One for the Aussies

I thought Australian politics had become surreal when George Bush and John Howard were seen planting a tree together in Washington and a reporter from commercial television said the two men did it to show how deeply rooted their relationship is.

From Martin Flanagan's column in today's Age, on the new and entirely foolish ABC policies for countering "bias" in news, current affairs and satire. The whole thing is worth your attention, as is Mr Flanagan's recent giving of the Stephen Murray-Smith Memorial Lecture.

The Howard Government chose not to be represented at the Wave Hill commemoration, an event said to signify the birth of the Australian reconciliation movement. As Peter Garrett, Labor’s shadow spokesman on reconciliation, pointed out to me at the event: he has no-one to shadow. The fact that the Howard Government has no Minister for Reconciliation is one of its most commendably honest acts, but what does it mean in real terms? It means, according to Patrick Dodson, that there is no dialogue. I have a saying: if you want to see white Australia - and by white Australia I mean John Howard’s Australia, which obviously includes people who are not white - step over into black Australia, then look back. What you see is a government that has no regard whatsoever for the thoughts and opinions of the people with whom you are standing as fellow Australians...

In the book I have written with Tom [Uren] I quote cartoonist Michael Leunig as saying the difficulty in working in the Australian media at this time is that we are expected to be moderate in a radical age. I find it highly significant that the two people I consider to have been the most serious critics of the Howard government over the past decade, Robert Manne and Malcolm Fraser, are both classical conservatives. We have all watched the many attempts made to make it appear that both these men have 'turned' or 'gone to the left' when an examination of their records shows they are simply applying the same principles they have always applied to the changing world around them. In the course of this lecture I hope I can appeal to decent conservatives.

Missing Creek

I don't know if any of my few visitors are regular readers of Chris Clarke's excellent weblog of poetry, nature writing and occasional commentary, Creek Running North. Unfortunately if you're not, you may not get the chance to become one, at least for some time. This utterly bites:

After family discussion regarding a commenter's threat of violence against our dog, Creek Running North has been taken offline.

Mr Clarke's beloved dog, Zeke, is an aged and frail shepherd, and his recent ill-health has been something of a concern for CRN's readers (while inspiring a number of fine posts from Mr Clarke including an extraordinary poem about past days of running we now can't reread). Presumably, recognising this, the tool who made the threat thinks they've been very clever in finding the right button to push. Well, at least as clever as a Skinner pigeon.

Creek Running North will stay in the blogroll in the hope of its return, or in remembrance.

Update 29/10: Well, turns out CRN shrugged this off so fast they were back up the day after I posted (factoring in the International Date Line). Then it took me five days to notice. So we've got that going for us. Check out Zeke's poem of disdain.

You Are Here

From Stephen Poole's review of The View From the Centre of the Universe: Discovering Our Extraordinary Place in the Cosmos by Joel Primack and Nancy Ellen Abrams:

[O]ne of the book's most interesting and useful ideas [is] that of "scale confusion". The authors explain how in physics, for example, the strong atomic force is irrelevant outside the nucleus, and gravity is irrelevant at tiny distances (until the very smallest). Things in general are only important at certain scales...

Scale confusion reappears in the book's final section, which seeks to apply our new cosmic insights to life right here, right now. "Since civilisations cannot behave like individuals and vice versa," the authors argue, "to describe individual acts as civilisational may be a kind of scale chauvinism (the logical fallacy in which a favourite size-scale is considered more fundamental than the others)." Politicians are incontinent scale chauvinists, always muddling concepts of individuals, families, nations and civilisations to deleterious effect.

But as Mr Poole points out, the author's search for cosmic meaning involves scale confusion, and I would say the very notion that humans should find meaning in their lives by convincing themselves they are central to the universe is saturated with it. Human meaning exists at the human scale. The cosmos can look after itself.

Myself, I see a lot of scale confusion in the anthropic principle, the ultimate expression of human cosmic centrality. Here the (supposed) slim probability of humanity's existence, when coupled with the importance of this fact to us, is meant to suggest that it cannot be mere chance that the Earth had developed to be capable of sustaining intelligent life on it. Of course, the chance that the Earth might have proved inhospitable is one calculated on the cosmic scale, while the fact that it did not is important only to us. Similarly, that the universe was one in which life might eventually come to be is a matter of great significance for living things, so if we were to accept that a universe such as ours coming into existence is a one-in-a-billion (or some other very large number) chance, that it did so might suggest some special feature of physics that fore-ordained life, or perhaps even the presence of conscious design behind it all, until one realises that all potential universes are equal in the eyes of the cosmos and ones that support life are only distinguishable from the welter by ourselves. To draw conclusions from the small probability of ending up with the life-friendly physics of our universe, or an Earth that had not been stripped of life by the slings and asteroids of outrageous fortune (yet), is rather like suggesting there must be something peculiarly portentous in my now typing the word "hedgehog", given how unlikely it is that eons of cosmic and planetary development, natural selection and human history would lead to the precise point where I would type that word rather than, say, type "squid" or "underfelt", or have gone to bed already and not bothered with this silly blog, or have been an intelligent semi-aquatic dolphinoid whistling a dissertation on kelp derivatives*. If there is nothing to choose between alternatives, then the fact that each is highly unlikely does not mean that one out of all the others happening is a matter of significance. The fact that a universe in which life can exist is (perhaps) only one possibility among many, many others is a matter only significant to us, and it is the height of egotism for us to apply that significance at higher scales. We got lucky; simple as that.

In its way, the anthropic principle is the mother of all apophenia, a gigantic case of false syncronicity. If after getting onto a plane while feeling a bit nervous, you fly through an airpocket and get a nasty jolt, you might imagine your anxiety was the result of some sort of precognition, forgetting that you'd felt nervous at the beginning of every other flight during which nothing frightening had happened. Similarly we can be sure nobody is remarking the particular kind of formless void their universe turned out to be seems very unlikely when they consider all the alternatives, perhaps significantly so; the expression of that fallacy is confined to universes and planets like our own, at least until the next asteroid arrives.

* Or, as the Russian scientist from Fred Hoyle's The Black Cloud argues in mocking his colleague's assertion that the cloud might be intelligent because it is heading towards Earth, it would be like claiming intelligence guides the path of a tennis ball rolled along a lawn and stopping on one particular blade of grass. "Why that one? Why not one of million others? Oh, it must be directed! What a bloody argument!" You'll notice this is an analogy that manages to avoid degenerating into idle aquatic anthropomorphism.

If I Was American I'd Mention Kool-Aid

Reading the Herald's letters page today I wondered if John Brennan, 2GB program director, was taking a leaf out of the book of Captain Lloyd Bucher (see below) when he deliberately filled his confession to the North Koreans with absurd nonsense to signal it had been coerced. How else would one explain this astonishing paragraph in Mr Brennan's pre-emptive strike on Chris Masters' Jonestown?

There are remorseless attacks on this man by his critics. He reminds me of another man some 2000 years ago who had the worst interpretations put upon His kindest actions, yet He went on; who had His words warped, twisted, falsely reported, minimised, yet He went on; was slighted, even laughed to scorn when He gave of His very best, yet He went on.

It would be pretty churlish to imagine Mr Brennan seriously intended to compare this hate-mongering mouth-for-sale to Jesus Christ, never mind the ratings he pulls in.

By the way, apologies for the rather lame title of this post but I couldn't quite bring myself to call it "No, a carpenter; not a cottager..." as I first intended. Although apparently I can bring myself to point that out.

Update: Other Herald letter writers respond to Mr Brennan.

Serving the Hungry Mile

Here's Chris Graham, editor of the National Indigenous Times, commenting in today's Crikey about Paul Keating's reaction to the decision to name East Darling Harbour, known during the Depression as the Hungry Mile, after Barangaroo, the wife of Bennelong (particularly PK's crack that "if the NSW Government is having pangs of colonial conscience, it can support the Perth Aborigines against the Western Australian Government in the Noongar appeal. That would be useful rather than trivial."):

The former PM makes an excellent point. White Australia has a very nasty habit of embracing Aboriginal culture when it suits, then stomping all over it when it thinks there’s cash or land involved.

...

For a start, it’s grossly offensive to Aboriginal people to name someone who is deceased (which is why place names have almost always been based on Aboriginal words, not individuals). But given that the average blackfella spends as much time worshipping the memory of Bennelong and his wife as they do handing out how-to-vote cards for John Howard, it probably won’t offend too deeply.

Because, you see, to quote the Herald, Bennelong was "the Aborigine adopted by the first white settlers." In other words, he was a ‘jacky jacky’. A blackfella who gave aid and comfort to the enemy.

It’s no coincidence that the first black man to help the white invaders has been immortalised by that most odious of institutions, the Bennelong Society. And it’s ironic that his wife is now being immortalised by that other great western institution, the shopping mall.

It’s a very ‘white’ thing to honour Aboriginal culture with the name of someone who helped decimate it.

The Sacred Honor of the Great Speckled Bird

Over at Millard Fillmore's Bathtub, Ed Darrell, with apophenically good timing, brings us the story of the USS Pueblo, captured in January 1968 by the North Koreans and held for eleven months. Despite mistreatment, the Pueblo's crew took advantage of their hosts' cultural confusion to register their disdain of the attempts to turn their capture to the DPRK's propaganda advantage, such as when they convinced their captors that photographs taken to show how well they were being treated would be enhanced if the crew gave the middle finger salute that was a well-known Hawaiian good luck sign. Pressured to sign a confession of American wrong-doing, the Pueblo's captain, Lloyd Bucher, made sure to fill it with florid absurdities and double meanings, such as swearing its truth "on the sacred honor of the Great Speckled Bird". His description of the mission briefing was worthy of Spike Milligan:

Our first stop was Hawaii where I visited the kingpin of all provocateurs, including spies. None other than Fleet General Barney Google. He was all I had been told, sly, cunning, closed mouthed, bulbous nosed, smelling of musty top secrets and some foul smelling medicine that kept him going twenty hours a day in pursuit of the perfect spy mission. He talked haltingly with me but persuasively about our forthcoming mission. “By God, Bucher, I want you to get in there and be elusive, spy them out, spy out their water, look sharp for signs of electronic saline water traps. You will be going to spy out the DPRK. By the sainted General Bullmoose we must learn why they are so advanced in the art of people’s defense.”

...

Surely we had to find out how come such a newly created government could lead its peoples so quickly into the number one position. As we went about detecting this valuable information, particularly the oceanic salinity, density, ionic dispersion rate, humpback whale counts, both low and high protoplasmic unicellular uglena and plankton counts. This information was of the highest value to our own scientists for the development of war mongering at sea when no one was looking.

Mr Darrell has more.

Evolving Self-Deception

At Seed Magazine, evolutionary biologist Robert Trivers and Noam Chomsky in conversation about deceit and self deception:

RT: It's the psychology of deceit and self-deception. When you start talking about groups, there are some very interesting analogies. Psychologists have shown that people make these verbal switches when they're in a we/they situation, in a your-group-versus-another situation.

NC: Groups that are simply set up for the experiment, you mean?

RT: It can be. You can also do it experimentally, or you can be talking about them and their group versus someone that's not a member of their group.

But you have the following kinds of verbal things that people do, apparently quite unconsciously. If you're a member of my group and you do something good, I make a general statement: "Noam Chomsky is an excellent person." Now if you do something bad, I give a particular statement, "Noam Chomsky stepped on my toe."

But it's exactly reversed if you're not a member of my group. If you're not a member of my group and you do something good I say, "Noam Chomsky gave me directions to MIT." But if he steps on my toe I say, "He's a lousy organism," or "He's an inconsiderate person."

So we generalize positively to ourselves, particularize negative and reverse it when we're talking about other people.

NC: Sounds like normal propaganda. Islamic people are all fascists. The Irish are all crooks.

RT: Yes, exactly. Generalize a negative characteristic in the other. Another thing that comes to mind with respect to the Iraq case: There's evidence suggesting that when you're contemplating something—whether or marry Suzy, for instance—you're in a deliberative stage. And you are considering options more or less rationally.

Now, once you decide to go with Suzy, you're in the instrumental phase; you don't want to hear about the negative side. Your mood goes up, and you delete all the negative stuff and you're just, "Suzy's the one."

Also some interesting stuff about the selective pressure for self-deception deriving from the benefits of over-confidence in conflict and courtship, although Robert Trivers does admit that much of it is "rank speculation". Personally I tend to see the self-deception of leaders that Noam Chomsky talks about as more institutional in nature than biological, the result of hierarchical structures that reward "decisiveness" and penalise admissions of doubt or error, part and parcel to the dominant and very strange ideas about what leadership is and what ruling structures are for.

Via the nonist.

"Partisan Redistricting" Sounds Nicer

From an article in Good Magazine, four examples of ludicrous US gerrymandering, including:

TENNESSEE’S 7th What seems to have happened here is that, upon discovering that the white suburbs of Memphis did not contain enough people to constitute a congressional district, the gerrymanderers simply decided to also include the white Nashville suburbs. That Nashville is halfway across the state didn’t seem to matter at all.

And we learn something every day: Gerry's name was pronounced with a hard G. Now I can annoy people even more than when I pronounce rationale as the Italian word it actually was.

Dead Legends and Black Sheep

For reasons best known to herself, Germaine Greer has bothered to pen a less-than-sympathetic piece about the late Steve Irwin for the Grauniad and unsurprisingly the local boys have been ramping up the outrage. (Incidentally, I can't help thinking the truncated version of Greer's spray which ran in the Herald comes across as a bit less sensible than the original.) Now, I happen to think Jack Marx is a bit of a tosser, but he's right on the money with this:

Loudest of all is the Melbourne Herald Sun, who report today that "a storm of fury has erupted over Germaine Greer's criticism of Steve Irwin". In fact, the "storm" was induced by The Herald Sun's own journalists, jumping on the phone to extract whatever inclement weather they could muster from interested (or otherwise) parties. It was a piece whose opinion was decided with or without the phone calls, editorialising thusly:

The expat Aussie, known more these days for her regular bashing of her homeland...hit below the belt as she accused Irwin of sending the wrong message to kids.

This is interesting, for, two years ago, The Herald Sun led the witchhunt for Irwin, Jill Singer hooking in good and proper in an editorial headlined: "Dad's a Drongo". In contrast to Greer's "scathing attack", which at least had the temper to go the issue and not the man, Singer's piece referred to Irwin as "simple-minded", "Neanderthal", "a Tarzanesque, chest-beating reductionist", a "dangerous dropkick" and a "dill", before going on to declare that "this foolish pair" of parents were setting a lousy example indeed, their actions comparable to some of the world's more loathed personages:

Steve has a lot in common with his heroes. John Howard toughens up the babies of asylum seekers by locking them behind razor wire from the time they're born, while George Bush assures the world that Iraqi and Afghani babies must be bombed for their own good.

The piece went on to compare Irwin to Michael Jackson.

...

What's happened between then and now? Nothing much, really - Irwin never changed his approach to life, and, as far as I know, never issued anything close to an apology for the way he lived.

What's changed is that, today, he's dead, and death sells by the bushell.

But you can't sell a dead "drongo", so it's "hero", "legend" and "larrikin" all the way, and anyone who doesn't toe that line is a creep.

And in further media-related matters:

Red Ted, Play School and hidden agendas
Piers Akerman
...the harmless happy family content has fallen victim to the nauseating politically-correct agenda that drives so much of the ABC’s news and current affairs programming on radio and television.
— The Daily Telegraph, Red Ted, Play School and hidden agendas, 29th August, 2006

This is what had Piers searching out the commissars of political correctness [said Media Watch].

Baa baa woolly sheep have you any wool? Yes sir yes sir three bags full..one full for the jumpers and one for the socks and one for the little girl with holes in her socks.
— Play School, ABC TV, 23rd August, 2006

As Piers wrote, "You get the drift".

Black sheep are out…
But if black sheep have been magically erased, it seems likely that words such as "master", "dame" and "sir" have also been banned for fear of upsetting the sensitivities of the ABC's young audience.

But as the Head of ABC children's programming pointed out in a letter to the Tele:

We did sing "Baa baa woolly sheep", as part of a segment related to wool, on Play School, as Piers Akerman states in his article headed "Red Ted, Play School and hidden agendas" (The Daily Telegraph, August 29).
However, far from the traditional version of Baa Baa Black Sheep being magically erased -- along with the master and the dame and sir -- it was just 34 seconds later in the very same program we sang: "Baa baa black sheep, Have you any wool, Yes sir yes sir, Three bags full. One for the master, One for the dame, One for the little boy who lives down the lane."
When it comes to Piers's next article, as we say on Play School, he may need a grown-up to help him.

I'd like to say this conclusively demonstrates that Piers Akerman has an attention span somewhat less than that of a small child but, as it was apparently the idiot reader who sent him the tip-off who failed to watch the sheep song til the end, I'll have to content myself with merely implying it.

Alexander Steps On A Rake

It takes more than factional support and slavish loyalty to the leader to make it as a Howard minister: you also need immaculate timing.

My point is this: in a grown-up society such as our own, the media cannot expect to get away with parading falsehoods as truths, or ignoring salient facts because they happen to be inconvenient to the line of argument - or narrative - that particular journalists, or media organisations, might choose to adopt on any given controversy or issue.

- Alexander Downer, speech to the National Newspaper Publishers' Conference, 28 August 2006

The Foreign Affairs Minister, Alexander Downer, issued instructions to suppress a damning letter about the hunt for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq after the war, a former senior diplomat says.

Dr John Gee, an expert on chemical weapons, worked with the US-led weapons hunter, the Iraq Survey Group, after the war and wrote the critical six-page letter when he decided to resign in March 2004. In it he warned the Federal Government the hunt was, "fundamentally flawed" and there was a "reluctance on the part of many here and in Washington to face the facts" that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction.

Dr Gee recorded in an email soon after that "Downer has issued instructions it [my letter] is not to be distributed to anyone". He wrote to a colleague in the Iraq Survey Group that a senior official in the Office of National Assessments, the Prime Minister's intelligence advisory agency, had told him about Mr Downer's instructions.

- Sydney Morning Herald, "Weapons cover-up revealed", 31 August 2006

I doubt this will threaten Downer's position. I certainly hope it won't; I'd hate to lose the opportunity to use the phrase "mendacious buffoon" on a regular basis.

Verboten

Let's try a thought experiment. Oh, wait, we don't need to:

On the Sunday Arts program, host Helen Razer was interviewing film director Bob Weis about his documentary Women of the Sun — 25 Years Later, charting the stories of Aboriginal women.

Razer noted the film compared his family's history as Holocaust survivors to the contemporary situation of Aborigines in Australia.

Weis said he would like to make one more "conceptual leap", to which Razer replied "be my guest".

Indigenous actress Justine Saunders sat beside Weis and encouraged him as he said: "That while David Irving — the Holocaust denier — sits in prison … ", before he was cut off.

Mr Weis said yesterday he uttered the words "… the Australian Government …", but that did not go to air.

Razer hit the dump button, saying on air: "I can't possibly let you say that", before switching to pre-recorded audio.

Weis and Saunders allege Razer then said: "I will lose my job." This did not make it to air.

"Is it a job worth having?" Weis asked her, also off air, before storming out of the booth.

What a good question.

Weis yesterday revealed he was going to say: "That while David Irving — the Holocaust denier — sits in prison, the Australian Government put our chief Holocaust denier on the board of the ABC."

Yes, well. Indeed.

Can't a Guy Name Himself after Suicidal Rodents Without Fear of Competition?

What an unfortunate coincidence.

A blog devoted to issues in language, epistemology, metaphysics, and mind.

Sounds demmed interesting, tho'.