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!)

Israel wants to change the rules about war crimes (The Age, 2009-10-21), using the "must combat terrorism" furphy.

I hope someone goes through the watering down proposed by the Israeli warmongers, and looks at what would have happened if the British Mandate of Palestine had used the same lack of morality to control the Zionist terrorists who were busy blowing up stuff and people in a successful effort to create a state, a state established by terrorists (UN Security Council Resolution 57 of 18 September 1948), a nuclear renegade state that keeps IAEA inspectors away from the 200-odd nuclear warheads in it’s arsenal, an arsenal that makes Kim Jong Mentally-Ill look harmless.

No, Britain let all the terrorists off scot free, to be declared heroes by the terrorist-established state, and some to become Prime Ministers.

I’d imagine that if the British had used the methods Israel now wants legitimized, the state of Israel would never have existed… and the boats bringing the ethnic cleansers to Palestine after the second world war would have been blown out of the water.

But then, we only have to look at the genocide verses of Joshua and Exodus to see what the Zionist tradition considers absolutely fine – as long as it’s only done to us goyim.

After all, what did the Solicitor for the Commonwealth of Australia, seeking to justice tougher counter-terrorism measures, say in 2007 about the historical pretext used by Zionists to justify their land claims:

History provides numerous examples of situations where it has been necessary for a polity to defend itself against a body other than a sovereign state. One could start with the book of Joshua in the Bible. If the Canaanite cities had had a federation with section 51(vi) in it there is little doubt that it could have been invoked against the children of Israel, although at that stage one could hardly describe them as a sovereign state in the traditional sense. Their only territory was the territory they were about conquer.

EU courts and commissions are often the target of those critical of "nanny states", but I expect even the most libertarian types will welcome this discussion from the EU Court of Human Rights about the rights of satirists and the EU’s efforts to try and stop fair satire being attacked by commercial and political interests in courts.

The satirists in the cases mentioned were doing things akin to having an effigy of the feral poodle as, well, a feral poodle, or maybe an image of corpulent bogans over a slogan "the people are bigger at Hungry Jacks".

From the ECHR blog:

Both cases could be laughed off as bizarre instances of the kind of situations that reach Strasbourg.  But equally, they point to a worrying development in various European countries in which commercial or political interests are attacking even the most innocuous expressions." In that respect, it is good that the European Court is taking jokes seriously.

I don’t think this worrying development is something particular to the EU… if it hasn’t started here yet, it soon will, and I hope our courts protect us from the powerful and their well-funded lawyers.

iSee/PLoS Idiot Guide

On your marks, ready, steady….. GEEK!

It’s an ultra-cool, life-like (well, if you are a radical) interactive 3D virtual world that you fly around, zoom in on details… installed as a browser plugin, but it’s not a game, it’s part of an open access, free, peer-reviewed scientific journal publishing exercise!

And promises of more and more "landscapes" coming up….

In the top-level article at PLoSOne, "Structural Biology and Human Health: Medically Relevant Proteins from the SGC" , you can find links to the hows and whys of the initiative, as well as links to the first few 3D interactive peer-reviewed "papers".

Read the installation instructions, and zoom around molecules (seeded by The Structural Genomics Consortium, that puts sequences of important molecules into the public domain so they cannot be stolen – i.e. "invented" by Big Pharma, and worked on the browser plugin.)

After the plugin is installed, choose the "enhanced" version of the scientific papers at PLoS, or go browsing around the collection at the SGC (no… not StarGate Command… much more useful).

Or get it via PLoS which might be easier, up in the paper’s abstract, you’ll see a link "enhanced version" (try this one, click that and your browser window will split with the molecule on the right (you’ve restarted your browser after installing the plugin, haven’t you) and the main text on the left.  If you haven’t got the plugin installed, you’ll be given a link to pick it up… then exit your browser and start it up again.

OK, so little John and Betty, larval internet addicts, might find this cool enough to get interested in biochemistry by flying around rather than using it seriously, but that’s fine.

When will journals (or government agencies) in other disciplines start doing something just as cool and informative?  Particle physics?  Mathematics?  Astronomy?  Economics?  Sociology?

Personally, though, I’d like to see you be able to swap something and watch the conformational changes, Hbβ 6 Glu->Val for instance, and able to control the pH and amount of water around the thing… but that’ll come.

Well, whadaryawaitinfor?  Oh, that’s right, the download servers are probably being hit very hard!

Anyway, here are a couple of shots of the same paper, the same dataset, before choosing a different rendering method and a bit of zooming and rotating (click for bigger versions).

Looking at a molecule one way, just before changing to a different way of looking at it

The same molecule after selecting another rendering, then rotating and zooming a bit

A third way of looking at the molecule

A fourth way .... almost the same position as the third

Another, same rendering method as before, but zoomed in and rotated to see EXACTLY how the ATP fits into gaps in the proteins and gripped for splitting

UPDATE:  This video displays some of the interactive features, is from the post on scienceblogs/everyONE and includes mention of early reactions to the PLoS enhancements, and ahem, guess who seems to have been first off the mark?

It’s a paradigm shift in product placement, more blatant and yet more subtle than merely having a hero drinking a particular brand of soft-drink on the screen – yet it’ll probably go unchecked by controls on TV advertising.

Microsoft are, putting it kindly, "having input" into the script of an upcoming "Family Guy" episode, with the dog touting all the bells and whistles as to why people should upgrade.

Will the TV broadcaster have to make announcements about it being a sponsored program like it does for other infommercials before the start of the program and when returning from typical ad breaks?  Will the broadcaster have to obey rules for how many minutes of advertising they can air in a given time?

Advertising under the wire

Even if the only part of the show has the advertising content is that included in the sneak-peak available at Ars Technica, that’s probably more as a proportion of the show than many ads on television that only flash up the product identification for a few seconds in an otherwise entertaining ad (this Australian ad being a brilliant and hilarious example), all the while the audience paying close attention to the content, more than the audience would to an obvious ad, and more attention than to the typical plug by the car the hero drives or the drinks imbibed by heroes/villians.

I doubt there’ll be a balance, such as the world’s cutest IT mascot coming up and going "loser", or satirising Poe’s "The Raven"?  Probably not.  (Take your pick – there are a few excellent parodies, including this, and this, and this, with most involving the user bedevilled by "Abort Retry Ignore" and a penguin quothing "Crash no more" or "Pay no more")

Microsoft and Fox, money and broadcasting clout near-unlimited, will be able to twist ACMA at will, and by the time anybody complains, the damage will have been done.  Perhaps ABC "Media Watch" might make a pre-emptive announcement and get pressure to at least warn viewers about the near-subliminal paid advertising just before they are exposed to it?

Surprise, surprise, surprise.  … or maybe I should say CAN I HAZ THE PAGE BACK COZ IS GON?

Glad I had kept a copy so dear readers can still get a giggle?

Anyone know how long it took to go?  It lasted at least a few months, but I haven’t checked for a while.

And boy, do I hope a few wishy-washy cat lovers clicked the link to the original post thinking they’d enjoy it!

It’s finally twigging to more and more Australians that the anti-Brutopian KRudd isn’t.

…that, barring a radical change for the better, perhaps the swearing-in of a new PM should be accompanied by patriotic cries of "The Howard is gone!  Long live the Howard!"

…or perhaps the cry should use not "Howard" but "HowRudd".

Even when Big Mal the Senior Prefect was PM, before he softened, we lefties used not a few four-letter words describing his policies – yet the policies of that Liberal PM were often to the left of the current ALP government.  We scarred lefties can now look back at Mal with nostalgia, deploring only the tactics he used gaining power.

However, thinking again, which is more deplorable: the tactics of Big Mal, or the misleading aura of benignity KRudd cultivated with his "Howard’s Brutopia" essay that supposedly differentiated him from the "me too" politics of Big Kim Beazley.

No… it’s Little Johnny, Little Kevin, Honest John, Honest Kevin, Johnny Rat, Kevin Rat.

Is the only difference in applicable nicknames between the two caused by the fact that it is easy to pronounce KRudd but not JHoward?

Even if you don’t know the original Latin poem, my near-just-changing-the-names and toning-down-of-obscenities in the post "With apologies to Catullus on Aemilius" (2009-08-25) is likely to get less and less of a joke as time passes, and the more exact translation (see this my note to that post about the last line, "quem siqua attingit, non illam posse putemus aegroti culum lingere carnificis") will become more and more appropriate.

The politicians at the top of the greasy pole in the major parties are fungible.

Given that "fungible" comes from the Latin "to perform": they can all go funge themselves…

See Also

• "My name is Kevin Rudd and I’m just like John Howard" (Mark Kenny 2009-10-17) is a good analysis of the non-difference between the two on refugees ("refugee", not "illegal" unless the doctrine of "innocent until proven guilty" has been thrown out the window).
• "KRudd? Promise Keeper? I wish!" (2008-07-07) on economic non-differences.
• "The joke is on us" (2007-11-10)

I’ll give Chris Bowen a pass for his press release on an initiative to recycle old corporate PCs for use by the disadvantaged, but it’s a bare pass, because money is being wasted upgrading PCs to the latest version of Microsoft XP Pro and MS-Office 2003.

While this is all fine and dandy, the lack of details about other more cost-effective, environmentally friendly, and child-safe programs suggests that better initiatives aren’t getting appropriate government support.  Issues include:

• Exposing kiddies to pr0n.
• No recycling of computers from homes, so a large environmental problem is unaddressed, and value from working computers is destroyed.
• Forcing financially disadvantaged families with limited computer literacy to pay big bucks for extra software packages.
• Lack of tailoring to need (e.g. age-appropriate games and educational programs for particular families).

The reason that corporate PCs (rather than former home PCs) are used is that the resources required to run XP Pro and MS-Office are significant, and there is also the problem of licensing, especially if the former home PC ran pirated software.

Home PC’s, particularly the older ones, would be quite useful running any one of the "lightweight" linux distributions – indeed quite a few distributions are specifically written for old hardware: one of the popular distros for 10-year-old machines is Puppy Linux, even the PuppyPro edition loaded with office productivity tools running on a 500MHz, 192Mb RAM

This risks exposing financially disadvantaged kiddies, in families that cannot afford the price of software upgrades, or the bandwidth for constant patches to Windows required to lower the risk of malware infections, to scams, spyware and worse: pr0n.  Think of the children!

While this is fine, there was no mention of other, better, cheaper ways of providing PCs to disadvantaged homes, and no hint that those PCs would be tailored to the particular needs of the person(s) getting the PC.  If there was such a program, I’m sure the opportunity for spruiking the government’s efforts would mean it would have been mentioned in the press release.

Is there government support for a way of recycling older PCs that aren’t from corporates but from homes, don’t require licence fees for upgrades, and get every last drop of performance from old gear?  That’d be some form of Linux with OpenOffice… choosing an appropriate distribution for the hardware (hell, some distros even work on old 386 and 486 machines).  No need to upgrade memory, put in a DVD drive.

It wouldn’t take much to have a few different distros ready-to-go, with selections of software based on the capabilities of the computer involved and the needs of the family (Kids? add age-appropriate games and educational software).  Indeed, you could hand a pack of different distros with the PC in case the user wanted to try something different.

The other advantage comes from the possibility that the computers handed could have unlicensed software and/or be infected with malware.  A "wipe-everything" install of a linux would solve that problem, avoiding the need to check whether the donation included pirated software, and a possible obligation to inform the producers of that software.

Besides, are Centrelink clients likely to be able to afford the upgrades to Microsoft-based software, or even the bandwidth required to keep virus and spyware checkers up to date?  (And think of how some malware can display stuff inappropriate for young kiddies!)  Don’t we want them to be able to upgrade or add new software at zero cost to avoid funnelling money away from food and rent?

Environmentally responsible provision of cheap used PCs to disadvantaged folk would source as wide a range of old computers as possible, not just those from corporates.  Is the program merely a tax lurk?

Notes/See Also:

• Damn Small Linux is what it says, basic web browsing, music playing and games run happily on an old 486 with 16Mb RAM.
• DeLi Linux ("Desktop Light"),
• There are other recycling programs with government involvement or promotion, including ByteBack (the link points to locations registered at http://data.australia.gov.au), but that only pulls them apart (value destruction), and there are extremely few collection locations.

I wonder what the Bolt will think on the line I’ve taken on a piece of his?  What motivates him more, the desire to inflame xenophobia, or a way of pointing out that KRudd is hopeless at something KRudd touts himself as – a skilled diplomatic negotiator in the region?

On the current debate (too generous a term, admittedly) about refugees coming to Australia by boat, the Bolt wrote a typical Bolt piece ("Check the map: why must Australia take in these people?" 2009-10-16) … and I couldn’t resist a comment that was totally in keeping with my lefty principles, but that shouldn’t get a knee-jerk response from the Bolt or his Boltariat legion:

Surely the best outcome would be if we could encourage other countries in the region to sign the convention on refugees, and then they would also have an interest to stop the root causes of the problems – privations in the countries refugees are fleeing – and even if conditions didn’t improve in the original countries, they wouldn’t have as far to travel to reach safe refuge.

That would be a win for everyone but the people smugglers.

Sure, we could help the Indonesians, Malaysians or whoever build places to house the refugees and do all the administrative tasks… but we wouldn’t have to haggle over any Australian “sovereignty” over those centres.

For those bearing false witness, it wouldn’t cost as much to deport them back.

If KRudd and company cannot convince others in the region to adopt the higher ground, then all his talk of diplomatic skill and improving Australia’s influence in the region is just hot air, "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing".

I couldn’t resist the last couple of phrases in quotes… and wonder how many of the Boltariat would have a clue as to the origin of those words.

So, why would the line I’ve taken not appeal to Bolt?  It provides ammo for both left and right to attack KRudd.  But then, it’s easier for Bolt to write a stock-standard bit of tripe and half-truths that work because of prole xenophobic button pushing, than to figure out a little more elegant attack.

…Or maybe it’s just a bit too subtle for the Boltariat to understand.

See Also:

• Jeremy at Crikey’s Pure Poison attacks Bolt another way: "We’re NOT the only ones, Bolt" (2009-10-16) – but because it requires the numeracy of a 6 year old to understand, and attacks their demigod, the Boltariat will reject the piece and the argument.

Obama got a pat on the back from the Nobel Committee, then wondered (along with the rest of the world) about the justification.

Penny Wong, on the other hand pats herself grandly on the back about her "achievements" from recent talks with China.

Summary of achievements touted in the press release:

• We talked.
• We talked some more.
• We promised to talk more in the future

Now, it seems that the criteria for judging failure of her efforts would be if China threw a nuclear rocket at us, waited long enough for the worst radiation to blow over New Zealand, declared "Terra Nullius" and grabbed the coal and iron ore.

Wow!  Given how all the scientists view climate change as a major threat to political and social stability, I reckon Ms Wrong is making space on her wall for next year’s Peace Nobel.

…but it won’t be like Obama’s who got it for not being Dubya.  KRudd and/or Wrong can’t get it for not being Honest Johnny, because there’s no substantial difference.