Yankees Clinch Post Season Berth

The Usual Rhetoric About October Followed

Yep. The Yankees secured the Wild Card. They probably won't win the AL East, but it's nice to know that they will likely play Cleveland in the ALDS. It's not an easy opponent, but historically speaking, and even in this season alone, the Angels plain kill the Yankees in a short series. If the Yanks have to face them, it would be better in a 7 game set. So it's sort of worked out well in terms of match ups. But again, it is a post-season and the hottest team ins. Bring on October Ball!

When you look at the above photo, it's hard to imagine these to guys are anything but good team mates. A-Rod had this to say according to Peter Abraham:

“This feels like home. It’s hard to believe that I played for another two organizations. So much has happened to me here, adversity, some success, that I feel like anything but New York feels weird for me now.”

People say they'd be surprised if A-Rod doesn't exercise his opt-out clause. I have a hunch that if they win it all this year, he most certainly won't opt out.
Call me crazy, but A-Rod's human too. Where's he going to go to top it all after he wins it all after a MVP season in New York?
Chicago? Yeah, sure.

Bob Collins, Senator, Statesman, Pedophile & Rapist

Somebody Help Us Out Here!

Bob Collins was a Senator. He was an important statesman in days of my youth. What I saw of him as a politician was a solidly policy-based, tough, direct kind of guy who would not mince words. He'd tell us, the people of Australia, straight if it was going to work or not. For years, I was comfortable with that impression and never revisited it. I really thought he was one of the few men of integrity in a sleazy business.
Now it turns out he was up for charges in child rape.

A MAN has told how the late Labor minister Bob Collins raped him when he was a 12-year-old, while watching pornographic videos in his Senate office.

Ben Helwend has told Fairfax Media that Collins was a friend of his family in Darwin and offered to pay for his journey to Canberra in 1989 so he could learn about the workings of democracy.

"Over a period of four days in Canberra he penetrated me, masturbated me and had me [perform oral sex]," Mr Helwend, 30, said. "I was just 12. I didn't know anything about sex and I was scared not to do as Mr Collins asked me because I played with his kids and my mum and dad were friends of the Collins family."

The Federal Government has granted Collins, 61, a state funeral in Darwin this Saturday following his death last Friday - just three days before he was due to face a committal hearing in Darwin on child sex offences against another three boys in the western Arnhem Land township of Maningrida some 30 years ago. The charges were dropped on Monday, but now there are claims Collins committed suicide to avoid the humiliation of being prosecuted.

Collins was also charged in Canberra last September with two counts of committing acts of indecency on Mr Helwend and one count of sexual intercourse with the child in the capital when he was a senator in September 1989. Mr Helwend said last night his lawyer had told him those charges had also been dropped.

He has come forward as The Bulletin, published today, details allegations by the Aboriginal actor Tom E. Lewis of being sexually assaulted by Collins.

"It's caused a lot of bitterness, and twistedness in my spirit," Lewis tells the magazine. "I've been beaten, flogged, you name it, when I was a kid. I can forgive those people. I've been ripped and called a f---in' whitefella in a black community. Everything. I can still forgive those people. I've got no room to forgive this Collins. Bullshit. [If] black people rape everybody and anybody who do anything like that, they have their name splattered everywhere."

What do we make of this?
Here's Bob Collins according to Wikipedia.

Federal Politics & Senate
In the 1987 federal election, Collins was elected to the Australian Senate representing the Northern Territory.
The Prime Minister Bob Hawke chose Collins as Minister for Shipping on 4 April 1990, and a month later on 7 May, Aviation Support was also added to his portfolio. In addition, he served during that term as Minister assisting the Prime Minister for Northern Australia. In May 1992, Prime Minister Paul Keating elevated Collins to the Cabinet as Minister for Transport and Communications. In December 1993, he was made Minister for Primary Industries and Energy.
After the Coalition lead by John Howard won the 1996 election, Collins continued to serve in the Senate until he resigned on 30 March 1998; Trish Crossin was

Honors:
In the Australia Day Honours of 2004, Collins was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) for services to the Northern Territory and indigenous rights.[3] appointed to his Senate seat.

The section covering the Child Sex allegations are twice as long.

On 19 June 2004, Collins was involved in a serious car accident when his car rolled over as he swerved to avoid a pig on the road near the town of Jabiru. He was taken to Royal Darwin Hospital, then flown to Adelaide, South Australia on 22 June for specialised surgery.[4]
As Collins recovered in hospital in Adelaide, officers of the Northern Territory Police flew to his hospital bedside to inform him that his home had been raided and that he was charged with child-sex offences. His home computer had been seized that prosecutors said contained 54 child-porn images[5]. Additionally four men had made allegations that Collins had sexually assaulted them as children, more than thirty years previously.[6] One of the alleged victims was Tom E. Lewis, a young actor who had played the title role in the 1978 Australian film The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith.[7]
Another allegation was made in 2006 of the sexual assault of a 12-year-old boy in Canberra in September 1989. Collins was charged with two counts of committing an act of indecency and one count of sexual intercourse with a child.[8]
Collins's continuing medical problems, including surgery for bowel cancer and injuries from his car accident, meant that he was unfit to attend the ACT Magistrates' Court for four scheduled hearings of the case in September and December 2006 and March and May 2007.[9][10]
An additional charge of possession of child pornography was set down against Collins in the Darwin Magistrates' Court in November 2006. Collins faced 21 child sex charges in the Northern Territory which were due for a committal hearing in April 2007. The child pornography charge was due for a hearing in the same court on 1 May.[11] He died before he could face court.

Appalling. So the whole thing got me thinking.

Thought No.1 - Innocent Until Proven Guilty?
What really gets me about this case is that Bob Collins being a former Senator probably got a substantial amount of protection exactly for having been a Senator and a man of considerable standing in the Northern Territory. So you wonder how innocent we can imagine him to be, given the amount of documented allegations. How can there be no fire with so many strands of smoke? And yet, we must all be vigilant and say innocent until proven guilty. If indeed Bob Collins has committed suicide, then he's evaded all charges. But was it worth dying for?
If you were going to commit suicide over your sexual proclivities, no matter how offensive, why do it? Was he insane? Was he deluded? What the hell was he thinking? Assuming he did it all, that is.

The point is, now we'll never know even on a juridical level - As in we won't even get to test justified true belief of whether he committed these heinous acts or not. However, I am saying that I now have justified belief that Bob Collins was a Child Rapist. Is that unfair? Well, as a cynic let me say this: I have to raise the bar of my cynicism considerably higher not to think so. Short of doing so, I have to assume that they're all somehow perverts.
John Howard? Rat-Fucker.
Kevin Rudd? Dog-Fucker
Peter Costello? Pig-Fucker.
Julia Gillard? Snake-Fucker.
Tony Abbott? Croc-Fucker.
Wayne Swann? Drug-Fucked.
George Brandis? Got his penis caught in a milking device when he was 12.

Who's to say the dirt on just who and what they fuck, won't come out on these people one of these years?

Thought No.2 - Who Knew About This Shite? Who Else Has Dirt?
"Bob Collins = Child Rapist" is such a shocking concept that I am asking myself, how did he get to be Senator?
Didn't anybody know? Or did they knowingly just let it slide?
What else is being hidden in Canberra's halls of power and press gallery?

BTW, I was told of a guy who moved to Canberra as a gigolo. He found so much work doing the wives of politicians, that he got to know so much about how Australian politics worked and was so disgusted he moved back to Sydney. What's amazing - apart from the fact that politicians' wives are so unimaginative that they all want to be serviced by the one guy - is that sex & sleaze is the order of the day in Canberra. So I ask again, who else knew about this shite, and what else aren't they printing?

Thought No 3 - Are His Crimes Enough To Cancel Out His Good Deeds?
What are the good deeds of Bob Collins the pollie? I can't actually recall. It's not like Paul Keating who reigned supreme as Treasurer and PM; he's not even Gareth Evans who was balling Cheryl Kernot senseless in his office while attending to *Foreign Affairs* (yeah, right); he wasn't even John Dawkins who brought Tertiary Education to its knees in this country.
But surely he must have done some good.

Now that he's been found out to have been a dirty little child-molester, we can all say yar-boo-sucks to that and flush his legacy down the toilet - because he sure did a good job of shoving it in there in the first place. I ask you, is this how we should be remembering our statesmen? This particular statesman?
If yes, then I think I'm forever done reading the news on politics. Whatever they may do, they fuck one goat or child and it's all in vain. And from Thought 2, we've established that they could be fucking anybody and any thing.

Thought No.4 - Politicians As Role Models?
There's this cult of people that screams blue murder every time an athlete turns out to be less of a man than he is an athlete. Take Andrew 'Joey' Johns and his drug habit. It didn't surprise me in the least bit that Andrew Johns was doing drugs for his entire career; that he never got caught; and 'fessed up afterwards.
However, some people say "he should have thought of his young fans. A Star is a Role Model."
After all, a traumatised kid in 1921 did ask of Black Sox's Shoeless Joe Jackson "Say It Ain't So, Joe!"
I think it's simply too much to ask of a boof-head pituitary case to be a great man as well as a great athlete. However, how about politicians? These are the very people who are *lawmakers*. If anybody should be leveled with the "Say It Ain't So", it should be politicians.
So on that line of thought... Bob Collins... WTF!?

Clearly, we all should be jumping up and down screaming our tits off because the Role Models have let us down badly. But you know what? People will just let this slide and go back to the booths to vote in the next person who they only know by name and affiliation. No wonder there are those who think Democracy is little more than Mob-ocracy.

Thought No. 5 - No Wonder the Right Hates the Left
One of the surest things in the politics is that the Right is always out to show that the Left is less than they claim they are. It delights the Right that a social reformist turns out to be nothing but a pedophile. Indeed The Angry Fat Man would be having a (pardon the pun) ball dancing on the 'corruption of the Labor Party' that allowed such a man into the halls of power on this land.
Christ almighty, what can the Left say about that?
It's unfair? He's innocent until proven guilty but he can't stand trial so he's always going to be seen as innocent?

Whatever the case, it seems to me that the Labor Party will have trouble living this one down. They may as well have had a vampire or Frankenstein's monster or an ex-NAZI in the House for those years.

The Left always stands up for obscure causes. Heroin Injection Rooms. Legalising Marijuana use. Dugongs in Okinawa. Nukes in France. Gay Rights. It's a miracle they won't stand up for Pedophile's Rights except for the fact that they stood up for Children's Rights already.
Now, I'm not saying it's wrong to do so, but you can see that the Conservatives and Reactionaries and Right Wingers are all going to see it as defending the moral decline of Civilization. That the Left want to stick up for things that brought down the mighty Roman Empire, is sufficient reason to anger the Right. Things like homosexuality drug-taking, and being kind to the slaves and all that...

Thought No.6 - Bob Collins As Gilles De Rais
Has It Always Been Like This?
I've been re-reading Georges Bataille's account of the trial of Gilles de Rais. Gilles was a man with power in his society, who used it to satisfy his peculiar lust. By the victim's accounts, Bob Collins seems to be in the same vein except without the killings. All the same, he seems to have been just as rapacious and predatory.
It's a crappy deal, but ever so often we get a total pervert who gets away with evil-shit acts for years, and that it has happened through out history. Thanks for the reminder Bob Collins, you evil pig-bastard.

My Song Of The Week

A Complete Newie!

Sometimes it takes a little while for a song to see the light of day. This one probably has taken over a decade, and it makes me feel a little guilty. It's a bit of a trip through how obliquely alienated I felt a while back, so much so that I couldn't bring myself to say what I wanted to say to this woman; but you get that. You hit a point where the repetition of asking women out and getting somewhere only to find it un-fulfilling for both parties, was a hallmark of my life at the time.

This song was born from those moments.

Super Bug From Space

You'd Think It Was Sci-Fi

Bacteria sent out to outer space come back strong.
Yep. It's like a B- Movie Plot, but here it is.

The germ: Salmonella, best known as a culprit of food poisoning. The trip: Space Shuttle STS-115, September 2006. The reason: Scientists wanted to see how space travel affects germs, so they took some along — carefully wrapped — for the ride. The result: Mice fed the space germs were three times more likely to get sick and died quicker than others fed identical germs that had remained behind on Earth.

"Wherever humans go, microbes go, you can't sterilize humans. Wherever we go, under the oceans or orbiting the earth, the microbes go with us, and it's important that we understand ... how they're going to change," explained Cheryl Nickerson, an associate professor at the Center for Infectious Diseases and Vaccinology at Arizona State University.

Nickerson added, in a telephone interview, that learning more about changes in germs has the potential to lead to novel new countermeasures for infectious disease.

She reports the results of the salmonella study in Tuesday's edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The researchers placed identical strains of salmonella in containers and sent one into space aboard the shuttle, while the second was kept on Earth, under similar temperature conditions to the one in space.

After the shuttle returned, mice were given varying oral doses of the salmonella and then were watched.

After 25 days, 40 percent of the mice given the Earth-bound salmonella were still alive, compared with just 10 percent of those dosed with the germs from space. And the researchers found it took about one-third as much of the space germs to kill half the mice, compared with the germs that had been on Earth.

The researchers found 167 genes had changed in the salmonella that went to space.

Why?

"That's the 64 million dollar question," Nickerson said. "We do not know with 100 percent certainty what the mechanism is of space flight that's inducing these changes."

However, they think it's a force called fluid shear.

"Being cultured in microgravity means the force of the liquid passing over the cells is low." The cells "are responding not to microgravity, but indirectly to microgravity in the low fluid shear effects."

"There are areas in the body which are low shear, such as the gastrointestinal tract, where, obviously, salmonella finds itself," she went on. "So, it's clear this is an environment not just relevant to space flight, but to conditions here on Earth, including in the infected host."

She said it is an example of a response to a changed environment.

"These bugs can sense where they are by changes in their environment. The minute they sense a different environment, they change their genetic machinery so they can survive," she said.

Worse the devil you know if it goes and come back from Space, then.

'Pizza Driver' On You Tube

What Took Me So Long?


I Dunno... :)

Looking Back

Mike Lowell vs Scott Brosius


Given the way things go, the cup is always half full/empty when you look back at trades - it's not surprising it fills us with the thoughts of what could have been. Trading away Mike Lowell and keeping Scott Brosius was one of the toughest decisions to stomach back in the off-season of 1998-99. I have often wondered what Mike Lowell's career would have looked like as a Yankee - even if it means non Aaron Boone.

There's an excellent article here by Steven Goldman on the '98-'99 off season where the Yankees opted to trade away a younger layer they developed in favor of keeping a player who had played well for them.

Brian Cashman became the general manager of the Yankees on February 3, 1998. Within days, he consummated his first major deal, sending four prospects — one of them the former first round pick Eric Milton, then 22 — for All-Star second baseman Chuck Knoblauch. Cashman didn't have to weigh too many other player acquisitions during the course of that season, as the Yankees went 114–48 and cruised to a championship. That winter, though, Cashman had to make his first major choice between youth and experience. Still learning, and not calling all his own shots, Cashman chose according to the Steinbrenner/Yankee way.

This early crucible was centered on third base and Lowell. The incumbent third baseman, Scott Brosius, had declared free agency. Brosius was a terrific fielder and inconsistent hitter who had happened to hit .300 AVG /.371 OBA /.472 SLG in a season where nearly everything touched by the Yankees was blessed. The year before, he had hit .203/.259/.317. In 1996 he had hit .304/.393/.516. Most hitters will hit within a fairly narrow range, but not Brosius. There was no way of knowing what kind of hitter he would be. But at 32, a dangerous age for a ballplayer of middling skills, he was more likely to be down again than up.

Also in 1998, Lowell had gotten his first cup of coffee in the majors, appearing with the Yankees on September 13. He had been a 20th-round draft pick in 1995, which meant that the Yankees, as well as every other team, thought of him as little more than filler for their minor league rosters. He did not prove the prediction wrong right away, but began a strengthening program in 1996 that would result in more power. The next year, as a 23-year-old playing in Double-A, he exploded, batting .344/.438/.561 with 15 home runs. Promoted to Triple-A halfway through the season, he batted .276/.348/.562 with another 15 home runs. In the winter of 1997, the Yankees traded pitcher Kenny Rogers for Brosius, who had largely been an everyday utility player for the Oakland A's — he was almost always in the lineup, but often at a position other than third.

Lowell was blocked, but only temporarily, as Brosius's contract had just a year to run. Returning to Triple-A Columbus during the 1998 season, Lowell had another strong season, batting .304/.351/.535 and knocking another 26 home runs. He had shown that his offensive improvement was for real. His defense was considered to be acceptable. The Yankees were, as ever, not a young team.

Anyway, the Yankees signed up Brosius for 3 more years, won 2 more World Series and got as far as Game 7 in another. However, Brosius was a mediocre hitter in 1999-2001, nowhere near the "300 AVG /.371 OBA /.472 SLG" hitter he was in 1998.

If you read the article Steven Goldman goes on to point out that trading away Lowell was a mistake in retrospect, but that the decision could not have been known at the time. There's an element of truth to this, but the article got me thinking: If we applied what we know now, what kind of answers would we get?

So without further-a-do, here is Scott Brosius' career stats.

What pops out are how good he was in 1996 and 1998. Cutting to the chase, the career graph of his OBP looks like this.

And his career graph of his career AVE has a similar shape. In other words, his OBP was highly dependent on which way his batting average went. In fact his walk rate was below average for most of his career except for 1996. Which leads me to this next point, his BABIP line.

BABIP: Batting Average on Balls In Play, is the flip-side of DIPS theory as discovered by Voros McCracken in 2001 - 3 years after the Brosius contract was handed out. In short, it measures how lucky or unlucky you are with the bounce of the ball, once hit. You might hit it to a fielder, you might hit it into the gap. On average, it's about .300 across the league.
Turns out, Brosius was considerably 'luckier' than his career norm as well as the league in 1996 and 1998.

In fact, if you take out '96 and '98, Brosius' BABIP ranges between .214 and .276 during the rest of his career. If nothing else this indicates that he was a slowish runner and/or played in pitchers' parks. Clearly, the high water marks of .336 and.338 were anomalous by about 60 points to a hundred.
So if you took those 60 points out of the "300 AVG /.371 OBA /.472 SLG", you're looking at a .240/.311/.412 sort of player.
In 1999, Brosius turned in a very similar .247/.304/.417.
Yikes! That was no joke. Steven Goldman goes on to write:

In retrospect, it appears that the Yankees were simply traveling the convoluted road that would lead to Alex Rodriguez, but that was not predestined. If not for a contract snag, Rodriguez would today be with the Red Sox. Good luck rescued the Yankees from their initial decision to choose Brosius over Lowell (though the cost was high in resources spent), as well as other similarly incorrect lessons: When the Yankees won two World Series in spite of Brosius's decline, it seemed to inculcate the idea that the team could make the same sloppy decisions it always had, favoring mediocre veterans over promising youth, and still prosper. With no championships since 2000 and a recent sea change in the way they treat young players, it seems safe to say the Yankees know better now.

So the Yankees were sucked in by even the high OBP, which was highly dependent on his BA, which was highly dependent on the bounce of the ball-in-play. Why didn't they pick this? Well, it's because DIPS theory really didn't come about until after the turn of the millennium. It's hard to fault the Yankees for wanting to keep the guy with the .371 OBP given the information at the time. Plus, you could look at it as the Yankees having gotten very lucky to have had 2 of Brosius' fluke seasons. But it still rankles; and you do wonder if the same choices came up again, whether they'd make the right call for the right reasons, or the wrong reasons.

As for the trade iself, the truly telling part is this page.

Lowell would have been just as good a hitter in 99, and '01, and been an upgrade in 2000, not to mention a pretty good hitter since then except for 2005 where he produced like Brosius in his ordinary years.

What's interesting otherwise is that they both had significant down years at age 31, but that would just be coincidence.

Yankees Update

2.5 Games Back


It's not so much that I'm an optimist as I just don't quit. It's a bad trait. However, here we are at the tail end of the season, 11 games to play for the Yankees and 10 for the Bosox, and the Yankees are trailing by 2.5 games. I don't believe in miracles, but I do believe the Bosox could choke-and-fold while the Yankees pursue them into the post-season. Seeing that the Tigers are now 4 games out from the Wild Card leading Yanks, the AL post-season teams are looking pretty set.

So do the Yankees *need* to win the the division when they're going to get to October Baseball anyway? Probably not. But there is this niggling thought that keep having where I feel the echoes of 1978. That's right. This Yankee team has a little bit of the same kind of magic. Unlike the 2004, 2005 and 2006 editions which had truly difficult guys to root for (Esteban Loaiza, Kevin Brown, Randy Johnson, Jaret Wright, Tony Womack et al.), this team is more like the older dynasty teams as well as a little bit of the Bronx Zoo. It's got Guidry coaching for a start. As teams go, I feel like they can really do some damage this year, as they have since the All-Star break.

In other non-news... Shelley Duncan signed this autograph for this kid in Bosox gear:

Anyway, I thought I'd mouth off now because 2.5 games is as close as it's been in a very long time. To claw back to here and the Wild Card lead after the disastrous start is victory in of itself.

Puttin' It Into Perspective

The Orphaning of Intellectualism In Australia
I was talking to my brother yesterday about various topics du jour, and obviously the looming, but as yet unannounced election was one of those things. He pointed out that as a University Lecturer, he didn't see the Labor Party getting in as any panacea to the woes of the Tertiary Education Sector.

As some readers may recall, I took an axe to the ALP's record in the Tertiary Education Area right at former ALP Senator Rosemary Crowley last New years' Eve. Half of my gripes about the Dawkins Reform come from my observations off what makes tertiary Education suffer so under the current Howard Administration. The fact is, the damages were done before anything John Howard did - and he really didn't do much except cut things further. In other words, there was nothing qualitatively different between the two major parties. Its been years since the Dawkins Reforms were enacted and there is nothing to say the ill side effects of those policies would be reversed under a new ALP.

So what is so wrong with all this? Under the current system, students are compelled to be totally results driven. So the most common question from a student is not going to be "could you explain that better please?" but "Is this going ot be in the exam?"
The students are results-driven because they see their degrees as a stamp of approval that they need to go get successful careers, which is fine. Except my brother says there is a palpable pain when it come to havin to think. In other words, they would rather have the answer than the idea, because the idea requires thinking. Holding an answer in your head only requires memory.

Students were probably always anxious to get to the end and start their wonderful lives, my brother says, but the best thing about Tertiary Education is that one gets time to think. The system right now takes away the opportunity for thought that existed before. Thought is not a luxury, but a necessity.

UPDATE: Just as I wrote the above, I notice this article.

PUBLIC spending on higher education remains well below the levels in other developed countries, the Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development
says.

While spending from all sources in Australia's universities was just above the OECD average, most came from private funds. Astralia ranked with the United States, Korea, Chile and Japan as countries with more than half their annual investment in universities from private sources.

Australia's public spending on higher education was among the lowest of the 34 developed countries covered by the OECD report, with only Russia, Brazil, Japan, Italy, Korea and Chile spending less in public funds on their institutions as a proportion of their economic output.

In its annual snapshot, Education at a Glance, released yesterday in Paris, the OECD also singles out Australia and Korea as spending a very small amount of public money on pre-primary education - just 0.1 per cent of the country's total output - eight times less than countries such as Denmark, Hungary and Israel.

Australia also has the highest proportion of international students, with 17.3 per cent of the campus population coming from abroad. In contrast, the US has just 3.4 per cent of overseas students.

Almost all these students are full-fee paying. The figures underscore the degree to which Australian universities are hostage to the international student dollar.

Our Universities are being short-changed. Welcome to the Ignorant Country

On Inflation At The Dinner Table
Here's the stupidity of the Howard Government's Environmental record of denying the problem even exists. Right now, Australia's on-going drought is entirely linked to the processes of 'Climate Change'. Not only is the drought taking a financial toll on the farming sector, the aggregate cost of food production is going up.

A kilo of grain costs more to grow today than it did at the beginning of the Howard Government's tenure.
It's commonly understood that it takes about 4kg s of grain to grow 1kg of Pork or Lanb and about 6kg to grow 1kg of Beef. So by the time a kilo of beef is on your dinner table, it's taken 6kg of grain's worth of energy and economic activity.

Now, there is a water shortage as well. And various measures are going to cost money in order to supply that water. The Howard Government is talking about 10 billion over 10 years to fix the Murray Dowling system. That cost is coming out of the Tax Payer's pocket anyway, so the water is going to cost more, which is an additional cost to the rising cost of grain production.
Thus the grain price is going to rise even more, going forwards. The cost is amplified proportionately through the 1kg of beef. You sure wouldn't want to be a farmer in this climate.

And the produce has to be carted around this dirty big country - and we do it on trucks and trains burning fossil fuels. Didn't anybody notice the fuel prices going up? So that will get factored in.

Yet, it's not just what is going on in the Bush. Sydney is going to get a desalination plant, which is reportedly going to mean 30% increase in our water bills across 4 years. That's 7.5% p.a. on average. So one imagines that everything that use water is going to be more expensive at a 7.5% rate that water is going to impact.

There is nothing on this list that the price is going to go down on or even hold steady, going into the next few years. The inflation rate could easily pop over 5% in the coming years. And while I won't say all of this is because John Howard won't sign the Kyoto Protocol, I will say that the refusal to engage with the problem until just recently has set the stage for rising inflation at our dinner tables in the near future.

And when the interest rates rise in response to this inflation rate, there will be more foreclosure as it impacts on the property bubble in Australia. There's going to be a lot of people pushed out of their homes, who are hungry and angry.

Good economic management you say, Mr Howard? Looks like a total lack of foresight to me.

North West Passage Opens Up

A Strange Moment In History

The search for the North West Passage claimed many an explorer. Now, thanks to global warming, it's going to be relatively easy to navigate.

The European Space Agency said nearly 200 satellite photos this month taken together showed an ice-free passage along northern Canada, Alaska and Greenland, and ice retreating to its lowest level since such images were first taken in 1978.

The waters are exposing unexplored resources, and vessels could trim thousands of miles from Europe to Asia by bypassing the Panama Canal. The seasonal ebb and flow of ice levels has already opened up a slim summer window for ships.

Leif Toudal Pedersen, of the Danish National Space Center, said that Arctic ice has shrunk to some 1 million square miles. The previous low was 1.5 million square miles, in 2005.

"The strong reduction in just one year certainly raises flags that the ice (in summer) may disappear much sooner than expected," Pedersen said in an ESA statement posted on its Web site Friday.

Pedersen said the extreme retreat this year suggested the passage could fully open sooner than expected — but ESA did not say when that might be. Efforts to contact ESA officials in Paris and Noordwik, the Netherlands, were unsuccessful Saturday.

A U.N. panel on climate change has predicted that polar regions could be virtually free of ice by the summer of 2070 because of rising temperatures and sea ice decline, ESA noted.

Russia, Norway, Denmark, Canada and the United States are among countries in a race to secure rights to the Arctic that heated up last month when Russia sent two small submarines to plant its national flag under the North Pole. A U.S. study has suggested as much as 25 percent of the world's undiscovered oil and gas could be hidden in the area.

Environmentalists fear increased maritime traffic and efforts to tap natural resources in the area could one day lead to oil spills and harm regional wildlife.

Until now, the passage has been expected to remain closed even during reduced ice cover by multiyear ice pack — sea ice that remains through one or more summers, ESA said.

Researcher Claes Ragner of Norway's Fridtjof Nansen Institute, which works on Arctic environmental and political issues, said for now, the new opening has only symbolic meaning for the future of sea transport.

"Routes between Scandinavia and Japan could be almost halved, and a stable and reliable route would mean a lot to certain regions," he said by phone. But even if the passage is opening up and polar ice continues to melt, it will take years for such routes to be regular, he said.

"It won't be ice-free all year around and it won't be a stable route all year," Ragner said. "The greatest wish for sea transportation is streamlined and stable routes."

"Shorter transport routes means less pollution if you can ship products from A to B on the shortest route," he said, "but the fact that the polar ice is melting away is not good for the world in that we're losing the Arctic and the animal life there."

The opening observed this week was not the most direct waterway, ESA said. That would be through northern Canada along the coast of Siberia, which remains partially blocked.

Well, yeah. Aspirational targets for carbon emissions are nice, but I doubt the government would let me fill an Aspirational Tax Return, so I don't know why we have to be subjected to that kind of bullshit.

My Song Of The Week

Trying To Do Some Bossa Nova

When I was in High School, I bought an LP by Charlie Byrd, which I thrashed to death. I always wanted to try playing bossa nova, but as some people say, dying is easy, jazz is hard. In most part, my playing style emerging out of listening to too much Pete Townshend, Robert Fripp, Steve Howe, and Trevor Rabin, never really led me to the bossa nova sound... until now.

I know it's weird. it's certainly not every day that I attempt a genre like bossa nova, but I've had this little songlet for a couple of years now and I just wanted to get it down while I thought of it. The result of the mini-session is this track.

End Of An Era?

Britney Spears Sighting!

Eeesh. That's a bad look.
How can one lose 'it' by getting more of something else? Just ask Ms. Britney Spears!

Spears kicked off proceedings at the Las Vegas event on Sunday with her new single, "Gimme More."

But the performance was viewed by many as a disaster -- not least, it seems, by the troubled star herself.

A backstage source tells Us Weekly, "She was able to see video of herself throughout the auditorium. She flipped out. She came running off the stage, yelling, 'Oh, my God, I looked like a fat pig! I looked like a fat pig!' She was inconsolable."

Oh well. Nothing like a bit of objectivity to bring you back to reality. As Philip K. Dick once observed "reality" is that which persists even when you stop believing in it. To me, Britney Spears has been one of those things - I'd like to believe the world would not buy so much of her crap, but it has, and still does - "and that's reality!"

She was never much of a singer. She was a dancer without a sense of rhythm. She sold her records on the back of other songwriters' work, and a video clip directed by pornographers. In other words, she was a complete media-event concocted by cynical marketing types. 8years down the track, she's lost the team that delivered her to stardom; pushed out 2 kids; gone through a messy media-frenzied divorce, gone in and out of rehab (where she yelled out she was the anti-Christ); packed on fat and cellulite; and has now turned up short.

There was a comment somewhere that said her best work was behind her, but I'm trying to figure out what exactly that work was, given the minimality of her creative input. I just can't imagine people reflecting on the turn of the millennium in a thousand years' time and thinking "Britney Spears! Now there was a creative visionary who defined her times!"
If anything she is the regurgitated product of her times.

People are saying this is the end of her. They *misunuderestimate* the stupidity of the masses.

UPDATE: Here's the actual *performance*...

View From The Couch - Sport Nut Weekend

The Swans Crash Out

What a bummer match.
125-87 is a painful scoreline, but the process was even worse. Watching it was terribly, terribly painful.

The Swans never really could find that top gear where they could dominate in the middle and control the Collingwood game-plan. It was a reasonably good season after a frustrating start, but you get the feeling this Swans side is on the decline. The results in the last 3 seasons certainly shows that they're going from Champions to Runners-Up to Semi-Final flame-outs.

I think it's pretty clear the club needs a bit of a re-build, but you don't get the feeling there's much coming up through the ranks in the next few years. That's bad.

Rugby World Cup: Australia Japan Match

In the last few years I seem to have watched a number of Australia-Japan internationals in baseball, and soccer. Turns out the Wallabies have not squared off against the Cherry Blossoms since the World Cup in 1987.

Before the match, my girlfriend who is both Japanese and a total Rugby-viewing-novice asked me what kind of margin to expect. I replied "about an 80-10 result".
We dutifully watched it and of course quite predictably, the Japanese side was annihilated 91-3. It was a competitive first half but they speedy defense of the Japanese simply fell away in the second half.

That got me to thinking about the value of speed in top-level sport. John Kirwan says he assembled the fastest defensive side in the world, but clearly you have to score to win games and to score you need size and power as well as speed. Even in Tennis I'd take a powerful player over a speedy player in the current crop of players. I'd always back a Safin-type champion over a Hewitt type.
Then there's the old adage that speed is over-rated in baseball; I'd always take Hideki Matsui over Ichiro or Kaz Matsui going into a season. And even in cricket I daresay a quick player between the wicket is not as valuable as a batsman who can pound lots of boundaries.
Just a thought.

Justine Henin Wins US Open

She's very tenacious, and looks a little like Yukio Mishima. But she is the Belgian superstar that just doesn't quit. She got a litle chokey in her second set against Venus Williams but she managed to hang on and win. She even beat Serena along the way to taking out the title against Kutsnesova.

I like watching Henin unfurl her backhand. It's a work of art, and she puts so much oomph into it through proper technique. It's a remarkable thing to watch. The Williams sisters look talentless next to her (which they most definitely are not - Serena is a great hitter of the ball as is Venus) which says plenty.

Roger Federer Wins Again

Isn't he just an awesome player? He looked a little nervy and the match result of 7-6. 7-6. 6-3 is actually not very indicative of how tentative and close the match was in most part. the only guy he's chasing down now is Pete Sampras. Greatness like this only comes around... once every decade it seems. LOL :)

Yanks Sweep Royals

The obligatory Yankees news. Hey, they keep killing Kansas City. They've gone 9-1 against them for the season. A-Rod hammered 7 homers in the last 5 games. The Wild Card is looking pretty set. However, I can't quit on the notion of beating the Bosox. Call me incorrigible but the Yanks are still 5.5 games behind. I guess I'd be dreaming.

Oh Man, how I watched a lot of telly this weekend. :)

View From The Couch - APEC First

Sick As A Dog

I've been down with the flu again since Wednesday. It has meant I've been confined to the couch to watch a lot of Television this weekend while APEC festivities went ahead. And when I say Festivities, I do mean it with the utmost contempt and snide sarcasm, thank you very much.
Apart from the infamous/glorious Chasers' stunt, the best joke I heard on it was that "the APEC fence was successful because so far none of the 21 leaders have escaped".
Pacific Solution indeed. :)

The Sydney Declaration

It's one of the running jokes of the world that the USA and Australia just won't sign the Kyoto protocol, but still want to be seen as somehow environmentally friendly. Foreign Minister Alexander Downer ha declared that Aspirational targets are meaningless. So the Federal Government worked up an aspirational target as the Sydney Declaration. Errr, excuse me, but we're not that stupid.

I'm guessing the Howard government is going to wave the Sydney Declaration around as a glorious environmental accomplishment as it heads to the election. That is going to be a bit like waving a thong bikini around and claiming it will cover your whole body. Pardon the pun, but we'll see just how that one washes.

Demonstrations Don't Work Any More

In my youth, Brutus Colcagoon described me as "the sort of guy, who on the eve of the revolution runs down to the barricades and says 'stop this madness, somebody might get hurt!'" Which is kind of cruel, but upon having lived the 20 years since, I find it to ring true. Maybe I've mellowed somewhat, but I just don't see the point in mass demonstrations that turn violent. [Unless of course you're serious about overthrowing the government, in which case you have to get a substantial portion of the police on your side in this day and age, but that's another story.]

Saul Alinsky wrote a book called 'Rules for Radicals' which points out that if you really want to combat the status quo, you must organise in a way that confronts the status quo in a new way. Well, in this day and age, the police have a tremendous amount of accrued know-how as to how to deal with demonstrators. It's just a process of history. It's not like it's the first time a mass of people have gathered and marched. In the absence of a new angle, the protest was always going to be largely meaningless.

So I sat from the couch watching the Channel 7 coverage of the demonstrators and a few things really stuck out. The police cordon created was successful and the demonstrators really were a rabble. Well-meaning, but without any kind of uniting vision of what exactly they were protesting against. Sort of a Champagne Socialists' day out at the protests. Pretty pathetic.

Did We Just See Chris Bath And Her Champagne Socialist Leanings

One of the more curious aspects of Channel 7's coverage was how the team seemed to really want a bloody, violent stoush to go down on the streets of Sydney. That spectre never raised it's ugly head, thankfully as at the best of times Champagne Socialists have no spine. Anyway, the one notable thing was how Chris Bath kept asking the "security expert" sitting next to her, "but don't you think this is too draconian? "Isn't this a bit excessive?"
The security expert kept saying, "no, this is all very good. It's working smoothly."
Well good sir, everything done to excess works. Nothing succeeds like excess.
Yes, Ms Bath, it was excessive - And good for you for pointing it out.

Police State Blues Part 3-a

Now that David Hicks is coming home later this year, it sort of took the big cause out of the protesters at APEC. What they really should have been protesting about were the excessive APEC powers designed to muzzle them. But such is life. The fascists always beat up on the left because as George Orwell observed, the left can't unite while the fascists can easily line up and beat some people up; which is exactly what they were champing at the bit to do.

I really don't like the NSW Police as an institution. I think at the best of times they're gun-happy, belligerent, officious, racist and not-at-all interested in true community harmony, but always looking for a bit of biffo, because they're all frustrated Rugby League players. They're generally bumpkins on the make and easily corruptible. My car was broken into during the week. I've been burgled 3 times in the last 15 years and they've never solved a burglary case for me, let-alone caught the perps (They even refused to take a fingerprint of something hat was obviously handled by the perp.) Yet these guys are happy to let red-necks riot in Cronulla and stand by and watch. Talk about "wouldn't know a perp if they ran right into one".
So in a sense they're institutional tax-robbers as far as I can tell. And every state government gets elected on Law and Order hires more of these moronic thugs. Colour me unimpressed.
The NSW police is a state-sponsored protection racket.

So giving this bunch the APEC powers was like giving a violent delinquent a truncheon and calling him a cop. But amplified to eleven.

Police State Blues Part 3-b

And if you think I'm kidding about the eager hostility of the Police force, there's this arrest of one Mr McLeay.

A FATHER of three wept yesterday as he revealed how crossing the road ahead of an APEC motorcade led to his violent arrest in front of his young son and a traumatic 22 hours in jail.

Greg McLeay was released on bail yesterday after his wife, Sophie, and children spent a sleepless Friday night worrying about him.

"Because of APEC I was not allowed to speak to him - even the lawyer couldn't," Mrs McLeay said.

"The children are traumatised. We spent the night sleeping together on the sofa. How does walking to yum cha with your 11-year-old son end up with 22-hours in jail and no access to a lawyer?"

Footage available on ninemsn showed Mr McLeay, a 52-year-old accountant from Sydney's North Shore, speaking to police in Pitt Street before four officers pushed him to the ground.

He could be clearly heard trying to explain that he was simply attempting to protect his glasses. He has a condition called astigmatism, which means he can barely see without them.

I'm wondering what kind of democracy allows an ordinary man to be arrested and kept without access to a lawyer for 22hours. It gets worse when you hear his side of it:

Mr McLeay said he and his son, George, cycled into the city on Friday - the APEC public holiday - and met a friend, Stephen Carter, 40, to work on his accounts at Mr McLeay's Pitt Street office.

They walked out at lunchtime to go to Chinatown for yum cha. They were crossing the street to avoid a police cordon outside the Westin hotel when a police officer started shouting at them.

"I didn't know what was going on," Mr McLeay said.

"I asked which way to go and he directed me around the block. I started to walk away and he suddenly started yelling at me. It was like a fool's comedy.

"He threatened me with arrest and demanded my ID. Then this character pushed me and told me that I had assaulted a police officer.

"I was pushed up against the wall and then I was thrown to the ground and they kept telling me to put my hands behind my back. There must have been four of them pinning me to the ground.

"I was frogmarched down to the hotel's underground car park and then they tried to put another pair of cuffs on me. I was just crossing the road. Never have I felt so mortified, embarrassed and invaded. I feel violated."

However, the news of the evening portrayed Mr McLeay as somebody who defiantly crossed the road against the Police. Defiant? I see an ordinary guy (in a tasteless shirt admittedly but it is APEC) getting thrown to the ground who is more calm than the eager-beaver cops taking him away.


When you watch the footage above, you don't see a man who is resisting arrest. You can feel the excitement of the cops - "we've got one, we've got one!"
No you haven't you stupid nongs! He's not a violent protester at all! Poor Mr McLeay submits to the police brutality quite peacefully. I love how the police try to get the camera away from the scene of the 'crime'. If they weren't doing something guilty, why would they try and block the camera? They know they're doing something illicit. They know it's a wrongful arrest. But they do it anyway.

I am eagerly waiting to see how judges are going to view this arrest and all the sweeping APEC powers that enabled the police to go on this little rampage. It must've been fun for them, arresting what is essentially a non-violent, non-protesting citizen without warning. Well done, boys.

Quick Shots

Yankees Update: How Sweep It Is

The Yankees swept the Bosox, which is good at any time of year, on any occasion. This places the Yankees at 5games behind. Yes, if they could have at least come away from Detroit with a split, and won in Anaheim, it would've been better, but the Yankees are seemingly headed for about 94wins if they keep playing this way. *If*, they keep playing this way, that is.

So the consensus right now is that because the Red Sox have an easy schedule, they can simply play .500 ball and stumble across the line at 95wins and win the division. Hence the division is out of reach and the Yankees are looking at taking the Wild Card.

Well, back in 1978, the Yankees were 6.5 games behind the Bosox and still beat them out. I know it's not likely and all that, but on the face of it, I have the following pseudo-analysis to offer.

1) 5 is less than 6.5, last I checked my maths.
2) The 2007 Yankees are a better squad than the 1978 vintage.
3) The 2007 Red Sox may not be as good as the 1978 vintage.
4) The Yankees actually came through the recent tough stretch off schedule better than hoped in spite of the series losses to Anaheim and Detroit. If anything, they've got upside to improve on performances yet - which is a scary thought. The Red Sox actually are going with Manny down for a week and their offense hasn't been what it has been in previous years. I don't know if they have as much upside, going forwards.

So, I don't think the '1978 scenario' is dead just yet. Of course they could come off the boil and lose 5 straight and that would be that. :)

The Moose Is Cooked
It pains me but the low-K Moose has proven to be fatal. In the 16-0 debacle against Detroit, it became clear that right now, you just couldn't trot him out there any more. His replacement will be Ian Kenndey which is surprising in some ways, but my old man would be happy. Like me, he has lost complete faith in Moose for months.
Here is his side of it.

“You start feeling like there’s nothing I can do to change this, and you get a bad attitude, and that’s where I was,” said Mussina, who is 0-3 with a 17.69 earned run average in his last three starts. “Everything I threw, I thought something bad was going to happen.”

Time away from pitching, Mussina said, may also help his legs feel stronger. Mussina, 38, said his arm was sturdy, but his hamstring has never fully healed since he injured it in April.

The puzzling part, he added, is that the physical concerns are no worse now than they were from June 7 through Aug. 11, when he went 6-4 with a 3.54 E.R.A. But without confidence in his pitches, it has been hard to pick the right ones to throw.

The self-analysis has become so painful for Mussina that he has stopped doing his regular interviews with the author John Feinstein, who is writing a book about Mussina’s season. Mussina would prefer to focus on whatever positives remain.

“Hopefully, it’ll make me a better player and make me learn how to deal with things better, because it’s coming to that time where, eventually, I’m not going to be doing this anymore,” he said. “And I know that. It’s not too far in the future. They didn’t release me or send me down, so I’m still here. That’s a positive.”

I like Moose. I have this side that hopes he makes a few adjustments and keeps going, but in all likelihood he's done.

My Songs Of The Week

A song about Global Warming Sceptics.



More fun with Magic Garageband, this time a Reggae track.