DUCK POND

YES, OTHER WORLDS EXIST! April 30, 2005

First Picture of Planet in orbit around a Star in another Solar System (The Independent)

Using a new technique, scientists from the European Space Agency have obtained a picture of first planet orbiting a star in another solar system. We are not alone. There are other worlds out there, and the intriguing possibility they have life, in some shape or form. The article points out the red dot is the planet. Now it has been given a name: 2M1207b. The full story and the picture is from The Independent.

I am surprised that these stories and this evidence does not appear to attract a wider interest.

FRIDAY NIGHT DOG BLOG RETURNS April 29, 2005

Other matters, from out of the blue, have taken my time this week, so I have had to go to the vault for the dog blog photos.

Sasha stops for a breather.

I kept telling Sash that Sisyphus had to haul the rocks up the hill. It should be a lot easier to tow them down the hill. Never mind this was a good time for a rest.

Taffy finds time to look on
What the caption says. Taffy seems to have a sunny disposition. He is not for hauling rocks.

The horses gather, the dogs search.
The horses gather when the dogs and the human comes by. I am not sure what they make of us.

Taff and Sash, without the dominant tongue
Sasha’s tongue just occasionally is not prominent. And Taffy’s never is. Panting, is I suppose, an important way for dogs to cool off.

DEALING WITH UNEMPLOYMENT April 29, 2005

I hear that the Federal Government is going to refuse unemployment benefits to people who have failed to meet the requirements of the mutual obligations test. Taking the high ground, as you do when engaging in mindless cruelty, they suggest that they are protecting taxpayer’s money. The more logical step is to pass legislation making failure to meet mutual obligations a crime, and then send the offenders to prison. That action will save crimes from being committed, save the suicide statistics from loss of self esteem and a sense of hopelessness, and move the unemployed to the jails. Oops this will not save taxpayer’s their money – for that you need to reintroduce the death penalty and make long term unemployment a capital crime. What is wrong with this government? Why don’t they get their act together?

I suspect, although I have no evidence, the long-term employed see themselves as unemployable. To be unemployable is to be a failure, and to lose self-confidence and self-respect. They are faced with part-time and casual work as their first step into the labor market, and for people from, for example the Wollongong area, they are faced with three to four hours travelling time per day. Understandably, some make the rational decision to reduce the footprint they leave on the planet, and live within a very restricted budget.

The fact that people are engaged in casual or part-time employment means that they get less benefits from their employment, are subject to greater and more exacting performance measures. Then they are more likely both to be subject to capricious and unaccountable management discretion, and suffer the stigmata of failure. In an earlier post, I have minimized the emotional consequences of being sacked. In terms of well being, it makes more sense, and by extrapolation is more humane, to simply let people resign (which of course does not happen for the underclass). As this article in The Sydney Morning Herald suggests that dismissal can be the first foot on a slippery slope leading to other problems. The situation is compounded if an income is not obtained obtained within a viable time.

This Government has taken the opportunity to ignored the self-funded unemployed, believing, no doubt with good cause, that are motivated to return as quickly as possible to the workforce. While lack of motivation, and that set of reactions, beliefs and attitudes of which it is made, may presage failure, it cannot alone address objective causes, such as talents, prescribed personality types, as is the case in selling, skills and knowledge. There is the wonderful economic logic to all of this, or at least as I am advised by PML, that business can (therefore should) externalize their costs. It looks like economic slavery to me.

Political ideologists, including Bush and Howard, are deeply imbued with the notion that the underclass must find salvation by working hard. When they talk like this, they show that they do not understand what work is, or indeed, what energy is. I do not really understand energy either, except that it requires structures, for instances waves, and that it exists as potential energy that can be converted to kinetic energy, and that in living things it is part of neurons and behavior. These structures are able to relate one to another as well as interact. The more entropy these structures contain, like the wound down alarm clock, the less capacity for activity. Some have suggested that stupidity is a form of entropy. Hence they suggest the critical importance of creativity. Living things and economies too, can grow, but we should not mistake growth with, for example, cancers. Growth is positive.

We might take such matter into account, if we were more to consider the economics of working smart, and appreciate at the same time the requirements of good management. The underlying question gets down to the one, as least Peter Singer is prepared to engage: How are we to live?

What I plan to do, acknowledging you may not be in the slightest interested, is to set myself a project of sixty days, during which I will be applying for jobs, developing a business plan for a modest home-based operation, and taking the opportunity to do and supervise all the jobs that need to be done around the house, but which I usually never have time. I am not sure about the time frame, but it seems to me I must recognize that time is a resource and that learning is necessary to develop greater effectiveness. Tom Peters would insist that it would have to be a wow! project. Oh yea!

PART-TIME AND CASUAL April 28, 2005

This report in The Sydney Morning Herald reports on a study conducted by RMIT to the effect that many part-time and casual workers are not working the hours to make ends meet and they are being forced to work harder. There are other issues not discussed, since it seems they are not news (at least today). The report does note that Australia is second to the Netherlands in the proportion of casual and part-time employees within the OECD, with no explanation why and how this has come about, and no comment that these figures are not available in the United States.

So it seems if you wish to be a victim become a part-time or casual employee, if you have a choice. The suggestion is that this fracturing of the labor force so that a significant proportion are effectively powerless and without employment rights is part of the Federal Government’s hidden agenda. The ALP is not much interested these days in the well being of citizens because it wishes to have credibility with the rich and powerful, who are the most deserving members of the population.

This is exactly the kind of issue that will not attract the editorial writers of the Herald, much less The Australian. As a matter of fact it does not seem to attract much interest in Aussie blogdom. I wonder why?

NON-REASONS FOR THE INVASION April 27, 2005

The final report of the US investigation into the claim that Saddam Hussein had Weapons of Mass Destruction, and that they were spirited away to Syria has concluded that such weapons did not exist. The Sydney Morning Herald records:

The report, which refuted many of the Bush Administration’s principal arguments for going to war in Iraq, marked an official end of a two-year weapons hunt led most recently by former UN weapons inspector Charles Duelfer. The team found that the 1991 Gulf War and subsequent UN sanctions had destroyed Iraq’s illicit weapons capabilities and, for the most part, Saddam had not tried to rebuild them.

Meanwhile, in the final days of the British electoral campaign, Tony Blair has defended his position:

At a news conference on Monday, he suggested that he would never persuade his detractors to accept his version of events but that he had no regrets about committing British troops to fight in the war. “I am not sorry about it. I think I did the right thing,” he said.

I was going to suggest that John Howard might put this line aside for future reference, except he would never say sorry.

And since we were discussing spirits, in an accompanying piece, it is reported that the US Marines are using dummies on their vehicles to suggest to their enemies their numbers are greater than what they are. Marines broke the code of silence to describe the extent to which they are short of equipment and manpower.

UPDATE: 28/04/2005

Kevin McMillian, guest blogger at Juan Cole’s Informed Comment, concludes:

There’s no need to play softball with this Administration. Its case for war was fraudulent or ludicrous in virtually every respect, and so many of its deceptions were demonstrably so at the time they were made.

SACK 60% April 26, 2005

This is my experience today, shared with a number of my colleagues, which I posted at John Quiggin’s place to attract more attention than what it would here:

On a completely different subject, the employment environment permits a complete disregard for the social welfare of people or any sense of ethical responsibility, especially in regard to temporary employment. In this context, temporary employment means 40 hours a week with the expectation that people attend every day.

Today, after the long weekend, and we are told from notice provided this morning, 60% of the workforce was summarily dismissed. We were assured by our employee, a call centre contracting to a leading telecom, that this action was taken not due to poor sales performance. Rather, I imagine, the sales would have contributed significantly to the profits of that leading telecom. The explanation, which superficially does not make sense, for example it it not a budget period.

I am not surprised by this behavior. It is just that I find it disgraceful, completely lacking in decency and courtesy. Decency might be taken is reciprocating the consistency of people coming to work, and the courtesy might be providing a honest and truthful explanation.

I do not worry about myself because I will cope, but speaking with other people made me realize that the situation can be a lot more dire for them, and for others it will not matter too much at all, they will just pick up another job. Some people are pressed by being put on reduced hours.

Where is the economic and social logic in all of this? It is not as if we were working in Silicon Valley. Bottom line, it seems to me, they do not care, and they do not have to.

Furthermore, we were paid on a flat rate, not a commission. In my case, I had been working for eleven months, less a month when I had to go to hospital. If the past is any guide, which it may not be, after some period of time, say two weeks, they will be ringing some of us up, asking us to come back in, or perhaps not. If that were to happen, in my view, it makes the behavior worse.

Interesting, or not? This, I think is not “flexibility”, or some other word that might be contrived; it simply a regression to vicious labor market where efficiency, so defined, is simply bled out of people. “Oh brave new world . . .”

UPDATE: 27/04/2005

I must say I considered a whole new experience to be sacked with a number of other people. Some of us meet today at an employment agency which was good. I read that everyone, or so it is claimed, will need to change their job involuntarily at least seven times in their working life. Odd, I think that I grieve (or whatever it is) for a job that I did not like. Obviously, it is best to get over this fast and focus on opportunities, rather than problems. This, should you wonder, is mere brave talk, and something I heard on a tape I listened on the train to turn off some fellow passengers inspired conversation.

Of course, rather like preparing for exams, the advice is to get ahead of the curve. I have the combined handicap – or should that be opportunity – that I just go along with the flow, moaning along, and put the inevitable on hold for the moment, and I am not a great self promoter, if anything the contrary. Still with help that I am grateful for, I am now pretty much up to speed looking for a job, and turning them down when offered, as if this time will be different. Whether this represents incorrigibility, or stupidity, or these options are very much the same, I cannot make up my mind.

PETTY PRECIS April 25, 2005

Bruce Petty say it all.

Let us suppose that the Second World War was not an imperialist venture, and there have been other ventures that have included Australia. War is not only hell, more often than not it is a snafu. Petty provides, I think, a succinct summary. (Although according to the program, Revealing Gallipoli, I watched last night, the withdrawal from Gallipoli was an extraordinary feat. There was no loss of life) .

Just to qualify what might be taken here, soldiers fight and kill where they are told to. Sometimes in the past, this has not further our national interest, or served the interest of Planet Earth. For those who might die in the pursuit of duty, we as fully participating members of the democracy, owe them a good and proper cause. That would preclude lies, incomplete information, and hopefully would include command competence.

The cartoon was spotted at Public Opinion. For a discussion on Revealing Gallipoli, see Barista.

For another view, John Quiggin has another concise summary, and concludes nothing good came of the First World War. Perhaps in general, given the loss of life, and the emergence of Nazi Fascism and Soviet Communism, but it saw the end of the Ottoman Empire, and the drawing of the modern map of the Middle East. Israel was added latter.

WRONG ABOUT IRAQ April 24, 2005

Apparently, according to The Guardian, another British newspaper has published leaked documents to the effect that the Attorney-General gave advice to the Government that the invasion without a second UN resolution would be illegal. This report is confirmed by The Independent.

It seems that both the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats had planned to make the Invasion of Iraq the centrepiece of the last days of the campaign. For the Conservatives, this will be to call into question the veracity of the Prime Minister, and for the Lib Dems to maximize the disaffected Labour vote.

So I have proved to wrong about this. Iraq did not seem to play a central role in the US presidential election, or in the Australian general election.

As always I am interested to follow what unfolds. Could this be the end for Blair?

GALLIPOLI – OFFENSE AND DEFENCE April 24, 2005

A haka (AFP)

According to this online news report from the ABC, the Prime Minister of Turkey has deemed that the haka is obscene and so banned it from the Anzac Gallipoli ceremonies. This action is bound to create a ruckus. Still it is their country, and all those years ago we were invading it, and we did not even give the pretext of bringing democracy, although that was the outcome. Turkey became a democracy, but not quite a liberal democracy. Somewhat like Australia prior to the removal of censorship laws that gave undue weight to the opinions of officials, authorities, and even politicians.

I am confident that this small matter of cultural understanding, will quickly be resolved. But perhaps not. Here is a Turkish report.

MATESHIP April 24, 2005

A Prime Ministerial Stare

I have only this report in the NZ Herald to go by. This behavior from a man who would have had “mateship” incorporated in the preamble to the Constitution. For the record, the Howard view was soundly defeated. He has better things to do than to attend to the requirements of neighbourly relations.

Our Asians neighbours might take note, that the Prime Minister’s notion of mateship, neighbourliness and diplomacy is indiscrimately offensive to one and all – except his close mate George Bush.

There may be another explanation that is not apparent as it relates to this case.