Post#117 Terrorists Prove That Imran Khan is Wrong! (Terrorist Attack on Sri Lankan Cricket Team.)

At Post#99 I noted that a gaffe by George Bush had verified the political insight of Imran Khan. Unfortunately, the attack by terrorists on the Sri Lankan Test cricket team in Pakistan have shown that Imran has at least one blind spot regarding the extremists in his homeland. I have seen him being interviewed on various television programmes in which he has confidently expressed a belief that cricket is too close to the hearts of his countrymen for anyone to dare an assault upon it.

This is a view which has been held by quite a few people and has been incorporated into the savage criticism that has been directed at the Australian national team for refusing to tour Pakistan. The general theme is that India's economy provides massive financial incentives to Australian players and that fear of terrorism has been a convenient excuse to avoid Pakistan and spend more time in India; making commercials, music videos, paid public appearances, etc.

If there was ever any truth in this it isn't going to apply in future. And if India is the next target for anti-cricket terrorism no amount of largesse will lure foreign players there.

It seems likely that the extremists have decided to demonstrate that nothing human is sacred to them; not life, not youth, not innocence. They are sending a message that nothing and no-one is "barlies". We should heed this message. Any inclination to mercy in dealing with these creatures should wither in the brutal heat of their villainy. Let them convince us that they have no humanity. The inhuman have no need of human rights. Yes, let them continue to enlighten us... when the time comes, we shall know how to deal with them.

For all that, I wish Imran Khan had been right this time.

Post#116 Mantis on the flyscreen (Archimantis latistyla)

Yesterday I found a large brown mantis sitting on the outside of the flywire on my kitchen window. It was about 12 centimetres in length and its abdomen section was about a centimetre in diameter. I was quite surprised to see this critter; I haven't seen a large green or brown mantis in more than 10 years. It often happens that something disappears from sight and a long time passes before you notice its absence. Thus with the mantises. The only ones I've seen for a long while were puny little green ones - and not that many or often.

I took a cobweb broom, cornered the beast and goaded it into climbing onto the broom-head. I then carried it across the yard to a bush which would provide it with better hunting and cover from the birds that might like to feast on it. During the pickup phase of this operation the mantis' rear end curved up and appeared to be trying to engage the broom with the pincers at the end of its abdomen. I noticed a similarity between this feature and the pincer-tail of the earwig. The mantis, however, didn't appear to have much flexibility and made this manoeuvre quite slowly.

I don't know what sort of predator this would be effective against; perhaps these pincers are mostly used for helping it to cling to plants.

Post#115 A Needless Dying (Black Saturday: 2009 Victorian Bushfires)

I haven't had much experience of the sort of lifestyle that people prefer in the forested hinterlands around Australian cities. My only contact with it has been brief visits to relations who have operated hobby-farms in Western Australia and New South Wales. Both families had experiences of bushfires approaching and menacing their homes and I read their stories in occasional letters and Christmas cards and saw some photographs of the efforts of country fire service units confronting these blazes. When I first heard these yarns in childhood and teenage years I thought it was just a manageable nuisance that came round every year and I wasn't all that concerned by it. I knew nothing of the various famous episodes of catastrophic and fatal bushfires. If they were mentioned they went over my head as just part of the dreary tapestry of the distant past (i.e. more than twenty years ago).

I woke up to the fact that these lethal events were contemporary in 1983 when the Ash Wednesday fires dominated the public fora of the day. I then sat up and took serious notice of what was happening. I couldn't understand how this could be happening in modern times. How could people die in a bushfire when they were in their own homes or in a vehicle on a road? My puzzlement was due to two factors: The first was that I had no idea of the power of such fires. In fact, I don't think there was much in the way of film footage of fires of this degree of intensity and I couldn't visualise it for myself. I'd never personally seen any fire in open country. The second was that I had no idea of the lunatic practices that facilitated the destructive effect of the fires.

I was greatly enlightened by the sights which were available to be seen once the media took up the issue of modern forest-dwellers and their environs. Once I caught on to the way in which eucalypts give up flammable vapour and the speed and volume of the waves of fire this produces, I was amazed to see the proximity in which housing was built to them. Throughout Victoria and New South Wales there were enormous districts in which a helicopter-borne camera could reveal the roofs of thousands of houses built in dense forest. Forest which bustled around and loomed over the buildings. A majority of the houses had large trees abutting them; the trunks pressed up right against the walls of the houses. This explained very simply the peril faced by these residents.


It didn't explain their being subjected to this situation. The next phase of my education was to discover that the authorities insist that people may not remove trees from the vicinity of their properties and that strong penalties are applicable to those who defy them. This seemed to me to be Alice-in-Wonderland absurdity. I've never had reason to reconsider that response. Some of the very residents at most risk from these crackpot policies are resistant to preventive clearing. They're apparently prepared to expose themselves and others to a potential horrible death for the sake of preserving their forest surrounds.


There is a simple solution to this problem. Like all such things, it will be grievously unpalatable to most who have a vested interest. The governments with planning control power must decide whether any particular forest area is to be allowed to be used for habitation. If it is, a decision must then be made as to what density of settlement will be allowed. It's really a matter of deciding how much of the forest one will tolerate seeing felled. If the answer is none, there can be no housing. If there is an acceptable loss, you allow as many houses as can be safely built within the sacrificed proportion of land, subject to these provisos:


1. A completely cleared area of 100 metres radius should be around each dwelling. 2. Building with inflammable materials should be restricted; the exteriors of buildings should be composed of brick, ceramic, stone or metal. 3. An approved shelter must be built within 10 meters of the house, accessible both from a direct entrance and from an access tunnel from the house.


That will do for starters. Here are some more ideas:


A water tank on a platform adjacent to and higher than the house would allow gravity feed of water so pumps would be unnecessary. The tank could be filled from a tanker truck operated by the fire service and checked/topped up twice a year. Obviously, it would be of a sealed type which would not allow evaporation. It would be filled through a feed pipe from ground level which would would have a return valve where it entered the tank. A ventilation valve would open when the water was to be drawn for use in sprinklers or hoses.


Every house could be fitted with a roof-mounted reflective curtain wich could drop down over the house. This could be made of a very light material which would be drawn up into a container above the roof until it was deployed.

And what about all those people already living in large numbers in dense forest? Once an acceptable proportion of clearing is determined, some of them, perhaps most of them in some areas, will have to be removed. I can hear the roars of fury already. Let 'em roar. No-one would baulk at prohibiting settlement on the rim of an active volcano or on a mountain slope known for periodic massive mudslides or rock avalanches. The time has come to crush the idiot brigade beneath the boots of common sense. If that means dealing with ferocious protests and paying thousands of millions in relocation compensation, so be it. It took a massacre to bring a little improvement in the gun control laws and this is the massacre that should bring reality to bear upon forest settlement practices. At this time of writing the death toll has reached 208. Some of these are children. Most of these people did not die of smoke inhalation. They burned while alive and conscious.

The craziness has gone far enough. There are too many timber houses built on slopes covered in trees; too many of them have massive glass facings which provide no protection and allow radiant energy to ignite the contents of the houses. I recently saw some lunatic architect's work in the field of treehouses being praised in the Weekend Australian Magazine. What a great idea. Let's not just have the fuel-trees adjacent to the house or growing in a central courtyard; let's mount dwellings on top of them! That'll make for a nice cozy fire, won't it?

We've had Ash Wednesday, Black Friday and now, Black Saturday. How many more days of the week have to be racked up with portentous names as memorials to stupidity?

A final point. Would-be social engineers keep singing to us the praises of high-density dwelling. Whatever arguments are mustered for it, most people don't want a bar of it. That's why the population keeps seeking sea-changes and tree-changes. It's one more weight in the scale that supports the argument that we need to contain our population and immigration should cease as a first step. We're being confronted by environmental stress and peril on multiple fronts and most of it would alleviate if we simply reduced the poulation of the country by a couple of million. We could knock down some of these new-minted "infill" slums in our cities and create managed parkland estates that would remove the impetus to push ever-outward into the perilous hinterland.

Post#114 The Mangled Meridian (AM versus PM)

There's been an advertisement running as part of a government campaign to discourage the sort of reflexive violence that's seen several deaths in recent years in this town. It's called the "One Punch Syndrome". Somebody is affronted and responds with a powerful single punch which results in the death of the recipient. The advertisement shows a couple of blokes out on the town at night and imbibing plenty of alcohol while failing to succeed in their passes at women. One of them is then bumped into in the street and responds with a punch that kills the careless passerby. In a second version of the ad which usually runs in a slot soon after the first, he's seen restraining his temper and walking away.

The advertisement is punctuated with time calls as the characters work their way through the grog and the unsympathetic females. It begins with something like "9:00 PM" and proceeds through "10:00 PM" and "11:00 PM" until the last which is "12:00 AM". This didn't strike my eye until I'd watched it a couple of times. Then I thought, "12:00 AM? Isn't that midday?" Yet it's obviously meant to be midnight when the fatal punch is/isn't thrown.

The advertisement ends with the text and voiceover which tells the viewer that the authorising party is the Government of Western Australia. I laughed at that and said, "So it's official; the government can't tell the time." I remembered that I'd also seen a bus timetable issued under the auspices of the Public Transport Authority of W.A. in which 12:00 midnight is colour-coded along with other times in the schedule to indicate that it's an "AM" time.

A lot of people seemed to be making this mistake when I started looking for it. Behind the all-purpose "twelve o'clock" or "midnight" or "midday" was a secret ignorance afflicting radio and television presenters, print journalists and every other kind of person who should know.

What they don't seem to get is that the Latin expressions for which AM and PM stand are describing time with respect to the progress of the sun across the sky. (Okay, we know that it's actually the progress of the sky past the sun, but the expression has its origins in the commonplace appearance of things, not Copernicanism.)

AM stands for ante meridiem and PM for post meridiem. This Wikipedia article goes into quite a bit of confused detail on the subject and the contributing editors have fallen into a trap in saying that the expression "12:00 AM" is "illogical". It's claimed there that the English translation of AM is "before noon". I'd say it's a misleading translation. To encompass the semantic content of the Latin phrase you would have to say "n th hour passed before noon". This means that you're counting the hours as they pass before noon. Thus: 1:00 AM is the first hour passed before noon; 2:00 AM is the second hour passed before noon and so on. 12:00 AM can then be clearly understood as telling us that that the twelfth hour before noon has passed. The PM times are then easily seen to be "hours passed after noon". No illogicality at all. (As Michael Gorey said to me in a comment on his blog a while back, Wikipedia is not always right. I should know, I've tried to contribute to it and given up in disgust.)

It's the little things like that which indicate a slippage in understanding of very basic things and a lack of fluency in our culture's use of its principal language. Like the endless battling on with "Two thous-and and..." every time the year is named instead of "Twenty-oh-whatever". Can these numb-nuts keep on all the way to the end of the century? I wouldn't bet against them.

Post#113: A New Type Of Wind Power: Residential Energy Ball

A story Dugg from DIY-Renewable-Energy-dot-COM. Check out the video.

read more digg story

Post#112 People at the Edges (Bit Players in History)

I was reading a post at The Girl Who Wished She Was Australian about former Australian Prime Minister, William McMahon, which prompted me to make a comment which I'll reproduce, in part, here:

"I remember a little bit about McMahon from my childhood. I have one enduring memory of him; a television newscast from the campaign for the election of 1972 that he lost to Gough Whitlam. In those days there were still large outdoor rallies to which anyone could turn up. These have disappeared in this country now and this is a good example of why: McMahon was about to give a speech from a platform and someone had organised a bouquet presentation. Two girls of about 6 years of age wearing white, lace-trimmed dresses, stepped forward to hand the large bouquet to McMahon as he stepped onto the platform. The crowd was, naturally, composed mostly of Labor supporters and a great groan and moan went up: "Ooaarr. Orrrr." It sounded as though they were watching someone eat something very unsavoury. As I understood it at the time they were expressing disgust with the girls for giving the bouquet to McMahon. I was pretty disgusted by that. Those kids had probably expected that it would be a pleasant event and their parents had dressed them in their best for the occasion. Only to be greeted by that. In the years since, I've realised that the crowd were probably expressing mock-revulsion at McMahon being allowed near the girls or abusing the adults who put the kids up to it. Still, I think it was probably a nasty experience for the kids and they wouldn't have taken it well at the time. "

As I was writing this I began to wonder about all those people who make peripheral appearances in history. Those two girls, for example. That was late 1972; 36 years and some months ago. They would both now be in their early forties if they are still in this world. I wonder where they are and whether they remember their big day out that took such a nasty turn.

On the subject of using children for political stunts, there's another episode which I remember with some disgust. In the 1990's there was a very vexatious public debate in Australia in response to the Mabo decision on Aboriginal land rights. The contesting factions included mining and pastoral interests which had sufficient funds to run expensive propaganda campaigns for their cause. Their purpose was, simply, to encourage anti-Aboriginal sentiment. These campaigns were cloaked in a pretence of moderation and fairness and were tuned to appeal to the baser aspects of human nature while appearing to speak in the voice of sweet reason.

On example of this was a glossy brochure which was delivered by letterbox-drop in my neighbourhood. On its front page was a photograph of four children standing in a line, each holding a cardboard square. On each square was written one letter of the word "MABO". The children had obviously been chosen as representative of racial and ethnic types. One was apparently of British ancestry, one was a dark-complexioned Caucasian and might have been any of several origins; Southern European, Indian, Arab. A third was East Asian, Chinese perhaps. And one was obviously an Australian Aboriginal. I was very surprised that any Aboriginal family would allow their child to be used as window-dressing for a campaign attacking their own ethnic group. Then I looked very closely at those cardboard squares. The letters in red on the white boards were not quite in the same tone as the other colours in the photograph. Very close but not quite. Then I spotted the explanation. The purveyors of this junk mail (And I do mean junk) were cunning but only half-clever. They had missed the fact that one of the children had a piece of red letter over the tips of his fingers. The children had been photgraphed holding blank white cards and the letters had been superimposed after the event. The parents of these kids had obviously not been told what the cards were going to spell out. They were probably booked through an agency, taken to the studio, photographed and sent on their way without explanation of the campaign's purpose. I assume a parent or authorised person accompanied them as they only appeared to be about ten years old at most. I never heard a word about anyone complaining. I had too much on my plate right then to try to stir up media interest so I let it go. I've wondered since what unknown furies and embarrassments this episode may have caused and what came of it all. Does the Aboriginal child know today how he was ill-used?

Another case of political exploitation of an individual's race was broadcast during the 1996 federal election campaign. The "minders" decided that they needed to smooth over John Howard's record on race relations. Eight years previously, Howard had expressed concern over the level of East Asian immigration to Australia. This led to a very lame stunt being performed at the election campaign launch for the Liberal party. As Howard left the hall after giving his campaign launch speech a woman rose from an aisle seat and interrupted his progress to hand him a large bouquet. She was of Mongoloid racial origins and was wearing what looked to me like a traditional Korean woman's costume. This was apparently supposed to prove that John Howard is not a racist and that Asians like John Howard. I know a little about the way these minders operate and I wouldn't be surprised if they'd lured some woman with a poor grasp of English and no idea of the history of the situation into playing this role. (I wouldn't even put it past them to have had a Caucasian woman made-up and dressed to look Asian. It wouldn't have been impossible to work such a scam; the Liberal party had complete control of the venue and could direct where any photography would be allowed and the camera was placed a fair distance from where the woman was sitting.)

It's intriguing to me that no-one interviewed the woman to expand on her views on the subject. Was she a loyal, Asian, Howard-loving Liberal who played her part by informed consent or was she a dupe? How does she feel about it now?

Another unknown bit-player is that man who anticipated Gough Whitlam's words on 11 November, 1975. ("A date which shall live in infamy", said Gough, wryly borrowing from Roosevelt.) On that day Gough spoke what he has, correctly, described as the most famous phrase in Australian political history. After the Governor General's secretary had read the proclamation dissolving Parliament and concluded with the exhortation "God save the Queen!!!", Gough stepped forward and made various comments to the crowd, including these words, written in fire in the memory of all of us who lived on that day and were old enough to take notice: "Well may we say 'God save the Queen', because NOTHING will save the Governor-General". Of course, it's obvious what he meant, but a strict reading of it shows that it's a non-sequitor as it stands. A proper expression of the sentiment would be, "Well may we say 'God save the Queen'. However, NOTHING shall save the Governor-General!"

I've seen the video-recording of this moment many times and, as with all very familiar things, your attention begins to drift to the peripheral details. A few years ago I noticed that Gough paused after saying "Queen". At that instant a man in the crowd shouted "God save Kerr!" (As in, "God help him if we catch him.") Then Gough spoke the mangled balance of the sentence. It's occurred to me that Gough was put off his grammatical stroke by the supportive interjector. Now, who was that anonymous voice? Does he live yet? Does he point out to his family or friends that his voice is to be heard on the soundtrack with Gough. Like the soldiers of Shakespeare's Henry V speech, does he strip his arms and show his scars of that Remembrance day? ("There be gentlemen in Melbourne who yet lie abed, will curse their luck that they were not here with us on this Dismissal Day.") I have stood on the very steps where Gough said those words and mimicked them to the amusement of a female friend. Only the two of us there on that Saturday in 1989 to share the joke. (Later someone set up a tour of the Old Parliament House where you could playact the roles of the protagonists and repeat their speeches.) O, wherefore art thou, interjector? If yet thou livest, come forth and claim thy mantle of glory!

Another rally with Gough, from the previous year, 1974, was the occasion for the can-throwing incident. Gough addressed a rally in my hometown, Perth, and was received with enthusiastic animosity by a large contingent of farmers who had come to town for the purpose thereof. One of them hurled a drink can (I think it was empty) which struck Gough (again, I think) on the side of his head. In those days drink cans were usually steel, not aluminium, although aluminium cans were beginning to appear. I don't think the thrower was ever caught. Perhaps he brags on "bopping Gough" to a select group of trusted persons.

In the field of rally-projectilers there is a somewhat less inglorious title to be claimed by the person who threw an egg at John Hewson in 1993. Hewson had attempted to revive the outdoor rally as an election event and encountered the same obstacles that had already killed it off once. At one of them he caught an egg which flew up from the crowd and called out, "That's the catch of the season!" At the other end of the egg's trajectory was a person who can say, "I threw the egg that Hewson caught."

And then, as Donald Rumsfeld put it, there are the "unknown unknowns". I can imagine one for you to show what that means. In the days when Alan Bond was being prosecuted for various matters, Paul Barry (then with the ABC) approached Bond as he was walking to court and said "Mr Bond, I'm Paul Barry from the ABC. Do you remember me, Mr Bond?" He handed Bond his business card as he said this. Bond calmly took the card, carefully placed it on the footpath and then ritually stamped upon it. As Bond turned and walked on, Barry followed, smiling and saying in a very pleasant and apparently delighted voice, "Ohh, so you do remember me Mr Bond." (At this time Bond was faking brain damage and memory loss for legal purposes.) Bond then turned and began shouting mock-hysterically (for the cameras) "Leave me alone! Leeeave mee alooone!!" It's a good yarn and I may return to it one day. For now, let's allow Paul and Alan to walk away from us down the path of history. Let's look back to where Bond stamped on the card. There it is, lying on the pavement with his shoeprint on it. What happens to it? That card is a Lost Treasure of Australian History. If only someone walking along behind would think to pick it up. Mounted in a nice frame it could attract a good price at a charity auction. Perhaps the National Archives or the National Library would like to have it. Or does it disappear with the rest of the debris of the footpath, disintegrating in a gutter or down a storm drain? Well, now that I've suggested it, it's a known unknown. Perhaps someone does have it tucked in their wallet and produces it at the pub as a conversation piece.

There are uncountable quantities of such curiosities and mysteries to be found, reaching all the way back to the deepest past of humanity. They spread out to touch all of us bit-players in history.

Post#111 Batman Returns (Urban myths and their origins)

"Dinna-dinna-dinna-dinna-dinna-dinna-dinna-dinna-dinna-dinna-dinna-dinna-

BATMAAAN!"

Now that I've got that out of my system, I'll stipulate that this post really has nothing to do with the Batman comic books, television series or movies - but wait! - it has plenty to do with kinky sex!! (sort of...)

What prompted me to think of Batman was a story that has appeared in the media during the past two years concerning an incident of October 28th, 2006. The story, as always, was somewhat fragmented in the media reports. The gist of it is that a young woman named Nicola Jane Clunies-Ross was charged with conspiring to trap a boyfriend in her home and then assisting another boyfriend in violently and sexually abusing him. She has now been sentenced to 2 1/2 years prison (suspended, so effectively nothing). As far as I can make out from the tangled media versions, the mess originated with a combination of jealousy on the part of the other boyfriend and resentment by Clunies-Ross. This link to The Australian covers the basics of the story. More links can be found in this Google search. My view is that Gurdulic's "apology" in his suicide note for coercing Clunies-Ross is baloney and an attempt by him to give post-mortem assistance to her. I believe the jury should have stuck her on for "guilty" on all the charges and that she should have copped a minimum of ten years before parole. Quite a bit of the Internet comment on the topic is along the lines of "Lots of people pay for this kind of thing..." Of course, those who pay for it have some control over the process and its outcome.



"Sexy Police Chick" Costume


The reason I mention this yarn is that, when reading about the scenario in which Clunies-Ross, dressed in what she called a "sexy police chick outfit", bound the victim and then opened the door for Gurdulic, I had a memory-flash that caused me to think, "All that's missing is Batman coming through the door..." The story is almost identical to one I heard in 1978 which was told to me as a joke. It goes like this:

"A bloke meets an attractive woman in a night club and she persuades him to go to a hotel with her and engage in some kinky sex. When they're in the hotel room she has him strip naked and binds his wrists and ankles to the bed-frame. She then prduces a roll of heavy adhesive tape from her handbag and gags him with it. After making sure the bindings are secure she smiles sweetly at him and leaves the room. He thinks he's going to be left for the maid to find and he's mighty vexed and embarrassed. Then he discovers things are worse than he thought. The door opens again...and a bloke wearing a Batman suit enters and does him over!"

Not a bad joke, as a joke. Then, five years later, I was talking with a work colleague who had just met a mutual acquaintance of ours who had joined the Western Australian police. This recently-minted cop had been telling him some good stories over a few beers. One of them was about a guy known as "Batman". Sure enough, it was the same story, except that the boy/girl bondage/rape team were allegedly real and working the clubs and pubs of Perth. The racconteur took a while to be convinced that our cop mate was either deluded himself or having him on. When you think about it, once you remove the suspension of disbelief which is usually granted to a joke, the story can't hold up. Perth had a small selection of nightspots in those days and someone trying to work the "Batman" scam repeatedly would soon encounter a previous victim or the word would get around so that any prospective new victim would quickly recognise the come-on and where it was leading. And the detail has to be considerably supplemented. Where is "Batman" supposed to be while the sucker is being bound? Perhaps in an adjoining room - he's not likely to be hanging around in the hotel corridor in his costume. Or we can change it slightly and have him hiding in a walk-in wardrobe or closet in the room where the trap is being sprung.

This is, I believe, how a lot of urban myths begin. A joke is misremembered or misheard as a true story; someone hears something while distracted or intoxicated and it later seems to have been told to them as a true story. Then imagination does the rest, smoothing out the implausibilities. "Where was Batman?" asks the skeptical listener. "Oh, he must have hidden in the closet", responds the improvising story-teller. After a few more recountings the story is polished enough to not immediately provoke scorn. Then it begins to seriously spread. It's also possible that someone deliberately translates a joke into a "true story" as mischief-making or just to impress a listener.

Somewhere in the five years between my first hearing the joke and its return as "reality", one of these two processes took place. The story of Clunies-Ross and her boyfriends indicates another aspect of the urban myth. The jokes that give birth to the myths may have a basis in reality. A real incident can provoke a joke on the same theme which is one day purveyed as fact.

Even now, someone may be turning the story of Clunies-Ross and her "police chick" costume into a joke which will return as a legend which may inspire some twit to actually try it and thereby generate a new wave of jokes...

Post#110 Mushroom Ragout Recipe from the Chef at Travian

I cut and pasted the following recipe from the forum at Travian.com Australian Server 2. Travian caught my eye back in September when I saw that it was being widely advertised as the most popular browser-based strategy game. I've never had anyhting to do with this particular sort of Internet pastime so I decided to have a go. It's apparently played by people aged from seven to seventy and some people become quite addicted to it. If you have a couple of friends who can mind your account for you ("sitters" as they call it), you can play it fairly successfully without a lot of time being invested.

I saw this recipe posted on the forum by a player using the handle "Tylers". If you want to take him up on his invitation to respond you'll need to register to play on Australian Server 2 to access the forum.

"As most of you will know by now I am a Head Chef in a restaurant... and today I had to make the MOST amazing recipe I have ever tasted and I wanted to share it with you... it's cheap, quick and easy to make:

Mushroom Ragout (Serves 2)

Ingredients

-About 7-10 medium sized mushrooms (Any kind)
-Half a glass of white wine (Any kind)
-Thickening powder, if not then flour (Plain or corn)
-Some frying oil (Sunflower, rapeseed etc.)
-3 cloves of garlic
-300ml Fresh Double Cream
-Some rice or pasta etc. to accompany

Method:

1. Chop your onions and slice your mushrooms, put a saucepan of water on the boil for your rice/pasta.

2. Put about 3 tablespoons of oil into a frying pan and put your onions and mushrooms on until nice and golden brown.

3. Put your rice/pasta on the boil.

4. Put your fried up mushrooms and onions into a saucepan and add the cream (Stir regularly).

5. Add your garlic and as much of the wine as you like. If you like your food nice and rich, then add the whole half glass; if you only want a bit, just add a splash.

6. Leave it to simmer for 5-10 minutes whilst stirring it regularly.

7. Add some thikening powder/flour until the ragout sauce is the consitency of custard.

8. Plate up your rice and top it off with your ragout.

9. Grab a beer or a glass of wine and enjoy I really do emplore you to try this out... it is sooo nice!

Oh and by the way if you do make it then post your thoughts or possible additions or improvements to the recipe! - T"

Post#109 A kick in the Qaeda (How many words does the English language contain?)

Last night I heard a BBC programme relayed through ABC NewsRadio. The crew were discussing someone's computer-generated prediction that in 2009 the vocabulary count for English would reach one million. As the guy being interviewed pointed out, the question is: How do you define "word"? He gave the example "is, are, was". I think it's fairly easy to accept that the various parts of verbs and plurals of nouns can be excluded. There's only one instance of "case" left in English, as far as I know; that's the personal pronouns, as in I, me, us, we, etc. That can get tricky, with argument about whether they rate as unique words, whether the old forms "thou" and "ye" and so on can still be counted. Then there's the issue of whether words of the type "my" and "mine" are genitive cases of pronouns or "possessive adjectives". I support the former view. Same goes for who and whom and myself. Pronouns all. The grammar-meddlers who say otherwise can visit the taxidermist for a good stuffing. Anyway, there are so few words in this category that we can ignore them in this context.

What is harder is dealing with words like "table". Apart from the furniture it denotes a collection of figures or words organised in a rectangular array for comparative or computational purposes. Unlike with "bear" the beast and "bear" the deed, these aren't completely separable etymologies with an accidental coincidence in modern spelling. The figurative use of "table" to describe the written data derives from the use of table-tops for ciphering and writing. I.e. actually writing on wood with chalk or drawing in sand spread on the table. So, are these two separate words or two connotations of one word? (Discuss in a ten-thousand word dissertation and have it on my desk by three-thirty p.m. on Monday.)

On firmer footing is the issue of loan-words. I think I've found an original slant on this. I've heard a lot of argument over many years about when a word imported from a foreign language is truly an English word. I think the easiest way to settle this bugbear is to apply a benchmark usage test. I'd propose that if a word can be understood by most randomly-chosen English-speakers that you say it to then it has become an English word. A good example is the vocabulary we've acquired from the Western Asiatic disturbances of the past thirty years. This includes ayatollah, fatwa, fedayeen, imam, jihad, madrassa, muezzin, mullah and mujahideen. Shahid (martyr) is probably familiar to people who take a particular interest.

"Allahu akbar" is a phrase which everybody on Earth has heard and which, if accepted as intelligible to most English-speakers, can now reasonably be called part of the English language. It's an example of a phrase which denotes a cultural context or can be used in a narrative. For example, if you're telling a story about a political rally or other event involving Muslims and you say or write, "The crowd were chanting 'Allahu akbar' ", you don't really need to explain its meaning. Having said that, I'll now dispute its meaning...

Although a phrase such as "Allahu akbar" can be understood in essence when translated into other words more familiar to English language speakers, there is a tendency to try to exoticise foreign-origin phrases or even to try to make them sound simplistic or awkward. This is, I suspect, to emphasise the weirdness of the foreign language or of the foreigners themselves. This is where translation occurs at a literal level without conveying a correct semantic impression. The usual translation given for "Allahu akbar" is "God is great" or "God is the greatest". This sounds to an English speaker like a rather crude choice of words; as though "God" was the name of a brand of cola drink. A more reverential tone would be struck by translating it as "The Lord is Supreme". A similar case is "Al Qaeda". This is usually translated as "the base". It may well be the word used in Arabic for "base" as in "base of operations" or "military base". However, to give a more significant and accurate translation to English, I feel that "foundation" is the right word, (even though there is another Arabic word meaning "foundation" as in a developmental institution). Thus, "Al Qaeda" would be "The Foundation".

To finish; an interesting example on these lines is the German word panzerkampfwagen. This is usually rendered as "tank" in English. The complete word can be comfortably translated as "armoured fighting vehicle." Someone wanting to make German look dopey could literally translate this as "panoplied struggle wagon". (That phrase reminds me of the embellished panel vans that Australian teenagers used during the 1970's and 80's for extra-domestic inter-gender relationship development. That's another story...)

Post#108 Christmas comes - just in time to beat Easter! (Commercialism and holidays)

I can't be sure when it started, but I think it's been in the past decade that the retailers began jumping on the holiday bandwagons much earlier than most people think reasonable. I first spotted Christmas decorations and seasonal foods on sale this year at Woolworths in Centro Dianella in the early days of October. Other retailers soon followed.

The remnants of the left-over Easter eggs had barely been sold off at gross discounts before their place was taken by the Christmas goods. Those Easter chocolates now include a great range of chocolate rabbits and the battling Easter bilby. (Click that, scroll down and you'll see a cute furry animal and two humans nearly throttling it. And here for a better view of the furry beast). These left-overs are often partially crushed/melted and are the wounded debris of the last days of pre-public-holiday shopping. Their metallic paper wrappers are usually dented like a depressed-fracture of the skull and they are about the most pitiful-looking stuff to ever hit the remainder shelves. Only a few years ago they were disposed of more discreetly, now they're shamelessly flogged.

(Alston, the cartoonist for The West Australian, has done a couple of good cartoons on this in recent years. In the first he shows the Easter Bunny riding with Santa Claus in his sleigh and saying "Thanks for the lift, mate. Joining forces is a good idea in the current economic climate." In the next year's the Bunny was being unpleasant, abusing a tardy Santa in a store: "Come on, you lazy old bastard, get a move on! It's my turn!")

Woolworths has a nauseating jingle they keep playing over their speaker system that contains the phrase "We're Woolworths the fresh food people". This is sung as, "Ther freshh fooood pee-pullll" in an unctuous and conceited tone by the sorts of voices you hear in jingles. All so loving and sweet. I loathe the blasted thing. A few weeks back I was in their Dianella store with a female friend and I busted out singing my own take on it: "We're Woolworths the greeeedy baaastaards and we're ripping you off! we're ripping you off!! we're ripping you off todaaay!!!" She joined in and a couple of other people chimed in as well in the aisle we were in. Other people in other aisles could be heard laughing. Then security was called for over the speakers and a couple of people prowled the aisles looking for the "offenders". They didn't have a clue who'd done it so I approached one of these twits and told her that it was a couple of bikies who'd just gone out the exit lane. They lost interest at that point. I couldn't believe it at the time, but in retrospect it was only to be expected. They're allowed to sing irritating songs to you. You can't reciprocate.

IGA at Dianella also has a cold eye and a hard jaw. Once, in IGA, I saw a store employee clearing the bakery shelves and chucking the unsold bread, cakes, etc. into a trolley very roughly. I asked her, "Does this all go to the tip?" She replied that it did. Baker's Delight at Dianella gives their daily surplus to charity workers who collect it at the end of business. I mentioned this and asked why IGA didn't do the same. She said, with some disgust, "I know; we've suggested it to the management here, but they don't want to know." Yep, they're all great lovers of humanity and full of generous spirit.

These two festivals, Christmas and Easter, bookend important sales phases in the business calendar and Jesus is the last thing on their minds. I've often thought we should bring back the pagan gods for these sorts of events. They liked a good booze up and cutting a deal or two. No-one had to pretend they were in it for love and self-improvement. We don't really have to believe in them, they can just be useful commercial vehicles. And there are so many of them. They'd fill the calendar. Actually, maybe I could sell that idea for something...

Post#107 "Wow, Enceladus!" (A story Dugg from the blog "The Bad Astronomer")

The Bad Astronomer discusses new Cassini images of Enceladus, a tiny water-ice moon orbiting Saturn: "...water and organic materials, and a known mechanism (tidal heating) to keep the water liquid, and to help mix it. Provocative, isn’t it?" Check them out!


read more digg story

Post#106 Patriotic Squandering (The Australian Government's Economic Stimulus Package for 2008)

I couldn't really take in what was happening until a few days ago. Then it got through to me that the Commonwealth Government was giving money away. Just giving it away. And the only squawk from their so-called Opposition was that some people would spend it on booze, gambling, drugs and whores and that others would just sit on it as savings. Apart from what I think of the idea in general, I think these are just the same sort of nit-picking nonsenses that Malcolm Turnbull is making into a standard practice. The money that is saved by being banked is ultimately providing capital for loans and the vice industries are just as real a part of the economy as a delicatessen or retailer of vacuum-cleaners.

My exasperation with it is because the government has found over a thousand million dollars to spend on a scattergun subsidy rather than thinking about investing in a long-term restructure. A good starting point would be the banking and housing sectors. That's where the current furore began and it would be a good place to begin with repairing the system.

The Road to Housing Hell

The perennial treadmill with these two sectors is the rent-trap into which prospective buyers are forced as they attempt to save to purchase a home. Those savings are eroded as the landlords attempt to extract maximum profit from the rental properties. At the same time, the prices of homes for sale also rise, as the vendors attempt to make the greatest possible return on their capital.

The rent-slaves don't like their servitude and respond by trying to increase their incomes. Those employed by others seek higher wages, those who own businesses raise the prices charged to their customers and/or try to cut their costs. One of the cost-cutting measures may be shedding staff; trying to do the same or more with less. Some of those shed will be those rent-trappped ones trying to get money together for a home purchase. So there's a stimulus right there to inflation and unemployment. What happens to the unemployed who can't find new employment quickly? The landlord still wants that rent and if they can't continue to meet it they're out, looking for cheaper accommodation.

These are complex issues, and complicated. I have heard people say that they prefer renting to owning their own home but those people seem likely to be in a very small minority, so these stresses will affect most people in the developed world.

Housing has become a focus for those who study the economic indicators. The figures for new construction commencements are scrutinised fiercely each quarter and the progress of prices is tracked breathlessly in the financial media. I see in this a main feature of the problem. The fundamental purpose of housing construction must be...to provide housing. Not to provide incomes to constructors, realtors, conveyancers, landlords and speculators. Nor to housing industry analysts. This is the same malaise that afflicts money markets. When currency becomes primarily a speculative commodity the price of it ceases to have any relevance to the real-world value of what is being marketed. Money should be valued according to what can be bought with it, housing should be valued according to the quantity and quality of the work and materials applied to the construction and the utility of the site.

(More to follow...)

Post#105 Murder Two - And Some Rapes (Fatal Choices by Female Crime Victims.)

It is a truism familiar to law officers and connoiseurs of crime that most crimes against women are committed in their own homes by men who are closely asociated with the victim. When any woman turns up dead or suspectly missing, the police searchlight swings around seeking the (usually estranged) husband, boyfriend, father, brother, son, etc. That is, unless there is a self-evident circumstance that indicates a different class of offender.

In any interview with a "dial-a-quote" type on the topic of women and crime there's now a mandatory phase in which the expert informs the audience that women are in most danger from their own "friends" and family. It's become a commonplace datum which most people are aware of due to dint of repetition. The usual focus of the argument is that fictional accounts of crime are weighted in favour of depicting "stranger danger" because it provides better material for creating dramatic tension.

I don't contest any of that, but it still leaves a large body of crime that is committed against women by strangers. I've observed a pattern in these events that is an ironic and tragic counterpoint to the threat from one's familiars. Again and again I read accounts of women raped and /or killed in a repeating scenario which I call Fatal Error Number One or "The Angry Girl Storms Out".

An example which is close to hand is the case of the 1963 murder of Rosemary Anderson in Perth, W.A. The prelude to her death was a horribly trivial tiff over a piece of fried fish. While visiting her boyfriend she tried to pilfer a piece of battered fish from his plate. He, seeing a hand sneaking into view, mistook it for the hand of his younger brother and snarled, "Get your own!" in a very savage tone of voice. Rosemary was appalled by the cruel response to this bit of mischief and gathered her gear and left the house in a distressed state. According to John Button, her boyfriend who was later wrongfully convicted in the matter, Rosemary had done this before when affronted and was impervious to reason when angered. She set out to walk home and was the victim of vehicular homicide by Eric Cooke. John had followed her in his car hoping that she would cool off and allow him to drive her home. It was during an interlude when she was out of his sight that Cooke ran her down with a stolen car. This case is definitively covered in Estelle Blackburn's books Broken Lives and The End of Innocence and John Button's work Why Me, O Lord!

Another famous case in W.A. is the rape and murder of Anne Zappelli in 1969. She was at a drive-in theatre in Geraldton when she became bored or irritated and decided to leave her friends in their car and...walk home. A man later made a death-bed confession; there's a link to an ABC story about it here.

An episode that caught my attention was a brutal rape that occurred in Perth in the early hours of New Year's Day in 1993. A young woman took a taxi home from celebrating the New Year and asked the driver to let her disembark at a corner a short distance from her home. According to the taxi-driver, a man walked by as she left the car and she called out "Happy New Year!" to this passerby. He didn't respond. She was later found unconscious in an alley; severely beaten, raped, her clothes torn to bits and her shoes missing. When she was able to speak, she alleged that the passerby she'd greeted was the offender. I never heard further on this case after the initial report. I have no idea whether he was caught but I do know this to be an example of Fatal Error Number Two or "The Girl Snatches Peril From The Jaws Of Safety". In this scenario simple impatience or penny-pinching or not wanting to impose or some other such exasperatingly trivial impulse leads to horrible consequences. A short-cut through a car-park, a playing field, a poorly-lit laneway. Saving a bus or taxi fare. Not waiting for that friend to provide a ride home. Not wanting to take someone a kilometre out of their way.

Again and again the stories appear. Women fleeing the safety of their friends' company and delivering themselves into the hands of monsters. Women unwittingly taking grave risks for petty reasons. "Reclaim the night!" Sure. Call me when it happens. Until then, I wish I could scream in the ears of all those who may make these errors: "Don't! Don't! For Christ's sake, DON'T!!" As a less histrionic aid I'd advise any young woman to find a copy of Gavin de Becker's book The Gift of Fear and recommend that they read it twice and be prepared to answer questions. The answers could save their lives.

Post#104 Murder One: Lesbian Vampire Killers and Their Unjust Deserts (Western Australian Murders and Penalties)

The notorious case of Jessica Stasinowsky and Valerie Parashumti has notched up another milestone. The inevitable appeals alleging harshness of sentence are now appearing in the court lists. The lovely Valerie Parashumti has stuck first with an application for reduction of sentence. Her barrister has argued to the Appeal division of the Supreme Court of Western Australian that the sentences imposed earlier this year were excessive. This is a standard part of the cycle of such cases and usually makes the average person wonder what kind of maggot-nest a criminal defence lawyer must have for a brain. However, although it's a familiar routine and I've become used to it, a note was struck in the report of the plea on Parashumti's behalf that staggered me. The defence advocate has contended that the offence in this matter was not in the worst category.

This genius of the forensic arts proposed that the most serious categories of murder are those involving assassinations of public officials such as judges or police officers. So, a bullet in the back of the head to one of these, is worth a more serious sentence than the deeds of the two offenders in this matter. This really is a provocation.

The problem we have in these islands is that we've seen the removal of the death penalty as a standard penalty for wilful homicide. This was done at the discretion of politicians with no plebiscite and without the matter being contested in the context of an election campaign. It was slipped in under the radar by MP's who believed that they knew better than the bloodthirsty canaille. Now judges are obliged to try to grade murders and reserve the longest sentences for the worst. The trap in this is that there is never going to be a "worst" murder. There's no bottom with these offences; whatever one may imagine, there will always be a worse. Under the old system, a life deliberately taken was worth a life. It still is. The law simply doesn't recognise the fact.

The other significant issue in this case is the familiarity which the gruesome subject matter is acquiring. We had another murder in this State shortly before this one which was of a similar style; two teenage girls murdered another girl in a shared house in the town of Collie. These were the sorts of killings which would have been beyond imagining in WA thirty years ago. Now they're forming a pattern.

Whenever the accused and their friends appear at the courthouse the casual observer could mistake the gathering for a convention of fans of the vampire movie genre. I may be overestimating it, but there seem to be a lot more of these vampire lesbians around these days. The curmudgeons who keep railing against the decadent influence of the entertainment industry used to attract barrages of derision from the "progressives" who kept insisting that fantasy and reality had no causal connection and that someone could immerse themselves in as much horror and violence as they pleased with no ill-effects. The evidence for the righteousness of the curmudgeons appears to be accumulating.

Post#103 Fomalhaut Planet

A while back I saw a news item about the discovery of a visible planet orbiting the star Fomalhaut. Television news showed a brief video clip simulating the planet's orbit. It seems to be following an eccentric orbit around the star and approaching quite close to the star. It's not a plausible candidate for supporting life of any kind but it should finally settle the hash of any remotely sane skeptic on the topic of the existence of planets outside our solar system. That is, if all the gravity-distortion data hasn't convinced them already.

It was only a few years ago that there were astronomers seriously proposing that our solar system may be the only one in the universe with planets or that ever has or will have them. How anyone could be that far into solipsism beats me from here to Brisbane. Was it ever remotely likely that in all of space and time our star system was so defiantly unique? As a hypothesis it really should have been relegated to the category of the infinitesimally probable during the nineteenth century.

I don't put much stock in the prospect of aliens pestering us in the recent past or future but I think it would be ill-advised on the same scale as the "no other planets" hypothesis to hold to an absolute denial of their existence. Of course, most other life in the universe will be of the sort which existed hundreds of millions of years ago on this planet. Other types may have progressed in a more benevolent star's orbit, where the extinction events which have disrupted the history of our planet may not have occurred. This could put them ahead of us intellectually and technologically. Of course, Nature being capricious, a planet which has been subjected to great plagues of extinction events may be harbouring a supremely adaptive and relentless species which is just about to take over the Universe. (In which case, let me be the first to welcome our new overlords.)

I was reflecting today on the indifference of these facts of Universal life to our opinions and perceptions. These alien planets have been there through all of recorded history and well before it. If they are trees in the Galactic forest, no human observer has been required to permit their growth or fall to occur. And there are probably wonders and mysteries out there which we may come and go without ever knowing or even imagining the existence of.

Post#102 An thou bloggest, thus shall it be... + Blogsoldiers!! Abandon ship!

I started at Post#2 by saying:

"In olden days they used to say, "Hire a hall if you want to make a speech!" Now it's "Start a blog!" People should be careful about saying it. The recipient of the advice might take heed and do just that. But what to blog about? There's everything and nothing. Let's have a bit of everything to start:"

And, so I started. The "Hire a Hall" series of rants and raves were subtitled to show them as part of the categories "Everything" and "Nothing". By that I meant to separate the topics into the great and the trivial. Looking back, I see that hardly anything made its way into "Nothing". Most apparently trivial things lead back to the great issues of life. This is something the makers of parables have known forever. Jesus, or whoever wrote his material, applied it all the time. There's probably some arcane Classical Greek rhetorical term for this type of exposition. Something meaning "arguing from the particular to the general". In fact I'm sure there is; I just can't think of it. So, I've decided to dispense with the "Hire a Hall" device and title the posts with whatever seems fit.

One thing I've noticed in roaming the steppes of blogdom since April is that a large number of blogs are moribund. People start with a burst of whatever it is that starts them and fizzle out. The blog servers must be strewn with the wreckage of millions of withered blogs that people gave up. The most plausible reason is an apparent lack of readership. The counterpoint to this is all the blogs urging other bloggers to "monetise" their blogs. Hub sites like BlogCatalog, MyBlogLog and Spicypage are full of spruiking on this topic. These are the efforts of people hoping to make money by blogging to other people about how to make money by blogging to other people... The revenue stream is apparently supposed to come from the advertisements on the site which will be clicked by the millions of visitors you'll receive. Just send a payment to this account and you'll learn the secret. I find it a bit sad; it's just like those gambling/real estate/whatever schemes that are offered by post or email. The anomaly is: if the sender knows the secret to becoming filthy rich, why are they bothering to fiddle around with a mail-order business? If they're doing it for love of humanity, why don't they just post it publicly once, for free?

I can think of plenty of ways of attracting visitors. Most are common sense and are given away as free advice by the "traffic ehancement" experts as a tease for the potential customers. They're also superficial. They attract people to blogs but usually don't entice anyone to actually read the damn things. Tricky titles for posts, leaving comments on other people's blogs, including images in posts; they're well-worn features of the blog culture.


Then there are traffic exchanges. These are sites where you receive credit points for visiting member's blogs and receive reciprocal visits according to how much credit you have acquired. The same problem afflicts this concept as with much of bloggery; people want others to visit their blogs and read their writings and click on their ads...they're not all that keen on being the readers and clickers. An economic model of this pattern would feature many sellers and few buyers. Even though these sites usually have timers that require you to access a blog for a minimum period, many people seem to simply open the site, reduce the window to a size just big enough for the navigation controls to be visible and then just click on it occasionally as they do something else. So they can't even see the blog sites they're "visiting". Several of these sites also are poisoned by bad management by the site owners. They want to receive income from paying members and don't look after the non-paying accounts to a degree that would encourage them to upgrade. I had this experience at Blogsoldiers which was, unfortunately for me, the first such site I tried. I didn't know enough at that stage to recognise the signs of a dying site and I wasted a lot of time on it that would have been better spent elsewhere. The main indicator that I should have spotted is that a lot of the blogs on the site had not been updated for a long time. Their existing credits were slowly being eroded by the small remaining community of users. Having jumped on a sinking ship I paddled away for several weeks acquiring useless credits by surfing blogs which would never provide me with any traffic. This happened in the period when i was waiting for my blog to be listed. This took about three weeks and, when it happened, amazed me with the lack of result it produced. I currently have 248 credits remaining which I'm allowing to run down to nil before I delete my account there. If you're reading this blog from Blogsoldiers you must be one of the fifty or so regulars there who still haven't jumped. I recommend you do so and join me at Blogexplosion, where things are a lot more lively. The rule I follow when surfing is to at least have a look at every site I visit and scroll down and see what the general quality of the posting is. I blogmark any that attract my attention in a positive way. I figure that the exchange traffic concept is a bit like speed dating. If you discover one blog in fifty that you'd like to read and there's a prospect of developing a correspondence with its author, you're doing well.

Post#101 Want To Be PC? - It's Easy As ABC!

I usually break out the flamethrowers to defend the Australian Broadcasting Corporation from the yellow cringing dogs of the Right (aaak- ptooey), but last night I heard something that wore even my Socialist patience out. A presenter on ABC Regional Radio was conducting a session in which listeners were attempting to answer each other's questions on the meaning of various sayings. One of the topics of discussion was the origin and meaning of the American phrase "Jim Crow". A listener, who had a timid manner to begin with, offered a quote from an American author which she prefaced by saying, "Now I'm quoting here, this isn't my choice of words.."

It turned out that the quote referred to racism in the USA and, inter alia, the epithet "nigger" was cited. The presenter interjected sternly, "I really wish you hadn't used that word...", further intimidating the caller. I busted out at that point with a few epithets of my own. I know that the word is as dangerous as nitroglycerine in the US. Media types there are cowed to the extent that they now use the expression "The N-word". Not without reason. For a white person who has any aspirations, to use the word "nigger" in any context is career suicide. A few years back a senior executive in a corporation there destroyed himself by unthinkingly using the expression "nigger in the woodpile" during a press conference. That's an ironic turn of events because that expression derives from the activities of the Abolitionists who ran the Underground Railway for absconding slaves. One of their tricks was to build hideouts for the slaves which would be concealed under a pile of firewood. Most people today seem to think that it means some kind of obnoxious intrusion, as with "fly in the ointment"; it actually denotes a dangerous secret, like "skeleton in the closet".

Lots of these sayings float around in the background of cultural memory and pass unnoticed until they're brought out carelessly into the unkind light of a politically correct day. The old version of "Eenie , meenie, minie, moe.." used when I was a child, contained the line "Catch a nigger by the toe!" Kids learned that by rote and didn't even know what "nigger" meant. If someone had bailed me up on that at the age of four and said "What is a nigger?", I couldn't have said whether it was animal, vegetable or mineral; real or mythical. I know what it means now. I know what goes with that word: Redlegs, Jayhawkers, Copperheads, Abolitionists, "Burning Kansas" (and Lawrence thereof), Quantrell's Raiders, Andersonville, Chickamauga, Gettysburg, Shiloh and on and on. And then Reconstruction and the Ku Klux Klan. That word "nigger" is soaked in blood and hate. It's been spat from the mouths of men who've hauled other men up into trees with rope necklaces or dragged them, first behind horses and wagons, then Model A Fords and more recently 4x4 pickup trucks. It's been the last word heard in this world by the ears of men being flogged on a tree or tied to a burning log or hearing also the blast of close-range gunfire or the whoomp of a firebomb.

When I grew older I discovered that I was a distant relative by marriage of Ulysses Grant and that members of my father's family live still in the United States, cousins whose names and numbers I can't even guess at. Some of their kin and mine are no doubt buried in those cemeteries that contain the tens of thousands of dead from those battles. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, those great slave-driving freedom fighters, bequeathed that also with their slave Constitution. And still it goes on. I read an article in the Weekend Australian's magazine a couple of months back (when Hillary was a contender and Sarah wasn't) in which a redneck customer in a gun shop was quoted saying, "I ain't votin' for no woman and I ain't votin' for no nigger." I suppose if he kept his word he must have refrained from voting. (Praise the Lord!) Nor should we forget Mr Rodney King and his eponymous riot. "Why can't we all just get along?" he asked. Good question. Perhaps when the aliens arrive they'll tell us what it's all about. Or the AntiChrist will. Or the real Christ. Or not.

In the meantime (mean time), we battle on fighting the bushfire of bigotry, flame by flame. Perhaps that's what that twit of a presenter thought he was doing when he chided the caller for saying "nigger". I wouldn't choose to use that word about anyone. In the context of addressing someone with it or calling them by it behind their back, I surely don't want to hear it on the national broadcaster. But really, mate. Complaining because someone referred to it in the context of a discussion about racial discrimination? Being that silly just puts fuel in the tank of the likes of Janet Albrechtsen.

Post#100 "Jelly balls" may slow global warming - A story from the Sydney Morning Herald via Digg.

VAST numbers of marine "jelly balls" now appearing off the Australian east coast could be part of the planet's mechanism for combating global warming...

(Refers to the salp, an obscure invertebrate which soaks up CO2.)

read more | digg story

Post#99 George Bush Proves That Imran Khan is Right!

I haven't bothered to pay a lot of attention to the story about the leaking of Kevin Rudd's telephone conversation with George Bush, but I gather this is the gist of it:

George Bush spoke to Kevin Rudd by telephone when Rudd was at Kirribilli House and was entertaining some media folk. The Australian subsequently published a story claiming that Rudd had said to Bush that a meeting of the G20 to discuss the economic crisis would be a good idea. Bush is supposed to have responded with a puzzled "What's that?" This apparently indicated that he didn't know what the G20 was, not that he hadn't heard correctly. Now, the White house spokespersons denied this "angrily", and the US Ambassador to Australia made some representations.

Mr Rudd issued a statement to the effect that Mr Bush had not spoken those words and thereafter clammed up, basically referring to the US authorities in a "what they said" manner. Mr Rudd also repeatedly insisted that this non-existent faux would not affect US-Australian realtions, or his personal dealings with the US.

Here's the anomaly: If it didn't happen, and Mr Rudd never claimed that it did, what was there for anyone to be angry about or make representions about? The final proof that it must have happened is the calculatedly unfriendly reception that Mr Rudd received from Mr Bush at the G20 summit. Bush seemed to be deliberately lavishing affection on everybody else to emphasise the minimalist greeting which Rudd received. So if it's all just the imaginings of malicious journalists, why is Bush so offended?

By snubbing Rudd he's proven the tale true. Which brings me to Imran Khan. When Andrew Denton interviewed him recently on Enough Rope he asked Khan to describe George Bush in three words. Khan replied, with exquisite moderation, "He is not very clever."

Post#98 Hire a Hall / Everything (The Wheel of Fortune)

I've just read The Pinstriped Prison by Lisa Pryor. It has a refreshingly clear style and is a much easier read than many works on "lifestyle". It provoked this response from fellow Perth blogger Sunili. It was seeing this post which inclined me to read it.

Pryor's work is an interesting attempt to describe and explain the way in which a small group of professions have managed to acquire elite status in the minds of aspiring students. They now lure the cream of the intellectual crop of graduates from high schools into preparatory degrees and also, subsequently, from other degree courses with no apparent relationship to the professions in question. The most impressive point that Pryor makes is that these three "glamorous" professions; management consultancy, law and banking are absorbing those who have particular talents which suit them to other professions which are subsequently impoverished for talent as a consequence. The graduates are attracted by the money and the verbose and deceptive promises of "dynamic" and exhilarating endeavours. The truth turns out to be that grunt work in glamorous professions is still grunt work. It's just intellectually harder. Wracking your brains over a client's tax position or corporate structure is really no more fun than laying cement. And none of it really breaks ground in advancing civilisation.

I found particularly resonant the description of how expenditure expands to absorb available income. I've experienced and observed this myself. I once held a middle-range position in an organisation in which the CEO didn't seem to have much more disposable income than I did. He was spending it at the same rate as he received it by keeping up the appropriate lifestyle.

On the other hand, things can be worse. I've also read Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in Working Class America. The author went "undercover" as a seeker of employment as an unskilled labourer. (She discovered inter alia that no job is truly "unskilled".) The cruelty of the plight of those who are trapped in this stratum of society is very thoroughly demonstrated. The two issues are brought neatly together in Lewis Lapham's documentary The American Ruling Class which has featured on SBS in Australia.

What it comes down to, I believe, is that the "system" industries of capitalism are providing massive earnings to those who control the corporations that grease the wheels for short-term profit to be made. They need wage-slaves for their mills and this provides the impetus for the intense recruitment drive to the consulting, legal and banking industries.

The long-term effect is the devaluing of those who would make the constructive changes in technology and provide high-quality social services. Thus industrial design, architecture, teaching, nursing, etc. are driven down towards the base of the status pyramid. Those who might have once aspired to these professions see that they don't get no respect and that they're shortchanged on pay whenever those paying can manage to do it. It's a vicious circle in which the recipient of the service is treated to the efforts of a progressively dumbed-down workforce. In teamwork situations, the poorly-trained, unmotivated operators also wear out the patience and morale of their colleagues who want to do better. Guess which ones drop out in disgust.

Post #97 Tapping in and washered out.

Last night I gave up on strangling the taps in the shower to stop their insidious dripping and accepted that it was time to try the washers I'd bought. These are a new type with a recess in them to use the water pressure to buttress against itself. They're made by Doust Plumbing Products, a firm operating out of my home town, Perth, Western Australia.

Here's a link to the page on their site which explains how they work.

I found they worked pretty well but I'm having to turn the taps off harder than I expected. I'm wondering whether it's that the tap needs reseating or the newfangled washer is not up to the contents of the blurb. Time will tell.

Post#96 Hire a Hall / Everything (A rack o' bamab? Rack off Obama!!)

(Not that I've got anything in particular against him, but I can't turn on a radio or television or read a newspaper or a blog without having him for breakfast, lunch and dinner. The trend in Australia is to pronounce all the a's in his name to rhyme as "ah" and run it together, thus: "Bahrahkohbahmah". The commentators are busting a gut trying to fit it in as many times as possible in any utterance. Perhaps it's easier to say if it rhymes. I swore a blood oath on the altar of Mars that I wouldn't blog about him yesterday and I managed to refrain from joining the stampede. Sufficient unto the day was the blogging thereof...but today's another day. I think I've found an angle on this that's actually new, so here goes.)

I proved again that I won't be joining the ranks of "earning" psychics by expressing preference for a McCain victory in my Post#2, whereat I wrote:

"The US presidential election? I don't make any pretence about it; I'm well to the left of the Australian Labor Party these days. So, if I was a US citizen, who would I vote for? Clinton or Obama? John McCain. Yes, that's strange on the face of it, but true. The history books may well show the old white guy defeating the first plausible female candidate or the first black guy with a real chance. No doubt the future will judge it to be a reversion to type. Perhaps the last gasp of the old right guard. They'll be wrong. It'll be a victory for common sense. The only "qualification" the other two have is a desperate thirst to get their hands on the controls at any price. I hope not."

I wouldn't change a word of that. The intensity of preoccupation with Obama's ethnicity is the most prominent fact of this episode in history and it prompts me to propose that an interesting inversion has occurred. If I'd thought of it I'd have asked the question, "Would you vote for Obama if he was white?" A quick look in the Googlebox shows that some people did. But not very many. Now that the American electors have got it out of their systems and elected a "black" President, what does the cold light of the next morning reveal? An unknown quantity. I'm sure he's not a cryptoMuslim, soft on terrorism or a secret hater of America. But those weren't very plausible accusations, so refuting them doesn't really win many points. More dangerous and plausible is the possibility that he's overambitious and out of his depth.

On the SBS Dateline programme broadcast on the day of the election I saw George Negus ask an American commentator, "What will his first mistake be?" George didn't get an answer to that. But it's coming, nonetheless.

Post #95 Anagrams of a Mabo

A long time ago in that past which is another country; before Al Kyder and his mate Terry Wrist hung a shingle outside a cave in Afghanistan; before the infamous Israeli agent Lewinsky infellatrated her way into the White House*; back in the days when most people didn't have mobile phones; there lived a man named Eddie Koiki Mabo. And for a while his name was one of the most recognisable in the Commonwealth of Australia. I hadn't thought about him in a long while when I noticed that Obama spelt backwards is "a Mabo". No real connection of course, just a string of letters that prompted a memory. Synchronicity did her trick and provided an episode of First Australians about him last night, just to let me know She's still messing with me and that I shouldn't become complacent.

In 1992, most Australians heard of him for the first time when the High Court found in his favour in a case which became known simply as "Mabo". (It was a posthumous victory; like Moses he had died shortly before the Promised Land was opened for business.) It was the decision which established the principle that indigenous title may endure in Australia. It had all begun in a rather trivial dispute between Mabo and another native of Mer island, named Dipoma, about ownership of a small piece of land...the explosive finding on native title was a mere byproduct of this dispute. Mabo and Dipoma had been feuding for a long while over it and I heard a letter Mabo had written quoted in a TV documentary, in which he wrote, "Dear Mr Dipoma: Your letters are full of what drops off in the toilet after a good feed..." First change the world, then get down to the serious business. The decision has been the subject of so much blathering argument by spoken word and pen that I won't bother writing more on its technicalities. I find it thought-provoking for the ironies it embodies. One hundred and four years had passed since the beginning of the British Conquest of Australia. The highest of our courts had now decided that customary genealogical inheritance of land title applied in Australia, just as in Europe. Not a bad effort, really. The Vatican took much longer to concede on Galileo.

And what did it do for Aborigines in the world outside jurisprudence? Next to nothing. Just like the 1967 referendum everyone drags up, or the efforts of the tragically misguided Vincent Lingiari. He led a "successful" campaign to obtain the right to equal pay for equal work for Aboriginal workers in the pastoral industry. Without a right to security of tenure of employment or residency on the stations where they lived. Without a law preventing racial discrimination in the giving of employment. The station owners expelled the Aboriginal communities and started them on their long path to degradation as unemployed fringe-dwellers. The helpful government gave them "sit-down money" to buy the alcohol they needed for this strenuous work. They're at it to this day. But the government's coming to help them again, so they'll be alright.

Another great victory for the cause was the appointment of an Aborignal man, Douglas Nicholls, as Governor of South Australia. Everybody now forgets that he nearly renounced the position within a few days of the government announcing its intentions. He was grievously offended by the media's disrespectful harping on his ethnicity. Their approach was, essentially, to repeatedly challenge him as to whether he did not find it a wonder of the world that he was to be appointed. There was a nasty racist undertone to this: "Aren't you as amazed as us that a boong is to be Governor?" Not that "boong" was spoken. He didn't fail to hear it, though, and he was right. I remember with disgust the media pack trampling his rose bushes as they swarmed into his front yard, ignoring his furious demands that they depart, bleating their taunts. They'd never have dared it with a white pastor.

So, who said, "Change we can believe in?"


(*Oops!! Gave away an international security secret there. Well, it was a long time ago. Maybe it won't matter...)

Post#94 "Interview on Writing Fiction Books" - Dugg from CuteWriting

"Author Carol Denbow on virtual tour teaching how to write and publish a book."

From a post at CuteWriting by Lenin Nair which I Dugg.

read more | digg story

Post#93 Hire a Hall/Everything (It's Payback Time for the Liberal and National Coalition!)

Now that the dust is settling from the W.A. State election of September 6th, the outlines are emerging of where the new government is going to be staking its claim to power. In the West Australian newspaper a couple of days ago I read a report of the intention of some Liberal backbenchers to revisit the issue of compulsory balloting. Yeah, sure, backbenchers. Just bringing up a matter of personal concern. Just like those Dorothy Dixer questions that backbenchers ask all on their own initiative. One of these concerned fellows is the recently scraped-in new MLA for Riverton, Mr Mike Nahan, a thirty-year refugee from North America. He found a nice little niche advising Richard Court, former Liberal Premier of W.A. and then moved, after Court's ouster, to the Institute of Public Affairs. Here's a reader's comment copied from the PerthNow website where Nahan's election spiel was posted

Dr Mike Nahan was the Executive Director of the extreme right wing "privatise at all costs" Institute for Public Affairs for ten years. Mike chooses not to mention this in his CV. Why is that? He supports the "astroturf" environmental front group the Australian Environmental Foundation, which has a base case of denying climate change, whether it is human induced or not.

Can't find anything to disagree with in that. Nahan's mates at the IPA have a relentlessly Thatcherite view. It's free-market anarchy that they preach; their idea of economic Paradise is located at the point on the eternal wheel of ideas where the lunar left and the lunar right meet. Karl Marx wrote of the "withering away of the organs of the State". Nahan and Co. want to cut off those organs with chainsaws. They bleat like the brainwashed sheep from Animal Farm: "Private good! Government bad!" The facts of private ignorance, corruption, incompetence, indifference to the future and so forth are of no matter to them. It's not really surprising. They're hooked up to an umbilical that provides a steady supply of sustaining funds from the very interests they support and praise. Not a bad money-spinner really. You establish a "think-tank" that unflinchingly (and unthinkingly) sings the praises of the would-be plunderers and they pay you by the word.

So good ole Mike has come out in favour of non-compulsory voter registration and balloting. Just like in his former homeland. Of course, the idea is that the removal of compulsion would make life a lot harder for the Labor party; supposedly its lower-socioeconomic demographic would be less likely to register and turn out. The Labor party really only has itself to blame for this. Apart from the grossly cynical decision to call an early, self-serving election they tampered with the electoral system to give themselves an edge by pushing the specious "one vote, one value" principle. That was a dangerous precedent to set. They did it for no reason other than their own electoral advantage and now they will have to drag that baggage uphill if they fight the Tories on this one.

How is "one vote - one value" specious? It purports that there is an ubiquitous merit in having all representatives elected by the same numbers of electors, i.e. the same number of electors in each electoral district. Weighting votes by having some candidates elected by smaller numbers of constituents than others is supposed to be as heinous as gerrymandering. I heard Stephen Smith, our Foreign Minister and MHR for Perth, W.A., pushing this line on a TV panel show recently and was provoked by his simpleton surety on the matter. If Steve really believes it he's lost his marbles. The practice of weighting votes in the W.A. electoral system to allow smaller constituencies in the hinterland isn't unreasonable. It's petty compensation for the uphill battle that the bush fights against the eternal "flight to the cities" and the negative discrimination this brings. The indisputable fact is that the hinterland is where the main wealth of the State comes from. Cutting back the opportunities of those who choose to make a home there isn't really very clever. Can we really stuff Perth full of three or four million people and then run the entire non-metropolitan economy on a "fly-in, fly-out" system? I thought we had a water supply problem and a sewage treatment problem. And what about those famous housing costs everyone's been squawking about for the past twenty years? Did I imagine all that blarney about "decentralisation" and easing the pressure on urban resources?

Without representation out of proportion to the size of the population, those hinterland areas will suffer an acceleration of the process of withdrawal of services and consequent loss of population. There won't be a political incentive to resist the process. And why is this being done? Because the hinterland seats have consistently returned conservative members to the State Parliament. Simple as that. They kept the Labor party from controlling the Legislative Council for many years and returned Country/National Party members to the Assembly. Well, now the Labor party has had its win over them. But, oh...what happened on the 6th of September just passed? They lost the election! Yep, the new, "fair" system returned a conservative Coalition government and gave a new lease of life to the National party. And now the conservatives, with the likes of Nahan leading the charge will have their turn. With equal hypocrisy and self-serving falsity they will push the idea of voluntary registration and balloting. And they may have the numbers to get it through.

For the sake of attacking each other's support bases the main blocs are hacking away at what was an exemplary system. And here's something for the likes of Stephen Smith to think about: What if this "unbreachable principle" of "one vote, one value" was applied in the context of the Commonwealth electoral system? If disproportionate representation is such anathema, each province of the Commonwealth should have the number of House seats and Senators that its proportion of the nation's population would indicate. So, where would that put Stephen Smith's home state, Western Australia? Certainly not with 12 Senators. Perhaps 8. Would the ACT and NT still qualify for 2 Senators? And if the provision in the Constitution that all original States of the Federation are guaranteed at least 5 seats in the House was removed, Tasmania would be reduced from 5 to 2. As well as dropping from 12 senators to 3. South Australia would certainly lose at least 4 Senators. And the Big Three, New South Wales/Victoria/Queensland would collectively gain as many as were lost by the others.

Obviously, the Senators don't sit in provincial blocs, nor do they often vote across party lines to defend a provincial interest. This often leads to mockery of the Senate in response to its title "States' House" (although it should now be "States and Territories" , since they've received Senate representation). The omission in this viewpoint is that the existence of those Senate seats provides a motive for the parties to give consideration to provincial concerns from the less-populated provinces which would otherwise be neglected. They don't often clash within their party ranks in the Senate because all parties have a vested interest in going along with certain main trends in national policy. If some parts of the nation could be reduced in electoral importance the inhabitants thereof would begin to notice that the Senate we have now wasn't just a paper tiger for provincial interests. Unfortunately, some people will only cotton to that when they're actually being thoroughly treated like dirt by Canberra. And that's the risk being run by Western Australians like Stephen Smith when they throw away that protective principle in the State context. What will Steve say if the Premiers of the three largest States demand application of "one vote, one value" to the Commonwealth's Constitution? Not much of coherence or consequence I reckon.

Post#92 The New Mini E (lectric) - Emissions Free Car - from Digg

"The BMW Group is about to become the first manufacturer of premium automobiles to deploy a fleet of nearly 500 all electric vehicles for private use in daily traffic. Powered by a 150 kW (204 hp) electric motor and fed by a high-performance rechargeable lithium-ion battery, the vehicle will be nearly silent and emissions free."

A story from Digg.

read more | digg story

Post#91 Hire a Hall / Everything (An enl-eye-tening discovery)

I was checking out some of my blogmarked sites at Blogexplosion (click the referral banner at the top of this page to check them out) and I discovered a post on a blog called "Eye See - Eye Talk" dealing with retinal detachment in platform divers. I found this pretty shocking and disheartening. I'd never heard of this and had never suspected that this was one of the hazards in the sport. I thought knocking your head on a board or platform (bad enough to be enough, I think) was the only peril its practitioners faced.

Post #90 A Science Experiment

I was in a store a few days ago and saw fire blankets for sale. They're non-flammable fabric squares which can be pulled from a package hanging on your wall and thrown over any fire involving the sort of fuels which don't respond well to application of water, e.g. cooking oil.

It triggered a memory from school days about the misguided efforts of a teacher to demonstrate the process known as "sublimation". This is the direct translation of a substance from a solid to a gaseous form. This could have been a difficult thing to demonstrate in the bare-boards science classroom that my high school featured; things that will turn from solid to gas at room temperature usually aren't lying around loose on shelves, for obvious reasons. However, an apparently fortuitous circumstance helped out the would-be demonstrator. In the classroom was a CO2 fire extinguisher. The enterprising teacher figured that he could show us the process by improvising with this device. He pulled the retainer pin from its trigger and blasted the extinguisher repeatedly against a blackboard. After several minutes of this a lump of solidified CO2 was sticking to the board. We were then exhorted to observe how it vaporised and disappeared into the air. For the benefit of those slow to catch on, or having trouble seeing from the back of the room, he put more of it in place with repeated furious blasts from the nozzle of the extinguisher. I didn't think this was all so amazing. Perhaps if a lump of solid metal had disappeared, it would have been worth the build-up, but this exercise just seemed to me to be showing the boring obvious and to be a waste of the contents of the extinguisher.

A week later when the great "sublimation" show was a fading memory, the same teacher was placing various items on the lab bench at the front of the room for an experiment when he spilled some kerosene on the bench top. He made a rapid grab at the flask he'd spilled it from and knocked over a Bunsen burner. The burner was operating and ignited the kerosene which was now spreading along the bench-top. The teacher thought he'd settle the burner down by pulling its supply hose from the gas tap at the end of the bench (The burner was lying in a spreading pool of burning kero by now). That stopped the burner fuelling the fire at its end of the hose but allowed gas to vent directly from the tap. The valve had a habit of sticking open and removing the hose plug hadn't popped the valve out to stop the gas flow. Of course the gas stream now ignited from the flames coming from the kero. It came out at full pressure, not the small flow the burner's outlet valve had been set to, and it was blazing a metre-long flame down the bench. One of my classmates was of Austrian ancestry and was a World War Two buff. He called out, delightedly, "Achtung! Flammenwaffe!!"

Now there's a dilemma: You've got burning kero spreading down the bench towards containers of volatile materials standing at its end (sulphur powder, acids, alcohol, other such goodies...). You've also got a gas flame a metre long that's doing God-knows-what to the gear on the bench top which is also surrounded by the burning kero. What do you do first, fight the kero fire or try to shut off the gas? I didn't know then and I still don't, but I guess there was a main tap near the bench or under it from which you could stop the gas. The teacher probably knew but he didn't seem to remember...anyway he decided that the kero was first priority. A reasonable decision; the gas flame was of finite length and coming from a fixed outlet, the kerosene was spreading fast along the four-metre long bench. He decided to give the kerosene the benefit of the trusty extinguisher's attention. In a smooth, commando-svelte motion he turned to the red cylinder of salvation resting in its wall bracket, hefted it, pulled the retaining pin (...close breech cover, draw back actuator lever...), pointed the uncompromising black metal nozzle at the kerosene fire and pulled the trigger lever. A blast of ice-cold fire-smothering CO2 jetted forth. For one second. Then, nowt but a feeble puff. Yes, he'd tested it to death. It was empty.

Now, you may be thinking, "What were the students doing while this..." Those of us at the front were taking a keen interest because the first students' bench was actually right up against the front of the lab bench. I was sitting at that bench with several others and was collecting my equipment and preparing to retreat from the kerosene which was burning only a few centimetres away. The others in the class were just watching, surprisingly, without laughing. There were about thirty of us in the room and no bastard, me included, was trying to help the guy. Anyway, there wasn't really a damn thing we could do. This is why the fire blankets in the shop triggered my memory of that day. They would have been just the thing to stop the progress of the fire. There weren't any in the lab. I don't believe there was one in the entire school.

Having discovered that his mate, the extinguisher, was extinct, the teacher cast about frantically for an alternative. Not having a suppressor blanket he applied his improvising talent again and seized upon a large cloth lying on a side table. Now that cloth had been hanging around the lab for years. It had done sterling service as a wiper-up of messes of all kinds and had collected within its fibres every chemical which had ever been used and spilled or dropped in that lab.

I once heard an American commentator on international affairs use a metaphor to describe errors in US foreign policy which was a story about a man walking through a perilous forest: "As he's walking along, in the gloomy light under the forest canopy, he sees a stick lying on the ground ahead him, a small curved branch that's fallen from a tree. In the poor light he mistakes the stick for a snake and panics. Casting about for something to hit the snake with, he sees something lying on the ground behind him which he wrongly believes is a stick...and he grabs it up..." That perfectly describes the situation of that fire-frightened teacher. That old cloth was probably the most flammable piece of textile product within the borders of the Commonwealth of Australia. And that's what he chose to beat the fire out with.

It caught in one millionth of a second and he was waving a blanket of fire as he spread the still-burning kerosene even further. I also remember that every speck of old spillage adhering to the bench-top was now igniting in this ideal fire environment. Little spurts of purple and yellow flame flickered into view for a fraction of a second as chemicals were liberated from the bench surface by the heat of the fire. Brilliant white sparkles showed where long-forgotten magnesium powder spills had occurred. At least it was getting a good clean-out.

As the cleaning-cloth was now beyond being held in a bare hand it was thrown to the floor and the teacher began futilely stamping on it. He had to give up and let it burn as the kero fire licked at the containers of combustibles standing at the end of the bench. He began grabbing them and transferring them to a waist-height shelf that was along the side of the room at right-angles to the lab bench. In this, at least, he succeeded.

Now he had a real inspiration. The lab bench had a metal sink. He decided to squeegee the burning kero into the sink using two large steel rulers that were on the blackboard shelf. He pushed the kero back, corralled between the rulers, and forced it over the rim of the sink. This required some suffering on his part because those rulers were excellent conductors of heat, but he'd beaten the fire at last. Most of the kero was in the sink, the little left on the bench was burning out. The burning cloth was now a smouldering, greasy black twist on the scorched wooden floor. That just left the flame-thrower gas tap. Picking up a piece of steel tube from under the bench, he advanced on the outlet, reached out and tapped it with the pipe. The valve popped out and shut off the gas.

There were some moments of silence as we all surveyed the now-quiescent scene. Then a burst of applause and sarcastic cheering. "All right, settle down, you blokes", said the teacher and proceeded to use some unburnt cloths to mop up the mess he'd made.


I always laugh at the memory of that episode but I knew from the moment it happened that it was nearly a catastrophe. I'm ever more amazed as the years pass at how ill-judged he was and how ill-equipped that place was. The thing that beats me most is how a man past thirty could be so foolish as to waste the contents of the fire extinguisher in the one room in the school where it was most likely to be needed. I have wondered if he had to tell the headmaster that he'd used up the CO2 in a dopey experiment. It's occurred to me that he may have said that he used it up in fighting the fire. Maybe he never said a word and just left the empty extinguisher for someone else to find out about the hard way. None of the students would have gone to talk about it with the headmaster. They were different days. There were lines you didn't cross. What happened at school stayed at school. What happened with a teacher might be discussed with other students but no-one would have crawled to the boss and informed about it. Today he'd be up to his neck in that burning kerosene.