By the logic of climate-change skeptics, deniers, or action-delays (from now on, I’ll just use "deniers"), they would see no problem with dusting your kids with Agent Orange, nor would they think you negligent if you dusted their kids with the stuff.  If not Agent Orange, then at least blowing smoke in the faces of their kids isn’t something they should complain about.

If you really want to make the analogy watertight, simply find something that is now has the same level of proof/doubt as to carcinogenicity and teratogenicity as Agent Orange did prior to 1991, or second-hand smoke did until recently.  How much doubt?  Well, if we go by the proof demanded by the deniers for the need for rapid and strong climate change, even if every reputable medical journal in the world, and every expert say the compound is probably carcinogenic, any dissenting opinion, even if only from those on the payroll of chemical companies, would be enough to satisfy the deniers that more proof was needed.  Certainly there were numerous inquiries by governments that (conveniently) absolved themselves of any responsibilities for the continuing birth defects in Vietnam, and in families of Vietnam veterans, those inquiries constantly issuing a "case-not-proven" decision.

Besides, dioxins (a major part of Agent Orange) are still being churned out by large incinerators and other industrial processes, including paper recycling.  As a by-product of industrial processes, and with industry claims over the years that it is too expensive to rework all their processes or not burn waste, the analogy with CO₂ is quite appropriate.

So, let’s just call such a chemical "Compound X", something we could doubtless find that the vast majority of toxicologists regard as a strong human carcinogen, but with a very small minority of deniers.

If a climate denier complained when you dusted their kids, their food, and their houses with "Compound X", what would you say?

1. It is not proven to be a problem:
   Sure, there are some who say it is, but they are panic merchants, and there is enough scientific doubt to say that dusting your kids with the stuff isn’t wrong. 
2. Even if it does prove to be a problem, it’s a long way down the track:
   Cancers (and birth defects generations hence) can take decades to show up after any exposures, and by that time, surely there will be better medical technologies and cancer treatments.  In the meantime, until the lumps start appearing, we’ll just keep throwing Compound X around.
    
3. If lumps do start appearing, don’t do anything unless all doctors advocate exactly the same treatment:
   Even if every medical opinion you seek says that a lump is a problem, if 20% say surgery, 20% say chemo, 20% say radiation, 20% say surgery and radiation, and 20% say all three, well that means the experts are still not in agreement.  So, continue to do nothing.
    

Somehow, if the climate-change deniers had this sort of thing happening to their kids, I think they’d either admit that they are totally inconsistent in their risk-appraisal and mitigation approaches, or they’d get a sudden attack of the sensibles with respect to degrees of proof required, early remediation, prudence, etc, etc.

Even in the absence of evil people poisoning their kids, climate-change deniers probably demand prompt action with much less agreement of experts when it came to environmental risks to themselves or their kids.

So, let’s imagine some other scenarios where climate-change deniers can’t object if you give something to their kids:

• A variation on amphetamine or ecstacy, perhaps not chemically related but hitting the same receptors, is discovered, and before the authorities make it illegal… give it to their kids.
   
• Spray a range of insecticides and herbicides around a school playground, just beneath the open windows of classrooms while the kids are in there.
   
• If you are babysitting kids between 4 and 8, give them a hefty dose of films rated MA because of explicit violence or sex, or teach them to play similarly-rated computer games – after all, those things aren’t illegal, and there is lots of debate over how much permanent damage, if any, it does to the kiddywinks, even if a few scaremongers think they twist the psyche of adults.

If any readers are climate-change deniers/skeptics/do-nothing-yetters, but have a very different attitude to what you expose the bodies and minds of kids to, the level of proof and agreement of experts required for you to consider something an unacceptable risk, then it would be very interesting to hear how it is possible to justify different rules for risk assessment.

But, to climate-change deniers (etc) out there… I’d hope your first comments relate to the following questions:

Before the recent law changes that prohibited smoking in cars with kids, what would you have thought of a family of two adults who had a toddler and a 10-year old in the back of a car, windows up, chain-smoking all the way between Melbourne and Sydney.  What if your babysitter, outside the house, blew smoke constantly in the face of your babies?  Would the babysitter be stupid, immoral, or criminally negligent?

The comments to this post a couple of days back made me think about the difficulties of rational conversations between those of different ideologies.

Dealing with projections is a problem, and it probably stuffs up policy development more than we can afford.

I’m not talking about extrapolations of figures, but something akin to psychological projection of the opinions of the reader, reading things that aren’t there, especially when the writer is known to have a different ideology.

My post was merely an assertion about the relevance of particular indicators to a particular problem, and calling for greater use of those indicators to manage a problem.  Yet it seems those who did not hold my admittedly lefty views jumped on this, one saying it gave insight into the lefty mindset.

Asking for figures to measure policy effectiveness, especially when there is no discussion of particular political systems or powers, when there is no discussion of policy particulars (other than the use of metrics to decide when policies work or don’t), has nothing to do with ideology, merely sensible and evidence-based management.

Now, I’ve no dislike for the libertarians concerned, but I’m very happy to accept the idea (although invalidly) that measuring success or failure of policy by changes to particular metrics is something particular too lefties rather than libertarians, as this would mean that lefties would make the best managers.

It’s invalid of course.  I could name quite a few righties who are big on collecting relevant data, seeing what actually works and what doesn’t, to develop policy positions, even if those policy positions are not necessarily in line with their ideological biases.

What interested me was that non-ideological statements, apart from the assertion that the proper duty of government (without mentioning form) being the happiness and lack of misery in the citizenry, were jumped on as advocating big government.

The only time I made judgement on a particular government, was on the Victorian government, covering periods where both of the major parties were in power – indeed, the longer inaction was that of the Bracks/Brumby government rather than the deregulation/privatization mad Kennett government.

No… these libertarians (but obviously, I cannot say libertarians as a group) projected distaste for my self-proclaimed leftiness in other posts, and thus found an argument for socialist policies where none could be found.

And lefties doubtless do the same to non-ideological statements from righties.

Now, I may have simply not made any ideological statements in the post, but the to-and-fro continued, despite the second (and my first) comment included the following, explicitly denying any ideological preference in the post:

If, as Herodotos argued, the psychology of different groups is affected by geography, then the means of achieving a lack of misery will differ from one place to the next.

So, whatever keeps a low incidence of mental health disorders (and I’d imagine that if many people are chronically ill, or dying of malnutrition, or indeed, if people really valued freedom and felt too enslaved to be happy, then stress and depression in the population would rise considerably), then I’d be all for it. Why should I object if the state is run on libertarian, socialist, or indeed monarchical means, as long as people aren’t unhappy?

Why should I care HOW the cat is skinned, as long as it ends up skinned? Assuming that I’m neutral about how much pain the cat goes thru… ;-)

All I’m talking about is having lots of use of measures of the happiness of the population by as direct a set of indicators as we can get, and using those as a kpi for those in power (or even an anarchical system without no-one in power).

There is no point to debates about policy if we cannot agree that the reason we have any particular system of government, or any particular people in power, is the happiness, or at least the lack of misery, of the population.  That shouldn’t be hard to get everyone to admit to.

There is no point to debates about policy if we cannot help but project ideological distaste to non-ideological statements, such as saying "we need to measure to manage, here is a candidate metric, and if things look bad, we change direction".

Sure, we can argue about the relevance of a particular indicator, whether it can be "gamed", whether we need to fine-tune it, but if we are going to argue about the importance of finding useful indicators and using data to determine when things aren’t working and we should change policy, as a general principle, on whatever topic you like, then we may as well have a civil war, and kill everyone with a different opinion to ourselves.

The attitude of not having human outcomes as the objective, and using evidence to determine policy, is something we normally ascribed to religious nutters, like the Vatican aiming at stopping the use of condoms rather than limiting the spread of HIV.

The attitude of projecting ideology onto neutral statements or objective data, whether the propositions and statements are put forward by an ideological friend or foe, is doubtless a real phenomenon, a sin most of us will commit at least some of the time.  But I hope I’d never say "it’s a capitalist plot" if "Honest" John Howard said "the sun rises in the east" or "we can use thermometers to decide if a person needs an anti-pyretic".

I know I certainly don’t make such errors all the time, after all, I’ve even written a post agreeing with the conclusions Andrew Bolt, saying he didn’t drive his point home enough, wasn’t worried enough, even though I think Bolt is a major pustule, indeed a huge carbuncle, constantly seeping poisons into the body politic and threatening our future.

I hope I haven’t committed similar, although less obvious, sins too often.  However, I suspect that projection happens far too often in debates about what we should do on a wide range of matters, many of them important.

All of us should measure ourselves, see if we ever say "I disagree totally with where you come from, but on this particular matter, you have a point".  Indeed, it would be very useful if we all put a bit of extra effort into looking for valid points made our ideological foes.

Surely nobody should object to that… but some probably will.

"Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" is an oft-quoted phrase describing rights of persons and therefore the duties of government, yet these are not measured as directly, nor as often, as much more indirect and much less relevant measures of government performance.

Perhaps the best way of assessing government performance quarter by quarter is to provide an indicator of the frequency and depth of depression in the community.  We might not be able to measure how successfully everyone in the community is pursuing happiness, but we can certainly measure how many are in the clutches of misery.

If a government is doing its job to perfection, then there would be zero incidence of depression that is a reaction to external circumstances, although there would be a small incidence of endogenous depression that would happen to a few unfortunate individuals however pleasant their circumstances.  Conversely, if nearly everyone has some degree of depression, even if only mild, and there are no signs of improvement, then any government that has been in power for more than a few months deserves to be ousted for incompetence (or malice).

It is fairly easy to measure depression incidence and depth as a number of indices exist, some of which can even be self-scored by patients and used as a quick screening tool.  These indices should also be used as a screening tool for government competence.

One of the many rating scales for depression, the Major Depression Inventory has been designed for consistency with the WHO ICD (World Health Organization International Classification of Diseases, used by health agencies in Australia for reporting) and the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders), and considered very suitable for epidemiological or population studies.

How hard can it be for the ABS (Australian Bureau of Statistics) to select a statistically valid sample, collect the results of the Major Depression Inventory, and report them every quarter, a period roughtly consistent with the time a person’s underlying mood can change?  It is surely easier and more reliable than metrics such as "Business Confidence" or "Consumer Confidence", less subject to fudging than the Consumer Price Index that is sensitive to the selection of the items in the basket.

It is also reasonable to consider indices of population depression as lead indicators, even as lead economic indicators.  Depressed workers are less productive.  While complicated by the real (and sometimes helpful) phenomenon of "retail therapy", community-wide depression can affect consumer confidence, sales in shops, and housing prices.  Stress and depression can affect incidence of domestic violence, drug dependencies, other crimes, and suicide attempts, and thus provide input into forward estimates for health and welfare budgets.

So, given that there are easily collected metrics that are direct indicators of the performance of a government in its basic duties, why does the ABS not report on these more frequently, why do the politicians not include them in media releases as KPIs (Key Performance Indicators), and why should they not receive just as much, if not more prominence in the media as quarterly trade flows, economic activity indices, and the like?

Why when I use Google to look for documents within the ABS mentioning both the words "depression" and "mental" over the last year do I get only a couple of dozen documents returned?  Why are the ABS Statistics 4326 and 4327 which relate to National Surveys of Mental Health and Wellbeing (included in the health subdivision of social indicators), only available for 1997 and 2007, even though basic moods of people can change in only a few months?  Why do these Mental Health Statistics have such a large focus on indirect indicators (such as divorce rates, etc) rather than have a statistic that concentrates on the direct indicators of misery levels?

The reason for the lack of collection and publication of these statistics is not the difficulty in collecting them, not the difficulty of interpreting the results, even if you do break them down by age, geographic region, and the frequencies of different score ranges.  The more likely reason is that the politicians know that collection and publication of such statistics, the KEY Key Performance Indicator of government action, would leave the politicians red-faced.

If a government was competent, especially after a change of government, we’d have ministers proudly showing graphs and trending figures about how much they were lowering misery, in as many press conferences as they could muster, pushing the sound bites into the news.  We don’t see that.

Instead, on the key business of government, the happiness of citizens, we get spin on indirect indicators, announcements claiming a deep concern, with the only real figures put before the public that amount of money politicians are spending, however uselessly, on the problem of misery.

A recent report from the Victorian Auditor General on the handling of Mental Health Crises, crises being defined as times the individual is a risk to themselves or others, had the following in the summary of findings, each paragraph separated from the others in the report:

There is a lack of information showing the effectiveness of triage and CAT services, and police and ambulance responses to mental health crises.  This prevents quantitative analysis and robust performance monitoring, allowing service gaps to go unaddressed

DOH lacks useful data about triage and CAT service responses to mental health crises. CAT services have run for 15 years, but DOH does not know the number of urgent referrals received, how services respond, their timeliness or the outcomes.

Until agencies have access to robust information about response effectiveness, they cannot identify successes or areas to improve in their own crisis response operations, nor can they review their joint performance to identify system-wide issues.

Thus, even for crises that have a huge impact on not only the individual in the crisis, and if not handled correctly, contribute to further crises, but also affect the families and friends of those unfortunate people, perhaps pushing others into misery and possibly crises, almost no useful data is available to assess performance and effectiveness.

There is a truism in management and performance improvement: "If it isn’t measured, it can’t be managed".  Our politicians must understand this, but use the corollary: "If it isn’t measured, we can weasel our way out of accountability".

The auditor mentions 15 years.  For a system to be in place that long, and yet there to be no useful data to demonstrate effectiveness, is not mere incompetence, which would probably have taken 5 to 10 years to produce decent data collection systems.  It seems likely that this lack of information is the product of deliberate inaction by politicians, or perhaps the intentional sabotage of the efforts of the competent and well-meaning public servants across a range of departments who would be wanting to get the data, assess the effectiveness of measures, and institute improvements where so often necessary.

While depression is not the only mental health issue, depression and associated stress are major contributing factors to other mental health disorders becoming visible in an individual, changing from a subclinical condition to something more obvious, touching the lives of all around them.

With the Victorian Auditor General noting that "nearly one in five Victorians experience mental illness each year", the domino effect upon families and friends, the consequent impact on budgets for health and policing, as well as the consequences for workforce productivity, it is fairly obvious that prominent quarterly depression incidence statistics would be useful indicators of government performance as a whole, could force governments to be accountable and take action.

If a political party seeking office has the courage to promise frequent publication of such indicators, to ask voters to use these to assess government performance, then we might not be able to judge ability to make a difference, but we can at least conclude that they think they can govern well, manage perhaps the most important duty of a government, the happiness of the citizenry.

Until we get such promises, we can be assured that no major political party has the intent to govern in the public interest or the confidence that they can perform their core duty.

See Also:

• "After 15 years, lack of data on Mental Health Crises is intentional" (2009-11-14)

Imagine if the rules for carbon emissions constraint by different countries were applied to wages and taxation within the community:

Those who are poorest would be hardest hit, needing to return to wages of a few years ago… and as most would be young "developing" workers, that might be before they were working, or working for a pittance as a trainee.

Meanwhile, the wealthiest might well be getting more money, based on their income from boom times when they were ripping everyone else off through commissions on dodgy derivatives.

There’d be a bloody revolution.

The only equitable method for assigning country-by-country emissions is to define the total allowable emissions based on a per-capita allowance that is the same regardless of the country, capped to the population of that country in a given year (let’s say 1990).

Instead, it’s as if a crew of castaways was looking at a limited food supply, and then dividing the food according to current bodyweight, never minding that some are underweight, and the morbidly obese who should be losing weight would be given more food than others, and never minding the child that should be growing.

It’s as if drunk-driving rules were calculated based on half your average blood alcohol in tests over the years… repeat offenders might be told it was ok to drive at 1.0% BAC, while the drivers who’d never drunk might have to figure out how to get a negative BAC.

It’s as if the big business associations were given control of the minimum-wage definitions.

And why is this simple fact of equity in carbon emissions per person not being explained in the mainstream media?  Because then consumption by the overconsumers would drop, and advertising revenue would suffer more.

That still doesn’t explain why mainstream media without the need for advertising revenue, like our ABC, doesn’t drive home the logic of per-capita carbon emissions allocated to countries on the basis of 1990 populations.

It is about time that the morbidly-carbon-obese trimmed down.

For completeness, below is a major rework of an earlier post that has appeared in On Line Opinion (2009-11-17), and the comments thread at On Line Opinion.

You’ll probably get wider readership of your comments over there… I’ve already put one response up.

If we look at figures for actual engagement with government, making submissions to parliamentary or agency inquiries, we might be able to get a good idea about what Australians really care about.

A recent inquiry, not a high-profile parliamentary inquiry but a departmental one, had an extraordinarily large number of public submissions (323), suggesting the subject of the inquiry could be the philosopher’s stone for politicians, the barbeque-stopper.

What was it?  Climate change?  Economic policy?  Human rights?  No, no, and no.

The thing that gets the electorate engaged is the issue of sport on TV.

The following table compares the number of submissions and submissions per day (between announcement and closing date) for the TV sport review compared to some inquiries at high-profile parliamentary websites on weightier issues that affect us all.  The figures would be even more stark if we only included submissions from ordinary citizens, rather than the usual suspects of academics and companies with a direct commercial interest in the outcomes of the inquiries.

With more submissions in both absolute and per-day terms, the clear winner is TV sport, in this case, the anti-siphoning regulations that limit what sporting events pay-TV can broadcast.

For most issues, submissions to inquiries are far outnumbered by the number of news items, published letters to editors, and blog posts, suggesting that the so-called "nattering classes" are just that, nattering but not officially engaged.  I suspect, however, that on this issue of TV sport, the number of submissions far outnumbered the news items and letters to editors.

Oddly enough, this might suggest that the TV sports buffs are much more efficient than the nattering classes when it comes to official engagement with the political process.  For once, the couch potato is smarter than a self-styled member of the intellectual elite: if only everyone who wrote a letter to a broadsheet about an issue under inquiry made a submission, we might be better governed.  Unless of course, the nattering classes are only nattering, appearing concerned about important issues only if in front of their friends, while in truth, their inner bogans rule.

The data in the above table could be extended, looking at more inquiries homed both in parliamentary and agency websites, correlating against letters to editors, space in the news sections of the mainstream media, number of blog posts in the same time, only including submissions made by "ordinary citizens" rather than academics and organizations, as well as the many other things that sociologists might consider relevant.  However, the take-home message probably wouldn’t change: while the electorate as a whole might sometimes say some things are important, when it comes to actual engagement, engagement that probably reflects the vote-changing issues that politicians will devote their minds to, the electorate is little more than a Homer Simpson with a bogan accent.

Looking through a small sample of the submissions from individuals, it gets even more depressing.  Few show a hint of anything consideration other than the self-interest of those who already pay for cable television, indeed, those who pay extra money on top of basic packages to watch sports channels.  Many could be summarized as "Free-To-Air doesn’t give me live sport, so give it to Pay-TV.  It’s my right as an Australian citizen to watch my favorite footy team live, without delays."

One of the more eloquent apostles of live televised sports, ben sutton (sic), who despite some errors probably caused by rushing the submission, waxes lyrical, showing sentiments that would be shared by many who lacked ben’s vocabulary.

What ever shape or form the new scheme takes, several cultural and historical points need to be weighed in during the creative process. Australians live, breath and digest sports like no other nation. Our sense of pride, togetherness and community are all intrinsicly linked to the corresponding paths and efforts of those sports individuals and teams that represent us. Bonds; both family and friendship are strengthened and maintained through sharing a common desire to see those that we respect and admire achieve. Sons and Daughters around the country for decades now have watched their idols on television and with the gentle nudging and guidance of their parents, thus dared to dream. Without a no cost readily available forum for this essential ingredient to be transferred, I fear that social networks, family unity and in some cases a sense of worth and aspriation in individuals will detiriarate. Be removing the protective barries that prevent the bidding wars of corporations channeling media on a basis of which audience will pay the most/afford the most, aren’t we then condoning a society in which childrens upbringings and foundation knowledge will differ greatly. I couldn’t imagine an Australia in 5 or 10 years time where half the kids in the playground don’t know who’s captaining our next tilt at the ashes.

After reading that, afraid I might actually be very un-Australian, lose my voting rights, never again be invited to a barbeque, I took solace from my loyalty to the Cats as a born-and-bred Son of Geelong.

It’s rather sad that live video broadcasting is considered essential to social unity, and one must wonder if "ben" thought about including comments about those who died for our country and way of life during various wars, then realized that then, social cohesion was maintained with merely radio broadcasts, while as recently as the 1960s, our sense of mateship and togetherness could survive by seeing a mere quarter of a football match played later that night, if you were lucky and your team was being taped.

One submission, however, did show the social conscience of the bleeding-heart liberal.  Anne Lynton showed concern for the disadvantaged who might not have cable TV, and raised the possibility of subsidies.

This brings us to how the massive response to a TV sport inquiry will be viewed by politicians and their advisors, and how this might affect the shape and priority of policies.  Policies that appeal to short-term self-interest and could be considered "bread-and-circuses", and subsidized Foxtel may well be the barbeque-stopper of the decade.  Economically is is hardly less responsible than throwing money at middle-managers in medical insurers, or inflating housing costs with housing grants.  Even if subsidizing cable TV fees would cost more than giving the money to the ABC to buy broadcasting rights and run a few extra free-to-air digital channels to show games live, the debate about how much of a subsidy to give, and whether there should be any means testing, could keep all sorts of tricky issues out of the news cycles for at least a year.

Cynical observers may even look at the timing of the inquiry, before the big rollout of new free-to-air digital channels which will probably include more dedicated sports stations.  Senator Conroy, DBCDE’s Minister, might well understand "Bogan Power", with the internet "Clean Feed" controversy reaching the ears of the typical couch potato who needs his fix of live TV sport and X-rated screen-savers for his telephone, so while the distraction might not have been part of the motivation for the inquiry, it was doubtless welcome.

Will the extraordinary engagement by the public on a "bread-and-circus" issue, and the practical disinterest in matters of greater weight, lead politicians to spend time (and our money) on more trivial issues and hold more populist stances, in order to control the news cycle, win the favor of the majority, and be returned at the next election?  The cynic would say there will be a quantitative change, but not a qualitative change, by pointing to voting patterns over the last decade or two.

However, there is a glimmer of hope for those few politicians that truly want more engagement from the population, and on more important issues.  Perhaps the public might take a deeper interest in weightier matters if there was a Big-Brother-like TV show, "Order Out of the House", with a range of policies vying for attention, but gradually pared down, one evicted every week by public SMS and internet voting, and the winner guaranteed to be rushed through parliament, the major parties unwilling to vote against anything that has so obviously become the darling of the square-eyed, sorry, 16:9-eyed public.  Perhaps this method to choose party leaders might give us better outcomes than the faceless machinations in party rooms.

Removing the tongue from the cheek, however, those of us more concerned with good long-term policies on substantial issues such as climate change, economic management, human rights, and governance than the fair distribution of remote controls around the house, must look on these active engagement metrics with mixed feelings: vindication of our opinions about the typical voter and the games politicians play, worry about the quality of long-term and evidence-based policy, and shame at the failures of our best and brightest to officially engage with government when it matters.

Australians will only stand up for their rights to watch things while laying down on the couch.  The only "Light on the Hill" of any interest comes from a flat-screen TV.

And the politicians wouldn’t want that to change a bit… would they?

This article was developed from a substantial reworking of the 2009-11-04 blog post of the same name on Balneus, which includes a more accessible version of the tabulated data.

Referenced Inquiries:

• Australian Senate – Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme – Mark 1:
  http://www.aph.gov.au/senate/committee/economics_ctte/cprs_09/index.htm
• Australian Senate – Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme – Mark 2:
  http://www.aph.gov.au/senate/committee/economics_ctte/cprs_2_09/index.htm
• Australian Senate – Economic Stimulus Measures:
  http://www.aph.gov.au/senate/committee/economics_ctte/eco_stimulus_09/index.htm
• Australian Senate – Gene Patents:
  http://www.aph.gov.au/senate/committee/clac_ctte/gene_patents/index.htm
• Victorian Parliament – Melbourne’s Future Water Supply:
  http://www.parliament.vic.gov.au/enrc/inquiries/Water/terms.html
• Department of Broadband Communications and the Digital Economy – Sport on TV review:
  http://www.dbcde.gov.au/television/antisiphoning_and_antihoarding/sport_on_television__review_of_the_anti-siphoning_scheme_discussion_paper

Was the unlamented Captain Smirk member for Bradfield?  Does 22=10?  Does the Australian Electoral Commission check things properly?

Let’s hope the Australian Electoral Commission does a better job of knowing which electorate is which, or the difference between 10 and 22 come December 5 byelection day!

Pictures over the fold, digitally altered only with red highlights and blacking over email addresses… text unchanged.

Go to this 2009-11-13 Media Release from the Australian Electoral Commission, arriving earlier today in my All Media Releases feed from the federal government

Now look at the title in your browser, compare with the headline.

Title of web page and news item? "22 candidates to contest the Higgins by-election".

And the text…? 10 candidates.

Nope… that’s Bradfield that has 22 candidates.

Oh, yeah, written by the AEC on the 2009-11-13, included in the Oz Gov Media Releases 2009-11-17.  Time enough to fix?

Click on each image to enlarge.

Unsurprisingly, the "Responding to Mental Health Crises in the Community" (2009-11-11) report from the Victorian Auditor General didn’t get a mention within a few days (at least) in either the old or new RSS feeds of all Victorian Premier and Ministers media statements.

Before having a brief look at the Auditor’s report on this topic (it ain’t pretty), it’s worth noting that very few of the auditor’s reports get a mention in the "All Media Releases" from the Victoria.  Three, according to searching within Google Reader, in a little over a year, had the word "auditor" in them… which suggests that only three were viewed as supporting the government, or even slightly spinnable.  There’s an opportunity for some interesting metrics, or even mashups there… looking for auditor reports and corresponding government/opposition media releases, especially the ones where the government avoids even the spin attempt.

The auditor examined the Department of Health, four Area Mental Health Services, Victoria Police and Ambulance Victoria to assess whether:

• agency responses to mental health crises are coordinated;
• agencies are adequately prepared to respond to mental health crises, and respond appropriately;
• agencies can show the effectiveness of their responses to mental health crises.

Mental Health Crises (MHCs) are those unfortunate situations where the one-in-five Victorians affected by some form of mental illness (including endemic depression, surely an indicator of government performance as important as any other) can become a risk to themselves or others.

Basically, while there are some in the police, social welfare, and health agencies trying to do make things better, for most things relevant to the problem, there are either no well-defined metrics, or where there are metrics defined, they either aren’t collected, collated or disseminated.

There’s a rule in performance management: if it ain’t measured, it can’t be managed.

For politicians, there is another rule: if it ain’t measured properly, any problem can be denied and/or responsibility avoided.

Even before the summary of findings document starts giving the dot points for conclusions, the auditor has this to say:

Presently however, responses to mental health crises are not consistently meeting the standards set out in the Mental Health Act 1986 or in agreed interagency protocols.
…
There is a lack of information showing the effectiveness of triage and CAT services, and police and ambulance responses to mental health crises. This prevents quantitative analysis and robust performance monitoring, allowing service gaps to go unaddressed

So, the auditor cannot figure out what is going on because there are no figures to work from… how convenient for the politicians!

DOH lacks useful data about triage and CAT service responses to mental health crises. CAT services have run for 15 years, but DOH does not know the number of urgent referrals received, how services respond, their timeliness or the outcomes.

And again:

Until agencies have access to robust information about response effectiveness, they cannot identify successes or areas to improve in their own crisis response operations, nor can they review their joint performance to identify system-wide issues.

It goes on, there is insufficient awareness of long-standing, recently introduced, or planned protocols, and no data available on how those protocols are performing anyway.

Remember the adage I mentioned?  "If it ain’t measured, it can’t be managed."

After 15 years of both Liberal (Kennett) and Labor (Bracks and Brumby) governments without measurement, there has obviously been no real intent to manage.  If there is a single objective being met, it is that the politicians have ensured they cannot be measured.  Even with incompetent governments, 15 years is enough to get a measurement system in place so that an auditor would have enough figures to get a grip on what is happening, whether things are getting worse or better.  The auditor has been as effectively blocked from investigating as if all the books had been burnt, while the auditor’s hands were tied and eyes gouged out.

It looks like the lack of figures must be intentional, malicious rather than negligent… and one in five Victorians are the target of that malice.

I detest all those cute cat photos that appear regularly on otherwise sane blogs, so, it’s time to react with something probably not at all original, but hey…

If you’ve ever done physics, you’ll know the Erwin I’m talking about, and there is a good chance you know what’s over the fold, so move on… no need to waste your bandwidth… but drop a note if you know of a better "Erwin" LoLcat image.

Yep…. that Erwin and that cat.

Of course, Schrödinger’s cat only looks a bit like this when you are NOT looking!

KRudd promised evidence-based policy.

Well, we almost got it, in a punny kind of way.  The talk-no-action nothing-much-changed-since-Howard approach has resulted in something that could be characterized as follows:

Avoidance-based policy.

I propose a test for whether a species deserves civil rights:

Have members of the species found farts or fart jokes amusing, or have been observed playing fart/poop practical jokes on their fellows for no other good reason than amusement?

Who cares if an animal finds farts funny in a natural environment or after exposure to humans?

And yes… I’m being serious… I think it could actually be a pretty good test.

Apart from the emotional intelligence… all you need is a bum.

And what an essay topic for psych, ethics, and law students!  The pros and cons involved are quite subtle.

¿crepo ergo sum?

See Also:

• "The Psycho-Social Bases of Scatological Humor: The Unmasking of the Self" (Montana State Uni Lecture Notes)
• "Funnier than a fart joke" (2009-01-10).

KRudd’s latest verbal attack on climate change denialists/skeptics as sabotagers of the world, is not only hollow, but betrays his opinion that Australians, whatever their political leanings, are too stupid to recognize a blatant non-sequitur.

If the climate change skeptics are that dangerous (I’d actually label Big Carbon as "Planetary Terrorists"), then why does he bend us over so we can have our pockets empited (via the Carbon Polluter Rewards Scheme) and our future ****ed by Big Carbon?

If KRudd doesn’t recognize the contradictions, either the disproof of his much-touted intelligence or the proof of his hypocrisy, he exudes confidence that he won’t be pulled up on it…

…or perhaps he knows that the Carbon Mafia are smart enough to recognize the contradiction, but always happy enough to pocket the profits.

Just like KRudd’s diatribes against neo-liberalis economics and financialism while at the same time solidifying the power of the big banks against competition, and supporting the system that causes crashes through moral endangerment, he does the same on climate issues.

Then again, KRudd’s estimation of the Australian electorate is unfortunately probably correct.

See Also:

• "Is rendering countries uninhabitable terrorism?" (2009-03-01) – well, yes, yet KRudd not only negotiates with terrorists but accepts money from them.
   
• "Sue Big Carbon Like Big Tobacco" (2008-01-03)
   
• "Insurers and litigation on climate change is old news" (2007-06-22)
   
• "Insurers to sue governments for climate irresponsibilities?" (2007-03-03)

Congratulations to the EU Court of Human Rights judgement that crucifixes in schools offend human rights – and it was unanimous.  Big thanks to the Finnish parent in Italy that brought the action and a big yah-boo-sucks to the Vatican spokesman, Federico Lombardi, who said the crucifix was a fundamental sign of the importance of religious values in Italian history and culture, and was a symbol of unity and welcoming for all of humanity, not one of exclusion.

The Court disagreed and found – unanimously – a violation of the freedom of religion (Art. 9 ECHR) jointly with the right to education (Art. 2 of Protocol 1). The Court, amongst others, took into account the nature of the religious symbol concerned (amongst the plurality of meanings, the Court held that the religious connotation of the crucifix was dominant) and its impact on young children.

Further, the ECHR blogger says the following:

One may note, that the Court thinks this applies in general in the exercise of public functions by the state and particularly (but not solely) in classrooms.

The learned arguments in the ECHR judgement could be used to get a little sanity into Darwin council, which has ruled that the Christian "Lord’s" prayer is non-religious.

What with the Global Atheists Convention coming up in Melbourne, perhaps the idiots in Darwin could be taken to court at the same time, with an atheist lawyer using the ECHR judgement to show the invalidity of the Darwin council’s ruling on logical grounds… although we cannot claim it contravenes any human rights here in Australia because we don’t have any.

Yes, a crucifix offends freedom of religion.  Yes!  That’s perhaps why KRudd and the irrational politicians in Canberra with imaginary friends don’t want human rights – we might be able to inject some rationality into parliament by getting rid of religious references in the parliamentary liturgy!

See Also:

• Press release by the ECHR
• Judgement of Lautsi v Italy (French/MS-Word)
• English catalog info

Guess what Australians really care about, deeply enough to:

1. Discover a government inquiry;
2. discover not a high-profile Senate inquiry, but one tucked away inside a department; and
3. make a submission…

Carbon emissions?  The economic stimulus?  Water?  No, no and no.

The winner is … televised sport, with 323 submissions (dbcde.gov.au).  While many inquiries by the Senate are lucky to get a couple of dozen submissions, it’s worth having a look at some fairly newsworthy inquiries:

While we could look at other inquiries across parliaments and agencies, while we could correlate the data with space and bandwidth in the news sections of the mainstream media, letters to editors, guess at those submissions by ordinary Australians by discounting submissions by organizations and the usual academic suspects, factor in the difference in profile of inquiries homed on the main parliamentary website versus those on agencies, the take-home message, that Australians are swayed by "bread and circuses", could play on politicians’ minds, and affect the policy agenda for years to come.

It is a depressing reflection on the Australian psyche.  Too depressed to look at the responses in detail, I did a small sample of individual submissions.

Were those responses mainly in favor of free-to-air sport?  No, from the tiny sample, most were wanting live sport, arguing that free-to-air-TV wasn’t doing enough, so pay-TV should be allowed to do it – feel free to look more deeply, I might be wrong.  Most of these were written with regard to the needs of the author rather than the individual community.

Anne Lynton at least was concerned about the disadvantaged folk and raising the possibility of subsidies if necessary for sporting fixtures that (based on past audiences) Australian seemed to care about.  Then again, she writes like a typical lefty.

One individual response, however, is worth quoting directly, for while it considers the wider context, reads as if written by someone with a reasonable vocabulary (despite the typos indicating a rush), it is unashamedly (or, just perhaps, satirically) arguing that watching sport should be critical to all Australians (my bolding):

What ever shape or form the new scheme takes, several cultural and historical points need to be weighed in during the creative process. Australians live, breath and digest sports like no other nation. Our sense of pride, togetherness and community are all intrinsicly linked to the corresponding paths and efforts of those sports individuals and teams that represent us. Bonds; both family and friendship are strengthened and maintained through sharing a common desire to see those that we respect and admire achieve. Sons and Daughters around the country for decades now have watched their idols on television and with the gentle nudging and guidance of their parents, thus dared to dream. Without a no cost readily available forum for this essential ingredient to be transferred, I fear that social networks, family unity and in some cases a sense of worth and aspriation in individuals will detiriarate. Be removing the protective barries that prevent the bidding wars of corporations channeling media on a basis of which audience will pay the most/afford the most, aren’t we then condoning a society in which childrens upbringings and foundation knowledge will differ greatly. I couldn’t imagine an Australia in 5 or 10 years time where half the kids in the playground don’t know who’s captaining our next tilt at the ashes.

- ben sutton

It seems the "light on the hill" now comes from a flat screen.

While there is certainly good grist for the mills of sociologists who have more incentive to go through the submissions in detail, crunching the numbers of responses compared to other departmental inquiries (which usually get very few responses), and while my small sample will make the latte-sippers shake their heads, it is the responses of political advisors that worries me.

What will those political advisors tell our lords and masters in parliaments?

• "We told you so."  Policy in the last decade or so has appealed to the same class of people that only become agitated about individual benefit in the here-and-now, and these policies have obviously reflected polling and focus groups run by political advisors.
   
• "The analyses of latte-sippers have been spot-on.".  How many latte-sippers have shaken their heads in disappointment and shame at policies, and how these were accepted by the electorate?
   
• "But you don’t have to worry what the latte-sippers think – even if they are correct."  The latte-sippers aren’t politically active, don’t push government directly with feedback, merely chatter away with blogs, letters to editors, and moan in coffee houses.  For many, even the moaning might even be mere show to impress their social circles, their votes could well be more low-browed than their talk.
   
• "We should be seen to promote participation in government policy with a TV show – Order Out of the House – like Big Brother but where the plebs evict policies that don’t appeal…
   
• …and the first policy we put up is a 90% rebate on Foxtel.  Telstra keeps its profitability, the plebs won’t mind the wasted money, there’ll be sport for all, … although a fallback option is still a barbeque-stopping vote-winner: 10 new ABC channels devoted to sport, and digital broadcast licenses conditional on having at least two sports-only channels with different programming, so free-to-air can provide all the major games live."
   
• "The news cycles and policies should be driven by three things:
  1. bread and circuses;
  2. break and circuses; and
  3. bread and circuses!

So, the latte-sippers, whether of the left or right, can do one of two things:

• Change the perceptions of political advisors by responding to more inquiries that are made public; or
• just give up, admit defeat, weep into lattes, and perhaps even change focus, taking what enjoyment is possible from the low-brow offerings that are the only things we’ll get.

As for myself, I’m the result of a century of selective pressure of Geelong being the "big smoke", so I’ve got my Cat’s Premiers 2007 and 2009 T-shirts.  I love it when the town is painted blue and white, that you can relate to strangers on the streets with "Hope we do well on Saturday".  I’m happy that my grandson (150 years of selective pressure) enjoys getting dressed in blue-and-white, having whiskers painted on his face, and can yell "Go Cats" and "Ablett".  I might even be tempted to disinherit him if he breeds with a Collingwood supporter.

However, even though a keen Cats fan, even though I knew about this inquiry, even though I’ve made a few submissions to other government inquiries (usually on topics dear to the hearts of latte-sippers, despite being a flat-white addict), and even though I think live free-to-air should be assured for major sports events like footy finals, televised sport isn’t a major factor when deciding whether or not to be politically active, nor is it anything that could alter my opinion of a government.

No, I’m proudly a latte-sipper.  I won’t lie down, and will keep putting my opinions in the face of politicians through inquiries on the public record.  That’s more than I can say not just for the general public, but for the majority of latte-sippers who merely moan and make no efforts.

So folks, be prepared to see the environment and human rights be nothing but a sideshow in the broadsheets.  Our politicians might have the intelligence of the latte-sippers, but they govern for the troglodytes, and have shown no inclination to elevate the critical thinking and sensitivity of the nation – merely look good by increasing the numbers attending university yet remain uncivilized, merely promise a PC for all students without worrying about cost-effective implementations that provide not middle-and-upper class welfare but better educational outcomes for the most disadvantaged.

Doubtless the politicians are happy with what has been demonstrated, that the population is short-sighted and self-absorbed, and thus easily swayed.

That an inquiry about televised sport gets the population much more politically engaged than what we latter-sippers consider important shows that the electorate will only stand up for their rights to lie on the couch.

I propose what seems to be a general rule of politics these days:

The probability of policies being set in harmony with the opinion of experts is inversely correlated to the unanimity of expert opinion and the importance of that policy.

Climate change is but one example where unanimity of relevant experts is near total, yet scientists are ignored at best, and often punished

Economic policy is an example where there is no unanimity, so the politicians choose the expert opinion that suits them or political sponsors.

Nature ("Sacked science adviser speaks out" doi:10.1038/news.2009.1053 2009-11-02) has a depressing interview with a recently sacked advisor on non-therapeutic drug use, who made the following comment.

It just seems to me a nail in the coffin of evidence-based government.

– David Nutt
University of Bristol

Almost every toxicologist will point out the irrational way biologically active compounds are regulated, and how the regulations bear little relation to toxicological data – whether we are talking about recreational drugs, food additives (such as the mild neurotoxin Aspartame), herbal supplements, or standard medicines).

Nutt had simply been pointing out the toxicological, sociological and economic data, all of which lead to the inescapable conclusion that controls should be relaxed on certain compounds, tightened on others.

Home Secretary Alan Johnson demanded the resignation of psychopharmacologist David Nutt on Friday, after Nutt reiterated his views on the relative safety of various drugs in a lecture at King’s College London Centre for Crime and Justice. Nutt gave the lecture in July but his comments came to light when the centre last week published a briefing based on the lecture.

But politicians took offence at this, claiming that this strayed into policy, which is the politicians domain.

If straight toxicological data, how dangerous something is, shouldn’t determine regulatory controls on a compound, then what should?

It wasn’t as if the briefing related to national security, so there is absolutely no reason why the briefing should not have been publically available.  Indeed, there are good arguments to say that all briefings, apart from perhaps those relating intimately to national security plans, should be publically available.

Sociologists are relevant to the debate on recreational drug policy.  They line up with the toxicologists.

Economists line up behind the sociologists.

What right have politicians to lie about these matters in a way analogous to determining that we should teach children in schools that 2+3=23, and exactly like Hilter did with "evidence" against Jews, and Stalin did pushing genetics that conformed to his pseudo-lefty ideology?

Politicians seem to want to exercise their skill in the dark arts of spin, whipping up a storm to appear more hairy-chested than their opponents.

Scientific literacy in the community, and at least some rigorous thinking at school, constrains the ability of politicians to use their dark arts to their own advantage, not that of the community.

Therefore, politicians of all major parties have a major incentive for decreasing the quality of education, while encouraging "grade inflation" so that it looks as if educational standards are improving.

And the dumber the population, the less the population is disturbed by sacking scientists, by castrating or censoring scientific papers.

The politicians are well served by scientists valuing truth more than money – for those scientists will generally be prepared to work for a pittance, and will usually be receiving funds directly or indirectly from government, and therefore, they can be silenced.

In the Nutt case, others on his advisory committee are resigning in sympathy.  Perhaps a whole lot of scientific advisors on other committees should do the same.  Perhaps if enough scientific advisors "went on strike" the evidence-free preferences of politicians would touch on the minds of the public.  No, that’s hoping for too much.

Yet censorship of films or photographs generates huge debate in the newspapers, and the celebrities get out in force.

But then a dumb public can only relate to bread and circuses, give attention to celebrity.

And that’s the way politicians like it.

How is this treatment of evidence by politicians when determining policy any different from a theocracy?

And the god of the modern "western democratic" para-theocracy is….?

See Also:

• Update: "Nutt decision shows immaturity of marijuana debate" – Derek Barry at Woolly Days 2009-11-04.
   
• "Drug chief sacking could stifle polydrug research" (New Scientists 2009-11-03)
   
• "Evidence of evidence" (2009-02-24)
   
• Update: "Evidence and Policy" (Mike Barnato 2009-11-02) quotes J.M. Keynes:
  

  There is nothing a government hates more than to be well informed; for it makes the process of arriving at decisions much more complicated and difficult.

• Update: US House Oversight Committee on science censorship in the Bush era … but don’t expect any real change by Obama when political sponsors or electoral gullibility makes evidence inconvenient.

A post about a single comment on LP, unfortunately by someone who didn’t leave a hotlink to their own blog:

I think Malcolm would make a better Labor Prime Minister than Rudd.

Billie at LP 2009-11-02

Whether Billie was talking of Turnbull or Fraser, it’s hard to disagree, and I wished I’d point it so succinctly when doing a "compare and contrast" on climate change rhetoric and policies before and after the election, giving the honors to Turnbull.

See also this.

While blogotariat was having problems with my news feed, many would have missed a post becoming more relevant by the day: "What if the ACCC covered political scams?"

Think about it.

Cutting the rebate for cataracts almost in half, the KRudd government has shown its teeth, dishonesty, and unfitness to govern, falsely advertising itself as a party of the Centre Left while using neo-liberal arguments.

"The Federal Government had tried to cut the rebate by even more, saying this would force overcharging doctors to reduce their prices."

Really?  Then why fund the private health insurers?

The only rule of KRudd’s regime is that the fat cats get the cream, while yes-men all will let this pass to get rewards from licking arse.

Honest ALP members must be feeling like they went out for a party, got a bit drunk, came home with what seemed like an attractive woman, and then got bent over and the deceit of the Howard-in-Drag rammed home in the most painful way possible.

Unless the ALP true believers take KRudd out the back immediately and pull his political entrails out as a lesson to all future traitors, the whole party is tainted, and no ALP member will ever get my vote unless they come out in the next week and publically call for KRudd’s head on a pike.

Lefty me is now of the firm opinion that we’d all be better off if Howard had won the last election.

At least if Howard had won the last election the intellectual elite wouldn’t have been lulled into a false sense of security, and wouldn’t be letting all the neo-Howard policies be implemented without protest, simply because those policies are coming from a party that calls itself the ALP.

Seriously, today’s ALP has as much right to call itself that, as a duck has of calling itself a dinosaur: sure, the duck might have had dinosaur ancestors, but now it’s a completely different beast.

Lucius Junius Brutus has overthrown the Tarquins for raping Lucretia, and instead of creating a republic, installed himself as Consul with regal power, raped every man, woman and child in Rome, to the cheers of all the republicans, hoping for scraps from the table.

See Also:

• "Turnbull too good for the libs – and better than KRudd" (2009-10-12)
   
• "With apologies to Catullus on Aemilius" (2009-08-25).  I was being kind.  Every ALP MP is an Aemilius-fondler.
   
• "Howard – the noun not the proper noun" (2009-10-17).
   
• "Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose" (2009-03-11)
   
• "My real election issue – revisited" (2007-11-11) with one of my favorite lines:
  

  And the people will accept those who most convincingly promise sated quests for empty affluence.

• "i-Howard 2.0" (Values Australia 2009-11-03)>

There are two points I’d like to make about spammers:

• The hypocrisy of business and governments that are not proactive about spamming, yet spend considerable resources trying to stop the much-less-damaging copyright infringments; and
   
• Just how stupid are these spammers anyway, if they are working hard at setting up false identities in one of the least likely social networks to fall victim to them, such as Nature Network, which is perhaps the social network with the highest average IQ and education?

However, one of the things a few of the fake identities on Nature Network were advertising could be considered well-targetted compared to the others.

Hypocrisy of Governments

Those companies arguing, and successfully lobbying politicians, for increased spans of time work is held from the public domain after the death of creators, including the prosecution of small fry, putting filters on the internet, and getting taxpayers to cover the huge costs of legislator’s time, are arguing that the issue deserves all this costly attention because of the damage that would be done to economies if those draconian measures were not taken.

Spam is far worse, clogging up internet bandwidth and CPU time, brain time, and also involves the creation of fake identities (usually an offence in itself).  When nearly 90% of email entering a business is spam, requiring fairly intensive use of expensive resources to filter from users (in which case, expensive human time is wasted), the cost of spam is enormous.

Just how difficult is it to find spammers?  All you need to do, whether it is email or a URL in a message or identity profile is to look where the link points, and you’ve got a prima facie case against the business getting the benefit of the spam.

All you’d need to do is have add-ins for mail clients (like Outlook or Thunderbird), or the co-operation of web-mail providers, that gives you a button to report spam to a central international enforcement agency.  That agency would only need to look at the number of pointers to a particular business to know where investigative and prosecution resources would be most effective.

Hell, you could also get a medium-sized server to co-ordinate the whole thing without human intervention.  If governments are prepared to issue "three strikes and you are disconnected" to lowly music downloaders, and assuming guilt until proven innocent, then why not something similar for businesses that engage in spam-like activity?

Besides, just think about the proportion of spam that promote products suitable only for consenting adults?

If governments are prepared to waste time and money and bandwidth on coddling mega-corporations and for politically advantageous but technically impossible filtering, why don’t they put similar resources into combatting spammers and scammers, and have even heavier penalties than those imposed on a uni student downloading a few pirate songs or videos?

I’m guessing here, but I reckon that if you factored in the full costs of spam, it would come in much higher than all the damages to the work economy caused by terrorists (excluding the costs of over-reaction to them, the bottomless pit called the "War on Terror" into which some governments are emptying their coffers).

Besides, controlling spam, which travels via "store and forward" protocols, is much easier to control, and much less disruptive to legitimate use, is much less disruptive than throttling live streams.  If governments can’t control spam, then claims they can control other material without disruption to legitimate use are straight-out lies or implied admissions of technical ignorance.

Governments: stop spam with a few technical resources and lots of heavy penalties and THEN we might have confidence you can tackle more technically challenging stuff.

Stupidity of Spammers

Consider the sorts of people who’d be part of the social network tied inside the Nature Publishing Group, which puts out some of the most prestigious scientific journals.  These will be people that are extremely well-educated (formally or informally), and could be described as "geeks", most of whom are poorly paid for their expertise, and most relatively unmoved by greed.

So why the hell would spammers be creating false identities in the Nature Network, with profiles pointing to real estate agents (impoverished scientists won’t exactly be a great source of commissions), or business email lists (academics and researchers might want money, but it will be from funding agencies in government, not a list of dupes in the general community).

At least I haven’t seen any advertising anatomy-stretching or physiology-improving treatments… because if members of the Nature Network felt a need for that kind of thing, a few hits of the journals would let them find the most efficacious mechanisms, and the recipes for brewing them up on the lab bench.

Only one of the products linked to from fake identity profiles was even halfway targetted… spectacles.  Mind you, safety glasses for lab work and budget "geek-goggles" which might have had a hope of attracting attention weren’t promoted – no, it was high-fashion high-cost spectacles.  Dumb.

It made me wonder though.  If pushing false identities to sell stuff to scientists that we aren’t interested in, haven’t got the money to pay for, and given our intelligence to resist such scams anyway, what are these spammers doing on social networking sites that have a dumber and more gullible population?  Can you imagine the cost this imposes on administrators of those sites, and the way this increases the chance that services currently free to users will be charged for in the future?

These spammers almost make me want to throw away my lefty principles and push for legal penalties on spammers and scammers that include capital punishment, or at least being covered in honey and tied in the baking sun above a big nest of hungry ants.

Suffering the death-of-a-thousand-nibbles is actually a very appropriate punishment – that’s what the spammers and scammers are doing to the internet, the thing that is critical to the world economy.

Yet governments do nothing, and I cannot figure out why.

Can anyone else explain the inaction?

Lobbyclue at Govhack is a nifty bit of hacking of government data (of the good hacking variety) that will only be up for a short time.

Follow the money between agency, individuals and companies, then click on the item of interest and get their relationships.

Enjoy it while you can get it folks.

I’d love to have this tool applying across the whole of governments in Oz.

I’m wondering how many readers have animal buddies that aren’t pets, but wild, yet seem to enjoy the company of you or your family.

I think such relationships, all parties on equal footing, are much better for all concerned than that between a human and a pet… although it wouldn’t surprise me if sometimes the animal thinks it is the human that has been tamed.

I’ve written before about the local magpie patriarch ("Trav") at my daughter’s place (here, here, here and here), and the wild-animal/child relationship continues to deepen.

It’s not so much that "Trav" isn’t scared and comes for food, indeed sometimes he ignores the titbits preferring to go after grubs and bugs, while still taking a few minutes out of foraging to come and sit by us if we are outside, or walk into the house a bit for a quick warble and fly off again.

What appears most unusual (I’ve had lots of magpie buddies since I was a kid, and none have behaved like "Trav") is the way the magpie plays chasey with my grandson… with hops and the occasional flight of a couple of metres to keep just out of reach, going around and around the yard, not flying away (until bored after about 5 minutes) despite the 2.5 year-old emitting squeals loud enough to scare away even seagulls (if they were foolish enough to visit while the magpie was about… forget play… pulling tail feathers from seagulls seems to be "Trav’s" favorite hobby).

Being chased by something much bigger (even though less agile) than you is something that would usually be quite stressful, especially when the one doing the chasing is making loud scary noises, so I’m puzzled by "Trav’s" behaviour, seeming to enjoy doing something quite unnatural, and something that must demand some insight into what young humans seem to enjoy.

Is "Trav" treating my grandson the same way people throw sticks or balls for dogs who enjoy bringing them back?  I don’t know.

The other odd thing is that he seems to be trying to teach me to warble.

With my human throat, there is no way I can produce a proper melody, but occasionally I’d make an attempt, and lately "Trav" has taken to coming up close, making a very simple short warble in my direction, which I try and copy, then he’ll give the same simple warble, I’ll mangle it back… and so on.

He has obviously figured out that we humans can’t talk properly, and adjusted his "teaching warbles" accordingly.  Am I being taught the magpie equivalent of "Polly want a cracker, who’s a pretty boy then"?  Am I thought too stupid, only fit to be drilled as far as the bird equivalent of "Goo goo, gah gah"?  Again, I have no idea – but if a bird wants to try and teach me to speak, how can I refuse such a generous offer?

My grandson is very privileged to have such a relationship with a wild animal, and I know the boy will be heartbroken when that magpie disappears from his life, unless one of this year’s batch of chicks is particularly friendly.  (Unfortunately, the friendly one from last year got killed by a car a few months back.)

But whatever happens in the future, the boy will have developed a proper respect for animals, from a relationship that the animal can sever at will if offended, and disappear when there is something more important to do.  It’s something I don’t think can be learnt from having a pet.

If more kids had such relationships with wild buddies, then perhaps the typical human disregard for the natural world would be softened, and perhaps we’d have never been faced with a dangerously shifting climate.

Whatever is going on in that feathered brain (and I’d really like to know), I’m sure it’s not instinctive, not purely cognitive, but involves some form of affection for us – some sort of care that makes it accompany us down the street through the territory of other magpies during swooping season, going from power pole to power pole, keeping to our pace.

As I noted before, I’ve had other wild buddies, not just birds, but possums (only females though) who seem to be able to figure out that my then-young daughter and I were safe enough to grab food from our hands.

However none of my wild buddies have ever appeared so keen to foster the relationship by departing so far from natural activities, seemed so able to model what was going on in the human brain and heart.

I’m privileged and humbled by this.

Have any of you have similar good fortune you want to share?

Microsoft doesn’t add up… 6.0 + 0.1 = 7.

It’s not surprising that as a self-proclaimed unix bigot, I won’t be rushing to install Windows 7.

That’s because I think Vista isn’t that bad, and the greater convenience touted on security matters ("fewer annoying popups") in "Seven" is oxymoronic.  My Microsoft partition will stay Vista.

Vista (Windows 6.0 if you open a cmd window and type ver) was the first Microsoft OS in over two decades that I didn’t immediately remove from new PC I purchased.  (Yes, I dual boot into SuSE, and run VirtualBox images of other operating systems).  That’s because it is the first Microsoft OS with half-way decent security (providing you avoid InternetExplorer, Outlook, Microsoft Office, etc, and use a good set of privacy and security add-ons for Firefox).

Windows 7 – well the hype of the OS is about as accurate as the number.  Open up a cmd window and type ver and you get the REAL version number: 6.1.

Now, if it had really been a major release, ver wouldn’t give merely a dot point difference between Vista and Windows so-called 7.  Microsoft control both the version and the brand… so why are they different?

Consider the difference between Microsoft and Apple.  OSX 10.2 is…. well…. 10.2.  No misdirection there!  But then, Apple is a real OS… it’s a unix, albeit a Berzerkely one.

Vista/6.0, patched up, is pretty much the same as Windows 7/6.1 – the only real difference (apart from an optional UTC-timestamped filesystem – something we’ve had in the unix world since the dawn of time) is cosmetic, and I turn off the RAM/CPU-hogging useless eye candy anyway.

So… think about it: Microsoft internals show "Seven" is only a minor release different from Vista.  And can you imagine the nightmare for those needing tech support in a couple of years when trying to figure out what version of Microsoft a person is running?  Windows "10" will probably officially be version 7.2.

Anybody who says Vista BAD, "Seven" GOOD is the sort of person who’d think capabilities change when a person changes from shorts to jeans.

Are the Libs in Canberra really hopeless?  By accident or design, their Big Carbon backers must be really pleased with how things are going.

Malcolm Turnbull, one of the more environmentally aware Libs, is someone who the ALP might have considered amenable to negotiations about carbon emissions, and therefore, would have softened their approach in the hope of easier passage, even softer than ALP fundraising imperatives demanded.

So… soft legislative proposals, Liberal stonewalling.  Action delayed.

As Copenhagen approaches, pressure mounts, and there was more and more talk of a double dissolution triggered by climate legislation.  All of a sudden, the Liberals say "we are open to negotiations".

Big Carbon supporters in the ALP will doubtless be happy about this… less pressure for action because there is the possibility of talk… and more gutting of the already gutless legislation.

What’s the reward for Big Carbon out of taxpayer funds so far… about $10 billion so far.

How much power via wind, wave and sun could we buy for $10 billion.

No, go and read what I wrote a little while back about how the Greens should be Schumpeter fans and unhypocritical economic libertarians should be baying for blood about the Carbon Polluter Rewards Scheme.

But the Greens, once accused of being moralists without sufficient pragmatism, have sold their collective soul by putting Clive Hamilton up for the Higgins by-election.  Remember, Hamilton is the guy who seems willing to contemplate suspension of democratic processes, who started the whole "censor the internet" thing when Howard was still in power (and for an academic, I’d expect more understanding of how the internet works, and how to read a survey, and to not complain about above-the-age-of-consent folks to engage in legitimate, even if distasteful, activities).

That’s the worst type of Machiavellian behaviour from the Greens… putting forward as a candidate someone who is diametrically opposed to previous Green principles in all but one single policy area, and even in that policy area, having a defeatest anti-democratic attitude.

Could the Greens have made Big Carbon any happier, the once holier-than-thou party clearly demonstrating enthusiasm for Faustian bargains?  What will the next "pragmatic" step by the Greens be?

Where are the Democrats when you need them, or as Big Carbon would say, thank goodness our bastards are off the hook.

As I wrote in the opening, this could be accident or design.  But either way, between them, the parties in Canberra are providing outcomes where the big winner is the group claimed in political oratory to be the threat.

I’m really hoping the Democrats get out of intensive care and put someone up for Higgins.

A veto note from the Gubernator, 
replete with a profanity 
not immediately obvious,  
intentional or highly coincidental? 
Enjoy the links below.

• "Schwarzenegger to foe: (Veto) you" (SwampPolitics – 2009-10-28)
• "Did Schwarzenegger drop 4-letter bomb in veto?" and a good image of the letter for the impatient (San Francisco Chronicle 2008-10-28)
• "Schwarzenegger offers CA legislature crytic F-you" (Business Pundit 2009-10-28)
• "The Gubernator’s acrostic mischief" (Language Log 2009-10-28) – also with a lovely acrostic in A Midsummer Night’s Dream for comparison
• "Schwarnenegger’s veto message delivers another message" (Wall Street Journal 2009-10-27)
• no… not joking or a hoax…. you can see a copy of the letter as a pdf from the official California governor’s site gov.ca.gov.

The first words of each line in the three paragraphs?

• I
• For… unnecessary… care… kick…
• Yet… overwhelmingly… unnecessary

And the Gubernator’s spokesperson on this?

"My goodness.  What a coincidence.  I suppose when you do so many vetoes, something like this is bound to happen.”

To me, the "kick the can" is unusual enough to indicate intent… but I’d not call it malice.

…especially as Arnie has had other (less pointed) acrostics in messages to his legislature, and has pulled some other pranks (see the WSJ article) such as sending a sculture of bull’s testicles to California’s Senate leader.

So… anybody thinking about being mischevious next time you write a note to your local member or a senate committee?  I know I am!

There are claims that the refugee processing centres in Indonesia, or at least some of them, have horrible conditions and brutal guards reminiscent of the film "Midnight Express".  If so, it may not be long before a legitimate refugee in such a place would either sicken and die, or suffer terrible injuries.

That would put egg on the faces of KRudd and company.

But if the Libs got reliable information about something like that happening at a centre that received any funding at all from Canberra, would they pass it on to the press?

Your choice: Wonderwoman, Supergirl or Batgirl?

Batgirl.

(Indirect link to preserve innocent eyes from the scientific paper published today which includes video references. And no complaints about being sexist … the Hoydens regularly ask similar questions from a female perspective. Damn limber those fruit bats!)

If climate skeptics (and neo-skeptics that advocate polluter protection or no significant action, in other words, those rejecting the precautionary principle) were skydivers… what would they do?

Skeptic Skydiving Flowchart

Anybody want to pitch in to give Andrew Bolt a skydiving holiday?

Why didn’t I think of that?

Over the fold is a tattoo (via facebook) that shows a smart person has thought a moment about the "Risen Jesus", and made the obvious conclusion.

If you are an easily-offended narrow-minded humorless Xtian… go no further.

But for the rest of you, giggles coming up…(and if you have no graphics, the alt text does the trick just as well)

Tattoo of Jesus Zombie

Just think if he’d terrorized the moneylenders like this!

There is a pernicious bit of contract law theory called "efficient breach", beloved of unscrupulous capitalists, "the view that a party should be allowed to breach a contract and pay damages, if doing so would be more economically efficient than performing under the contract".

But would they want long-term homeless folk reading Posner, breaching not a contract to supply widgets, but the social contract?

Consider, by breaching the social contract, beating well-heeled older capitalists to death, (adult kids, hefty life insurance, it’s a minimal impact murder if such a thing exists), and then immediately surrendering to police, the punishment is a long term guarantee of food, shelter, clothing, medical care, and even TV and other recreation facilities.

That’s certainly "economically efficient" for a homeless person!

So why doesn’t this "efficient breach" of the social contract, major crimes by homeless folk, happen more frequently?  After all, the damages/punishment cause the state to actually take responsibility, accepting duties that (unless you have committed a major crime) are so obviously, frequently, and cold-heartedly abrogated by governments.

Could it be that homeless folk have higher moral standards than the advocates of "efficient breach" theory?

I suppose Posner would have to commend a starving person who mugged or murdered a silvertail on their supreme legal reasoning capabilities, or be branded a hypocrite.

I wonder too, whether for all their mouthings, all the political parties, and indeed the population at large, practice efficient breach when it comes to homeless folk.  Why bother putting in the effort to solve the problem, to prevent the causes of homelessness and address the results, when the homeless have no political voice because they have no fixed address and are not on any electoral rolls, when they can be made invisible by council by-laws against "begging", when through the privations of the weather and poor nutrition, the problem of any individual resolves itself in death relatively quickly.

When a few hundred thousand healthy people lose their houses in bushfires, instantly as many tents, blankets, toys, phone charging stations and cheap loans are provided.  Instantly mountains of food appear.

Every time there is cheering for the promises of lower taxes that mean winding back the social wage and the programs that protect those most poorly served by our society, the applause is for "efficient breach" theory.

Yet every time a corporation uses efficient breach against a single consumer, paying for good lawyers to achieve a minimal rap over the knuckles… shock… horror!

Maybe next time someone on the street asks for help, take a minute or two, get them the tram ticket, a carton of milk, a piece of fruit… and don’t ask for thanks but forgiveness.

With the possibility of a Human Rights instrument going through the federal parliament, while lefty me thinks overall it would be a good thing, I happen to think that it is a regressive concept.

I’d argue for "Sapient Rights", not "Human Rights".

I’d go into this in more detail if I hadn’t already covered it reasonably well in a post written before this blog was as well-known: "‘Human Rights’ : a regressive concept" (2008-05-04).

Pushing it perhaps to the extreme, think of the impact of the difference between Human and Sapient Rights while recalling movies like "The Day the Earth Stood Still", "2001", and even junk like "Independence Day".

Would we want "Little Green Men" to only have "Little Green Men Rights" in their legal code, or would we be happier with "Sapient Rights"?

…and the way we’re going on planetary policy, you’ve got to wonder if we’d qualify even then!

Given the way Rudd’s policy reflects scientific opinion and pre-election promises: C₄H₄AsH

Rudd as PM

See also DOI 10.1002/anie.197204411

Buy CAS 287-77-4.

(Oh, yeah, the position of the "As" in the image is significant!)