Category Archives: Landscape

Catching up on my week and ‘Are you backing up?’

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Other than strata inspections during the day, I have been reworking my essay ‘Discovering English’. A discursive ramble through what I know about my only language, and how I, and others, communicate in English. I will post this in sections as I am satisfied with the text.

Today’s podcast

Yarnbombing: when Granny gets punk

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/artworks/stories/2011/3296728.htm

 Have you wandered about town and been surprised by a piece of knitting adorning a lampost or a tree or a car? If so, you have stumbled upon a growing phenomenon known as yarnbombing. It’s a kind of knitted graffiti, where the grandmotherly art of knitting has been given a punk edge.

I have been passing this interesting piece every day – it has been there since Christmas and now realize it’s street art. More photos on Artworks and the podcast is well worth a listen (the Vatican was yarnbombed!).

Backing up and restoring

I have always been an advocate of regular backups of my various computers. When I ran the computing facilities at CQU Sydney, we backed up to tape every night and were competent at restoring files. At Unilodge with an array of servers, this discipline continued and despite some awful disk crashes, we never lost any critical data.

When I dropped out of these activities and had a couple of Macs to tinker with, I continued backing up using Carbon Copy and again, never really lost a file. With OS 10.6.x came Time Machine, which backed up every hour to a dedicated desktop hard drive. Very cool! However, when my MacBook Pro fainted and I needed to move files to my MacMini, “Sorry, this is a different machine. No can restore!”. I finally got the MacBook back up and immediately returned to Carbon Copy and backed up the hard drive. Nothing like a failed restore to shake one up.

Planning ahead of the replacement with a 27 inch iMac and a 13 inch MacBook Pro, I bought a 3Tb Seagate GoFlex desk drive which worked twice then bombed. Seagate support was, despite the stress of having stored irreplaceable images on the drive, laughable. Their recommended dagnostic was Seatools – Windows ‘Yes, DOS ‘Yes’, Mac ‘NO’ even though the drive was Mac specific. DOS? – where have these people been? They basically refused to help other than replacing the drive without my data. I eventually got it working (dud power supply), and duplicated the critical data on to a LaCie desktop drive.

The current config is Carbon Copy backing up to the Seagate at 04:30 and the LaCie at 05:30 every day. The automatic backup occasionally fails so I check the logs regularly. I synchronise the Imac and the Macbook regularly so the Macbook files are safe.

The point of this note is to strongly recommend testing your backup (if you are doing one) with a restore. I note that one of my highly respected technical Facebook friends (they shall remain unnamed) lost their hard drive and publicly grieved. It can happen at anytime – an analysis by Google of their many thousands of hard drives found that 10 per cent failed in the first 12 months. I also note that Apple had a recall of MacBook Pro machines with failing Seagate drives – it can happen to anyone.

Sunday

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Near Alice Springs.

Climate Change – The Skeptics

The skeptics base their skepticism on political interference, incorrect modeling and inaccurate data (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming_controversy). We can disregard ‘Climategate’ as just another unseemly squabble amongst academics – it was a peripheral disturbance, which served to make me more aware of the controversy.

For the skeptics case see Joanna Nova, (2009), The Skeptics Handbook, downloadable from http://joannenova.com.au/, Formatted to draw attention to the ‘fallacies’ perpetrated by the anthropogenic community (humans are causing climate change) it, on a second reading, lacks credibility. Headings such as ‘The Surgical Strike’ and ‘The Global Warming Gravy Train Ran Out of Evidence’ are journalistic, which I am striving to avoid. However, cutting through the hyperbole, she does summarise the skeptic’s case and leaves me unconvinced.

Then there is Ian Plimer’s, (2009), Heaven and Earth: Global Warming – The Missing Science, Connor Court Publishing, which takes the long-term view presenting information that cold periods have coincided with significantly higher CO2 in the atmosphere. I respect his credentials and agree with his thesis, but what is his point? Why not act on reducing our carbon emissions and our environment-disturbing footprint? Why argue against what will benefit us and future generations?

Over several months I have moved from sympathy with the ‘skeptics’ to ‘let’s get some sensible action in place’. I doubt that chaining one’s self to a coal train, climbing lamp-posts or blockading coal mines will have much effect – it’s the old Vietnam Moratorium syndrome that so attracts the young, and is fun, but has never changed society.

My next inquiry will be to look at the Commonwealth Government’s policies and actions to mitigate CO2 emissions.

Saturday

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Trephina Gorge, Central Australia

Climate Change – First Principles

After reading many badly written media reports I am going back to first principles of Climate Change. This began with Andrew Campbell, 2008. Managing Australian Landscapes in a Changing Climate: A climate change primer for regional Natural Resource Management bodies. Report to the Department of Climate Change, Canberra, Australia (downloadable from the author’s website, http://www.triplehelix.com.au/). Campbell is a firm believer in the ‘Greenhouse Effect’ driven by CO2 emissions and whether one is a skeptic, or agrees with the CO2 effect, he offers practical suggestions for mitigating climate change.

But first, some definitions.

“Climate encompasses the statistics of temperature, humidity, atmospheric pressure, wind, rainfall, atmospheric particle count and numerous other meteorological elements in a given region over long periods of time.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate

Climate change is the variation in global or regional climates over time. It reflects changes in the variability or average state of the atmosphere over time scales ranging from decades to millions of years. These changes can be caused by processes internal to the Earth, external forces (e.g. variations in sunlight intensity) or, more recently, human activities. In recent usage, especially in the context of environmental policy, the term “climate change” often refers only to changes in modern climate, including the rise in average surface temperature known as global warming. In some cases, the term is also used with a presumption of human causation, as in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

Climate models use quantitative methods to simulate the interactions of the atmosphere, oceans, land surface and ice. They are used for a variety of purposes from study of the dynamics of the weather and climate system to projections of future climate. The most talked-about models of recent years have been those used to infer the consequences of increasing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, primarily carbon dioxide (see greenhouse gas). These models predict an upward trend in the global mean surface temperature, with the most rapid increase in temperature being projected for the higher latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate#Climate_change

Global warming is the increase in the average temperature of Earth’s near-surface air and oceans since the mid-twentieth century and its projected continuation. Global surface temperature increased 0.74 ± 0.18 °C (1.33 ± 0.32 °F) between the start and the end of the 20th century. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming

The trend shown below from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology confirms that we are experiencing increasing temperatures. Additional data and definitions are on http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/change/.

However, when checking out the ‘Annual Mean Temperature Anomaly’, I found slightly different information where the trend line is not so ominous.

See http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/change/amtemp.shtml

What is the cause?

External forcing of climate refers to processes external to the climate system (though not necessarily external to Earth) that influence climate. Climate responds to several types of external forcing, such as radiative forcing due to changes in atmospheric composition (mainly greenhouse gas concentrations), changes in solar luminosity, volcanic eruptions, and variations in Earth’s orbit around the Sun. Attribution of recent climate change focuses on the first three types of forcing. Orbital cycles vary slowly over tens of thousands of years and thus are too gradual to have caused the temperature changes observed in the past century.

The greenhouse effect is a natural warming process of the earth. When the sun’s energy reaches the earth some of it is reflected back to space and the rest is absorbed. The absorbed energy warms the earth’s surface which then emits heat energy back toward space as longwave radiation. This outgoing longwave radiation is partially trapped by greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, methane and water vapour which then radiate the energy in all directions, warming the earth’s surface and atmosphere. Without these greenhouse gases the earth’s average surface temperature would be about 35 ° Celsius cooler.

Australian BOM

Human activities such as deforestation and the burning of fossil fuels have increased the concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. http://www.bom.gov.au/lam/climate/levelthree/climch/clichgr1.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Climate_Change_Attribution.png

In summary, the surface temperature of Australia is rising and greenhouse gasses are increasing. The greenhouse proponents sress that the two are linked. I now need to review why the sceptics dismiss the CO2 connection.

Today’s Podcast

There is a small controversy over school gardens in the USA. Caitlin Flanagan, “Cultivating Failure”, The Atlantic, Jan-Feb 2010, http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/201001/school-yard-garden has provoked comment with her thesis that school gardens are teaching students work skills that their migrant parents in California want to leave behind. School should be for better test scores and graduating on to college and a less labour intensive working life.

“The Edible Acre Project”, Agroinnovations, 11 January 2010, http://agroinnovations.com/index.php/en_us/multimedia/blogs/podcast/ is an interesting example of how school gardens have been woven into the curriculum rather than simply picking lettuce.

In this episode we continue with the theme of school gardens and farms. I am joined by Debbie Hillman of the Edible Acre Project, a project in a suburb just outside of Chicago Illinois. Debbie discusses the origins and implementation of the project, the role of a the farm/garden in education, and practical strategies for those looking to develop similar projects in their communities.

Thursday

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The MacDonnell Range at Glen Helen, Central Australia

The Cook-Book

The draft was reviewed last night by a knowledgeable food and cooking person; favourably. It has now reached the stage of becoming semi-public so I can get further feedback on the layout and range of recipes and chapters. Current problems are:

  • Indexing – the way I have assembled it doesn’t lend itself to automatic indexing but a solution will appear as I get closer to that activity. It would be handy now.
  • Consistency – is a bit of a mish-mash; some items are capitalized in one recipe, lower case in another.
  • Naming – some recipe titles begin with ‘Lamb’, others may be ‘Kebabs with Lamb’ so I need to develop a naming convention.
  • Assembling the components into one document – Word is notorious for falling apart when working with long documents.
  • Page numbering – because the chapters are stand-alone, I can’t get consistent page numbering.

However, I am pleased with this result so far and will continue to improve on it and solve these problems.

Technical Note

I am migrating the cook-book to the web but to get to this there were some problems. Initially, I had intended to use Microsoft Expression on a Windows server that backs-up my music files. When I moved the cook-book files across from my MacbookPro, I discovered the Word documents could only be read in Wordpad – I hadn’t installed Office on this server.

As I have Parallels Desktop on the Mac and can operate a Windows virtual machine, I updated Parallels, Vista and Office and installed Expression. The only glitch so far is not being able to share folders (directories) despite following the instructions in the manual and the support forums. Not a big issue at this stage.

Positives are that Expressions imports Word and builds the pages automatically. Once I design a suitable template, this makes authoring much simpler. Another is that Expression connects, using ftp, to my server in New Mexico so I can upload files directly from the application. I am impressed – and Vista is faster than I have ever experienced.

Climate Change

Some indication of what the Australian public thinks:

“Nice try Penny, but it’s time to take another look”, The Australian’, 14 January 2010, http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/nice-try-penny-but-its-time-to-take-another-look/story-e6frg71x-1225818991552

Before Copenhagen, public support for tackling climate change was strong, with polls showing about three-quarters of Australians backing action. That support will be tested in the next few months as the government moves to reintroduce its CPRS legislation.



Monday

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Central Australia

Notes from Xanadu

We travelled to Bowral yesterday and enjoyed the Southern Highlands greeness, coolness and difference to our Inner West — very pleasant.

I have now a first-draft of the Cook-Book and am considering how to migrate it to my web server — not quite sure how to format each recipe as a separate page and will begin testing this.

Climate Change

A further example of the sorry debate over this problem:

Jonathan Leake, “Sea-level theory cuts no ice”, The Australian, 11 January 2010, http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/sea-level-theory-cuts-no-ice/story-e6frg6so-1225817853987

CLIMATE science faces a major new controversy after Britain’s Met Office denounced research from the Copenhagen summit that suggested global warming could raise sea levels by more than 1.8m by 2100. The studies, led by Stefan Rahmstorf, professor of ocean physics at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, have caused growing concern among other experts. They say his methods are flawed and that the real increase in sea levels by 2100 is likely to be far lower than he predicts.

Jason Lowe, a leading Met Office climate researcher, said: “We think such a big rise by 2100 is actually incredibly unlikely. The mathematical approach used to calculate the rise is completely unsatisfactory.” The new controversy dates back to January 2007 when Science magazine published a research paper by Professor Rahmstorf linking the 17cm rise in sea levels from 1881 to 2001 with a 0.6C rise in global temperature over the same period. Professor Rahmstorf then parted company from colleagues by extrapolating the findings to 2100. Based on the 17cm increase that occurred from 1881 to 2001, Professor Rahmstorf calculated that a predicted 5C increase in global temperature would raise sea levels by up to 188cm.

Critic Simon Holgate, a sea-level expert at the Proudman Oceanographic Laboratory, Merseyside, has written to Science magazine, attacking Professor Rahmstorf’s work as “simplistic”. “Rahmstorf’s real skill seems to be in publishing extreme papers just before big conferences like Copenhagen, when they are guaranteed attention,” Dr Holgate said. Most of the 1881-2001 sea-level rise came from melting glaciers that will be gone by 2050, leaving the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets as contributors. But contributions of these sheets to date has been negligible and researchers say there is no evidence to show that will change in the way Professor Rahmstorf suggests.

Professor Rahmstorf said he accepted many of the criticisms. “I hope my critics are right because a rise of the kind my work predicts would be catastrophic,” he said.

And yesterday I had the opportunity to talk to a well-connected climate change proponent and raised my doubts regarding the data and analyses that I have seen so far. I was told that:

  1. There is absolutely no doubt that climate change is a human induced phenomenon.
  2. The Bureau of Meteorology report is unequivocal that the climate is warming. That the previous Director of the BOM disagreed with the current stance was brushed aside.
  3. The complexity of weather leading to often-inaccurate forecasts does not reflect on the BOM’s ability to analyse climate.
  4. Another example of climate change is the acidification of the oceans.
  5. An American neuro-surgeon was quoted as saying if he procrastinated in medicine as the politicians were over climate change, his patients would all be dead. I thought this ironic considering the current insurance debate and litigation in the USA health system.
  6. Earth scientists, who take a long-term view like Ian Plimer, are wrong – unfortunately I can’t recall why.
  7. The fire threat in South Australia was ludicrous as there was nothing there to burn.
  8. I should have another look at the data, as I was wrong.

This is what I remember this morning and I could be mis-reporting him. But I was left with the impression what he said had the same cant I have been reading and listening too from both sides. I came home no wiser. What currently puzzles me is that after a career analyzing data looking for patterns and discontinuities, I cannot make any sense of what is currently being offered as proof by either side.

Wednesday

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Tianjara Falls, Moreton National Park

Climate Change – New Data, Same Arguments

In today’s SMH and The Australian are several articles written around the release of the “Annual Australian Climate Statement 2009” by the Bureau of Meteorology, http://www.bom.gov.au/announcements/media_releases/climate/change/20100105.shtml

Issued 5th January 2010, 2009 will be remembered for extreme bushfires, dust-storms, lingering rainfall deficiencies, areas of flooding and record-breaking heatwaves. Second warmest year for Australia

This has been interpreted by our Federal Government as clear evidence that CO2 is causing the temperature rise. The Opposition is advocating change-action to halt the CO2 instead of a tax on emissions.

Rosie Lewis And Ben Cubby, “Heatwave shows need for carbon deal: Garrett”, SMH, 6 January 2010, http://www.smh.com.au/environment/heatwave-shows-need-for-carbon-deal-garrett-20100105-lses.html

THE Federal Government has said climate data showing last year was Australia’s second-hottest on record means the Senate should pass the emissions trading scheme next month. The Opposition said it was cynical to link the data to the emissions trading legislation, and said if emissions needed to be cut then ”direct action”, such as changing soil composition to absorb more carbon, would suffice.

But the Government claimed science was on its side. “It’s up to the Senate and Mr Abbott to recognise that climate change is real, to recognise that for Australians warming is happening,” the Environment Minister, Peter Garrett, said yesterday. The report was consistent with the “unequivocal science view” that global warming was happening as a consequence of human activities, “and it’s in our economic and environmental interest to arrest it”, he said. “The Australian public expect decent climate change policy from the Leader of the Opposition. At the moment all they’re getting is mistakes and thought bubbles.”

And then there was this (quoted selectively):

Christopher Monckton, “Mr Rudd, your misguided warming policies are killing millions”, The Australian, 6 January 2010, http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/mr-rudd-your-misguided-warming-policies-are-killing-millions/story-e6frg6zo-1225816411782

You say “formal global and national economic modelling” shows “that the costs of inaction are greater than the costs of acting”. Yet, every economic analysis except that of the now discredited Lord Stern, with its near-zero discount rate and its absurdly inflated warming rates, comes to the same ineluctable conclusion: adaptation to climate change, if necessary, is orders of magnitude more cost-effective than attempts at mitigation. In a long career in policy analysis in and out of government, I have never seen so cost-ineffective a proposed waste of taxpayers’ money to stop the tide from coming in.

You led a delegation of 114 people to Copenhagen to bring back a non-result. Half a dozen were all that was really necessary. If you and your officials are not willing to tighten your belts, why should the taxpayers tighten theirs?

Millions are already dying of starvation in the world’s poorest nations because world food prices have doubled in two years. That was caused by a sharp drop in world food production, caused by suddenly taking millions of acres of land out of growing food for people who need it, to grow biofuels for clunkers that don’t. … At a time when so many of the world’s people are already short of food, the UN’s right-to-food rapporteur, Herr Ziegler, has rightly condemned the biofuel scam as “a crime against humanity”.

Yet this slaughter is founded upon a lie: the claim by the IPCC that it is 90 per cent certain that most of the “global warming” since 1950 is man-made. This claim – based not on science but on a show of hands among political representatives, with China wanting a lower figure and other nations wanting a higher figure – is demonstrably false…. Nor is the IPCC’s great lie the only lie in the official documents of the IPCC and in the speeches of its current chairman, who has made himself a multi-millionaire as a “global warming” profiteer.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Monckton,_3rd_Viscount_Monckton_of_Brenchley for background. The florid writing added to the ‘millions starving because of bio-fuels’, plus this background, has me placing him out on the ‘wacky’ fringe.

And then there was this (again selectively quoted):

Natasha Robinson, “Sceptics use temperatures to cast doubt on carbon theory”, The Australian, 6 January 2010, http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/sceptics-use-temperatures-to-cast-doubt-on-carbon-theory/story-e6frg6nf-1225816385293

THE weather bureau’s latest climate statement has nothing to suggest that warmer temperatures are the result of increased carbon dioxide emissions, climate change sceptics say. And despite the new figures indicating that the past decade was the warmest since record-keeping began, the sceptics point to the fact that there has been relatively little upward shift in temperatures since the 1980s.

Meteorologist William Kininmonth, a former head of the Bureau of Meteorology’s National Climate Centre, said yesterday the globe was still coming out of the Little Ice Age. “The globe has been warming for the past 300 years and so it is not surprising that the recent decade is probably warmer than anything else we have experienced in the last century,” he said.

Engineer and climate modeller David Evans yesterday blamed an “urban heat island” effect on thermometers, as well as the location of many thermometers at airports, for the higher temperature data. He also claimed that the weather bureau’s unadjusted raw data showed a cooling trend of temperatures. “It’s pretty clear that global warming is not predominantly due to carbon dioxide,” Dr Evans said. But National Climate Centre climatologist Blair Trewin said yesterday that the latest data indicated that long-term warming was probably the result of increased carbon emissions.

“It’s pretty solid evidence that warming trends that we have seen over the last century globally are consistent with what we would expect given the change that has happened in the atmosphere,” Dr Trewin said. A lead author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, University of Melbourne meteorology professor David Karoly, said yesterday there was no doubt the increased temperatures recorded were the result of human factors. “It is clear that there will be ongoing warming globally and in Australia, and that that warming will accelerate due to increased emissions of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere,” he said.

With the release of new data the two camps have reacted flamboyantly which leaves me wondering what politics Rudd and Abbot will play when parliament resumes? It would be useful to now see some climate-change opinion polls for a glimpse of what a sample of Australians think about this issue..

Today’s Podcasts

For someone influenced by Bach’s music, this adds much to my appreciation.“Bach, the Evangelist”, Encounter, 27 December 2009, http://www.abc.net.au/rn/encounter/stories/2009/2783278.htm

Silver medallist at the New York Festivals, this Encounter finds Johann Sebastian in his upstairs apartment at St Thomas’ School, a ‘cantata factory.’ Seemingly oblivious to beasts in the town square, students in the corridors, and at least eight offspring at home, he produced the world’s greatest music.

And having spent much time in the arid north this inspired me to go back to some of those isolated jewels of red earth.

“The Composition of Souls”, Encounter, 3 January 2010, http://www.abc.net.au/rn/encounter/stories/2010/2750959.htm

Ludwig Leichhardt

In 1993 a group of men and women in the tiny township of Yowah in far Western Queensland told Encounter of their response to a vast and jewelled country of opals, red earth and heat. How did their response to land compare with the journals of explorer Ludwig Leichhardt who had travelled nearby and who is also represented in Patrick White’s Voss? This Encounter won a Silver Medal in the New York Radio Festivals for its reflections on European responses to remote Australia.

New Year’s Day 2010

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Mount Connor (Atila) is a 700 million year old sand and rock mesa west of Uluru.

From the Kitchen Window

Currawong — Marr Playground

Climate Change

This article is a useful indicator of why the USA will not adopt Climate Change protocols in the near future. As usual, selectively quoted.

Tom Switzer, “Don’t expect too much down Mexico way”, The Australian, 1 January 2010, http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/dont-expect-too-much-down-mexico-way/story-e6frg6zo-1225815087091

There are many reasons for the changing climate in Washington. Here are four of them:

First, both Congress and the White House remain pre-occupied with other policy priorities from overhauling the healthcare and immigration systems and increasing 30,000 troops to Afghanistan to implementing new Wall Street regulations and tackling double-digit unemployment and skyrocketing debt and deficit.

Second, polls and surveys Pew, Gallup, Zogby, Rasmussen show Americans are quickly losing faith in the science of man-made climate change. A Harris Poll found that those who believe that carbon dioxide leads to global warming have dropped from 71 per cent two years ago to only 51 per cent today. And this poll was conducted before Climategate erupted.

It may be the case that the thousands of leaked emails and documents from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit do not disprove the science of man-made global warming. But it is also true that the uproar over allegations that some IPCC scientists manipulated data, hid inconvenient evidence and tried to silence dissenting views has led to calls for government inquiries and congressional hearings into the scandal. After all, US tax dollars fund many climate scientists.

Third, world leaders are recognising that reaching a global consensus on climate change is even more difficult than reaching a global consensus on multilateral trade. China and India insist they won’t be part of what they see as an economic suicide pact. In Canada, a Kyoto signatory that has increased its emissions much faster than the US, the ETS bill is stalled in legislative limbo. In Australia, the conservative opposition parties just defeated Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. In the EU, cap and trade has not only been the victim of fraudulent traders; emissions from the 27 member states have increased by nearly 2 per cent since the ETS was implemented in 2005.

Fourth, this year is an American election year. A huge new energy tax that threatens to cut wages and jobs unnerves politicians facing a mid-term vote. And not just Senate Republicans either. “Blue Dog” Democrats from the South as well as “Brown Dog” Democrats from the Midwest and Great Plains, whose states are dependent on coal and manufacturing, are uneasy about the administration’s energy policies.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton says the US will help raise $US100 billion ($111bn) a year to defray the cost of climate-change mitigation in the developing world. But although the idea that rich nations should pay for poor nations to adapt to non-carbon technology may be accepted wisdom at Harvard University and The New York Times, it is hardly a vote winner in middle America during a recession. Imagine a Democrat senator from a Rust Belt state telling his coal mining constituents that they should pay higher taxes to help China become more energy efficient and more economically competitive.

Review

Geraldine Brooks  (2005), March, Harper Collins

This is a story of cruelty that I found difficult to finish. Brooks writes of floggings, murder, shocking medical procedures, post traumatic stress syndrome, pillage, slavery, incest and the US peoples’ treatment of African Americans during a year in the Civil War that swamps her ‘Little Women’ backdrop. Four of the six reviews below range from negative to somewhat supportive of the story of the missing Father from Little Women (which I have not read) and barely touch on the shock of Brooks’ narrative. I was left thinking that the hidden agenda in some of these reviews was that this Australian doesn’t know enough about the USA to write such a novel.

  • Christian Science Monitor review by Ron Charles
  • Washington Post review by Karen Joy Fowler
  • St. Petersburg Times review by Mindi Dickstein
  • January Magazine review by Sue Bursztynski (an exception – March is an entertaining tale with some interesting original characters as well as some reinterpreted Alcott characters, but there are a few gruesome scenes — my emphasis).
  • New York Times review by Thomas Mallon.
  • http://www.reviewsofbooks.com/march/ to read the above reciews.
  • Peter Pierce, The Age, 2 April 2005, http://www.theage.com.au/news/Reviews/March/2005/04/01/1112302217831.html. This is a distinguished book, a masterly reworking of what fiction and history have afforded Brooks’ vibrant and questing imagination.

It is a ‘distinguished book’ which, due to the superb writing, was disturbing. Well worth the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2006.

Today’s Podcast

This is an excellent warning about stereotyping our fellows.

“Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie at the Sydney Writers Festival”, TheBookShow, 24 December 2009, http://www.abc.net.au/rn/bookshow/stories/2009/2588360.htm

Thursday

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Uluru, Central Australia

Uluru, Central Australia

According to the Anangu traditional landowners of Uluru, the world was once a featureless place. None of the places we know existed until creator beings, in the forms of people, plants and animals, traveled widely across the land. Then, in a process of creation and destruction, they formed the landscape as we know it today. Anangu land is still inhabited by the spirits of dozens of these ancestral creator beings which are referred to as Tjukuritja or Waparitja.”

One account has Uluru built up during the creation period by two boys who played in the mud after rain. When they had finished their game they travelled south to Wiput. Another tells of serpent beings who waged many wars around Uluru, scarring the rock. A third tells of two tribes of ancestral spirits who were invited to a feast, but were distracted by the beautiful Sleepy Lizard Women and did not show up. In response, the angry hosts sang evil into a mud sculpture that came to life as the dingo. There followed a great battle, which ended in the deaths of the leaders of both tribes. The earth itself rose up in grief at the bloodshed, becoming Uluru. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uluru

Climate Change

I have just searched this weblog for ‘Climate change’ and recent postings show substantial confusion. When I read back over these comments and quotes, I can see a lobbying pattern emerging where the participants are:

Climate Change caused by CO2 emissions
  • Science activists
  • Green activists
  • Politicians
  • Coal activists
  • The esoteric – Lovelock
  • Affected industry spokespeople – insurance
CO2 Skeptics
  • Science activists
  • Politicians
  • The esoteric – Sunspots
  • Affected industry spokespeople  — resource extraction, electricity generation, et al.
  • The public

It would be foolish to attempt any predictions for the 2010 so I will continue watching and accumulating information that may eventually clarify the debate.

This article caught my attention:

“John Prescott defends China’s role at Copenhagen climate summit”, guardian.com.uk, 28 December, http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/dec/28/john-prescott-defends-china-copenhagen

John Prescott has defended China’s role in the climate change summit, saying the blame for its flawed outcome must lie with the United States and Barack Obama. The former deputy prime minister helped negotiate the Kyoto protocol in 1997, and was in Copenhagen acting as an informal bridge between the Chinese delegation and others.

In a letter to the Guardian, Prescott criticises the US climate change special envoy, Todd Stern, who “said at Copenhagen emissions weren’t about ‘morality or politics’, they were ‘just maths’, with China projected to emit 60% more CO2 than the US by 2030″.

… Prescott claims that Stern’s arguments “ignored the more transparent measure of pollution per capita, which shows the US emits 20 tonnes per person every year, compared to China’s six tonnes, whilst America’s GDP per person is almost eight times greater than the Chinese”. He also attacks President Barack Obama for suggesting there had been a period of “two decades of talking and no action. That might have been true in America, which refused to sign up to Kyoto, but not in the case of China or Europe, who followed a lot of that protocol’s policies. … Prescott is climate change convenor for the Council of Europe, with the role of exploring how to keep the talks on the road.

According to the lengthy defence of China’s actions, European nations repeatedly tried to impose secret drafts, unscheduled meetings and a hidden agenda on China and other developing nations.

Social Media

James Harkin, “Going Tweet and saying nothing”, SMH, 31 December, http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/going-tweet-and-saying-nothing-20091230-ljtm.html

Far from delivering a ”wisdom of crowds”, social networking sites create only a deafening banality, writes James Harkin.

In 2003, in an elaborate joke on New York’s media-savvy, empty-headed hipsters, a journalist called Bill Wasik sent around an anonymous email suggesting that they congregate at a department store at the same time and stare at a rug. The event was an enormous success, and became the world’s first documented example of a ”flash mob”. By the end of the decade, however, the joke was on all of us. Faced with any kind of group activity, our first response is: do any of them know how to use Twitter?

How did we get here? In the past decade, ideas about how society works have been treated to a glamorous new outing. It all began in 2000 with the publication of Malcolm Gladwell’s beautifully crafted bestseller The Tipping Point. Gladwell argued that, given the right kind of push, ideas or products can suddenly gain traction and pass around from person to person like a virus. In its wake came a slew of new thinking about how information and ideas cascade around the place and gather momentum. Then there was the influential idea that we can raise ourselves to a kind of collective intelligence – the so-called ”wisdom of crowds” – by arriving at our decisions independently and punching our best guesses into a computer.

Most of these new ideas took their cue from the time we’ve been spending online. In an age of rapid change in the way we’re communicating, that’s hardly surprising. It helped that many of these new ideas-entrepreneurs made excellent writers and talkers, capable of expressing their theories with more flair and less pomposity than the traditional homme serieux (Comment: Google has let me down – I cannot get a translation for this phrase). It would be churlish not to admit that there was something in their ideas, too. Online is a fantastically efficient way of sending a message out, and taking a pop at established industry authorities.

But the hard part is to find a message worth sending – it’s not good enough, as the internet gurus do, just to blow hard about the joys of a new medium. A succession of breathless internet evangelists have told weird and wonderful stories about young people who were using Facebook and Twitter to organise a whole new kind of politics. From Iran to Moldova, it was claimed, a new generation of activists had armed themselves with Twitter and were using it to fight political repression. ”You cannot have Rwanda again,” argued Gordon Brown in June, referring to the ”Twitter revolution” in Iran. ”This week’s events in Iran are a reminder of the way that people are using new technology to come together in new ways to make their views known.”

It all turned out to be wildly overcooked. Among activists and dissidents, Twitter and other social networking sites were useful in getting messages out of the country, but they turned out to be just as handy for the authorities who were trying to track them down. In any case, since only a tiny number of Iranians use Twitter – a mere 0.027 per cent, according to a forthcoming report from the British Council – it was never going to be much use in organising demonstrations.

I access Facebook several times a day, more in wonderment at the postings than for seeking the goings-on of ‘friends’. Here are some of my ‘friends’ postings:

  • SPA reunion lunch tomm. (Dec. 31) at Clay Oven, Green Park, New Delhi @ 2PM. Everyone’s welcome – please spread the message and join us :)
  • xxxxxx was tagged in a photo.
  • xxxxxx and yyyyyy are now friends.
  • My friend xxxxxx & yyyyyy have a baby girl .All ar well.
  • xxxxxx and yyyyyy are now friends (these two people have been in a rich partnership so becoming ’friends’ is a revelation).
  • xxxxxx Going to Perth shortly. Looks like another beautiful sunny day ahead (I have no idea how I became friends with this person).
  • xxxxxx must…discipline myself…write…WRITE!!! WRITE!!!!!!!!!!!!.
  • xxxxxx Just finished his … film treatment…last minute much!!?
    • yyyyyy  YAY YOU. Hey I’m editing mine this week…you never told me what you thought of the script

Methinks it may be time to look further into this new English that is developing.

Today’s Podcast

Unfortunately no longer downloadable but the transcript is available. I have often labeled Ramona Koval as an ill-disciplined blabber-mouth but her choice of guests over this holiday period has been exceptional; to the point where I need to relax my commentary.

“In conversation with Richard Holloway”, TheBookShow, 21 December, http://www.abc.net.au/rn/bookshow/stories/2009/2570367.htm

Richard Holloway is the controversial former bishop of Edinburgh and author of 25 books. In 2000 he resigned as bishop of Edinburgh in the Scottish Episcopal Church and now describes himself as a ‘Christian agnostic’. He was Gresham Professor of Divinity in the City of London and remains a Fellow of the Royal Society. Now in his mid-70s, Richard Holloway has written on morality and religion for many newspapers in Britain and is a mainstay on BBC Radio Scotland and BBC TV.

His many, many books include On Forgiveness (2002), Looking in the Distance (2004), Godless Morality (1999) and Doubts and Loves (2001). His latest book is Between the Monster and the Saint. Ramona Koval interviewed Richard Holloway at the Sydney Writer’s Festival.

Wednesday

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Gosses Bluff, Central Australia

Gosses Bluff is an impact crater in Central of Australia, about 175 km west of Alice Springs. It was formed by the impact of an asteroid or comet approximately 142 million years ago. The original crater rim has been estimated at about 22 km in diameter, but this has been eroded away. The 5 km diameter, 150 m high crater-like feature, now exposed, is interpreted as the eroded relic of the crater’s central uplift.

The site is known as Tnorala to the Western Arrernte Aboriginal people, and is a sacred place. It is now located in the Tnorala Conservation Reserve. A Western Arrernte story attributes its origins to a cosmic impact: in the Dreaming, a group of celestial women were dancing as stars in the Milky Way. One of the women grew tired and placed her baby in a wooden basket. As the women continued dancing, the basket fell and plunged into the earth. The baby fell to the earth and forced the rocks upward, forming the circular mountain range. The baby’s parents, the evening and morning star (Venus), continue to search for their baby. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gosses_Bluff_crater

Further Thoughts on the USA

Yesterday, the review of Sarah Palin’s Going Rogue prompted some thinking about the USA. This continues today.

For five weeks in 2004, we tootled through Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and Utah and had a wonderful and educational time. Beginning in Las Vegas, which was overwhelmingly amazing, we visited 30 National Parks and Monuments marveling at the vistas, the art, the craft and the super camping conditions. We also saw poverty and modern tribalism in the Indian reservations and discovered that Americans can talk but principally about themselves. This was at the beginning of the Iraq invasion and the wave of patriotism manifested in flags in front yards, on cars and Harley Davidsons, and the TV coverage was an experience. This exuberance has long vanished but it is an indicator of the naivety of US people.

This war and the invasion of Afghanistan, the sub-prime mortgage blow-out, the extraordinary bonuses, the incredible deficit; contributions that will I think, lead to the permanent sinking of the USA. Then there are the social discrepancies.

The minimum wage

Santa Fe has the highest minimum wage at $9.92 per hour as of January 1, 2009. Kansas for many years had the lowest state approved minimum wage, set at $2.65 per hour (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._minimum_wages). Our minimum wage is $14.31 per hour but casual work rates are $20 per hour.

Health insurance

How can this society accept 35 million uninsured people receiving sub-standard health care? Why does it cost $35,000 to have a baby? Why so much litigation concerning mal-practice? This morning I listened to Edward Albee talk of his play The Death of Bessie Smith (1959) who died from injuries in a car accident and was turned away from the hospital because she was black.

Australian taxpayers contribute 1.5 per cent of their taxable income to Medicare. To obtain extra insurance covering private hospitalization, dental, optical and other refunds, we pay a total of $170 a month (for the two of us) to a private insurer. Last year I had a melanoma cut out of my back, didn’t pay any additional fee and received a letter of thanks from the hospital for using their service.

Fundamentalism

We have our ‘fundamentalists’ and evangelicals but they pale beside the Jimmy Swaggert model that comfortably combines televangelism, money-gathering and adultery. And then there are the Waco, Texas massacres and the polygamous Mormons. We may have these weirdoes in Australia but they are well hidden.

Debt

Gross Debt is the national debt plus intra-governmental debt obligations or debt held by trust funds like the Social Security Trust Fund. Types of securities sold by the federal government include, but are not limited to, Treasury Bills, Notes, Bonds, TIPS, and United States Savings Bonds. This is now $10 trillion. Of this the Peoples Republic of China own more than $2 trillion (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_public_debt),

I can’t get an accurate debt for Australia but it appears to be about $80 billion.

Extraordinary intellects

On the positive we witness extraordinary cleverness. Above I mentioned Edward Albee; sharp at 81 and writing still. A remarkable collection of thinkers, artists, writers, academics and entrepreneurs. We have ours but not in the same numbers.

Conclusion

There are many similarities between the USA and Australia; the rawness mixing with the sophistication, the landscapes, but it is the magnitude of the grossness in the USA that is prefacing the decline of a society. Is it the ‘Decline and Fall Of the USA Empire’?

Today’s Podcast

“Edward Albee”. ArtWorks, 20 December, http://www.abc.net.au/rn/artworks/stories/2009/2712866.htm

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? remains the best known of all the plays Edward Albee has written, but there are 30 more of them and he’s still going. Now 81 years old, he has received many awards, including the three Pulitzer prizes for drama and numerous Tony Awards. Edward Albee has just been in Australia, where he had a conversation with actor and writer Jonathan Biggins at the Sydney Theatre.

Tuesday

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Mount Sondar, Central Australia

Mt Sondar, Central Australia.

Living under the flight path

Emirates A380

Notes from Xanadu

Cook-book

Posting to the weblog has been intermittent over the Christmas period. First came the excellent Colleen McCullough and yesterday, I worked on the cook-book. More recipes added and then sorted into menu types –- Starters, Soups and Frittatas, Lamb, Vegetables are some examples –- and bought a large new folder for better storage.

It has now got to the stage where I need to back-up and store off-site as I begin the test cooking. And the text requires much editing to conform to the style I have established. Received the ‘thumbs down’ on over-use of fish sauce in one vegetable dish so have added a cautionary note.

The garden

Several days of steady, light rain have done wonders to the garden. The basil and tomatoes have put on a great spurt. And we need to clear out one of the fish ponds which has been overgrown with papyrus and wisteria. Later today? Striped marsh frogs tok tokking away and also heard one in a neighbouring street this morning when walking the pooches – – perhaps one of ours migrating?

Climate Change

Another article by Michael Asten continues to strengthen the search for wider causes of global warming and climate change than the focus on CO2. As usual, quoted selectively.

Michael Asten, “More evidence CO2 not culprit”, The Australian, 29 December, http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/more-evidence-co2-not-culprit/story-e6frg6zo-1225814230258

THE Copenhagen climate change summit closed two weeks ago in confusion, disagreement and, for some, disillusionment. When the political process shows such a lack of unanimity, it is pertinent to ask whether the science behind the politics is as settled as some participants maintain. Earlier this month (The Australian, December 9) I commented on recently published results showing huge swings in atmospheric carbon dioxide, both up and down, at a time of global cooling 33.6 million years ago.

Paul Pearson and co-authors in a letter (The Weekend Australian, December 11) took exception to my use of their data and claimed I misrepresented their research, a claim I reject since I quoted their data (the veracity of which they do not contest) but offered an alternative hypothesis, namely that the present global warming theory (which was not the subject of their study) is inconsistent with the CO2-temperature variations of a past age.

Some senior scientists, who are adherents of orthodox global warming theory, do not like authors publishing data that can be used to argue against orthodoxy, a point made by unrelated authors with startling clarity in the Climategate leaked emails from the University of East Anglia. In the scientific method, however, re-examination of data and formulation of alternative hypotheses is the essence of scientific debate. In any case, the debate on the link between atmospheric CO2 and global temperature will continue since it is not dependent on a single result.

… we have two geological examples and two satellite data studies pointing towards a lesser role of CO2 in global warming. This argument does not discount the reality of global warming during the past century or the potential consequences should it continue at the same rate, but it does suggest we need a broader framework in considering our response. The Copenhagen summit exposed intense political differences in proposals to manage global warming. Scientists are also not unanimous in claiming to understand the complex processes driving climate change and, more important, scientific studies do not unambiguously point to a single solution. Copenhagen will indeed prove to be a historic meeting if it ushers in more open-minded debate.

Review

This review fostered further thinking about the USA. Finally, some sort of health care legislation has been passed by both chambers but what a shambles it is. From the country that promotes itself endlessly, a review of the legislation leaves me wondering, ‘what can they be thinking’? How can it be that it costs $US35,000 to have a baby. Perhaps the answer lies in something I read from Peter Singer –- the legislature is corrupted by lobbyist funding and to get the finance for their re-election Congress and Senate members have to toe the lobbyists’ line. I sense that we are witnessing the decline of the USA and selective quotes from this review give my feeling substance.

Jonathan Raban, “Sarah and Her Tribe”, New York Review of Books, 14 Januaty, 2010, http://www.nybooks.com/articles/23532

  • Going Rogue: An American Life by Sarah Palin, Harper, 413 pp., $28.99
  • Sarah from Alaska: The Sudden Rise and Brutal Education of a New Conservative Superstar, by Scott Conroy and Shushannah Walshe, PublicAffairs, 301 pp., $26.95

There’s a moment of near rapture in the video of Sarah Palin’s acceptance speech at the Republican convention in St. Paul on September 3, 2008. It begins in the eleventh minute, after her Westbrook Pegler quote (“We grow good people in our small towns…”) and before her “lipstick” quip about hockey moms and pit bulls. Following a nervous start, she is now entirely at ease in front of the biggest crowd of her speaking life, and riding high on the chants of “Sarah!” “USA!” and “Drill, baby, drill!” Her smile looks ecstatic, as she allows herself a snuffling chuckle at the acerbity of her own wit, then shows off her repertoire of little nods of self-approbation, complicit left-eye winks from behind her glasses, and lips smugly pursed to signal that an unanswerable point has just been made. When the camera cuts to the crowd, face after face is a joyful mirror image of Palin’s own, as if transfigured by a shared triumph.

Her nasal voice, pitched in the upper register, with the upsy-downsy, singsong delivery of a kindergarten teacher, became, rather improbably, a great electoral asset. Her diction and accent were shaped more by class than region, and spiced with faux-genteel cuss words like “dang,” “heck,” “darn,” “geez,” “bullcrap,” and “bass-ackwards.” It was a voice unspoiled by overmuch formal education and boldly unafraid of truisms and clichés; a perfect foil for Obama’s polished law-school eloquence.

Going Rogue is stuffed with dubious quotations from Famous Authors, among them one often attributed, but never reliably sourced, to Pascal: “the God-shaped vacuum in every human heart.” Unfortunately, there does seem to be a Palin-shaped vacuum in the heart of the American electorate, and it’s not hard to see why. After the ritual brandishing of the flag and her shout-outs to her fellow Christian fundamentalists, Palin’s core message is, as it always has been, about fiscal policy.

Palin’s general economic theory, so snugly adapted to Twitter’s 140- character limit, carries great weight. At a time when everyone should be clipping coupons, tightening belts, and buying generic peanut butter, Obama (Columbia and Harvard), Larry Summers (MIT and Harvard), Tim Geithner (Dartmouth and Johns Hopkins), and Peter Orszag (Princeton and London School of Economics) are out on a spending spree that is “baffling,” “nonsensical,” and “obscene.” But then what did we expect of the East Coast elites?

Against their transparent profligacy should be set the record of Sarah Palin (University of Idaho, School of Journalism and Mass Media). She made Wasilla hum, while putting an end to personal property taxes. … She not only makes economics perfectly comprehensible at the level of the kitchen table, she makes it work brilliantly in practice.

She’s much more deeply in touch with her followers than Ross Perot, Pat Buchanan, Ron Paul, Mike Huckabee, or any other recent candidate who’s tried to court the same constituency. (Admittedly, they also lacked her flirty sex appeal.) She has the knack of turning public debate sulfurous with a phrase, as she did last summer with her remark that Democrats want “death panels” in their health plan. She is a catalyst around whom the Tea Party movement is growing alarmingly in size and strength,

Having hoisted her banner of Commonsense Conservatism, and campaigned across the country by Lear jet and tour bus to promote Going Rogue, she’s unlikely to assuage her compulsion to be a winner merely by selling more books than anyone else during 2009′s holiday season.

A search on Google for ‘Tea Party’ brought up http://teapartypatriots.org/Default.aspx where ‘Taxed to Death’ is the theme and http://taxdayteaparty.com/ which is going to storm the Senate.

Today’s Podcast

A highly witty discussion on heaven.

“Stairway to Heaven”, The Spirit of Things, 27 December, http://www.abc.net.au/rn/spiritofthings/stories/2009/2777507.htm

Stairways, ladders, tunnels or rainbows: the way to heaven has been imagined since the beginning of time, and for some who’ve nearly died it’s been experienced. But for others, heaven isn’t a place so much as a state of mind or a state of soul. St John’s Anglican Church in East Malvern, Melbourne, is the venue for a discussion on heaven with guests, the Rev Dr Roger Ferlo of Virginia Theological Seminary, Indigenous writer Lillian Holt, and Senior Rabbi of Melbourne’s Temple Beth Israel, Fred Morgan