Who Needs State Controlled News Media?

When your morning newspaper devotes the top half of every front page to the latest "Gold! Gold, gold, gold for Austraya!" moment and every television news broadcast begins the same?

Hobson's Choice

Here's a conundrum - is it better to be Janet Albrechtsen and happy, or Clive Hamilton and unhappy?

Australia's Economic Future Secured!

AUSTRALIA may be sitting on an oil and gas bonanza after winning legal ownership of a slice of undersea territory five times the size of France. (The Age)

Good to know that we can kick off another minerals boom when this one ends, isn't it? We can all relax now - the dire threat of the nanny-state has been put off another few years, thanks to the prospect of more wealth flowing into the economy from all the oil and gas fields we'll find out there. If it comes to it, we'll find a way to pioneer underwater coal extraction too.

And What About the Illiterate Millions Then?

As you wait for our best and brightest to gather in Canberra, at the behest of the broad left faction of the Australian Technocratic Elite Party, to discuss how schools can add value to students and other topics, spare a thought for the poor Kenyans whose best and brightest are still mired in the thinking of centuries gone by:

On equity grounds and given that it generates substantial social returns, secondary education should be fully funded by the state. For example, a worker's schooling enhances his or her own productivity as well as those of co-workers, thereby giving rise to classical externalities or spillover effects. The general level of education in the workforce also expands production possibilities, by facilitating the discovery, adaptation and use of more economically rewarding, albeit technologically more demanding and knowledge-intensive, production processes. By making it free, all learners who were unable to access public secondary education on account of financial constraints will join school. [source (PDF)]

Does Don Aitken Take Aspirin?

The blogosphere today resounds with plaudits for Professor Don Aitken, eminent historian and political scientist, and respected academic, after this report in the Opposition Orifice that Professor Aitken doesn't believe that the science of global warming stacks up:

The eminent historian and political scientist said in a speech called A Cool Look at Global Warming, which has received little public attention, that he was urged not to express his contrary views to orthodox thinking because he would be demonised.

He says critics who question the impact of global warming are commonly ignored or attacked because "scientist activists" from a quasi-religious movement have spread a flawed message that "the science is settled" and "the debate is over"...

Although not a scientist, he has brought his critical approach as an experienced academic accustomed to testing theories to a debate he says so far lacks clear evidence.

Aitken hits all the usual "skeptical" talking points - the computer models are crook, it's all a beat-up by those "activist scientists" who silence critics with the threat of Soviet style demonisation then very late in the article declares one of his own misgivings about the science:

[Aitken] says an increase in atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide over the past century is agreed, some of it due to fossil fuels, cement-making and agriculture. However, normal production of CO2 is not known, and it makes up only a tiny part of the atmosphere. "How does a small increase in a very small component have such a large apparent effect? The truth is that no one has yet shown that it does." (emphasis added)

Which brings us to the question of aspirin. When I get a headache - a really bad headache - I usually resort to a taking a couple of aspirin tablets, at 250 milligrams to 300 milligrams a tablet. I'm of about average weight for my height - let's say 80 kg. That's 80,000,000 milligrams. How can such a tiny amount of aspirin diffused through all that body mass possibly cure my headache?

A similar question that might trouble Professor Aitken in his sleep is how can he be sure that he will wake up in his bed tomorrow, and not floating around in outer space, when the gravitational constant is so damned small?

The real risk Professor Aitken has taken in declaring his skepticism isn't that "activist scientists" will call him a madman; it's that they'll take him for a fool.

Dichotomy

He keeps himself well-informed and up-to-date on the latest developments in evolutionary psychology; she hasn't grown out of reading her daily horoscope.

Born Sluts and Instinctive Doormats

Which of the following quotations is the odd one out?

• Clear evidence of women’s promiscuity throughout evolutionary history is in the size and shape of men’s genitals and what men do with them. (Satoshi Kanazawa)
  


• For any woman, the need to submit, to surrender, to place all your trust and faith in another is a natural and useful instinct—despite assumptions to the contrary by the prevailing culture. (The Submissive Wife)
  


• There is a female instinct to want to be saved by a man who sweeps them up, marries them and causes them to live happily ever after. In a tempered form, this instinct mightn't be such a bad thing; many men do have the corresponding impulse to play the rescuer role.("Still not getting it" at OzConservative)
  


• Your prince may not ride up on a white horse, but it's not too much to ask to spend your life with someone attractive who makes you feel like a princess. Being loved by a man is your birthright as a woman. Mating is one of the oldest, ingrained human instincts. While self-sufficiency is admirable, it doesn't fulfill your need to be held and touched, to be intimate with a man. Acting as though you don't crave a leading man in your life doesn't make it so, but it does contribute towards keeping you single. (The Surrendered Single by Laura Doyle)
  

Whichever quotation you picked, you were wrong. It was a trick question. They're all bollocks.

If you find that unfair, here's a small concession. The last, from Laura Doyle's The Surrendered Single, only implies that women have an instinctual need to find either Mr Right or Mr Adequate and get themselves married. The other three - and the linked pages - make quite explicit claims about what is innate behaviour for women. They all use evolutionary just-so stories to support the authors' views of what women should be and how women should behave.

Word of the Day: Ex Gratia

ex gratia - adv. as a favour; not from (esp. legal) obligation - . granted on this basis (ex gratia payment) (Latin = from favour).

So, for example, a tip (or gratuity) is an ex gratia payment from a customer to a staff member of a bar or restaurant in recognition of services rendered - unlike the cost of the meal, or the bar tab.

That's worth keeping in mind when you read statements like this:

The carer bonus was paid ex gratia by the previous federal government over the past four years, to families caring for people with disabilities, chronic illness or age frailty, in recognition of the unpaid care provided by those families eligible for the carer payment and/or carer allowance. (Jean Tops at On-Line Opinion)

Tops' OLO article is yet another contribution to the confected public outrage over the "Rudd razor gang's" threat to "axe" the Howard government's carer's bonus, one of several ex gratia payments made by the previous Government over its term of office.

I've no argument with the rest of Tops' article (I haven't read it through yet), nonetheless I've a small suggestion. Let's drop the confected outrage, and look at the question of what the Rudd government - and any government that follows it - should be doing to assist carers. That's a debate worth having.

As for the question "Is it proper for a democratically elected government to dish out ex gratia payments to particular sectors of the voting population?" I think that's pretty much a case of asked and answered.

Note: this post was written ex gratia. I don't have to do this you know.

Harry Nails It.

It being his own metatarsus:

Howard closes in on the riff-raff.

Everything that's wrong with, and wrong about, conservative commentary on this election and the conservative attitude generally in just seven words.

There's more too, but nothing that you couldn't find elsewhere, no less ill-considered, and no less shitty-livered.

Thanks for the "Cheerful Friday thought" Harry - it's brightened my day up a lot. Which it needed.