As usual on Monday, you are invited to post your thoughts on any topic. Civilised discussion and no coarse language, please. As we approach the winter solstice (for Southern hemisphere readers), I’d be interested in seasonal reflections.
94 thoughts on “Monday message board”
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John Quiggin 
I marked the 6th day of “winter” in Brisbane by cycling bare-chested from the inner city to the Nathan Campus of Griffith University. The average maximum temperatures in the three “winter” months of 2004 in Brisbane were roughly 3 degrees Celsius above the historical average, and thus far we seem to be heading for another warmer than average “winter”. I place “winter” in inverted commas because an actual winter implies the occurrence of cold, bleak weather, and I’m having difficulty remembering the last time such weather occurred in Brisbane.
Well, Paul, I live in Canberra. I have visited Brissie just once in the past two decades, and on that day it was the coldest day in Brisbane for a decade – several degrees colder than Canbberra was that day, in fact. Perhaps its time I visited again to bring you some refreshing southern chill :-).
The tallest apartment building in the Southern Hemisphere (cop that Paraguay!) is nearing completion here in Melbourne. This morning its top twenty floors gleamed like an extraterrestrial mothership above a thick fog (and 55 floors of cheaper apartments).
Could someone enlighten me on a news item I read in the AGE a couple of days ago, and of course I didn’t save it and googling has been unsuccessful.
Briefly, VCE students have been told they are to multiply by 10.0 rather than 9.8 (I think, or something similar) in a traditional question in a physics exam. Is it, as some people claim, pretty unimportant (9.8 itself being an approximation as the story goes?) or will apartment buildings like the one in the last comment fall down because of future engineers’ calculations? Can any scientific types enlighten me?
ahhh – the solution to global warming
fly derrida derider to each city in the country once a day.
With the arguments about means versus medians in the previous article, and given that it is possible to even teach 1st year psychology students what a distribution is (and hence I assume, almost anyone), I wonder why distributions to describe and argue about) data are not used more ?
Helen,
9.8 is the coefficient of gravity, so I will presume that is the number being discussed. The hopefully, VCE students will not be designing apartment buildings any time soon, so it should not be a problem. In any case, an increase in the value to 10 will result in a stronger building in any case – so all that will happen is that the cost will go up marginally.
Helen,
I take the 9.8 you mean is for the gravitational accelaration on earth. Well its unlikley to mean a building falls down as I really hope safety margins are bigger than that. Although some aircraft might not get off the ground fully laden if designed using that value.
Hopefully though they are telling them to use 10 just to simplify calculations, not as an understanding that is what the value really is. If it is taught in that way I don’t see its a problem. Physicists do in their head calculations using a whole host of simplifications like pi =3 or pi^2 = 10 or g = 10 etc to get a rough answer to a question.
Helen
This must be what you are talking about.
http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5478,15489290%255E2862,00.html
http://www.theage.com.au/news/National/Exam-board-upsetting-Isaac-Newtons-applecart/2005/06/02/1117568316509.html
I suppose that when unsupervised novices without engineering qualifications start designing skyscrapers this may cause a problem.
23C in Adelaide today. 24C yesterday. The days may be short but they sure are pleasant.
If this is what global warming brings, I am all in favour of it. And if things get too dry then nuclear-powered desalination sounds like fun. In fact, why are we waiting? There’s plenty of cotton and rice farmers to feed; can we start now?
Paul, I’ve lived in Brisbane continuously since 1969 (and for a spell before that in the 50s and 60s). Since 1991 I’ve been outside much of the time. We had bursts of cold/windy last winter and quite cold overnight quite often. The main feature is that the last five winters have been extraordinarily dry, so the days are warmer than average, but the nights cooler. Looks like the same this year.
The last wet winter was in 1999, when we had January average rainfall in June. I remember, because we were building a swimming pool and the machines pulverised our driveway. It was wet all the way down to bedrock.
I heard a climatologist say that global warming had raised temperatures one degree in Oz, (more than the world average) the equivalent of moving a couple hundred kilometres north.
More questions about the nuances of income taxation here http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=9166
Oh, don’t worry about global warming. We’ll just ban it, like SA is to do with plastic shopping bags. Ahhh, shopping bag economics and quantity controls. The luvvies answer to everything.
Ahh, lets just make everything deductible – it would make it much simpler. Or perhaps, we can just ban taxation altogether. I feel a quantity control would be too complex to enforce.
Having always lived in Southern Victoria,and always having loathed hot weather I enjoy the winters,although this year’s drought and the warmest autumn on record have been a spoiling factor. Recently visiting Tasmania I was struck by the thought that the cold weather there imparts a kind of European feel to the place in Winter. I have fond childhood memories,of a large kitchen with a wood-stove which warmed the room,and of meals slowly cooking on my return from school . I had the task of lighting the Lounge Room fire on the weekend,and we had a grate that burned “coke”(a word with different meaning these days!)…it was a waste product from the coal-gas used in the Gas plants,and if placed on the coals of a wood fire gave an intense heat.I took a pride in making the fire so hot everyonce had to move their chairs away for some distance.In winter we sometimes went mushrooming and cooked the mushrooms on top of the stove…and also some times chops and steak cooked over the open vent on top of the stove Even in Melbourne we no longer get the cracking frosts which were once a standard feature of life here ,and my grandchildren hardly know of the winters I knew as a child.
Can i ask people what they think about the dental health of australians.
Its a topic not talked about by politicians but at least 50% of my friends up here in queensland (most aged under 28) are suffering from severe dental problems but none of them are choosing to go to the dentist.
The main reason they choose not to is cost (apart from the fear of drills :).
Numerous friends require root canals but are simply ignoring or masking the pain with painkillers.
Since howard removed dental from the medicare list in 1996, how much has the dental health of ordinary australians dropped? Surely, for ordinary australians, a single root canal a year will cost much more than any skimpy $6 a week tax cut delivered by our elected enemy of the working class.
When we talk about people receiving tax breaks – we need to also look at the decreasing levels of services delivered to people, and the long term effects on our nation as a whole.
Surely the Labor party could think of worse issues to reiterate over the next 3 years.
I suggest the labor party sets a goal of making weekly public comments regarding lack of dental funding until the next federal election.
The SA shopping bags ban shits me. Every other store I shop at these days self-righteously announces that they don’t provide shopping bags.
As someone who puts his used shopping bags to good use (they get another run as bin liners and nappy bags before going to the landfill), this assumption that I am somehow an environmental vandal for even asking for them really gets up my nose. Especially when we continue to allow farmers to use 21,500 liters of water for each kilo of rice they produce.
Next time I think I’ll collect my groceries by backing my truck through the front-window and loading the damn things directly into the boot.
Alphacoward, speaking as someone who’s spent a fortune on dental work, I couldn’t agree more. Labor did promise to restore the Keating policy last time, I think, and this really is a serious issue.
As someone who learned (in the 1960s and 1970s) to carry goods home from the local shop in my mother’s string bag or my sister’s old school bag, I think the South Australian consumers will get used to the shopping bags ban sooner rather than later.
On the few occasions that I find myself obliged to take a plastic shopping bag from retailers (due to several unanticipated purchases when I hadn’t through to take a cloth bag or backpack with me) I have found that the bags can be reused over and over again on shopping trips before they disintegrate. I’m still reusing the Low Density Polyethylene bag in which I carried a new pair of jeans home back in 2001.
Finally anon, the High Density Polyethylene singlet bags can be recycled, so you don’t need to send them to the landfill after you use them as bin liners.
regarding the g=10 thing, having read the articles, all I can say is what a storm in a teacup. The Herald sun show’s its own intellectual prowess, by calling a constant value a formula. The opposition wades in and shows its lack of knowledge also. If physics was about learning stuff like g=9.8 then I think most people would have a much easier time with it.
Thanks to everyone for replies re. the “g-10 thing”. One thing Steve (Edney), doesn’t making a value 10 rather than 9.8 make the equation, whatever it is, radically easier to solve? even as someone who never did well in mathematics, I know I can solve problems quickly and easily if they’re in whole numbers, but less so if they are in decimals. But I might be talking about the olden days here; that would only hold if you have to do calculations manually, and I think kids now are allowed to take calculators into exams for various calculations, is that right?
So is the Herald right or not in claiming that some “dumbing down” is occurring? If I understand the responses here, it’s not really a big deal – or is it only not a big deal if you are already experienced and have done things by the book?
As someone who learned to travel by horse and cart in the 60’s and 70’s (19th century), I think the South Australian consumers will get used to the automobile ban sooner rather than later.
Seriously, there’s such a thing as convenience. Shopping bags are used everywhere – people will have to carry alternative baggage with them all the time. Given the inconvenience this is going to create, I predict no more than 18 months once this law is enforced before it is abolished.
If the bags are recyclable, then lets make it easy to recycle them. Don’t ban them.
Helen,
Obviously I don’t know what the exact questions were, but in general it makes the calculation of an actual value easier if you are doing it by hand, but generally you are using a calculator so you don’t bother making the simplification.
Usually getting a numerical answer is not what a physics problem is trying to get at. Rather they are more interested in how you apply physical reasoning, understand the problem, and then apply relevant formula that correctly solves the problem possibly with some algebraic manipulation. The goal after all is to test physics not arithmetic and pushing numbers into a formula early on is generally frowned.
I guess its on the same level as ignoring bad spelling in a history or economics essay.
Personally, I am outraged that any educator would even consider g=9.8 as appropriately accurate. Talk about “dumbing down” in modern schools. When I was a lad, use of anything less than seven decimal places (9.8010423) earned you a fail and a jolly good caning by the headmaster.
Of course, all questions involving “g” also need to be qualified by the geographical location: g is smaller at the equator than at the poles (due to both the equatorial bulge (got one of those myself) and the earth’s rotation), and lower at higher altitudes. 9.8010423 is only good for Washinton DC and anywhere equidistant from the earth’s center at the same lattitude (north or south).
So yes, the g=10 thing is definitely a storm in a teacup.
I’ll never find the article again, but a year or two ago I found statistics that showed that extractions had gone up markedly since the 96 funding cuts to dental services (that was to service the ‘black hole’ and the debt truck IIRC).
The only dentistry available for poor people is whipping them out, because by the time your filling gets off the waiting list that’s all that left to be done. So in effect (as this article was saying) dental health is again becoming a marker of class, as it had been in the world up until fairly recently.
Way to go John boy!
Now, a separate question. Ken Davidson is always going on about Treasury currency speculative losses (most recent example ). Is this a true story or is it BS? If it is true, why no scandal?
The msot commone high school question involving G is probably some variant of:
a. if you drop an object of weight x how long will it take to fall y metres or
b. if you drop an object of weight x and it falls for y metres how much kinetic energy does it acquire?
I don;t see how using a value 10 rather than 9.8 makes much of a difference a difference (other than 2% or so discrepancy from the correct answer).
I’m also not sure if it makes the question much easier since I was under the impression calculators are allowed in most exam rooms these days.
Instead of using supermarket bags to throw out rubbish, people will buy plastic bags as bin liners. Likely the prob will be made worse. I thought that bio-degradable bags were available. Why dont they just make them compulsory?
Today the shopping bag, tomorrow the Garbag. Be very very afraid 2 joe. Also the SA govt is bringing in legislation that all new houses must have gas or solar hot water systems from next year. ie no J tarriff, off-peak electric units. Wonder how the power generators will like that and how they’ll have to cost recover more from peak load pricing?
Anon, the value of g varies considerably more than that according to your location:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gee
As to that physics exam, it doesn’t really matter whether students use 9.8 or 10 as their approximation of Earth gravity; the point of the question is whether they understand how to apply the formulae they’ve learned, not whether they can do long multiplication accurately.
There are perfectly legitimate things to worry about with regards to modern school curricula; this doesn’t appear to be one of them.
agreed re the g thing – storm in a teacup. this is presumably physics they’re learning, not mental arithmetic. i thought all high school students used calculators even in exams anyway?
I don’t think the g thing is tempest in a teacup necessarily. It’ll confuse students by implying significance of the decimal system of counting that it doesn’t have.
Plastic bags recycled back to the source (ie. in the bin the supermarket chains provide) are not the problem. Bags reused several times and disposed of appropriately are more or less no problem.
What is a problem is that many bags are just allowed to blow away into the environment where they cause damage to both wildlife and farm animals and look unsightly.
The Irish (who now have a standard of living higher than that of Australians) have successfully learned to adapt to life without plastic bags being supplied by supermarkets.
Of course, if you wanted to multiply by 9.8 it would be simple enough – take the original number, multiply it by 10 and then take off 2/10ths of the original number.
Of course, this does not take into account the ‘correct’ value of g, 9.80665, equatorial bulge or centripetal acceleration.
Seriously, though – 10 is close enough. For examination purposes it does not matter if (as they did in my TAE exam) they used g on the surface of Mars (can’t remember the number) it is the application that counts.
I get great health care for all sorts of fundamental reasons which our society basically accepts.
How come my teeth are not considered to be part of my body?
It is soooooo illogical and comes down to nothing more than cost and administrative complexity. And don’t get me onto the price of hearing aids. Or the fact that I walk into opticians with my bog standard round John Lennon NHS glasses and they look at me pityingly and say that I can’t get screws or the nose thingys for them any more.
And will the government pay to have my horse shod? Bah!
The solution to the bag problem is those green ones which are much easier to carry things in anyway, Probably even nappies. Although in twenty years time octopi will be discovered strangling themselves on the handles in Port Phillip Bay … and so it goes.
While i totally agree with the ban on plastic bags – i believe it is a symbolic gesture only. Total environmental positive impact will be incredibly marginal.
The fact is – we will simply be taking 10 items wrapped in indescrutible plasic packaging home in an environmentally friendly bag. The mass of packaging inside the bag far outweights the total weight of the carry bag.
Much greater reform – including taxes on unenvironmentally friendly packaging will be required to bring about any useful change.
It will be a symbolic win for the environmentalists – but real change is going to be much harder and require far greater leadership.
Re Mark on Teeth
I know Latham tried to bring teeth back into the picture. But it never got drilled into public perception that it was howard that took away our dental care in the first place.
It needs to be a constant campaign by Labor NOW – starting with a signifcant policy announcement – followed up by advertising and constant press release.
The fact is everybody has teeth – and even those with private health cover are still forking out a fortune on dental care.
Labor will be suprised at the traction they get with this simple issue. It is a lot less escoteric and divisive than Refugees, Global Warming and even IR.
‘Observa Says’, that legislation does not make me scared. I reckon it is most smart. Solar power is great and anything that punters can do, in their own house, to cut down on energy use, is the best way to go.
Small supermarket bags that should be bio-degradable, will be replaced by large, green ,wheely bin sized bags that will make the situation ,in the tips ,worse.
Why do environmentalists always want to tell the rest of us how to live? I mean, I don’t see plastic bags blowing everywhere. I don’t see them clogging our waterways. Far as I can tell, plastic bags are pretty damn minor on the scale of human environmental impact. Yet the greenies are all excited about their “victory”, and the rest of us are forced to lug large green bags everywhere or transport our groceries home in our rectums.
I have a suggestion for all those greenies looking to minimize human impact on the environment: tackle a real issue. Or better still, do us all a favour by reducing your own impact to zero…..
General health risk of periodontal disease.
Slots J, Kamma JJ.
MBA University of Southtern California, School of Dentristy, Department of Periodontology
The possibility that periodontal disease might influence the morbidity and mortality of systemic diseases constitutes a research topic of great current interest. Human periodontal disease is associated with a complex microbiota containing approximately 500 microbial taxa and various human viruses, many of which possess significant virulence potential.
…
Research data from various laboratories point to periodontal infections as a risk factor for chronic medical disorders, including cardiovascular disease, cerebrovascular accidents and low-birth-weight infants. However, recent epidemiological studies have failed to show a significant relationship between periodontal disease and cardiovascular disease. This review paper evaluates the current status of knowledge on dental focal infection and suggests avenues for further research into the topic of general health risks of periodontal disease.
So more stents and bypass surgery maybe?
“However, recent epidemiological studies have failed to show a significant relationship between periodontal disease and cardiovascular disease.”
– so maybe not.
Though body piercing may be another risk factor.
Why do religious bigots tell me how to live?
How about the anti-smoking brigade making smoke free zones in our pubs?
Or the police telling me to stop speeding or smoking dope?
And we ban XXX porn in mainland australia because?
There are just as many do-gooders on the conservative side of politics as the liberal side.
Its just some things seem more important to some than others.
My personal preference is for mandatory biodegradable plastic pacakaging.
And the challenge of elimitating cigarette butts would be a far more worthwhile fight.
Can you imagine for one moment how you would legally define an ‘outlawed ‘ plastic shopping bag (when is a bag a doggy-do bag and when is it a shopping bag?) and what would be the penalty for possession of such a heinous item? Sheesh! Already the unions have come out and are bleating about OHS concerns with ‘dirty’ bags (contaminated with mould or blood products) and the extra weight that can be placed in the reusables causing strain injury for checkout chicks. Hold on to your cat hats greenies, there’s another storm brewing with the unions.
Actually the ramifications of this thin end of the wedge for the packaging industry are enormous. Tonight with MrsO out, MissO and I called in to pick up some bbq ribs on the way home. They came bathed in plum sauce, in a 225mm square aluminium foil container straight out of the red hot pizza oven and you guessed it, into the ubiquitous placcy bag so you could carry it. Come to think of it, it’s time to ditch the Amcor shares with all these legislative idjits on the warpath.
RE: G
As Tom Lehrer says, in the new maths:
“Now remember how we used to do that. three from two is nine; carry the one, and
if you’re under 35 or went to a private school you say seven from three is six,
but if you’re over 35 and went to a public school you say eight from four is
six; carry the one so we have 169, but in the new approach, as you know, the
important thing is to understand what you’re doing rather than to get the right
answer. ”
RE: seasonal reflections, twice a year at the Collingwood Childrens Farms in Abbotsford the Steiners hold their ‘Steiner bonfire’ for the exquinoxes. These Steiner bonfires are very scary because Steiners are immensley scary, they are like hippies with no moral values. They are hypocritical hippies, not even sell-out commercial ones. If you have never heard of Steiners before then count yourself lucky.
anon – “Why do environmentalists always want to tell the rest of us how to live? I mean, I don’t see plastic bags blowing everywhere. I don’t see them clogging our waterways. Far as I can tell, plastic bags are pretty damn minor on the scale of human environmental impact.”
So if you don’t see it is not a problem?
More people should be aware of something else our big media players, Kerry, Rupert and Kerry are considering. An interesting story by MediaWatch at
http://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/transcripts/s1378484.htm
Evidently there were some plans to legislate that pi be 3.2 in the US. See:
http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2005/06/another_reason_.html
Why 3.2 – I don’t understand, shouldn’t it be 3.1?
Pi is whatever number you get when you push the symbol button on your $150 compulsory graphics calculator at school dummies!
Tom Lehrer is awesome isnt he.
I don’t think it is the greenies who get excited about the introduction of the environmentally unfriendly green bags. Its Coles and Woolworths who benefit.
They no longer have to provide us with the old plastic bags or introduce the newly developed environmentally friendly bio-degradable plastic bags. They get to sell us those carcinogenic green bags and profit again when they sell us another one when we forget to bring it back with us. At last count I had about 200 of these toxic green bags glowing in my garage.