I stumbled across the site of Dr Vegeta[1] whose motto is

If you have to ask whether you have published enough, you haven’t.

Since I ask myself this every day, I’d better keep typing.

fn1. Those in the right age cohort (or their parents) will recognise the allusion to DBZ. His SO is called Bulma.

There’s not much to say about the latest earthquake in Indonesia, except to hope that no worse news comes in from places that have not yet been contacted. Our thoughts go to those who have lost homes and loved ones.

Well, today is my birthday. A gentleman never reveals his age, but it’s a perfect square[1]

fn1. And not the subject of a Beatles song

Well, we’ve bought our Easter eggs and Easter bilbies, and we’ve had plenty of Hot Cross Buns. I used to like those solid candy eggs when I was young, but they seem to have gone out of favour, and they’d probably be too sweet now anyway. Does anyone have any other seasonal treats they can recommend (or, for that matter, warn against).

There’s already been a bit of blogospheric response to the latest study on wasteful consumption (PDF) by Clive Hamilton and others at the Australia Institute . As Andrew Norton notes in the comments to Jason Soon’s post, the study reflects Clive’s rather ascetic wordview, one not shared by the majority of Australians. And, no doubt, waste is in the eye of the beholder. To take one of Clive’s examples, I must admit to buying books and not reading them, at least some of the time, but I can find excuses for this, whereas I’m scandalised by the idea of throwing out perfectly good clothes because they’re out of fashion.

That said, I think that, unless you are willing to take a completely agnostic view of social trends of all kinds, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that the present period is one of generally excessive consumption. There are underlying economic causes of this, including low interest rates, easy credit and an economy that rewards successful speculation more than effort[1]. This in turn produces a demand for cultural celebration of consumption which reinforces the whole process. The wheel must turn and I think Clive is right to give it a bit of a shove.

And, leaving aside the fact that an excessive focus on consumption is bad for us, Tim Costello was spot-on on TV pointing to the moral obscenity of allowing children to starve while we making strenuous efforts to acquire trivial items for ourselves. No-one is perfect here, but, as I’ve said before, we all seemed a lot happier when we were putting a bit of our spare time into the tsunami aid effort. If we could keep this up, the world would be a much better place.

Such things are cyclical: material prosperity was just as eagerly celebrated in the 1950s, and this produced the anti-materialist reaction of the 1960s.

fn1. And even where wealth is produced by effort, it commonly takes the form of a capital gain, on the sale of a business, a renovated home, or whatever.

I was fascinated by reports on a government study of Australian women (the phrasing I mention appears to come from the study, as I saw much the same elsewhere)

The Federal Minister assisting the Prime Minister on Women’s Issues, Kay Patterson, will release the research on 19,000 Australian men and women, which compares women’s lives to 10 years ago.

And as Tanya Nolan reports, it paints a picture of women as being increasingly lonely and unhealthy.

TANYA NOLAN: She used to be in her early thirties and married with children. Now she’s pushing 37, is likely to be single, with one or two offspring.

I am most miffed about this. The average woman, it appears, has aged about four years in the last decade[1]. I, on the other hand, have aged exactly 10 years. Whatever she is taking to achieve this time dilation, I want some of it.

fn1. I won’t even ask what has happened to her spouse and some of her children.

I’ve been a bit rushed and I haven’t had time for a thorough check of all the donations to the Global Fund Appeal However, I’m very happy to report that thanks to the generosity of contributors who gave more than they had promised, the total amount donated to Medecins Sans Frontiers exceeds $A1000. Thanks again to everyone who took part.

The Fin reprints this piece from the New Statesman by Nick Cohen

I think you can smoke in the Groucho[1], but you can’t in Waitrose or at any Islington dinner party I’ve been to in the past decade. The social taboo against smoking is becoming absolute, in the middle classes at any rate … it is social death to put a cigarette in your mouth, not to stuff cocaine up your nose.

I’m obviously out of touch here. I thought it was de rigeur to go to the bathroom to snort cocaine, and to go out to the porch to smoke. But now I fear total embarrassment at my next middle-class dinner party: obviously I should have the cocaine served at the table. Can anyone give me more details here – are individual salvers the way to go, for example, and is it OK to ask guests to bring some of their own?

Read More »

I sent in my donation to MSF just now, and I’ve had confirmation from several co-sponsors that they’ve done the same. The number of comments was a bit disappointing, but I’m happy to say that most people so far have responded by giving more than they promised. I’d like, once again, to thank everyone who participated.

As promised, this is the post for my second “cash for comment” appeal. I’ll be giving $1 per comment, once again, up to a limit of $1000 (last time there were about 500 comments). I plan to donate the proceeds to Medecins Sans Frontieres, and express a preference for projects related to the The Global Fund to fight against AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria . These diseases kill over 6 million people each year, and the numbers are growing. Of course, cosponsors are welcome to nominate their own preferred charity.

As before, I’m also hoping for cosponsors, who agree to put in 5,10, 20 or 50 cents up to whatever limit seems appropriate. When the appeal is done, I’ll email to tell you how much you’ve promised. You then send the donation to MSF or your preferred alternative. If you can advise me when you’ve done it (and if you want, send a copy of the receipt) that’s great, but this entire appeal is being done on the basis of trust. I’ve already had one offer of 10c per comment, which I hope to confirm soon.

As regards your comments, anything you want to say is fine (civilised discussion and no coarse language, please), and it doesn’t have to be more than a word or two. But I’d be interested in discussion on the issues raised by exercises of this kind, for example, priorities in aid, the role of private philanthropy vs governments, NGOs, business and so on.

I’ll just mention that I’m financing my contribution partly from the payment I got for a review of Lomborg’s book, Global Crises, Global Solutions, coming out of the Copenhagen Consensus. Although I had some severe criticisms of that exercise, there were some important positives as well, and the assessment of health initiatives was largely consistent with the priorities identified by the Global Fund. So it seems appropriate to allocate the proceeds to a high-priority good cause.

The appeal will continue until 6pm Sunday Queensland time. I’ve got a few things on over the weekend, but I’ll try to post some updates.

Update 11pm Friday The appeal has barely begun and already cosponsors have promised 80 cents a comment, in addition to my $1. That’s a target of $1800. So please, spread the word.

Update Saturday 4pm I expected to get more comments than last time and fewer cosponsors, having already leaned on the generosity of my regular readers. In fact, it’s been pretty much the reverse. Comments have been a bit slow coming on, but the support from cosponsors has been truly impressive. Roughly in order

An anonymous regular reader has offered 50c per comment
Ken Harwood has offered 20c
Jonathan Lundell has offered 10c
Harry Clarke has offered 20c
Mister z has offered 10c
rdb has offered 10c
Emma has offered up to $100 (not sure what rate)
matthew Klugman has offered 10c

If my arithmetic is right, that’s a total pledge of $2.30 a comment. Given that it looks pretty unlikely that the upper limit is going to be reached, I’ll pitch in another 70c, and bring it up to $3. Is this a bargain, or what?

Update 2pm Sunday We’ve just passed 150 comments, so the amount raised is over $500, which is not bad, although there’s a lot more than this still on the table. Let’s hope we can make at least 200 by 6 pm (four hours to go).

Additional cosponsors

Peter Fuller offers 20 cents per comment – up to 500 ($100)
Bill Gardner offers 0.25 / comment, up to A$100.
Caitlin offers $50 if we reach 500

I forgot to mention in the earlier update that Jack Strocchi has offered 10c, subject to the requirement that I should say something nice about Bill Gates and his charitable efforts. Sooner done than said!

Appeal ended 6pm Sunday A total of 156 comments and a bit over $500 raised. Not as successful as last time, but a good effort nonetheless. Tomorrow, I’ll be getting in touch with the many generous cosponsors to tell them how much they’ve promised. Thanks very much to them, and to everyone who took the time to comment and think a little a bit about the issues. Thanks also to Tim Blair, Mark Bahnisch, Claire from Anggargoon(?) and others who linked. My Trackbacks aren’t working properly so there may be others I’ve missed.

fn1. At my absolute discretion, I’ll delete bots, spammers, repetitive commenters etc. If you don’t trust me to act fairly in this respect, or any other, don’t participate.