Thursday photos

Yes, yes, yes - there is stuff happening in the country today, but I couldn't give a rat's arse. This is just business as usual in our family - one relative was a player in three previous historical political assassinations, and compared to the Big One, this is a bit passe. I'm over it. Here is much more interesting stuff - diggers in the mist.

Which one do you prefer?

Although it was reasonably frosty out there this morning, this madman was riding in a sleeveless top - no arm warmers and no leg warmers. Some people just don't appear to feel the cold.

Does cropping it to remove all the cars improve the photo? I like how he's heading for that misty gateway in the distance...

Being a shared pathway, there is usually a bit of dodging that has to be done to get around the slower movers. The fun really begins when a fast moving bike wants to overtake a slow moving bike, and the slow moving bike is trying to overtake some pedestrians. I am sure I am going to witness a really good pile up one day.

Heading home in the dark, following a proto-ninja. He's not quite entirely dressed in black from head to foot, but he's getting there.

Wednesday photos

Rain, rain, rain and more bloody rain. It rained so hard on the way home, I didn't dare take a single photo in case the camera drowned. The wet isn't deterring many cyclists - I wouldn't say the bridge was crowded this morning, but there were quite a few about - like the 3 in this photo.

There were even a few heading out of town.

This is my camera getting wetter and foggier as the journey went on.

The rain didn't deter the hardcore joggers either.

The cold and rain does take a bit of a toll on your skin though. I've resorted to using a facial scrub when I get home to remove the film of oil that builds up from all the oily water flicking off the road. My face felt like a Louisiana pelican tonight. The hands cop it from the cold - let's just say there is a bottle of hand cream in the bath room that is slowly emptying by mysterious means.

Tuesday photos

This week appears to be all about rain - will it or won't it? If I wear my spray jacket, it doesn't rain - and I sweat instead, getting just as wet inside it. If I take it off, it rains. Question is, what is preferable - warm sweat or cold rain? At least the clouds are keeping the minimum temp up. It was 8 degrees last week, it's more like 13 this week.

It's been bleak and grey and cloudy these last few days. Not a breath of wind though, which is nice. Notice the lack of lights in these photos? All the sensible people are still in bed.

One unforeseen hazard though has been wet newspapers that have blown around the place. I was going up a hill with a corner on it pretty quick tonight, and as I went around the corner, I ran over a sheet of soggy newspaper. I was laying down the power to keep the speed up, and when I hit the newspaper, the back wheel lost all traction. As it was dark and murky, the grey newspaper didn't stand out against the grey concrete, so I didn't spot it until the front wheel was upon it.

Apart from spinning my legs at about 300rpm, the rear also started going sideways. There was something about going uphill and the way my momentum was travelling that kept me upright - if I had been going downhill, I reckon I would have been a goner. I'd be scrubbing the last bits of gravel and sand out of my ripped up skin about now.

The best thing about the rain is that it sweeps away 90% of the pedestrians. I can race around the Bay with little fear of crashing into an idiot dog walker or pram pusher.

Monday photos

I did my usual "poke the camera in that direction" this morning and got this photo. I didn't notice the planes at the time, but there are two in this photo. You need to click on it to enlarge it and see the more distant one. I was actually interested in the cloud formations. It appeared to be raining in the distance, yet it was clear overhead where I was.

Is the cycleway now permanently open, or is the council going to annoy us every few days by changing their mind and closing it, opening it, closing it etc etc. I thought that the wet weather this morning had discouraged most cyclists, until I got through Pyrmont and spotted this two.

And then about 5 seconds later, this mob turned up....followed by even more on two wheels. You'll note that a bunch of us, including me, are on the wrong side of the concrete barrier. That's because some idiot somewhere has not figured out that there are cyclists that bear right here and ride around the back of Darling Harbour. The only sensible way to do that is to start from where I am standing - not over there on the other side of the concrete. Why are frigging cycle paths designed by people who have never ridden a bicycle?

Boom and bust in the scooter market

I just noticed that the big new scooter shop on Victoria Rd in Drummoyne is now for lease.

Either they moved on to bigger and better premises..... or they've moved on to going out of business.

Scooter shops popped up like weeds after rain when fuel prices went up last year. I guess there was a limit to how many people wanted to trade in the Commodore with climate control, cruise control, leather seats, a good sound system and so on for bugs in the face and rain trickling down your neck.

Anthony Green analyses the Penrith by-election

Gruesome results for Labor.

Brrrr

It's been a very crispy 8 degrees every morning this week when I've headed out the door. The body has finally adjusted to the drop in temperature - I've shed the top layer and am now comfortable with 2 instead of 3. That means I'm a bit chilly for the first few minutes of the ride, but I am not arriving at work swimming in a shower proof jacket full of sweat.

All the other cyclists who went into hibernation when the mercury first fell have emerged from the woodwork. They've been through their hardening up process and are now mentally prepared for the cold winter months. There were swarms of them about this week.

The Pyrmont bike route appears to be almost ready for Clover Moore to come along and cut a ribbon. Just to annoy everyone on two wheels, the route was opened up on Tuesday and then closed again the following day. However, everyone that used it on Tuesday then expected to be able to use if after that, so they rode into it at the top end, and then found it blocked at the bottom end. I reckon Clover doesn't want anyone using it until she has seen her photo inserted into a dozen press releases about it.

I think the next photo is Tuesday, showing the route largely open.

A cyclist with his winter warmers on - leg and arm warmers. Or is it a her?

Now to get all arty - I like the way the three pointy bits lined up here - the top of the staunchion holding up the tram overhead wiring - the pointy hat on the old building, and then the "astronaut escape tower" on the far building.

I bet this guy feels like a dick now

First new report:

A neighbour, David Lynch, said police should have called off the chase once they entered an area where scores of children were walking home.

Second news report:

A MAN has admitted he tried to kill two schoolgirls with the car he was driving so police would stop pursuing him after a violent rampage through western Sydney, a court was told.

Charlie McGee, 24, has been charged with four counts of attempted murder and 23 other offences after a series of crimes across five suburbs and eight locations over an hour on Wednesday afternoon. Ten people were assaulted or threatened, police said.

The attack began with the alleged bashing of a man with a hammer at Lalor Park at 2pm and ended after the pursuit in Doonside in which Mr McGee allegedly ran into the two girls aged 14 and seven.

Police documents tendered to Blacktown Local Court yesterday said he admitted he did so deliberately, aiming to kill the girls so the chase would be called off.

The pursuit continued and Mr Gee was arrested a short time later. The girls suffered only minor injuries.

I think this is one of those cases where the cops actually have the facts, and the neighbour didn't. Knowing that this nutter was running amok trying to kill and maim people, they would have been mad to stop and let him go. That they arrested him without shooting him is a miracle - and a sign of great restraint being shown.

Wednesday photos - continued

Righto, in the last post I said that this photo could benefit from a bit of cropping. I think I was right.

The city at sunset. This looks smashing full size.

Yes, yes, yes - I have to publish photos of other cyclists. Especially ones in combat pants with leg warmers - a very interesting look.

I tried and tried to get an artfully framed shot of the underside of the ANZAC bridge. This is the best I could do. I have ridden past photography classes at this spot a few times - at least that's what I assume when I see a dozen or so artistic types dressed in black from head to foot lugging very large and expensive cameras on tripods up the bike ramp. The berets usually give them away. I find the bridge really hard to shoot - unlike the Harbour Bridge, a good vantage point is hard to find. What I was looking for here was the far support to be framed by the closer support. I'll have to keep trying. All the crappy trucks under the bridge don't help - you don't find that under the Harbour Bridge.

More cyclists. First there were two....

...then I put the camera away and along came number 3. So I took the camera out and took another snap, then put it away again.

And then along came number 4, and then number 5. I couldn't be bothered photographing them, although in hindsight, it would have made a good series.

Wednesday photos

Gosh, is it Wednesday already? I left a bit earlier this morning for several reasons. The first is that I got up earlier than usual - Junior screwed up the setting of his alarm clock, and it woke me up at about 0545. Didn't wake him up though. As usual. Second was that I wanted to get down to the water before the sun came up - in order to photograph it as it came up. Third is that I wanted to feel no guilt whatsoever about stopping and taking photos. Normally, I just belt along and point the camera in the general direction of what I want to photograph and hope for the best. This morning, I wanted to try out some of Cav's tips. As Cav has noted previously, I am ugly, so there will be no photos of me to spoil your viewing pleasure.

Cav has lots of good advice about framing the shot, and the rule of thirds. I have tried to apply them here - judge for yourself what works and what doesn't. I started where my ride meets the water, took a photo, rode a few hundred metres, took another and then did repeat, repeat, repeat until my ride left the water.

Photo 1 - didn't quite get the rule of thirds correct - but the shot is framed at least by the land on the left. Sun is just about to come up.

Photo two - boring. Rule of thirds has been ignored, shot is not framed. The water was nice though - it was totally flat in places, with just the slightest ruffling here and there.

Photo 3 - still haven't got the hand of it. At this point, Cav will be saying, "You're ugly and stupid. Why am I wasting my time trying to edumacate you?"

Photo 4 - improving slowly. The sand bar helps to add interest to the shot.

Photo 5 - almost got the thirds bit right - not quite balanced 2/3 sky and 1/3 water, but close. Again, the land to the left frames the shot. It helps that the water is smoother and the sky has a bit more colour as the sun starts to peek above the horizon.

Almost, but stuffed it with a lack of framing. Notice that the sun is not in the middle - I have remembered to offset it to add some interest. Colour is getting better all the time. Yes, the photo is tilted - I think I was riding when I took this.

This should be better, but I'm not sure it grabs me. It's framed, the sun is offset and the thirds are about right. However, the bit doing the framing is boring.

Now we have some trees for framing, and a rower. I reckon this photo would be much better with a bit of cropping.

More of the same rower. The dark blob on the far right is the rowing boatshed. He's heading for home.

All these were snapped with my very battered and chipped Canon Ixus, which cost me about $200. Canon release a new generation of Ixus every 12 months or so. They start out close to $400, but when they reach the end of their life, and the next model is about due, they fall to below $200. Best time to buy one is when the new model is on the shelves and retailers are dumping the old stock.

All these photos were shot at high resolution, and came out at about 2mb each. I used a photo application to reduce their quality to 50%, and that shrunk them to under 200kb. That's because most of the colours in these photos are the same - they compress really well.

Thanks for the tips Cav - they've been a big help.

Severe head tilt, with twist

Check out the photo of the reporter - that must be painful.

The Phantom Shitter

If poo is not your thing, stop right now and go read something else. It's all downhill from here. I mean it.

We have someone at work that I have decided to dub "The Phantom Shitter". This is not a new term - I believe Stephen Coonts described such a character in either "Flight of the Intruder" or the follow up book (five books later) "The Intruders". His was a tale of a sailor who haunted an aircraft carrier, crapping in odd places and never getting caught.

Ours is not like that - he craps in the same place every day, but he's never been caught.

His problem is not so much his crap, as the amount of toilet paper he uses to go with it.

You see, we have only one dunny in our change rooms, and almost every day, the Phantom Shitter has completely jammed it with paper. There are two toilet rolls hanging on the wall, and he will use almost an entire roll every time. Once, he used almost two.

I've gone into the toilet and found great wads of paper drifting across the floor. He's pulled off strip after strip about 12 sheets long, scrunched them a little bit and then just dumped them on the floor. Oh, and he'd dumped an entire roll's worth in the toilet too.

As you can imagine, most flush toilets are incapable of handling that much paper, which means every day, once the Phantom Shitter has used the toilet, no one else can until a cleaner comes along and unclogs the toilet.

No wonder our cleaner always has such a hangdog look on his face. He comes to work knowing that come hell or high water, he has to undo the work of the Phantom Shitter.

I learned yesterday that the Phantom Shitter can be sneaky. Most of the time, it is obvious he has done his work - the bowl is full of water almost up to the rim. A clearly blocked toilet. However, I have been caught a few times where the water level has been low, but I have not noticed the great wad of paper poking out of the pipe at the bottom, indicating a blockage. It's not nice hitting the flushing button and watching in alarm as water starts heading up with a view of pouring onto your shoes.

Yesterday was the last straw. One thing about the timetable of the Phantom Shitter is that he always craps after 9am, so before that, you have a clear toilet.

But Monday was a public holiday, and the toilets were not cleaned. So my sure-fire rule about avoiding the Phantom Shitter was stuffed.

I thought I was safe, so I used that toilet.

And boy, did I use it.

Many years ago, whilst waiting for a tooth to be drilled, I read an article in the waiting room about enemas. I think they were all the rage because Lady Di liked to have them. It described the cleansing properties of an enema, and how for meat eaters, it removes the build up of fermented goop that clogs up your intestines blah blah blah. I particularly remember it describing how sheets of that clogged goop would peel off your guts and be flushed out by the enema, and how awful that goop could be. The enema marketing people really went to town on that article, extolling the cleansing and cancer avoiding properties of a gut-flush. In order to make it sound like a good idea, they really played up the solid, fermented poo in your guts angle.

I'm almost gagging thinking about it.

Anyway, yesterday morning was like having an enema without having an enema. Goodness knows what triggered it, but yesterday was the poo to end all poos. Not as in size, but in smell. It was just awful, and I was out of there quickly.

However, when I hit the button, I suddenly discovered that the Phantom Shitter had done his business the day before - on the public holiday - and the toilet cleaning timetable had gone out the window. That poo was going nowhere, except round and round a large bowl of water.

I had to bail - no sane person with nostrils could bear to hang around in that small, unventilated room.

I felt sorry for those that would follow me - it was truly awful.

However, I also had this sneaky little frisson of pleasure. Because I knew that later that morning, the Phantom Shitter would turn up, and he'd be presented with my ghastly floating turds, and that would be sweet (or smelly) revenge. Those turds remained because of his actions. He'd have to live with the consequences.

I hope he suffered.

Rolls Royce meets BMW in a nasty way

Saw the aftermath of a rather nasty prang this afternoon. In this photo, from right to left, we have a Police car, and ambulance, a 4WD that appeared to just be parked there, a small car that looked slightly dinged and then an old model Rolls Royce and a BMW 325 which have been totalled.

Sorry about the blurred photo - I cycled up to get a closer look, and the blasted camera battery went flat. Trust me when I say that the front ends of these two cars were well and truly mangled - wheels pointing in strange directions and all that.

This is the view from the rear - just as the battery went flat. My assumption is that the BMW was coming out of the side street and failed to give way to the Roller, which was coming down the hill and creamed the BMW.

There was a red P plate on the road, and I think it was from the BMW. I had to ride through a road full of broken glass and bits of plastic and stuff to get these shots - what a mess. Didn't see anyone banged up though - either they had already been carted off to hospital, or the crash was bad for the cars but not for the drivers.

Meandering fool

There is just one problem with bike lanes that run along the edge of roads - all that separates the cars from the bikes is a strip of white paint a few inches wide. The painted line provides a rather unrealistic expectation that cyclists will be safe because cars will be over there and we will be over here.

Unfortunately, there are some drivers that have trouble keeping their car under control. I don't know if this bloke/Sheila is drunk, tired or just fiddling with his Blackberry, but he/she went back and forth across the white line several times after passing me - the video only picked him/her doing it once. Thankfully, they only went across the line by a small distance - I've seen some knuckleheads drift or swerve right across the bike lane, which would have been rather nasty if the lane had been occupied by a bike at the same time.

If you can't control your flipping car, take the bus.

AB 02 CD - knobhead of the day

Once again, a numb nut goes the wrong way down the road - around an island - because I am costing them 2 or 3 seconds before they get to the next Stop sign. Being a positive kind of guy, I can take away some good things from this particular nerkle.

First, better that they go around me rather than over me.

Second, the island in the middle of the road is going to rip the sump off one of these idiots someday soon. That will make me laugh. A lot.

Greetings, driver of AB 02 CD - you are a fucking idiot.

Tuesday photos

Today, I tried to follow the principles espoused by Cav regarding photography - particularly the rule of thirds. As I was riding at just under 30km/h when I took these, and I took them blind by poking the camera in the general direction of what I wanted to photograph, I think I got it halfway right.

The city in the mist.

I really needed to be about 20 feet back when I took this next photo - it would have framed the smoke stacks better with the sun behind them. However, that would have left me halfway up an overbridge, and that is no place to stop a bike.

And finally, a photo of another cyclist - haven't taken one of these for a while. This guy was plodding along happily in his jeans and trainers, not in a hurry at all. I just can't relax and take it easy like that - I don lycra, I have to move.

Now for something less serious

Rocket car powered by Coke Zero and mentos - check it out.

The rest of the blog posts over there are worth a read too.

The experts can't explain a decline in the murder rate

The Director of the Bureau of Crime Research and Stuff was in the paper again this week pointing out that the murder rate has been dropping - and no one can explain why.

The big puzzle in NSW is the murder rate. It has almost halved since 1990 and no one knows why. The trend started well before the introduction of tougher gun laws, so that isn't the cause. Is it a case of the same number of people being attacked but fewer of them dying of their wounds, or are NSW citizens simply less likely these days to go out and kill one another? If so, why?

The answer may lie in two papers that his own agency has published over the last 20 years - one in 1994 on trends in homicide between 1968 and 1992, and a second crime brief covering 2003 to 2008. They're only 8 pages each, so they're an easy read. Some of it is obvious, but it needs stating:

men are often killed as a result of confrontational violence. This mainly involves men who are highly marginal in an economic and social sense. They display high risk-taking behaviour regarding their own, and others lives during disputes. Often conflict, or saving face, escalates to physical violence, and sometimes this results in a fatality. They may also murder in the course of committing another crime.

I think there is one thing worth looking into, and that is the age of murderers:

Suspects in our sample were disproportionately young, over half (67.1%) being aged between 15 and 34 years.

The reason I think we should consider age as a factor is that relationships are a big factor:

In most cases of homicide (40.6%), the suspect and victim were members of the same family. In 38.3 per cent of homicides, the suspect was a friend or acquaintance of the victim. Only 16.6 per cent of homicides involved a suspect who was a stranger.

The studies have both said that firearms are not really a factor - people generally like stabbing or bludgeoning each other to death:

(47.4%) were mainly due to bashing, strangling and other less common methods, such as smothering or drowning, and 23% due to stabbing.

And the use of knives is increasing:

It seems more likely that offenders are increasingly using knives, where before they may have used their fists and feet to bash the victim. This latter method decreased significantly over the period, and accounts for a large proportion of incidents not involving shooting or stabbing.

Here is the age factor again:

There has been a significant reduction in the rate of suspects aged 30-44 years.

Let's have a look at the second report, covering 2003 to 2008 - however, it only covers domestic homicides, not the whole range:

Stabbing was the most common act causing death, with knives used in over one-third of domestic homicides. The use of knives increased over the period, while the use of firearms decreased. Over three-quarters of offenders were male, and one-third of offenders may have had a history of mental illness and/or been suffering from mental illness at the time of the homicide. Twenty-six per cent of offenders were persons of interest in a violence-related incident in the 12 months prior to the homicide, and 52 per cent in the five years prior.

How is domestic violence a factor?

Each year since 1998, there have been between 17,800 and 27,500 incidents of domestic violence-related assault recorded by the NSW Police Force. Each year, for every victim of domestic homicide, there are more than 620 recorded incidents of domestic violencerelated assault.

I thought I'd toss this in - just in case Karl Mayerhofer comes back:

Approximately 13 per cent of offenders were recorded as being Aboriginal (26 of 207). As with the number of domestic homicide victims who were Aboriginal, this is disproportionate to the population of Aboriginal people in NSW (approximately 2%). At the national level in 2006/07, in relation to homicide more broadly, Indigenous males were found to be seven times as likely to be offenders as were non-Indigenous males, while Indigenous females offended at nearly 14 times the rate of non-Indigenous females (Dearden & Jones 2008).

How about mental health?

approximately 35% may have had a history of mental illness and/or been suffering from mental illness at the time of the homicide. The most common reference was to schizophrenia, followed by depression.

So what does all this tell us, and what can we conclude from it?

People are murdered because angry young people, who are possibly drunk, stab or bash their partner to death. However, fewer people are being murdered each year, so what is driving that?

You may notice that I have quite a few overseas police and ambo blogs on my sidebar. There have been a few instances where blogging coppers and ambos have opined that we have a lower murder rate due to better medical care. If you were sliced open 30 years ago, you probably would have died. Now, you walk out of hospital a week later with 60 stitches in you. Same with gunshot wounds. Some have even conjectured that our societies are more violent than ever, but the consequences are mitigated by ever improving emergency medical care.

That could be the case.

But there are a few other factors to consider.

I mentioned age at the start because the older you get, the less likely you are to kill someone. You mellow with age.

We also know that many homicides are domestics - husbands killing their wives. My suspicion is that because of relaxed sexual mores, people are less likely to go postal when their partner has an affair, and kill them. They just get divorced. People don't get as outraged anymore when they are cuckolded.

The second is that people are shacking up at a later age - an age when they are more mellow. If we consider that a certain amount of homicide must be driven by some sort of sexual anger - males feeling that they have been dishonoured etc - then anything that reduces the "sexual temperature" will reduce the rage that leads to murder.

I also think that the use of knives must be a factor. Stabbing someone is a bloody, messy business - much messier than beating them to death. I am going out on a long bough here, but I reckon that a lot of stabbings end up short of murder because the stabber chickens out after sticking the blade in once. It takes a special type of person to go on stabbing after they feel the knife go in the first time, and the blood come out. We did a bit of bayonet training when I was a chocko, and we had to be desensitized to sticking a bayonet into the guts of another person. It actually takes quite a bit of training to get a normal human being used to the idea of sticking another human. I have enough trouble slitting the throats of sheep - a person would be another ball game entirely.

A firearm on the other hand can be pretty terminal quite quickly - one blast from a shotgun, and it is all over. However, with a knife, unless you are a good stabber, it's likely you'll need to poke more than one hole in your victim before they keel over - and I reckon a lot of people would give up at one, leaving a wound that can be sewn up in emergency. It would be worth looking at the number of women being locked up for GBH with a knife - a lot might have intended to kill their hubby, but couldn't go through with it after that first stab.

Same goes for beating someone. With a gun, it's pretty easy to tell when someone is dead - or to make them dead. With a beating, it's hard to draw a line between "thumping a lesson into the woman" and "oh dear, that was one blow too many". A man in a drunken rage can cross that line and beat a woman to death because it's nasty, but not bloody like a knife attack. Sticking a knife in can result in instant remorse; whereas a punch to the head does not have the same impact.

The final factor must have something to do with the greater emphasis on dealing with domestic violence. The easiest way to stop a mad husband from beating his wife to death is to remove the wife (or husband) from the home. The skyrocketing rate of divorce over the last 30 years might have helped reduce domestic homicide - women just don't hang around to get beaten up. The fact that the Family Court also financially rapes men in order to set ex-wives up with a semblance of financial security allows wives to leave without fear of living on the breadline.

I'll be interested to see where the Law of Unintended Consequences takes us with this. There has been a lot of emphasis on reducing knife crime and carrying of knives of late - I wonder if the result will be fewer non-fatal stabbings but more fatal bashings?

Stay tuned........

Read this and weep

From Maralyn Parker's education blog in the Tele (which I now link to) - this is a comment from someone was has worked in the Education Dept for 15 years:

The whole top bureaucracy of the education department has been politically appointed and controlled. There are many many consultants etc working in the Assistant Directors Generals office all with links to the labor party and it filters down from there. I have worked for the Education Department for 15 years and have always been proud in the work I do and difference I make in educating our kids and no I am not a teacher. I ahev alwasy said once we loose site why we are here which is for the students we may as well shut up shop and I am afraid we have reached that point. I know of many long serving staff who have just had enough and are retiring or going on leave which I am doing now. I will not go back and i know of over 10 staff in the same boat that have over 200 years combined experince. The first thing that should happen is Tafe and Schools seperated, Regions obolished and focus put back on kids

• Directors Generals?
• I ahev alwasy said once we loose site
• 200 years combined experince
• Tafe and Schools seperated
• Regions obolished
• focus put back on kids (no full stop at the end)

Oh dear God.........

By the way, Maralyn's blog is always worth a read, and if you like a good fight, there is always one to be had in the comments.

Saturday photos

Posting this week has been quiet due to the bike going tits-up. The cable on the right should be connected to the nipply thing on the left. Without it, I can't change between the big and small cogs on the front. I could still ride, but lacked the wherewithal to reach top speed - that combined with a cold has reduced me to taking the bus this week. And the bus is not good for the brain.

I saw the most un-safety Nazi like thing when I was getting the bike fixed. A family had walked home, and instead of waiting for Dad to unlock the front gate, a girl of about six climbed onto the neighbours fence, then up some wooden slats and onto a fat brick fence post, and from there onto the top of their front wall - a wall about six feet high. From there, she grabbed a tree branch and swung into their front yard, and unlocked the gate from the inside. She went up that wall pretty quickly - she was obviously well practiced.

I'm sure there are battalions of OH&S types out there that would just love to know where this family lives so that they can sue childhood services onto the parents. Which is why this photo is blurry and in black and white.

How's that hope and change working out?

BP, the oil spill, and Obama refusing foreign assistance to clean it up twice as fast.

Here

and here.

Thanks to Samizdata.

Separately, a Dutch news site De Standaard also reported Belgian and Dutch dredgers have technology in-house to fight the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, but the Act Jones forbids them to work in the U.S.

A Belgian group--DEME-- contends it can clean up the oil in three to four months with specialty vessel and equipment, rather than an estimated nine months if done only by the U.S. The article noted there are no more than 5 or 6 of those ships in the world and the top specialist players are the two Belgian companies- DEME and De Nul - and their Dutch competitors.

Lame statement of the week

Cut to Dr. Theonia Boyd’s letter to the media: “My husband and I did not experience drinking at group parties in high school... therefore we had no red flag precedents to rely upon.”

From here.

What a pair of wierdos. With no mates. Imagine - not going to a drinking party at high school!!

And in case you are wondering, I was a complete swot at school. Who also happened to party on when appropriate - which was pretty much any time we could sneak away to a party.

Two mutually incompatible ideas

I saw a sticker on a car this week that said, "Close the Gap - demand equality in Aboriginal health" (or something close to that).

During the same week, I read an article in the Spectator (not available on line) regarding Aboriginal health. I am going from memory here, but it said that Aboriginals paid less attention to their health because they believe in curses and witch craft - it you get sick, it's because you've been cursed (or words to that effect). Why bother with washing your hands when the cause of illness is not germs, but sorcery?

I was a bit taken aback by that, and do not have the knowledge to say whether that is so or not. However, let's assume for the moment that it is true in some areas (Karl Mayerhofer will be along shortly to say that it is rubbish - but until that time, let's just go with the flow)*.

I'll add another bit to the mix. The Aus had a story on Aboriginal education this week (can't find that either) which mentioned a school somewhere, and the teacher had to wear a microphone connected to an amp and speakers because quite a few Aboriginal students were quite deaf as a result of ear infections, and she needed to boost the volume to get through to them. (Don't ask me for a link - I read the paper in a cafe at breakfast and searching for the articles on line afterwards is a pain, especially when newspapers fail to index their sites properly).

And of course we know where poor education outcomes and illiteracy lead to - poverty, welfare, dependency, alcoholism, drug abuse, crime and blah blah blah.

So you could say that the root of many of the problems in Aboriginal communities these days results from poor infant and childhood hygiene.

But if the story on sorcery is correct, those poor hygiene practices are not the result of poverty, lack of water etc etc - but cultural beliefs and practices. My Mum grew up in a hessian shack with a dirt floor in the middle of the wheat belt - a hot, dusty place at the best of times, with water having to be fetched from a bore tank. Somehow, her generation grew up in the 1920s without suffering the agonies of ear and eye infections - and they did so because her Mum was manic about washing faces and hands. With hot water and soap - water that had to be boiled in a kettle over a wood fire, water that didn't come out of a tap and soap that was hideously expensive to a family struggling during the Depression.

If cultural practices are the problem, then throwing a huge increase in the health budget at the problem is not going to solve it. Sending expensive ear and eye specialists to the outback to treat serious and nasty and repetitive infections is not tackling the underlying issue - a simple failure to wash properly and thoroughly.

Could it be that a whole raft of problems could be alleviated by simply getting Aboriginal parents to wash their kids properly?

But wait for it - that would mean attacking and destroying a facet of Aboriginal culture - the belief in sorcery and things like the kadaitcha man.

So on the one hand, we have the Squishy Social Justice People clamoring for government to "close the gap" on Aboriginal health, but on the other hand, it would appear that in order to do that, they need to attack and dismember some traditional Aboriginal beliefs and customs.

The result? The Squishy People refuse to believe that washing (or lack of it) could be the issue. The real issue is that racist white people are not sending enough medical staff to the outback to deal with Aboriginal health issues - so more money and more resources are required.

Instead of a fruitless, multi-billion dollar medical effort, how about we just send a few pallet loads of face cloths and soap?

* by the way, is this you Karl? "As the editor of a guitar magazine that caters to fans of instrumental guitar"

"Close personal friend"

Saw a bit of KRudd on TV last night. Normally, I try to avoid these things. He was talking about The One canning his trip down here.

KRudd said, in part, that Obama is a "close personal friend".

What a load of crap.

He's met the guy - what - once or twice? Had dinner and a few drinks? And he's a close personal friend?

Give me a break!

Once upon a time in Afghanistan

Photos from Afghanistan in the 1950s - well worth a look. Amazing to think how far the country has fallen in our lifetime.

Thanks to the Devil's Kitchen - err, Knife.

Bias at the ABC? Nothing to see, move along now.

From tonight's TV guide:

ART FROM THE ARCTIC

A group of 20 artists, scientists and educators travel to the remote and beautiful Arctic island of Spitzbergen to exchange ideas and plot ways of communicating to the wider world, concerns about the environment and climate change.

The diverse gathering on this Cape Farewell expedition include highly respected names in the fields of writing, video, sculpture, choreography, photography and music and their work there is a stunning statement on the anxieties about global warming.

This was covered by James Dellingpole in the Spectator earlier this month. For some reason, it is only available in Google cache.

The homeless are on the increase - what a surprise

Back in July last year, I dug into a report on the homeless and found a few interesting things. This is again of interest as it is now reported that the number of homeless is on the rise.

I had a look at the homeless situation last year because the government announced plans to reduce our 100,000 homeless by 20% by 2013. That was going to be done by building a few suburbs worth of social housing.

Here are the stats that breakdown the homeless categories (from last year)

• Boarding houses - 7626 persons, 28% of total
• SAAP accommodation - 5110 persons, 19%
• Friends and relatives - 10,923 persons, 40%
• Sleeping rough - 3715 persons, 13%

Total of 27,374 in NSW, or 104,676 across Australia.

As a quick perusal of any suburb after dark, or even during daylight hours, would show, the number of rough sleepers is surprisingly low. 87% of the "homeless" actually have a roof over their head. It's just that a group of bureaucrats (or members of the homeless-industrial complex) have decided to define some categories of people that sleep in a warm, weatherproof building with hot and cold water etc as "homeless".

How much is the government spending on social housing?

Since the White Paper, the government has announced a further $6.6 billion to be spent on the construction of 20 000 homes for public housing, the largest expansion of public housing for many years.

That's $330,000 per unit.

Here's my take on the whole matter:

1. Given the disastrous blowout in costs experienced with the BER and Aboriginal housing, it's a reasonable bet that this program is also costing much more than it should. The result will be that either more money is thrown at it, or less units get built. Fewer units would mean a smaller decrease in the number of homeless.
2. If I was crashing with my brother (as I did at one point in my 20's, making me technically homeless), and I saw some nice new houses being built down the road, I'd have every incentive to declare myself as homeless in order to get myself off my brother's couch and into a nice new home. If you essentially make homelessness an attractive option, more people will become homeless to gather the benefits.

This statement from the Salvos took me by surprise:

"One of the biggest things is still the drought that is causing people to be in really difficult circumstances and to be losing their homes," she said.

Hmm, drought. The impact of the drought would presumably be in rural areas - not Sydney. Many rural towns have been losing people in droves for the last few decades. I visited one such town not long ago and noticed that you could buy a 2 bedroom brick house for under $20,000 - because the population had fallen from 5,000 to under 4,000. Why on earth would the government want to spend $330,000 building new houses in Sydney to accommodate rural people when it could buy existing houses in rural areas for $20,000? Heck, you can buy a 4 bedroom demountable in Wagga for about $50,000 if you want something new and shiny.

Which makes me wonder - if the average cost if $330,000, and we know we can get places cheap in the country - what are these units costing to build in Sydney? $600,000?

That line from Kev from before the last election needs to be reprised:

"Hi, I'm Kevin, and I'm from Queensland, and I'm here to spend all your money".

Thursday photos

Film crews love using the old Glebe Island Bridge for shoots, especially cop shows. It was a miserable day for a shoot yesterday - and probably a miserable day for proper cops as well.

Cold and sweaty

I've been up before 0600 for the last few weeks, which is a bit early for my liking at this time of the year. I like to be on the road early in summer, but I also prefer riding with a bit of daylight. It's just too easy to get run over on a bike at night, regardless of how much you spend on gigawatt lights and reflective gear. In the end, it all comes down to the inattentive nut behind the wheel of a car.

I had one of those today - on the Roundabout of Death no less. My video batteries had gone flat, so I missed filming him tearing up to the roundabout, then realising he had to give way, and then the slamming on of the brakes, and him ending up parked halfway through the roundabout with a sheepish and idiotic grin on his face. Bloody Mercedes drivers.

Anyway, to Cold and Sweaty.

As usual, I goofed around the house whilst I waited for a bit of daylight. A bowl of Weeties. A bit of bag packing. The reading of a few blogs. And then a few more blogs. Some checking of the weather forecast. Yuk - 8 degrees. Another three layer day.

Even at 8 degrees, it is not really cold enough for 3 layers. After 5 minutes of easy riding on the flat, I'm starting to sweat. However, it's also too cold for 2 layers. I can unzip a bit here and there, but I can't take the top layer off as I'll start to freeze. Better to be too hot than too cold.

If I was going for a long ride - say 2-4 hours - I'd reach a point where I'd be getting really hot, and then the top layer would come off regardless. But with a 45 minute commute, there's no point in stopping and shedding. You just push on, knowing that hot shower is not far away.

By the time I got to work, sweat had actually pooled in the sleeves of my jacket. When I took it off, I heard the splosh of a good sized puddle impacting on the floor.

But at the other end of my body, my feet were frozen. Hence the hot shower.

I could spend a small fortune on cycling kit of different weights and thicknesses and so on in order to get around these problems, but I'm not going to. I'm just going to put up with it. Mainly because I can't fit much more cycling kit in the wardrobe!

Wednesday photos - and that must suck

First, the nice bits. Sunrise over the Harbour Bridge. Yada yada yada. Ain't it lovely.

Sunset over The Bay. More gushy mush.

Then we reach the "this must suck" moment. As I climb that approach to the ANZAC Bridge, I noticed that the traffic had come to a standstill and up ahead, there were the flashing lights of a tow truck.

Turns out it was a larger than usual tow - a broken down bus. I guess the passengers got out and walked over the bridge.

Then we have this week's "shit for brains" award. It's almost dark, and here we have a bloke in dark clothing on a motorised skateboard in peak hour traffic. No lights. No reflectors. Hoodie covering head, restricting vision in all directions. This nutter probably had his iPod plugged in as well, blocking all those useful traffic sounds like cars coming up behind you.

Sorry, it was really gloomy and this ninja was very hard to photograph. I imagine he was also blending into the road really well as far as all the car drivers were concerned too. I reckon he's lucky to have made it home without having been blended into the road by a passing truck.

You know you've reached a certain point in your life...

...when you see two lesbians going for it in a supermarket car park, and you really don't find the scene attractive at all.

Then again, both were ugly, and had their clothes on.

I worry this is a sign that I am growing old.