Today I received two emails about Steve Conroy's mandatory ISP filtering plan. One of them from someone I have a massive crush on, which usually helps when trying to get petitions signed, no? But I just can't get excited about signing the petition (although of course I sign a lot of petitions that make me depressed rather than excited).
Because this idea is so dumb I kind of hope they do it. I imagine at the moment there is a fair level of support for the idea - I mean filtering out child prOn or stopping kids seeing ordinary p0rn sounds like a good idea huh? But the consequences will be so disastrous, and so ineffective, that any government that does it is going to take some serious heat. And not just from a small minority of libertarians and techno geeks who're currently worried. No if they actually do this thing everyone who uses the web will hate them. Which is a lot of voters.
Ok the heat will be shared because the Coalition will have voted for it too, but the government will still get the blame, and the Greens in particular will stand to benefit.
So what is going on? Well one possibility is that they are so stupid they don't realise what a disaster it will be, despite every technical person warning them. Well it is Stephen Conroy we're talking about here, but its still a bit hard to believe.
Next option is that they can see the train wreck coming, but are so stubborn they just won't let go. Ahh, here's the part where the Steve Conroy bit starts to make sense. Still, surely there are more senior ministers who aren't willing to throw away 5% of the vote and the country's economic competitiveness to satisfy one man's obsession.
Which leaves us with option three. They know it is a dog, but for the moment a popular dog. So what they want is to be seen pushing it as much as possible, and then have it sunk by someone else. They can say "we tried, we really tried" to all the people who think it is a good idea until they have to use it, and blame its failure on someone else. Since the Liberals and Greens are both currently opposing the idea that works well. It probably won't hurt the Greens - they'll lose a few votes, but gain a roughly equal number.
On the other hand the Libs will probably be hurt whichever way they go. Vote against it and they will be tarred with supporting kiddie fiddlers or something. Vote for it and they will be part of the problem that put the country into the computer stone age. But if they let it through they'll be a small part of the problem, with Labor getting most of the blame.
So the whole thing becomes a giant game of chicken, watching to see whether the Libs lose their nerve and wave it through.
The country may have changed a year ago, but wedge politics didn't die.
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Victory
It's probably impossible to make any genuinely original contribution to one of the biggest stories of all time. So I'll leave it at this short note on one point I haven't seen made explicitly before or after the election:
Besides all the other reasons to celebrate, its worth noting that one of the hardest jobs in the world right now must be being an Al Queda recruiting agent, particularly in Africa. That has to be good for almost everyone.
Besides all the other reasons to celebrate, its worth noting that one of the hardest jobs in the world right now must be being an Al Queda recruiting agent, particularly in Africa. That has to be good for almost everyone.
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
The Poor Will Not Be With You Always
Apparently it is Global Blog Action Day today, or something like that, and the theme for this year is poverty. So...
I doubt we will ever remove relative poverty. Certainly all attempts to create a sufficiently egalitarian society for this to be realistic have failed. But I think we can aspire to end absolute poverty. And since that would rank with ending war in the greatest human achievements of all time, it seems to me a pretty worthy goal.
And clearly this is achievable. Human productivity has risen so much over the last couple of centuries that there now certainly is enough for everyone to have adequate food, clean water, decent if spartan housing and basic medical cover. Yes all that and still enough for large sections of the world to live in unimaginable luxury.
Global Warming will make things much, much tougher, but science isn't going to stop. The productivity of the world, from an economic point of view, will slow, but its unlikely to go much backwards, even per head.
So ending poverty is all about willpower. We haven't done it because, collectively speaking, we simply don't care enough. The developed world giving 1% of its wealth to the poor would do it, just as the UN agreed on it back in 1970. (Note the agreed figure is 0.7% government aid, the rest is to come from private individuals. Indeed, the target is a lot easier to reach these days than it was back then. A goodly chunk of the rich world is now in China and India. The money doesn't even have to flow across national boundaries. The traditionally rich world needs to look after Africa and substantial sections of Asia and Latin America, but it no longer has to worry about the whole rest of the world.
It's true that local wars mean that some regions are resistant to anything the wealthy world can do, but that's actually a pretty small proportion of global poverty. The main thing that is needed now is good aid (not the stuff that ends up with the military and in politicians' pockets) and fair trade. And one of the main things stopping that from happening is the lack of belief that it can work. It really is a case of "nothing to fear but fear itself".
I think the most important thing to do is to keep the pressure on governments to increase aid, or at least not cut it in the face of the credit crunch. But private giving is important as well, and the wonders of the Internet mean you can do that without costing anything but your time.
Most famously. But one can do even better with the search engines that send their profits to charity rather than shareholders. Here or here. You can even feed the world by playing games online. It's true these online measures are a bit of a drop in the ocean. And in some cases the sponsors are other aid organisations, so in a sense the money is just going round in circles, unless they succeed in getting you to actually donate (or buy from their online stores). Which is why its important not to lose site of the main game of putting pressure on the politicians. But these websites do make a powerful point. The rich world is now so rich, credit crisis not withstanding, that it only takes a little of that wealth slopping over the sides to end absolute poverty. So little of the wealth in fact, that we wouldn't even miss it if it was gone.
I doubt we will ever remove relative poverty. Certainly all attempts to create a sufficiently egalitarian society for this to be realistic have failed. But I think we can aspire to end absolute poverty. And since that would rank with ending war in the greatest human achievements of all time, it seems to me a pretty worthy goal.
And clearly this is achievable. Human productivity has risen so much over the last couple of centuries that there now certainly is enough for everyone to have adequate food, clean water, decent if spartan housing and basic medical cover. Yes all that and still enough for large sections of the world to live in unimaginable luxury.
Global Warming will make things much, much tougher, but science isn't going to stop. The productivity of the world, from an economic point of view, will slow, but its unlikely to go much backwards, even per head.
So ending poverty is all about willpower. We haven't done it because, collectively speaking, we simply don't care enough. The developed world giving 1% of its wealth to the poor would do it, just as the UN agreed on it back in 1970. (Note the agreed figure is 0.7% government aid, the rest is to come from private individuals. Indeed, the target is a lot easier to reach these days than it was back then. A goodly chunk of the rich world is now in China and India. The money doesn't even have to flow across national boundaries. The traditionally rich world needs to look after Africa and substantial sections of Asia and Latin America, but it no longer has to worry about the whole rest of the world.
It's true that local wars mean that some regions are resistant to anything the wealthy world can do, but that's actually a pretty small proportion of global poverty. The main thing that is needed now is good aid (not the stuff that ends up with the military and in politicians' pockets) and fair trade. And one of the main things stopping that from happening is the lack of belief that it can work. It really is a case of "nothing to fear but fear itself".
I think the most important thing to do is to keep the pressure on governments to increase aid, or at least not cut it in the face of the credit crunch. But private giving is important as well, and the wonders of the Internet mean you can do that without costing anything but your time.
Most famously. But one can do even better with the search engines that send their profits to charity rather than shareholders. Here or here. You can even feed the world by playing games online. It's true these online measures are a bit of a drop in the ocean. And in some cases the sponsors are other aid organisations, so in a sense the money is just going round in circles, unless they succeed in getting you to actually donate (or buy from their online stores). Which is why its important not to lose site of the main game of putting pressure on the politicians. But these websites do make a powerful point. The rich world is now so rich, credit crisis not withstanding, that it only takes a little of that wealth slopping over the sides to end absolute poverty. So little of the wealth in fact, that we wouldn't even miss it if it was gone.
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
A Good Man Died Today, One Of The Country's Best
Last week when Paul Newman died Pavlov's Cat quoted A Prarie Home Companion, "It's never a tragedy when an old man dies. Forgive him for his shortcomings, and thank him for all his love and care."
By that token, Graeme Laver's death a few days before Newman's, but of which we only heard today, wasn't a tragedy either. Nevertheless, its still sad.
I had the honour of speaking with him a few times, and he seemed like a genuinely nice and caring person. However, if there was any sainthood in him, then it was buried from me. As far as I know he never risked his life for his work, or donated most of his worldly wealth to help the poor. Yet in two stunning achievements he dwarfed the good that Newman did the world through decades of joyous acting, long years of activism and $250 million raised for charity.
Laver's first great achievement was so obscure I'd barely heard of it until today. He discovered a better way to break the influenza virus down into constituent parts, without damaging these parts. The second is slightly more famous. He created such large, clear crystals of neuraminidase, (a component of the flu virus) that pharmaceutical companies have been able to design two drugs, Relenza and Tamiflu to lock onto one of the few stable parts of this everchanging virus and make flu treatment drugs that actually work.
Neither Relenza nor Tamiflu are perfect. Relenza is difficult to take, and needs to be given almost as soon as symptoms start to really be effective. Given the difficulties in telling early flu symptoms from the common cold this is pretty hard. Strains of the flu virus are already showing signs of developing resistnace to Tamiflu.
But the fact remains that when you look at things to be really, really scared of an influenza pandemic lies behind Global Warming and Nuclear War, but ahead of pretty much everything else. The Spanish flu killed 20-40 million in a much less populated world. The next one was always going to be worse, unless someone invented a flu drug first (or a way of making vaccines faster than we can at the moment).
The stockpiles of Relenza and Tamiflu built up around the world give us a fighting chance against the next pandemic, even if the odds are still on dead numbered in seven figures. With any luck there'll be another, better drug in a few more years.
And then there's the matter of the thousands who die of ordinary 'flu every year, and the millions who suffer considerably. Tamiflu in particular has made a difference to a lot of them.
Of course we know that if Laver had chosen to wash cars for a living someone would have made his discoveries eventually. But eventually would probably have been decades later. These don't seem to have been discoveries pipping his rivals by weeks. The years Laver gave us could make all the difference.
By that token, Graeme Laver's death a few days before Newman's, but of which we only heard today, wasn't a tragedy either. Nevertheless, its still sad.
I had the honour of speaking with him a few times, and he seemed like a genuinely nice and caring person. However, if there was any sainthood in him, then it was buried from me. As far as I know he never risked his life for his work, or donated most of his worldly wealth to help the poor. Yet in two stunning achievements he dwarfed the good that Newman did the world through decades of joyous acting, long years of activism and $250 million raised for charity.
Laver's first great achievement was so obscure I'd barely heard of it until today. He discovered a better way to break the influenza virus down into constituent parts, without damaging these parts. The second is slightly more famous. He created such large, clear crystals of neuraminidase, (a component of the flu virus) that pharmaceutical companies have been able to design two drugs, Relenza and Tamiflu to lock onto one of the few stable parts of this everchanging virus and make flu treatment drugs that actually work.
Neither Relenza nor Tamiflu are perfect. Relenza is difficult to take, and needs to be given almost as soon as symptoms start to really be effective. Given the difficulties in telling early flu symptoms from the common cold this is pretty hard. Strains of the flu virus are already showing signs of developing resistnace to Tamiflu.
But the fact remains that when you look at things to be really, really scared of an influenza pandemic lies behind Global Warming and Nuclear War, but ahead of pretty much everything else. The Spanish flu killed 20-40 million in a much less populated world. The next one was always going to be worse, unless someone invented a flu drug first (or a way of making vaccines faster than we can at the moment).
The stockpiles of Relenza and Tamiflu built up around the world give us a fighting chance against the next pandemic, even if the odds are still on dead numbered in seven figures. With any luck there'll be another, better drug in a few more years.
And then there's the matter of the thousands who die of ordinary 'flu every year, and the millions who suffer considerably. Tamiflu in particular has made a difference to a lot of them.
Of course we know that if Laver had chosen to wash cars for a living someone would have made his discoveries eventually. But eventually would probably have been decades later. These don't seem to have been discoveries pipping his rivals by weeks. The years Laver gave us could make all the difference.
Friday, October 3, 2008
Sex Sells - And Sometimes It Should
We're all familiar with the use of sex to sell, well everything. It keeps happening because it works. And when you have a worthy cause to sell, it can create something of a conundrum: Use the tried and true method, or hold back through ethical concerns.
Declare yourself, a Hollywood campaign to get young people to register to vote in the 2008 elections (with the sometimes explicit acknowledgment that most who do so will be backing Obama) don't seem to have any qualms. I'm pretty sure there will be mixed feelings from supporters about the pneumatic beauties in skimpy bikinis in some of the ads. However, in this one they've found away around the problem: Make the sex relevant to what you're saying. It's also funny, none of which stops it being hot.
And yes, I know, every blogger worth their salt knows how to embed a Youtube. I don't alright. I never claimed to be technologically competent at everything. Perhaps its just as well there's probably no one listening.
Declare yourself, a Hollywood campaign to get young people to register to vote in the 2008 elections (with the sometimes explicit acknowledgment that most who do so will be backing Obama) don't seem to have any qualms. I'm pretty sure there will be mixed feelings from supporters about the pneumatic beauties in skimpy bikinis in some of the ads. However, in this one they've found away around the problem: Make the sex relevant to what you're saying. It's also funny, none of which stops it being hot.
And yes, I know, every blogger worth their salt knows how to embed a Youtube. I don't alright. I never claimed to be technologically competent at everything. Perhaps its just as well there's probably no one listening.
Saturday, September 6, 2008
Playing For Peace
At the bottom of this post are links to two of the most inspiring articles I've read for a while. Australian readers may want to go straight there. Anyone from overseas might need a little background to make sense of them.
Australian Rules Football is an odd sport. Until about 30 years ago it was only really played in southern and north-western Australia, areas that include about half the national population. Americans sometimes describe it as a mix of basketball and soccer, although its more accurately a mix of soccer, rugby and a game played by the Indigenous population of Western Victoria. It's most similar modern sport is Gaelic football, which appears to be a derivative created by Irish gold diggers returning from the Victorian gold rush.
In the late 70s the people who ran the major leagues decided a little local game would not survive as more than a curiosity in the face of competition with global sports like rugby and what most of the world considers football. So they started an aggressive expansion campaign, joining up all the state-based leagues and making a push into the rugby playing north-east of Australia. Now they're moving on, trying to spark interest overseas.
Where this really gets interesting is that some of their expansion strategies have caused them to act in ways that are having some remarkable spin-offs. Football is something of a religion in many Aboriginal Indigenous communities, and the league realised that the skills of players from some of these areas form one of the game's greatest attractions. They've set up coaching programs in places that have been desperately under-resourced by the government. Children are only allowed to play if they attended school the previous week, and this has been the most successful program in Australian history in addressing truancy in remote communities.
More suprisingly, the league singled out South Africa as the best prospects for growth. They've approached schools in some of the poorest townships offering to supply sporting gear and administration money on the condition the schools teach Australian rules. For these schools battling parental unemployment over 50%, soaring rates of HIV and drastic underfunding this is a godsend. Some inspirational and hilarious stories have come out of this program.
One aspect of the international push is the creation of an international cup for all nations playing our rules other than Australia. None of these nations are remotely competitive with the local teams, although there is an on-again, off-again competition with Ireland in a hybrid of Aussie rules and Gaelic football. However, for teenagers and young adults from many developing nations getting a flight to Australia paid to come and play is pretty exciting. Soon, the AFL hopes, we'll have players from these countries playing at the highest level.
A joint Israeli/Palastinian team has been created to compete in the cup. Most of the players had never heard of Australian rules football before they were invited to play, let alone seen a game. They'd probably be thrashed by a weak team in an outback country league. One might think that you'd be better off doing the same thing with soccer or basketball teams. I believe such things are happening too, but as one of these articles makes clear, the very fact that the sport is new to the players can be a strength not a weakness, and of course the assistance from the League might be harder to obtain for an established sport.
When your team loses as badly as mine did this weekend its easy to hate football for a few days. But reading these pieces was as good as the best wins.
Ready. Here they are.
Australian Rules Football is an odd sport. Until about 30 years ago it was only really played in southern and north-western Australia, areas that include about half the national population. Americans sometimes describe it as a mix of basketball and soccer, although its more accurately a mix of soccer, rugby and a game played by the Indigenous population of Western Victoria. It's most similar modern sport is Gaelic football, which appears to be a derivative created by Irish gold diggers returning from the Victorian gold rush.
In the late 70s the people who ran the major leagues decided a little local game would not survive as more than a curiosity in the face of competition with global sports like rugby and what most of the world considers football. So they started an aggressive expansion campaign, joining up all the state-based leagues and making a push into the rugby playing north-east of Australia. Now they're moving on, trying to spark interest overseas.
Where this really gets interesting is that some of their expansion strategies have caused them to act in ways that are having some remarkable spin-offs. Football is something of a religion in many Aboriginal Indigenous communities, and the league realised that the skills of players from some of these areas form one of the game's greatest attractions. They've set up coaching programs in places that have been desperately under-resourced by the government. Children are only allowed to play if they attended school the previous week, and this has been the most successful program in Australian history in addressing truancy in remote communities.
More suprisingly, the league singled out South Africa as the best prospects for growth. They've approached schools in some of the poorest townships offering to supply sporting gear and administration money on the condition the schools teach Australian rules. For these schools battling parental unemployment over 50%, soaring rates of HIV and drastic underfunding this is a godsend. Some inspirational and hilarious stories have come out of this program.
One aspect of the international push is the creation of an international cup for all nations playing our rules other than Australia. None of these nations are remotely competitive with the local teams, although there is an on-again, off-again competition with Ireland in a hybrid of Aussie rules and Gaelic football. However, for teenagers and young adults from many developing nations getting a flight to Australia paid to come and play is pretty exciting. Soon, the AFL hopes, we'll have players from these countries playing at the highest level.
A joint Israeli/Palastinian team has been created to compete in the cup. Most of the players had never heard of Australian rules football before they were invited to play, let alone seen a game. They'd probably be thrashed by a weak team in an outback country league. One might think that you'd be better off doing the same thing with soccer or basketball teams. I believe such things are happening too, but as one of these articles makes clear, the very fact that the sport is new to the players can be a strength not a weakness, and of course the assistance from the League might be harder to obtain for an established sport.
When your team loses as badly as mine did this weekend its easy to hate football for a few days. But reading these pieces was as good as the best wins.
Ready. Here they are.
Saturday, August 30, 2008
This Should Be Fun
Just recently we've had the spectacle of Global Warming deniers trying to claim that they are the true defenders of the enlightenment. I suspect that this isn't a line their American equivalents would run. The US Right is so interwoven with religious fundamentalists that even secularists don't want to claim the enlightenment crown too fiercely.
That's not true here. Australian fundamentalists are useful to the Right, but they are pretty peripheral, and not powerful enough to get offended when their allies start talking about the enlightenment as a good thing.
But the Australian Right these days is caught up in worship of Republicans. Most decry the fundamentalist wing of Bush's coalition, but also downplay it. In particular, they don't want anything to do with creationism, and want to pretend its not a crucial part of the movement they support. Bush, they say was in an alliance of convenience with creationists because of all the other things they had in common - he didn't really deny evolution.
So it will be interesting to see how they handle the reported fact that Sarah Palin is a creationist, as well as a global warming sceptic. It's no great surprise. In America the two usually go hand in hand. But its going to be fun watching the Craig Emersons of the world explain how it is the environmentalists who are the new church persecuting modern Gallileos, when the new standard bearer for global warming deniers believes the world was created in six days.
That's not true here. Australian fundamentalists are useful to the Right, but they are pretty peripheral, and not powerful enough to get offended when their allies start talking about the enlightenment as a good thing.
But the Australian Right these days is caught up in worship of Republicans. Most decry the fundamentalist wing of Bush's coalition, but also downplay it. In particular, they don't want anything to do with creationism, and want to pretend its not a crucial part of the movement they support. Bush, they say was in an alliance of convenience with creationists because of all the other things they had in common - he didn't really deny evolution.
So it will be interesting to see how they handle the reported fact that Sarah Palin is a creationist, as well as a global warming sceptic. It's no great surprise. In America the two usually go hand in hand. But its going to be fun watching the Craig Emersons of the world explain how it is the environmentalists who are the new church persecuting modern Gallileos, when the new standard bearer for global warming deniers believes the world was created in six days.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)