This is a sandpit for people who want to
(a) argue about the efficacy of specific road safety interventions
(b) record their status as believers (with or without qualification) in the libertarian/conservative orthodoxy that climate change is a hoax/fraud/unsupported hypothesis.
I’d request no responses to those in category (b). They are, in my view, beyond help, and there are plenty of sites pointing out their errors if they want to look.
Well, 2010 is over and it’s been a year of contradictions for me. In personal and family terms, things have gone very well, starting with the birth of my first grandson, James in March. Then there’s my literary offspring Zombie Economics, which seems to be going very well, and my election as a Fellow of the Econometric Society (quite a big deal in the academic circles where I move, if not exactly a barbecue-stopper among family and friends in general).
Politically on the other hand, it’s been a year of frustration.
It is too early to say much about this latest tragedy, but I wanted to mark it.
A moving post on marriage rights from reader and occasional CT commenter Tim Scriven.
The floods in Pakistan never produced a dramatic moment like the Boxing Day tsunami. And one flood looks much like another on TV, so it’s hard to comprehend the scale of this disaster. But it is truly one of the worst in recent history, worse even the tsunami in terms of the destruction it has wrought, though not for immediate loss of life. There’s some more information here from Oxfam.
James Farrell ran an election-tipping exercise at Club Troppo, which raised $1150 ($250 from me). I haven’t thought of a gimmick (suggestions appreciated) but I hope we can raise at least as much here. Please give to your favorite charity and record it in the comments box. If you’re shy, email me with the details and I’ll add you to the list as “an anonymous reader”
I’m moving this back up to the top. The disaster is still going on, and help is urgently needed
It’s hard to say anything good about this election campaign, but it is a trivial problem compared to the disaster afflicting Pakistan. To get something good out of this horse-race, James Farrell has organized a tipping competition, with proceeds going to flood relief. Get over, make a prediction and pledge some money.
Open for your thoughts on mothers and motherhood, reminiscences, and so on.
On this day, nearly 100 years ago, thousands of young Australians and New Zealanders ran on to the beaches of Gallipoli. Many of them died before the day was out, along with many more among the Turkish defenders and troops from Britain, Canada and many other places. By the time the campaign ended in failure, over 100 000 were dead and hundreds of thousands more severely wounded. A small toll by comparison with the main Western and Eastern fronts, but quite sufficiently horrific to be remembered a century later.
The Anzacs had no quarrel with the Turkish soldiers who were trying to kill them, nor did the people of Australia and New Zealand have any quarrel with those of Turkey. Their bravery and their lives were expended in the course of a bloody and pointless war between alliances of which the armies fighting at Gallipoli were tiny parts, over pretexts no one alive now, and very few at the time, could comprehend as the basis for a cataclysmic war.
By the time the Gallipoli attack was planned, the dreams of rapid and glorious victory that had led both sides to war had drowned in the mud of France and Flanders. It should have been obvious that this was a war no one could win. But, a peace that restored the status quo ante would mean an admission that it had all been for nothing.
Instead, the war planners kept coming up with futile strategic ideas like Gallipoli, secret weapons like poison gas, and new tactics previously considered unthinkable such as submarine attacks, without warning, on merchant shipping. By the time of the armistice in 1918, ten million or more had died, and the seeds of future wars had been sowed.
For all those who died, bravely following their country’s call to unknown battlefields, lest we forget.
We just returned from Sydney where we saw our first grandchild, James, now two weeks old. (I’ll skip all the doting grandparent stuff, but other grandfathers and grandmothers can fill it in for themselves). It’s striking to think that he could easily be around in 2100 and, given plausible advances in medical technology, well beyond that.
When we (that is, middle-aged and older people) talk about the effects (good and bad) of our actions on “future generations”, it’s worth remembering that young people now alive will experience those effects long after we are gone.
As in past years, Nicholas Gruen is organising a group subscription to Crikey. Check it out here
John Quiggin 