I have just read the book 'Born on a Blue Day' which is the memoirs of a man called Daniel Tammet. Daniel has aspergers syndrome but why he should be so interesting is the fact that he is also a savant. What is particularly unique about him is that he does not suffer from serious disability as so many other savants do. As a result of this he can actually describe the way he is able to perform the most amazing mathematical calculations. He has synaesthesia, whereby he visualises numbers as shapes with colour, texture, and movement. When he does calculations in his head, he does not consciously perform the arithmetic, he simply visualises two separate images, which merge together to create a third which represents the answer. It is fascinating to comprehend the way his mind works in such a way and it is also an example of the capabilities of the human brain. I was a bit disappointed with his book to be honest as I was hoping it would focus more on his intellectual abilities, however it was really just the story of his life so far.
http://www.optimnem.co.uk/
Friday, September 29, 2006
I'm no Einstein
Last night, after watching the football; I tried to explain to Mike and James the basic principle of the General Theory of Relativity, using a towel and a rugby ball.
Thursday, September 14, 2006
Consistency
I feel that the Indonesian justice system is flawed by evidence that it can sentence a person who has been involved in the violent deaths of 20 people, to just 15 years; when a boy who was 1/9th of a syndicate to smuggle drugs out of the country, can be sentenced to death.
Monday, September 11, 2006
Another Aussie legend down
Another big shock to Australians with the sad passing of the great Peter Brock.
There seems to be some kind of conspiracy going on to knock off Aussie legends. I am of the understanding that Shane Warne, John Eales, and Richie Benaud have been taken into protection by the authorities.
There seems to be some kind of conspiracy going on to knock off Aussie legends. I am of the understanding that Shane Warne, John Eales, and Richie Benaud have been taken into protection by the authorities.
Friday, September 08, 2006
Couldn't agree more
The following is an article written by Simon Jenkins in the Guardian today. I think it is an outstanding commentary on the current situation of 'global terrorism.' I could not agree more with the sentiments of this article and only wish there were more people who saw sense in the matter.
The weekend's 9/11 horror-fest will do Osama bin Laden's work for him
This repetitious publicity glorifies terrorism as a weapon of war, scaring us far more than the original explosions did.
Turn on the radio this week and a ghoulish voice from the bowels of the former World Trade Centre seeks to curdle your blood and chill your bones. It is yet another BBC trailer evoking the horror of the twin towers and the monster of evil, Osama bin Laden. The corporation is desperate to outdo other media outlets in their commemorations of the fifth anniversary of 9/11. They include movies by Oliver Stone and Paul Greengrass, and American and British 9/11 specials from stars such as Harvey Keitel and Kevin Costner called The Millionaire Widows, The Miracle of Staircase B, On Native Soil and numerous variants on twin towers. There are comic strips and videos and where-was-I-then memoirs. The weekend is to be wall-to-wall 9/11. Not glorifying terrorism? You must be joking.
The favourite line from the war on terror's military-industrial complex is that in 2001 Osama bin Laden "changed the rules of the game". (Forgotten is that he attacked the same target in 1993, his only error being one of civil engineering.) George Bush repeated the change thesis again on Wednesday in confirming his secret interrogation camps and excusing the five-year delay in bringing al-Qaida suspects to justice. Tony Blair cites the change with every curb on civil liberty. The "new" terrorism requires a new approach to public safety. The security industry cries amen.
Most of this is self-serving drivel. Nervous rulers have colluded with soldiers and businessmen throughout history to cite some ethnic or religious menace when needing more power and higher taxes. Political violence has become more promiscuous with suicide bombing and a consequent rise in kill rate per incident, but - as Matthew Carr shows in his book on terror, Unknown Soldiers - the change is one of degree.
Forty years after Alfred Nobel's invention of dynamite, Russian terrorists tried to pack a plane with the stuff and fly it into the tsar's palace. In 1883 Chicago-financed Fenians exploded bombs on the London underground, leading the Times to wonder if the tube could ever be safe. There has been little change in the preferred weapon of terror, the explosive device, or in the psychopathology of the bomber. The causes remain the same: separatism, and religious nationalism dressed up as holy war.
What has changed, grotesquely, is the aftershock. Terrorism is 10% bang and 90% an echo effect composed of media hysteria, political overkill and kneejerk executive action, usually retribution against some wider group treated as collectively responsible. This response has become 24-hour, seven-day-a-week amplification by the new politico-media complex, especially shrill where the dead are white people. It is this that puts global terror into the bang. While we take ever more extravagant steps to ward off the bangs, we do the opposite with the terrorist aftershock. We turn up its volume. We seem to wallow in fear.
Were I to take my life in my hands this weekend and visit Osama bin Laden's hideout in Wherever-istan, the interview would go something like this. I would ask how things have been for him since 9/11. His reply would be that he had worried at first that America would capitalise on the global revulsion, even among Muslims, and isolate him as a lone fanatic. He was already an "unwelcome guest" among the Afghans, and the Tajiks were out to kill him for the murder of their beloved leader, Ahmed Shah Massoud (which they may yet do). A little western cunning and he would have been in big trouble.
In the event Bin Laden need not have worried. He would agree, as did the CIA's al-Qaida analyst in Peter Taylor's recent documentary, that the Americans have done his job for him. They panicked. They drove the Taliban back into the mountains, restoring the latter's credibility in the Arab street and turning al-Qaida into heroes. They persecuted Muslims across America. They occupied Iraq and declared Iran a sworn enemy. They backed an Israeli war against Lebanon's Shias. Soon every tinpot Muslim malcontent was citing al-Qaida as his inspiration. Bin Laden's tiny organisation, which might have been starved of funds and friends in 2001, had become a worldwide jihadist phenomenon.
I would ask Bin Laden whether he had something special up his sleeve for the fifth anniversary. Why waste money, he would reply. The western media were obligingly re-enacting the destruction and the screaming, turning the base metal of violence into the gold of terror. They would replay the tapes and rerun the footage ad nauseam, and thus remind the world of his awesome power. Americans are more afraid of jihadists this year than last. In a Transatlantic Trends survey, the number of them describing international terrorism as an "extremely important threat" went up from 72% to 79%. As for European support for America's world leadership, that has plummeted from 64% in 2002 to 37% this year.
Bin Laden might boast that he had achieved terrorism's equivalent of an atomic chain reaction: a self-regenerating cycle of outrage and foreign-policy overkill, aided by anniversary journalism and fuelled by the grim scenarios of security lobbyists. He now had only to drop an occasional CD into the offices of al-Jazeera, and Washington and London quaked with fear. The authorities could be reduced to million-dollar hysterics by a phial of nail varnish, a copy of the Qur'an, or a dark-skinned person displaying a watch and a mobile phone.
A feature of democracy is freedom of information and speech. News of violence cannot be concealed since concealment fuels the climate of fear. The state should not censor news of terrorist incidents. As Milan Kundera asserted, "the struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting". But there are ways of not forgetting. A feature of democracy is also to reject arrest without trial, reject the use of torture, and reject retaliatory violence against people or groups. Democracy can apparently sacrifice these legal principles to guard against the 10% of terrorism that is bang. Why not restrain the publicity that fuels the other 90%, the aftershock? The boundary between news and scaremongering may be hard to define. But so is any boundary between liberty and security. What is so sacred about publicising terror as against habeas corpus?
Conceding the kudos of state censorship to jihadists should be as unthinkable as conceding arrest without trial. That does not excuse the politico-media complex from any responsibility for caution, a sense of proportion and self-restraint. The gruelling re-enactment of the London bombings in July and this weekend's 9/11 horror-fest are not news. They exploit grief and horror, and in doing so give gratuitous publicity to Bin Laden and al-Qaida. Those personally affected by these outrages may have their own private memorials. But to hallow the events with repetitious publicity turns a squalid crime into a constantly revitalised political act. It grants the jihadists what they most crave, warrior status. It more than validates terrorism as a weapon of war, it glorifies it.
The best way to commemorate 9/11 is with silence. Instead, Bin Laden must be laughing.
The weekend's 9/11 horror-fest will do Osama bin Laden's work for him
This repetitious publicity glorifies terrorism as a weapon of war, scaring us far more than the original explosions did.
Turn on the radio this week and a ghoulish voice from the bowels of the former World Trade Centre seeks to curdle your blood and chill your bones. It is yet another BBC trailer evoking the horror of the twin towers and the monster of evil, Osama bin Laden. The corporation is desperate to outdo other media outlets in their commemorations of the fifth anniversary of 9/11. They include movies by Oliver Stone and Paul Greengrass, and American and British 9/11 specials from stars such as Harvey Keitel and Kevin Costner called The Millionaire Widows, The Miracle of Staircase B, On Native Soil and numerous variants on twin towers. There are comic strips and videos and where-was-I-then memoirs. The weekend is to be wall-to-wall 9/11. Not glorifying terrorism? You must be joking.
The favourite line from the war on terror's military-industrial complex is that in 2001 Osama bin Laden "changed the rules of the game". (Forgotten is that he attacked the same target in 1993, his only error being one of civil engineering.) George Bush repeated the change thesis again on Wednesday in confirming his secret interrogation camps and excusing the five-year delay in bringing al-Qaida suspects to justice. Tony Blair cites the change with every curb on civil liberty. The "new" terrorism requires a new approach to public safety. The security industry cries amen.
Most of this is self-serving drivel. Nervous rulers have colluded with soldiers and businessmen throughout history to cite some ethnic or religious menace when needing more power and higher taxes. Political violence has become more promiscuous with suicide bombing and a consequent rise in kill rate per incident, but - as Matthew Carr shows in his book on terror, Unknown Soldiers - the change is one of degree.
Forty years after Alfred Nobel's invention of dynamite, Russian terrorists tried to pack a plane with the stuff and fly it into the tsar's palace. In 1883 Chicago-financed Fenians exploded bombs on the London underground, leading the Times to wonder if the tube could ever be safe. There has been little change in the preferred weapon of terror, the explosive device, or in the psychopathology of the bomber. The causes remain the same: separatism, and religious nationalism dressed up as holy war.
What has changed, grotesquely, is the aftershock. Terrorism is 10% bang and 90% an echo effect composed of media hysteria, political overkill and kneejerk executive action, usually retribution against some wider group treated as collectively responsible. This response has become 24-hour, seven-day-a-week amplification by the new politico-media complex, especially shrill where the dead are white people. It is this that puts global terror into the bang. While we take ever more extravagant steps to ward off the bangs, we do the opposite with the terrorist aftershock. We turn up its volume. We seem to wallow in fear.
Were I to take my life in my hands this weekend and visit Osama bin Laden's hideout in Wherever-istan, the interview would go something like this. I would ask how things have been for him since 9/11. His reply would be that he had worried at first that America would capitalise on the global revulsion, even among Muslims, and isolate him as a lone fanatic. He was already an "unwelcome guest" among the Afghans, and the Tajiks were out to kill him for the murder of their beloved leader, Ahmed Shah Massoud (which they may yet do). A little western cunning and he would have been in big trouble.
In the event Bin Laden need not have worried. He would agree, as did the CIA's al-Qaida analyst in Peter Taylor's recent documentary, that the Americans have done his job for him. They panicked. They drove the Taliban back into the mountains, restoring the latter's credibility in the Arab street and turning al-Qaida into heroes. They persecuted Muslims across America. They occupied Iraq and declared Iran a sworn enemy. They backed an Israeli war against Lebanon's Shias. Soon every tinpot Muslim malcontent was citing al-Qaida as his inspiration. Bin Laden's tiny organisation, which might have been starved of funds and friends in 2001, had become a worldwide jihadist phenomenon.
I would ask Bin Laden whether he had something special up his sleeve for the fifth anniversary. Why waste money, he would reply. The western media were obligingly re-enacting the destruction and the screaming, turning the base metal of violence into the gold of terror. They would replay the tapes and rerun the footage ad nauseam, and thus remind the world of his awesome power. Americans are more afraid of jihadists this year than last. In a Transatlantic Trends survey, the number of them describing international terrorism as an "extremely important threat" went up from 72% to 79%. As for European support for America's world leadership, that has plummeted from 64% in 2002 to 37% this year.
Bin Laden might boast that he had achieved terrorism's equivalent of an atomic chain reaction: a self-regenerating cycle of outrage and foreign-policy overkill, aided by anniversary journalism and fuelled by the grim scenarios of security lobbyists. He now had only to drop an occasional CD into the offices of al-Jazeera, and Washington and London quaked with fear. The authorities could be reduced to million-dollar hysterics by a phial of nail varnish, a copy of the Qur'an, or a dark-skinned person displaying a watch and a mobile phone.
A feature of democracy is freedom of information and speech. News of violence cannot be concealed since concealment fuels the climate of fear. The state should not censor news of terrorist incidents. As Milan Kundera asserted, "the struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting". But there are ways of not forgetting. A feature of democracy is also to reject arrest without trial, reject the use of torture, and reject retaliatory violence against people or groups. Democracy can apparently sacrifice these legal principles to guard against the 10% of terrorism that is bang. Why not restrain the publicity that fuels the other 90%, the aftershock? The boundary between news and scaremongering may be hard to define. But so is any boundary between liberty and security. What is so sacred about publicising terror as against habeas corpus?
Conceding the kudos of state censorship to jihadists should be as unthinkable as conceding arrest without trial. That does not excuse the politico-media complex from any responsibility for caution, a sense of proportion and self-restraint. The gruelling re-enactment of the London bombings in July and this weekend's 9/11 horror-fest are not news. They exploit grief and horror, and in doing so give gratuitous publicity to Bin Laden and al-Qaida. Those personally affected by these outrages may have their own private memorials. But to hallow the events with repetitious publicity turns a squalid crime into a constantly revitalised political act. It grants the jihadists what they most crave, warrior status. It more than validates terrorism as a weapon of war, it glorifies it.
The best way to commemorate 9/11 is with silence. Instead, Bin Laden must be laughing.
Wednesday, September 06, 2006
Give us a break
I admit that when I first heard that Steven Irwin had died, I was rather sad. He was basically a good man with good intentions and it is always sad when good people die. To be honest though, I thought they guy was generally annoying; portrayed the worst kind of Australian stereotype to the rest of the world; and was as thick as two short planks. While his death certainly brings me no joy, I'm not reaching for the kleenex.
Seriously though, what did people expect was going to happen to him? The guy spent most of his days teasing deadly animals, so surely one of them was eventually going to get him. Ok so when it came it wasn't how you would have imagined; mauled by a croc or bitten by a king brown snake would have been a greater possibility. Being killed by a sting ray is a rather unlikely event but when you keep putting yourself in harms way, no matter how good you might be at avoiding it, eventually you're going to get hurt; it's simple laws of probability.
The following is a quote from US talk show host Jay Leno, whose show Irwin had appeared on 11 times.
"I think for many Americans he's become the face of Australia and he was a great ambassador. He represented all that was good about the country."
That's the whole reason so many Australians were indifferent to him, because we didn't want him to be the face of our country. He does not in any way represent all that is good about Australia. There are endless reasons why Australia is great, and nearly all of them do not look, smell, sound, taste or feel like Steve Irwin did. What he did do was absolutely personify the ridiculous stereotype that Americans have about Australians. Even the Australian media have jumped on the band wagon now and are saying he was all that was to be Australian. Rubbish! I've lived in Australia for most of my life and I've never met an Australian like him before.
The media have latched onto all this drama and it's starting to make me sick. The guy was a simpleton, and an annoying one at that. The media are making him out to be Gandhi, give us a break! This is no national tragedy; it is not like JFK and it is not like Princess Di. Germaine Greer has had the balls to say what she thinks. She makes a fair point, and has been duly slated by the media. "How dare you say that about our Steve, he was a legend, a hero, how could you be so un-Austrlalian?"
Bollocks
Any shred of sorrow I had for the guy has been washed away by the endless flood of bullshit excreted by the media. He lived his life like it was a big circus and now that's exactly what his death is too.
Further reading
Seriously though, what did people expect was going to happen to him? The guy spent most of his days teasing deadly animals, so surely one of them was eventually going to get him. Ok so when it came it wasn't how you would have imagined; mauled by a croc or bitten by a king brown snake would have been a greater possibility. Being killed by a sting ray is a rather unlikely event but when you keep putting yourself in harms way, no matter how good you might be at avoiding it, eventually you're going to get hurt; it's simple laws of probability.
The following is a quote from US talk show host Jay Leno, whose show Irwin had appeared on 11 times.
"I think for many Americans he's become the face of Australia and he was a great ambassador. He represented all that was good about the country."
That's the whole reason so many Australians were indifferent to him, because we didn't want him to be the face of our country. He does not in any way represent all that is good about Australia. There are endless reasons why Australia is great, and nearly all of them do not look, smell, sound, taste or feel like Steve Irwin did. What he did do was absolutely personify the ridiculous stereotype that Americans have about Australians. Even the Australian media have jumped on the band wagon now and are saying he was all that was to be Australian. Rubbish! I've lived in Australia for most of my life and I've never met an Australian like him before.
The media have latched onto all this drama and it's starting to make me sick. The guy was a simpleton, and an annoying one at that. The media are making him out to be Gandhi, give us a break! This is no national tragedy; it is not like JFK and it is not like Princess Di. Germaine Greer has had the balls to say what she thinks. She makes a fair point, and has been duly slated by the media. "How dare you say that about our Steve, he was a legend, a hero, how could you be so un-Austrlalian?"
Bollocks
Any shred of sorrow I had for the guy has been washed away by the endless flood of bullshit excreted by the media. He lived his life like it was a big circus and now that's exactly what his death is too.
Further reading
Monday, September 04, 2006
Increased Security Levels in Europe
The British are feeling the pinch in relation to recent bombings and have raised their security level from "Miffed" to "Peeved." Soon, though, security levels may be raised yet again to "Irritated" or even "A Bit Cross." Londoners have not been "A Bit Cross" since the Blitz in 1940 when tea supplies all but ran out. Terrorists have been re-categorized from "Tiresome" to a "Bloody Nuisance." The last time the British issued a "Bloody Nuisance" warning level was during the great fire of 1666.
Also, the French government announced yesterday that it has raised its terror alert level from "Run" to "Hide." The only two higher levels in France are Surrender" and "Collaborate." The rise was precipitated by a recent fire that destroyed France's white flag factory, effectively paralysing the country's military capability.
It's not only the English and French that are on a heightened level of alert. Italy has increased the alert level from "Shout Loudly and Excitedly" to "Elaborate Military Posturing." Two more levels remain: "Ineffective Combat Operations" and "Change Sides."
The Germans also increased their alert state from "Disdainful Arrogance" to "Dress in Uniform and Sing Marching Songs." They also have two higher levels: "Invade a Neighbour" and "Lose."
Belgians, on the other hand, are all on holiday as usual, and the only threat they are worried about is NATO pulling out of Brussels.
Also, the French government announced yesterday that it has raised its terror alert level from "Run" to "Hide." The only two higher levels in France are Surrender" and "Collaborate." The rise was precipitated by a recent fire that destroyed France's white flag factory, effectively paralysing the country's military capability.
It's not only the English and French that are on a heightened level of alert. Italy has increased the alert level from "Shout Loudly and Excitedly" to "Elaborate Military Posturing." Two more levels remain: "Ineffective Combat Operations" and "Change Sides."
The Germans also increased their alert state from "Disdainful Arrogance" to "Dress in Uniform and Sing Marching Songs." They also have two higher levels: "Invade a Neighbour" and "Lose."
Belgians, on the other hand, are all on holiday as usual, and the only threat they are worried about is NATO pulling out of Brussels.
Up the Students
Congrats to Sydney University Rugby Club on winning both the first grade and second grade grand finals for the second year in a row. Uni is a great club and I hope that they, along with other strong clubs in Sydney and Brisbane fight against the imposition of the proposed national competition next year. This is not what Australian rugby needs, the third tier competition already exists and it exists at club level. Rugby power brokers should be pouring funds into the already existing club structure and strengthening it even further. Clubs like Uni, Randwick, and Eastwood are already producing the bulk of the Wallabies, so they clearly represent a strong foundation in Australian rugby. Why introduce a new competition with 8 brand new teams? These teams have no financial backing, no supporters base, no tradition or history. Surely it would be better to enhance the current club competition when a club like Uni already has a base of players, fans, sponsors and the history and tradition associated with being the oldest rugby club outside of the British Isles.
If a national competition is what we must have, then let's make it one made out of existing clubs. Take the strongest clubs from Sydney and Brisbane, add in the Canberra Vikings and a team from Perth. A first and reserve grade competition could exist concurrently within this format; lower grades, as well as the remaining Sydney and Brisbane teams not included in the national comp, could continue the club competitions in their current format. Surely this is a recipe for success! At the very least it is a much more cost effective option than what is currently being proposed. The national competition as it has been proposed is a huge risk and faces losses amounting to millions of dollars within its first few years.
The powers that be at Australian Rugby headquarters need to look at what has and what currently makes Australian rugby strong; that is, the foundation and strength that Sydney and Brisbane club rugby provides. The people who support their clubs at this level are the real supporters of the game, don't take away the clubs they support!
The ARU should give Australian rugby supporters what they want, and not what they think they should have.
If a national competition is what we must have, then let's make it one made out of existing clubs. Take the strongest clubs from Sydney and Brisbane, add in the Canberra Vikings and a team from Perth. A first and reserve grade competition could exist concurrently within this format; lower grades, as well as the remaining Sydney and Brisbane teams not included in the national comp, could continue the club competitions in their current format. Surely this is a recipe for success! At the very least it is a much more cost effective option than what is currently being proposed. The national competition as it has been proposed is a huge risk and faces losses amounting to millions of dollars within its first few years.
The powers that be at Australian Rugby headquarters need to look at what has and what currently makes Australian rugby strong; that is, the foundation and strength that Sydney and Brisbane club rugby provides. The people who support their clubs at this level are the real supporters of the game, don't take away the clubs they support!
The ARU should give Australian rugby supporters what they want, and not what they think they should have.
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