A Beaut Little Hurler

I had to make some tough decisions on my library borrowings Sunday: I've had a bit of a bibliomania rush over the past couple of weeks and picked up too many of those interesting volumes that turn up on the shelf just next to the book you went in to borrow in the first place. It's time for them to go back to the cultural lolly-shop, so that I can do some genuine reading. For sheer pleasure I've got Frederik Pohl's O Pioneer. Pohl is still one of the best writers of "hard" science fiction there is and he's in fine form in this book. It's also pleasant to read an American writer of hard science fiction who isn't a complete right wing twat - In O Pioneer, Pohl even goes so far as to slip in a few sly "anti-American" jokes about a Pentagon.

Another book I'm hanging on to, at least for time being, is Susan Blackmore's The Meme Machine. I think it might be worth doing the rounds of the remainder shops and the second hand book stores to see if I can pick up a copy of my own. The hard-back edition is of a good size and medium weight; I think it's the sort of book where you can get a good long throw with a simple overhand action, which I much prefer to the frisbee style lateral spin you have to use to get a respectable throw with a paperback. It looks like the sort of book that would give you plenty of provocation too, which is always a plus when you're looking to set a new personal best for distance.

The irritants start coming early, starting on the second page of the foreword by Richard Dawkins (p viii). Here Dawkins provides a brief history of the 'meme' meme:

... Since 1976, when the word was coined increasing numbers of people have adopted the name 'meme" for the postulated gene analogue.

The compilers of the Oxford English Dictionary operate a sensible criterion for deciding whether a new word shall be canonised by inclusion. The aspirant word must be commonly used without needing to be defined and without its coinage being attributed whenever it is used. To ask the metamemetic question, how widespread is 'meme'? A far from ideal, but nevertheless easy and convenient method of sampling the meme pool, is provided by the World Wide Web and the ease with which it may be searched. I did a quick search of the Web on the day of writing this, which happened to be 29 August 1998. 'Meme' is mentioned about half a million times, but that is obviously confounded by various acronyms ... The adjectival form memetic, [Rhymes with emetic, doesn't it? Sorry, I needed to take a cheap shot, just for the break. Now back to the tedious task of transcription]. however, is genuinely exclusive, and it clocked up 5042 mentions.

Dawkins goes on to provide scores for a few other recently coined words and phrases: spin doctor (spin-doctor) gets 1412 mentions, dumbing down 3905, and so on. Dawkins then asserts (although I'm not sure how he arrived at his figures):

Of the 5042 mentions of memetic, more than 90 per cent make no mention of the origin of the word, which suggests that it does indeed meet the OED's criterion. And, as Susan Blackmore tells us the Oxford English Dictionary now does contain the following definition:

meme An element of a culture that may be considered to be passed on by non-genetic means, esp. imitation.

Well, whoopy-do, 'meme' is in the OED, and it only took 22 years to get there. Now you'd think that the bloke who made up the word might have something to skite about, wouldn't you? Whoever he is, he's nearly up there with the egregious Stephen Potter (gamesmanship and one-upmanship), Lewis Carroll (chortle, and possibly one or two others), George Orwell (doublethink and, possibly, ungood and doubleplus ungood) and the legendary Dubliner who won a pub bet by getting quiz into the English language within the space of 24 hours. Can you guess who it was?

There's no real need to, if you've already read Dennett & Hofstadter's The Mind's Eye or if you just carry on reading. Dawkins drops a final modest hint on p xvi of his foreword and Blackmore drags the shy originator rightout onto center stage on page 4:

The term 'meme' first appeared in 1976, in [drum roll] Richard Dawkin's [cymbal] best-selling book The Selfish Gene.

Yes, it was Richard all the time. I bet you never guessed. You have to admit it, he's such a clever boy. I'm not going to say that the rest of the book couldn't possibly be any sillier than want I've read of it so far (which is a little more than what I've written about here) because I strongly suspect that it will. Intellectual football anyone?

Afterword: Having finished O Pioneer on Sunday night, I can thoroughly reccommend it. Pohl is in fine satiric form throughout. As a bonus, he gives us a hero and heroine who actually develop through the course of the novel, rather than arriving fully formed in the first chapter, straight off the standard science fiction hard man and beautiful woman production lines.

Can Libertarians Do Yum-Cha?

"Doing yum-cha" is a pleasant way to spent a rainy Sunday afternoon in Melbourne. Or anywhere other city. Melbourne has plenty of Chinese restaurants that put on a good yum-cha, and it's a popular way to celebrate special occasions like birthdays, wedding and divorce anniversaries, send-off lunches and those secret, after the event, "they finally sacked our bastard manager" parties.

A few words of explanation might be in order for anyone who's never been to a yum-cha. What you get is a lot of free tea (now seems as good a time as any to slip in the obligatory reminder that literally translated yum-cha means "drink tea"; however more intoxicating beverages are usually available, for a price) and a lot of dim sum*.

We're not talking about those bloated fish-and-chip shop dimmies here either, we're talking about the real thing: pot-stickers, steamed pork buns and chicken buns, shark's fin dumplings, taro dumplings, sticky rice in lotus leaves; too many to list at once. You don't order from the menu - the usual drill is that the waiters bring carts of bamboo steamer baskets past your table, tell you what they've got on offer and you say "One of everything, except for the chicken feet." For some reason, everything comes three to a basket, even the chicken feet. They must get them off those mutant three-legged chickens that turn up in supermarket freezers from time to time.

Each time you order something off the trolley, it gets marked up on the bill for your table. If you have the good sense to book for the one-thirty sitting, rather than the eleven-thirty sitting, you can easily stretch things out until at least four o'clock (the eleven-thirty people are the slightly pissed-off bunch being politely, but firmly, ushered out of the restaurant to make room for you when you arrive). There's plenty of time for ten people to knock off a good twenty to thirty steamer baskets. And still find room for a coconut jelly dessert.

The usual arrangement for paying the bill is that everybody covers their own drinks but the total cost of food is split equally over the whole table, with a decent round-up for the tip. It's this arrangement that I think would present difficulties for hard-line libertarians. It's fraught with all kinds of problems like those which create their aversion to high taxing, high intervention government.

Take the chicken's feet - I think very few non-Chinese readers would, so here we have a clear example of moral hazard (thanks to Martin Wisse for his succinct definition, in the comments here): if some brave soul at the table decides, what the hell, I'll give them a go, there's a risk that he won't like what he gets. And the cost of that risk has to be borne by the whole table.

On the other hand, the offcuts gourmet who orders a basket of chicken feet, two of which go uneaten, has just received a subsidy from everyone else and, to make matters worse, she's also squandered some of the table's financial resources on a pair of useless, and rather unsightly, bits of dead bird. A chicken's foot is unmistakably a chicken's foot - even cooked. To this pair of squeamish western eyes, the only part of a chicken that's any uglier is the parson's nose. Apparently there are people who consider this a choice morsel as well.

Moving on, there's the free rider problem. Most of the carts come with steamer baskets at two prices: the cheap stuff, like fried turnip cake, steamed pork noodle, chinese sausage, black bean beef, steamed pork and chicken buns, pork dim sum, steamed greens, sticky rice and, of course, the chicken feet. Then there's the pricier stuff: crab claws, shark-fin dumplings, prawn and seafood dumplings, prawn noodle, prawn cakes, sesame prawn toast, steamed prawns, taro dumplings, peking duck and often a house special or two (such as baby octopus, which goes down quite pleasantly with a dab of chilli sauce).

It isn't possible for everyone on the table to get one each apiece all round out of the pricier baskets. A rationally self-interested person might well decide that they're going to appropriate an extra share of the goodies, so long as they can get away with it. The only deterrent is the risk that if you're caught, it might be the last time your nominal host will invite you to yum-cha. That's collectivism at work; split the costs of a Sunday afternoon meal and someone's bound to rip you off. If the yum-cha hog is your nominal host, it's a clear case of collectivism equals theft. If I were one of those property-fixated libertarians, I'd be very suspicious of an invitation to Sunday afternoon yum-cha.

Finally, let's look at the problem of cost blow-outs. Bean-counting is generally frowned upon at a yum-cha, especially in the early stages, when everyone is eager to start tucking in. By the time someone has thought to do a quick reckoning on the tab, to check whether the imaginary community largesse will stand up to a couple more baskets, it's often too late: everyone's over budget. It's pure tragedy of the commons. Naturally, there's bound to be some shifty bugger at the table who'll try to talk everyone into a couple more anyway.

Usually this starts with a cunning remark that it's a pity that the turnip cake and sticky rice didn't turn up earlier. A turnip cake faction and a sticky rice faction will spring up and quickly combine to agitate, oh so very politely, for an order of turnip cake and sticky rice, if possible. And, because rational restraint effectively dissolves in a collectivist environment, the result is that everyone says, what the hell, we've already run over what we expected to spend, it's only going to be another buck each and let's keep an eye open for the dessert trolley while we're at it. This tactic hasn't failed me yet.

Of course, you've got Buckley's chance of making it work if you're hanging out for the chicken feet. You're only real hope is that they might turn up with the turnip cake and sticky rice. If they do, it's wiser not to order them - the turnip cake and sticky rice factions might get a little snarky** because the sight of you eating your preferred delicacy is putting them off eating theirs. And the dessert or coffee majority definitely won't want chicken feet around while they're tucking into their coconut jelly or slurping up their flat whites.

So, on the whole, it's very hard for me to imagine a die-hard libertarian being happy at a yum-cha. I think Mongolian barbecue would suit them better. The trick there, of course, is to know how to really pack your bowl. Otherwise, once you get it back from the chef, with everything cooked down to half its original volume, you'll discover it's half empty (or half full at best). This leaves you with two choices: stump up some readies for another bowl, or hope that someone with better Mongolian barbecue skills will finish up with some left-overs they're willing to part with. In other words, pay more or hang out for charity. Me, I'm sticking with yum-cha, chicken feet and all. By the way, did I mention the stuffed bean-curd? How could I possibly have missed the stuffed bean curd? Never mind, there might be a chance to get it in before ...

* Readers from outside Australia (I have some reason to think that I might have a few) may recognise that what we call a "yum-cha restaurant" here is a "dim sum restaurant" in most other parts of the world. I know that this is so in Hong-Kong - and the only way to get the staff to take you seriously enough to start bringing round the good stuff, is to pluck up your courage and order the chicken feet. At least one of you has to be seen eating one too. I admit, a little shame-facedly, that I wasn't that person.

** Another blogger told me recently that the word "snark", which I usually associate with Lewis Carroll, has now been appropriated to mean a peevish post on a blog (and I expect it's very likely to get extended to other written media as well). On this basis, I assume that the adjective "snarky" is a synonym for "peevish" or something similar. This is the one and only time I intend to use either of these words on my blog.

Whoever coined this usage obviously has a limited vocabulary: there are already plenty of perfectly good nouns and adjectives in the English language to describe nasty writing, and the world's most widely used but least popular word processing package has a handy little thesaurus feature which will provide suggestions if you need them. The word "snark" properly belongs to Lewis Carroll and has nothing to do with spite or malice. I admit that Carroll is dead, but there are a lot of Lewis Carroll fans out here who want the damn word put back where it belongs, thank you very much. And don't you go nicking our slithy toves, [mimsy] borogoves, mome raths, jub-jub birds, frumious bandersnatches, tum-tum trees or jabberwocks either. If you do, we'll set a boojum on you.

Update: thanks to mark for hunting down an on-line copy of The Hunting of The Snark, giving me the perfect excuse to update this post and fix up some wonky paragraphing at the same time.

Ken Parish wonders "Why is it easier to expose emotions and vulnerabilities to hundreds of strangers on a blog than to just one on a tram?" This is very personal. And sad.

Bumper Pretty Bloody Ordinary Monday Edition!

Thanks to a very productive weekend of off-line pseudo-blogging, I had three fairly good pieces to start off with this week. Thanks to a technical hitch with a recalcitrant 3.5" floppy, and a serious ufpuck by the standard disk repair and file recovery tool of the world's most commercially successful PC operating system, only one made it onto the hard-drive of the PC where I usually give posts a final polish before they go on the net. All that's left of the other two is interspersed with garbage from old files and long strings of ASCII null characters. With a little luck, and a better floppy disk, they ought to be available tomorrow. So Chris Sheil of Troppo Armadillo and the Babboon will just have to hang out another day to find out what the book was. The only post that is left in a fit state to put up today opens The Potemkin Museum of Antique Humour. The first section to open to the public is our English Humour collection, starting with some pre-Thatcherian items from The New Statesman. The collection includes items from earlier periods, which will be put on display over the next few weeks.

The idea for an on-line museum of "antique humour" came to me on Saturday: I was looking for a useful pretext to post on one or two books I have in my extensive humour collection (It includes both intentional and accidental humour: anyone who doesn't get a laugh from Sartre's immortal dicta "To touch slime is to be contaminated by the slimy," and "Slime is the agony of water," was probably wearing too much black in the late fifties). I couldn't find anything plausibly topical, so I had to come up with something else. You'll find that some of the material is quite dated: re-reading some of the books, I wonder what I found so amusing that I was willing to shell out $2.00 secondhand or $5.00 remaindered for them. Still, one or two pieces might stand up, dated though they are and, as for the rest, they might have cautionary value. Looking at the society and blogosphere around me, I'm leaning towards the view that a few people might benefit from a gentle reminder that nothing gets old anywhere near as quickly as bad humour.

The Potemkin Museum of Antique Humour

Various (England, Later Young Elizabethan Era): New Statesman "Comps"

Description: Over several decades, the English magazine New Statesman ran Weekend Competitions where readers were challenged to produce short literary works in a variety of styles, often on a contemporary political issues. At least four anthologies of winning "comps" entries have been published, in 1946, 1955, 1968 and 1979.

The following selection of winning entries is drawn from the 1979 anthology Never Rub Bottoms with a Porcupine! In his introduction to the anthology, Arthur Marshall notes the sort of problem of which bloggers currently conducting competitions of their own might need to note:

... There have, I regret to say, been occasions when the word limit has, unspotted by the adjudicator, been exceeded by an overexcited competitor and furious rivals have quite rightly written in to complain. Have the word exceeders, covered in shame and confusion, then nobly surrendered their prize money? Your guess is every bit as good as mine.

The 1965 anthology was Salome Dear, Not in the Fridge! I have no idea what the titles of the two previous anthologies were.

Each entry (or set of entries) is preceded by the page title from the book and a short description of the competition that produced it. With one significant exception, the entries on display were selected either because they're "timeless" (without any intent to imply that they are classics) or because I think they have some relevance, however tenuous, to current events. I don't think the exception will be too hard to spot.

...

Never Rub Bottoms with a Porcupine!
A few proverbs and aphorisms which either state the bleeding obvious or are just fatuous.

If there's no lead in your pencil you don't need a rubber. J. A. Smith

Tomorrow is what today was yesterday. R. Armstrong

A bald man does not fear grey hair. T. Griffiths

A bird in a taxi's worth two in a bus. G. R. MacFarlane

All: 1969

...

A Just Not So Story
Competitors were asked for inside stories exposing the myth of the Black and Tans or the Slave Trade. Here's one on the latter.

Interviewed today, Mrs Hagar Ffoulkes of Takoradi said: 'The British Hulk Trading Association are doing a grand job. My husband, family of foour and myself have all been placed in holiday homes. No, we don't pay a penny. We live as family. Later, I believe, exchanges are to be arranged so that colonists out here can see out beautiful country. The children are about twenty miles away on another plantation. It is the first holiday from the children that I have had since they were born. Of course I help out in the house. It is the least I can do in return for the hospitality I have received here. Yes, the iron collar is free, too ...

Eileen M. Haggitt, 1969

...

Hello World
Famous words of the newly-born.

OEDIPUS: I'll be back. Roger Woddis

JESUS: My father was never in these parts. Gerald Hinch

Both: 1969

...

Beyond Our Faculties
A new university course and its justification.

A Parisian countess, returning from Proust's funeral, encountered a friend who, on learning where she'd been, remarked 'Marcel Proust? Who's he?' Suddenly the countess records she felt 'une immense fatigue'. Your Faculty, having pondered many doctoral hundred doctoral theses with titles like 'The Tensile Heart: Patterns of Moral Equilibrium in the Poetry of Emily Dickinson' confesses to sensations of similar weariness. It has been decided therefore to scrap the existing ENGLIT course and substitute for it an anonymous happening. Anyone who wishes will be lent a selection of books that some people in the past have found meritorious and will be given a quiet, warm room (adequately stocked with alcohol, tobacco, coffee, etc.) in which to read them. There will be no lectures, seminars or tutorials, nor will there be any terminal examinations, gradings or assessments. The 'course' will have no objective, produce no result and will provide no marketable qualification whatsoever. Your Faculty has meanwhile awarded itself a well-earned sabbatical and will be engaged in literary research in Las Vegas.

Molly Fitton, 1969

...

Grave Matters
This competition asked for elegies to "contemporary bigwigs in the style of any notoriously good-bad poet".

For Mrs Thatcher, after Alfred Austin

Across the wires the message sped,
She is no better, actually she's dead.
Fair Leaderette! with Party cares o'erladen,
Supreme example of a self-made maiden,
A grocer's daughter, born in Grantham Lincs,
She got a Second in what some call 'Stinks',
But First in the affections of the Tories,
Secure in History she evermore is.
Though Number Ten she never dwelt inside,
Be sure the Pearly Gates will open wide
To welcome her in heav'nly twin set clad,
The best Prime Minister we never had.

Stanley J. Sharpless, 1975
[I don't know who Alfred Austin was either. Gummo]

...

'P' Means Relief Is Permitted
Helpful advice for tourists visiting the UK.

In Scotland, Gentlemen's lavatories are indicated by a picture of a man in a kilt. A. C. C. Brodie

London barbers are delighted to shave patrons' armpits. V. F. Corleone

Bus Conductors like to be paid in L5 and L10 notes as they hate carrying heavy coins up and down the stairs. C. Vita-Finzi

All: 1976

...

Ken Parish has a new contest.

Something Pleasant, for a Change

It's sometime between 7.30 and 8.00 pm at the corner of Collins Street and Spencer Street. THere's a young cat crying out across the road, but I haven't been able to work out where and, anyway, my tram is going to arrive soon. It's the 109 to Port Melbourne and I don't want to miss it, despite my self-serving interest in maybe picking up a stray moggy that I can carry home later on in the bag of library books I've got tucked under my left arm. The tram arrives so I can quite conveniently put aside the caterwauling moggy as somebody else's problem, and carry on with my plans for the eveneing.

I get on the tram at the last door. It's not peak-hour crowded, but I still habve to look around for a vacant seat. I walk to the back of the tram - you look up at me and smile. Maybe it's not the full smile you'd give to an old friend, but it's enough to let a complete stranger know that you'll tolerate him in your space. I sit down and pull a silly library book out of the bag under my left arm. I already know that it's a silly book - that's why I borrowed it. I'm looking forward to ripping it to pieces here on mhy blog, later.

We rattle through south-west Melbourne. I'm reading. I'm making it very obvious that I'm reading, so you won't get the idea that the only reason that I'm sitting here opposite you is that you're an attractive young woman who's made it pretty clear that you don't mind my being here. I read through the silly first chapter of the silly book, making it very obvious that i'm just some guy who happens to be on the same tram, who has business of his own. Like reading silly books. As soon as I see the chance - as soon as the seat on the opposite side of the aisle is free - I move, so you'll know that I'm not assuming that there's anything more between us than that we're a couple of strangers on a tram who are prepared to put up with each other's company. If I was seriously thinking about it, I'd probably say you're too young for me anyway. It's easier than admitting that I'm too old for you.

The tram reaches my stop. I'm too late getting up, and I nearly fall into the lap of a Chinese guy sitting on the seat next to me when I get up to get off. It's your stop too, but I don't know that until I'm walking past you and you say "Excuse me, I've just had two red wines, but I just wanted to say that you looked like an interesting person. You seem very thoughtful." I'm not sure that that's exactly what you said, but it's close. Right now I'm reconstructing events from memory and the notes I took down a little later. After a short delay, I reply: "Thanks. maybe I should speak to people who have had a couple of reds more often."

The conversation goes on a little longer - we both have to walk in the same direction, at least for a little while. You tell me that you have to read up on joint occupancy. I say something whichisn't too bright, like "Oh. Legal stuff. Well good luck with it." Our ways separate for a short while: not because either of us really wants it, but because I think it's the courteous thing. You walk on down the street - I turn into the door of the pub, confidently expecting to get my arse kicked in tonight's trivia challenge. And that's that.

Except for one thing - if you happen to read this, I'd just like to make it very clear that I didn't write it because I want to go steady or anything. OK?

Simply Irresistible

Geoff Honnor has noted a couple of interesting ironies which occurred recently in the world's leading constitutional gerontocracy. I'm in a more parochial mood today, but here's an exquisite little home grown example I found through a quick visit to Tim Blair's little corner of spleenville. Tim gives us a sizeable citation from Miranda Devine's column in today's Sydney Morning Herald. Here's where Tim starts his quote:

The secret of Howard's success is, as always, his enemies. No one likes a bully, and the cowardly, unimaginative pack-bullying practised by what passes for intelligentsia in urban Australia, whether they are writers, artists, academics, journalists, John Hewson or Paddington wives, whether you call them the left, or elites, as David Flint has in his new book, is particularly repugnant.

There's plenty more where that came from, but the ending is a real cracker:

But, despite Howard's apparent success, and perhaps contributing to it, is the fact he allowed his enemies to win the culture wars. They have successfully colonised the universities, the arts and parts of the media, a process which has continued almost unchecked during his term in office.

It is futile to try to reverse those victories, as the Communications Minister, Richard Alston, did so ineptly with his 68-point "dossier" of objections to the ABC's Iraq war coverage. It is like trying to hold sand in your hands. You just have to look at the National Museum of Australia in Canberra, built with $155 million of taxpayers' money on Howard's watch, with its sneering black armband treatment of our history, its irony overload of upside-down Hills hoists and digger statues, and its Holocaust architecture.

It was designed as a big "f--- you" to Howard and his supporters and there is not much Howard can do about it, no matter how many $200,000 reviews he tries. You can't legislate for attitude.

Better to write off the NMA as an expensive folly and rename it the "OzKulcha" museum to better reflect its contents. As for the ABC, the Bulletin columnist and blogger Tim Blair will tell a Quadrant magazine dinner next week that ABC types should be calling for the privatisation of their beloved institution because then it could be as biased as it likes without the pesky intervention of Alston and co. Sneering right back is the best revenge. [my emphasis]

Pity I can't make it to the Quadrant dinner next week - it sounds like it's going to be a real ripper of a leather breech-clout and tom-toms fest. I think Miranda might have a point on the subject of sneering back - it's bloody good fun. Still, it's always wise to remember the old saying about he who sneers last ...

Update: I've just been back to fix up the link to Tim's site. For some reason I can't fathom, he's added the text of a letter that one of his readers received from John Howard, in response to an E-Mail and remarks that several US readers have received similar letters. It makes me almost (but not quite) curious enough to write one myself, to see how similar a response I'd get. And whether it comes with an elephant stamp.

Gary has been trying on the sneer over at public opinion.

At Last, a Weird(ish) Search Request

From here on, it can only get better.

Oh Sod It!

I'll admit it, I had a good giggle at Media Watch on Monday Night. Forgot about Tim Dunlop's sister-in-law being one of David Marr's pet targets and I had no idea of the correspondence between Alison Broinowski and David Marr revealed by Stanley of the Billabong. So I'm feeling a bit pissed off right now - first with myself, for getting sucked into enjoying the cheap shots, but especially with David Marr.

A couple of weeks ago, I actually e-mailed Media Watch via their "tip-offs" link and using my real name too. It was about this article by Andrew Bolt, which I commented on in this post. I thought the Media Watch crew might actually take an interest in why Andrew Bolt seemed (at least to me and at that time) to be the only journo in Australia to have written about Andrew Wilkie's secret report on Iraq for the Office of National Assessments. I might have to re-Google it, just to make sure, but I think I might have noticed if there had been reports of Wilkie's work being tabled in Parliament, or of it falling out of the secure documents bin on its way to the shredder.

Curious as I am about the question, I won't be holding my breath waiting for Media Watch to look into it. And I'm not sure that I'll be watching next Monday night - I'd rather get my weekly dose of the macabre from watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer than watching the corpse of a former journalist decompose to a voice from the beyond soundtrack. I'd rather remember Marr for his coverage of Seidler v Cook in The National Times, back in the seventies. In my opinion it gave the best explanation of the technicalities of libel law ever published in an Australian newspaper. If I can track down a copy of the article, I might see if I can put a few selected excerpts on line, as a reminder of the greatness that might have been.

Privatisation for the Home Scientist (Part I)

I've had this post at the back of my mind for a while but I haven't found an excuse to post it. So thanks to Chris Sheil at Troppo Armadillo for his post "Score this One for the Elites": at last I can pretend, at least to myself, that these musings are more or less topical and up-to-date, with-it, hip F-A-B Scott, F-A-B Virgil and goodnight John-Boy.

Here's a little experiment you might like to try at home. You'll need a pair of 1.5 volt batteries (one EverReady Energiser, one Duracell), some ordinary copper wire and two flashlight bulbs. If your resources run to a couple of ammeters, so much the better - you can try the quantitative version of the experiment, but if you only have ordinary household resources, the qualitative version will have to do. Strictly speaking, if you have the sort of ordinary household resources I have, you're probably stuch with the gedanken version of the experiment but that shouldn't deter you. It was gedanken experiments which helped to make Einstein what he is today - the world's greatest dead physicist.

Your mission, should you accept it Jim, is to wire the two batteries, and the two light bulbs, into a single electrical circuit with current from both batteries flowing from the batteries to the bulbs along a single wire. The return from the bulbs to the batteries is also to be a single wire. You're not allowed to wire one battery to one bulb and one to another - the current to the bulbs must come from both batteries. You may, however, wire either the bulbs or batteries in parallel as long as a single wire connects the battery sub-circuit to the bulb sub-circuit. Now here's the tricky part: you have to design your electrical circuit so that (subject to the small restriction I've outlined) all the current from the Duracell battery goes to one bulb and all the current from the Energiser goes to the other.

Actually, it might be better to use a couple of fairy lights, say a red one and a green one, so that you can tell them apart. In that case, you'd want all the current going from the Duracell going to the red fairy light and all the current from the Energiser going to the green fairy light. Or vice versa, as long as there's no mixing of current.

If you have the two ammeters, you want to achieve something similar - with all the rated current output of the Duracell going to one ammeter and all the rated current output of the Energiser going to the other. If you're the sort of person who owns two ammeters that's probably blindingly obvious to you, but I thought it might be useful for the fairy light people to know. Oh and if you're stuck in the gedanken experiment group just try to work it out in your head, or by drawing a few diagrams on a sheet of paper.

There's no time limit on this, so take as much time as you need. It's not a contest. On the other hand, if you're still stuck at the end of next week it might be wise to give it up and contact former Victorian Treasurer Alan Stockdale. To be truthful, I've no idea how it can be done either, but apparently Alan does. One of the economic advisors told him how when he privatised Victoria's electricity industry. It's not really a problem of physics at all it's a matter of economic policy, and the solution is in how you structure the market.

Get it right, and you can have two households right next door to each other in the same street buying electricity from two different retailers and both getting the benefits of lower prices through competition. Even though the the two houses are both wired up to the same grid. And that's not the end of it - the retailers get to buy the electricity that they on-sell to the households from competing generating companies, so they get the benefits of lower prices through competition too. This is either a triumph of human ingenuity over refractory facts of nature, or the most successful confidence trick since two anonymous Frenchmen sold the Eiffel tower for scrap, by tender. Twice.

I know what you're going to say (especially if you're pro-privatisation): an electricity supply grid isn't a pissy little electrical circuit, with two batteries and a couple of fairy lights. That's very true. An electricity supply grid is a bloody great big electrical circuit, with generators and high voltage cables strung across the landscape on pylons, sub-stations, step down transformers, overhead wires in your local street and an electricity meter on every house. And it runs on AC, rather than DC so there's no need for a complete circuit but, when you consider the basic physics, the idea that you and your neighbour can buy different electricity from different retailers is revealed as an elaborate and rather ridiculous fiction. There's simply no way to provide every household with a genuine choice of electricity retailers, unless you duplicate the transmission infrastructure. The real choice for the householder is between different brokers, each of whom is essentially selling electricity out of a common pool.

The same is more or less true at the supply end: unless you duplicate the high voltage transmission cables that connect the generators to the retailers, all the power that goes into the grid goes into the same supply pool. Different retailers may, nominally, have contracts with different suppliers for electricity supply, no doubt doing the best they can to negotiate contracts which allow them to sell to end users at a reasonable profit, but simple physics dictates that if you have two generators putting power into the same length of high-voltage cable, what comes out at the other end is the combined output of both stations. There simply ain't no way to separate out a component for each generator. More crucially, it's impossible to work out which retailer any given kilowatt hour of electrical power "belongs" to. You can't put a despatch label on electrical current.

I suppose that, having used the words "Part I" in the title, I shall now have to go on to produce a Part II. That will have to wait until next week, but in the meantime, ask an economist (there are one or two good ones in the blogosphere) to explain the concept of "moral hazard" to you. I need to refresh my knowledge on this too, so if you get a good explanation, please drop me a line.

(Ante)penultimate(?) Words on Windschuttle

Once again, I've been beaten to the punch. I was thinking over another post on the Windschuttle Kerfuffle this morning (for purely personal reasons, I want to get The Popular Front for the Liberation of East Dorset off the top of my Technorati Links Cosmos List), but Christopher Shiel at Troppo Armadillo got in first today with "History, Giant Ants and Flying Snakes". In it, Chris manages to combine his studied indifference to the Windschuttle kerfuffle with a gloomy prognostication for those who want the whole thing settled one way or the otter, damn it. Still, as experience shows that a good Windschuttle post is likely to generate at least one link, it's worth a try. It has to be better than a cheap shot at Kylie Minogue's battle with cellulite: we all know where that could lead.

I've been reading Lyndall Ryan's The Aboriginal Tasmanians over the past 4 weeks (I'm now 3 days into my one week period of grace before the overdue fines kick in) and I have the nagging feeling that maybe I've been reading the wrong book, or perhaps the wrong edition.

This is not a new experience: having heard that Roland Barthes wrote a book called The Fashion System, in which he analyses the meaning of clothing, I went out and bought a copy. I'ver long had a soft spot for Barthes. But instead of an extended analysis of how the three-piece suit expresses a deontological theory of ethics, or some such nonsense, I got an extended semiological analysis of fashion writing. In fact, in hisa introduction, Barthes specifically rules out the possibility of sitting down with a bunch of fashion photos (or even the latest Balenciaga collection) and analysing them for the signs and signifiers beloved of semiologists. On the other hand, a critical analysis of fashion writing and journalism is eminently possible, and that's what The Fashion System is. Sort of.

I've decided to put aside some time this weekend to get my mitts on a copy of Windschuttle's book - either at the State Library or Border's. Frankly, I'm losing track of what Keith's main point is, although I'm starting to wonder if he has one. Norman maintains that the academy refuses to deal with Keith's central argument, preferring instead to focus either on trivia such as footnotes and minor details of Keith's case or dismiss the whole enterprise on vague historiographic grounds. So far, the impression I get from the secondary debate is that Keith's case is built up precisely on trivial detail and vague historiography, so maybe a look at the book is in order to get at the meat of things. Certainly, Keith's own entries in the "secondary debate" haven't been helpful, such as his speech at the University of New South Wales, which begins:

In her book The Aboriginal Tasmanians Lyndall Ryan claims that British colonists killed 100 Aborigines in Van Diemen's Land between 1804 and 1808.

So far I've read 10 chapters of the book, and I still haven't come across this figure. There is a table in the appendix, listing total aboriginal deaths over a thirty year period, so right now I'd like some chapter and verse. Where exactly does Ryan make this claim? Maybe Windschuttle's book will help answer this question. It might also clear up another issue that bothers me about Windschuttle's speech: his concluding remarks on the need for a new "paradigm" for aboriginal history:

For the past thirty years, the left-wing historians who have dominated Aboriginal history have created a paradigm they all have shared. The concept of a paradigm, as I'm sure everyone here knows, derives from the history of science and from Thomas Kuhn's notion that, for most of the time, scientific inquiry remains confined within a common set of assumptions about how to investigate a field and what the researcher expects to find. The NSW Premier, Bob Carr, recently said some unkind words about the use of the term "paradigm" by academic media analysts. He said those who used the term, were speaking "contentious ideological claptrap". In media and communication studies, I am sure he is absolutely right.

But in real academic disciplines like science and history, a paradigm remains a useful concept. Kuhn observed that the history of inquiry is often punctuated by "paradigm shifts", which occur because researchers eventually produce too many anomalies and inconsistencies that question the dominant perspective. If there are enough of these findings, they produce a crisis in the field. Some researchers then abandon the dominant paradigm for a better one, but others, usually older investigators, cling doggedly to the now, outworn stereotype.

I've written previously about Windschuttle's concerted (and botched) intellecual assault on Karl Popper, Thoma Kuhn and others in The Killing of History. It seems to me that Windschuttle is showing more front than Myers in recruiting ideas he has so thoroughly bagged to support his case now. It would be interesting what, beyond the immediate convenience of the occasion, created his newfound belief that Kuhn's ideas about paradigms and paradigm shifts are useful. Perhaps I'll find the answer in the historiographic portions of The Fabrication of Aboriginal History.

Finally a few words for those commenters who have expressed concern over the fact that "the academy" remains silent on Windschuttle's fabrication charges.

Firstly, as Christopher Shiel points out, next month brings not one, but two academic responses, both in book form. This might not be as prompt as, say, the scientific community's response to Fleischmann and Pons' claim to have discovered cold fusion, but history isn't physical chemistry. The principle reason that cold fusion got debunked so quickly is that other scientists were able to reproduce Fleischmann And Pons' experiment very easily, with standard laboratory equipment. Try doing that with original archival sources, and you might begin to see the problem with claims that "the academy" is dragging the chain on this issue.

Secondly, it may be true that "the academy's" apparent indifference to Windschuttle's claims reflects a widespread orthodoxy or mindset. It doesn't follow that this orthodoxy or mindset is wrong, any more than the generally dismissive attitude to Fleischmann and Pons claims was wrong. Nor is the academy's failure to confirm Windschuttle's evidence an indication that the truth is still being suppressed. A lot of people who wanted cold fusion to exist made the similar accusations against the experimenters who failed to reproduce Fleischmann and Pons' results: they weren't trying hard enough. It wasn't until someone accidentally mishandled his laboratory equipment in the same manner as Fleischmann or Pons had that the results were reproduced.

On a personal note, if the best you can do is, purely on the basis of reading The Fabrication of Aboriginal History and only that book, complain that you have lost faith in history and historians, don't bother. Unless you enjoy looking like a lazy fool. A useful corrective might be to read the works that Windschuttle has slagged and decide for yourself if he has described them accurately. It's one thing to believe your own bullshit - it's something else entirely to accept someone else's purely because you're too precious to step up and take a quick sniff.

Curse: Bloody Blugger!

Into the Woods with Iron John

Prime Minister John Howard said today that public opinion would not sway any decisions on Australia's future involvement in Iraq.

Mr Howard said he believed many Australians were "not feeling strongly either way at the moment" about potential war against Iraq.

"I will take what I think is the right decision in Australia's long-term interests," he told radio 3AW.

"I will weigh public opinion, I will listen to the public.

"In the end, however, on this as on other issues such as the introduction of a new tax system and a number of other things, I won't just be swayed by the latest opinion poll."

But while Mr Howard said public opinion would not be the ultimate deciding factor, he would not disregard it either.

"You can't make great national decisions based on that (public opinion), but equally you have no right as a Prime Minister to be contemptuous of public opinion," he said.

"I've never been that, I'll always respect the opinion of Australians because they're very commonsense people."

The Age, January 24, 2003.

More than two-thirds of Australians believe the Howard Government misled the public over Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, according to a new poll.

The Australian newspaper's Newspoll of 1,200 people found 67 per cent believe the Howard Government misled Australians on the issue and 36 per cent thought it did so knowingly.

...

Mr Howard says he is not surprised by the survey. He says the percentage who believe the Government misled the public is the same as those who opposed the war in the first place.

"We did not mislead the Australian public because we did have those assessments - I stand by those decisions," he said.

He says he still believes the Government made the right decision.

Mr Howard says no-one should leap to a judgment until the search for evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq is complete.

ABC News Online, Today.

And, in all fairness, we ought to wait for those drowned kiddies to turn up too. It's only a matter of time.

Culture War Fizzles

Depending on who you read, the Review of the National Museum of Australia Its Exhibitions and Public Programs has either confirmed that the National Museum is a disgrace and not worth a Captain Cook, or basically unbiased but could do better.

In the report's conclusions, the review panel states:

... the Museum’s principal weakness is its story-telling - the NMA is short on compelling narratives, engagingly presented dramatic realisations of important events and themes in the Australian story. And there are too few focal objects, radiant and numinous enough to generate memorable vignettes, or to be drawn out into fundamental moments.

Having searched the web for suitably radiant and numinous objects, I think the museum could do worse than to acquire a few natty hats and perhaps a gorgeous frock or two (the latter might also be a source of inspiration for anyone with an unwanted wedding gown or two on their hands).

Update: here's another natty hat which would look very good next to one of those Bradman baggy greens.

Word of the Day: Community

The Macquarie Dictionary records several usages of this word, but there's one in particular that seems to get Shadow Prime Minister Peter Costello's goat:

3. a group of people within a society with a shared ethnic or cultural background, especially within a larger society: Sydney's Chinese community.

Here's what he had to say on this usage of the word "community" in his recent speech to the Sydney Institute:

In 1987 Margaret Thatcher famously declared: "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families."

This is an extremely individualistic view of the world. And she received a lot of criticism over this statement.

At the other end of the spectrum are the collective views of the world usually held by politicians of the left who want to submerge individuals into groups of one kind or another. One clear giveaway is the tendency to put the word "community" after everything. Joan Kirner was a classic example of this. She was forever talking about the "Victorian community", the "artistic community", the "ethnic community", the "Greek community", the "business community" etc., etc. In this view of the world there are no longer individuals who are artists or Greeks or businessmen. There are a series of groups into which individuals are divided and treated together. It is assumed that they have a uniformity of opinion because they share a particular characteristic even though they might never have met, have no desire to do so, and have very different perspectives.

You'll note that the habit Mr Costello objects to is that of putting the word "community" after everything. There's one significant exception, which the following examples ought to illustrate:

JOHN HOWARD: Well that's just Peter Beattie. I mean, Peter Beattie is running a very political campaign on this. Let's call a spade a spade. I mean, I don't, I mean, Peter Beattie, that's, he's running a political game on this. It's an appointment made by the government of another political stripe. He really is running a very political game on this, and using parliamentary privilege to attack Dr Hollingworth.

I'm not going to get into that game. Dr Hollingworth has given an enormous amount to the underprivileged in the Australian community and I think people like Peter Beattie forget that in their zeal to traduce the reputation of a person who has in the past given a great deal. [my emphasis]

John Howard talking on AM, May 14 2003.

The Government strongly believes that the decision it's taken is right, it is legal, it is directed towards the protection of the Australian national interest, and [I] ask the Australian community to support it. [my emphasis]

John Howard again, this time announcing his decision to deploy Australian forces in Iraq.

Did I say one significant exception? Here's another:

I wish her well, I thank her for all the joy and thrills she's brought to her sport and to Australia and particularly the credit that her dignified performances have brought to the indigenous community of our country.

John Howard again, commenting on Cathy Freeman's retirement.

Bugger me, here's another:

JOHN HOWARD: The threat of North Korea is real, but like all threats it has to be dealt with in a careful and sober fashion, through a combination of steady diplomacy, and those nations that can most influence the behaviour of North Korea are speaking with a common voice, expressing a common view and a common exhortation to North Korea that her best interests lie in returning to the world community and to an acceptable mode of behaviour so far as nuclear weaponry is concerned.

John Howard on PM, 16 July.

Could John Howard be a closet lefty, a fellow traveller with Joan Kirner? Or is Peter Costello talking through his fundament? Tough call, isn't it?

Hello There!

Since I added Sitemeter to the blog, I've been having a little fun back-tracking through the referrals to see who's linking to my site. And making the obligatory additions to the blog roll.

Anyway, an overdue "Hello There!" to everyone who's been coming here from Patrick Nielsen Hayden's Electrolite and a less overdue one to readers of Jeremy Osner's READIN. Also to the person who cam via the link at Brad De Long's Semi-Daily Journal, and the person who came via the Sydney Morning Herald breaking news page - although every time I go there looking for the link to Tug Boat Potemkin, it seems to have disappeared again.

And an extra special Hello if you came here from a Google search for "tug boat". I'll bet you're really pissed off right now, especially if you've taken the trouble to get this page translated into Spanish.

Update: I should have known that someone was going to ask what Tire Del Barco Potemkin looks like. Anyone know where I can hunt up a good English to Russian translator?

Tips for Young Witch Hunters

5. Faint heart ne'er won true confession.

But if neither threats nor such promises will induce her to confess the truth, then the officers must proceed with the sentence, and she must by examined, not in any new or exquisite manner, but in the usual way, lightly or heavily according as the nature of her crimes demands. And while she is being questioned about each several point, let her be often and frequently exposed to torture, beginning with the more gentle of them; for the Judge should not be too hasty to proceed to the graver kind. And while this is being done, let the Notary write all down, how she is tortured and what questions are asked and how she answers.

And note that, if she confesses under torture, she should then be taken to another place and questioned anew, so that she does not confess only under the stress of torture.

The next step of the Judge should be that, if after being fittingly tortured she refuses to confess the truth, he should have other engines of torture brought before her, and tell her that she will have to endure these if she does not confess. If then she is not induced by terror to confess, the torture must be continued on the second or third day, but not repeated at that present time unless there should be some fresh indication of its probable success.

The Malleus Maleficarum, Part III., Second Head, Question XIV: Of the Method of Sentencing the Accused to be Questioned: and How she must be Questioned on the First Day; and Whether she may be Promised her Life. The Ninth Action

Language, Libertarianism & Ludwig

A serious and good philosophical work could be written consisting entirely of jokes.

Ludwig Wittgenstein, On Certainty (?)

The trouble is that, if someone did write such a work, very few people would recognise its seriousness. Take for example, the comments on this post by John Quiggin on the subject of libertarianism, where with serious intent but flippant tone I posted the following comment:

Re: The moral argument is simply: All used things are owned (by definition).

That's a very interesting use of language. Which prompts me to pose a simple question: if I pick up a stone off the ground, and use it to break a window (by throwing it) do I acquire property rights in the stone? Or is it in fact morally wrong to do this, because I have used a thing which I do not own?

PS - for the sake of this example, please assume that the window is my own, as is the house it is on. There may be any number of reasons why I might choose to break my own windows but the simple assumption of lunacy will do for now.

This brought on a number of replies from libertarians; the upshot is that the stone becomes my property through the application of the "homesteading" principle, although it might be a little impractical to enforce. Especially if the window through which I lobbed the stone were someone else's, such as my neighbours.

I'm not going to complain about the subsequent comments missing the main point of the comment; when a point has been missed it's usually because it wasn't well made in the first place. After all, whatever can be said at all can be said clearly. Tedious as it is, I'm just going to have to put in the time to expand on the comment and raise the issues I hoped people might start thinking about explicitly, however much I might feel that this is going to be a lot like explaining to a particularly dull-witted child how to count on his fingers.

Reading the various arguments that have been offered by libertarians - whether they be moral libertarians defending the primacy of property rights over all others, or utilitarian/consequentialist libertarians defending property rights on whatever basis utilitarian/consequentialist libertarians defend property, it's difficult not to conclude that, while they might not be using a private language, they are using a demotic or dialect of their very own. Just as Marxists do. And when they attempt to translate from that demotic into the sort of ordinary language that the rest of us use, they get in trouble. Just as Marxists do. 24601's summation of the moral argument for property rights is a very good example; as I hinted in my response, the ordinary senses of the words "use", "thing" and "own" aren't up to the job of making the moral case for property.

At this point, it's usually considered obligatory to insert an extensive passage of very earnest argument on the various senses each of the words in question - "use", "thing" and "own" - might take in different contexts. I think it's sufficient to note that, in ordinary usage, language might be referred to as a "thing", just as a window or a stone might; that we use language when we speak or write; and that, langauge is the social institution par excellence. The notion of "owning" a language is patently ridiculous - if language could be made property, it would cease to function as language (following Wittgenstein, I will assert that a private language is no language at all). So, in language, we have an example of a thing that is used which is not owned, and, by definition cannot be owned. I think you'll agree that's a pretty telling counter-example to the assertion that "all used things are owned (by definition)", and that getting it across in a single paragraph is a nice piece of philosophical work.

I did have a few more things to say on this topic, but I might save those for later; right now I'd rather quit while I'm on a roll.

Repeat Offender

Brian Deegan has offended decent opinion yet again with an article in the Australian. At least four charges have been levelled against Deegan:

1. Once again, Deegan has raised the "it's all our fault" shibboleth in relation to international Islamo-Fascist terrorism;

2. Deegan's repeated references to his dead son Jake Joshua amount to a blatant exploitation of his son's memory for political purposes;

3. Deegan is angry at the wrong people. Instead of raising questions about the Government's performance in relation to the Bali bombings - for example questioning whether travel warnings were adequate - he should pay more attention to the people who were really responsible, the bombers;

4. Deegan is a naive goody-two-shoes wimp who doesn't realise that shooting is too good for terrorists, who really deserve a drawn out, painful death, preferably involving the creative use of pork products as a ritual defilement.

These charges, and the various other outraged comments found at Tim Blair's blog and Gareth Parker's have the same root: Deegan is not being a good victim. Tim Dunlop has already commented on both posts, so this post of mine may be supererogatory. On the other hand, having half written it last night, I've decided what the hell, I might as well finish it and put it up anyway.

Victims, especially of crime, enjoy a number of special privileges in political debate, but they must also abide by a number of binding obligations. Otherwise the office of poor bugger will be passed on to someone else.

The victim's first obligation is to reflect the community outrage arising from the crimes perpetrated against him. In saying that he is against giving the death penalty to Amrosi, Deegan has signally failed in this obligation. It would have been more fitting if Deegan's article had said that, while he is opposed to the death penalty in general, he was prepared to make an exception in the case of his son. This would have kept everybody happy: the boil 'em in lard brigade would have another clear example showing that, when they are personally affected, soft-headed opponents of the death penalty discover that maybe it's a good idea after all. On the other hand, the rest of the soft-headed bleeding-heart hand wringers would be able to tut-tut quietly, and make patronising comments about how we need to cut Deegan some slack, and offer the usual suggestions that once he gets over his initial grief, he might change his mind.

The victim must also show in his public statements, that he understands and respects the proper role of government authority in dealing with crime. Any suggestion that a criminal act may have been the result of government neglect is, of itself, offensive. This accounts for the objections to Deegan's repeated suggestions that the Australian Government might have stuffed up, even a little. Of course, this obligation may be waived if the current Government is a Labor Government because, as we all know, Labor Governments are necessarily out of touch with community attitudes and notoriously soft on crime.

Finally, victims who are grieving relatives, must show the proper respect for their dead. Once again, Deegan fails to perform properly. If Deegan's references to his dead son, and his dead son's grave been combined with a demand for fitting retribution on the killers (preferably involving very hot lard), no-one would have had a problem with his article, for the reasons I've already outlined. In summary, despite what the softies commenting at the Dunlop place may have to say, it's time for Deegan to wake up, smell the coffee and get with the program.

Hun Runs with "Sex Swap Cop" Shocker

Following up on yesterday's front page story, The Melbourne Hun offers some in-depth coverage and analysis on the controversy over the possibility that the Victoria Police may soon have transsexual within its ranks. The police force is in revolt:

THE police force is split over plans by a transsexual to join its ranks.

The rift between officers and police command emerged as the Herald Sun learned a second transsexual wants to become a policewoman.

Chief Commissioner Christine Nixon yesterday refused to comment, but a spokesman claimed most police would back the move.

However an overwhelming majority of officers surveyed by the Herald Sun yesterday said they did not want transsexual officers.

And 81 per cent of Herald Sun readers who responded to a Voteline survey also opposed transsexuals being allowed to become police.

On the other hand, when Hun reporter Holly Ife took to the question to the streets yesterday, she found a different picture:

MELBURNIANS surveyed yesterday predominantly supported the right of a transsexual man to join Victoria Police.

A Herald Sun vox pop found the majority questioned believed the ability to do the job was more important than sexuality.

Nonetheless, The Hun's editorialist decided that the Voteline results provided enough moral high ground to declare:

Police Minister Andre Haermeyer, predictably, takes the rigid, politically correct view that in all circumstances everyone must get equal opportunity.

But in the real world of cops and robbers, what really matters is what the community wants from its police.

The public expects officers not only to uphold the law but to be acceptable role models.

Unfortunately, The Hun's crusade on this issue might have been a little counter-productive:

ANOTHER transsexual said she wanted to join the Victoria Police yesterday.

The transgender woman, who was born a man, went to a bayside police station to obtain application forms.

The issue has also drawn international attention, with reports appearing at The Independent On Line and Brunei Direct.

It looks like The Hun has found an issue to run with for the next few days. I suspect that eventually we can expect to see a Hun editorial something like this:

The decision to accept a transsexual recruit into the Victoria Police Force was a disastrous decision. Recruit X's decision to withdraw his application to join the police force was the best decision for himself, the Victorian community and the Victoria Police.

The Herald Sun is sorry for Recruit X himself, who should not have been put into this situation. It has been very difficult for him and we congratulate Recruit X on his good sense. In withdrawing his application Recruit X has averted a growing crisis in the Victoria Police force and the Victorian community generally.

Tips for Young Witch Hunters

4. Keep them on their toes.

But those who are strongly suspected, that is, those who have acted in such a way as to engender a great and strong suspicion; even those are not necessarily heretics or to be condemned as such. For it is expressly stated in the Canon that no one is to be condemned of so great a crime by reason of a strong suspicion. And it says:

Therefore we order that, when the accused is only under suspicion, even if it be a strong one, we do not wish him to be condemned of so grave a crime; but such a one so strongly suspected must be commanded to abjure all heresy in general, and in particular that of which he is strongly suspected.

But if he afterwards relapses either into his former heresy or into any other, or if he associates with those whom he knows to be witches or heretics, or visits them, receives, consults with, forgives, or favours them, he shall not escape the punishment of backsliders, according to the chapter Accusatus.

The Malleus Maleficarum Part III., Third Head, QUestion XIX. Of the Various Degrees of Overt Suspicion which render the Accused liable to be Sentenced

So What?

The rainforest edition of the Melbourne Hun had a real screamer of a headline this morning; "Sex Swap Cop":

A transsexual man who plans to become a woman has applied to join the Victoria Police.

The strapping, 188cm candidate has passed the early stages of the selection process to join the force.

I'm not sure what this story is doing on the front page or how it got there, but the report hints that there might be some differences of opinion between Police command and Victoria's Equal Opportunity Commission on the one side, and the Victoria Police Asociation on the other:

Victoria Police Association secretary Paul Mullett said he was stunned [sic] by the news.

"Clark Kent went into a phone box and came out as Superman. This person is apparently going to go into the police academy as a man and come out as a woman," Sen-Sgt Mullett said.

"The association will be interested to see what the Government and the Chief Commissioner's policy position will ultimately be on this application – particularly if it's successful."

Jon Faine picked up the story on his radio show this morning: some of the comment is included in this NEWS.com.au report. We also get some extended, bob-each-way comment from Paul the stunned Mullett:

"The view of the association is that we should listen to community reaction today," Sergeant Mullett said.

"The community should have some input into Victoria's police force so let's listen to the community voice and let them decide."

Sgt Mullett said he felt union members would initially be shocked by the news, but the important issue was how well a person does their job.

However, it doesn't look like the Victoria Police are going to be too concerned with what the "community voice" might have to say, at least at this stage:

Victoria Police human resources director Sanjib Roy said a formal application by a transsexual had been received and would be processed.

"We try to attract people with strong values, integrity, intelligence, compassion and life experience," he told Melbourne's ABC radio.

"And we want to make sure we don't discriminate on the basis of gender, sexuality, ethnicity, or religion as this would be contrary to equal opportunity laws."

Isn't it a bugger when the law gets in the way of running a police force that properly reflects community attitudes?

Update: ABC Online reports that Victorian Opposition Leader Robert Doyle has decided to make a complete idiot of himself on this issue.

Update Too: Giving Victorian Attorney General Rob Hulls a perfect opportunity to show just how complete an idiot.

Looks Like It's Libertarian Season Again

In a transparent attempt to generate a lively comments thread and to get others to link to his blog, Ken Parish has posted a speculative think piece on libertarianism. Apparently this works; John Quiggin has taken up part of Ken's challenge - he doesn't appear to have done Ken's suggested reading, but nonetheless has weighed in with a reductio ad absurdum hatchet job on the philosophy of Robert Nozick, author of Anarchy, State & Utopia. Sam Ward at a Yobbo's View has flagged his intentions to respond to Ken's post later. And Brian at Crooked Timber notes that we seem to have declared Nozick bashing day Down Under.

I haven't done Ken's reccommended reading either, but this is the blogosphere, not academia, so I see no good reason not to weigh into this emerging debate myself. I actually have a copy of Anarchy, State & Utopia somewhere - it was passed on to me by a friend, who described it as a political philosophy based on the premise that the state evolved from the Mafia. I actually attempted to read it once - all I can remember of it is the section on "invisible hand laws", where Nozick takes Adam Smith's idea of the invisible hand of the market and extends on it to establish some basic point that I've long since forgotten.

As it's the only section of the book I can remember, I doubt that I got much further, although I do have vague memories of a state of nature theory which has social institutions arising out of "protective associations" formed by groups of like minded people who get together to defend themselves from the prevailing anarchy. From there I think they go on to sell protection to their neighbours and there you have it; the modern state begins with Doug and Dinsdale Piranha. But as I say, my memory of the book past the "invisible hand laws" is pretty vague; that's where I first started to lose patience with the book.

Nozick's thesis is that just as predictable behaviour emerges in economic markets through the operation on Smith's "invisible hand", there are other areas where systemic behaviour emerges through the same mechanism - the aggregation of individual choices. He cites several examples, starting (I think) with increased suicide rates around inner city high rise apartment blocks. The underlying mechanism is either that people looking for a way to top themselves are attracted to high rise buildings with easy access, or depressed tenants with poor impulse control might be more inclined to take a swan dive through the lounge window than their suburban cousins. Nozick works through some other examples, identifying plausible underlying mechanisms for interesting social phenomena.

The example that killed my interest in the book was Nozick's argument that over time you could expect Jews to become more intelligent than Roman Catholics. The reason for this, according to Nozick, is that in both religions, intelligent boys are encouraged to become religious leaders - either priests (in the case of Catholicism) or rabbis (in the case of Jews). As priests are mostly celibate, in Catholic communities this results in the most intelligent males being taken out of the gene pool, creating a selective pressure in favour of lower intelligence. Nozick may have mentioned cultural factors as well - because priests don't (officially) have children, fewer Catholic kids are exposed to the sort of lively theological discussion that you can expect to go on in priestly households, so the Catholic practice deprives Catholic boys of intelligent male role models.

I'm not a Roman Catholic, but I still found the example, and the argument used to support it, stupid. Possibly Nozick included it to add a bit of humour to his argument or to satirise anti-semitism; if so it's a good example of the general standard of philosophical humour and a poor example of satire. After reading it, I found it difficult to put aside the conviction that all the rest of the book had in store was more ridiculous elaborations of stupid ideas.

The other libertarian writer who gets a passing mention in Ken's post is Ayn Rand. Back in the early seventies, when I had my first job, I'd occasionally see people reading The Fountainhead or Atlas Shrugged on the red rattler on the way home from work. The typical Rand reader was usually male, middle-aged, and wore the sort of grey suit that was pretty much de rigeur for middle managers in banks and insurance corporations. I didn't read Rand myself until a university friend lent me a copy of Atlas Shrugged a couple of years later.

Looking back, there's a sad irony in the fact that Rand had so many readers in the managerial middle classes that Rand openly despised. Rand's contempt for these people is openly displayed in Atlas Shrugged. For those unfamiliar with the novel, the plot is very simple: the world's "intellectuals" go on strike, bringing on the collapse of civilisation as we know it and paving the way for Rand's vision of an objectivist Utopia. Along the way there are interludes of rough sex and a few touches of bizarre homoeroticism in industrial settings. On the latter, they would count as homoeroticism if written by a male writer; in Rand's hands perhaps it's more the equivalent of the sort of lesbian porn which is produced by men for male audiences.

The intellectuals who go on strike are of course, capitalist entrepreneurs, sick of being fettered and exploited by the "looter state". John Galt, the books hero, is the inventor of a truly miraculous electric motor which runs on static electricity drawn from the atmosphere. One of his friends is a South American playbay and pirate, who steals back money looted from the rich for the benefit of the undeserving poor and returns it to its rightful owners. Against them are ranged a host of corrupt bureaucrats, corrupt trade union officials and - middle level corporate managers. Not all of Rand's middle-level managers are depicted as evil - one is a loyal business associate of the novel's sado-masochistic heroine, Dagney Taggart.

Rand's view is made pretty clear - there are the creative people, who deserve to reap every possible reward from the fruits of their intellects and the rest of us, who are just there to provide the muscle or intellectual stoop labour needed to execute their ideas. If we're on the side of the looters, we're morally reprehensible; if not, we're just dispensible. That includes Dagney's friend and colleague who, when civilisation ultimately collapses, is left on an isolated section of railway track, desperately trying to restart a stalled railway locomotive. This, we must understand, is the proper fate of those who value loyalty to others above their own self-interest. In the end, this poor bugger was just another "second-hander": lacking the creative spark of sociopathy which enabled Rand's heroes and heroine to achieve much happier fates.

If Nozick and Rand were typical libertarians, I'd be forced to conclude that libertarians are generally silly people. Perhaps this is why I'm uncomfortable when friends describe me as a "left libertarian" - that and unpleasant memories of the amount of condescending venom that International Socialists can put into pronouncing the phrase.

Oops: Ayn Rand actually scores her mention in a comment from Oz Libertarian 24601. Sorry Ken, sorry 24601.

Qu(ot)e?

I think it was a disastrous decision and I'm glad that, I think we're all glad that Canon John has stood down, though we are sorry for the man himself, who should not have been put into this situation. I think it's very difficult for him and I'm glad he's taken this decision. At this early stage it looks like this is going to avert a crisis that was growing in the United Kingdom especially, as well as in the international Anglican communion.

Bishop Robert Forsythe of the New South Wales Right of the Anglican Church, speaking on AM this morning. Speaking personally, I feel sorry for Bishop Forsythe, who should not have been put into the situation of having to offer public comment on the issue of Canon John's appointment as Bishop of Reading.

Tips for Young Witch Hunters

2. No accusation is baseless.

The following procedure, therefore, is to be employed in the case of such a one against whom nothing has been proved except public obloquy. In this case judgement cannot be delivered for the accused, nor can she be absolved as in the first method; but a canonical purgation must be imposed upon her. Therefore let the Bishop or his deputy, or the Judge, first take note that, in a case of heresy, it is not necessary that a person should be defamed only by good and respected people; for the calumniation uttered by common and simple folk carries equal weight.

And the reason for this is, that the same persons who are admitted as accusers in a case of heresy are also admitted as detractors. Now any heretic can be accused by anybody, except his mortal enemies; therefore he can also be defamed by anybody.

3. The accused is guilty until proven not-so-guilty (see Tip 1).

Here it is to be considered that, when a person is duly found to be publicly defamed of some heresy, and nothing is proved against him except that defamation, a canonical purgation shall be imposed upon him. That is, he must produce some seven, ten, twenty, or thirty men, according to the extent to which he has been defamed and the size and important of the place concerned, and these must be men of his own station and condition. For example, if he who is defamed is a religious, they must be religious; if he is a secular, they must be seculars; if he be a solder, they must be soldiers who purge him from the crime for which he is defamed. And these sponsors must be men professing the Catholic faith and of good life, who have known his habits and life both recently and for a long time.

But if he refuses this purgation, he must be excommunicated; and if he remains obstinate in that excommunication for a year, he is then to be condemned as a heretic.

And if he accepts the purgation and fails in it; that is, if he cannot find sponsors of the number and quality desired; he shall be considered as convicted, and is to be condemned as a heretic.

Malleus Maleficarum, Part III., Third Head, Question XXI: Of the Second Method of Pronouncing Sentence, when the Accused is no more than Defamed.

Reading Matters

Just in from the local library this week are A Moral Reckoning: The Role of the Catholic Church in the Holocaust and Its Unfulfilled Duty of Repair by Daniel Jonah Goldman, 199 Days: The Battle for Stalingrad and Stalin by Edvard Radzinsky. That's the same Stalin I took back last week, narrowly avoiding an overdue fine. I'm going to put Lyndall Ryan on hold while I get through the last ninety pages or so.

Perversely, I've persisted with the undead prose of Necroscope: Defilers long enough to reach the half-way mark. It's grisly stuff, especially for lovers of good writing:

Now the vampires took up the body, Castellano at the head, and Garzia at the feet, and without pause fed it headfirst into the hearest niche. As it went the crumbling bones of some elder Argucci, entombed two hundred years before, fell into dust and gave it passage. And the silent screams seemed louder yet, but Castellano and Garzia didn't hear them.

Then, as the nightmare pair dusted themselves down and left the burial chmber, Garzia looked back in satisfaction. Several dozen pairs of feet - none of them Arguccis, but all with their flesh in various stages of decay or completely sloughed away - protruded from their niches like Georgi Grusev's ... except his were firm as yet, however cold, and their toes pointed upwards.

It's the sort of book that gets you thinking about the possible benefits of pre-frontal lobotomy: get rid of a couple of creativity inhibiting "higher centres" and I could probably write like that. And make a bucket of money into the bargain. Of course it's unlikely that any "responsible" medical practitioner would be prepared to perform brain surgery purely on the off-chance that it might turn you into a best selling horror writer, which just goes to show you how few personal liberties we really have. A truly free society would recognise that my brain is pretty much mine to do what I like with and as long as the doctor is adequately remunerated, no one has the right to interfere in what is basically a commercial transaction. Bloody nanny state.

Tips for Young Witch Hunters

1. Acquit No-one.

Let care be taken not to put anywhere in the sentence that the accused is innocent or immune, but that it was not legally proved against him; for if after a little time he should again be brought to trial, and it should be legally proved, he can, notwithstanding the previous sentence of absolution, then be condemned.

Malleus Maleficarum, Part III., Third Head, Question XX: Of the First Method of Pronouncing Sentence.

Doing the Numbers

I put Necroscope: Defilers aside last night, in favour of Lyndall Ryan's The Aboriginal Tasmanians. Prosiac as a lot of history writing is, it's still a damn sight more interesting than page after slime dripping page of crepuscular cliches.

In the comments thread to this post over at Troppo Armadillo, Norman asks:

Why does Ryan suggest approximately 15% of Tasmania had been given to whites by 1820, when in fact grants totalled only 1/2 of one percent by then?

The implicit answer, of course, is that it's a historical beat-up, and that Keith Windschuttle was right all along. So let's take a quick look at Ryan's figures.

In Chapter 1, Ryan states that Tasmania has a total land area of 67,870 square kilometres (p 7 in my copy). At 100 hectares to the square kilometre that's 6,787,000 hectares. In Chapter 4 (p 78), she says:

Between 1811 and 1814, the area under cultivation increased from 3,332 hectares to 12,711 hectares, the number of cattle increased from 421 to 5,060 and the number of sheep from 3,573 to 38,540.

My calculations for these areas as percentages of the total land area of Tasmania are 0.04% and 0.18% respectively. The 15% claim is made at the end of chapter 4:

By 1820, the Europeans occupied less than 15 per cent of Van Diemen's Land, but already they had depleted the Oyster Bay and Midland tribes. [my emphasis]

This looks like a fairly big discrepancy, until we take the cattle and sheep into account. If we assume (as the outrage over the wide discrepancy between the area under cultivation and the area occupied by Europeans does), that all of the cattle and sheep were confined to the 12,711 hectares of land under cultivation, we end up with approximately 2 hectares for every cow, and 1/3 of a hectare for every sheep. That's a generous estimate, which ignores any areas set aside for agrarian production. I'm no agronomist, but unless the Tasmanian grasslands were exceptionally productive in 1820, I can't see that level of grazing being sustained in the long term. So maybe the reason Ryan suggests that the Europeans occupied so much more of the land than the recorded 0.18% isn't so sinister after all. How else could they feed the animals?

Last Word On Lego

ifilm has a collection of classic Lego animations including The Lego Chainsaw Massacre and One: A Space Odyssey. Even more at Brickfilms.

Reading Matters

A friend has (with the owner's permission) on-lent me a copy of Ellen Willis' Don't Think, Smile: Notes on a Decade of Denial. It's a collection of essays on US Politics in the nineteen-nineties from a long-standing libertarian feminist (think I got that right). I've also picked up a copy of Lyndall Ryan's The Aboriginal Tasmanians from the local library (damn thing's finally turned up back on the shelves).

Once I finish that, I might take up a friend's suggestion and nick down to that big foreign-owned book store in Prahran, and settle into one of their comfy chairs with a copy of Keith Windschuttle's chainsaw job on the Aboriginal History Establishment. I know this probably counts as theft of intellectual property, but I think the possibilities of book-hurling in a large bookstore are too good to miss. Besides the opportunity to achieve new personal bests for force and distance, there's the added frisson of maybe catching one of the business geeks in the Personal Motivation section a good clip behind the ear with the spine of a well-aimed book. By the way, I know that I'm supposed to read Windschuttle first, but I'm going to do this my way, so shut up about it.

For leisure reading, I've picked up Necroscope: The Defilers by Brian Lumley, allegedly "an excellent contemporary horror writer". I wouldn't exactly call it stomach churning, but chapter seven did give me an unpleasant attack of the hiccoughs.

I'm quite impressed with what some people do with Lego. There's a Lego Bible (Genesis 2:25 is as good a place to start as any), a chamber of horrors, even a Lego Tarot. Sooner or later, I suppose someone might get round to producing one of these in Lego, although I can't see it ever going on display in the Myer Toy Department.

Afterthought: I don't think this style of post really suits me at all. So much for extending my range.

Update: Another good place to start reading the Brick Testament (Lego Bible) is the seduction of Lot.

Denmark 1940-1943: Legend & History

(And to hell with Godwin's Law)

Here's a story you may have heard about the Danes during World War II. I first learnt it from the film of Leon Uris Exodus. Posting an mpeg file of the relevant sequence would be tedious to organise, so here's an excerpt from the novel instead:

The situation seethed and seethed - and finally erupted. The morning of August 29, 1943, was ushered in with a blast heard across Zealand. The Danish fleet had scuttled itself in an effort to block the shipping channels!

...

From German Occupation headquarters at the Hotel D'Angleterre came the decree: ALL JEWS MUST WEAR A YELLOW ARM BAND WITH A STAR OF DAVID.

That night, the underground radio transmitted a message to all Danes. "From Amelienborg Palace King Christian has given the following answer to the German command that Jews must wear a Star of David. The King has said that one Dane is exactly the same as the next Dane. he himself will wear the Star of David and he expects that every loyal Dane will do the same."

The next day in Copenhagen almost the entire population wore arm bands showing a Star of David.

I think you'll all agree that this is a ripping good yarn, and a truly inspirational example of national resistance in a dark time of military occupation. So you can imagine my disappointment, when I read this in Hannah Arendt's Eichmann In Jerusalem:

When the Germans approached [the Danes] rather cautiously about introducing the yellow badge, they were simply told that the King would be the first to wear it, and the Danish government officials were careful to point out that anti-Jewish measures of any sort would cause their own immediate resignation.

It gets worse too. I won't post the entirety of Arendt's account of events in Denmark in 1943; for one thing the book went back to the library yesterday, narrowly evading an overdue fine, so I don't have it to hand. But I can provide a brief summary.

After worker riots in the Danish shipyards in 1943, the Germans introduced martial law. Himmler saw an opportunity to do something about the Danish Jews, as well as the 1,000 or so stateless German Jews living in Denmark (the Danish government had refused to hand them back to Germany precisely because Germany had declared them stateless. The Danes took the position that in doing so, the Nazis had forfeited any right to take them back). The German forces in Denmark were considered unreliable for the task of rounding up Denmark's Jewish population, so special police units were brought in from Berlin to conduct operations.

At the last minute, Dr Werner Best, head of Denmark's German administration issued a remarkable order. To avoid conflict with the Danish Police, the German units were not to enter any apartments by force: they could only seize people who opened their doors voluntarily. We Trotskys know a thing or two about these matters; take it from me, this is not the way to run an effective purge. Nor does it help if, as I learnt from this site this morning, you warn the government of the occupied nation of what you're planning. A purge is no time to stand on courtesy.

The end result was that of a population of more than 7,800 Jews in Denmark 5,919 were safely ferried to Sweden. (Zeppo Bakunin tells me that this operation was assisted in no small measure by the fact that the German Navy vessels patrolling the waters between Denmark and Sweden were very punctual in maintaining their regular patrol schedules).

If you're wondering why I'm posting on something that is so totally old hat, you're not alone. Partly it's because of the ongoing Windschuttle kerfuffle of course - if nothing else it's revived my interest in history, and what we can learn from it. Which, as long as we maintain our sentimental attachment to stirring tales of good versus evil, or canny Danes versus stupid Germans, is nothing. (Does anyone seriously imagine that the German occupiers thought that the Danish government would keep knowledge of the planned purge to themselves? That the Navy expected patrols that ran with clockwork regularity to be effective)? When we get past Uris' legend to the real events, a much more complex and interesting tale emerges.

Of course, it's not as comfortable as Uris' version of events: if we accept that it's possible that high ranking Nazis in Denmark were able to engage in acts of covert decency - the sort of decency that we like to think belongs to people like us, we may also have to face up to the possibility that people at the other end of the scale might have started out as people a lot like us too; for example Adolf Eichmann, the failed salesman who entered the SS as (more or less) a good career move. Now there's a worrying thought. It always has been, hasn't it?

Update: thanks to boynton, here's another web page debunking the Denmark legend.

Qu(ot)e?

So what is the place of the voluntary association or the charity in a modern industrial economy that operates an extensive system of income support? Do we still need them?

It occurs to me that there are a number of reasons to reaffirm the role of the charity in addressing human need.

1. Unlike entitlement programs which are entrenched in law, charities can respond immediately and individually to need.

2. While income support provides insulation against poverty it does not treat the cause of poverty.

3. The voluntary associations and charities bring an extra dimension to their work to the extent they are staffed by people of strong religious or moral conviction.

4. Giving to the voluntary association or charity enriches the giver as well as the receiver.

To the extent that it fulfils these roles the voluntary organisation or charity can do what the State cannot. But it must work at these tasks. And to fulfil these tasks there is one thing that it needs above all - trust. People will give to a charity they trust. They will give if they trust those who deliver assistance to make a difference in a way that others (including Government) do not.

Australian Treasurer Peter Costello who will shortly be handing most of his portfolio responsibilities over to a hand-picked committee of volunteers from Anglicare, The Brotherhood of Saint Laurence and The Saint Vincent De Paul Society.

Bad Laws Make Bad Cases Too

Geoff Honnor at Troppo Armadillo approves of the US Supreme Court's decision to strike down Texas' anti-sodomy laws. So do I, especially after hearing this little tidbit of information on AM this morning:

The case was triggered five years ago when a neighbour with a grudge faked a distress call to police, telling them that a man was "going crazy" with a gun in an apartment next door. Police went to the apartment, and instead found the two men having sex.

Of course it's inconceivable that here in Australia a malicious neighbour might contact the authorities with a false report which results in police laying charges totally unrelated to the original report and, eventually, a High Court case. We don't have any laws that would allow that sort of situation to occur and, even if we do, there are plenty of safeguards and protections built in to prevent that sort of thing. I know because Dazza told us so.