News in Review

I've lately been able to spend a fair bit of time reading, which has made me feel pretty good. Among other things, I've finally finished Living Dolls: The Return of Sexism, by Natasha Walter and 59 Seconds: Change Your Life in Under a Minute, by Richard Wiseman. I enjoyed both books and will be very soon posting up my thoughts on them.

In the meantime, I thought I'd muse a bit on some of the events of the past few months.

• I imagine the Catholic church considers Wikileaks a miracle sent directly from God, for completely stealing the media's attention away from them. Hopefully, this won't mean people will forget what they've done.

• Speaking of Wikileaks, I don't understand how anyone could have anything against them. After all, Wikileaks is no different in concept than any other newspaper or news source, save that it allows for the release of far more important stories than the latest celebrity non-event. Whatever negatives effects Wikileaks could have, or be capable of, seem no different to me, than those that a newspaper would be capable of; namely publishing a story without properly considering the consequences.

• Wikileaks itself got pushed out of the news, at least in Australia, by the the more immediate news of disastrous floods happening in Queensland, Australia. Justin Bieber sends his prayers; which would be understood as a kind gesture, except that unlike every other celebrity doing the same, he does not mention or suggest donating to the flood relief fund, or indeed doing anything constructive at all.
  

• The Pope, probably upset that he hasn't been in the news for a while, tries to convince people that they should give their children proper christian names from the bible, in order to combat the moral decay that he sees in society. Note that this is the pope who, before he was pope, thought that the church in the 17th century was right to have threatened to execute Galileo if he did not recant his scientific conclusions that the earth moved around the sun and not vice versa.[1]

And that's everything off the top of my head.

Yours,
Charles

1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_Galilei#Church_reassessments_of_Galileo_in_later_centuries

Hello Again and Happy New Year

It's been a while since I posted here, for various reasons, some of which still hold at the moment. The first is having a lot less free time with access to a computer (a necessary tool for both keeping up to date with the news and blogging, as you can imagine)*. The second however, and probably more important reason, was that blogging about strange or infuriating or just discouraging things that appear in the news becomes draining after a while. Or at least, it does to me. By paying special attention to these stories, they begin to become almost all you see, and believe me, there is no lack of such stories, to the point where the world can seem a far more bleak place than it is**.

For this, and for the fact that this made me take an extended break without warning, I apologise***.

I have been prompted (repeatedly) to start blogging again by readers, you know who you are. So here I am.

In an effort to avoid the mistakes I made last time, and work in with the new restrictions on time I have now, several things will change, though probably without being particularly obvious.

The first is that I won't be able to blog nearly as often as I did before, so I'll be aiming for at least once or twice a week.

The second is that I will consciously not just post about doom and gloom stories, but will also post about the stories that make me feel as warm and fuzzy on the inside as I am on the outside.

So with this in mind, thanks for reading and let's get started.

Happy New Year everyone.

Yours,
Charles

* And computers are already hard to get to in the jungle.
** And it's not exactly the friendliest of places at the best of time.
*** I apologise for the fact that I blogged predominantly about these stories, to the point of not being able to blog anymore, rather than apologising for the fact that the world has such events in the first place; something which I have no control over, no matter what you may have heard. (Though I'd be flattered, really).

Some Responses From Parliament

I've finally gotten some responses from Parliament to my letter (and email) that I sent a little while ago.

Dear Mr Monkey*

On behalf of Senator Adams, I thank you for your email.
It will be brought to her attention shortly.

Yours sincerely
JARROD LOMAS

Office of Senator Judith Adams
Deputy Opposition Whip in the Senate

Liberal Senator for Western Australia

Electorate Office

48 Ventnor Avenue, WEST PERTH WA 6005
PO Box 930, West Perth WA 6872
Ph: (08) 9481 0349 | Fax: (08) 9321 4876

Canberra Office
Suite SG-98, Parliament House, CANBERRA ACT 2600
Ph: (02) 6277 3646 | Fax: (02) 6277 5774

I suppose that's to be expected, but here's another one:

Dear Charles*

Thank you for your email. Given that you don’t want to receive what you describe as party political rhetoric, I am interested to know how you intend to use the information you gather from the politicians to whom you have written.

Also could you provide me with your contact details including an address.

With best wishes

Julie Bishop

The Hon Julie Bishop MP
Deputy Leader of the Opposition
Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs

Canberra: 02 6277 2102
Perth: 08 9388 0288

www.juliebishop.com.au

To this email, I replied:

Dear Ms Bishop,

First, thank you for responding to my email.

Second, my interest is a personal one. By that I mean, I don't work for any media organisations, I am acting on my own behalf.

These are questions I have never really heard answered or even asked of particular politicians, save perhaps the ones most caught in the public eye. I decided I (and indeed perhaps most Australians) didn't know enough about the people guiding the country, as people, and that it couldn't hurt to ask a few questions. Chalk it up to curiosity.

On that note, rereading the phrase "political party rhetoric" I realise it could have come across as cynical or even abrasive. This was not my intention at all. I merely meant that I am aware that due to time constraints and a concern over saying perhaps unsubstantiated statements or statements that may come across as contradictory to party lines (if there are any), many politicians answer with generic answers (like Senator Conroy's office sending me a pdf when I asked about the internet censorship issue). I was just expressing a hope that, time permitting, the answers I received would be as honest and natural as possible.

I hope that answers at least some of your concerns.

My contact details are:
Address: *
E-mail: *
Mobile: *

If you have any need of more details, please let me know.

Yours,
Charles T. Monkey*

No response has been forthcoming from this second email to her. I wouldn't mind given that she's not my geographical representative, except that she's, you know, the Deputy Leader of Opposition in my country's government and if she could answer my first email, she could have answered the questions.

We'll see how things develop.

Yours,
Charles

* Not necessarily the actual details.

Letters to Parliament

A little while ago, I wrote a letter to Parliament. By this, I mean this letter was sent to every member of the Australian House of Representatives, the Senate, at both State and Federal levels, as well as all the members of my local council.

The letter was as follows:

Dear Politician*,

As a citizen with an ongoing interest in Australian politics I write to ask a few questions to ascertain your views on a number of issues; which political direction you are coming from and what you are aiming for.

Unfortunately, the kind of information I'm looking for from members of parliament, in both the House of Representatives and the Senate, is seldom forthcoming or is couched in party political rhetoric that doesn't give an accurate indication of the actual views held.

While several of the questions I wish to ask deal with complex topics that could in fact be the sole subject of a thesis on their own, I do not wish to impose it upon you to go to that level of detail. Of course, I would be more than happy to receive such an answer.

My questions are as follows:

1. What motivated you to move into politics? What motivates you now?

2. Where do you see yourself in 4 years? Where do you see Australia in 4 years? More importantly, where do you wish Australia to be in 4 years?

3. What are you aiming for, as a politician, both for yourself and Australia, in the longer term? In answering this, I am particularly interested in any goals you have that may extend beyond your own career as a politician, or beyond your placement in a particular role in government.

4. If you could wish for one thing for Australia, what would it be? For example, a free public transport system running at such a capacity as to reduce traffic on roads by 70% of 2010 levels by 2040 or, for the coal industry to be wound down and replaced by the geothermal or solar power industries by 2015. (Bear in mind I've pulled these examples and dates out of the ether, as I write this).

I thank you in advance for taking the time to read and hopefully respond to my enquiry.

Yours faithfully,

Charles T. Monkey**

I've started getting a few responses back, so I thought I'd begin posting them up here once I collect them all together.

This should be interesting.

Yours,
Charles

* Their name and title obviously went there.
** May not have been the name I actually signed with.

Potential Darwin Award Winner

Jim Rawlinson is a surfer. This is not the reason I propose keeping an eye on him as a potential winner of the Darwin awards*.

Jim was surfing, as surfers typically do, when a shark that was trying to catch turtles accidentally bit into Jim's board. This knocked Jim off balance, causing him to, according to Jim, fall onto the shark's back, where he remained for 5 to 10 seconds before sliding off.

Let us assume that what Jim is saying is accurate and not a fabrication, stranger things have happened. The reason I want Jim to be noted as a potential Darwin award is after his close encounter with the shark, he claims to have continued surfing for another 45 minutes before getting out of the water.

I must confess, the story makes him sound, I believe the term is, "bad-ass" and I expect the tale to be related around many campfires, perhaps with grandchildren sitting on one knee, enthralled at this legendary exploit.

On the other hand, had Jim been again accidentally attacked by perhaps even the same shark, I imagine the doctor would have no choice but to fill out 'Cause of injury' on related hospital forms as 'Stupidity'.

Yours,
Charles

* For those who don't know, the Darwin Awards are explained here.

Because Poaching Isn't Enough

Apparently the fact that elephants are endangered due to poaching isn't enough for some people, they feel the need to poison them as well.

At this stage the investigation isn't complete, and I hope to be able to find any follow-up articles to see if they can indeed confirm the poison hypothesis.

I'm sad to say that the idea that someone would poison an elephant for no understandable reason isn't as far-fetched as I would like. What I'd like to see is for further investigation to show that it was not poison, after all, which killed the elephant, but something more mundane, though no less tragic, like a heart attack. At least then I could continue to think better of my fellow apes.

Yours,
Charles

[Image courtesy of http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/printable/asian-elephant.html ]

Gay Dogs Not Welcome?

A blind man with a guide dog was refused entry to a restaurant because a waiter thought his partner, Chris Lawrence, said she wanted to bring a gay dog into a restaurant.

The way the article phrases the situation, it comes across as if bringing any other dog into the restaurant would have been fine, but a gay dog? Not on.

"The staff genuinely believed that Nudge was an ordinary pet dog which had been desexed to become a gay dog," the statement said.

If that were the case, that would surely be the most ridiculous example of homophobia anyone had ever seen. I'm going to give the staff at the restaurant the benefit of the doubt and assume that the article is merely clarifying what the waiter thought he had heard and that the dog's sexuality had nothing to do with the issue, only whether or not it was a guide dog.

I think this is a nice example of a lack of critical thinking.

A guide dog is typically easy to spot: they wear special harnesses, to allow the blind person they are guiding to easily sense what the dog is doing. The dog is typically a Labrador, which is fairly distinctive. The final clue is that the owner is blind.

Granted, there are different degrees of blindness and not all blind people wear sunglasses and carry white canes, but the combination of Labrador and person whose eyes don't seem to focus on what is in front of them should set off enough mental alarms to start anyone thinking.

On top of the visual clues, we also have what the waiter heard. A diner telling a waiter they would like to bring their gay dog into the restaurant is not, I don't think, an every day request. Surely it would make the waiter curious enough to wonder to themselves; along the lines of "Why has this patron mentioned that their dog is gay? How can a desexed dog be gay? Perhaps I have misheard. I will ask for clarification about the situation."

It seems no such thought process occurred.

The manager of the restaurant also told the blind man and his partner that the dog could not be brought inside without permission from the police. I'm not sure where this rule could possibly have come from. After all, the restaurant displays a "guide dogs welcome" sign.

I'm surprised that at this point that the couple hadn't left to try their luck at a more reasonable restaurant, but they persevered enough for the manager to say that the chef was allergic to dogs, so the dog wouldn't be able to enter the premises. Unless the chef was going to come out to pat the dog in the dining area, rather than stay in the kitchen, or the waiter was planning on bringing the dog into the kitchen, I can't see how this is more of an issue than if a dog were to pass by the front of the restaurant.

Hopefully this sort of miscommunication between people and misinterpretation of the law needn't occur in future. Perhaps if Ms Lawrence had pointed at the "guide dogs welcome" sign as she explained the situation a second time, the waiter would have understood. In this case he would have either allowed the dog inside, showing that it had been an innocent misunderstanding.

Or he would have continued to bar the dog from entering despite knowing it was a guide dog, showing that he was just being an inconsiderate twit.*

Yours,
Charles

* Excuse my french.

More on Kick-Ass

Given that I wrote a post about people's reaction to the movie Kick-Ass, I thought I'd post here a link to a column by Emma Young where she also points out the bizarre nature of the public's focus.

I particularly like this bit:

The director, Matthew Vaughn, finds it bizarre that public furore has zeroed in on the girl's bad language more than her homicidal tendencies.“I was like, 'Does it not bother you that she killed about 53 people in this film?'” he told The New York Times. “I'm like, 'Would you rather your daughter swore, or became a masked vigilante killer?' They're going, 'Yeah, I don't know.'”

I can imagine a father teaching his daughter about life. "Sweetheart, you may kill anyone you like, in as gruesome a fashion as you like, but a lady never cusses."

Sigh.

Yours,
Charles

Customer Ethics

Apparently young Australians have loose ethics. Shopping ethics that is, according to a 10-year study.

Let's have a look at this statement made in the article and see what's wrong with it:

The moral decay has been blamed on new technology, including the rise of self-service transactions, and the common perception that businesses are purely out to make as much money as they can.

Straight away, the phrase "the moral decay has been blamed on new technology" begs the question. Decay compared to what? Was there a previous study performed that they're not mentioning that is being used as a benchmark? Unless this previous study exists, there is no reason to assume that customer ethics have changed one iota.

Second, it's being blamed on technology. They are arguing that customers now have the means to more easily steal from businesses. Let us assume this is true, though you'd have to talk to experts in shop security to get any real data. That doesn't mean that customer attitudes have changed, it would only mean that they can now take actions based on those attitudes in a way they couldn't before.

Thirdly, they state that the 'decay in ethics' is due to the perception that businesses "are purely out to make as much money as they can." It makes sense that customers have this perception, because businesses are out to make as much money as they can.

Dr Neale, who was part of the 10-year study, says "Businesses cannot rely on their customers to always do the right thing." Interesting, I can also phrase that the other way. "Customers cannot rely on businesses to do the right thing." That is something everyone would agree with. After all, it's only when laws and regulations are put in place to prevent businesses from doing the wrong thing that they actually stop doing the wrong thing.

Even with regulations in place, it's no secret that businesses, particularly big businesses, make very lucrative profits on their sales. Enough to give CEOs bonuses of millions of dollars on top of their already enormous salaries. To my mind, and indeed to every other consumers', the fact that they can afford to throw around such large sums of money probably means that the price of the goods we buy is probably a little over what it actually costs to make, ship, store, package, advertise and sell them. Maybe.

It should therefore come as no surprise if some consumers didn't feel any remorse at saving themselves those few dollars by stealing from big business.

The assumptions made by the article go further than that. Let's assume that the article is right and that a third of customers are likely to try and get away with stealing items, or paying less, or failing to refund extra change. Perhaps it is simply a fact that a third of all people will behave similarly, whether they are consumers, or businesses, in any transaction.

Another flaw in the study is the fact that it was conducted using data from "3700 young consumers on five continents including Australia" over a period of ten years. I hate to break it to the researchers, but 10 years means that some of your subjects have probably changed demographic.

Since the study is being conducted over five continents, it means that, taking the average, we expect around 740 people from each continent. Given that Australia is the only country that is also a continent, that means that in the other countries the study was performed in, much fewer than 740 people would have been polled. Add to that the fact that Australia is likely to be the country involved in the study with the smallest population. That means the percentage of the population polled is so minute as to become statistically meaningless. Unless the study took into account cultural norms and values in each country, region, demographic and cultural group, the results are likely to be similarly devoid of any meaning or comparison value.

It's hard to see what the possible conclusion to the study could really be other than "some people steal stuff and they think it's ok". Which is hardly something we need to have proven in a study.

Yours,
Charles

The Burka in Europe

A woman in Italy has been fined for wearing a full burka in a public building, in this case, a post office. Last week, Belgium passed laws banning women (and presumably men) from wearing a full burka in public. In France, President Sarkozy is trying to institute a similar law.

Of course, as expected, Muslim leaders, even Catholic leaders and groups like Amnesty International, are protesting the laws, saying it is discrimination against Muslims, a violation of human rights, freedom of speech and so forth.

This is of course, ridiculous. The Belgian law makes it illegal to wear any clothing that prevents the user from being identified. This just happens to include niqabs and burkas, but it also includes motorbike helmets, masks, balaclavas, etc. The French laws banning children from wearing burkas is a law that bans any overt religious symbol, so that school remains a secular and religious free zone. This hardly looks like a case of picking on the Muslims.

Expression of religion can hardly be used as a reason to allow anyone to wear clothing like the burka in public. If religion offers such a carte blanche, then perhaps we should see what reaction people would have to someone claiming their religion mandated that they carry a machete at all times. (Sikhs, for example, are obliged to carry a Kirpan, or small sword). Clearly other considerations are more important than mere religious expression.

Claiming freedom of speech has been violated by stopping women from wearing the burka is misguided, at best. I cannot help but imagine slavers during the 1700s demanding that their slaves be able to freely express their status of servitude by wearing their chains, or Jews in Nazi Germany demanding to be allowed to wear the yellow star. For the sake of simplicity, let us assume that these women do want to wear the burka. That doesn't change the fact that they shouldn't be allowed to wear it in public, particularly in places like post offices, shops, banks and other sensitive areas.

Someone in a burka can't be identified. They could be anyone, they could have anything under their clothing. You can't even properly read the expressions on their face. In short, they are cut off from normal social interaction. Of course, this is the whole point of the garment and it's why women don't wear the burkas in their homes, or in all female company. If anything, this should tell us that the burka is the antithesis of free expression*.

Our society is built on, by definition, social interaction and communication. In fact, it is believed humans evolved the whites of their eyes** because of the advantage it gave them communicating with visual cues. Scientists are even studying the hypothesis that part of the reason humans have become hairless is so that other humans can more easily read their emotions. Add to this the fact that a large portion of communication is through non-verbal cues, then it's no surprise that people are made deeply uncomfortable by someone they can't read.

A person masked and anonymous, who could be carrying any sort of device under formless clothing, will and should always be seen as a potential threat. This is why anyone wearing a motorbike helmet into a bank will be asked to take it off or be escorted out by security. It is not something concocted up to suppress Muslims.

Asking everyone else in society to ignore this threat to themselves in the name of human rights, freedom of speech, religion and multiculturalism, is to step on their rights as members of society.

Yours,
Charles

* Or an avant-garde, post-post-modern ironic piece using lack of expression as a form of expression. I don't think this is the case.
** Not on purpose.