Global Midden

So, you reckon those supermarket plastic bags are harmless to the environment. That banning them, or imposing a levy on their use, is just another fine example of politicians knuckling under to greenie-Gaian stand-over tactics. It's just another scare campaign from self-loathing, self-flagellating tree-hugging planet savers who find happiness in inflicting misery and inconvenience on the rest of us. The sort of people who write letters to the editor with inflated claims like this:

There is a knotted stew of plastic bags in the Pacific Ocean the size of a continent, yet we cannot put a miniscule tax on plastic bags in supermarkets to discourage their use.

Maybe you should think again - assuming that is, that your thinking on plastic bags isn't conditioned by reflexive hatred of all things Gaian. Because that little claim I've just quoted (from the letters page of today's Age) isn't that far off the mark. On Googling "Pacific Ocean Plastic Bags", I found quite a few web pages on the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (2GP) aka the Pacific Trash Vortex. For those who consider Wikipedia infradig and unreliable, the Independent has a good article describing the discovery of the patch - not so much a tangled stew of plastic bags as a soup of plastic waste:

The vast expanse of debris – in effect the world's largest rubbish dump – is held in place by swirling underwater currents. This drifting "soup" stretches from about 500 nautical miles off the Californian coast, across the northern Pacific, past Hawaii and almost as far as Japan... The "soup" is actually two linked areas, either side of the islands of Hawaii, known as the Western and Eastern Pacific Garbage Patches. About one-fifth of the junk – which includes everything from footballs and kayaks to Lego blocks and carrier bags – is thrown off ships or oil platforms. The rest comes from land.

The 2GP is in the Northern hemisphere so it's most likely, given the way ocean currents behave, that most of its contents came from industrialised countries around the North Pacific rim - Canada, the USA, Japan and possibly China.

The currents that hold the 2GP in place have their counterpart in the South Pacific - the South Pacific Gyre. That's where plastic bags and other trash from the East Coast of Australia and New Zealand would end up if they actually made it into the open ocean without snagging on a coral reef, the west coast of New Zealand or some other obstacle. Perhaps there's a Lesser Pacific Garbage Patch out there, waiting to be discovered.

And when it is discovered, we'll show those Canucks, Yanks, Japs and Chinks a thing or two, when the unrestrained growth of our Pacific Garbage Patch outstrips the growth of theirs and they have to cede the title of Great Pacific Garbage Patch to our oceanic soup of plastic. Because that's what being Australian is all about - boring it up anyone who isn't Australian, any bloody way we can.

Anti-PC Beat-Up of the Week - Withdrawn and Re-Awarded

It's with the greatest regret and embarrassment that I write this post. The source of both is that I find myself owing an apology to Andrew Bolt. On Tuesday, I awarded the accolade of Anti-PC Beat Up of the Week to this anti-Gaian fulmination at Bolt's blog, but today his colleagues and rivals at The Daily Terror have topped him handsomely. Post in haste, repent at leisure.

"Gay concern bans mum and dad in classroom" shrieks the Terror. Underneath that headline, its "Education Reporter", Bruce McDougall writes:

TEACHERS are being urged to stop using terms such as husband and wife when addressing students or families under a major anti-homophobia push in schools.

The terms boyfriend, girlfriend and spouse are also on the banned list - to be replaced by the generic "partner" - in changes sought by the gay lobby aimed at reducing discrimination in classrooms.

Schools are coming under pressure to provide lessons for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender students and stack their libraries with books and videos covering their issues.

Yes Sydney's lavender mafia are out in force and they have the backing of the gummint:

Education Director-General Michael Coutts-Trotter emerged as a leader of the school anti-homophobia campaign, opening a Government-backed conference on sexual diversity - That's So Gay.

Coutts-Trotter is something of a favoured target for the Terror and the NSW State Opposition: last year, after Coutts-Trotter was appointed Education Director-General, McDougall reported that in 1986 - then a mere 21 years ago - Coutts-Trotter had been convicted of drug offences at the age of 19, and imprisoned. This happened despite the fact that Coutts-Trotter had received the benefits of a private education at St Ignatius College aka Riverview. Perhaps that's why Coutts-Trotter prefers to send his own daughter to a public school.

But when a former teenage drug addict and drug offender, even a rehabilitated one, opens a conference on sexual diversity there really can't be any reason for it but to push a homosexualist social agenda, can there. That's no doubt why the news.com.au follow on from the Terror's report is headlined "Teachers told to avoid using homophobic terms" although the first paragraph reads:

SCHOOLS will not move to stop using words like mum and dad, or girlfriend and boyfriend, the New South Wales Education Department says, despite reports that public schools are under pressure to provide gay-friendly environments.

The report later mentions Coutts-Trotter:

...Department of Education and Training director-general Michael Coutts-Trotter says there is no move to stop using terms such as boyfriend, girlfriend, mum or dad in public school classrooms.

But who'd take his word for it, when we have the more reliable testimony of Bruce McDougall of the Daily Terror:

The [Daily Terror] can reveal that the department is already spearheading a major push to win acceptance for gay and lesbian students in public schools.

"Teaching about sexual diversity, tolerance and anti-bullying occurs through the Personal Development, Health and Physical Education (PDHPE) curriculum in all NSW schools - public and independent," the spokesman said.

Sorry Andrew, but compared to the efforts of Bruce McDougall, your Gaia bash was pretty tame stuff.

An Internet Wingnut Is Something to Be

Scientist-emeritus Jennifer Marohasy and fearless, independent journalist Andy Bolt (who, unlike those poor sods at The Age, doesn't have to toe an editorial line on global warming and is at little risk of finding his opinions on other issues in conflict with those of his proprietor) are singing the praises of Lawrence Solomon, whom you've only just heard of. Solomon is a journalist at Canada's National Post and he's won acclaim for reporting, last Saturday, on how his attempts to correct an "inaccurate" Wikipedia page were thwarted by a "global-warming zealot".

As I'm writing this column for the Financial Post, I am simultaneously editing a page on Wikipedia. I am confident that just about everything I write for my column will be available for you to read. I am equally confident that you will be able to read just about nothing that I write for the page on Wikipedia.

The Wikipedia page is entitled Naomi Oreskes, after a professor of history and science studies at the University of California San Diego, but the page offers only sketchy details about Oreskes. The page is mostly devoted to a notorious 2004 paper that she wrote, and that Science journal published, called "Beyond the Ivory Tower: The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change." This paper analyzed articles in peer-reviewed journals to see if any disagreed with the alarming positions on global warming taken by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. "Remarkably, none of the papers disagreed with the consensus position," Oreskes concluded...

...When Oreskes's paper came out, it was immediately challenged by science writers and scientists alike, one of them being Benny Peiser, a prominent U.K. scientist and publisher of CCNet, an electronic newsletter to which I and thousands of others subscribe. CCNet daily circulates articles disputing the conventional wisdom on climate change. No publication better informs readers about climate-change controversies, and no person is better placed to judge informed dissent on climate change than Benny Peiser.

If you're like me, you've never heard of Benny Peiser either - turns out he's a social anthropologist "with particular research interest in human and cultural evolution [whose] research focuses on the effects of environmental change and catastrophic events on contemporary thought and societal evolution." With those qualifications and research interests, it's no wonder he's so well placed to judge informed dissent on the subject of climate change.

Solomon contacted Peiser, was told that the Wikipedia page had got its facts wrong - particularly on Peiser - and decided to set the record straight:

For this reason, when visiting Oreskes's page on Wikipedia several weeks ago, I was surprised to read not only that Oreskes had been vindicated but that Peiser had been discredited. More than that, the page portrayed Peiser himself as having grudgingly conceded Oreskes's correctness.

Upon checking with Peiser, I found he had done no such thing. The Wikipedia page had misunderstood or distorted his comments. I then exercised the right to edit Wikipedia that we all have, corrected the Wikipedia entry, and advised Peiser that I had done so.

Peiser wrote back saying he couldn't see my corrections on the Wikipedia page. Had I neglected to save them after editing them, I wondered. I made the changes again, and this time confirmed that the changes had been saved. But then, in a twinkle, they were gone again! I made other changes. And others. They all disappeared shortly after they were made.

That's right, Solomon started a Wikipedia edit war. On one side, Lawrence Solomon, determined defender of truth on the other:

...Someone called Tabletop was undoing my edits, and, following what I suppose is Wikietiquette, also explained why. "Note that Peiser has retracted this critique and admits that he was wrong!" Tabletop said.

I undid Tabletop's undoing of my edits, thinking I had an unassailable response: "Tabletop's changes claim to represent Peiser's views. I have checked with Peiser and he disputes Tabletop's version."

Tabletop undid my undid, claiming I could not speak for Peiser.

Why can Tabletop speak for Peiser but not I, who have his permission?, I thought. I redid Tabletop's undid and protested: "Tabletop is distorting Peiser. She does not speak for him. Peiser has approved my description of events concerning him."

Tabletop parried: "We have a reliable source to this. What Peiser has said to *you* is irrelevant."

Tabletop, it turns out, has another name: Kim Dabelstein Petersen. She (or he?) is an editor at Wikipedia...

Thanks to Solomon's article in the National Post, the (Solomon instigated) edit war came to the attention of higher authorities at Wikipedia:

I should NOT be reading about content disputes on Wikipedia in my Saturday National Post!

• There is a existing process for resolving content. See Wikipedia:Dispute resolution for full details.
  
• I've already seen and dealt with a case regarding content disputes that have made it to national media (see the Pat Binns dispute). Enough is enough especially when the edit war over this page gets on my daily newspaper! If I continue to see a edit war, I will recommend this page be protected, until we sort out what's going on. I've already contacted an admin, and I suggest the two of you cool it off.

ThePointblank (talk) 10:38, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

The editor in question doesn't seem to want to discuss his edits. But keeps putting in information that is prohibited by amongst others WP:BLP, WP:NPOVWP:SPS. The onus of convincing others that their contributions uphold these guidelines lies on the contributer. If you have anything specific that you find questionable about the reverts - then i suggest that you comment on the specifics. And please don't tag the regulars. --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 10:55, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

Solomon didn't win himself any credibility with the Wikipedia contributors by continually referring to Kim D. Petersen as "she" after naming "her" in his article when a check of Kim D. Petersen's profile would have shown that the proper pronouns to use were "he" and "his".

Solomon finishes his live blogging of the edit war with this warning:

While I've been writing this column, the Naomi Oreskes page has changed 10 times. Since I first tried to correct the distortions on the page, it has changed 28 times. If you have read a climate change article on Wikipedia -- or on any controversial subject that may have its own Kim Dabelstein Petersen -- beware. Wikipedia is in the hands of the zealots.

Judging from Solomon's own conduct, that warning should equally be applied to climate change articles in the Canada National Post, and articles on any controversial subject that might have its own Lawrence Sullivan. The same cautious approach is warranted when reading the posts of bloggers who publish links from readers' tip offs without doing a little background checking.

Qu(ot)e?

It is always a danger to honest journalism when a newspaper takes up a cause. Suddenly reporters are under pressure to push a line, and not necessarily the full facts.

Andrew Bolt

Some people are just too damned careless with their petards.

A Quick Reminder

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)]

Another Day, Another Bleg

I've been futzing around with ABS Census data for the past week or so, trying to get together a belated submission to the Senate Inquiry into Housing Affordability. The data I've been using has come from published Census tables listed on this page at the ABS web-site.

The first question I've looked at, from data in this ABS table is the numbers of dwellings in three categories: rented, being purchased and owned outright. I've aggregated the data (ignoring whether the dwellings were separate houses, terraces and units etc) in the table below.

Total Numbers of Dwellings by Tenure Type, 1996, 2001 and 2006 censuses, Australia wide

Census Year	Tenure Type	Total Dwellings	Percent
1996	Being purchased	1,656,062	27%
	Rented	1,865,961	30%
	Total	3,522,023	57%
	Fully owned	2,657,971	43%
2001	Being purchased	1,872,132	28%
	Rented	1,953,095	29%
	Total	3,825,227	58%
	Fully owned	2,810,917	42%
2006	Rented	2,063,945	30%
	Being purchased	2,448,211	35%
	Total	4,512,156	65%
	Fully owned	2,478,265	35%

(Note: the data in each year is sorted by the total number of dwellings in each category.)

There's an interesting change between the 2001 ands 2006 censuses: the statistical minority of households in fully owned dwellings fell from 42% to 35% of all households, so that there was a roughly equal split between renters, mortgagors (home buyers if you prefer) and home owners. The issue of housing affordability of renters isn't being addressed by the Senate inquiry - its terms of reference are limited to issues affecting mortgagors and would be mortgagors and looking for ways to bag the states.

The next step I wanted to take, before disaggregating the data into dwelling types was to look at the total numbers of individuals living in rented, mortgaged and fully owned dwellings, with a later disaggregation according to household type (single individuals, families and group households). The reason for that last is to look at ways in which individuals might be accomodating themselves to what, properly described, is a housing shortage: are we seeing the formation of more group households, for example?

As usual when I take on the ABS web-site, I've found myself a bit stumped, so if anyone can point me to data series that I should be looking at, please let me know.

Anti-PC Beat Up of the Week

This time it's Andrew Bolt, gunning for the Gaians. In response to this report that a group of Swiss ethicists have published a report on the rights of plants Andrew huffs: "Slowly, slowly, humans are being denied the right to exist."

The Swiss ethicists in question are the members of Switzerland's Federal Ethics Committee on Non-Human Biotechnology (ECNH) "appointed by the Federal Council to advise the authorities from an ethical perspective, as an independent expert committee, in the field of non-human biotechnology and gene technology." According to the ECHN web-site:

The [Swiss] Federal Constitution requires "account to be taken of the dignity of creation when handling animals, plants and other organisms". The ECNH’s key tasks include putting this concept into concrete terms.

So, are the Swiss the first nation in the world to adopt Gaianism as their national religion? Not if the preamble to the Swiss constitution is any guide:

Preamble
In the name of God Almighty!
We, the Swiss People and the Cantons,
being mindful of our responsibility towards creation,
in renewing our alliance to strengthen liberty and democracy, independence and peace in solidarity and openness towards the world,
determined, with mutual respect and recognition, to live our diversity in unity,
conscious of our common achievements and our responsibility towards future generations,
certain that free is only who uses his freedom, and that the strength of a people is measured by the welfare of the weak,
hereby adopt the following Constitution:

Far from being a Gaian push to legislate humans out of existence the ECHN report (PDF format) is a good example of what happens when you try to mix religion and political constitutions. Andy should look a little closer to home if he wants someone to get huffy with.

Qu(ot)e?

Get Roger on this. He's a sadistic shit, he'll sort it out.

Rupert Murdoch? Or not?

Qu(ot)e?

Some sort of warming is consistent with, though not plainly the cause of, the evident melting of sea ice and the retreat of some glaciers.

Professor Don Aitken

*head desk*
*head desk*
*head desk*

Strange Bedfellows

Senator Andrew Bartlett, one of the star bloggers in my Missing Link portfolio, or case-load, or whatever the hell you want to call it, has been having a little trouble with political allies lately. Twice last week he was embarrassed to find himself agreeing with long-standing opponents or adversaries. First it was Greg Sheridan, then it was Peter Slipper.

After reading this report in Saturday's The Age on Julia Gillard's latest proposals for education reform, I find myself in the unpleasant position of agreeing - at least in part - with education warrior Kevin Donnelly. I suppose it's some consolation that I don't find myself agreeing with Andrew Bolt who has endorsed Gillard's push for parents to get details on school performance. I'm agin it.

The sticking point, for me, is in this section of the story:

The [Federal] Government plans to publish the annual results of individual primary and secondary schools on national literacy and numeracy tests, which begin next month, for students in grades 3, 5, 7 and 9.

It will also talk to the states about measuring how schools "add value" to students, and is keen for a reporting system that reflects the challenges faced by each school, for instance through socioeconomic data, or trends between similar schools. (emphasis added)

Excuse me, but what planet are we on here? What sort of education policy aims to "add value" to school students? Aren't they valuable enough already, as people in their own right? That's why I'm in uncomfortable agreement with Kevin Donnelly right now - because in this piece, about the 2020 summit briefing paper Education, Skills and the Productivity Agenda he's right on the money:

The first mistake is to define education in terms of its economic and utilitarian value.

Education, instead of being dealt with in its own right, is valued for its ability to contribute to “prosperity, productivity and global competitiveness”, completely ignoring the cultural role of learning...

I suppose it's some consolation that after that point Donnelly pretty much drops the money again and by the end of the piece he's implying that the purpose of education is to preserve culture by storing it in students' brains ("And the fundamental question of the purpose of education in an age when many of the young are disengaged and culturally illiterate is not on the agenda."). But that's not that much consolation. When we have the Federal Minister for Education talking about schools "value adding" to students its pretty clear who's captured the education debate and where the debate's headed.

Who benefits when students are treated as commodities and education is about "value adding"? Not the hapless bloody students, that's for sure.

Will It Make Media Watch?

News Limited loyalist, Bernard Slattery, has joined a certain nursery-rhyme cow, thanks to reports in The National Rupert that journalists at The Age are in open revolt against the sale of the newspaper's soul to commercial interests (reports here and here). According to Bernard:

A common but wrong accusation from lefties is that News Corp editors and journalists are commanded from the top to publish the company line. Such a claim is never directed at the luvvies’ preferred news outlets. Thus, there was a certain smugness in News offices this week when the left-preferred opposition was caught disseminating propaganda.

Bernard's first sentence is incorrect - the standard "leftie" accusation against News Limited editors and journalists is that they're a bunch of ignorant, group-thinking sheep whose faith in the company line is so deep-seated that no command from the top is needed to keep their toes where they should be.

The ructions at The Age have been caused, in part, by Fairfax's participation in the promotion of Earth Hour, and the way “Reporters were pressured not to write negative stories and story topics followed a schedule drafted by Earth Hour organisers.” Bernard looks to that other favourite news outlet of "the luvvies" and asks:

Will it make Media Watch, though?

It already has, Bernie. Us "luvvies" knew about it by Tuesday night at the latest. And The Age journalists' grievances about the treatment given to published correspondence from a certain R Walker of Melbourne didn't come as a complete surprise either.

Hedunits

I used to be a big fan of Wire in the Blood, that TV crime drama that regularly turns up on the ABC. Now I'm not so sure.

Yesterday, I got lucky when I was leafing through the old magazines in the waiting room of my personal head care specialist - there were three old New Yorkers in the stack. One of them was the November 12, 2007 edition, which included "Dangerous Minds - Criminal profiling made easy." by Malcolm Gladwell. Gladwell totally demolishes the "Hedunit" genre of crime fiction and the real-world profilers don't come out looking too flash either.

Wire in the Blood is a good example of the "Hedunit":

We are now so familiar with crime stories told through the eyes of the profiler that it is easy to lose sight of how audacious the genre is. The traditional detective story begins with the body and centers on the detective’s search for the culprit. Leads are pursued. A net is cast, widening to encompass a bewilderingly diverse pool of suspects: the butler, the spurned lover, the embittered nephew, the shadowy European. That’s a Whodunit. In the profiling genre, the net is narrowed. The crime scene doesn’t initiate our search for the killer. It defines the killer for us. The profiler sifts through the case materials, looks off into the distance, and knows ... Profiling stories aren’t Whodunits; they’re Hedunits.

In the Hedunit, the profiler does not catch the criminal. That’s for local law enforcement. He takes the meeting. Often, he doesn’t write down his predictions. It’s up to the visiting police officers to take notes. He does not feel the need to involve himself in the subsequent investigation, or even, it turns out, to justify his predictions... (my emphasis)

Hence in Wire in the Blood we get all those scenes where Tony Hill stands in front of a visual aid with high production value - in the last series that I saw, a large computer touch screen which allowed him to open up crime scene photographs and drag them around the screen with the touch of a finger - saying in an agitated voice: "it doesn't make sense: this is all carefully planned and organised, this is chaotic, impulsive."

Very quickly Tony realises that the crimes are being committed by not one, but two killers. Then the writers add a final plot twist - it's actually one killer with Dissociative Identity Disorder.

Of course Wire in the Blood is fiction. But it's a very persuasive form of fiction - a lot of work is put into the production to give it realism. The effect of the Hedunit genre on our understanding of crime and policing is similar to the CSI Effect. We see Tony Hill, brilliant clinical psychologist, reading a crime scene for insights into the personality of a killer and we are gulled into thinking that things actually work that way - after all, modern writers of crime fiction do a lot of research to make their stories plausible, don't they*?

The problem isn't restricted to fiction where background research is distorted for literary or dramatic effect. Hedunits are also presented as non-fiction, in the memoirs of profilers themselves. It's one such memoir that inspires Gladwell's coverage of the history of profiling and his assault on profiling's inflated reputation:

There is a deeper problem with F.B.I. profiling. Douglas and Ressler didn’t interview a representative sample of serial killers to come up with their typology. They talked to whoever happened to be in the neighborhood. Nor did they interview their subjects according to a standardized protocol. They just sat down and chatted, which isn’t a particularly firm foundation for a psychological system. So you might wonder whether serial killers can really be categorized by their level of organization.

Not long ago, a group of psychologists at the University of Liverpool decided to test the F.B.I.’s assumptions. First, they made a list of crime-scene characteristics generally considered to show organization: perhaps the victim was alive during the sex acts, or the body was posed in a certain way, or the murder weapon was missing, or the body was concealed, or torture and restraints were involved. Then they made a list of characteristics showing disorganization: perhaps the victim was beaten, the body was left in an isolated spot, the victim’s belongings were scattered, or the murder weapon was improvised.

For more on what those psychologists at the University of Liverpool found, you'll have to Gladwell's original article. Just be warned - if you're a fan of Hedunits, it's the biggest spoiler of all. You might even find yourself erupting into uncontrollable laughter next time you see Tony Hill do his shtick with the crime scene photos.

* - That is we assume that screen writers in the US and the UK do. Give Australian TV producers a million dollar budget for a series and they'll want every possible cent of that million up on screen, with Georgie Parker in the lead female role. The writers can produce any old tosh they like , as long as it's at least up to the standard of Neighbours and Home and Away.

Screen Shot

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.

Anti-PC Beat Up of the Week

Oteha Valley School in Auckland has achieved global notoriety with a "ban" on children bringing birthday cake to school. In the most recent edition of the school newsletter the principal of Oteha Valley School made the following request to parents:

The tradition [of] taking a cake or sweets to the preschool centre on your child’s birthday has moved into schools over the past few years. However, the Ministry of Education’s new National Administrative Guidelines for healthy eating will not encompass birthday treats... We still love to celebrate your child’s birthday with them but, as from the beginning of Term 2, please do not send any food to share with the class.

I'm not sure when this "tradition" started, or how. My guess is that it's a fairly recent development, started by some status-conscious pander of a parent who decided that their special child wasn't getting their fair share of recognition at the local kinder. Someone who figured that the way to improve their snotty little brat's popularity was to bribe the other kiddies. You can imagine the playground conversations about the little bugger can't you: "Tarquin might be a nathty little thit, but hith mummy maketh real nithe birthday caketh."

By the time I learnt of the story (through Bernard Slattery's blog, Bernard being something of a go-to guy if you're looking for ridiculous anti-PC media beat-ups) that request had been turned into an order:

Oteha Valley School in Auckland has told parents not to allow their children to bring birthday cakes to school for friends to share, The New Zealand Herald reported Friday. (AFP)

CHILDREN in a New Zealand school have been banned from taking cakes to the classroom to share on their birthdays, due to new government guidelines on healthy eating. (The Scotsman, for crying out loud)

In keeping with standard tabloid practice, none of the outlets who carried the "PC killjoys deprive kiddies of birthday cake" bothered with the school's side of the story or checked the school newsletter. Other news organisations weren't so slack:

The principal of an Auckland primary school says the media seems more upset about a ban on birthday cakes than parents are...

Principal Megan Bowden says there were no qualms from students about the loss of their birthday tradition - which has attracted nationwide attention.(New Zealand's TV3)

With 400 students, there is a birthday at least every day at the school. Baking was flying in the door, and Principal Megan Bowden had no choice but to place a ban on the humble birthday cake.

Bowden says the government's healthy food guidelines are one of the reasons for the ban.

But she says many parents were also thinking that it was compulsory to provide birthday cake.

"We think parents shouldn't have to pay out extravagant money just to bring cake to school for their children's birthday. There are lots of other ways of celebrating a children's birthday without having to share food."

Bowden says some parents like to manage what their kids eat, and are unable to do that if dessert is being provided at school.

She estimates sometimes a classroom would have up to four cakes in a week before the ban. (TVNZ

That's right, TV3 and TVNZ actually talked to the school's principal before they got on their high horses about cake-deprived kiddie victims of political correctness and wowserism. The real story, it turns out, is this - a school principal decided to ask parents to desist from a practice that might have been putting other parents to unnecessary expense and undermining the authority of those weird, abberant parents who want their kids to have a healthy diet. That seems an entirely appropriate way to deal with the issue.

One question to finish with - who is actually being deprived here? Is it the kids, or is it those idiot parents who take pride in the fact that little Tarquin always has the biggest and best cake to take to school on his birthday? Think about it.

Randomised Trials in Education - Towards A Practical Approach

Dr Andrew Leigh of the Australian National University, would like to see public policy become more evidence based, particularly in the field of education. He has suggested that randomised trials of the effects of factors such as teachers' salaries and class sizes on educational outcomes would be desirable, to give policy makers, and the rest of us, the information needed to make sound decisions on education policy. In this post I will outline a practical scheme for conducting such a randomised trial.

The trial will require at least four schools. Due to the rigorous controls that are outlined below, these schools will need to be newly constructed - I propose that a National Institute of Experimental Education (NIEE) be established, to manage these experimental schools. Specific details of school organisation are detailed below.

For a trial on the effects of class sizes and teachers salaries four distinct school regimes are needed:

School One: a school with low teacher pay and large class sizes;
School Two: a school with low teacher pay and small class sizes;
School Three: a school with high teacher pay and large class sizes;
School Four: a school with high teacher pay and small class sizes.

This requirement is dictated by the difficulty of constructing an appropriate control group for such a randomised trial; a control group of children who are not schooled at all might create problems for Australian society at large and it is difficult to identify anything that might serve as an educational placebo.

Blinding - of the kind applied in clinical trials of medical treatments - will be difficult but not impossible.

First, students in each of the schools must be kept in ignorance of the existence of the other schools in the trial, and indeed, the existence of any schools unlike the one that they are attending. This can be achieved by drafting representative random samples of children of school entry entry age from all states. The Federal Parliament will need to pass legislation conferring this power on the NIEE.

Similarly, teachers must be selected at random - without regard for experience or competence - from across the states, and the National Institute of Experimental Education will need the power to draft teachers in this way. Teachers drafted to the NIEE will be placed on strict employment contracts stipulating, in particular, that in no way are they to alert the students to the fact that an NIEE school is not a normal school. Heavy sanctions, possibly including criminal penalties, will be imposed on any NIEE teacher breaching this term of their employment contract.

To rigorously control for possible exogenous factors (such as differences in home environment), all students at NIEE schools will be boarders. A rigorous security regime to ensure their separation from the outside world will be maintained. To prevent students inadvertently learning of the existence of other schools which might differ from their own, students will have no access to radio, television, print media or the internet.

A viable first trial would consist of six years of primary education under such conditions, followed by release of half of the experimental students into the general population, where their academic performance in secondary school would be closely monitored.

The other half of the experimental population would receive a further six years of schooling under the above conditions, and their performance on standard university entrance examinations analysed. After their release into the general population, NIEE researchers would monitor their performance in tertiary education.

Longitudinal monitoring of NIEE schooled students is also indicated to establish the effects of these four distinct educational regimes in preparing students for stable employment and social relationships.

News Limited Eats One of Its Own

Robyn Wuth is a columnist at The Gold Coast Bulletin, one of News Limited's provincial papers. Today she scored a spot in the Brisbane Courier Mail, with an open letter to Queensland Premier, Anna Bligh. Headlined "Robyn appeals to the Premier" the open letter is actually a hectoring list of incoherent demands.

Before we look at the letter, it's worth taking a look at Wuth's previous form as a journalist. Our first source will be this Conference paper, "Journalists Trying to Make a Quid, Politicians Seeking Re-election and Tightrope-walking Judges: Three-ring circus or democracy in action?" by Justice Margaret McMurdo, President of the Court of Appeal of the Supreme Court of Queensland. It was presented at the ANU National Institute of Social Sciences & Law conference on confidence in the courts in February 2007.

In the paper, Justice Margaret McMurdo describes a little brou-ha-ha that resulted from a judgement made by Justice Philip McMurdo in the case of Attorney-General for the State of Queensland v Sutherland. Sutherland had served the full term of a 20 year prison sentence for crimes including manslaughter and rape. The Queensland Attorney-General wanted Sutherland kept in prison under a continuing detention order. The full 16 page judgement in is available here (PDF); it was published on September 27, 2006.

On October 6, The Gold Coast Bulletin published as its page 1 story Psycho killer next door by Robyn Wuth:

A sexually sadistic psychopath who police say is one of the most dangerous offenders ever to be released on the Gold Coast is now living in a house, pictured above, next door to a children's playground at Nerang.

... Shocked local residents have reacted with anger at the revelation the convicted killer had moved into their area without them being warned. Sutherland was convicted of the 1987 strangulation death in Bundaberg of 47 year old Paula Peters, which he said was the result of a bondage sex act gone wrong...

... A warning issued to the Gold Coast police and leaked to The Gold Coast Bulletin describes
Sutherland as a serious danger to the community (as quoted by Justice McMurdo)

Inside the paper, Wuth's report continued, under the headline "Fury at psycho killers release":

A killer diagnosed as a 'sexually sadistic psychopath' who the Government believes is so dangerous he should never be released is living at Nerang next to a children's playground.

Paul Vincent Sutherland ... is now living unsupervised in a modest three-bedroom brick home
on Nerang-Beaudesert Road.

... Shocked neighbours and nearby residents were horrified to learn a convicted killer was their new neighbour. One nearby resident who has young children burst into tears when told how close she lived to the killer. (as quoted by Justice McMurdo, emphasis added)

Right now I'm wondering who told that mother of young children about Sutherland, to elicit that tearful response. Any suggestion that it was Wuth herself would be pointless speculation - no competent tabloid journalist, whether they worked in print, radio or television, would forego the opportunity to pass on such distressing news and report the reaction.

The outcome of Wuth's report was a political controversy which drew in Acting Premier Anna Bligh. On October 7, the Gold Coast Bulletin reported, under the headline "'Terror Next Door – Nerang breathes easy after killer taken away", that Sutherland had been moved out of Nerang. In that article, Wuth and a colleague, J Gibbons, got stuck into the judge responsible for his release:

Residents were outraged Sutherland had been allowed to move into the suburb and blamed Justice Margaret McMurdo, the judge who refused the State Government appeal to keep Sutherland behind bars and granted his freedom.

Despite acknowledging Sutherland was 'more likely to reoffend', Justice McMurdo decided his release was an 'acceptable risk' to the Nerang community, while she lived safely in an exclusive inner-Brisbane suburb in her secure $2 million mansion.

The later report includes interviews with outraged local worthies: once again, routine stuff for a competent tabloid journalist in any medium. For the rest of the story, I suggest you look at Justice McMurdo's conference paper. A google search for more recent news of Sutherland turns up little dating beyond that paper - a clear case of no news is no news - good or bad. For the time being, Sutherland isn't sensation fodder.

Some of Wuth's recent op-ed columns are archived at The Gold Coast Bulletin. They make interesting reading - individually incoherent and rambling, as a whole collection capricious and inconsistent. On February 16th, Wuth had this to say about Kevin Rudd's apology to the stolen generation:

... It's insincere, it solves nothing but it was a lovely photo opportunity.

We said it to make you feel better ... did it work?

...

To be honest, I'm sick of all this namby-pamby boo-hooing about bloody saying sorry.

...

For every Aboriginal child who was stolen, another was saved, some were given a chance to change their lives.

It's a shame they refused to take it.

...

But I have to say sorry.

Sorry for giving you free medical care, for giving you money, for building you homes which you vandalised and destroyed and treated with contempt and we paid to fix.

Sorry for developing large farms and properties, which today feed your people.

Sorry for providing you with warm clothing made of fabric to replace the animal skins you used before.

Sorry for building roads and railway tracks between cities and building cars so that you no longer have to walk over harsh terrain.

The fact is, we won.

All right?

We came in and we killed lots of them and we took their land and we're not giving it back, unless the High Court makes us and then, frankly, the High Court will have to go.

Then on April 4, she had this to say about the Northern Territory intervention:

IT'S Australian apartheid. I hate to say I told you so ... who am I kidding? I love to say I told you so.

I've made up a special dance which I'm doing right now.

Remember when Kevin Rudd said 'I'm sorry'?

In a column that inspired a tirade, I said it was 'insincere'.

Well, I told you so.

While Kevin Rudd said sorry before the cameras and posed for the lovely pictures and puffed out his chest and preened like a proud little pigeon, behind the scenes it was a completely different story.

The Labor Government, in its wisdom, has wound back any attempt to open up the Aboriginal territories to all-comers and reinstated the permit system to ensure all communities remain closed. A better word? Hidden.

That means these communities can become taboo territory rife with sexual abuse, alcoholism and violence -- completely closed to normal scrutiny.

...

The bottom line is we -- all Australians -- are not allowed to go a part of our own country without permission. This is similar to the system once used in South Africa. My colleague Ken Vernon, who spent 25 years reporting on apartheid South Africa, says the same type of permit system applied to the black 'homelands' created under apartheid, with the same result.

"The black homelands became cesspools of crime, corruption and nepotism, exempt from the prying eyes of journalists, where local leaders became virtual dictators whose word was law."

Sound familiar? Is that what we want to happen here? Is that the image we want to send to the world -- Australia, the new pariah state?

As I said, incoherent and inconsistent. The only thing the two columns have in common is their ranting, self-righteous tone.

On Saturday, 29 March, Robyn Wuth's cousin, Carmel Wuth, was raped and killed by Maurizo Perini, a resident of the same aged-care facility as Ms Wuth. The Queensland Opposition is already demanding an inquiry into the killing, and how a "psycho" came to be living in an aged care facility. And that's not all they're demanding:

Opposition Leader Lawrence Springborg demanded Perini be tried in the courts rather than "disappear" into Queensland's mental health system.

Robyn Wuth is making similar demands in her open letter to Anna Bligh:

If mental illness is a defence and the accused person never faces trial, I am supposed simply to contain my rage.

I am supposed to respect his privacy. I want this man to have a fair trial, to have his day in court and for justice to be served.

I watch closely as it unfolds. A man has been charged, but what are the chances he will ever face trial? I suspect none. Already, the accused has been ordered by the courts to undergo an advanced mental health assessment in a secure facility in a Brisbane hospital.

And so it begins.

What begins is the process which might see Perini '"disappear" into Queensland's mental health system; if the courts find that Perini is unfit to plead, there obviously won't be a trial. That's a painful result for the Wuth family, but one that can't be avoided if the law is to be fair to both Carmel Wuth's family and to Maurizo Perini. Of course that's much easier for me to say from a considerable geographic distance and the position of someone who isn't personally acquainted with the Wuth family.

Human decency - of the kind Wuth and her peers expect, even demand, of their readers - dictates that we feel sorrow for Carmel Wuth and the Wuth family and outrage on their behalf. I'm having a bit of trouble with that right now, thanks to The Gold Coast Bulletin's latest article on the Carmel Wuth murder "Elderly in dark as psychos move in", by Kathleen Donaghy:

RETIREES and the elderly are moving into unregulated aged hostels and retirement villages with no idea they could be living next to somebody who is mentally ill.

The dire lack of supported accommodation on the Gold Coast has forced people with mental health problems into homes with the old and frail, sometimes with devastating consequences, according to carers and mental health advocates.

At the same time, no laws exist to prevent ordinary hostels from using 'retirement' or 'aged' in their names.

The controversy surrounding aged accommodation has come to a head after the horrific killing of Carmel Wuth, 77, who had been living in the Trinity Gardens Retirement Hostel, which is open to all ages.

What is the The Gold Coast Bulletin agitating for this time, besides a day in court for Maurizo Perini, fit to plead or not. You can get some idea from Wuth's open letter:

How can I put my faith in a system that placed a strong 36-year-old man in a retirement village, among the elderly in the first place?

A system that prefers to shove the mentally ill out the door and into the community.

A system that closed the asylums years ago.

A system that ludicrously relies on the mentally ill to self-medicate, without proper supervision and support...

Time and time again we see cases where the mentally ill are involved in horrendous crimes of violence.

This is an ignorant, fearful view of mental illness - Robyn Wuth wants all the loonies locked up in asylums where they belong, so that, in future, the aged in nursing homes and young mothers in suburbia, need never be upset by a tabloid journalist asking "How do you feel knowing that your next door neighbour is a psycho?" Never mind that in most cases of mental illness, the people who are at most risk of harm are the patients themselves, who might top themselves, or harm themselves in other ways, if unmedicated.

Towards the end of her open letter, Wuth declares:

All these years, I have interviewed so many people whose lives have been touched by tragedy.

For the first time in my life, I understand.

You'd have to have a heart of stone and a head of balsa to read that without smiling at the irony of a sensation-monger feeding herself into the sensation-mill.

Postscript: I think I'll treat myself to a hiatus now. Comments are disabled so that:

• Anyone who wants to slag me off for being callous and ghoulish has to do it elsewhere, where I don't have to read them;


• I don't have to spend a lot of time deleting defamatory comments about Robyn Wuth, The Gold Coast Bulletin or any other person or organisation mentioned in this post.

Qu(ot)e?

At the risk of stooping to the level of culture warrior by broad-brushing an entire subgroup of the community, it must be said that the chest-beaters on the Left and Right of our national discourse are surprisingly naive in the ways of politics. They think governments run nations when, in fact, they manage them as best they can. They mistake the limits of power for cowardice and think the exercise of policy reform is an exact science.

This isn't a comment against individuals, but against a style of writing that assumes only one version of Australia, be it Left or Right, is the true expression of national identity. Australia is open and closed. It has three established mainstreams: the traditional white male, the tertiary-educated woman and the Australia-born children of immigrants. Each brings a slightly different perspective to national identity, depending on the topic.

This level of complexity escapes the cultural warriors because they need caricatures of good and evil.

George Megalogenis in the Australian Literary Review.

Got that everyone? To understand Australian society in all its complexity, one stereotype is not enough. You need three.

Same Old Same Old

According to HL Mencken, nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public. It's equally impossible to lose a political debate, or personal credibility, by underestimating the attention span and incuriosity of the Australian public. Especially on the internet.

A recent study by two Harvard University economists - Radha Iyengar, Jonathan Monten - published at the US National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) has been picked up by defenders of the war in Iraq as a rhetorical big stick, leftists for the whacking of. If you can't afford the $5 (US) NBER charges for electronic delivery of the paper, you can get some idea of its content from this US News report.

I first learnt of the study from this post on Andrew Bolt's blog - "Leftists Lie, Iraqis Die":

It comes with lots of important caveats, and yet:

Are insurgents in Iraq emboldened by voices in the news media expressing dissent or calling for troop withdrawals from Iraq? The short answer, according to a pair of Harvard economists, is yes.

Kudos to Bolt for mentioning that the study included "lots of important caveats"; no kudos for that inflammatory title and omitting those important caveats from his own coverage of the study. No kudos, either, for ignoring the ending of that US News report:

But before partisans go wild on both sides of the aisle, here are just three of the important caveats to this study:

• The city of Baghdad, for a variety of reasons, was excluded from the report. The authors contend that looking at the outside provinces, where 65 percent of insurgent attacks take place, is a better way to understand the effect they have discovered. Other population centers like Mosul, Basra, Kirkuk, and Najaf were included in the study.
  


• The study does not take into account overall cost and benefit of public debate. Past research has shown that public debate has a positive effect on military strategy, for example, and, in the case of Iraq, might be a factor in forcing the Iraqi government to more quickly accept responsibility for internal security.
  


• It was not possible, from the data available, to determine whether insurgent groups increased the overall number of attacks against American and Iraqi targets in the wake of public dissent and debate or simply changed the timing of those attacks. This means that insurgents may not be increasing the number of attacks after all but simply changing the days on which they attack in response to media reports. (emphasis added)

That last caveat rather detracts from Bolt's implied argument, that the left should jolly well shut up about Iraq - not that he's in favour of limiting free speech, of course, he just wishes that opponents of the war would wake up to themselves. It's not known, from the study, whether public dissent leads to new attacks, or whether the insurgents are timing their attacks to coincide with periods of public dissent.

Bolt's argument, such as it is, is tenuous. And pretty childish. "Every time you say that going to war in Iraq was a mistake Iraqis die" is little better than "Every time you say I don't believe in fairies a fairy dies."

I don't believe in fairies. I don't believe in fairies. I don't believe in fairies. That's three blokes who won't be going to the next Sydney Mardi Gras.

Bolt's argument is made even more tenuous by that last caveat - if debate merely influences the timing of the attacks, rather than the overall number, it becomes a case of "Every time you say you don't believe in fairies a poofter bashing happens".

I don't believe in fairies. I don't believe in fairies. I don't believe in fairies. That's three blokes I've just put into intensive care.

If you want to limit the chances of a skeptical reader - a potential critic - finding those caveats, you do as Currency Lad has done in this post. You link to the NBER abstract, which doesn't mention those embarassing caveats at all:

Finally, given the emboldening effect of anti-Bush agitprop and mendacious journalism, it would help if some observers grew up. If only they were as serious about liberty and peace as they are about "global warming."

There's one caveat to the study that US News doesn't list - perhaps it's omitted from the NBER paper as well. It's too bleeding obvious to rate a mention.

In the US, in particular, it's difficult to stifle dissent from government policy completely, because of that well known First Amendment to the Constitution. In Australia the protections are weaker but we like to at least pay lip service to the idea that we're a democratic society where freedom of speech is valued and respected.

There's a very obvious double standard in play in both cases. Bolt and the Currency Lad have this week lauded the publication of Geert Wilders' Fitna on the web as a victory for free speech. Yet here we see them advocating restraint of free speech when it comes to discussion of Iraq. Debate on that thorny topic would be best conducted if one side - the critics of the war - just kept their mouths shut. Critics of Fitna, those who dare to suggest that Wilders' film shouldn't have been published - bad evil opponents of free speech. Bolt and Currency Lad, who would like public debate on Iraq to be conducted without the participation of the war's opponents - defenders of "responsible" free speech.

There's a name for that. It's one of the words that George Orwell is credited with introducing into the dictionary: doublethink.