Marilyn Chambers Obituaries

Rewriting Pornology


When I was a kid, Marilyn Chambers wasn't just the name of a porn actress, she was some kind of transgressing entity that somehow threatened polite civilization. I didn't understand porn yet, but in NYC, all the tweenie kids knew her name in the local park playing ball. It was the name of a woman who seemed to be a cipher for the breakdown of walls in the 1970s. Everything was possible, and her name was part of that social force. And none of us had seen a single frame of her porno movies.

Time Magazine had an obituary/tribute column a fortnight ago when she died.

People in the '70s knew two things about Marilyn Chambers: she had appeared as a model on an Ivory Snow box, fondly holding an infant under the corporate slogan "99 and 44/100% Pure"; and she starred in Behind the Green Door, one of the first, weirdest and most popular hard-core movies in that brief period of the '70s known as "porno chic." These two factettes, with their colliding irony, made the blond, willowy Chambers the pinup princess of XXX cinema, a notoriety she parlayed into a career in soft- and hard-core sex films that lasted from 1972 until ... yesterday.

The sad news is that Chambers, to quote the title from a 1974 movie she did not appear in, is 99 and 44/100% dead. The actress was discovered last night in her mobile home in Santa Clarita, near Los Angeles, by her teenage daughter McKenna Taylor, from the last of Chambers' three marriages. An autopsy will be performed; foul play is not suspected.

Chambers wasn't the first person to take the route from modeling and acting to hard-core, from commercials to pervertials. Eric Edwards, whose porn career spanned nearly four decades, had appeared in ads for Gillette razors and Close-Up toothpaste. But of all the shadow stars that emerged from the early porn sensation — Linda Lovelace and Harry Reems of Deep Throat, Georgina Spelvin of Devil in Miss Jones — Chambers was unusual in her Waspy good looks, her girl-next-door appeal and her use of her real name at a time when other actors resorted to jokey pseudonyms. If the Ivory Snow girl could go into porn unashamed, then maybe the genre wasn't so sooty. She was different, and smart, in another way: when co-directors Jim and Artie Mitchell asked Chambers to star in Green Door, she demanded $25,000 (an astronomical sum in the pinchpenny industry) and a percentage of the gross. And she got it.

It's pretty weird how the writing has the tone of somebody who grew up jerking off to her films. :) Anyway... It's also a little surprising to see the SMH run a belated Obit from the London Telegraph a good week later.

She was working as an exotic dancer in San Francisco when she saw a newspaper advertisement seeking actresses for what was described as a "major" film. Only when she filled out the application form did she realise it was pornographic. The producers offered her the starring role.

Shot on a shoestring budget, Behind The Green Door became one of the biggest adult film hits of the 1970s, thanks to its unexpected publicity boost when a photograph from Chambers's modelling career appeared on boxes of a popular brand of detergent, Ivory Snow.

Chambers went on to be ranked by Playboy magazine as one of the top 100 sex stars of the 20th century and was named among the top 10 adult film stars of all time.

"The adult films have been a total pleasure," she once said. "They were like getting paid to live out my greatest fantasies. The rest of the stuff … sometimes got to be a real grind."

Chambers, who was found dead on April 12, was married and divorced three times. One of her husbands, Chuck Traynor, had once been married to porn actress Linda Lovelace. A daughter survives her.

A bit more somber in its tone there.

The 1970s really were weird, and for a moment in history it looked like the sexual revolution was going to overcome all mores. This is from Time Mag back in 1974:

Farewell, Deep Throat? So long, Miss Jones'? Could it be that the lust affair is over? Within the past year, two hard-core flicks (Deep Throat and The Devil in Miss Jones) were among the nation's top-grossing films and porno stars like Linda Lovelace (Throat) and Marilyn Chambers (Behind the Green Door) became nationally-known figures. Today, hard-core movie houses are half empty. "Business is only 60% of what it was last year," says Porno Producer David Friedman, president of the Adult Film Association.

The recent Supreme Court decisions toughened local prosecution of pornography, and the FBI now has 90 full-time agents monitoring interstate shipments of film. The real trouble, however, is neither cops nor courts but boredom—the intrinsic tedium in the medium since hard-core hit the screen. "A hard-core film today is as strictly constructed as a medieval morality play," Friedman complains. "There are just so many positions you can film."

There are approximately 730 hardcore theaters in the U.S., and about 1 million regular patrons. To make big money, porno films must lure larger audiences. But, says Friedman, "the millions who saw Deep Throat and Green Door have now seen a dirty picture. They belong to the one-time-only club."

Of course AIDS put an end to that happy prospect, but before the grim days of the 1980s, there was a period where you had 'cross-over films'. Films that were essentially (and fundamentally porn) that somehow garnered mainstream critical press and audiences.

And if it weren't for this willingness, kids wouldn't have come to know the names of people like Marilyn Chambers or Linda Lovelace. It's actually the sign of the times that the greatest whistleblower of the 1970s William Mark Felt Snr ended up with a codename from a porno flick - 'Deep Throat'.

In retrospect it seems unthinkable, but there were porn films with artistic aspirations and ambitions. The weirdness of this terrain got explored extensively in 'Boogie Nights' so I won't bother with the absurdity of that pretension, but Marilyn Chambers' career fits right into that arc where for a moment in history, even hardcore porn found mainstream success.

It would be unthinkable to go take a girl on a date and to watch a porno in the movie theatres, but heck, that's what happened with Marilyn Chambers' 1970s work (for want of a better word!).  The confusion of the times is tacitly documented in 'Taxi Driver' where Travis Bickle played by DeNiro takes Cybil Shepherd's white crust girl Betsy to the cinema where they are playing hardcore porn. She says she's uncomfortable but he insists it was recommended highly.

It's laughable today, but back in 1975, there was a lot of confusion about these things. There's a certain irony that Chambers got cast in her first porn movie for her resemblance to Cybil Shepherd, and for Cybil Shepherd to end up playing a character who is made uncomfortable by the social changes wrought by those films.

Yet, after all that, the biggest irony of them all might be the loving obituaries that Chambers got this month. In the end it seems, that moment in history when porn broke through to the mainstream mattered more than we thought, if only because she brought so much ...err... joy to so many blokes.

Screen Australia Presents... Its Guidelines

These People Scare Me

I don't know what it is about government film bureaucracies and the people they get to make crucial, key decisions for them, but today I found out Ross Matthews is the head of Production Investment. I hadn't heard Ross's name in a long while but now that I have my heart has sunk. Dear heavenly hosts, why the fuck did I have to be in the Australian film industry!?

I'm not going to quote the whole thing because it's privileged content, but this is an excerpt from Screenhub:

Ross explained that this sector is doing relatively well. “Obviously there are two types of feature films now, the offset and the non-offset. Every movie is an offset movie unless it’s under the offset threshold, and if you want to come to Screen Australia you have to utilize the offset as they are looking to do as many productions as we can, and the only way we can do that is by utilizing the offset, cash-flowing the offset and Screen Australia comes along as a top-up.”

He talked about the looming deadline of June 12 for low budget films, which is those under $1.2 million resulting in a QAPE under $1 million, which means it can’t utlize the offset. He said that Screen Australia would hopefully fund two or three features under this program, which don’t need domestic marketplace attachments, although it would be good if you had them.

With the offset, the total amount that can go to any film under the offset is 75% of the budget. “By legislation we can’t top up the budget to any more than 75% of the budget and it will be very rare for Screen Australia to go that high,” he said. They are hoping to fund films to a level of 60 to 65 per cent. “At 75% you’d have to have a really strong cultural remit such as a film like Ten Canoes.”

The assessment process for features has changed, with the merging of the evaluation and marketplace doors, and now there is one door for which you need a domestic distributor, an international sales agent, an idea of where the finance is coming from but the finance plan doesn’t have to be fully formed, and then it can come into the assessment process. At the moment Scott Meek and Tristan Miall are the assessors along with external readers. Every eight or nine weeks a committee meets to decide whether Screen Australia will or will not support the project.

Within the nine-week turnaround the assessors meet with the filmmakers once or twice. “The assessment committee includes the assessors, Ross Matthews, Ruth Harley, any investment managers working on the film, Martha Coleman from development, someone from marketing will be there, and the meeting is extensive and the final decision not taken lightly.”

There was some discussion around the need for a deal memo to be in place. You don’t need a long memo apparently, a one pager is okay. However Bryce Menzies said that even with a one-pager, this means that the deal is then locked in at a time when the distributors and sales agents have the upper hand, and once it’s signed you can’t renegotiate. There was then discussion about therefore whether you needed such deal memos to be signed, or whether the project may be better off with unsigned memos.

Bryce said that at the moment if Scott doesn’t like your project you’re dead in the water, so in a way it would be better to wait to see what he thinks before proceeding into the marketplace.

Dee McLachlan said that it was difficult dealing with a distributor where the budget is changeable depending on what stars will end up being attached to the project.

Ross said he believed the assessment process is currently working well, but the difficulty is the level of the bar that they’re requiring producers to get over. He said that in the next couple of years they’ll have to assess how it has worked. “We have a team of people who take a careful look at the projects, talk to filmmakers, talk at length and meet at length. You can argue about their decision. If it’s a no we’re a bunch of fuckwits, if it’s a yes you’re very happy.”

Well, to be absolutely frank, even if he were to fund one of my pet projects and I were to be a happy-camper director I'd still think he's a fuckwit. That would be because he would still be one until the day he drops dead, goes to hell, and gets his face raped right off by a flock of extinct pteranodactyls. And he'd still be a fuckwit in my books the day after that. And the week after that too. So there's nothing new. Moving right along...

Martha Coleman's a name from my AFTRS days. It's interesting how that vintage of AFTRS producing grads keep cropping up in Film bureaucracies as opposed to y'know... being producers. It's a side effect of the industry tanking for so many years under the guidance of such apostates as Ross Matthews, but what the heck, it's all new and shiny now at 'ScrOz', right? Get me my vomit bag puh'lease!

On A More Sanguine Note

It's nice to know that if Scott Meek and Tristan Miall hate your project, you have zero chance of it getting made, even with a deal in place.

An Issue Of Competence

One of the assumptions we're forced to live with is that people are competent until proven otherwise. The cop who takes your call after a burglary, the school teachers to whom you entrust the care of your children, the doctor the nurse, the lawyers you entrust for their professional judgment. Just as all the accused are innocent until proven guilty, we must presume competence upon all and everybody we meet.

Even if our lifetime of experience tells us that the cop is just some country yokel who couldn't find any other job but was fortunate to be tall enough to join the police; that the teacher might not be a pedophile but is illiterate; the doctor only passed his courses, the nurse is a sadist, the lawyer a drunk; in spite of all these things we might encounter in our lives as we continually bump in to gross incompetence by people you wish weren't so, we have to presume competence. And so it is with Screen Australia.

Thus, even after my entire adult life of seeing the Australian government fuck up the industry over and over and over and over again, and the likelihood is that this is going to continue due to institutional inertia and endemic incompetence, I - and by extension you and therefore we - must presume competence of these poor, wretched souls entrusted with making decisions at Screen Australia.

BrisConnections Chaos Continues

Mac Bank Earns World Of Trouble


Of course it's not going to help the sense of chaos that characterises the whole BrisConnections venture. Now, the second largest shareholder has decided to go for management control.

The company's second-largest shareholder, represented by Jim Byrnes, and a mysterious finance company in Surfers Paradise have launched a bid to secure management control.

Less than a fortnight after a proposal to wind up the project was voted down by unit holders, BrisConnections said yesterday it had a received a request from Brisbane Toll Road Link, which owns 15.2 per cent.

The request was for a second meeting to consider the appointment of Armstrong Corporate Capital to replace the BrisConnections Management Company.

Another request was for the second $390 million instalment call for BrisConnections shares, due on Wednesday, to be delayed until "Armstrong notifies members that it is due and payable".

New Hampton Distressed Asset Fund is the owner of BTR but Macquarie and advisers close to BrisConnections are questioning whether the US hedge fund exists.

But Mr Byrnes said in an email last night: "The company does exist." He provided no other information and declined to answer the Herald's questions or identify who was behind the fund. According to Australian Securities and Investments Commission documents, its address is the same as Mr Byrnes's home address. Mr Byrnes also lodged a statement of claim in his name in the Federal Court yesterday, as part of his planned $1.3 billion class action against the toll road's advisers, Macquarie Capital Advisers.

BTR director Carl Trad, an importer of luxury cars, declined to say how he became involved with the company, except: "I've had some really good advice."

When the Herald phoned the Armstrong office in Surfers Paradise, the unidentified person who answered the phone said: "I'm sorry, I'm not giving any interviews to the press, thank you."

The problem for BTR is that even if a meeting is called, the earliest date it could be held is May 12, three days after the final deadline for it to pay the second installment. A Macquarie bid to buy out 80 per cent of the unit holders would do little to solve the problem of many in dire financial circumstances if they were forced to pay the installments.

Don't you just love the way the craziness begets more craziness?

It's enough to wonder when ASIC is going to step in and fix this thing. Leaving it to the unit holders or Macquarie Bank or eve this new bunch out of Surfers Paradise is a surefire recipe for horrible repercussions where the tunnel might not get built.

Then there is the consideration whether if Brisbane really needed this tunnel in the first place, and whether Mac Bank were up to their usual tricks in inflating forecasts for just how much traffic is going to use this lousy toll road when current roads already service the airport just fine. It's certainly starting to stink of the same graft and greed routine that plagued the Sydney Cross-City tunnel fiasco all over again, and surely ASIC has to be wondering if Mac Bank was acting in good faith when it launched these partially paid units. Because so far, if the past record is anything to go by, there's a lot that "goes to character" sying they were acting in much, much, much less than good faith.

Yankees Update 26/04/09

Driven To Tears ...In The Tendon

The story of the week in most part was the piling up injury concerns. Wang was sent to Tampa for assessment and a simulated game and was promptly put on the DL with a soreness in the hip - which is a euphemism for a pain in the ass, I'm sure.

Brian Bruney has also been placed on the DL along with the non-achieving Cody Ransom. Filling 3B with Ransom in the absence of A-Rod was probably a tall order given that the Yankees already have a weak CF and injury concerns in the other corners thus far. Unfortunately this has meant that the third string 3B is Angel Berroa who has played one inning at 3B in his pro career.All of this goes to that it's hard to have depth at 3B when your starting 3B is A-Rod under contract for another 9 years. It also highlights why some of us hold out hope that Eric Duncan amounts to something along the way. If he could play league average 3B about now, he'd be the right tonic. If, that is.

Bruney going on the DL actuall impacts my last remaining fantasy league as well as the thus-far-cruddily-performing bullpen. Hopefully he won't be out for too long. All the injuries and callups have resulted in the Yankees releasing Humberto Sanchez outright. I guess the Yankees got nothing for trading away Sheff.

In relatively good news, Nady won't be going under the knife; he's going to rehab his elbow tendon.

Why Can't They Beat These Guys?

2 games in Boston thus far have yielded 2 slugfests. Neither of which the Yankees won. It's enough to make you hate the game. This capped off a week where the Yankees took 2 from the A's and split the series with the Indians.

Still, the 5-4 and 16-11 losses to the Red Sox just drives me around the bend.

Robinson Cano's Hot Bat

In amongst the crappy week, there was this line of .354/.403/.538 through yesterday.

He has 3Hrs, but also 6 walks to go with 6 strike outs in 16 games so far. He's doing very well indeed. I like this 2009 version of Robbie. Much better than 2008.

BABIP? Did I Hear You Quote BABIP?

During the week, Brian Cashman mentioned that one of the reasons they picked up Nick Swisher was because of his BABIP last year.

Cashman, in his two-hour program, talked of the collecting and meshing of information in making decisions. He still employs scouts extensively to speak to a player's intangible qualities, but the use of underlying stats to evaluate players is a growing part of running the franchise.

For instance, in the decision to acquire Nick Swisher despite a .219 average for the White Sox last year, stats like line-drive percentage and pitches taken were used. "The only stat that was different was batting average when he put the ball in play," Cashman said, "so we concluded it must have been an unlucky year."

Swisher has been an early-season success for the Yankees.

If there were any doubts about the sabermetric-savvy of the Yankees GM, I think it should be banished. He at least understands BABIP which means he is abreast of DIPS theory. What a GM! This is why Yankee fans like Cashman.

From The Pleiades Mailbag 22/04/09

Columbine Still Bowling

Here's an article about how schools are run along the lines of prisons since the Columbine shootings.

Based on the assumption that schools are rife with crime and fueled by the emergence of a number of state and federal laws, mandatory sentencing legislation, and the popular “three strikes and you’re out” policy, many educators first invoked zero tolerance rules against kids who brought firearms to schools. In the aftermath of Columbine, exacerbated by a number of high-profile school shootings in last decade, and an increase in the climate of fear, the assumption that schools were dealing with a new breed of student—violent, amoral, and apathetic—began to take hold in the public imagination.  Moreover, as school safety become a top educational priority, zero tolerance policies were broadened and now include a range of behavioral infractions that encompass everything from possessing drugs or weapons to threatening other students—all broadly conceived. Under zero tolerance policies, forms of punishments that were once applied to adults now applied to first graders.  The punitive nature such policies are  on display in a number of cases where students have had to face harsh penalties that defy human compassion and reason. For example, an 8-year-old boy in the first grade at a Miami Elementary School took a table knife to his school, using it to rob a classmate of $1 in lunch money. School officials claimed he was facing “possible expulsion and charges of armed robbery.”

In another instance that took place in December 2004, “Porsche, a fourth-grade student at a Philadelphia, PA, elementary school, was yanked out of class, handcuffed, taken to the police station and held for eight hours for bringing a pair of 8-inch scissors to school. She had been using the scissors to work on a school project at home. School district officials acknowledged that the young girl was not using the scissors as a weapon or threatening anyone with them, but scissors qualified as a potential weapon under state law.”

Time to break out the old copies of 'The Wall, I think. If this kind of thing is going to be education, then they sure as hell don't need this kind of treatment. If you read on it gets worse. 7 year old forced to the ground and the numbers of suspensions doled out are ridiculous. You sort of wonder what will happen to kids who grow through this and come to think of it as normal.

Bush Torture Memos

For some reason the much ballyhooed Bush Torture Memos have been made into pdfs where people can send around. I must be on the 6th degree of Kevin Bacon from the first person to send it out to the world, but somehow I've managed to get it thanks to Pleiades. I don't think I even asked for it, but bang, there it is.

It makes for chilling reading. The details found within are pretty bluntly put so there is no mistaking that the degree to which they had permission to hurt and coere people for information was delineated. It's not a bright moment in the history of the United States. Naturally,one imagines the Repuablicans are very updeat that the Obama administration let these documents out into the public domain, but tha's the funny thing. There's no mistaking that yes, they said yes to torture, and the language isn't even velied with bureaucrat-ese.

Here's an article about all this in Time.

Many Democrats and human-rights activists see the memos as damning evidence that the U.S. violated international law, and that officials should be held accountable. Many Republicans and national-security experts are dismayed at the decision to air the dirty laundry, claiming the revelations weaken the country's intelligence gathering capabilities and give an misleading picture of the efficacy of such interrogation tactics. (Read how waterboarding got out of control.)

The Obama Administration has already ruled out the prosecution of those who actually carried out the harsh interrogations, so long as they complied with the government-approved guidelines. And Obama treaded carefully on Tuesday, stressing to reporters, at the end of his Tuesday meeting with Jordan's King Abdullah, that he did "not want to prejudge" the outcome of the Justice Department's inquiry into the policy's legal underpinnings and that he would not want any inquiry to turn into a partisan witch hunt. "I do worry about this getting so politicized that we cannot function effectively and it hampers out our ability to carry out critical national security operations," he said. But at that point it was too late. By not entirely ruling out the authors' prosecution — as his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, had appeared to do over the weekend — the President had effectively unleashed the hounds.

What a drag. It's as if these people who okayed this stuff thought they were going to get away with it by dint of September 11. Who needs terrorism and terrorists when the CIA is given carte blanche to torture?

CJ Henry Sighting

A Bust Is A Bust

The last we heard of CJ Henry was when he went and played basketball with his brother Xavier. Now he is at the centre of some problem in the NCAA because of the tuition fees that came about because of his signing that original contract with the Yankees.

The Yankees, you see, signed C.J. out of high school in 2005 (after he had committed to play basketball for Kansas). Three years later C.J. gave up his baseball dream to play at Memphis. At the time it was reported that C.J.'s contract with the Yankees stipulated that the team would pay for his college education should he ever want to return to school. So, when C.J. did just that in 2008, the Yankees footed the bill and C.J. joined the Tigers basketball team as a walk-on. (Because of his deal with the Yanks, C.J. wasn't eligible for a scholarship.) Due to that deal, Henry won't require a scholarship next year should he stay at Memphis or transfer to Kansas or Kentucky, a nice bonus for Bill Self or Calipari, who won't have to free up scholarship room for both Henry brothers. Got all that?

Goodness that signing in 2005 was terrible, even if it netted Bobby Abreu at the trade deadline in 2006. I know it's beating a dead horse, but in retrospect CJ Henry was an awful, awful, awful choice.

No Reason To The Pricing

There's No Correlation!?

Most businesses have a cost and set a price for their services in line with costs. That is everybody except the rail services in Sydney. Check out this article:

It's been revealed that NSW Premier Nathan Rees is being urged from within his own government to make public transport free for everyone as part of a radical bid to win the next election.

The Daily Telegraph says it's also learned the government is doing extensive modelling to make ticket prices fairer for outer suburban commuters if the free transport move does not go ahead.

The paper says that if public transport were to be completely free it would cost the government about $1 billion a year.

But fares only cover just over a quarter of the $3.8 billion total cost of operating public transport.

The move could save hundreds of millions in staffing costs and ticket-machine operations, and abolish the trouble-plagued smartcard.

Blacktown MP Paul Gibson has lobbied Mr Rees to consider the idea, and says it would take pressure off the roads, shore up Labor's western Sydney heartland and help win the green vote.

Mr Gibson told the Telegraph Mr Rees gave him an undertaking to cost the proposal when he last raised it several weeks ago.

The paper says Mr Rees is unlikely to back such a move at a time when the budget is already in the red.

Get that? The amount of money paid by the public only goes towards about a 1/4 of the annual cost of running the thing. Clearly the price hikes they've been carrying out have been largely irrelevant attempts to raise more money to cover the 2.8billion that's never going to be covered.

At the same time, you'd have to say that they're actually charging too much for their services which in turn is driving people to just drive their cars instead. As the article points out, if the PT system goes free, they also cut out the cost of ticketing and the execrable smartcard system.

I doubt the NSW government would ever give public transport away for free (although they might if it won the ALP an election), but they could afford to slash the prices radically to about 1/5th. They might be pleasantly surprised at just how many people would go back to braving the PT system.

Things You See In The Newspapers

Raiders of Anthony And Cleopatra's Lost Tombs

'X' never marks the spot unless it's scripted that way. Archaeologists are digging around 27km west of Alexandria for the resting place of none other than Anthony and Cleopatra.

For years, researchers have been seeking the graves of the famed pair, celebrated in plays and movies. French archaeologists recently said the tombs were in the newly excavated remains of Cleopatra's palace in Alexandria, but they found nothing.

Last year, archaeologists from Egypt and the Dominican Republic found the remains of a cemetery near the temple of Taposiris Magna, 27 kilometres west of Alexandria. The cemetery has so far yielded 27 tombs and 10 mummies. Such cemeteries are common near royal tombs.

The team uncovered a damaged bust of the Egyptian queen, 22 coins bearing her image and a funerary mask that is believed to be of Antony.

Last month, it used radar to find three deep shafts leading to three "spots of interest" under the temple, the Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities said.

I guess if and when they do find them, they'll do DNA tests and stuff, and then we'll go look for the closest living relative of the two and make a TV special out of that. Or perhaps not.All the same, I'm interested. It sure beats following BrisConnections. Speaking of which...

We Get The Crap Governments We Deserve

Sydney's a pretty crappy town these days. Gone is the lustre form its halcyon Olympic hosting days. The roads are congested, the trains are crap, the busses are never on time and there's really no easy way of getting around town.

It turns out it's because none of the NSW governments have addressed the underlying issues for decades. No wonder the present day mob is not up to the task - and worse still, the opposition may be worse by dint of ideology.

It's round about now in history where Sydney's lack of investment in public transport is catching up to the city hard and fast.

A FAMILY living in the outer suburbs of Sydney with one parent working in the city will spend as much money running their car as they do on mortgage repayments over the course of a 30-year home loan.

This fact - revealed in a 2005 federal parliamentary inquiry into the sustainability of Australian cities - is the legacy of a rail network that is frozen in time.

Sydney's rail system has remained almost unchanged from the original vision developed by engineer John Bradfield in the 1930s and then updated in 1956. The city is now seeing the social consequences of this in the growing divide between those who have access to transport and those who do not.

The recent decisions by the State Government to dump the north-west and south-west rail links are just the tip of the iceberg.

The head office of RailCorp is littered with blueprints for grand rail projects that never made it off the page. Over the past 15 years the government has promised, but failed to deliver, at least $28 billion of rail infrastructure, including 13 projects that would have provided more than 1000 kilometres of track and dozens of new stations.

Some, such as the Mosman to Mona Vale line, were envisaged by Bradfield himself. More recently, the Government has axed plans for a south-west connection between Strathfield and Hurstville, a fast train between Hornsby and Newcastle and the duplication of the Richmond line.

The physical reminders are easy to see. The Maldon to Dombarton freight line, begun in the early 1980s but dumped by the Greiner government in 1988, lies half-finished and gradually rotting in the Illawarra, and tunnels under North Sydney and St James have been empty for decades.

"There is a problem with NSW treasury not believing in rail in this state and Sydney in particular," says Garry Glazebrook, a transport expert from the University of Technology, Sydney.

"For 10 to 15 years we were able to build toll roads using private sector finance and that relieved treasury of the responsibility."

That the failure to provide new public transport infrastructure is having serious social consequences should not come as a surprise.

Well, d'uh. It's been a long time coming, but it also has to be said the newspapers have been really bad at understanding the ramifications of this neglect that has been going on for a long time. If there's one thing that stops Sydney from being a truly pleasant city. it is the absence of a rail network.

My favorite story is how City Rail got rated the worst rail service of its kind in the world. So they sent their brightest fellow to Switzerland who had the best system in the world, to find out how to do it. Except that once he got there, instead of listening to the Swiss telling him how to do it, he'd insist on telling them how they did it at City Rail. As in, what? The Swiss want to learn how to turn their world-best system into the world's worst system, just like Sydney's?

Rail Corp is full of stories like that. You'd think people would be marching about this instead of bloody APEC or whatever.

Pony's Relatives

As if the story of Pony the Orangutan wasn't sad enough, we find in the news today that her relatives in Sumatra are in trouble. Sumatran Orangutans have it tough.

UP TO five adult orang-utans are being killed for every baby animal illegally captured, according to a new report showing the species faces extinction.

The World Wildlife Fund report says that hunters, who are rarely prosecuted, usually shoot both parents and sometimes other adult members of a colony to catch a baby to sell at markets so it can be kept as a pet or in a private zoo.

But about one in three babies dies before reaching a market because of the trauma of capture or poor transport conditions.

Authorities are failing to crack down on the booming illegal trade in orang-utans and gibbons on the Indonesian island of Sumatra.

The report, released by Traffic - a group that monitors illegal animal trading for the WWF - shows that both species are on the brink of disappearing.

"We're talking about an animal which takes 11 years to reach maturity, then carries its babies for about seven years before weaning, so it takes a very long time for the population to recover, if it does at all," an Australian spokesman for Traffic, Chris Shepherd, said.

"Babies fetch high prices at markets, so when someone is found with an orang-utan or gibbon and it is seized, they go straight out and get another one.

"There is no deterrent. Awareness is not the problem and neither is the law. We have some of the best legislation in South-East Asia but we need an increase in enforcement to stop this."

Pretty bad. Years ago, they had stories of abandoned Orangutans in the streets of Taipei because these pet Orangutans are cute while they're small but turn into dirty big creatures that are too unruly for the urban household. Even that little thing above is going to turn into a sumo-wrestler sized ape. I just don't get the people who think that something like that would make a nice pet.

Yankees Update 19/04/09

Up And Down Week

This week saw the Yankees squeeze by the Royals in the third game of that series, win 2 of 3 from the Rays and then return to NY to open the new stadium. The troubling thing about the Rays an Indians series has been how the Yankees have lost the opening games of the respective series in blow outs.

The Yankees dropped their first game against the Rays in a horrific pitching meltdown by Wang, then won two pitching duels behind AJ Burnett (who took a no-hitter into the seventh) and Andy Pettitte.

With the Indians, CC Sabathia pitched a forgettable game against his old team for a loss, while Joba pitched an ugly 4.2 innings which eventually led to a Yankee win. Today. Wang has expolded on the mound again. Keeping in mind that teams tend to up their intensity with the Yankees, a pitcher in April can be vulnerable to a lineup trying to drive up the pitch count.

On the other hand, Wang has been pitching like a fireman trying to hose down the Towering Inferno with gasoline. His sinker has had no sink this season so far. This week saw two games where he pitched 1 inning of double digit ERA. Whatever it is that he's doing wrong, he needs to fix it now.

After all that rigamorole, the Yankees still sit at .500.

Who Is That Masked Man?

Nick Swisher has been hitting like Ruth. Well, better than Ruth actually, with a .406/.486/1.000. line, he also managed to pitch a scoreless inning in his lone relief appearance in a blowout. If nothing else, picking up of Nick Swisher for Wilson Betemit has been paying immediate dividends to a club that is actually struggling with injuries.

Robinson Cano has also been hitting like his old self. Well, better than his old self in small sample-size heaven with his .421/.488/.632 line making him a very valuable bat in an otherwise flagging lineup.

Those Injuries

Xavier Nady who won the RF job from Swisher has a tear in his elbow tendon and may be looking at season ending surgery. The poor man is in his contract walk year. It's very unfortunate for him, because the Yankees will have to move on from him and once they do, it's unlikely they'll bring him back after a second Tommy John surgery.

Hideki Matsui is also having trouble with his reconstructed knees. I might have mentiond this before but the years of playing on artificial turf at the Tokyo Dome and going for the consecutive games record may have taken their toll. Maybe it was symbolic that he got past Shigeo Nagashima's Japanese homerun record with his lone homer in his first game.

On top of this, Mark Teixeira has been struggling with a sore wrist, for which he received a cortisone shot. There's apparently no structural damage. Then there is Johnny Damon who has the flu, and then of course A-Rod who is rehabbing his hip. This means the Yankees have been fielding lineups with Cody Ransom, Ramiro Pena and Melky Cabrera. Brett Gardner hasn't exactly been helping just yet.

It's Early Days Yet - Part 1


It really is still too early, which brings about some small sample-size quirks. Derek Jeter is the best fielding shortstop though April 17. In the 10 game stretch, his zone rating is .920, and he's fielding at a 30runs saved per 162 clip. That's 3.4 wins with the glove! It won't last.

It's Early Days Yet - Part 2

A quick look at Scranton Wilkes-Barre had me smiling. Anthony Jackson is killing the ball with a 1.123 OPS. So is Juan Miranda with a q.092 OPS.Miranda of course got called up to replace the injured bats. A-Jax is going to be kept at AAA to get those at-bats, but it may turn out that he'll be up at the big league level a lot sooner.

It's Early Days Yet - Part 3


Hiding a bit further down the list is good frien Eric Duncan with a solid .895 OPS. For the first time in a long while, Duncan has gotten off to a good start.

I know, I know, every year I hope for Duncan to do well. He is the Yankees' 2003 top pick after all. But when you consider that 2004's top pick is also at AAA SWB (Phil Hughes); and 2005's top pick got trade away for Abreu, boomeranged back as a waver pick up and left for basket ball; and 2006's top pick is also at AAA SWB (Ian Kennedy), maybe he's doing just fine. Duncan is still 24 going on 25. This is the year that will tell, so it's good to see him doing well. If I have my maths right, he's a Minor League Free Agent at the end of this year.

If the bats continue to get injured and falter at the big league club whileDuncan keeps hitting well at SWB, he too may make the big club yet this year.

Afghanistan, Afghanistan

Mis-Remembering Rambo


I've been having a personal retrospective of the Rambo movies since seeing Rambo, the fourth installation in this largely misbegotten series of films. They're quite perverse in the light of today's state of geopolitics. Particularly devastating is the irony that comes out of Rambo III where the shirtless one runs around the hills of Afghanistan on the side of the Mujihadeen. Of course we know what happened there, so we won't go into it, but it seems Afghanistan really is our "worst nightmare" in part because invading forces never seem to properly size up what the hell the objectives might be in Afghanistan.

I couldn't suppress loud guffaws throughout the film as the script tried to couch the Afghan War waged by the USSR as their "Vietnam", and that America had learnt from the Vietnam experience that you cannot defeat a nation committed to independence. That one had me in stitches - That would be why the West is back there again.

I shouldn't be laughing at all.

When Did This All Start?

It's hard to say, but Afghanistan was invaded by the British in the 1830s, through the Khyber Pass for the very reason to forestall a Russian move into the south. A force led by a William Macnaghten marched into Kabul in 1839 and made a complete hash of his occupation.

His political career began in 1830 as secretary to Lord William Bentinck; and in 1837 he became one of the most trusted advisers of the governor-general, Lord Auckland, with whose policy of supporting Shah Shuja against Dost Mahommed Khan, the reigning amir of Kabul, Macnaghten became closely identified.
He was created a baronet in 1840, and four months before his death was nominated to the governorship of Bombay. As a political agent at Kabul he came into conflict with the military authorities and subsequently with his subordinate Sir Alexander Burnes. Macnaghten attempted to placate the Afghan chiefs with heavy subsidies, but when the drain on the Indian exchequer became too great, and the allowances were reduced, this policy led to an outbreak. Burnes was murdered on November 2, 1841; and under the elderly General William Elphinstone, the British army in Kabul degenerated into a leaderless mob.

Macnaghten tried to save the situation by negotiating with the Afghan chiefs and, independently of them, with Dost Mahommed's son, Akbar Khan, by whom he was assassinated on December 23, 1841; the disastrous retreat from Kabul and the massacre of the British army in the Kurd Kabul Pass followed. These events threw doubt on Macnaghten's capacity for dealing with the problems of Indian diplomacy, though his fearlessness and integrity were unquestioned.

Macnaghten's demise strongly resembles the depiction of how Danny Dravot comes to an end in Kipling's 'The Man Who Would be King':

Dravot, wearing his crown, stood on a rope bridge over a gorge while the Kafirs cut the ropes, and fell to his death. Carnehan was crucified between two pine trees. When he survived for a day, the Kafirs considered it a miracle and let him go, and he begged his way back to India.
As proof of his tale, Carnehan shows the narrator Dravot's head, still wearing the golden crown. Carnehan leaves, but the next day the narrator sees him crawling along the road in the noon sun, with his hat off, and gone mad. The narrator sends him to the local asylum. When he inquires two days later, he learns that Carnehan has died of sunstroke ("half an hour bare-headed in the sun at mid-day..."). No belongings were found with him. [2]

Kipling essentially takes the detail that Macnaghten ends up as a beheaded corpse and fashions his own little horror show, but doubtless it was based on Macnaghten's campaign. Afghanistan remained a thorny geopolitical problem for the British that the British returned there in the 1870s:

After tension between Russia and Britain in Europe ended with the June 1878 Congress of Berlin, Russia turned its attention to Central Asia. That same summer, Russia sent an uninvited diplomatic mission to Kabul. Sher Ali tried, but failed, to keep them out. Russian envoys arrived in Kabul on 22 July 1878 and on 14 August, the British demanded that Sher Ali accept a British mission too.
The amir not only refused to receive a British mission but threatened to stop it if it were dispatched. Lord Lytton, the viceroy, ordered a diplomatic mission to set out for Kabul in September 1878 but the mission was turned back as it approached the eastern entrance of the Khyber Pass, triggering the Second Anglo-Afghan War. A British force of about 40,000 fighting men was distributed into military columns which penetrated Afghanistan at three different points. An alarmed Sher Ali attempted to appeal in person to the tsar for assistance, but unable to do so, he returned to Mazari Sharif, where he died on 21 February 1879.

With British forces occupying much of the country, Sher Ali's son and successor, Mohammad Yaqub Khan, signed the Treaty of Gandamak in May 1879 to prevent a British invasion of the rest of the country. According to this agreement and in return for an annual subsidy and vague assurances of assistance in case of foreign aggression, Yaqub relinquished control of Afghan foreign affairs to the British. British representatives were installed in Kabul and other locations, British control was extended to the Khyber and Michni passes, and Afghanistan ceded various frontier areas and Quetta to Britain. The British army then withdrew. Soon afterwards, an uprising in Kabul led to the slaughter of Britain’s Resident in Kabul, Sir Pierre Cavagnari and his guards and staff on 3 September 1879, provoking the second phase of the Second Afghan War. Major General Sir Frederick Roberts led the Kabul Field Force over the Shutargardan Pass into central Afghanistan, defeated the Afghan Army at Char Asiab on 6 October 1879 and occupied Kabul. Ghazi Mohammad Jan Khan Wardak staged an uprising and attacked British forces near Kabul in the Siege of the Sherpur Cantonment in December 1879, but his defeat there resulted in the collapse of this rebellion.

The second Anglo-Afghan war ends with the British getting what they want, except they go at it again in 1919:

As a result of the peace treaty, the British withdrew the handsome subsidy that they were paying the Afghans and withdrew from them the right to import arms from India, whilst the Afghans gained the right to conduct their own foreign affairs as a fully independent state.[2] For the British, the Durand Line which had long been a contentious issue between the two nations, was reaffirmed as the political boundary separating Afghanistan from the North-West Frontier and the Afghans made an undertaking to stop their seditious activities on the British side of the line.[2] Thus, in affect, both sides could make claim that they achieved something from the war.
But whilst the war was over, the effects that it had were not. The nationalism, disruption and unrest that it had sparked stirred up more trouble in the years to come, particularly in Waziristan.[18] The tribesmen, always ready to exploit weakness, whether real or perceived, banded together in the common cause of disorder and unrest. They had become well-armed too, as a result of the conflict, as they had benefitted greatly from the weapons and ammunition that the Afghans had left behind as well as from the influx of manpower in the large numbers of deserters from the militia that had joined their ranks. With these they launched a campaign of resistance to British authority on the North-West Frontier that was to last until the end of the Raj.

Add in the Soviet invasion, the aftermath of the Soviet withdrawal, the Taliban government, the Allied invasion, you have the picture of a place that's never managed to establish stable government. If any of all this is to go by, Afghanistan is where the west's ambitions go to die.

Nick Bolton Speaks

Nobody's White Knight

It was interesting while it lasted, but a man tends to look after his own interests first and Nick Bolton seems to fit the identikit of a classic corporate operator. Here's an article in the SMH.

"I took a commercial approach to this before buying in," he said.

"I saw an opportunity to improve the position of unit holders through our entry in the company and the actions we were planning to undertake. It was a commercial transaction, intended for commercial gain, for unit holders and for myself."

By his own admission, he was "playing a game" from the start, and the result was to extract a benefit from the carcass of BrisConnections.

"To the extent there was an altruistic outcome it was unintended, in that my interests were aligned with the interests of all other unit holders," he said. "But there was always a commercial intention on our part. We didn't seek the tag of white knight, and it doesn't fit."

Does he now fear his name, and his reputation, have taken a battering?

"To the mass market, yes. One needs to take an informed or educated decision as to whether or not that's right or wrong. To those at home it has definitely affected my credibility, but in other circles I am fine."

Throughout his court case with BrisConnections, counsel for the toll road builder tried to untangle the language used by Bolton to describe his intentions.It is no different trying to get Bolton to answer if, ethically, he can justify taking money for his vote.

'"To take money for something that would be of prejudice to others I think might raise questions," he said. "This wasn't one of those cases. I consider commercial prudency to be the number one motivator here. My personal ethics go to operating a business by the rules. If there are opportunities out there and they require exploitation of the rules, I don't think that's unethical. It comes down to interpretation, I guess, but I certainly think I have conducted things very ethically."

Interesting dude, but not nearly as interesting as the active shareholder people mistook him to be.  It's certainly made blogging the BrisConnections saga a lot less interesting. I'll tell you that much.

BrisConnections Disconnect

Nick Bolton Sells Out

It turns out that Nick Bolton sold out of his position in BrisConnections to the Leightons Group for the sum of $4.5m.

The rebel shareholder who pushed for a meeting of unitholders that had been expected to jeopardise the nation's biggest infrastructure project has done an about-face - and netted himself $4.5 million in the process.

Nicholas Bolton's company Australian Style Investments sold 77 million shares in BrisConnections, the builder of the $4.8 billion Brisbane airport toll road, to Theiss-John Holland.

Theiss-John Holland is a subsidiary of Leighton Holdings, the company that won the contract to build the road.

Mr Bolton was engaged in a court battle against BrisConnections. He had pushed for a meeting of unit holders that had been expected to commence wind-up proceedings today.

But he did a complete about-face, selling the shares and voting against the resolutions he had earlier pushed for - and he did not attend the meeting in person.

BrisConnections chairman Trevor Rowe told an angry meeting of unit holders that Australian Style Investments had voted against all seven resolutions when its proxies were received on Saturday.

Mr Bolton's surprise move makes it virtually impossible for retail investors to pass any resolutions that would wind up BrisConnections or its trusts.

So that goes to show his motion to wind up BrisConnections was nothing but a play to make somebody shake some money out of the tree for him. Good for Mr. Bolton, but he leaves a lot of disappointed people in his wake. Naturally, the required 75% vote for the resolution did not happen, which means all those mum-and-dad investors are stuck with the $1-per-unit obligation at the end of this month.

I imagine Mr. Bolton might have to watch his back for the rest of his life, but he now has $4.5million to keep him safe. You can't blame a guy for selling out at the right moment.  I'm not sure it's the kind of bargain most people would have made - but the $94m bill probably looked scary, and he himself probably didn't believe there would be the 75% to back his challenge. The bummer now is that things got a lot less interesting on the unit-holders' challenge front.

I've been speaking to people in the know and they they think the maths underlying the prospectus itself is incredibly dodgy, and that ASIC (for once) might wade in to see if Mac Bank really had done their due diligence by ASIC in launching such a troubled product on the market. If their forecast on the traffic is just as wrong as all the other toll road forecasts that have preceded it, then there might be a reason for ASIC to look into this thing more seriously. I mean, does anybody remember Sydney's own Cross City Tunnel fiasco?

The ABC News is also reporting that Deustche Bank and Mac Bank are not exactly seeing eye to eye on the matter of underwriting, so we'll see where all this is going to go, even without Nick Bolton's amazing challenge. So much for that.

Moving Targets On The High Seas

Did Anybody Call Casey Ryback?

Navy SEALs have rescued an American captain held hostage by pirates. Its like something straight out of a 1990s Steven Seagal movie, but there you go.

NAIROBI, Kenya – In a daring high-seas rescue, U.S. Navy snipers killed three Somali pirates and freed the American sea captain being held at gunpoint. The operation was a victory for the world\'s most powerful military but one that is unlikely to quell the scourge of piracy off the African coast.

Angry pirates vowed Monday to retaliate for the deaths of their colleagues, raising fears for the safety of some 230 foreign sailors still held hostage in more than a dozen ships anchored off lawless Somalia.

News of the rescue caused the captain's crew in Kenya to break into wild cheers, and brought tears to the eyes of those in Capt. Richard Phillips' hometown in Vermont, half a world away from the high-seas drama.

President Barack Obama called Phillips' courage "a model for all Americans\" and said he was pleased about the rescue, but added that the United States needs help from other countries to deal with the threat of piracy and to hold pirates accountable.

The stunning resolution to a five-day standoff came in a daring nighttime assault in choppy seas Sunday after a pirate on an enclosed lifeboat held an AK-47 assault rifle to the back of Phillips, a 53-year-old freight captain.

Vice Adm. Bill Gortney said Phillips was tied up and in "imminent danger" of being killed when the commander of the nearby USS Bainbridge made the split-second decision to order his men to shoot. Gortney said Navy snipers took aim at the pirates' heads and shoulders.

Gortney said the lifeboat was about 25-30 yards (meters) away and was being towed by the Bainbridge at the time. Pirates had agreed to let the warship tow the powerless lifeboat out of rough water.

A fourth pirate surrendered after boarding the Bainbridge earlier in the day and could face life in a U.S. prison. He had been seeking medical attention for a wound to his hand and was negotiating with U.S. officials on conditions for Phillips' release, military officials said. The wound may be from an ice pick that a crew member drove into one pirate's hand after the pirates boarded the U.S.-flagged Maersk Alabama on Wednesday.

The fight put up by the Alabama crew left the pirates with just one hostage on a small lifeboat, putting them in an exceptionally vulnerable position. Prior to this attack, Somali pirates had become used to no resistance once they boarded a ship and negotiations that yielded million-dollar ransoms.

Yet Sunday's blow to their lucrative activities is unlikely to do much to quell the growing pirate threat that has transformed one of the world's busiest shipping lanes into one of its most dangerous. It also risked provoking retaliatory attacks.

"This could escalate violence in this part of the world, no question about it," said Gortney, the commander of U.S. Naval Forces Central Command.

The American rescue followed a similar operation Friday carried out by French navy commandos, who stormed a pirate-held sailboat, the Tanit, in a shootout at sea that killed two pirates and freed four French hostages. The French owner of the vessel was also killed in the assault.

"Every country will be treated the way it treats us. In the future, America will be the one mourning and crying," Abdullahi Lami, one of the pirates holding a Greek ship anchored in the Somali town of Gaan, told The Associated Press. "We will retaliate (for) the killings of our men."

I dunno. Don't these pirates watch American movies on their pirated DVDs and stuff? You'd think that they'd know by now that the Americans are very well equipped to do certain kinds of things. Send in the clowns, send in the seals. These Navy SEALs dudes have probably been waiting all their lives to do this stuff. Good on them I say.

I love the lame threat at the end. Sure they'll retailiate. Of course! God knows how, being pirates based out of Somalia, but we know they'll do *something*. The cycle of violence demands that they do, but somehow I think the Americans are really keen to take on pirates on open seas  rather than the jihadists ducking in and out of caves in Afghanistan. They're easier pickings.

Meanwhile In Baseball Land

Yankees Update 12/04/09 - Bad Start?

The MLB season opened and the Yankees immediately leapt off to a 0-2 start. Yep, 2 straight losses behind CC Sabathia and Chien-Ming Wang sort of put them in the media spotlight where "the 400gazillion dollar Yankees have sputtered to a 0-2 start..." Like, they were going to finish 0-162. Then they won the next three games, so as we speak, they're sitting at a .600, 96win pace. The joys of small sample sizes are wonderful, the first week of a season being particularly skewed, whereby Nick Swisher has socked a .538/625/1.385, 2.010 OPS, thus making Brain Cashman's acquisition a genius move. Umm, eat that A-Rod! :)

Swisher was always on the rebound after a disastrous season in Chicago, but it's been amazing to see him hit so much, so well. Just who did the Yankees trade away for him again? :)

During this same time, Posada has looked good with bat and glove; Tex hit his first Yankee homer; Sabathia lost one badly and won one in grand style; AJ Burnett and Pettitte both put in very solid starts, and well, the Kansas City Royals looked ordinary. It's Joba going for the sweep tomorrow.

Today's BrisConnection News

BrisConnections Underwriters Seek Payment Deal

Ever since this circus started making headlines, I've been blogging this thing for fun.  I have to confess I have no stake in any of this, except more amusement, which must make me a terrible rubbernecker in the world of high finance train-wrecks.

Here's the latest on the news vine.

BrisConnections, the Queensland toll-road builder that has tumbled 99.9% since its initial public offering in July, has requested its shares be halted from trading ahead of a potential approach to unit holders.

The company has received "material information from one of its underwriters regarding a possible approach", it said today in a statement.

Macquarie Group and Deutsche Bank are its underwriters.

Elizabeth Knight has this entry in the SMH.

Here is how the sides are lining up. Macquarie Bank is involved in almost every facet of this project; most importantly, it is a major lender. Its bridging loan will be repaid from the proceeds of the instalment receipts due from shareholders.

Deutsche Bank and Macquarie Bank have underwritten the instalment receipts, so if investors can't pay the money they owe (the first instalment is due later this week), then these two underwriters will need to make good on the shortfall.

Deutsche Bank would rather see BrisConnections wound up, because it could then avoid having to pay the shortfall on the instalment receipts.

Macquarie is happy enough to honour the underwriting agreement, because the larger institutional shareholders will be able to stump up the additional $2 liability attached to their shares and they will share any shortfall with Deutsche Bank. So on this deal the two underwriters are pitted against each other.

The third party in this is the Queensland Government. From a political perspective, it wants this project to be completed because it needs a new road from Brisbane Airport to the city, and it wants to employ local voters to build it.

It also has financial skin to lose as this project is a joint partnership, using taxpayer money.

On the other hand, the last thing the Premier, Anna Bligh, wants to deal with is lots of local shareholders being faced with debt collectors on their doorstep asking for money.

It was fortunate for Bligh that she went to the polls before this disaster blew up in her Government's face.

Nicholas Bolton may have been the catalyst for bringing this disaster into the public arena, but since this project began it has been an accident waiting to happen.

It's a classic highly-geared structure that should probably never have made it into the listed public arena.

The debt crisis that changed the feasibility of leveraged projects like this had already begun when it was listed on the Australian Stock Exchange. Getting equity funding from small shareholders who were then obliged to pay a call for further instalments was irresponsible. ASIC should have been looking at this at its conception, not its implosion.

There was no room in this project for excessive debt or rubbery forecasts for revenue and traffic use. But these are issues now coming into question.

It's funny how it's only now that the the foundations of the deal has been exposed as largely wanting that the public sphere has woken up to just how dodgy these public infrastructure deals put together by the Macquarie Bank actually are.

There are plenty of other tollways and motorways that Macquarie Bank has been shoving through development with these kinds of deals so there should be a greater lesson in it for governments. Of course the governments a re silent because it means they have to go back to the horrible prospect of actually doing these infrastructure developments from scratch by themselves, and weigh up the real needs of the population rather than throw up tollways every which way.Mac Bank shouldn't have been allowed to run loose with this stuff to begin with.

Of course the deafening silence you from the government is actually that because doing the right thing by the electorate and being accountable and making sense in how to spend public monies is hard work. Privatising deals and ripping off mom&dad retail investors, is capitalism in action and makes perfect sense, but BrisConnections shows it is an utter crock of a notion.

The 'Read'em Their Rights' Rule

It now falls incumbent upon Stockbrokers to warn investors about partially paid listed securities as a fall out of all this BrisConnetions mess. So even with an understanding that anything in the market must be caveat emptor, the ASX wants brokers to warn the small-timers.

The ASX said brokers will now be required to obtain from retail clients a signed agreement saying they are aware they have a responsibility to obtain and read a copy of a prospectus, product disclosure statement or information memorandum produced by the product issuer.

The rule will apply when small investors enter transactions to buy a partly paid security for the first time and take effect from May 1.

Client agreement rules of this kind already exist for complex products such as options, futures and warrants.

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission said the new rule for party paid securities is aimed at improving disclosure for retail investors, ensuring they are aware of potential liabilities when making such investments.

"ASIC and ASX have been in direct contact with several market participants to ensure that they have contacted their clients with current orders to buy partly paid Securities,and communicated their potential obligations,'' ASIC said in a statement.

The change to the ASX market rules was approved by federal superannuation and corporate law minister Senator Nick Sherry today.

"The government shares the concerns of ASIC and the ASX that retail investors have not fully understood their potential obligations with regard to partly paid securities,'' Senator Sherry said in a statement.

"A falling share market this year has meant that some securities that looked like a bargain actually had huge liabilities attached to them that were not understood by retail investors who purchased them.''

There are five partly paid securities listed on ASX that will be subject to the new rule.

I wonder how they'll make this work with internet share trading and the such.

Projections For MLB Season

A Spin On The Fave Pastime

I actually like this part of the spring training where people present us with their projections. People are constantly predicting things through their intuition but computer technology has also given rise to the multiple simulated seasons method where people run the teams through the season many times to get an answer.

The most interesting projections come out of the multiple projections systems that get put through the Diamond Mind baseball game 1000times, done at the Replacement Level Yankee Weblog, courtesy of 'SG'. The various projection systems all emphasise different aspects of a player, league contexts, ballparks and so on, but once they go into the blender of 1000 seasons it's remarkable how similar the outcomes are.

The average of the 6000 simulated seasons has the AL as:

EAST:

• NYY: 95.9-66.1


• Bos: 94.3 - 67.7


• Tam: 90.1 - 71.9


• Tor: 75.6 - 86.4


• Bal: 74.5 - 87.5

CENTRAL:

• Cle: 85.5 - 76.5


• Det: 81.4 - 80.6


• Min: 79.5 - 82.5


• KC: 74.6 - 87.4


• ChA: 74.1 - 87.9

WEST:

• LAA: 85.4 - 76.6


• Oak: 81.1 -80.9


• Sea: 77.8 - 84.2


• Tex: 72.1 - 89.9

All of which seems like a just about what your intuition might tell you with a few caveats that SG comments upon on the entry when you follow the link above. Of course, the projection systems have all come in under on Chicago for a number of years, and injuries and such tends to affect how these things go.

Of the 6 projection systems, CHONE likes Boston more over the Yanks, but apart from that the 6 projections line up roughly as above.

What got my attention today was this simulation here on Yahoo.

2009 American League Preview

SIMULATION BASED FORECASTING & METHODOLOGY
AccuScore uses past player performance statistics to describe how players perform under different environmental, match-up, and game situation conditions. Using projected starting lineups AccuScore simulates each game of the 2009 Season one at-bat at a time. By repeating the simulation 10,000 to 20,000 times per game AccuScore calculates the precise probability each team has of winning each game, winning their division, making the playoffs, advancing in the playoffs and winning the World Series. Here's AccuScore.com's analysis of the 2009 American League.

Wow. 20,000 sims per game! And the AL looks like this according to this test:

EAST:

• Bos: 95 - 67


• Tam: 93 - 69


• NYY: 91 - 71


• Tor: 80 - 82


• Bal: 68 - 94

CENTRAL:

• Min: 86 - 76


• Cle: 83 - 79


• ChA: 82 - 80


• Det: 79 - 83


• KC: 75 - 87

WEST:

• LAA: 88 - 74


• Oak: 81 - 81


• SEA: 72 - 90


• Tex: 69 -93

As you can see, that's a pretty different outcome in the 1-2-3 slots for the AL East and the AL Central is quite different too. Accuscore thinks the extended absence of A-Rod is enough to pare back the Yankees while still having a 25.4% chance of winning the division. They're also high on Minnestoa's pitching, while they're a little sour on Cleaveland's rotation. There's little love for a bounceback season for Detroit. All of which are interesting takes on the possible outcome of the season.

Hence I thought I'd note this all down so that when the season is done, I can come back and have a look and see whose projection system did what, and to see if Accuscore's projection does any better than the sabermetricians.

UPDATE:

Here's another one.

Professor Bruce Bukiet, of the mathematical sciences department at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, developed a formula in 2000 to predict game results. As the season gets under way Sunday, his formula sees the defending World Champion Philadelphia Phillies, the New York Mets (which Bukiet admits is his favorite team) and the Atlanta Brave will each win 88 games and tie for the NL East title.

Bukiet's formula says the Chicago Cubs Los Angeles Dodgers and Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim should easily win their divisions.

The New York Yankees, predicted to win 99 games, were a two-game favorite over the Boston Red Sox in the AL East and the Cleveland Indians were installed as the team to beat in the AL Central.

"These results are merely a guide as to how teams ought to perform. There are many unknowns, especially trades, injuries and how rookies will perform," Bukiet said. "Over the years, the predictions have been about as good as those of the so-called experts. It demonstrates how useful math can be in understanding so many aspects of the world around us."

A 3-way tie in the NL East sounds interesting.

Moments In Science

Robot Scientist Makes Discovery On Its Own

That line reads like a 1950sscience fiction movie title, but we've actually arrived at the day where a robot has done the scientific process of hypothesising and testing all on it own.

A robot programmed to study genomics has for the first time independently discovered new scientific knowledge, according to a report in the journal Science.
Researchers at the Aberystwyth University in Wales and the University of Cambridge, England, created Adam, a robot scientist that conducted experiments on yeast metabolism and also reasoned on the results, according to an online press release.
Using artificial intelligence, the prototype robot carried out each stage of the scientific process on its own, with researchers using separate manual experiments to confirm its hypotheses, it said.

The finding, to be published today, may pave the way for automating tedious laboratory tasks, according to the researchers.
"Ultimately we hope to have teams of humans and robot scientists working together in laboratories," Professor Ross King, who led the research at Aberystwyth University, was cited as saying in the statement.
Adam discovered "simple but new" scientific knowledge about the genomics of the baker's yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae, an organism used to model more complex life systems, the statement said. He also came up with a follow-up experiment.

Pretty wild.

H2B Rocket Engine Test Fire Is Successful

Some of you may know that some years ago I was involved with a Discovery Channel program about the Japanese Space Exploration Agency. We went out to Tanegashima Island where they launch their rockets and covered the H2A rocket launch No.9.

At the time, they said they were developing a new rocket to follow the H2A which would have a higher capacity payload, and that was the H2B. Today we find the H2B has had a successful test firing of its engine. Here's an English article.

Japan's new H-2B rocket rolled to its oceanfront launch pad this week and briefly fired its two main engines Thursday, concluding the heavy-lift booster's first practice countdown after a six-day delay due to faulty ground equipment.

The orange and white rocket, stripped of its payload shroud and four solid rocket boosters, was driven atop a mobile platform overnight Tuesday to Launch Pad No. 2 at Tanegashima space center's Yoshinobu launch complex.

It was the second trip to the pad for the H-2B. Two previous attempted countdowns ended with scrubs on March 27 and again Wednesday.

Engineers began loading cryogenic liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen into the rocket Thursday morning.

Clocks counted down to zero at 2 p.m. local time, or 0500 GMT Thursday, when the first stage's two LE-7A main engines ignited for a 10-second burn.

Early results indicate the engines performed well during the test, according to the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, or JAXA.

Thursday's exercise included the real first and second stages that will be used on the rocket's maiden flight later this year. The test was designed to validate the H-2B rocket's first stage propulsion system and the launcher's connections with the newly renovated launch pad, according to JAXA.

The H2B rocket will get its first launch in September this year. I kind of wish Discovery Channel would want to do a follow up program, just so I can go see another rocket launch in Tanegashima. :)

Gary Sheffield Is Cut By The Tigers

What Next, At The Threshold Of 500 HRs?

Gary Sheffield, who would in an instant win the modern equivalent of the 'Jim-Rice-'most-feared hitter' accolade, has been cut by the Detroit Tigers.

The Tigers released designated hitter Gary Sheffield this morning, a startling development since the team had already guaranteed him $14 million this season. It's the second-highest amount owed to a released player in club history, behind Damion Easley's $14.3 million in 2003.

“You’re going to pay him, one way or the other,” said club president/general manager Dave Dombrowski.

The decision is surprising from a historical perspective, because Sheffield’s next home run will be the 500th of his career.

“It’s one of those things where you move on, you know?” Sheffield said, remaining remarkably composed as he discussed the move. “I was surprised. I thought I was getting ready for the season. I never thought that I wasn’t going to be playing with the Detroit Tigers this year. It’s probably a blessing.”

Dombrowski confirmed that the decision means outfielder Marcus Thames will make the team. Thames will likely get a percentage of at-bats as the DH. “Marcus is a good player, a threat,” Dombrowski said. “He’s a streaky hitter at times. When he’s hot, he’s real hot. I think he’ll be a big plus for us.”

Of course, Gary Sheffield is nobody's idea of slam-dunk Hall of Famer today because there is the specter of  hanging around with a PED-era Barry Bonds while hitting 35+ HRs each year, he is in the "steroid era highly suspect hitter" basket.

If Sheffield does not get a call and ends up being forced to retire, he will leave one homer short of the once-hallowed 500-homer mark. Eventually, he will also be an interesting case for the Hall of Fame. In addition to his home runs, Sheffield has 2,615 hits, 1,633 runs batted in and a .292 career average. Based strictly on numbers, Sheffield is a Hall of Famer.

But some voters will surely wonder how much of his production was tied to steroids. He testified before a federal grand jury investigating Balco in December 2003. One year later, Sheffield, who worked out with Barry Bonds, told Sports Illustrated that he unknowingly used a designer steroid on his knee.

Will Sheffield’s link to steroids, even if he said it was unknowing, damage his Hall of Fame chances? I think it will. I’ve interviewed numerous writers who have told me they will not vote for any players who were connected to steroids, regardless of the explanation.

So, while Sheffield waits for a call that could enable him to climb over the 500-homer mark, anything else he does in the future may not sway certain voters. Whether Sheffield ends up with 499 or 515 homers, some voters have already made up their minds about his candidacy for the Hall. Have you?

Who'd a thunk it way back when George Steinbrenner picked Sheff over Vlad Guerrero when offered the choice by Brian Cashman? Vlad would have been the sane choice, but Sheff's tamp ties essentially got him his contract. The notion then was that George was looking forward to celebrating Sheff's 500th homer in pinstripes- and here he is getting cut by the Tigers, 1HR shy of the mark. How times change, and with them our attitudes to athletes an their foibles.

Sheff says he's not done. So I decided to look up his projections at fangraphs. He's projecting worse than Hideki Matsui, for that ever that is worth, but there you go. None of the projection sysems think his ISO will op .200, and his OBP looks mired between .339 and .356. The high .700s OPS would put him at about league average but that's Xavier Nady with more OBP, less SLG and no fielding.If you could get him for $400,000, then that is something some team will buy into, I imagine.

I'm pondering just who needs a league average bat to DH in the AL...

Yanks, no Bosox no, Rays no, Orioles no, Maybe Jays?

Chisox no, Indians no, Twins maybe & maybe Royals?

Angels, no, Athletics no, Rangers no, but Mariners maybe?

Even then I'm not sure the Twins or the Jays or Royals really need Sheff. And of course the Mariners are trying to cure their ills through better team chemistry so I don't see him landing there. That means he's likely to end up as pinch hitter on some NL team.

Springtime For GM & Chrysler

Obama Sends Them Back To Drawing Board

The best indication as predicted some itme ago is that the Obama administration will let General Motors and Chrysler go to bankruptcy.

President Barack Obama believes a quick, negotiated bankruptcy is the most likely way for General Motors Corp. to restructure and become a competitive automaker, people familiar with the matter said.

Obama also is prepared to let Chrysler LLC go bankrupt and be sold off piecemeal if the third-largest U.S. automaker can’t form an alliance with Fiat SpA, said members of Congress who were briefed on the GM and Chrysler situation before the president said two days ago that the automakers’ viability plans were insufficient.

The president gave GM 60 days to come up with deeper cost and debt reductions than the biggest U.S. automaker proposed in its plan submitted last month. The “quick and surgical” bankruptcy his administration said was also an option appears to be inevitable, said the members of Congress and two other people familiar with the matter. Obama personally signed off on asking GM Chief Executive Officer Rick Wagoner to step down, which he did on March 29, they said.

A GM bankruptcy would mark the fall of a corporate icon that as recently as 2004 posted a $2.8 billion profit and in 1962 controlled 51 percent of the domestic car market. A plunge in sales of sport-utility vehicles and pickups as gasoline prices soared, coupled with the seizing up of credit markets, caused GM to lose $82 billion in the last four years and seek government help to survive.

Kind of makes the eyeballs hurt, just reading that. There are erstwhile voices asking whether it really would be good to let GM, Chrysler and their investors go to the wall, but it is also the case that the US government can't continue to just keep on handing over money to keep them afloat, month by month.

The smart money seems to be that if and when GM goes into bankruptcy, it will have to be broken up into 2 companies in the restructuring process - the profitable parts of the business will be bundled together and emerge from bankruptcy quickly while, the problem children of the business will be shepherded through more slowly. GM Holden in Australia is most likely to be in the former group, but it maybe the case that sections of GM might simply be sold off to interests who can afford them. Chrysler seems to be headlong on its way to bankruptcy, "don't pass go, don't collect $200.00", as Monopoly would tell us.

Now, speaking of colossal failures in capitalism...

Back In Ostraya, Remember John Hewson?

Does humor belong in music? Or does the Pope live in the Vatican?

John Hewson has recently written some article on a pay- site that basically says there's no going back to the way it was before because it was all so screwed up to begin with - or words to that effect. He's been makin some noise lately, Dr. Hewson, so I also wanted to link to Gerard Henderson having a go at him here.

Hewson lost the "unlosable" election that year. After leaving for the corporate world, he created a resume littered with disputation. Last week there was more bad news about the collapse of Elderslie Finance Corporation, where Hewson was chairman before matters slid out of control, leaving 4000 investors behind.

Before that, Hewson departed from the board of Pulse Health Group in a shake-up. Before that, he quit as chairman of Natural Fuel amid a boardroom battle. Before that, he lost a bitter boardroom struggle for control of Sports & Entertainment Limited. Before that, he departed Belle Property amid a dispute. Before that, he resigned as chairman of Network Entertainment prior to the company's collapse. Before that, as dean of the Macquarie Graduate School of Management, he had a spectacular falling out with the university. Before that, he helped lead a Macquarie venture in Singapore, which collapsed. Before that, CBD Online, where Hewson had been chairman, failed.

When it comes to authority in the worlds of business and politics, Hewson is a dead man talking. Only one field would treat this resume as a qualification for authority - the media - and so it was that Hewson provided the most lurid example, thus far, of the self-generated, self-feeding media speculation around Costello for the past month.

Pretty funny. Nothing makes for such fine autumn reading as old politico-warhorses having a jab at one another.

More Interesting News For Business Types

The American Economy As Basketcase

A couple of weeks ago, I did point out that oligarchies do have their merits in stabilising systems. They're uncompetitive, and perhaps even anti-competitive, but a stable economy seems to be built on oligarchic sharing of market segments, rather than a genuine free for all. Part of this might be because there simply aren't enough smart people around to run a lot of tiny corporations, and in turn, there is possibly a natural pooling of talent in more stable environments which means the oligarchies tend to come out of the same social soil as the idiots who might be running these companies. With that in mind, check out this link from Pleiades.

In its depth and suddenness, the U.S. economic and financial crisis is shockingly reminiscent of moments we have recently seen in emerging markets (and only in emerging markets): South Korea (1997), Malaysia (1998), Russia and Argentina (time and again). In each of those cases, global investors, afraid that the country or its financial sector wouldn’t be able to pay off mountainous debt, suddenly stopped lending. And in each case, that fear became self-fulfilling, as banks that couldn’t roll over their debt did, in fact, become unable to pay. This is precisely what drove Lehman Brothers into bankruptcy on September 15, causing all sources of funding to the U.S. financial sector to dry up overnight. Just as in emerging-market crises, the weakness in the banking system has quickly rippled out into the rest of the economy, causing a severe economic contraction and hardship for millions of people.

But there’s a deeper and more disturbing similarity: elite business interests—financiers, in the case of the U.S.—played a central role in creating the crisis, making ever-larger gambles, with the implicit backing of the government, until the inevitable collapse. More alarming, they are now using their influence to prevent precisely the sorts of reforms that are needed, and fast, to pull the economy out of its nosedive. The government seems helpless, or unwilling, to act against them.

Top investment bankers and government officials like to lay the blame for the current crisis on the lowering of U.S. interest rates after the dotcom bust or, even better—in a “buck stops somewhere else” sort of way—on the flow of savings out of China. Some on the right like to complain about Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, or even about longer-standing efforts to promote broader homeownership. And, of course, it is axiomatic to everyone that the regulators responsible for “safety and soundness” were fast asleep at the wheel.

But these various policies—lightweight regulation, cheap money, the unwritten Chinese-American economic alliance, the promotion of homeownership—had something in common. Even though some are traditionally associated with Democrats and some with Republicans, they all benefited the financial sector. Policy changes that might have forestalled the crisis but would have limited the financial sector’s profits—such as Brooksley Born’s now-famous attempts to regulate credit-default swaps at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, in 1998—were ignored or swept aside.

The financial industry has not always enjoyed such favored treatment. But for the past 25 years or so, finance has boomed, becoming ever more powerful. The boom began with the Reagan years, and it only gained strength with the deregulatory policies of the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations. Several other factors helped fuel the financial industry’s ascent. Paul Volcker’s monetary policy in the 1980s, and the increased volatility in interest rates that accompanied it, made bond trading much more lucrative. The invention of securitization, interest-rate swaps, and credit-default swaps greatly increased the volume of transactions that bankers could make money on. And an aging and increasingly wealthy population invested more and more money in securities, helped by the invention of the IRA and the 401(k) plan. Together, these developments vastly increased the profit opportunities in financial services.

Oh dear. And Wall Street really ran with it, didn't they now? The net result is the plum-pudding of financial doom we're all being collateralised into. Who came up with this lousy plan?

It's another rivetting read if you're into why this Global Financial Crisis is so f*cked, begat in f*ckedness, and delivered from and unto f*ckednss by the f*cked.

Macquarie Bank Buys Into Brisconnetions

A couple of weeks ago, we looked at Brisconnections and its amazing collapsing unit prices, the $2-per-unit that had to be paid, and how one Nick Bolton who bought into these shares as penny-dreadfuls looking for a quick buck, has now moved to wind up the trust.

This week we find Macquarie Bank has waded into this mess by buying the trust units in order to forestall the windup motion.

What started as a circus sideshow has now turned into a serious headache for the investment bank, which is attempting to protect its $325 million exposure and a future fee stream.

Macquarie was a key member in the BrisConnections consortium that won the 45-year concession to build, operate and finance the 6.7-kilometre Airport link toll road in Brisbane.

But now the bank that turned infrastructure financing into a global franchise faces having one of its bread-and-butter tollroad projects derailed in a street fight with a 26-year-old internet entrepreneur.

Macquarie's 8.1 per cent stake in BrisConnections, picked up for spare change, is aimed at thwarting Nicholas Bolton's attempt at winding-up the toll road operator. This move had been looming as the escape plan for Bolton and thousands of retail shareholders who are holding onto toxic securities that have hundreds of millions of dollars worth of debt attached.

In rosier days BrisConnections represented a fee pot for Macquarie and a clutch of investment banks linked to last year's $1.2-billion sharemarket float.

Macquarie secured a financial advisory fee of $56.1 million, a sponsor development fee of $12.5 million, and an equity underwriting fee of $28.2 million. It also stood to gain a dividend reinvestment plan underwriting fee of $14 million.

Deutsche Bank shared its equity underwriting exposure to Macquarie, and Credit Suisse and JPMorgan each had a small windfall in the underwriting fee.

Macquarie also stood to gain through an agreement that secured it as an exclusive financial adviser to BrisConnections for a decade.

Among all this is Deutsche, which is a not so disinterested bystander in proceedings. With Macquarie, Deutsche is the co-underwriter of the $390 million due to be paid on April 29. The two have a further $390 million underwriting obligation that is due again next year.

Unless there is a miraculous change in appetite for start-up infrastructure assets, the underwriters are likely to be left with the bulk of the shortfall, given the unrealistic prospect that retail shareholders will be in a position to pay for this.

Naturally, Deutsche Bank would rather not pay that sum of money just because Mac Bank floated the damn thing in a way that -pardon the pun - would sink rather than float. All very funny, and I do hope this Nick Bolton fella wins. The Mac Bank model of 'infrastructure business' is so reprehensible, they deserve this stuff to happen to them and probably more.

UPDATE: Of course  the news of the day (02-Apr-'09) is that Bolton wins the first round in court. BrisConnections can't stop him from calling  the unit holders' meeting to wind down the trust.

Rebel shareholder Nicholas Bolton has won his court battle with Brisbane toll-road builder BrisConnections.

Two planned meetings of unitholders will now go ahead, as scheduled, later this month.

The decision puts in jeopardy the future of Brisbane's $4.8 billion Airport Link toll road, the biggest infrastructure project under way in Australia. The company's unit holders will vote on a series of resolutions to have BrisConnections wound up at those meetings.

BrisConnections was seeking orders in the Victorian Supreme Court to have Bolton's company, Australian Style Investments, wound up on the grounds it was insolvent and would not be able to pay a $77 million instalment owed to BrisConnections.

BrisConnections was also seeking orders to have two meetings of unitholders - called by Mr Bolton, ASI's 26-year-old major shareholder - to be cancelled. BrisConnections told the court the meetings had been improperly called.

Justice Ross Robson found in favour of Mr Bolton and said the meetings could go ahead. "BrisConnections' objections to the meetings are not valid objections,'' he said.

The decision means that BrisConnections' small shareholders, who control somewhere between 70% and 75% of the company's stapled units, will be able to meet and vote on having the company wound up.

Whether that eventuates remains in doubt, as a special resolution to wind-up the trusts requires a 75 per cent vote.

Stay tuned. This is one interesting circus.