Australian aid and the Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital

Catherine Hamlin

I first read about the Addis Ababa fistula hospital years ago- I'm not sure where- and I was struck by how important the work of people like Catherine Hamlin is. I'd never even heard of the term 'fistula', nor what it meant, and to find out that something like that existed, bringing crippling disability and ostracism from the community upon women and girls in the prime of their lives, was actually quite a shock. A condition so easily preventable with basic medical care that it no longer exists in the West, and something that would be so easily preventable in Ethiopia with an amount of funding that would seem insignificant in comparison to the huge sums wasted on senseless wars... when I first read about the work of the Addis Ababa fistula hospital I was so worried that because it wasn't a major charity that has the budget to advertise in the way my other favourites Oxfam and MSF do, I would forget it existed by the time I had a job and money, so I created a list of charities I plan to support when I finally have a real job and regular income. Catherine Hamlin's work was first on my list.

Anyway, today's SMH article on Catherine Hamlin is a great read, and I hope that anyone already thinking of where they might put their tax-deductible donations this year will take a look at her work and strongly consider sending some money her way.

One thing that did bother me about the article was the praising tone the journalist adopted when it came to Australia's former foreign minister Alexander Downer:

Hamlin had been receiving a token grant from AusAid when Downer and his daughters sat down together to watch a television show one Sunday night on the Addis Ababa hospital. "My daughters turned to me and said, 'Oh Dad, you must give that woman more money.' The next morning I rang AusAid and increased her grant to $1 million and I'm very, very glad I did."

Why not pose a question to Alexander Downer as to why he and the Howard government thought that the Addis Ababa fistula hospital was worth barely as much in foreign aid money as they were giving as a yearly salary to the scummy Trevor Flugge and counting that as part of Australia's foreign aid budget? Australia's system of foreign aid is an utter disgrace thanks to the Howard government using 50% or so of the total foreign aid budget to line the pockets of its cronies. And why not follow that up with a question to our new and hopefully more competent foreign minister, Stephen Smith, regarding what the Rudd government intends to do about the situation and whether he thinks that projects that actually save lives are more worthy of Australian taxpayers' money than tax-free salaries for the likes of Trevor Flugge? I'd really like to know how Labor is going make improvements in this area and make sure Australia's aid money goes to worthy causes and not scumbag cronies of politicians.

Electric kettle

Just over a year ago we 'cashed in' some of our FlyBuys points for a Breville stainless steel cordless kettle. Over the past couple of months, dodgy things have been happening- the first sign was the kettle's automatic switch-off/thermostat mechanism, for when the water has boiled, seemed a bit temperamental and slow. Sometimes it would switch off when the jug boiled, other times it would keep boiling and boiling and boiling until it either finally switched off itself or I would get worried and switch it off manually. Then the powerboard we have it attached to took to switching off if I used the kettle at the same time as the coffee machine. And just now, when I went to switch off the kettle because the thermostat/switch-off thingy was taking too long, I swear I got a small electric shock in my finger. That's not good. I think I'm going to have to avoid needing to boil water until we can get another kettle... I don't fancy being electrocuted by a dodgy kitchen appliance, or anything else for that matter.

Venezuela cops it from the crazies

Old news, but no less preposterous for being a little stale:

US lawmakers want Venezuela on US list of terrorism sponsors - A bit rich given that the US-backed regime in Colombia recently conducted an illegal bombing raid over the Ecuadorian border and the only thing Chávez is really guilty of is not being a right-wing dictator willing to suck up to the US and bow to its every whim.

Peruvian leaders cry foul as Chávez exports healthcare- the headline says it all, really. I bet the average Peruvian wishes they had a government even half as good as the Venezuelan government. Tell a blind person whose eyesight has been saved that they have no right to their free operation because it was funded by a socialist government and they'd probably tell you to get bent.

Binge drinking- following a bad example

There's an article in the New York Times titled "Can Sips Prevent Binges?" that centres on writer Eric Asimov's dilemma of how best to introduce his two sons to responsible drinking.

Apart from the fact that I seem to remember that studies have in fact suggested the opposite- that parents who introduce their children to alcohol through small tastes of the stuff at the dinner table actually increases the likelihood of either alcoholism or binge drinking (I can't remember which one and I couldn't find the study), my own experience was that my parents did what was thought to be the responsible thing and let my brother and I try a sip of their wine or whatever it was they were drinking (my earliest memory of it was an "oh yuck" reaction) and experienced two wildly different outcomes when it came to my drinking patterns versus my brother's.

What was in the section of text I've bolded in the section below, however, alarmed me:

As they were growing up I occasionally gave them tastes from my glass — an unusual wine, perhaps, or a taste of Champagne on New Year’s Eve. They’ve had sips at Seders and they see wine nightly at our dinner table.

There's just something about drinking every day that I'm not comfortable with. I know some European cultures do it, and food wankers are positively incapable of enjoying a good meal in the absence of alcohol, but to me the constant pairing of food and alcohol sends a message that alcohol is some kind of necessity, some kind of staple.

Growing up in my family, alcohol was generally only consumed on special occasions- this situation existed more thanks to financial reasons than anything else, I suspect. As my parents grew financially comfortable, alcohol made more regular appearances. While I never went to parties as a teenager (I think I never asked, knowing my parents would insist on picking me up at 9pm or some similarly embarrassingly early time), my younger brother did as he pleased, regularly getting wasted at parties with his friends from about age 14 onwards. I was a couple of months off turning 18 before I went to a party armed with four lemon Ruskis and instructions from my parents to give two of them to a friend. I was tipsy by the time I'd finished a single bottle, and there was the lightbulb moment that told me what I'd been missing out on all that time. I probably made a massive fool of myself- I distinctly remember lying back on a log and watching the stars spin over my head- but the fact that I woke up feeling better the next day than I'd felt prior to going to the party (I'd been coming down with a cold) meant that my first impression of getting drunk was a positive one indeed.

After I finished year 12 I went on a bit of a bender, trying to make up for lost time in everything I'd felt I was missing out on during my time in high school. I developed what I thought was a pretty good tolerance for alcohol and wore it as a badge of pride, mainly because I thought everyone else did. This continued into the first month or two of college (although I had a rule that I would never get drunk two nights in a row- I don't know why I set myself that rule, but perhaps I could tell that my body needed time to recover) until I started going out with Gam. I have had that period of probably 5 or 6 months in my life where I was drinking regularly and that's it. In the eyes of Stephen Fielding I'd be a success story.

Meanwhile, my brother drank his way through highschool, held off long enough to do very well in his HSC (better than I, 'the clever one', did), get into his chosen course at uni, and to this day binge drinks fairly regularly. Given that he's got a year of work under his belt and a part-time job at an engineering company while he finishes his degree, he's arguably a lot more successful than I am. Not a Steve Fielding success story.

For my brother and I, it's obviously not our upbringing that has been the primary influence when it comes to our drinking patterns. Rather, it's a social thing. My brother was always better at fitting in socially than I was, and in his peer group that entailed a lot of drinking. Alcohol is such a constant feature in the lives of most Australians that drinking it, and drinking heavily, has become a cultural thing: all major sporting events feature alcohol advertising; tv and radio advertisements advise us to 'stock up' for such and such a sporting event, or Christmas, or New Year, or Australia Day.

And today I tut-tut about my parents' alcohol consumption. I laughed out loud at my Mum when she told me she'd given up alcohol for a while ("it's been 24 hours since I last had a drink!"). They drink most evenings- or they were for a while. Gam's mother likes a drink every evening... for people of our parents' age it seems to be taken for granted that a drink is the best way to unwind after a stressful day. The people who make the laws in this country sit down to dinner with a bottle of wine on the table, and the next day they discuss what to do about the 'young people' binge drinking. While a bottle of wine over dinner doesn't constitute binge drinking, it's the mindset that alcohol is a necessity in certain situations is what has to be changed, and that mindset seems to be pervasive throughout every age group and every social 'class' in Australia.

If the 'grown-ups' can prove that they can do without alcohol then perhaps they'll be better able to send a message to the young'uns instead of looking like a bunch of old hypocrites. And while everyone knows that heavy taxes are the way to knock most problems with alcohol overconsumption on the head, no-one wants to mention the 'T-word', preferring instead to talk solemnly of putting gruesome pictures on bottles to tell us what could happen if you get drunk. What no-one seems to want to realise is that alcohol is a drug, and it's a rather fun drug. People enjoy using it to the extent where they become irresponsible. Trying to make it 'cool' not to drink is never going to work because the effects of alcohol are largely very enjoyable for the users and generally they go unaffected by serious adverse consequences. The only thing the government can do to drastically reduce the incidence of binge drinking is to make it too expensive for the large majority of people to overindulge in on a regular basis. And the only way to do that, apart from banning the stuff (which would just be stupid) is to raise taxes and possibly set a minimum price at which alcohol can be sold.

Rudd Saves Our Democracy

Does what it says on the tin

After 11 years of grubby, brown paper bag political funding, the Rudd administration has turned a hose on Howard and Eric "aids and" Abetz's Aegean stables.

The Rudd Labor Government will introduce legislation in the next Parliamentary sitting to fix loopholes in donation disclosure and public funding.

The Government will also kick-start a green paper process to reform and modernise our electoral processes. The Prime Minister will ask the States and Territories to join the Commonwealth in examining electoral issues.

In the short term, the Government will urgently move to:

* Set the campaign donation disclosure threshold at $1000, reversing the Howard’s government huge increase in the threshold which took the disclosure limit from $1,500 to over $10,000;
* Ban donations from overseas or from non-Australian companies, ensuring donations come from a jurisdiction where our laws apply, and can be enforced;
* Tie election funding to reported and verified electoral expenditure directly incurred by a candidate or party for an election, to stop any candidate making a financial gain from the electoral funding system;
* Remove the loophole whereby separate divisions of a party are treated as separate entities, so preventing large donations from being hidden by paying portions across state and territory branches of the same Party; and
* Increase public scrutiny of donations by reducing disclosure timeframes from 12 months to six months.

John Faulkner, Special Minister of State, now less scaly.

Tying election funding to verified expenditure means Pauline Hanson can no longer run for parliament for a living. The rest of the changes lift up the big rock created by the Liberal party to hide their donors and whatever else they were doing. Of course the Liberals have opposed this every step of the way, bleating about scrutiny being anti-democratic (secrecy, the way every democracy should operate). Says a lot about them and their funding if no one will donate money to them if they can be found out. Best of all, there's more to come. At this rate Faulkner will deserve his own statue...

Excellent start by Faulkner and what a commitment to our democracy. How tempting would it have been to use Howard's influence peddling, oligarchic legislation for their own ends? This is the very essence of good government, it's such a great feeling to be free of that grubby little creep and his noxious effect on our political system.

'Diary' entry- sniffles and pet photos

I'm at home today with the worst case of hayfever I've had in a fair while. Not so bad I need to go to bed, but bad enough that I'm still sniffly even after two Telfast decongestant tablets. Luckily I thought ahead and ordered those from the chemist at the beginning of the week after I ran out of Clarinase (our doc gave me a prescription for both). Telfast used to come in packets of 10 tablets for $14.50- $1.45 per tablet. Now it comes in packs of six for $11.95- $1.99 per tablet (Clarinase was ~$13 for a pack of 6). Yikes. What difference selling 4 fewer tablets per pack makes to Australia's methamphetamines epidemic I don't know, but I suspect very little.

The hayfever today is wholly my own fault though... I've sussed out that eating chocolate gives me hayfever the following day, almost like a hangover :( Of course it had to be chocolate and not something like, I dunno, sultanas... overindulging in alcoholic drinks seems to give me an attack of hayfever the next day too but I hardly ever drink whereas I eat chocolate all the time. I couldn't stand the thought of sitting at work and sniffling miserably, ripping through the tissues and not getting much work done... instead I'm sitting at home and not getting much work done.

Earlier this week I was asked to return a phonecall to someone important at the School of Public Health- there was no indication of why they'd called. It turned out he wanted to ask if I was willing to be a referee for my favourite lecturer... staff are regularly subject to internal reviews or something like that. I said yes, of course, thrilled that she would think to put me as a referee. He said the uni only contacts a random selection of referees so I may not have to do anything, but I'd actually really love the chance to put in a good word for this lady... she's an utter gem of a teacher and I genuinely admire her. I know she would have put me down knowing that I'd probably have something good to say about her, but I doubt she would be expecting the kind of praise that I intend to give her if the uni asks.

It's only a couple of weeks until my first real assessment- a 30 minute presentation outlining the rationale, background, methods etc. for my project. Presentations make me nervous, but I have pretty much everything under control, so that's good at least. I have to start working on the actual slides at the beginning of next week though, as I've promised my supervisor the draft by next Friday- two weeks prior to the presentation. I really like my supervisor so far. He's a very cheery guy, busy but not too busy to help me out when I need it, and happy to let me work at my own pace... I hope I can do well enough this year to make him glad he took me on.

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I started a cleanout of our fridge last night and found a half-full bottle of apple and guava juice that Delali had bought when she was out here for our wedding. The bottle was a bit puffed up, as happens if juice ferments in the fridge, but I wasn't too worried as that sort of thing happens all the time. I loosened the lid a tad, a little bit of gas hissed out, and then there was a loud 'pop' like a champagne cork and the lid blew off the bottle and flew across the room! Was not expecting that! The fermentation must have been a good one, as the juice was bubbling like champagne but still had a 'clean' apple and guava smell... I was almost tempted to try it! Gam is currently experimenting with sourdough starters (attempting his first loaf as I write this), so the kitchen is almost a food biology lab at the moment.

Then this morning when I continued the clean there was some old Barambah Organics milk I'd been keeping for cooking and using periodically- Gam had accidentally left it out of the fridge overnight once after using it in cooking, so I'd decided not to use it for regular consumption- I happened to notice that the milk bottle, too, had blown up. Blown up to the point where it looked like the lid might blow off if I touched it (or perhaps I was just paranoid given what had happened with the juice). So I placed a tea towel around the bottle before picking it up and placing it in the sink (and then running off to ask Gam what I should do with it). That milk I expected to be truly foul, but surprisingly whatever processes had gone on in the bottle had simply turned it into a very attractive-smelling cheese-curd and whey. I bet if I was trying to make cheese that wouldn't have happened. Once again I didn't give in to my temptation to try the curd (doing food microbiology tends to make you a little paranoid) but I have no doubt it would have been quite good- it smelled creamy and fresh and just a tiny bit 'cheesy'... drained, salted and pressed I bet it would have made a damn good cheese.

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Last of all, here's some recent pet photos: it's been a while since I put up any of our bluetongue lizard (previous photos here and here), who I still haven't given a name. We've had her for just over a year now, and unlike Fatso she hasn't shown any desire to leave. She trundles up and down the garden once a day or so, often crawling into Keith Richards' side of the garden to steal some of his fruit. I think she's happier here than Fatso because she is old, whereas Fatso was a rebellious teenager when he made it clear that he wanted to leave. Adolescent animals are all the same.

Un-named lizard.

Feifei on the back wall. A flare-up of the indolent ulcer (eosinophilic granuloma complex) on his lip is just visible- he developed it when he was a kitten and it's never really gone away, though the severity varies. We tried treatment with corticosteriods (tablet form), and a hypoallergenic diet, but nothing worked... luckily it doesn't seem to bother him apart from apparently itching at times- he rubs it extra-hard with his paw sometimes when he's washing his face.

Even Feifei went through a 'rebellious teenager' phase. Un-named lizard is incredibly tame- she rarely bothers to run away if I go to pick her up, and never attempts to bite, though she does puff up and hiss at me, as any self-respecting lizard would. She seems to quite like Keith Richards, too, and quite happily sits next to him if he's sitting on his back wall (I think the lizard likes Keith Richards more than it likes me). And KR doesn't mind the lizard either, which is a real contrast to our old guinea pig, the Pork Beast, who would shriek an alarm call whenever Fatso appeared, and then try and attack him!

A rain-bedraggled Keith Richards nibbling on a piece of dead sweet potato vine. Slug-eaten passionfruit leaves are visible in foreground.

We always figured guinea pigs must think 'snake' whenever they see a lizard, but perhaps Porkie just had issues. Keith Richards differs from Porkie in a lot of respects- temperament, food preferences, conversation- he's a lot more laid back, a lot less fussy (but at the same time less greedy), and he prefers to 'chat' rather than just shout orders as Porkie used to. But they're equally loveable.

Unfortunately the lizard isn't keeping pace with the growth in the slug population in our garden... I'm very fond of slugs (see here and here), but they have been breeding too successfully thanks to all the rain we've been getting in Brisbane. There are now so many that they manage to drink the ~1 litre glass bowl (which I keep water-weeds and grow mozzie larvae in for the fish) dry in the space of a couple of days. Plus they drink Keith Richards' water bowls dry (as well as making them all slimy so I have to wash them) and invade his house to eat his pellets.

Getting ready to 'escape' into the garden.

Plus they're munching on anything else that doesn't poison them, including my struggling passionfruit vine (struggling because the slugs keep eating the leaves) and our capsicum plant. So I'm starting to think of ways that I could drive the slug population down. I refuse to use slug pellets (it's a safety issue with pets- I once had a rabbit that died after ingesting a snail bait), and I refuse to sprinkle salt on them; my options seem to be a) hoping that I can find another lizard to temporarily put in the garden to help eat them, b) gathering up a handful or two of slugs and secretly dumping them over the back wall into the leaf litter of the main garden where they'd hopefully survive (but they'd probably just crawl back up over the wall- that's where most of them came from to begin with), c) freezing them (allegedly it's the most humane way to kill them, as the cold effectively puts them to sleep before they actually die) or d) feeding them bran (which allegedly they can't digest so they swell up and die- I have my doubts about this one). Any suggestions as to what's the best way to go? I need to find a humane way to control the population... bear in mind that I do like the things and don't want to see them suffer.

The pawpaw tree in Keith Richards' side of the garden... I have to get rid of it because it's now as tall as the back wall (and I made Gam hold off chopping it down until it got to that point because I like having it there...)

Feifei's grass-bowl. I can't tempt him with meat scraps, but I can tempt him with grass!

Bono

bono

Bonehead more like. A talentless dwarf irish schlock rock singer who's been releasing the same overblown pompous wank rock song over and over again since 1980. A man who's level of understanding of geopolitics is around GCSE level but who insists on lecturing us all on how to save the world. A prick who goes on about 3rd world poverty all the time yet is strangely silent when it comes to really political issues like Iraq. In fact, worse than that, the little twat sucks around Tony Blair (the man responsible for hundreds of thousand of deaths in the middle east), has photo opportunities hugging the cunt and tells us all to vote for him! He even donates his crappy 'beautiful day' song for cunt Blair to use as his election theme. Oh yes Bonehead, I bet its a beautiful day in Iraq you fake little fuckwitted douchebag. In fact it gets worse, the horrible ugly sunglassed asswipe organises 'Live 8' with his arselicker-in-chief Bob Geldof to 'make poverty history' (I can really see that working - watching a bunch of over the hill has-beens flogging their latest album is really gonna make a difference to starving children in Africa) but really to drag up a bunch of his corpse mates from the 80's and flog a few albums. Then all the performers and their entourages who are all supposed to be doing this for charity (about 300 people altogether) get a £5000 goodie bag (containing Ipods, chanel perfume etc) to take home with them as a thank you! (Laughable. You couldn't make this stuff up. He then makes it a condition of the gig that (because war criminal Blair is his mate) no performers are allowed to mention Iraq, Afghanistan or Bush and Blair. What a horrible, hypocritical little wanker. 'In the name of love' my fucking arse. In the name of money more like. Fuck off and die in Mortal Kombat style pain you smug twat!

Bono? Isn't he that shortarsed little twat who's always lecturing us on how to save the world? The talentless, phoney, fuckwitted cunt.

I bet that was satisfying!

Bad move, Jenny

The message Jenny Macklin sent by choosing to spend the night aboard a $680 per night boat in preference to the local $90 per-night guesthouse on her visit to Aurakun sends a message that basically says "Your community is so shit that I wouldn't even spend a single night there". In fact, according to The Australian, she only spent 4 hours there.

Macklin claims that her intent in spending the night aboard the boat was "to support a local business" (presumably the local guesthouse is owned by some foreign tycoon?), but that really rings hollow.

I'm not suggesting that The Australian doesn't have ulterior motives in the way it's reporting Macklin's visit, seeing as the paper is known for being overtly anti-ALP, but honestly: Macklin shouldn't have made it so damn easy for them. Australia's MPs need to get over themselves, and if they're visiting a community then they shouldn't be thinking themselves too good to spend a single night there. If it's so bad then what about the poor bastards who have to live there all year round? Labor should make a point of differentiating themselves from the Howard government and keep themselves respectable. Otherwise what's next? Commandeering RAAF jets for private beach holidays?

I should also say something else that struck me when I looked up the business that operates the boat and runs tours of the Aurukun wetlands: damn those tours look good. If I had a holiday and a few grand to spare I would go there in a heartbeat.

Hillary the liar

Congratulations to The Australian for being the first Aussie media outlet I've seen to call Hillary Clinton a liar. As usual, the media in general has pussyfooted around the issue- I'm not quite sure what it takes to get the mainstream media over here (or in the US) to call an important political figure a liar despite the fact they do it all the damn time. The story of how she 'misspoke' (lied) about arriving in Bosnia under dangerous conditions and sniper fire during a visit to Bosnia when there was a mountain of evidence (including her own memoirs) to prove the contrary, has been around for a good few days (maybe even a week) now, and no-one has had the guts to really call her on it and ignore this "I misspoke" or "I was sleep-deprived" nonsense. If she can make up a porky like that just as a result of being a bit tired, how is she going to handle the proverbial '3am phonecall' that she ran ads suggesting Barack Obama would not be ready for? (Because he has never been married to a President? I never got that one...).

I really enjoyed the following YouTube clip that Gam sent me:

Hillary the movie:

Why I prefer a pound dog

How could you go past a face like this?

Just now I was searching for a picture of a 'sooky dog' (just because I like sooky dogs and needed to point out the very obvious reason to Gam why we should get a sooky dog, i.e. 'just look at that face!'). I came across a very cute picture of a little boy cuddling a big sooky Labrador on this page belonging to Renbury Farm Animal Shelter- their success stories.

As cute as pet shop puppies are, I know I could never go past the RSPCA or an animal shelter when we are finally able to accommodate a dog. Ditto for cats if we're ever able to get Feifei a friend- we'll either go back to the RSPCA or adopt one from the uni vet service (which has roomfuls of beautiful, attention-starved cats that we often walk past to say 'hello' to through the glass). I only wish I could adopt them all!

Gam swears I'd be a crazy cat (or dog) lady if I hadn't met him, and he's probably right...

Funniest 'news' of the day

Australian model Kristy Hinze says she was instantly attracted to her 63-year-old boyfriend, Texan billionaire Jim Clark, by his intelligence.

Baahahahahahahahahahaha!!!!!!

Because if he'd been... I don't know... a research scientist making $60 000 a year she'd have totally gone for it... yeah. Totally.

More like she was instantly attracted to Grandpa the dude because certain women have an area in their brain which exhibits magnetic properties for gold. I mean, dear god... she's only 3 years older than me. Okay I'll be nice: for an old guy he looks pretty good- well preserved. Attractive? No way! I bet his daughter is older than Kristy Hinze... There's nothing more gross than an old guy dating someone who is the same age or younger than his own children.

Movie Meme

I picked this up from MB who got it from someone else: No tagging, just thought it was a good idea. Anyway, here are the rules:

• Pick 15 of your favourite movies

• Go to IMDb and find a quote for each of the movies

• Post them here for everyone to guess

• Strikeout when someone correctly guesses in the comments, put who guessed it and the movie

• No Googling or using IMDb to work out the answers

So, in no particular order, here they are:

1. "Das war ein Befehl!"

2. "STAMPEDE! Stampede, Earl! Get out of the way, get out of the way! "
"You dumb shit. I was in a stampede once. Five hundred head, all hell-bent for the horizon.
Now, exactly how many cattle are required for a stampede, Earl? Is it three or more? Is there a minimum to 'pede?"
I wish they'd stampede up your ass. "

3. "Surely you can't be serious. "
"I am serious... and don't call me Shirley." - Airplane! - Magic Bellybutton

4. "They won't catch us this time! Not this time! They haven't spotted us! No, they're all snoring in their bunks! Or, you know what? They're drinking at the bar, celebrating our sinking! Not yet, my friends. Not yet!"

5. "Excuse me, I have to go. Somewhere there is a crime happening." - Robocop - Magic Bellybutton finally gets there!

6. "I can't. Nobody goes home. Nobody else comes through. It's just him - and me."

7. "I will not die easily. I am a warrior!"

8. "What was sundered and undone shall be whole - the two made one." - The Dark Crystal - Magic Bellybutton

9. "You like me because I'm a scoundrel. There aren't enough scoundrels in your life." - Star Wars Episode V Chade

10. "Some motherfuckers are always trying to ice-skate uphill."

11. "I was dealing with something delicate, Otto. I'm setting up a guy who's incredibly important to us, who's going to tell me where the loot is and if they're going to come and arrest you. And you come loping in like Rambo without a jockstrap and you dangle him out a fifth-floor window. Now, was that smart? Was it shrewd? Was it good tactics? Or was it stupid?"
"Don't call me stupid."
"Oh, right! To call you stupid would be an insult to stupid people! I've known sheep that could outwit you. I've worn dresses with higher IQs. But you think you're an intellectual, don't you, ape?"
Apes don't read philosophy."
"Yes they do, Otto. They just don't understand it. Now let me correct you on a couple of things, OK? Aristotle was not Belgian. The central message of Buddhism is not "Every man for himself." And the London Underground is not a political movement. Those are all mistakes, Otto. I looked them up." - A Fish Called Wanda - good work Mikey and latecomer jamesm

12. "Clevon is lucky to be alive. He attempted to jump a jet ski from a lake into a swimming pool and impaled his crotch on an iron gate. But thanks to advances in stem cell research and the fine work of Doctors Krenske and Mueller, he should regain full reproductive function again." Idiocracy - Sarah

13. "Your effort to remain what you are is what limits you."

14. "I could have killed 'em all, I could kill you. In town you're the law, out here it's me. Don't push it. Don't push it or I'll give you a war you won't believe. Let it go. Let it go."

15. "I am going to ask questions. If you don't answer fully and truthfully, you will suffer much more than you have to. I'm going to cut your fingers off. One by one, if I have to."

16. "Do you think I've got 'cunt' written on my forehead?"

17. "Viggy, Viggy, Viggy, you have been a bad monkey!"

18. "Hey, Doc, I got a mother, all right? I mean, you got a mother. Sarge's got a mother. I mean, shit, I bet even the captain's got a mother. Well, maybe not the captain, but the rest of us got mothers.
"Theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do and die."
"La-la, la-la, la-la, la-la, la-la, la-la, la-la, la-la. What the fuck is that supposed to mean, Corporal, huh? We're all supposed to die, is that it?" - Saving Private Ryan - nice work Chade

Playboy's timeline of pubes

Liv Lindeland, 1971

There's an interesting feature on Playboy's website this month, with a 'timeline' of Playmates from the 1970's to 2008 cataloguing the evolution of the popularity of pubic hairstyles over time. The timeline isn't representative in other respects- there's a disproportionate incidence of natural boobs on the Playmates from 2002-2008 (I should know- I started buying them at the end of 2002), but it's nonetheless very interesting.

Lisa Welch, 1980.

You can see the nice-looking girl-next-door types in the 1970's, the arrival of the airbrush and dodgy hair and makeup in the 1980's, and fake boobs in the 1990's (although like I said, natural ones are overrepresented compared to what appears in the magazine), and of course the evolution of pubic hairstyles from hair with flair to barely there. Another change you'll see over time is the disappearance of tan lines- maybe I'm reading too much into it, but I think tan lines used to be considered sexy because it implied the viewer was seeing something that was normally covered up. The absence of tan lines implies that the model never covers up. Personally, I find the former sexier than the ubiquitous all-over tan.

Marianne Gravatte, 1983: note the dodgy airbrushing on the face.

The pubic hairstyle thing doesn't bother me so, as I think that's largely reflective of fashion, but Playboy's use of the airbrush is a real travesty. The girls in the 1970s are cute as hell and recognisably human; the girls of 2000 onwards are airbrushed to the point where they're barely indistinguishable from plastic barbies. You'll find the same phenomenon occurring on the cover of almost any men's magazine you care to name- women's magazines use airbrushing to the same extent, but with less flesh on display. It's a real shame- it's one thing to use the airbrush to remove a pimple or a speck of dirt, it's another thing altogether to turn an otherwise good-looking person into an alien. What's strangest of all is that people so readily accept these images as being something to live up to...

No pubic hair and all-over airbrushing: Playboy in 2008

Queensland Nats go shopping for nuts

The Borg is back... and he's bringing the bigots with him.

The National Party in Queensland has apparently decided that including far-right nutbag groups in a prospective united conservative party is the way to win elections- they've been shopping around for support from Family First and the Shooters Party and god knows who else. Seems the Nats under Lawrence Springborg are dreaming of a new Joh-style era. Is that scary or what? Needless to say, the state Libs aren't excited by the prospect, but I suppose they're not exactly bargaining from a position of power. And given Queensland's history of rabid nutbaggery among the population, it's probably not so far-fetched to think that the Nats might be onto a potentially popular concept. Ugh.

457 visas: worker's rights come first

I can understand the need for 457 visas to import workers for businesses like the Charleville abattoir, but I think any 'overhaul' of the 457 visa system should include provisions that ensure that workers on these visas are paid, at a minimum, what Australian workers are paid, checks should be conducted on every workplace that employs workers from non english-speaking backgrounds on a 457 visa to ensure that the workers aren't being ripped off and know their rights, and massive fines and hefty jail terms enacted for employers who exploit them- and that includes cases like these.

Dirty, bloated and corrupt

Call me a cynic, but I suspect Morris Iemma would never have suggested banning political donations unless he thought the idea would have absolutely no traction whatsoever within his own (corrupt) party or the NSW opposition. I particularly love how he talks of the 'perception' that political donations are used to buy influence. Because we all know they aren't really used to buy influence... especially not in NSW.

Nostalgia for dodgy food of yesteryear

Prawn cocktail: not even wannabe-retro-chic puff pieces in 'gourmet' magazines could tempt me...

The Age has a piece on two books recently released that both sound like a great read for anyone who enjoys reading about food (I do!): Colin Bannerman's Seed Cake & Honey Prawns - Fashion And Fad In Australian Food and Margaret Dunn's Mrs Harvey's Sister-In-Law And Other Tasty Dishes.

I suppose my interest doesn't stem so much from a nostalgia for foods of my childhood, or amusing memories of food fads from the 70s mainly because I was only born in the 80s and my memory doesn't go back that far. Also I suppose I developed something of a deliberate aversion to the bland, stereotypically Australian or British foods- anything that could be described as 'meat and three veg'- because that was all you could get where I grew up. That and the overly sweet local 'Chinese' take-away. I don't think I tried Indian food until I came to Brisbane in 2002, and that's just one example of culinary deprivation I could mention. Occasional trips to Sydney provided some relief from the monotony, but I would religiously read the restaurant reviews and 'Good Living' section of the SMH as a teenager to find what I was missing out on.

But I still remember my Grandma's pumpkin scones, which must be an early memory indeed, as I remember them hot from the oven with butter melting into the cut surface. I stopped eating butter as a condiment when I was about 6; I think my Grandmother pretty much stopped cooking around the same time. Baked custard, some fairly bland, sultana-containing cakes cooked in the microwave in one of those ring-shaped dishes whose specific name I can't remember, and trifle are other things I remember her cooking. There's also a vague memory of my cousin, my brother and I sitting around a table at her grand old house from the days when my grandfather was still alive, possibly when he was still able to walk, eating breakfast and arguing whether marmite or vegemite was the better spread. No memories of her cooking from that early time, although my parents regularly tell the story of when they moved to Kempsey from Sydney, heavily pregnant with me, and they would drive over the bridge to Grandma's house where she would all but force-feed them a five-course dinner and they would drive home groaning "never again!"- I bet they could name a few of Grandma's favourite dishes.

So last century? Nothing wrong with a good trifle!

And apricot chicken casserole was a reasonably regular visitor to our kitchen, usually when there were large numbers of people to be fed and Mum's casserole dish would come in handy. I don't eat chicken these days, so there's no saying whether I'd actually like it or not. I believe the equally infamous 'French Onion chicken casserole' also made an appearance on similar occasions. Given that the best recipes of old tend to stick around even in modern cookbooks (lemon butter is an example) and the worst ones die out (flummery? Hmm), I think what interests me most about these two books is the stories behind the food. It's the connection between society and its cuisines that's the source of the fascination.

That said, I'm sure some of my Mum's old cookbooks can be admired just for the freakshow-value of the dishes they contain... hopefully she hasn't thrown them out and I can collect a few of the more stunning examples for a post of my own.

Bligh's buses triple the trouble?

According to the Brisbane Times, the Bligh government is shopping for triple-length 'superbuses' to solve all Brisbane's transport problems. I think they're going to have even more problems if they go ahead with this particularly hare-brained idea given that even the current articulated 'bendy-bus' buses aren't even well-suited to some of the roads they're on.

A couple of weeks ago, Gam and I caught one of the bendy-buses on a trip from Sunnybank Hills (out in the 'burbs) to the city, and even with quiet roads and an almost-empty bus the bus driver was clearly having trouble getting the thing around corners in average-sized streets; on one occasion when he was having trouble turning left into a reasonably narrow street with a car about to make a turn out of that street, the car at that intersection actually had to reverse down the road to allow the bus through. It wasn't even as if the bus driver was taking the corners fast, either- quite the contrary: he seemed to be very careful. I can't say whether the problems that occurred were a result of inadequacies in the bus design (i.e. perhaps it was designed for wider roads) or driver training (i.e. the poor bastard was trained in a regular city bus and then allocated an articulated bus that handled in a completely different manner without being given any training for the job). Regardless, if such troubles arise with the conventional articulated buses, how much worse is it going to be when the new buses are 30% longer?

I think the reason the Bligh government has dreamed up what appears to be a particularly stupid idea in this case is the fact that the council is having trouble recruiting bus drivers. If they did the sensible thing and ordered more regular buses and had more services more often, they'd have to recruit even more drivers. Which they're currently having trouble with anyway, I hear, despite a large recruitment/advertising campaign. Perhaps the sensible thing to do would be to create a financial disincentive such as a congestion charge for people who drive to work in the CBD and to use the money raised from that to create more attractive salary patterns or perks for people who choose a career as a bus driver.

I think triple-length buses could be a very expensive disaster.

'Success'

Noor Salman

From the BBC:

Iraq lives: Schoolgirl in Baghdad
Noor Salman is 16-year-old Iraqi girl living in Baghdad. She writes about her experiences of life in the five years since the US-led invasion.

LOST LIVES

The last five years have passed by so quickly and so much has happened. I can't believe it's been five years since this all began.

Noor at her father's grave
Noor lost her father in a militia raid on their home in August 2006
Baghdad has changed so much and so has my life. Up until two years ago we had a big house and had plenty of money and my father looked after us.

Now we live in a small rented two-bedroom house with my mother, my brother and his wife and my seven sisters.

But my dad is no longer with us. In August 2006 a group of militia men got out of a car and forcibly entered our home.

I cannot describe these people, they are not human beings. They broke the front door of our home and stormed into the house and kidnapped my dad.

They pulled him while aiming their guns at him. When he tried to defend himself they knocked him unconscious and put him in the boot of the car.

I was very frightened and I lost faith in everything and everyone. I wish they had taken everything, our car, our home, but left my father alive.

The next morning we were informed by the police station that they had found his body, it had been dumped in a side street with his hands tied behind his back. He had been shot in the head.

I could not believe that I had lost him forever. Many other teenagers like me have also lost their fathers in Baghdad, killed for no apparent reason.

REFUGEES

My dad used to do everything for us. He used to turn on the generator so that we had electricity at home and he would do all the hard jobs.

Even to this day we only have two hours of electricity a day so we need to get the extra energy from the generators. Now that my dad is gone we have to do these things ourselves.

After my dad was murdered the violence meant we had to leave our home
In early 2003, when I was in school, everyone was talking about the possibility of war. As school children we did not understand the implications.

The day Baghdad fell, I started to understand. We saw many of our relatives and friends getting displaced. Many fled to neighbouring countries.

My dad, however, was adamant. He said he would never leave his country and would prefer to die here rather than for us to live as refugees in another land.

After my dad was murdered the violence meant we had to leave our home and we became displaced and other people came and squatted in our house.

I lost my home, my childhood memories, my bedroom, my toys and my beautiful garden with all its flowers.

My dad used to call me Dr Noor when I was young - he wanted me to become a physician. I am still hoping to fulfil his dream.

Our city is not what it once was and studying is not easy. Walking to school became a dangerous journey, although recently things are better.

I wonder, how many school children in the world have to go to school fearing they may not make it home. That's what we had to do.

I'm so happy that things are better on that front - but we are all aware that they could easily change again.

COPING WITH FEAR

She says children have had to live with bombings and destruction
Today I had Dolma, one of my most favourite dishes, it's basically stuffed vegetables, it's a very traditional Iraqi dish.

After the war began, getting food was very difficult and people were living off the basics. Even to the go to the market was very difficult.

It's only recently that people feel it's a bit safer to go to the markets - there have been bombings in these places and that makes people think twice - but you have to live.

After the fall of Baghdad Iraqi children learnt very quickly the meaning of destruction and war.

I remember at dawn time, instead of hearing the call to prayer we woke up hearing the noise of blasts.

Baghdad became like a ghost city. There was no law and order and an increase in crime so people were afraid to go out.

We learnt to cope with fear and after time we started going back to school.

We got used to living in a city were violence was everywhere and random bombings could happen anytime and in every place. We experienced the brutal nature of this new Iraq when my father was murdered.

Noor Salman is sponsored by the charity Islamic Relief

Less Interference = Cheaper Houses

With nine bathrooms you can turn every poop into an adventure!

Most 'solutions' to the housing crisis involve tinkering with policy at the edges. Ideas that work on the demand side, home buyers' grants, subsidies, higher wages, will just drive up the price of houses. The solution must understand that there is an effectively finite quantity of product. Hence, putting more money into the hands of people demanding the product will simply raise prices. The same effect can be seen with various idiotic interventions in markets like childcare.

In our situation, part of the problem is due to housing supply. Why do councils persist in giving land to developers? Simply stop the sale of land to developers and let developers make money from building the actual goddamned house on the land. Why isn’t this obvious? The finite supply of land around capitals is artificially restricted because if you want any, you have to go through a middle-man who bought the land for a cheaper price and sells it at a profit. Cutting out a bunch of hoarding middle-men would do more to actually create more supply and drive prices down without risking economic blowback a la negative gearing or using clumsy policy instruments. If you can’t even sell petrol at market rates without every man and his dog breaking into l’ internationale and demanding cheap fuel for workers, why is it ok to sit on piles of land waiting to cash in on demand?

If you look at the US housing market, though house prices have risen (in large part due to the availability of debt, I think) they haven't risen as fast or as high as ours. This is because the US housing boom actually resulted in new houses being built. Over here a large quantity of housing spending went into renovating properties and then buying those properties at inflated prices. It also went to buying new land/houses from developers when they decided prices were high enough to sell bits of their hoards. Either we decide that housing is more than just an investment, that it's different to collecting vintage cars or something, or we just don't bother and leave things alone. All the solutions I've seen so far aren't going to make it any easier for us to get into a house.

Aussie apiarists' outrage

Not happy: Australian apiarist Graham Grigson

This article on how chinese honey products contaminated with an antibiotic are being packaged in Australia and sold overseas as 'made in Australia' is a good argument for updating the laws to ensure that slimebag manufacturers can't continue to mislead and rip off consumers by duping them into believing a product is Australian when it's not.

In loving memory...

I couldn't help but be impressed by the story of a Taiwanese guy hiring a stripper to perform at his father's funeral (found via fleshbot):

The stripper danced in front of Cai Jinlai's coffin for more than ten minutes at the funeral in Taizhong town.

Son, Cai Ruigong, paid her more than £80 to dance in memory of his late father, reports United Daily News.

Cai Ruigong says he promised his father a stripper for his funeral if he lived beyond the age of 100.

I was most impressed by the next bit:

Cai Jinlai passed away at the age of 103 after a three mile walk into town to vote. He was the oldest person in his village and had more than 100 descendants.

His son said his father was famous locally for his interest in strip clubs: "He would travel around the island with his friends to see these shows," he added.

What a great way to remember his dad... and the idea of a 103 year old guy walking the same distance (~5km) that Gam and I cover when we walk to the city is just incredible!

Unisex name dilemma

Just now Gam was sending off a job application, and after he finished typing the email to accompany his application he turned to me and asked if the name of this person could also be a girl's name. I said I thought so (despite this person sharing a name with a famous male movie-star) and said we should google this person's name to determine whether they were male or female. The googling was not fruitful. So instead of being able to address his email using an honorific (Mr/Ms), Gam had to type the person's full name, e.g. 'Dear Riley Smith*'. Makes it sound like some kind of dodgy spam, really. Is there a better solution to this kind of problem?

*Obviously not the person's real name

Queensland still waiting on sensible porn laws

This afternoon I received the following email in my inbox, allegedly from Queensland Premier Anna Bligh's Deputy Chief of Staff, Stephen Beckett:

Dear [Sarah]



Thank you for your email concerning the restricted sale of non-violent erotic films. I have been requested to reply to you on the Premier’s behalf.

The Premier referred this matter to the Honourable Kerry Shine MP, Attorney-General and Minister for Justice and Minister Assisting the Premier in Western Queensland who has advised that the current laws in Queensland enable consumers to make informed decisions about the materials they choose to view or purchase and also aim to protect minors from inappropriate materials.



While I appreciate your strongly held views on this matter, concern is regularly expressed by Queenslanders about the relaxation of the present laws regarding x-rated material.



The Government needs to balance the strongly held views of those on each side of the argument. While the sale of x-rated videos and DVD’s are prohibited in Queensland, it is not illegal to own, possess, order or view the material in question.



Again, noting your views, there are no plans to alter the legislation in Queensland.



Yours sincerely





Stephen Beckett

Deputy Chief of Staff

I wasn't going to bother replying, because I know the real reason the Bligh government can't be arsed to change the law is that they don't want to deal with a bunch of nutjobs just as rabid as the anti-fluoride brigade, and if they attempt to change it the media will be all over the issue because it involves sex and naked people. Or at least audiovisual content depicting sex and naked people. It's all the same to the media. Plus, while there are a heck of a lot of porn users in Queensland, most of them don't really care that Queensland businesses aren't legally allowed to sell the stuff- after all, most do anyway, and porn is freely available online. So why make a fuss? It's the principle: the law is a relic. It's stupid and backward. Why shouldn't Queensland adult-product businesses be able to legally make money from a product that is widely and legally available here (via internet and mail order) anyway? So I replied and asked Mr Beckett a couple more questions:

Dear Stephen,

In your email regarding the Queensland government's failure to enact common-sense laws that enable the sale of non-violent erotica through adult stores you claimed:

"While I appreciate your strongly held views on this matter, concern is regularly expressed by Queenslanders about the relaxation of the present laws regarding x-rated material.



The Government needs to balance the strongly held views of those on each side of the argument"

I was wondering if the Queensland government is able to explain why they are so eager to pander to the views of a very noisy minority on this matter when the same did not hold true in the case of the Bligh government's recent and very sensible decision to pass laws to enable fluoridation of Queensland's water supplies. A lot of ill-informed 'concern' was expressed in that case too, but the Bligh government made the decision to go ahead. Why?

You say also that Queensland Attorney General Kerry Shine has "advised that the current laws in Queensland enable consumers to make informed decisions about the materials they choose to view or purchase and also aim to protect minors from inappropriate materials."

I would also like to know why the Bligh government believes that allowing the sale of x-rated non-violent erotica through businesses owned by Queenslanders would in any way alter the ability of consumers to 'make informed decisions' about what they watch. As for the aim of 'protecting minors from inappropriate materials', I fail to see how the sale of x-rated NVE through adult stores, where customers must be aged over 18, would in any way undermine the government's stated aim of protecting minors from inappropriate materials. If this was the case, shouldn't the sale of cigarettes in Queensland be banned because their physical presence in stores makes them more accessible to minors? Of course to make this analogy truly accurate I'd have to be advocating the sale of x-rated material through supermarkets, where cigarettes are sold to customers aged over 18. Why is the Queensland government exhibiting such selective judgement, even hypocrisy, in this regard?

I eagerly await your reply.

Yours sincerely,

Sarah

Allergies have a cost? No way!

When I read this report in The Australian on the impact of childrens' nasal allergies on their sleep and schooling, I couldn't help thinking of the arseholes who want to ban all pseudoephedrine-containing products from pharmacy shelves. Pseudoephedrine in medications such as telfast decongestant, clarinase or sudafed has often meant the difference between my being totally incapacitated for an entire day and being able to function properly. Nasal allergies can be absolutely debilitating and have a real cost to the economy in terms of lost productivity- and as for illicit methamphetamines manufacturers, banning the sale of products containing pseudoephedrine won't stop them- I think it's a pretty safe bet that forcing people like me to go to the doctor and get a prescription in order to obtain medications to relieve hayfever and other nasal congestion has had no impact at all on the quantities of methamphetamines ending up in this country, whether they're manufactured here or smuggled in. All it's done is make life more difficult- I'm lucky in that I have a doctor who knows about my hayfever and a chemist who doesn't treat me like a potential druggie (I've come across chemists who do).

Rant over for now- but for as long as I have hayfever I'll continue to bitch about this issue from time to time :)

Amanda's Renovation Rescue

Someone this fashionable shouldn't be forced to live with fake suede couches and faux Italian antiques!

Former Howard government immigration minister Amanda Vanstone has ordered a makeover for her Italian diplomatic residence, set to cost Australian taxpayers more than $25,000.

Ms Vanstone, who has been Australia's ambassador to Italy since April last year after retiring as a Liberal Senator, introduced several changes at the 70-year-old villa in Rome, The Australian newspaper reports.

But it seems the four-storey, five bedroom brick villa with swimming pool and various reception areas located in Rome's prestigious Parioli district, is still not up to scratch.

In an email to a Canberra bureaucrat, Ms Vanstone outlined her frustration with "fake suede couches" and "faux antique Italian", the newspaper reports.

Her complaints focussed on the villa's interior, with claims that lighting and furniture were not in keeping with any particular theme.

Paint colours ranged from "two-tone white-cream banding in the foyer, green in the stairwell, white in the main reception room and apricot in the dining room ... nicely (!) set off by a chocolate library".

SMH

The horrified taxpayer can only imagine what she needs real suede couches for. No word on whether any of the $25,000 was to make any of the doors wider.

Please, Julia, can I have a mousepad?

Julia Gillard is asking for suggestions regarding what to do with the truckloads of WorkChoices propaganda materials that the Howard government spent millions of dollars of taxpayers' money on. I'd love to get my hands on one of those mousepads. Gam and I emailed Julia a few weeks back when she first brought up the subject of the propaganda stockpile, but no-one replied :(

I think Julia and Kevin Rudd should arrange to autograph a bunch of them and auction them off to raise money for a good cause- something that would really antagonise John Howard, like assistance for refugees or financial supplements to the meagre wages of young apprentices; perhaps putting some money towards health or employment programmes in indigenous communities, or giving it to public schools- maybe to set up a special section of the history curriculum devoted to educating our kids about Australia's proud history of worker's rights... and the people who buy the mousepads would get to own a little piece of Australian history. I reckon that beats cutting them into pieces- however satisfying that may be, the satisfaction can only be ephemeral. How about turning Howard's waste of taxpayers' money into a good cause?

I'd love to buy a WorkChoices mousepad autographed by Julia Gillard. Come on Julia, how about it?

4WD = Death Machine

Holy crap. Can anyone tell me why these things haven't been banned from the roads?

HMAS Sydney, another heroic disaster

HMAS Sydney

News of the discovery of HMAS Sydney's wreck has started a bit of a flurry of historical revisionism, especially with regard to the events of the sinking by the German raider HSK Kormoran (Cormorant).

Luwig Ernst, a witness on board the Kormoran stated:

Mr Ernst accused Burnett and his officers of allowing themselves to be duped by a much smaller ship. "I observed Sydney's incompetent command structure from the moment Sydney appeared over the horizon and turned to pursue us," he said. "Whenever we came across an unidentified object, it was standard practice to fire a shot at 5000 metres across its bows. We on Kormoran were all expecting Sydney to do the same, but it never came … And that is Burnett's crime - he closed an unidentified ship to within 900 metres. When Sydney did ask us for our secret call signal, the only answer we had was our guns."

Mr Ernst said the Sydney's officers were sitting ducks on the bridge when the light cruiser was supposedly at action stations.

"The bridge was full of white caps … But what really enabled our survival was the incompetence of Sydney's gunnery officer. He fired a bracket, Sydney's first salvo going over us and the second falling short. At point-blank range you didn't need to do it."

SMH

The first part of his account is pretty awful. There is no reason whatsoever for a fast, heavily armed warship to approach to 900m of an unidentified ship, especially when that warship is on the look out for disguised raiders that pretend to be unarmed ships. That range is knife-fighting range for ships. The second part, that Sydney's officers were all on the bridge is possibly even worse. That suggests that at least some of those officers should have been somewhere else, supervising other duties on a ship that should have been at action stations but clearly wasn't. If other reports by Kormoran crew members are accurate, that probably contributed to the sinking. Kormoran fired at Sydney's bridge, probably killing or incapacitating most of it's officers. That would have had dire consequences for damage control. I have a feeling that there will be lots of open bulkheads on the wreck, meaning the Sydney wasn't ready for battle.

This brings us to the final part of Ernst's account, that Sydney bracketed the Kormoran. That means that as Sydney closed on the Kormoran the gun crews didn't update their firing solutions or even train their guns on the Kormoran. That means when the battle began, Sydney's initial salvo went over the Kormoran, while the Kormoran, negating Sydney's armour and fire control advantage with close range, was able to hit her several times with 6 inch guns and with 20mm AA guns which would have been devastating to the exposed bridge crew. That and a torpedo hit was what did Sydney in. It's likely that Sydney lost her ability to fight in the first few minutes of the battle with the loss of many officers.

The SMH article gives space to someone who suggests that the Kormoran pretended to surrender before opening fire, something not corroborated by any of the Kormoran survivors. It would seem strange that 320 men would maintain a conspiracy of silence for 67 years about something that would constitute a war crime. Secondly a surrendering ship should still be under the guns of the ship it is surrendering to. The crew of the Sydney were brave men who did their duty defending their country against some pretty steep odds. That they met their end as a result of an error in no way reduces the merit of their service. Rather than trying to rewrite their deaths as some sort of crazy conspiracy or devilish machination, we should recognise that those men died as the result of a series of mistakes. The biggest and first being the people of the belligerent nations allowing the war to happen in the first place. Instead their deaths will be used to glory in war by politicians and commentators.

Captain Obvious Reports

JOHN HOWARD was excessively obedient to the White House on Iraq, climate change and the "so-called war on terror" in a stance that was damaging for both Australia and the US, says a Liberal MP and international relations expert, Russell Trood, who has urged the Coalition to adopt a new co-operative foreign policy.

SMH


Really Russell? I hadn't noticed. Poor Johnny, might as well stay in America, your name is mud over here. Maybe you can get a job on the Bush ranch?

Brisbane City Council elections

Liberal voter

Yesterday, Brisbane returned Campbell Newman as retarded-monkey-in-chief along with a Liberal majority council for the first time in 15 years.

Unfortunately, it came as no surprise. There were only three pieces of pre-election junk mail that came from Labor, and only one of them was from Labor's mayoral candidate, Greg Rowell. The other two were from the Labor candidate for our voting ward (whose name I can't remember- good sign, no?) and our state member, Ronan Lee- the former arriving in the mail sometime in the last week and the latter arriving only the day before the election. In short, it was as if Labor never even tried to win.

Not that Labor could have been trusted to do a particularly good job; it was more a case of hoping for the lesser of two evils.

On Thursday we got a call from our local Greens candidate, Daniel Krute, asking if we could help out by handing out how-to-vote cards, so we agreed to show up from 8-10am; we figured they must have been a bit desperate, seeing as we're not actually Greens members (yet- we're supporters for sure, but not members) and they only had our details because we volunteered to help out at the federal election in November.

When we arrived at Ironside State School, there was a girl already there handing out Green HTV's- Rosie, the same one who'd done been at the polling place we worked at the federal election. She said she also wasn't a member but they'd called her to ask for their help and she'd agreed to do 8-10am as well. There was scarcely any need to have 3 of us at Ironside- it was incredibly quiet. Rosie said to us that heaps of people she'd spoken to over the last couple of days didn't even know there was an election on. It's been a bit like that, really... we found out today that one of our friends forgot to vote! Overall it's been a really lacklustre campaign. Anyway, we mostly amused ourselves by playing 'spot the Liberal'... and I arrived at the 'moccasin theory' of Liberal-spotting:

Basically, any male dressed in a 'preppy' fashion, wearing moccasins, thigh-length shorts, usually with a belt, and a polo shirt, will refuse outright to take a Green HTV card. Lots of people take a Green HTV just to be polite, you can tell, but guys dressed this way will always refuse. While most of them wore moccasins, the theory seems to apply to males wearing other forms of preppy leather footwear- certain kinds of sandals and slides, but moccasins were definitely the most popular. Rosie didn't believe us, so we challenged her to offer an HTV to every guy dressed like that who came along over the next 15 minutes: all but one refused, and Rosie even admitted that the one who took it probably only did so because she literally jumped out in front of him! Plus his polo shirt was kind of old and not nearly 'preppy' enough. Obviously a Liberal voter who's a bit off his game...

I feel a bit weird handing out HTV cards, because personally I think that people should have made their mind up prior to the day; the Greens weren't actually recommending preferences at all, which to my mind obviates the need for an HTV (though I would, under most circumstances, put preferences regardless of whether any party recommended a 'just vote 1' strategy). So a vote that's swayed by an HTV is a vote not earned, to my way of thinking... sure they all count the same, it's just hard to have any respect for the decision of someone who has no idea why they're voting. Still, I guess I like the idea that we're doing something to help out a party we like.

Green voter

Another thing that happened when we were handing out HTVs was that someone who lives in our unit complex arrived. Now, this woman is, I can say with almost 100% certainty, a Liberal voter. She is middle-aged (50-something), single (though wears a wedding ring), works in HR, comes across as insular, selfish and quite often downright antagonistic. I might be being too hard on her, but it's entirely possible I'm also being quite generous in my description. When she spotted us she was clutching only a Liberal HTV, obviously having refused the Labor one. Yet she smiled as we said good morning, said something about us doing our 'civic duty', and took a Green HTV... it was so weird... she was clearly only taking it to be polite... I know for a fact she's not interested in the Greens' main platform of improved public transport- we're talking about someone who drives her car to the bin on her way to work, hops out to put her rubbish in, and drives off... she also drives to the mailbox to collect her mail (as do a frustrating number of residents at our complex, i.e. most of them). I wonder if she'll find a way to mention it at body corporate meetings?

Anyway, looks like Brisbane has got a chance to see just how far it can fall with Campbell Newman taking full control of the council. I just can't believe the amount of apathy that appeared to exist on the Labor side, like they were just expecting to win a majority without any effort while the Libs spent their way through a million dollar campaign fund. Unbelieveable.

UPDATE: Looks like our friend wasn't the only one who forgot there was an election on. According to this post on Andrew Bartlett's blog, turnout was as low as 60% in Central ward, while the highest turnout for any ward was 76%. So the trickle of voters that we saw early in the day clearly didn't turn into a flood- it looks like a good many people stayed home or went to the beach instead.