An open thread where you can, at your weekend leisure, discuss whatever you like.
Archive for October, 2005
Heard that phrase lately? News comes that Thomas Geoghegan has another book out called The Law in Shambles that might serve as a reality check on the Howardian future. For those who don’t know him, Tom is the author of Which Side Are You On? Trying to Be for Labor When It’s Flat on Its Back, which is the most readable recent book on the US labour movement I’ve read (a 1991 bestseller, it was republished with a new afterword in 2004). Actually, delete “recent”.
I have long been intending to post something based on the book about why the anti-discriminatory sacking (”Protected by”) law that Howard is advertising as part of his I/R propaganda package will not work if it is anything like the US experience (upon which Howard’s plan is modelled). Now, it seems that Tom has broadened his critique. Not only is the US anti-discriminatory dismissal law a complete farce, according to Scott McLemee, Tom argues that “the whole edifice [of US law] has been gutted; before long, there won’t even be any nails holding the facade together.” To illustrate, McLemee retails Tom’s account of “the case of the rat turds.”
Catalyst had a piece on Intelligent Design last night that really put the boot into this new fangled creationism. It really showed ID up for the crackpot, religiously motivated nonsense that it is.
There was a clip when I presume a science teacher states:
Teacher to class: Evolution. Intelligent Design. We need to give a good treatment of each of those ideas so that we can weigh them up fairly.
What the teacher really saying is:
“Look, if you scream long and loud enough you can get your crazy, crackpot ideas officially recognized especially if you exploit a poor understating of the theological underpinnings of faith combined with a woeful lack of understanding of science and have a whizz bang political campaign.”
This is not education. It presents a gross distortion of how science works and the status of ID within the scientific community (it has none). There is no compelling reason to be fair to ID in a scientific sense. Indeed even more so when Catalyst pointed out:
Paul Willis, reporter: So who or what is the intelligent designer?
Prof. Michael Behe: Well that is a good question I am happy to think the designer is God.
Narration: It’s not surprising that the DVDs, books and other promotional material supporting ID are produced and distributed, not by scientific organisations, but by fundamentalist Christian groups.
If there was some actual science behind ID then there would be some interest from scientists in general. Michael Behe was presented as the leading scientist promoting ID. The amount of scientific research Behe has done regarding ID is bugger all. He has written one book, Darwin’s Black Box back in 1998. Behe however is yet to present any actual original scientific evidence regarding ID. He has abandoned any pretense of doing science. Behe is also a lead witness in the Kitzmiller v Dover Area School District trail. Behe hasn’t fared to well under cross examination. So far he has claimed that the designer could be anything but then admitted that he believed the designer is God. Or that his book was peer reviewed but then that this peer review consisted of a 10 minute phone call. Behe’s credibility has been pretty much destroyed. In fact his own university has disowned him.
By the way I’m starting to feel sorry for the word choice. It is being abused as a concept in WorkChoices as well by Brendan Nelson in the context of the ID debate as mentioned in the Catalyst segment. Choice in this context seems to be the idea that no matter how absurd your ideas are that you have a right to present them as an equal alternative. Utter balderdash. I wonder what Nelson would think about “choice” if it were Holocaust deniers agitating for their views to be taught in a history class.
The SMH, The Australian and The Age have run the statement by Australian scientists opposing ID and good on them. There is no reason to consider ID as science or as an equal alternative to modern evolutionary theory. ID should be consigned to the lunatic fringe of science where it rightly belongs.
Update harry at For Battle! sent me along an alternative text book disclaimer.
Susoz, who many of us know from her wise writing at Personal Political, will be hosting the second Carnival Of Feminists.
The first ever Carnival was put up yesterday at Philobiblion, and it showcases the best feminist writing on the web. There are some great links there, well worth your browsing and reading time.
I’m going to submit something to Susoz, and I’d encourage other feminist bloggers to do so as well. You can also submit posts by other bloggers, of course.
For now, I’d like to point you towards one of the links Philobiblion included in the Carnival, a very interesting discussion from Coturnix of that controversial question, where are all the women bloggers?
Like hurricane Katrina the earthquake centred on Balakot in Pakistan was predictable and predicted. Indeed, with the inexorable northern movement of India at a rate of a millimetre per week we are told that worse is likely. Experts warn that “earthquakes tens of times more powerful must be expected…[which] could kill as many as a million on the Ganges plain.” Yet the world was unready and now 12 days after 8 October when it happened the focus in Europe is turning to battling the bird flu while attention in the Americas is turning to hurricane Wilma, the 21st of the season and the most powerful seen in the Atlantic basin, now carving a path through the Caribbean.
The South Asian earthquake is already a deadly killer. Pakistan has raised the official death toll to 47,723. The final toll from the initial shock could go as high as 100,000. Kofi Annan is now warning that “a second wave of massive deaths will happen if we do not step up our efforts.”
The problem is that almost three million people have been made homeless in difficult terrain with after-shocks continually cutting roads. Winter will soon close in. I’ve heard that 500,000 heavy winter tents are needed and so far only 17,000 have been supplied. Apparently there are simply not enough tents in all the world to do the job.
UN emergency relief chief, Jan Egeland, said the quake was the UN’s worst logistical nightmare, worse than the Asian tsunami. Some 20% of the affected area has not yet been assessed. The UN and other agencies are even hiring donkeys and mules to get supplies and relief personnel such as doctors to remote areas.
With the tsunami 80% of the funds committed by donor countries was available after 10 days. This time the score is a mere 12%.
Annan said:
There are no excuses. If we are to show ourselves worthy of calling ourselves members of humankind, we must rise to this challenge. Our response will be no less than a measure of our humanity.
There has been excellent coverage of this tragedy on radio, especially on the BBC.
While there has been coverage elsewhere somehow it has failed to capture the public imagination and generate the same sympathy as other recent disasters. Clearly we need to do better not only in our response but also, I think, in our preplanning and reserve resources.
I may or may not write a post tonight, and I’ll schedule the Saturday Salon post in advance, but don’t expect to hear too much from me over the next week or so. My friend Carol and I are visiting Perth for a wedding - leaving tomorrow night and coming back on Wednesday morning. I’m looking forward to some holiday downtime, seeing a city I haven’t seen before, and last but most certainly not least, meeting other LPers like Rob and Kate.
The mammoth ad budget has already put the IR campaign on track to become the biggest advertising spending spree in Australian history. With no end in sight to the Government’s bid to swing the public behind the IR changes, observers predict it will easily outstrip the GST campaign in 2000, which cost $100 million.
And how do the pro’s describe the government’s strategy?
John Sintras, chief executive of Starcom and head of the Media Federation of Australia, said the campaign and the “staggering” number of ads had been a significant talking point in the industry. “There is a fine line between effective reach and overkill and they have crossed it,” he said. “I’m stuffed if I can think of someone who has launched with that kind of weight; $7million is what most people spend in a year. Not even Telstra or Coles spends at that rate.”
Combine this with the governments big spend on the anti-terrorism ads, and we see that over the past few weeks there has been some massive spending by them on their current pet topics.
The IR spend is really no surprise though, the proposed legislation, support for it and even further measures by the big end of town, and the wildly successful union campaign against IR has painted the government and the PM as a party for the bosses. On this one issue they have been framed as bad for working people and appear unlikely to wriggle out of it.
The government’s solution? Use the blunt instrument of crude propaganda, all at taxpayers expense of course.
Cross posted at Troppo
Here’s this week’s column in the Courier Mail. And here’s the devastating graph which shows how poorly correlated with poverty low wages and minimum wages are. There is almost no relation between these jobs and household income.
So, at considerable cost and while it generates unemployment, the thicket of IR regulation we have doesn’t look like it does much for equality. As the chart shows, what’s really associated with inequality is unemployment and absence from the labour market.
Anyway, the column is over the fold. Continue reading ‘IR reform - the column - and a graph you need to see if you want to think about IR regulation’
The Sydney Morning Herald reports:
After weeks of public anger the NSW Government has agreed to release Cross City Tunnel papers it said it could never make public because they were commercial-in-confidence … The Government’s about-turn followed sustained public criticism, two motions from the Greens, a decision by the Opposition Leader, Peter Debnam, to ditch his party’s support for keeping government contracts secret and a post at Larvatus Prodeo.
And the winner will receive two icy cold cans of coke!
Ah, no, maybe not.
If you didn’t read the previous thread, here’s the deal. I, as the resident frivolous and flippant LP blogger, am hereby declaring the very first LP t-shirt slogan competiton OPEN.
The rules: think of something witty, maybe even hilarious, we can put on a t-shirt. We will open either a Spreadshirt or Cafepress store — I’m still investigating this — and we’ll put the best slogan (and maybe even a cool little arty thing as well) on said t-shirt, AND we’ll give the winner one for free, in a t-shirt design of their choice.
Everyone else will have the opportunity to buy one, because we’re not a bloody charity!
Ahhh, free market neo-liberalism at its best.
The winner will be chosen by a panel of expert judges.* Namely, we, the bloggers of LP. You have until midnight Sunday to submit your slogan. You can either pop it in the comments thread or email me at deborah.kate@gmail.com
So, comrades, slogan away.
*No correspondence will be entered into by the judges. Family and friends of LP bloggers are encouraged to apply.
Update [by MB]: Credit for the first of the series of posts and comments that inspired this idea goes to Jean who’s quite right also to say that her original comment at Mel’s place was about rational debate via t-shirt design rather than stoushing. However, at LP, we believe that stoushing is rational debate (well, kinda, and sometimes… remembering that stoushes are good humoured arguments…).
Jack Strocchi very kindly sent me a link to a column by Jason Briant on the evils of relativist and leftie infiltration of University social science and humanities faculties. Unfortunately, Jason hasn’t marshalled any evidence for his incoherent argument stronger than that advanced by Jack.
Briant writes:
The starting point in coming to grips with social and cultural issues lies with the state of the universities, particularly the social science and humanities faculties. Arts faculties in Australia and across the Western world have mostly abandoned their traditional role as the guardians and promoters of the Judeo-Christian tradition, as a result of being largely captured by the counter-cultural radical Left.
There has been an assumption that while the takeover of universities by left-wing radicals is annoying, it is of little real long-term consequence. The assumption is that most students, upon joining the real world of work, will leave the infantile preoccupations of university behind them, resulting in little long-term damage. Although there is a strong element of truth in this, a great deal of damage is nonetheless still being done to our culture by ideas coming out of universities.
Since their takeover by the Left, many universities have used their position to try to indoctrinate future generations of societal elites against the very values upon which our civilisation is built, which constitutes a total reversal of their original mission. There is an urgent need to think of means that would restore balance to the universities and return them to their original role as the guardians of our civilisation and culture. This is something with which conservative thinkers and policy-makers have not as yet come to grips.
Well, they should on past form, since it’s one of the rare pieces of federal legislation that recognises same sex partners.
More at Catallaxy.
It’s good to see that former NSW Auditor General Tony Harris is still on the case with respect to so-called ‘public-private partnerships’. Tony has been working this beat along with John Quiggin and myself and a few others for a dozen or more years now, pointing out the stupidities and unaccountabilites.
Just in case you happen to be labouring under the misapprehension that the Sydney tunnel contract fiasco is unusual, let me recount one of my favourite government contract stories.
The year was 1995. The place was Adelaide. The minister and soon-to-be premier was John Olsen. The company was United Water, a French-British consortium invented for the purposes of tendering for the city’s water and sewerage works - a $1.5 billion 15.5 year deal and reportedly the largest outsourcing contract going in the world that year (not counting info tech stuff).
Over at Mel Gregg’s place, Jean has come up with a novel and innovative form of Stoushing‚Ñ¢! T-shirts at ten paces!
Ps: Speaking of Stoushing‚Ñ¢, it’s Cut Price Commentariat’s first birthday. Such a combative youngster at an early age!
As a bit of a follow up to my post about hegemonic struggles for time and leisure last week, I’ve been inspired by an extremely interesting reflection on tv and the cultural politics of relationships by Mel Gregg to write a (no doubt overly long) comment in response. I think Mel has raised some very interesting issues about the way relationships interact with time pressures, though I differ from her on whether neo-liberalism is to blame (or at least in the way I think that it’s to blame).
It’s very interesting, and I think laudable, to see the sorts of thinking about how productivist crusades impact on the time to be with others in communal, friendly or intimate settings, that are now emerging as an unintended consequence of the Howardian WorkChoices regime, now incidentally (going back to Mel’s tv hook) crowding out anything worth watching on the teev.
To what degree is the expression of private freedom through the creation of relational space constrained by allegedly liberal drives for the centrality of work to life? That seems to me to be an extremely important question.
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