It's a conspiracy, I tell you

Men in utes are out to get me. Particularly those displaying P plates. Almost got taken out by two today.

Then again, young idiot males are liable to crash into just about anyone or anything, so maybe they aren't out to get me.

Note - almost every ute that I have had a close call with has been a Holden. Just the one Ford. Fords are obviously driven by boring old people who can't find second gear.

Dams and floods

The Shadowlands starts a debate on how useful dams might have been in Queensland.

As Gavin notes, Peter Garrett knocked back a Queensland dam because it might have impacted on the habitat of some endangered frogs and things.

I'm wondering this - how would the impact of the dam compare to the impact of a fucking enormous flood? Do those habitats still exist, or are they now 30 feet under water? What sort of condition will those habitats be in when the waters subside, and will those endangered species ever come back? What if they've all been wiped out by the flood? Can we then start pouring concrete for a new dam?

Of course Garrett and the Federal environmental pubes would never consider such an outcome, as they couldn't conceive of it ever raining again in Australia thanks to climate change.

Idiots.

Finland - a snippet about its education system

Finland generally places around the top in various league tables of international educational performance. That podcast that I listened to the other day mentioned that a Finnish student will learn about an extra year's worth of stuff compared to an Australian student, even though they go to school for the same amount of time. They just better at this learning stuff.

Here is something worth knowing though - "tracking" students into academic sheep and vocational goats:

Expansion of education and changes in the structure of schooling — for instance, a shift toward later tracking — appear to have contributed to increases in intergenerational mobility in Sweden and Finland. On the other hand, in the United States and United Kingdom mobility seems to have stagnated and possibly decreased in recent decades despite educational advance.

and

It’s worth noting that both Sweden and Finland have (Finland more rigidly than Sweden) have education divided into those academic and vocational streams from 15 onwards. As we know very well, the UK abandoned this (and sure, perhaps 11 was too young to be making the distinction) and the US hasn’t really ever had it.

Here's where I start wondering.... when Finland is compared to other countries, are we comparing the entire Finnish education system (academic and vocational), or are we just looking at the academic side of things?

It would be easy for Finland to top the scores if they'd already screened out all the non-academic plumbers and gasfitters and were only putting the academic-minded kids through the Maths and English exams that make up these international tables.

Just a thought....

Tuesday photos

I eyed this yesterday and couldn't help myself - eye had to go back and get a photo - "Artificial Eye Specialist". Who knew such professions existed?

This is a newish bike shop/cafe in Lilyfield - the Bicycle Garage. The eye guy is almost next door. On the spur of the moment, I pulled in here recently just to try their coffee - it's excellent. Really top notch. They're a bit old fashioned in that they don't have a website. Who cares - what would you rather have? Great coffee or a spoofy looking website?

It's going to be grey skies all week, along with a bit of rain. Nothing like the rain the banana benders are getting. More like a spot of drizzle every now and then - just enough to get the humidity up to 99%. It's not hot down here at present, but sheesh, it's sticky and miserable. I want to have a shower every two hours.

Today must have been declared "ride on the footpath day". Everywhere I looked, there were cyclists trundling along the footpaths. None hooning or ducking and weaving in amongst the pedestrians - just people quietly strolling along at a gentle pace, taking it easy and enjoying life.

Meanwhile, back on Planet Earth, I was doing my usual blast past the Hubbards. I've found that I just can't point the camera in the general direction of the subject when taking a photo from side on - I actually have to look at the screen in order to frame the cyclist properly. Very annoying. It's so much easier photographing people from behind.

Like these two.

One of my pet hates - tradesmen who park in the bike lane, and don't bother putting out orange cones to divert traffic around their van. There were two plumbers vans here, and a few blokes ripping up the footpath. Park next to your work site by all means - but put out the cones so that us cyclists have a safe path around your stupid van. I felt like stopping and letting down his tyres - but that would have meant he would have spent another few hours blocking the lane. Much better to just ride past and quietly fume.

A quick comment on sights and targets

Much has been written about the use of cross-hairs in various political campaigns, and whether this contributed to the Arizona shooting.

Just a small technical point - the loon who did the shooting used a Glock. The Glock does not come with a scope, so you don't see cross-hairs when aiming it. You see something more like this:

Why be picky? Because of all the ranting that the pictures of cross-hairs set this guy off. Somehow the association between the cross-hairs that you would see in an old fashioned rifle scope would make this bloke buy a pistol and shoot all and sundry.

Old fashioned rifle scope? Fancy modern sights employ a red targeting dot, like the sight picture below.

Cross-hairs are so 20th century. They're the sort of thing you find in a Norden bomb site on a B-17, not a modern weapon.

Just saying.

I hope they fry the guy by the way. Elections are the best way to remove a politician you disagree with.

A good education interview

Listened to a good Counterpoint podcast today - you can read the entire transcript here, or listen to the podcast. Driving is my favourite time to listening to stuff like this - only problem is that I can't take notes or blog about it on the road!

A couple of key points stood out.

First is that Australia's education standing is pretty good by world standards. There are a few exceptional countries out in front (like Finland), but we are not far behind. We're not a basket case like the UK. Although we like to moan and complain about it, and Gillard feels the need to inflict a national curriculum and other crap on us, things are not that bad.

Second, real expenditure on education went up 41% between 1995 and 2006. I've blogged before about where that money is going - or not going - in NSW. A great deal of the money went into reducing class sizes, but to date, educational outcomes have not improved.

Third, we'd be at the top of the international league tables if we could improve "teacher effectiveness" by 10%. I have no idea what "teacher effectiveness" is, or how you measure it, or how you improve it by 10%. I guess if the experts knew what it was and how to improve it, we'd be at the top of the league tables.

Fourth, a top teacher can teach a year's worth of curriculum in six months, whilst a pretty ordinary teacher takes the entire year. I've experienced a top teacher like that - in years 11 and 12, he not only taught us the high school Economics course - he also taught us the first year Uni Economics course. That allowed me to booze my way through my first year of Uni, which gave me a lot of bad habits that I never managed to shake for the following years. Still, that wasn't his fault.

Anyway, have a listen. You might learn something.

The SMH is full of crap

Nasty little story in the paper today about Vodafone - unfortunately, someone at the SMH has decided to juice up the story to make it sound much worse than it really is.

THE personal details of millions of Vodafone customers, including their names, home addresses, driver's licence numbers and credit card details, have been publicly available on the internet in what is being described as an ''unbelievable'' lapse in security by the mobile phone giant.

No you twit, they are not "publicly available". You need a username and password to access them. If they were publicly availably, I'd be looking up some people I don't like right now.

The Sun-Herald is aware of criminal groups paying for the private information of some Vodafone customers to stand over them.

Which criminal groups and when? How many times has this happened. Once? Twice? Provide some proof, not idle gossip.

Other people have apparently obtained logins to check their spouses' communications.

"Apparently" - which means it's gossip. No proof offered.

Personal details, accessible from any computer because they are kept on an internet site rather than on Vodafone's internal system, include which numbers a person has dialled or texted, plus from where and when.

They're only accessible from any computer if you have a username and password.

The full extent of the privacy breach is unknown but The Sun-Herald has learnt that possibly thousands of people have logins that can be passed around and used by anyone to gain full access to the accounts of about 4 million Vodafone customers.

This is really beating it up - "the full extent of the privacy breach is unknown" - makes it sound really bad. Plus the bit about "possibly thousands of people have logins" - of course thousands of people have logins; they've got thousands of employees and agents and call centre staff.

Professor Michael Fraser, the head of the Australian Communications Law Centre at the University of Technology, Sydney, said that it appeared to be a major breach of the company's privacy obligations and ''unbelievably slack security''.

Whenever a story needs a bit of credibility, always ask a professor.

''The fact you can look up anybody as easily as that seems to be a gross breach of privacy and resulting in an almost negligent exposure to criminal activity,'' said Professor Fraser, who also heads the Australian Communications Consumer Action Network.

''Customer information is accessed through a secure web portal, accessible to authorised employees and dealers via a secure login and password,'' he said.

The revelations come as Vodafone is facing potential lawsuits and widespread customer dissatisfaction with network access.

Irrelevant. If your story doesn't have enough heft, add in some bad news from elsewhere.

More than 9000 customers have joined a class action and the company has set up a number of taskforces to try to fix the problems.

In this new saga for Vodafone, dealers have revealed that they are frequently asked to do ''favours'' and to pass on their login details.

Ok, so dealers are frequently asked to do favours. The point is, do they actually provide the favours, or do they knock them back? Cops are also asked all the time to do favours like this on the police system - but as they know all access is monitored, they knock them back (the stupid ones don't, get caught and are sacked and charged).

Because the customer database is not an intranet (internal company system) and instead on the internet, users with a password can log in to the portal from anywhere, then access any customer's information.

So what? That's the whole idea.

Vodafone retailers have said each store has a user name and password for the system. That access is shared by staff and every three months it is changed. Other mobile dealers who sell Vodafone products also get full access to the database.

I'd imagine so. How are you supposed to connect new customers and help existing customers if you don't have access to the database? Duh.

Anyone with full access can look up a customer's bills and make changes to accounts. Limited access allows searching by name, which takes much longer and is more involved but can be just as effective when done correctly. ''It's scary stuff in the wrong hands,'' one dealer told The Sun-Herald.

Ooh, it's "scary stuff in the wrong hands". Sounds like the sort of quote you'd make up on a slow news day. Is it really scary stuff that I can walk into a store and ask the dealer to make changes to my account? I would have thought that is good stuff.

Disclaimer - I don't use Vodafone as their country coverage is not as good as Telstra. I don't particularly like or dislike them - I just hate media beatups.

Why should taxpayers pay for this?

Thanks to Andrew Bolt, we get this story about a couple aborting twin boys conceived via IVF because they want a girl:

A COUPLE who terminated twin boys conceived through IVF are fighting to choose the sex of their next child - because they want a girl.

In a case that raises the ethical question of sex selection, the couple have taken their fight to the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal. They already have three sons and said they now want to have a girl after their baby daughter died.

An independent panel, known as the Patient Review Panel, rejected the couple's bid to choose the gender of their next child using IVF. They now want that decision overturned. The tribunal, which ruled it has the power to review the earlier decision, will hear the case in March.

I just hope they aren't claiming the Medicare rebates for the IVF treatment, which runs at $4,500 - $5,000.

Apart from the moral issue of aborting kids because you don't like their sex (which I think is attrocious - I'd sterilise the pair of them), why the hell should the taxpayer be funding any of this? I just hope we aren't picking up any of the tab. If they have, we should not only cut the balls off the father - he should be made to eat them too.

I've actually done a fibre cost-benefit analysis

You may not know this, but most state governments are sitting on big fibre networks. Quite a few government utilities have rolled out fibre on their own over the last few decades to support their own operations.

For instance, the electricity transmission companies have strung it along their pylons. The RTA has run it along motorways. I'm sure the water mob have laid fibre alongside their pipes. Same with gas. The railways have run it alongside every bit of track in the metro area (not worth it out in the country - surprise, surprise). The railway signalling network used to run over a copper network; most of it is now run over fibre. Not that signalling needs a lot of bandwidth - I remember being told once that it needs 9600kb at most.

Back in my public service days, I worked with a government agency on a cost benefit analysis for hooking up to one of these fibre networks. The fibre was already in place - it ran past most of the larger offices for this agency, which had premises all over the metro area. It was just a matter of tapping into the fibre and putting in the right sort of network kit.

Doing the costing was easy - we needed so many switches at such and such a cost. eg - 50 sites, two switches per site, $10k per switch. Pretty simple maths.

We brought in a cabling company to estimate the hauling of the last mile fibre tails - we needed to bore under roads and pipes and so forth, and that costed up to $80,000 (depending on the difficulty and length of the bore). We also needed to cost in the professional services required to install and configure all that stuff, along with additional power outlets in some places and all sorts of trivial bits and pieces.

Many of the benefits were also easy to quantify. Every office had a small server room. That server room had its own air conditioning and an uninterrupted power supply (and both needed maintenance and had finite lives, and the air con units had to run 24x7). Depending on the location, it would have anywhere from 2 to 10 servers, and all were life expired (ie, old and crap). We added up the cost of centralising hundreds of servers into a single data centre, where a trivial number of servers would be required, versus replacing the whole damned lot (which had to be done anyway as they were cactus). The cost of the existing backup system was incredible - each site required a set of daily, weekly and monthly backup tapes, and backup tapes and tape drives aren't cheap. I think the saving in backup tapes alone was well over $100,000.

Then there was the saving in operating system and application licences - they went from dozens of email servers to just a few. The number of backup software licences was also cut dramatically - they were over $1,000 a pop.

The costing started getting squishy when we got to the technical support aspects - how much would we save on having engineers driving all over the countryside supporting all this kit? That was hard to pin a number on, but we did our best.

In the end, I think we calculated that the project would pay for itself in about 9 months - it was a complete no-brainer.

In typical public service fashion though, the manager of the server team vociferously opposed the project as it would cut into his empire. He preferred to spend millions of dollars of our money on replacing all that kit out in the field because it would make him look more important.

Thankfully, it went ahead. I came back later to see what benefits had been realised, and how the costs had gone. Funnily enough, for a government project, the costs actually came in almost smack on the money. The benefits were realised, along with a couple of unexpected ones that we hadn't thought about - they managed to get rid of two vehicles and some satellite support offices because they didn't need so many people out in the field anymore. They could work from a desk and support stuff remotely, which meant instead of doing 3 hours of driving and 4 hours of work, they could actually do 7 hours of work per day.

We tried to quantify the productivity improvements that the users would get from a faster network - what impact would going from a 2Mb WAN link to 1Gb have? Yes, it was now possible to move large files around quickly (which was actually vital for a couple of projects that generated massive files, including lots of video), but putting numbers on it was next to impossible. You can fudge some stuff up - we did - but you end up with very questionable numbers that fall apart when anyone starts poking them with a sharp intellect.

So it is possible to do a cost-benefit analysis on this sort of thing. It actually didn't take that long - a week at most, with input from half a dozen people. If the costs and benefits are staring you in the face, it's just a matter of crunching the numbers.

That's the problem with the NBN - the benefits aren't staring us in the face. With the Snowy Mountains scheme, I think most people could grasp the benefits of generating cheap hydro power and supplying irrigation water to farmers. With the Harbour Bridge, people could grasp the improvement over catching a ferry to North Sydney and the opening up of land to the north for housing. I'm still trying to grapple with what the NBN is going to deliver.

And before people start going on about health and education, after we finished that fibre rollout for that government agency, we had a look at doing all the hospitals and schools that were within easy reach of that fibre network. It was a no-brainer as well - we were raring to do it. However, it all fell over thanks to inter-agency bickering. We could have had most public hospitals in the metro area and lots of public schools on a 1Gb network 6 or 7 years ago, but the political will wasn't there to ram it through.

NBN cost benefit analysis blah blah blah

Last time I wrote something about the NBN, I got this comment:

How many nation building projects would not be started if they had cost-benefit analysis done against them? Sydney Harbour Bridge? At what point is or should vast nation building projects be less subjected to being forced to turn a profit or not exist? Public parks are wasted real estate oh very high value in some cases, they don't make a profit, why do we allow these spaces to exist then? Where was the cost-benefit analysis of these places?

It's been a few years since I have been involved in producing a cost-benefit analysis for a major project; my last one was the Sydney Airport Rail Link. I was only a junior flunky at the time - my main role was to proof read the research, prepare presentations for Cabinet etc and ask a lot of dumb questions (something I am good at).

The rail link was never expected to be profitable for the government by itself. Most of the financial benefits to the government were to come from the following areas:

• increased land values (and land taxes and stamp duty) from converting light industrial land along the route to high density housing
• avoidance of having to pay for lots of new roads, water lines, sewerage, power lines etc on the urban fringe by redeveloping an area that already had them

The other benefits that we looked at had to do with lowering the cost of congestion and the avoidance of a lot of new air pollution that would be created by housing people out on the fringe (where they'd drive a lot).

All these benefits added up to more than the cost of building the line. Estimating them was a lot of fun though - glad I didn't have to do that. However, the thing was, experts were able to come up with rough estimates for all of them, and they were able to justify their estimates using various economic and financial models etc.

I don't get why this can't be done for the NBN - it really isn't that hard once you have identified the benefits.

The thing is, if you can't identify any benefits, then you're in a bit of a pickle.

Thursday photos

I hereby declare 2011 to be the year of photographing cyclists from side on. That should disarm my critics who think I am only interested in photographing women's bums. Check out the high elbows on this cyclist - I only look like that when I'm trying to unscrew the cap off a beer bottle.

I obviously still have some way to go in developing my photography from side on skills.

If this bike looks like it has 4 legs, it's because the bloke standing up is getting a dink. Don't see much of that anymore.

There were a horde of photographers with fancy equipment waiting for me at this spot - I smiled graciously as I went past. Those big black screens are some sort of photographic lighting kit. It looked like they were photographing the blank wall of the pub. As there were also a few blokes there with paint tins, I presume they are going to be taking lots of snaps of something interesting being painted on the wall. I'll grab more photos tomorrow.

Wednesday photos

The unseasonal cool spell has been great for riding - not too hot, not too cold. It was about 20 degrees when I rode to work, and 24 when I came home. Given that the silly season is still in operation, I slept in this morning and didn't get going until about 8am. There were a lot of other cyclists out and about - either that it the time when they normally ride to work (making me a very early starter), or lots of people have decided that the combination of the sleepy holiday period and the nice weather makes for a good time to ride to work.

One reason I gave up the backpack - the larger models never sit in the middle of your back when you are hunched over. They always fall over to one side or the other - very uncomfortable. There are two bikes way off in the distance in this photo - no matter where I rode this morning, there were a couple of other bikes in sight.

This was not a good place to take one hand off the brakes to take a photo - I need all the braking power I can get on steep descents like this one, and when the bloke in front started to brake hard, I was in a spot of bother. This should be the only photo you'll ever see of this location.

Although it's supposed to be the season of good cheer etc, two idiots did their best to run me off the road today. Both were in a screaming hurry to be somewhere else. I'm seasoned enough to recognise when a driver is in a manic rush, and I do my best to get the hell out of their way, contenting myself with giving them the finger once they have gone past. I also had to yell at a pedestrian who ambled out into the bike lane right in front of me without looking - she was fiddling with her iPod of course. Gave her a nasty fright, and I didn't even have to swear. Hopefully, she will have enough sense not to do that again.

Starting the clock on the odometer

I've never done this before - taken a reading on the bike computer at the start of the year. I really have no idea how many kilometres I do per year - I know I've been through 3 bike computers (they die of drowning after a while, thanks to riding in the rain) and each bike computer had at least one battery change. At each changeover, I have never bothered to keep track of the distance at that point.

This is not a new year's resolution - it's simply that I thought about it before getting on the bike this morning. I start the year at 8341km - let's see where it finishes.

How long does it take to demolish a jar of Vegemite?

We seem to eat an awful lot of Vegemite in this household, so for my American readers, I am going to time how long it takes to demolish this 400gm jar - that's 14 ounces. This one will be opened tomorrow at the latest - I don't give it more than 2 months.

Given that we work our way through at least 6 jars of this size per year, that means we're consuming about 5 pounds of the black stuff per year.

Ponder that, next time an Aussie tries to feed you some on a slice of bread.

Depleted uranium - when the numbers just don't add up

Thanks to JF Beck and Gavin Atkins, we have a lurid insight into the wild fantasies of the Left.

Apart from the Grauniad failing to understand that DU rounds are fired from tank cannons rather than rifles or field artillery, the numbers behind the story just don't add up.

There are lots of wild stories about depleted uranium zooming around teh interweb. Here is a good one from a bloke tellingly named "greenerblog"

It was estimated that during that assault over 10,000 tons of depleted uranium, DU, was used in the bombardment of the city of 300,000 people. Both the Pentagon and the British governments insist that the use of DU is not illegal. Source

This 10,000 tonne figure is doubtful. It may relate to the amount used in Iraq as a whole - see below.

At least he has the sense to say that the 10,000 tonne figure is doubtful. It's more than doubtful - it's probably incredibly bloody stupid.

This is what a DU round for a 120mm tank cannon looks like. The spike in the middle is made of DU and titanium. If you want to read more about this round, go here.

"It's primary function is the destruction of threat tanks and armor fighting vehicles. Target penetration is affected strictly by the high kinetic energy of the DU core when it impacts. Like other DU munitions, these are identifiable by their black color with white markings on the projectile (pointed) end. M829 series ammunition is loaded and fired in the normal manner. This ammunition will not be fired over the heads of friendly troops unless troops are protected by adequate cover as they may be struck by the discarded sabot."

Depending on which model of ammunition is used, a DU round weighs between 41 and 56 pounds in total. That's 19 to 25kg. That's the entire round - the DU penetrator, the sabot, the casing and the propellant.

From this site, we get an estimate of how much DU there is in each round - 10 pounds per round, or 4.5kg:

"How much DU was used in the Gulf War? A 1991 report in The Independent said of the rounds fired by tanks and aircraft: "The best estimates were that the US tanks fired 5000 rounds, US aircraft many thousands of rounds, and British tanks 'a small number.' The tank ammunition alone would contain more than 50,000 pounds of DU, enough radioactive material, the International Committee of Radiological Protection estimates, to cause 500,000 potential deaths, if it were inhaled." How much was used in other DU-containing weapons is not known outside the Pentagon. The LAKA Foundation estimates that the total amount of DU used in Iraq exceeds 800 tons."

At the other end of the spectrum, if you search Google for "Pentagon admits to having used 1,200 tons of DU in Iraq", you'll get 408,000 hits. Nowhere can I find a link to the original story that quotes anyone from the Pentagon, or the US Military. If you find it, let me know.

Assuming that 1,200 tons of DU was fired from Abrahms tanks, at 4.5kg per round, that comes to an amazing 266,666 rounds of 120mm ammunition.

That's just not credible. 5,000 rounds were fired in all of Gulf War I, presumably to kill Saddam's tanks. The video below shows HEAT and SABOT (DU) ammunition being used to kill tanks on the firing range.

The only thing that SABOT, or DU rounds are good for is killing thick skinned tanks. They are a waste of time on buildings of personnel. If you see troops in the open, you use a canister round. If you want to kill troops in a bunker or a building, you can use something like a high explosive obstacle clearing round or a good old high explosive multi purpose round.

In case you are wondering why I think the figure of over 250,000 rounds of DU being fired in Iraq is stupid, here's a photo of some pallets of 120mm ammunition being unloaded in readiness for loading up some tanks. There are 30 rounds per pallet, and the HEMTT (truck) that's being unloaded can carry about 10 tons. As each pallet weighs about a ton, let's assume 10 pallets or 300 rounds per truck.

At the start of this blog, I noted the wild claim of "10,000 tons" of DU being fired into Fallujah alone. If we assume they mean that 10,000 tons includes the total weight of ammunition, then we are talking about needing 1,000 truckloads like the one above. If we are talking about just the weight of the DU at 4.5kg per round, then you're talking about an impossible 2.2 million rounds of 120mm tank ammunition - all that to kill around 6,000 insurgents.

An Abrahms can carry 55 rounds of main gun ammunition, and can fire at 6 rounds per minute. You can't maintain that rate of fire for ever, as the gun tube would quickly overheat.

The battle of Fallujah lasted about six weeks - for about 60,000 minutes. Tanks would need to be firing 37 rounds per minute for that entire 6 weeks in order to fire 2.2 million rounds. 7400 truckloads of ammunition would need to be brought forward in order to fire off that many rounds.

It just doesn't add up.

There are of course other possible sources of radioactive contamination in Fallujah - such as the leftovers from Saddam's nuclear program.

"U.S. and Iraqi forces have guarded the 23,000-acre (9,300-hectare) site - surrounded by huge sand berms - following a wave of looting after Saddam's fall that included villagers toting away yellowcake storage barrels for use as drinking water cisterns."

Drinking out of yellowcake storage barrels - that can't be good for you.

I got that link from this guy:

"Then, in 1991, the US Army and Marines faced five Iraqi Republican Guard divisions ladened with Soviet tanks. A-10 aircraft and M1 tanks killed hundreds of Iraqi tanks with DU and SABOT rounds.

In 2003, we faced Iraqi armored divisions again, so A-10s roamed the skies ahead of the American invasion and M1 Abrams tanks probably carried some SABOT rounds (although, I have no personal data describing tank ammunition loads during the initial invasion). The 2003 invasion force stayed far away from Fallujah. Baghdad and Tikrit were the targets.

I spent three years researching the battles for Fallujah. I have spoken to tankers, Light Armored Vehicle Marines and Bradley commanders and I have obtained logistic reports. Nowhere, in all my extensive research, have I found a single piece of data to indicate that SABOT or DU rounds were even carried in the armored vehicles that were used in Fallujah. Furthermore, no A-10s were ever used in Fallujah.

My research not withstanding, it makes no military sense to employ DU munitions in an urban environment. They are tank-killing weapons and the enemy had no armored vehicles in Fallujah. A DU projectile would travel through wall-after-wall, leaving a golf cup size hole. They wouldn’t do much damage and would do little more than scare the enemy. The benefits of using DU would not justify the expense.

So, lets all drop the discussion of DU causing all the birth defects in Fallujah. It is fantasy."

Interestingly enough, the mob that pushed the initial idea about DU being used in Fallujah are a neo-Nazi news organisation - America Free Press. They're likely to be a really credible source - not.

"The same mum?"

I have returned, refreshed and with a few stories to tell.

There I was, standing in front of the cheese section in a country supermarket. Standing next to me was a ratty looking bloke holding a young baby. Blue singlet, unwashed, smelly. He looked like he was no older than 25, and had about 5 teeth in his head. In a few months, his baby will have more teeth.

An older bloke walked up and asked about the baby. From the conversation they were having, I concluded he had fathered a number before this one. The last question I heard before wandering off to the milk section was, "Is it from the same mum?"

Happy new year - welcome to another year of working hard in order to pay taxes to keep the ferals in a life of ease and comfort.

Wednesday photos

Riding into the sunrise - for the first time in a few days, I was buffeted madly by wild winds. Until I rode home - but that was another story.

Smile - you're on candid camera.

I'm going to have a hiatus for a week or so, unless I can work out how to blog when mobile. Here's something to keep you occupied during that time:

Some 10 minutes after driving Chris Williams's Packard-engined Behemoth my hands were still shaking, my voice was croaking and the cool autumn wind was chilling my sweaty overalls. My face was cherry red from the infernal heat of the engine and my eyebrows singed from its 24 flaming exhaust stubs. In my entire career I have never driven anything as visceral, as physical or as sheer bloody terrifying as Mavis, the 42-litre Packard-engined Bentley.

How do the NBN financial assumptions stack up?

The NBN business case is out - if you want to wade through all 160 pages of it (like I did), you can find it here. You can follow a reasonably informed debate on this at Catallaxy, where I originally posted much of this comment.

There are a number of assumptions driving the financial models underlying the business case. As with any model, you can tweak the numbers you put in to get any result you want. Garbage In, Garbage Out.

The amount of revenue the NBN will gather is based on two things - how many customers it signs up, multiplied by the average revenue per customer.

The business case gives us these numbers.

The average revenue per customer is termed ARPU - Average Revenue Per Unit. You are a Unit - get used to it. I am a Unit on a Bike. Or a UNOB. Hmm - don't like the sound of that much.

The plan states that the ARPU will be $34 per month. It's worth looking at how they calculated an ARPU of $34 per month.

There is a table on page 101 that sets out the wholesale prices for each plan

12mb - $24 month

25mb - $27-30 month

50mb - $34

100mb - $38

250mb - $70

500mb - $100

1000mb - $150

There is a graph on page 118 that shows the subscriber split by speed.

I check these things carefully, because I used to do this sort of modelling at work from time to time, and I know how much bullshit went into the models.

From eyeballing the graph, I get the following splits for 2014:

12mb plan - 53% at $24 month

25mb plan - 16% at $28.50 (splitting $27 and $30)

50mb plan - 24% at $34 month

100mb plan - 7% at $38 per month

From that, I calculate an ARPU of $28 per month ex GST.

In 2020, you get:

12mb plan - 45% at $24 month

25mb plan - 5% at $28.50 (splitting $27 and $30)

50mb plan - 15% at $34 month

100mb plan - 25% at $38 per month

250mb plan - 10% at $70 per month

This gives an ARPU of $34, but it is driven by the truly heroic assumption that 10% of the population will be on a 250mb plan with a wholesale price of $70 per month.

It then goes on to assume that by 2028, 40% of the population will be happy paying a wholesale price of between $70 and $150 per month.

I call that "fantasy". I'd love to see the hard data that supports those assumptions about what Australians are willing to pay for their broadband.

Monday photos

We had quite a storm come through on Sunday afternoon. In one direction, the sky was clear and blue. Out west though, it was black and awful. It rained buckets for a few hours, and although it cleared up overnight, today was windy as hell. It was one of those days where I had to lean over more than usual when standing at red lights in case a gust knocked me over the other way - that would be embarrassing and painful. The city buildings cause the wind to swirl in all directions, so you might spend the first 1/3 of a block belting along with a fast tailwind, then get slammed sideways for the next 1/3, then spend the last 1/3 gasping into an awful headwind.

The tide was right up this morning - higher than I have ever seen it. Storm surge I suppose.

Come afternoon though, it was way lower than usual.

Badly taken photo as I battle gusty headwinds on a climb. Nice shoes though, and a cute pannier.

Dirty, hairy weird beard hippy on a fixie.

Part of the Panthers Triathlon team. I caught them at this set of lights, and expected that this was the last I'd see of them. However, only one of them had any idea where he was going, so they took it "relatively" easy - I managed to stick with them for a while.

When we got into town and were waiting at another light, I asked one if he came in this way often. His response was that he'd never do it again - he valued his laps too much. Or maybe he said life - it was hard to understand him.

I did it the easy way on the way home - found another cyclist and sat on his bum as he pushed into the 40-60km/h headwinds. It was gusting up to 67km/h - that's 40mph in yankspeak. I normally sail down the big hill on my trip home at a bit over 60km/h without even trying - just coasting. Today, I was going hard at the pedals and only touched 45km/h for a brief instant before the speedo rapidly fell back to 30.

Something blew into one eye on the way home, so I'm half squinting at the screen because it bloody hurts to keep that eye open. I also became a helmet convert today - as I was rounding the Bay, the wind caught a fairly thick branch as I went under a tree and it blew down and smashed me on the helmet. It was a pretty hard blow - enough to give me a bad case of the wobbles - so much so that I almost mowed down a pedestrian whilst recovering. If I wasn't wearing the skid lid, I reckon the force of the blow on my naked scone would have taken me down, and hard. I'd be sitting here with stitches in my scalp if not for the helmet.

Coppers

I read a recommendation on Inspector Gadget this week about a pommy show called Coppers. I've watched 4 out of 5 episodes so far - it's excellent. Far removed from your usual reality cop shows. The first episode is a corker for anyone interested in how the underclass is progressing these days. The travails of two very stupid crims made up most of the episode. It's awful, but it just has to be watched. Here's the bloke - a heroin addict who after 15 months in prison, re-offends on his first day out. This is him at age 32 (I think).

He'd been arrested over 50 times - here he is around 23.

The same effects were evident on his partner, the other crim. She was 30 going on 45, an addict and a prostitute.

One hilarious scene is where the bloke goes nuts because his partner - the prostitute - had shacked up with another bloke when he was in prison. He was quite happy to get her to have sex with other men for money, but not for pleasure.

The worst bit was the interviews with the grandfather of the female crim - listening to him describe how she started using heroin at about 15, and then went downhill from there. Interestingly, no sign is ever seen of her mother or father - just her grandfather, who clearly looks after her and loves her. It was just terrible watching what she put him through.

Each episode is about 45 minutes. Spend a bit of time and have a look at them.

As for the big question - what the fuck do we do with these people? The show doesn't pretend to have any answers, and neither do the coppers involved. I'll take the wisest course and stay well away from trying to answer it as well. Just watch the shows, and be horrified and amazed and appalled.