined the Swiss team and came back and took it from us. And now it was starting to look like the Wallabies were going to do the same now they had a Kiwi coach. And speaking of boats.... I was looking forward to the annual Sydney Boat Show which was where we went yesterday morning. Didn't buy anything but got lots of ideas and advice from the experts up there about everything from pumps to anchors, EPIRBS and Life Rafts. And then we hunted around for a Pub so we could have some dinner and watch the Game live. Its weird being in an Australian pub watching All Blacks and Wallabies play because everyone except me cheers whenever the Wallabies make a move - and when I'm feeling sick - and when I want to cheer for the All Blacks the Wallabies supporters are usually deathly silent. I usually just cheer quietly to myself and then punch the air with a clenched fist when we score. After two close defeats in a row it was great to see the AB's hammering the Wallabies again.This is what the NZ Heralds columnist wrote about it :

If ever anyone needed reminding that rugby is a simple business, they got it last night. The All Blacks went back to basics, took care of the core skills, played the game in Australia's half and levelled the series.
They did much more than that, though. The All Blacks administered an old style belting - the kind where the receiver feels the humiliation more than the pain.
They restored some pride, showed there is a depth of emotion with regard to what the jersey means, and that Robbie Deans, for all his ability and tactical knowledge, can't work any magic when faced with the fury of an All Black side wanting revenge.

So the week ended well.

A Cute Baby

This is a Panda pup. Its interesting how we always find babies so endearing - a Basic Instinct I guess to want to nurture and protect our own young which flows out to all other young and defenceless babies. Which then left me wondering how the hell it is that the grossly over rated nicole kidman, after all the hoo ha about adoption and wanting a baby, having finally got one of her own - from Keith Urban, a fellow Kiwi by the way who comes from my home town - is now saying she cant wait to get back to work? As if she needed to ! What a vacuous empty waste of space that woman is.

Another Tony Wood

Unlike my relative of the same name, this Tony Wood is standing in Local Body elections in Sydney on a No Drugs ticket, and he's another case that illustrates my earlier point about people being persuaded by their personal experiences rather than something more objective. The poor mans daughter died after taking ecstasy over 12 years ago and now he feels hes cooled down enough to think clearly about the issue and take action. He's proposing a Zero Tolerance to Drugs policy and making the police enforce it. Or in other words Prohibition.

The trouble with Prohibition is that its already been tried and it doesnt work. All that happened when alcohol was outlawed in the US between 1920 and 1933 was that the perfect conditions were created for an underworld of crime to flourish, giving rise to such evil gangsters as Al Capone, Bugs Moran and the Mafia. They made most of their money from smuggling, producing, and distributing alcohol, but also from prostitution and gambling, and they used it to corrupt the police, the legal profession and politicians, thus eroding the most fundamental pillars of society. Furthermore the Government spent millions trying to enforce these laws which were finaly repealed in 1933. Prohibition however has remained the Policy in respect of every other recreational drug except for cannabis in a few enlightened places. The reality though is that the world wide war on Drugs is a massively expensive failure and a new appproach needs to be developed if any sort of progress is ever to be made. Cranking up enforcement like Tony Wood wants is not going to help. It will just make drugs more expensive and therefore more attractive to criminals and smugglers, and make it harder for users to seek help.

Instead try to imagine what would happen if all recreational drugs were legal, say like alcohol and tobacco are. Firstly the whole underworld of crime that the drug trade has created would no longer exist as there would be no market for the drug lords products; Drug users would no longer be forced into prostitution and petty crime such as robbery and burglary to suppport habits which can cost thousands per day;addicts could freely seek help rather than hide themselves and their illegal activities and contacts from authorities fearing punishment; governments all round the world would save millions if not billions of dollars by not having to spy on people and train sniffer dogs and customs officers and helicopter pilots to look for drugs, and instead spend more money on education about the dangers of drug use, of alcohol and tobacco use and on encouraging people to behave responsibly. Police and the Courts and Prisons could get on with dealing with real crime. Its the Drug Trade that keeps the Taliban in business in Afghanistan, it was the drug trade at the heart of the Crime War in Victoria Australia recently portrayed on the TV drama "Underbelly", its the drug trade that still fuels the Mafia and much of the violent crime on US Streets , its the drug trade that funds the civil war in Colombia - imagine how the world might change if all this drug money just disappeared!

There would of course be problems, and deaths, just as there are with tobacco and alcohol. And just as there are with playing many sports, with fishing and swimming, mountaineering, sailing, driving cars, and even hamburgers, peanuts and chewing gum have choked and killed people.

Instead of banning all these things we simply educate and inform and encourage, and hope that people will behave responsibly. Prohibition was a huge mistake in the 1920's and it created an evil underworld - we need to grow up and move on.

On the Money

Readers, this is where I labour to bring you the gems I dig up out of the news and out of the confused recesses of my brain. I struggle to get one or two posts a week but if you watched TV last night - in Australia anyway, you would see that I can be Right On the Money !! Last nights "4 Corners" on ABC TV was about Firepower and the conman Tim Johnston. I think they took the script for their programme from my Blog Post - watch the Programme or read more about it by clicking here :http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/default.htm. You will see a perfect example of how feelings lead people astray - as I was trying to explain in my post about the Firing Squad - something Johnston obviously understands only too well, for so long being able to make people feel everything was OK even though their own THINKING had made them suspect otherwise. Greed was the motive he appealed to - see how that poor chap smiled when he remembered how the shares he paid next to nothing for were going to list on the London Exchange for at least 1 Pound, maybe up to 6 Pounds.....

As for World Youth Day, I was going to comment on the morons who think that God was responsible for the weather being so good - that reminded me of a woman I remember who Praised God once for providing her with a carparking space right outside the shop she wanted to go to - if God controls the weather then why the bloody Tsunami that killed so many? But I was really disgusted by the way Cardinal Pell and Co responded to the apalling child sexual abuse scandal that makes that whole Church smell so badly - why on earth could not the Pope have given up a little time to really and truly meet and speak with that man whose two daughters were RAPED by a priest - the Pope had time for a snake and an echidna brought over specially for him to pet from the Zoo, but not for this poor grieving father?

Death by Firing Squad

I was expressing scepticism about Clairvoyants the other day and was told that I could only think it was rubbish because I had never had a "Reading" done. If I did get a "Reading", I was warned, my opinion would change. Now this of course is where the huge mistake is so often made - not just about Clairvoyants but about everything - thinking that ones personal subjective experience is somehow a good guide to the Truth. In fact its about the worst possible trap. The trouble is that our own personal experience is more real to us than just about anything, and so feels very persuasive and powerful. A simple proof of how unreliable our own feelings are about something is the Divorce Rate. Marriage is one of the Biggest decisions a person ever has to make in life, its rarely made lightly and in our society who we marry is very much determined by how we feel about that special someone, that person we just know is so right for us - but how often does it prove to be a mistake, sometimes a huge mistake?

There were two things that started me thinking about this problem of the way our personal experience can't be relied on - the first was the huge Mass conducted by the Pope at Randwick racecourse today. The atmosphere generated among all those hundereds of thousands of people singing and dancing and celebrating together will have been a very powerful subjective experience for all of them I am sure, and most will eventually go home feeling their Religion has once again been validated. But it would have been the same if they were all Hindus or Mormons or Shiites. Agree? But they couldnt all have been right - unless you want to say that the objective reality of their religion is not important, only the experience of it - though of course the actual mormons or Catholics or Hindus would have said their experience validated the actual reality of their Faith.

The other thing I was thinking about was that the Bali Bombers were supposed to have been executed by Firing Squad in the last few days. The father of one of the people killed in Bali was quoted as saying he would be happy to pull the trigger if they would give him a rifle, a viewpoint which is easy to understand, given his personal experience of what happened.I've often thought that if somone precious to me, especially one of my children was brutally murdered I would want to avange their death and track down and murder the killer myself. I would feel that I had that right.

But I would be wrong and I would have allowed my own personal experience to lead me astray, as that mans has, into thinking that killing criminals is somehow right.

The truth that seems evident to me is that Life is precious and has to be protected at all costs. And one of the costs is that vicious killers have to be taken out of society and prevented from doing harm again, but not by killing them. Killing them keeps making it possible for all of us to believe that sometimes its excusable to kill, and once that is established all that remains is for someone to think up an excuse.

If killing and murder and war is ever going to end, the first thing we have to agree on is that theres never an excuse.

Surfing weekend

Its become an annual thing - maybe this will be the last time now Ewin is 17 - but for his birthday each year Ewin and his friend Jack and I head down to the South Coast for a long weekend and stay in a rented beach house so they can go surfing.

We've stayed at Kiama, at Berrara, at Sussex Inlet and this time at Bawley Point. Again this time we were lucky to have great weather, and on our last day at Black Rock whales surfaced just out beyond the breakers. Ewin has a website, http://www.saltvisions.com/ on which he has put lots of great pictures of the surf, but heres a few more.