Weekend Reflections is on again. Please comment on any topic of interest (civilised discussion and no coarse language, please). Feel free to put in contributions more lengthy than for the Monday Message Board or standard comments.
After the riots
There’s not much to say about the riots that hasn’t already been said, but one point that hasn’t been stressed enough is the small numbers of people actively involved. The crowd at Cronulla on Sunday was large, but it seems that only a couple of hundred were engaged in violence. Similarly, forty car loads of thugs were said to have been involved in the subsequent round of attacks on Monday night. That’s alarming but again it amounts to a couple of hundred people. The same was true in the French riots, which mainly consisted of small groups burning cars under cover of darkness. The availability of mobile phones makes organising this kind of thing a lot easier, and calls for a response. I hope that, in addition to those already charged, the police will pursue everyone involved in this shameful behavior. Many of them have been recorded on film and ought to be easy to identify.
Then there are the instigators of the violence. The senders of SMS messages will no doubt be hard to trace, but there’s no doubt about the role of talkback radio and 2GB in particular. It’s unclear whether Alan Jones or his talkback callers have committed a criminal offence, as suggested in comments here and elsewhere, but if he hasn’t, then the government’s spanking new sedition laws are clearly a dead letter.
The laws governing broadcasting are also relevant. Radio stations like 2GB get free allocations of valuable spectrum under a system of licensing which includes a prohibition on broadcasting matter that is likely to incite violence. If this system is to be maintained, 2GB should be stripped of its license by the Australian Broadcasting Authority for broadcasting people like Jones.
Christmas Charity Appeal
I’m always interested in new ways to raise money for charitable causes using blogs. Tim Worstall has a plan which involves referral bonuses for those signing up for Google’s Adsense account. If you’re thinking of including ads on your site, you can do a bit of good on the way.
Summer schedule
I’m going to practise what I preach and take it a bit easier over the summer. That includes a less regular schedule for blog posting from now until I get back to full speed some time in January. I plan to keep the regular open threads going, and I’ll also be happy to publish guest posts (subject to the usual blog rules).
It should be easy enough to keep things going along in my semi-absence. Two threads have managed to pass 200 comments with only occasional intervention from me, and with the usual wanderings off-topics. A two-line post on Peak Oil has produced 210 comments on such issues as the electrical conductivity of gold and the theory of market failure, but is still focused on energy issues. A piece on American labour markets turned into a pile-on demonstrating the statistical illiteracy of Donald Luskin. That’s how it goes.
Monday message board
It’s time, once again for the Monday Message Board. As usual, civilised discussion and no coarse language, please.
What I'm reading, and more
I’ve been very slack about this regular feature, but I’m encouraged to persevere by the discovery that it really annoys a certain class of semi-literate blogger. This soi-disant (look it up, Richie), purveyor of right-wing rants links to me, objecting to ‘pretencious bloggers‘ who discuss what they’ve been reading, and asks:
How often would a blogger who goes to effort of providing his current reading material list a title like The Da Vinci Code?
If Richie knew how to use Google, he’d know the answer was Once – do you think I’m going to reread Dan Brown?
Anyway, what I’ve been reading this week is The Republican War on Science by Chris Mooney. Mooney does a great job documenting the postmodernist and anti-science stance of US Republicans on issues like global warming and evolution, reproduced in Australia by commentators like Andrew Bolt.
Meanwhile, on the movie front, I finally hired Heathers which was great. My son and I also watched Team America which was fun, if crass – I guess it’s the kind of satire you can take either way.
What I’m reading, and more
I’ve been very slack about this regular feature, but I’m encouraged to persevere by the discovery that it really annoys a certain class of semi-literate blogger. This soi-disant (look it up, Richie), purveyor of right-wing rants links to me, objecting to ‘pretencious bloggers‘ who discuss what they’ve been reading, and asks:
How often would a blogger who goes to effort of providing his current reading material list a title like The Da Vinci Code?
If Richie knew how to use Google, he’d know the answer was Once – do you think I’m going to reread Dan Brown?
Anyway, what I’ve been reading this week is The Republican War on Science by Chris Mooney. Mooney does a great job documenting the postmodernist and anti-science stance of US Republicans on issues like global warming and evolution, reproduced in Australia by commentators like Andrew Bolt.
Meanwhile, on the movie front, I finally hired Heathers which was great. My son and I also watched Team America which was fun, if crass – I guess it’s the kind of satire you can take either way.
US backdown on post-Kyoto agreement
Today’s papers report contradictory assessments of the latest climate talks in Montreal. The NY TImes reports that the US Administration has backed down on attempts to stop negotiations for the setting of new targets for the post-Kyoto period. The US was apparently left out on a limb by China and Australia, its main allies in attempts to stop any real action, neither of which were prepared to join the US and Saudi Arabia in walking out of the talks. The result is likely to be a slight softening of language in the final agreement, but determined attempts to sabotage the process have failed.
It’s noteworthy that, despite a lot of speculation that Tony Blair was preparing the ground for a capitulation to the Bush Administration, nothing of the kind actually happened, and the US stance was repeatedly and vigorously attacked by nearly all the participants in the conference, including British delegates.
On the other hand, Australia’s environment minister was reported in today’s SMH as saying that the Kyoto protocol was almost dead
A number of [countries] are saying ‘Look, we made a mistake. We don’t think that it’s worth opening up a new negotiation about a future commitment when the commitments we have today are looking so unreasonable’,
The only support I can find for Campbell’s statement in the NYT report is the observation that the agreement on negotations does not include a specific date for ending talks, reflecting the difficulties in meeting existing targets.
An alternative interpretation is that Campbell’s statement is designed to give him cover with the domestic anti-Kyoto lobby for his break with the US position at the talks, which undoubtedly contributed to the American backdown. If so, good for him – he’s been about as good a minister as possible, given the Howard government’s generally bad position.
Overall, the outcome of these talks was about the best that could be hoped for. Undoubtedly, the accumulation of evidence over the past couple of years, to the point where no-one who is both well-informed and honest can deny the reality of human-caused global warming, has contributed to this outcome, despite the obvious reluctance of governments everywhere to do anything painful.
Weekend reflections
Weekend Reflections is on again. Please comment on any topic of interest (civilised discussion and no coarse language, please). Feel free to put in contributions more lengthy than for the Monday Message Board or standard comments.
Income and Consumption Inequality (crossposted at CT)
I’ve spent a lot of time trying to work out what’s been going on with income and consumption inequality in the United States. Partly that’s because the subject is of interest in itself and partly because social and economic developments in Australia often (not always) follow the lead of the US.
However, there seem to be lots of contradictions in the data, and between data and popular perceptions, for example regarding social mobility and consumption inequality. I’ve finally managed to sort out what seems (to me, at any rate) to be a coherent account of what’s going on. A list of the main points follows, with supporting links, some of which may require registration/subscription. I’ve tried to indicate which bits of the story reflect my judgements, and which are drawn from the literature.
Comments and criticism on this are most welcome.
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