Dresden gets to decide

German Election: Will Dresden Decide Germany's Next Chancellor?

In truth, it is the complicated permutations of the German electoral system that have turned Dresden into such a hot button area. Although only one representative will actually be elected in the district, Germany's 'second vote' system -- in which individuals vote for a party they want to see in parliament -- could produce three extra parliamentary seats for Dresden. These are known as 'overhang' seats and are created to reflect more accurately and more democratically a party's true support. And it is these seats that are being eyed by the politicians. The current breakdown of seats in parliament is SPD 222, CDU 225. So those three seats could make a big difference and transform Dresden into the German kingmaker.

and:

Indeed, there are already murmurings of a new Dresden "poker game" in which the Left Party might be convinced to encourage its voters to vote for the SPD. Its own candidate, Katja Kipping, is already assured a parliamentary seat due to the second vote system. So that leaves the party and its voters free to maneuver.

The Dresden electorate has one deputy and last time the CDU won it with 33.8% of the vote. That could change if, for instance the Left Party or the Greens asked their people to vote SPD. The electorate will also, effectively generate 1 or more extra deputies through its list votes. A huge turnout for the SPD or the Left could feasibly generate a third seat. It's where a whole lot of bets break down and the great weakness of MMP, using first past the post to elect district MPs, suddenly comes into play.

I am beginning to suspect the new Bundestag may play out without electing a chancellor. If they cannot do that within a fixed time the Federal President has to dissolve them and call another election.

German election result

Live News Blog: The Latest News on Germany's Parliamentary Elections

Public broadcaster ZDF and Forschungsgruppe Wahlen have released their first exit poll:

CDU - 37%
SPD - 33%
FDP - 10.5%
Greens - 8 %
Left Party/PDS - 8%

In Germany only the lower house, the Bundestag is elected. Voting is by MMP as in New Zealand. The system was developed in postwar Germany as a reaction to the 'excessive' proportional representation in the Weimar Republic. The makers of the German constitution believed Hitler's rise was partly explained by the instability caused by a multiplicity of small parties in the Reichstag. I suspect it had more to with roughly 1/6 the of MPs being communists and anther 1/6 being rightists. If you're trying to find half the deputies and 1/3 of them are unacceptable life gets tough. You end up with the President appointing chancellors by decree, which is what Hindenburg resorted to with the results we now know.

The Bundeswahlleiter still has no official results up.

The BBC has a rundown on the German parties. That exit poll would leave the CDU/ThisFPD with 47% of seats where they need 51%. The SPD/Greens have 41%. How the Left/PDS will jump between abstaining and supporting the SPD/Greens is literally anybody's guess. This is a much messier result than New Zealand, especially when the CDU went into the campaign with a 20% lead.

Live News Blog: The Latest News on Germany's Parliamentary Elections

(6:32 p.m.) Cheers for SPD-chairman Franz M�unterfering, but otherwise restrained reactions in the Willy-Brandt House at the SPD's election party. With the weak results for their own party, the members are calculating that the crisis won't run too deep. Cheers break out whenever a new low number gets reported for CDU/CSU. 'The Union has lost,' is the tenor among the party faithful. And: more and more people are talking eagerly about a 'stoplight' (Red-Green-Yellow between the Social Democrats, Greens and FDP) coalition.'

A CDU/FPD coalition would have been a black-yellow government. There is some chance of a black/red grand coalition, which would translate into Australian terms as a Howard/Beasley government. Who says contemporary politics lacks colour?

The Bundeswahlleiter is still strangely silent.

Der Bundeswahlleiter:

WIESBADEN/BERLIN - As reported by the Federal Returning Officer, 41.9 percent of the persons entitled to vote have exercised their voting right until 2 p.m. (CEST) at today's Bundestag election. The votes cast by postal voters have not been included yet.The Federal Returning Officer has ascertained voter participation in co-operation with the Land returning officers on a representative basis for the entire Federal Republic of Germany.In the 2002 Bundestag elections, voter participation until 2 p.m. was 42.8 percent; total voter participation was 79.1 percent.The Federal Returning Officer asks all persons entitled to vote who have not voted yet to exercise their right to vote. The polling stations will be open until 6 p.m.

There are seat projections floating round the international and German media, but they're all based on exit polls at this stage. The CDU is now speaking about a black/red grand coalition with some enthusiasm. Deutsche Welle has a live radio feed.

Live News Blog: The Latest News on Germany's Parliamentary Elections

(6:48 p.m.) The head of the Free Democratic Party, Guido Westerwelle, sees his party as the 'victor of the day.'

The FDP is saying they will not join a stoplight coalition with the SPD and Greens. They plan on heading for opposition if the black/yellow coalition does not get an absolute majority.

From Deutsche Welle's audio feed at 7:44 local time. Schroeder just claimed victory. Merkel, the CDU candidate for chancellor, claimed victory at 7:01 pm German time.

Pope Stimulates Election Betting

Germany isn't exactly known as a den of gambling addicts, but after betting and winning that native son Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger be elected to the seat of Peter, more Germans than ever have been drawn to gambling on this Sunday's federal elections.

Well, it's an ill wind... The pope's brother confirmed that His Holiness, still enrolled in Bavaria, will not vote in this particular conclave.

Live News Blog: The Latest News on Germany's Parliamentary Elections

(7:26 p.m.) Despite his party's poor showing, Chancellor Gerhard Schr�der of the Social Democrats told party supporters Sunday night that he should remain chancellor. 'I feel this validates ... that in the next four years, the country will have a stabile government under my leadership.'

Schroeder and Merkel are both now saying they will negotiate with everyone except the Left/PDS.

The Results feed from the Bundeswahlleiter is interesting because the show the CSU, a Bavarian regional party usually counted as part of the CDU, as a separate party and they also show shifts in support from the last election. Yahoo has a self-updating version. Schroeder is using the alleged separateness of the CSU to claim the SPD as the alrgt party and threfore the legitimate candidate for the chancery.

Essentially, this election marks the failure of MMP. It was designed to avoid the Weimar problem of finding a majority government from only 2/3 of the deputies. The Left Party is held together by opposition to globalisation and economic change. In a sense it is an exact analogue to One Nation, although its formal positioning is left-wing rather than right-wing. Their polices are about as realistic as One Nation's were. All other parties refuse to negotiate with the Left Party, an amalgam of former SDP members and East German ex-communists. This means that today's Germany faces the Weimar problem all over again - finding a majority government from 90% of the deputes. The results would have been quite different under STV, but I'll go into that in more detail in another post.

The Vote in Germany: Preliminary Results Show Schr�der, Merkel Stalemate

Sunday's results are not yet final. The results from 220,000 voters in Dresden will not be known for another two weeks -- votes that could be vital for the final outcome. Last week, far-right candidate Kerstin Lorenz of National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD) died of a stroke while giving a campaign speech, meaning that ballots there had to be reprinted and the vote delayed until Oct. 2.

Why do I feel the people of Dresden will see an amazing level of plitical camapigning in the next few days?

A lot of it is now only historical (except in Dresden) but Deutsche Welle has an English language election podcast.

the dunes! the dunes! I mean the wires, are alive with, um

Dune tunes...the greatest hits

It might not knock Coldplay or Kanye West off the top of charts, but physicists who say they have cracked the riddle of 'singing' sand dunes are compiling a CD of sand music. The team say their new theory allows them to predict the notes that different dunes will make.

Sand dunes in certain parts of the world are notorious for the noises they make as sand avalanches down their sides. Some emit low powerful booms, others sound like drum rolls or galloping horses, and some are even tuneful. These dune songs have been reported to last for up to 15 minutes and can sound as loud as a low-flying aeroplane. Physicists know it is the avalanches that set the grains humming, but the precise mechanism has remained controversial.

St�phane Douady of the French national research agency CNRS and his colleagues shipped sand from Moroccan singing dunes back to his lab to investigate. They found that they could play notes by pushing the sand by hand, or with a metal handle. That put to rest one theory that the noise was the result of the entire dune resonating.

You might think that orchestrating a sand dune is the height of musical eccentricity. You would be wrong...

NZ election results

At 11:42 in New Zealand the count, on 99.9% of polling places, was:

• Labour Party - votes 40.60%, electorate MPs 31, list MPs19, total MPs 50 (52)
  
• National Party - votes 39.76%, electorate MPs 31, list MPs 18, total MPs 49 (27)
  
• New Zealand First Party - 5.86%, electorate MPs 0, list MPs 7, total MPs 7 (13)
  
• Green Party - votes 5.09%, electorate MPs 0,, list MPs 6, total MPs 6 (9)
  
• Mâori Party - 1.95%, electorate MPs 4, list MPs 0, total MPs 4 (0)
  
• United Future New Zealand - 2.74%, electorate MPs 1, list MPs 2, total MPs 3 (9)
  
• ACT New Zealand - 1.52% electorate MPs 1, list MPs, total MPs 2 (9)
  
• Jim Anderton's Progressive - 1.21%, electorate MPs 1, list MP 0s, total MPs 1 (2)
  

The bracketed numbers show the seats held by in the old parliament. Roughly, the minor parties of the right have haemorrhaged support to National and many New Zealand First voters appear to have transferred to the Maori Party. National have almost doubled their seats, but largely at the expense of smaller right-wing parties.

The Australian media are carrying fairly inaccurate reports that the election result will not be known for days. That is wrong. It will take some time to form a government as the two major parties negotiate for support, but it's hard to see how anyone but Helen Clarke can emerge as prime minister. The election result, however, is likely to be very close to these results and should be finalised within 72 hours.

Labour and National correspond fairly closely to the ALP and the Liberals, although NZ Labour is a long way to the ALP's left and National is probably slightly to the Liberals' right. New Zealand First is essentially a personal vehicle for Winston Peters who was formerly a National MP. The Green Party needs no explanation. The Maori Party broke with Labour over the foreshore and seabed controversy and because they felt Labour was attacking Maori rights. United Future New Zealand is a centrist and Christian Party that, in some ways, resembles Family First. ACT New Zealand and Jim Anderton's Progressives are personal vehicles led by former Labour MPs representing, respectively Rogernomics and opposition to globalisation.

Clarke starts from a base of 50 seats and needs 12 for a majority of 62. Clarke has an existing coalition with the Greens which leaves her looking for 6 MPs. New Zealand First said before the election they would support the largest party which is 7 more, although United Future say they will not support a government with Green MPs. It is impossible to see the Maori Party supporting Brash's project to abolish the Maori seats and end any special standing for the Maori people. A Green/UFNZ/Maori Party arrangement gives Clarke a majority of 63 without New Zealand First.

Brash starts from a base of 49 and needs 13 to govern. His only certain partner is ACT New Zealand and that leaves him 11 short. Even if Winston Peters, the head of New Zealand First, persuades himself (as he has on past occasions) to support a National Party government Brash is still 4 short and looking for Green support. Even if Brash cobbled together a New Zealand First/Act New Zealnd/United Future New Zealand arrangement he would still need one more MP. Where would he find them? The Greens, the Maori Party and Jim Anderton all stand to Labour's left.

The unicameral New Zealand parliament is elected by the Mixed Member Proportional system used in Germany and other countries. The parliament comprises 63 electorate MPs, 7 Maori MPs and (usually) 51 list MPs. The electorate MPs and Maori MPs are elected in single member districts by first past the post. Every New Zealander gets an electorate vote and a list vote. Maori can decide to enrol in the local electorate of in one of the Maori electorates. The list votes are counted in a single electorate comprising the whole country. The list MPs are elected in proportion to the party's share of the list, but their party has to to either win an electorate or get more than 5% of the national vote. The number of list MPs varies slightly according to the performance of the party in the electorate vote. Any Australian journalist who begins an election report with a complaint about the complexity of the system is only telling you they're too lazy to do any research.

All in all, this looks like a famous victory for Helen Clarke who has almost certainly won a third term as prme minister. I'll update the results tomorrow but I do not expect them to vary much from now.

Update
The comments at John Quiggan include some misguided souls who say the way the NZ parliament is elected is better than STV. I may post some thoughts on MMP v STV tomorrow, after I've tracked down some detail on the German election.

Update 2
At 12:05 am on 18/09/2005 NZ time, the results in terms of numbers of seats had not changed. there are 35000 overseas voters on the roll, and it's not clear from the Electoral Commission website how many of these have been counted. Special votes, by electors not on the roll with a claim to vote, are in the sme situation. 25000 ovrseas votes are unlikely to change this result, but we'll know more tomorrow.

There's been some really bad reporting on Wnston Peters, leader of New Zealand First. Natonal defeated him in his electorate of Tauranga. However, his party won list seats and he is the number 1 candidate for those seats so his election as a list MP is assured.

I'll update again tomorrow when the situation with special and overseas votes should be clearer and I've worked out what the Bundeswahlleiter is reporting in Germany.

the ostrich in the greenhouse

Warming world blamed for more strong hurricanes

Worldwide since the 1970s, there has been a near-doubling in the number of Category 4 and 5 storms %u2013 the strength that saw Hurricane Katrina do such damage to the US Gulf coastline late in August 2005.

Peter Webster of the Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, says the trend is global, has lasted over several decades and is connected to a steady worldwide increase in tropical sea temperatures. Because of all these factors, it is unlikely to be due to any known natural fluctuations in climate such as El Niño, the North Atlantic Oscillation or the Pacific Decadal Oscillation.

"We can say with confidence that the trends in sea surface temperatures and hurricane intensity are connected to climate change," says Webster's co-author Judy Curry, also of the Georgia Institute of Technology. The team looked at the incidence of intense tropical storms and the study results are the strongest affirmation yet that Katrina-level hurricanes are becoming more frequent in a warmer world.

The study finds there has been no general increase in the total number of hurricanes, which are called cyclones when they appear outside the Atlantic. Nor is there any evidence of the formation of the oft-predicted "super-hurricanes". The worst hurricane in any year is usually no stronger than in previous years during the study period.

But the proportion of hurricanes reaching categories 4 or 5 - with wind speeds above 56 metres per second - has risen from 20% in the 1970s to 35% in the past decade.

"This trend has lasted for more than 30 years now. So the chances of it being natural are fairly remote," says Greg Holland of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) at Boulder, Colorado.

Moreover, says Webster, natural fluctuations tend to be localised. "When the east Pacific warms, the west Pacific cools, for instance. But sea surface temperatures are rising throughout the tropics today." The surface waters in the tropical oceans are now around 0.5C warmer during hurricane seasons than 35 years ago.

The International Panel on Climate Change and Australia's own Greenhouse Office both make certain predictions about what the greenhouse world will be like.

More super-hurricanes? Check. More bushfires? Check. More droughts? Check. Greater intensity in all three? Check. Urgent government action to minimise the harm greenhouse will do the planet? Um...

America's Sorrow

The Confucian and Daoist parties at the court of the Emperor Han Chengdi debated the best way to control the flooding of the Yellow River, already known to them as China's Sorrow. Although the Daoists, led by Engineer Jiarang, triumphed at a court conference held in 8 BCE, their success was short-lived and by 58 CE the Confucians were using levees to control the floods. The river deposited silt between the levee banks and after some centuries the bed of the river was higher than the surrounding plains. Sadly the US Army Corps of Engineers had no access to the records of the court conference. and the Mississippi suffered the same fate as the Yellow River.

Role of the Yellow River Basin in Chinese Culture and History

This deep connection between Chinese culture, the Yellow River and flood control can be seen in the Legend of Yu. The Great Yu (c. 2,000 BC) was one of the three early, probably mythical, leaders of China and was known for taming the Yellow River floods using a strategy of channel clearing rather than dike construction. While it is unlikely that Yu, or anyone else, successfully controlled Yellow River flooding by any strategy, the story continues to be told, in part because it carries with it the moral analogy that adverse human nature can be better corrected by guidance (clearing a path) than punishment (constructing a barrier). More fundamentally, the channel-clearing versus dike-construction can also be seen as a reflection of a general philosophical debate in river management which has continued in China for more than 2,000 years between Taoists, with their emphasis on letting nature, human or otherwise, follow its own path and Confucianists, with their desire to channel behavior through virtuous moral codes (Needham 1956).4 The dichotomy of approach can still be seen in the modern debates on Yellow River management. In fact, both the historic and modern debates form part of a broader, and in many ways uniquely Chinese approach to river management predating Confucianism and Taoism of using the river to tame itself.

Differences between ideals and practice not withstanding (Rhoades 1967; Tuan 1968; McNeill 1998), the value of recognizing the role of philosophy in Chinese water management, and the role of water management in Chinese philosophy and culture, is not simply for academic exercise. Rather it highlights a more historically robust and broadly defined concept of integrated water management than exists in the West in which concern is placed not only on basic science, engineering and appropriate management units, but also on a philosophical understanding of man and nature. For example, current Yellow River managers approach the problem of environmental requirements with a Chinese perspective of the interrelationship between man and the environment, and so, define environmental water uses differently than may typically be the case elsewhere. In general, the concept, if not the practice, of environmental water use in China can be considered to contain not only the maintenance of biodiversity and natural ecosystem function, as emphasized in the West, but also the maintenance of the landscape as a place for human habitation and livelihood.

Okay, it was an undergraduate epiphany that all politics is about dike building and channel clearing. It is not an undergraduate epiphany that the Mississippi problem is an issue of the human landscape and not just a question of engineering technique.

The Chinese saw flood disasters as a mark of dynastic failure and the inevitable passage of the mandate of Heaven to a new dynasty. At one level this is just folklore about the anger of Heaven. On the other hand, a failing dynasty usually lost so much revenue to the aristocracy and to corruption they could not maintain the levees. Mengzi argued that: 'Bad rulers suffer not because they get worse weather but because they do not deal properly with the weather they get. A discussion with King Hui of Liang illustrates Mengzi’s view. The king describes how if the year is bad in a certain area, he moves the people elsewhere and he sends grain to the affected area. In spite of this, his people do not increase, and the king complains that Mengzi’s advice – that if you are virtuous your kingdom will benefit – is false. Mengzi responds by saying the king is not good enough, and that praising himself over other rulers is like a deserting soldier who laughs at those who run a little further away. Mengzi affirms the connection between virtue and reward by claiming the king is not virtuous and thus not rewarded.' and wrote:

Dogs and pigs eat the food of people, but you do not realize it is time for gathering, and when men drop dead from starvation by the wayside, you fail to realize that it is time for distribution. People die from starvation on the roads, and you do not issue the stores for them. People die and you say, “It’s not me; it’s the year.” In what way is that different from killing a man by stabbing him, and then saying, “It’s not me; it’s the weapon?

Too Many People in Nature's Way

The more advanced the nations, the bigger the blow may be. Terry Jeggle, a U.N. disaster-reduction planner, cites the New Orleans levee system -- dependent on pumps that run on electricity produced by fuel that must be transported in. One failure will lead to another along that chain.

"Complex systems invite compounding of complexity in consequences, too," said the Geneva-based Jeggle.

Experts fear more is to come.

The scientific consensus expects global warming to intensify storms, floods, heat waves and drought. Climatologists are still researching whether climate change has already strengthened hurricanes, whose energy is drawn from warm ocean waters, or whether the Atlantic Basin and Gulf are witnessing only a cyclical upsurge in intense storms. Computer models of climate change in the decades to come point to more devastating Category 5 storms.

The prospect of more vulnerable populations on a more turbulent Earth has U.N. officials and other advocates pressuring governments to plan and prepare. They cite examples of poorer nations that in ways do a better job than the rich:

• No one was reported killed when Ivan struck Cuba in 2004, its worst hurricane in 50 years and a storm that, after weakening, killed 25 people in the United States. Cuba's warning-evacuation system is minutely planned, even down to neighborhood workers keeping updated charts on which residents need help during evacuations.
  
  
• Along Bangladesh's cyclone coast, 33,000 well-organized volunteers stand ready to shepherd neighbors to raised concrete shelters at the approach of one of the Bay of Bengal's vicious storms.
  
  
• In 2002, Jamaica conducted a full-scale evacuation rehearsal in a low-lying suburb of coastal Kingston, and fine-tuned plans afterward. When Ivan's 20-foot surge destroyed hundreds of homes two years later, only eight people died. Ordinary Jamaicans also are taught search-and-rescue methods and towns at risk have trained flood-alert teams.

A couple of memes are floating down the river of spin pouring out the White House in an apparent attempt to dam a flood of water with a flood of words. The Bush administration's performance does not compare favourably with much less advanced nations. Only last month, China successfully evacuated almost a million people in the face of Typhoon Talim. The nonsense, since disproven, that Louisiana's governor did not declare a state of emergency or request federal help is disproven. The President, Secretary of Homeland Security Chertoff and Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Brown were all warned by the National Hurricane Center well before Katrina's landfall. Why the relief effort was bungled matters, because it will control how the relief effort, and beyond it the reconstruction effort is executed. The only interesting question is why, if the White House has a true excuse, they have resorted to infantile and risible lies.

The White House is now pushing a particularly disastrous idea that FEMA should manage the reconstruction.

Talking Points Memo

Even if FEMA were still a model government agency, as it was by most accounts in the 1990s, this would still be a really, really bad decision. As the title says, FEMA is an emergency management agency, not a reconstruction agency. It doesn't have the organizational structure or competence to run the economy of a significant chunk of the United States for the foreseeable future, which is what this amounts to.

Failed leaders pushing a failed policy through a failed agency, and hoping failed lies will hide their failure.

God blew and they were scattered

Letters from Voltaire, 24 November 1755, describing the great Lisbon earthquake

This is indeed a cruel piece of natural philosophy! We shall find it difficult to discover how the laws of movement operate in such fearful disasters in the best of all possible worlds-- where a hundred thousand ants, our neighbours, are crushed in a second on our ant-heaps, half, dying undoubtedly in inexpressible agonies, beneath débris from which it was impossible to extricate them, families all over Europe reduced to beggary, and the fortunes of a hundred merchants -- Swiss, like yourself -- swallowed up in the ruins of Lisbon. What a game of chance human life is! What will the preachers say -- especially if the Palace of the Inquisition is left standing! I flatter myself that those reverend fathers, the Inquisitors, will have been crushed just like other people. That ought to teach men not to persecute men: for, while a few sanctimonious humbugs are burning a few fanatics, the earth opens and swallows up all alike. I believe it is our mountains which save us from earthquakes.

Personally, I suspect God wanted to encourage the Enlightenment so he flattened Lisbon in order to seed Europe with disbelief.

Boiling Over

Apart from what it revealed of human depravity, Mr. Barry says, the flood of 1927 changed America. It put Herbert Hoover in the White House, even while his duplicity in dealing with blacks helped begin the shift of black voters from the Republicans to the Democrats. It inspired Congress to pass a law putting responsibility for the Mississippi in Federal hands, making it easier for both Congress and the public to accept an even larger Federal presence during the New Deal years. And the pressures the flood brought to bear on the delicate racial fabric of the Deep South caused tears that could never be mended.

Altogether, then, ''Rising Tide'' stands not only as a powerful story of disaster but as an accomplished and important social history, magisterial in its scope and fiercely dedicated to unearthing truth. What the book doesn't do, doesn't intend to do, is to give us much reason to think that humans are ever going to control the river for any length of time (as the floods of 1993 demonstrated once again). The river's power is too great and our dreaming too small (and perhaps too ignoble) seriously to impede the course of what Mark Twain called ''the great Mississippi, the majestic, the magnificent Mississippi rolling its mile-wide tide along.

Octavio Paz on the politics of the 1985 Mexico City earthquake

One of the most significant results of the [1085] earthquake was autonomous action outside of the PRI and the government.

We are in the process of a transformation that began in 1968 with the student revolt. While the student revolt was a leftist revolt, its main demand was welcomed by the Mexican public: democratization.

That revolt instigated the Echeverria 'apertura,' the Lopez-Portillo political reforms and now De La Madrid's proposed changes for more seats in the legislature for the opposition parties. I wrote in 1968 that either we are going to have serious upheavals or we are going to move toward a more modern democracy. Although the effort is too slow for me, I am happy to say that democratization is happening, little by little. We are on the verge of change.

One of the great obstacles to democratic progress in the past has been the weakness of the opposition parties. Now we have
a new phenomenon in Mexico: the democratic right is more powerful than ever before, mainly in the north.

Apocalypse in the USA

The rest of America has rallied. Despite the Lone Ranger rhetoric of freedom, amazing reserves of solidarity bind US society. It starts with neighbourliness, swells into civic pride, and becomes patriotism. My university opened its classes to students displaced from the Gulf Coast, helping to lead a similar movement around the nation. Schools where refugees have taken shelter have done the same. Disaster relief has become a national, rather than a federal, effort. The government is outdone, engulfed and isolated by a wave of sympathy for fellow citizens in distress.

Regional authorities in the Mississippi Delta who failed to foresee the tragedy are, for the moment, escaping most of the resentment. Governor Hailey Barber of Mississippi disarmingly confesses failure while wanting to make up for it. His popular touch comes naturally, where the President's always seems scripted. People believe Mr Barber when he promises that "we're gonna hitch up our britches". Mr Bush, meanwhile, keeps promising a better future, when what the victims want is present relief. His uneasy optimism seems reflected in the gleaming eyes of fat-cat friends, already prowling around for prospective reconstruction contracts.

When the terrorists struck on 9/11, Mr Bush could make any number of mistakes, and still gain in popularity, because there were aliens on hand to hate. He could launch and mismanage wars with impunity, counting on the electorate's fidelity in the face of the foe.

This time Mr Bush cannot rail against God or, with his environmental record, make an enemy of nature. He cannot bomb the sea or invade the wind. God and nature are on the same side; and they no longer look like America's coalition partners. Even in the context of a natural occurrence, where there is no real enemy, people still need to hate and long for vengeance. Slowly, inexorably, with a chilling uniformity, the accusing gazes are focusing on the White House.

Bush could lie his way into Iraq because it is far away and little understood. When he brought the big lie home and tried to privatise social security he was arguing against his own supporters' direct experience and the spin did not work so well. When Spin does not sway the Fox network, the Bush administration, in his father's immortal phrase, is in deep doodoo. Historical crises destroy, they do not strengthen, rulers. Historical crises where the relief effort is a manifest failure can bring down entire elites. Robert Frost said it a lot better than I'm ever going to:

The Flood
Blood has been harder to dam back than water.
Just when we think we have it impounded safe
Behind new barrier walls (and let it chafe!),
It breaks away in some new kind of slaughter.
We choose to say it is let loose by the devil;
But power of blood itself releases blood.
It goes by might of being such a flood
Held high at so unnatural a level.
It will have outlet, brave and not so brave.
weapons of war and implements of peace
Are but the points at which it finds release.
And now it is once more the tidal wave
That when it has swept by leaves summits stained.
Oh, blood will out. It cannot be contained.

The death toll will be horrendous and there is not going to be any way to prevent comparison with other hurricanes and other disasters unnecessarily. In particular, the death toll of those who died unnecessarily, because the relief effort moved so slowly, will take more than cute word tricks like Bush condemning an effort he headed and directed. Blood will out.

transit of Greenwich

Tick-tock goes the atomic clock

Australia's clocks officially go atomic from today.New national laws, which come into effect from 1 September 2005, have moved Australia to a new time standard based on the super-accurate atomic clock.

The system, known as co-ordinated universal time (UTC), replaces Greenwich Mean Time (GMT).

GMT is based on the average time it takes the Earth to rotate on its axis from noon to noon, a standard that is becoming increasingly unsatisfactory as more sophisticated technology demands more miniscule units of time.

UTC is based on the vibration of caesium atoms as a pendulum, which make it accurate to a nanosecond, or a billionth of a second. Because the Earth's rotation is relatively imprecise, GMT can be out by several thousandths of a second, and can be affected by tides, currents in the Earth's molten core, seasonal change or major tectonic movements.

Irregularities can have implications for global positioning, high-speed computing, astronomers, security networks and electronic transaction time records.

The move to UTC brings Australia in line with New Zealand, Singapore, some US states and most of the European Union.

Losing GMT cuts us off from one part of our history. Timekeeping brought the British empire into the Pacific.

Transactions of the Royal Society

1768, with the rank of lieutenant, he [James Cook] was appointed to the command of the Endeavour, accompanied by Mr. Green, astronomer, to observe the transit of Venus at Otaheite, in the South Seas; and an account of their observations on that occasion is given in the article above. Along with them also sailed Mr., now Sir Joseph Banks, and Dr. Solander. After the transit was discovered, Mr. Cook sailed on a voyage of discovery, in which he discovered and visited a number of new lands; as the Society Islands, New Zealand, Nevis Holland, Botany Bay, &c. In June, 17, 1771, he arrived in England, and was appointed a commander in the navy, an account of the voyage being published by Dr. Hawksworth.

James Cook and the transt of Venus

The size of the solar system was one of the chief puzzles of 18th century science, much as the nature of dark matter and dark energy are today. In Cook's time astronomers knew that six planets orbited the sun (Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto hadn't been discovered yet), and they knew the relative spacing of those planets. Jupiter, for instance, is 5 times farther from the Sun than Earth. But how far is that … in miles? The absolute distances were unknown.

Venus was the key. Edmund Halley realized this in 1716. As seen from Earth, Venus occasionally crosses the face of the Sun. It looks like a jet-black disk slowly gliding among the Sun's true sunspots. By noting the start- and stop-times of the transit from widely spaced locations on Earth, Halley reasoned, astronomers could calculate the distance to Venus using the principles of parallax. The scale of the rest of the solar system would follow.

But there was a problem. Transits of Venus are rare. They come in pairs, 8 years apart, separated by approximately 120 years. Halley himself would never live to see one. An international team did try to time a Venus transit in 1761, but weather and other factors spoiled most of their data. If Cook and others failed in 1769, every astronomer on Earth would be dead before the next opportunity in 1874.

On his way back to London from Tahiti, Cook discovered and claimed the east coast of New Holland and the rest is, as they say, history.

Montreal Convention succeeds

Changes In Ozone Layer Offer Hope For Improvement, Says Team Of Scientists

Analysis of several different satellite records and surface monitoring instruments indicates that the ozone layer is no longer declining, according to a study by scientists working with the Center for Integrating Statistical and Environmental Science (CISES) at the University of Chicago.

In some parts of the world, the ozone layer has increased a small amount in the past few years, although it still well below normal levels.

The results will be published Aug. 31 in the Journal of Geophysical Research and follow 18 years after an international agreement, the Montreal Protocol, was established to limit the production of chemicals determined to be harmful to the atmosphere.

The work, funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency, is a collaboration between atmospheric scientists and statisticians through CISES. "The work of this team of scientists and statisticians is widely recognized as some of the most authoritative in the statistical analysis of stratospheric ozone," said Michael Stein, director of CISES at the University of Chicago.

"These early signs indicate one of the strongest success stories of international cooperation in the face of an environmental threat," said retired Navy Vice Adm. Conrad C. Lautenbacher, Ph.D., undersecretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere and NOAA administrator.

For the past few years, studies have focused on ozone declining in the topmost layer of the atmosphere where there is naturally very little ozone. However, this study addresses the total ozone column layer that has significant impact on how much ultraviolet radiation is coming through the atmosphere, said Betsy Weatherhead of the University of Colorado.

"Our work focuses on the thickness of the ozone layer and is therefore relevant to the amount of harmful ultraviolet (UV) radiation reaching the surface of the Earth," said Weatherhead, a co-author on the paper.

The Montreal Convention worked. We will never know if the Kyoto Convention could work just as well because Australia and the US refused to ratify Kyoto.

Seven finds a way to exploit Katrina

Unbefuckinglievable! The Seven Network is showing imagery of flooded cities and fallen oil rigs to advertise Oil Storm for prime time Sunday 11 September.

Hurricane Katrina

Monstrous Hurricane Heads for New Orleans

For years, forecasters have warned of the nightmare flooding a big storm could bring to New Orleans, a bowl-shaped city bounded by the half-mile-wide Mississippi River and massive Lake Pontchartrain.

As much as 10 feet below sea level in spots, the city is as the mercy of a network of levees, canals and pumps to keep dry.
Scientists predicted Katrina could easily overtake that levee system, swamping the city under a 30-feet cesspool of toxic chemicals, human waste and even coffins that could leave more than 1 million people homeless.

"All indications are that this is absolutely worst-case scenario," Ivor van Heerden, deputy director of the Louisiana State University Hurricane Center, said Sunday afternoon.
Jefferson Parish President Aaron Broussard said some who have ridden out previous storms in the New Orleans area may not be so lucky this time.

"I'm expecting that some people who are die-hards will die hard," he said.

For those who were evacuated, it wasn't an easy trip. Traffic backed up bumper-to-bumper on many highways. Three nursing home being bused to a Baton Rouge church died, one aboard the bus, another at the church and the third at hospital, the local coroner said Sunday.

"These folks are pretty fragile when they're put on these buses," said Don Moreau, of the East Baton Rouge Parish Coroner's Office.

Katrina was a Category 1 storm with 80-mph wind when it hit South Florida with a soggy punch Thursday that flooded neighborhoods and left nine people dead. It strengthened rapidly in the Gulf of Mexico as it headed for New Orleans.
By 1 a.m. EDT, Katrina's eye was about 90 miles south-southwest of the mouth of the Mississippi River and 150 miles south-southeast of New Orleans. The storm was moving toward the north-northwest at about 10 mph and was expected to turn toward the north. A hurricane warning was in effect for the north-central Gulf Coast from Morgan City, La., to the Alabama-Florida line."

The US National Weather Service states:

DEVASTATING DAMAGE EXPECTED

AT LEAST ONE HALF OF WELL CONSTRUCTED HOMES WILL HAVE ROOF AND WALL
FAILURE. ALL GABLED ROOFS WILL FAIL...LEAVING THOSE HOMES SEVERELY
DAMAGED OR DESTROYED.

THE MAJORITY OF INDUSTRIAL BUILDINGS WILL BECOME NON FUNCTIONAL.
PARTIAL TO COMPLETE WALL AND ROOF FAILURE IS EXPECTED. MANY WOOD
FRAMED LOW RISING APARTMENT BUILDINGS WILL BE DESTROYED. CONCRETE
BLOCK LOW RISE APARTMENTS WILL SUSTAIN MAJOR DAMAGE...INCLUDING SOME
WALL AND ROOF FAILURE.

HIGH RISE OFFICE AND APARTMENT BUILDINGS WILL SWAY DANGEROUSLY...A
FEW POSSIBLY TO THE POINT OF TOTAL COLLAPSE. MANY WINDOWS WILL BLOW
OUT.

AIRBORNE DEBRIS WILL BE WIDESPREAD...AND MAY INCLUDE HEAVY ITEMS SUCH
AS HOUSEHOLD APPLIANCES AND EVEN LIGHT VEHICLES. SPORT UTILITY
VEHICLES AND LIGHT TRUCKS WILL BE MOVED. THE BLOWN DEBRIS WILL CREATE
ADDITIONAL DESTRUCTION. PERSONS...PETS...AND LIVESTOCK EXPOSED TO THE
WINDS WILL FACE CERTAIN DEATH IF STRUCK.

POWER OUTAGES MAY LAST FOR WEEKS...AS MANY POWER POLES WILL BE DOWN
AND TRANSFORMERS DESTROYED. WATER SHORTAGES WILL MAKE HUMAN SUFFERING
INCREDIBLE BY MODERN STANDARDS.

THE VAST MAJORITY OF NATIVE TREES WILL BE SNAPPED OR UPROOTED. ONLY
THE HEARTIEST WILL REMAIN STANDING...BUT BE TOTALLY DEFOLIATED.

In harm's way

Hurricanes are a common heritage for Louisiana residents, who until the past few decades had little choice in facing a hurricane but to ride it out and pray.

Today, billions of dollars worth of levees, sea walls, pumping systems and satellite hurricane tracking provide a comforting safety margin that has saved thousands of lives.

But modern technology and engineering mask an alarming fact: In the generations since those storms menaced Champagne's ancestors, south Louisiana has been growing more vulnerable to hurricanes, not less.

Sinking land and chronic coastal erosion — in part the unintended byproducts of flood-protection efforts — have opened dangerous new avenues for even relatively weak hurricanes and tropical storms to assault areas well inland.

"There's no doubt about it," said Windell Curole, general manager of the South Lafourche Levee District, who maintains a hurricane levee that encircles Bayou Lafourche from Larose to the southern tip of Golden Meadow. "The biggest factor in hurricane risk is land loss. The Gulf of Mexico is, in effect, probably 20 miles closer to us than it was in 1965 when Hurricane Betsy hit."

These trends are the source of a complex and growing threat to everyone living in south Louisiana and to the regional economy and culture:

The combination of sinking land and rising seas has put the Mississippi River delta as much as 3 feet lower relative to sea level than it was a century ago, and the process continues. That means hurricane floods driven inland from the Gulf have risen by corresponding amounts. Storms that once would not have had much impact can now be devastating events, and flooding penetrates to places where it rarely occurred before. The problem also is slowly eroding levee protection, cutting off evacuation routes sooner and putting dozens of communities and valuable infrastructure at risk of being wiped off the map.

Coastal erosion has shaved barrier islands to slivers and turned marshland to open water, opening the way for hurricane winds and flooding to move inland. Hurricanes draw their strength from the sea, so they quickly weaken and begin to dissipate when they make landfall. Hurricanes moving over fragmenting marshes toward the New Orleans area can retain more strength, and their winds and large waves pack more speed and destructive power.

Though protected by levees designed to withstand the most common storms, New Orleans is surrounded by water and is well below sea level at many points. A flood from a powerful hurricane can get trapped for weeks inside the levee system. Emergency officials concede that many of the structures in the area, including newer high-rise buildings, would not survive the winds of a major storm.

The large size of the area at risk also makes it difficult to evacuate the million or more people who live in the area, putting tens of thousands of people at risk of dying even with improved forecasting and warnings. The American Red Cross will not put emergency shelters in the area because it does not want to put volunteers or evacuees in danger.

The Army Corps of Engineers says the chance of New Orleans-area levees being topped is remote, but admits the estimate is based on 40-year-old calculations. An independent analysis based on updated data and computer modeling done for The Times-Picayune suggests the risk to some areas, including St. Bernard and St. Charles parishes and eastern New Orleans, may be greater than the corps estimates. Corps officials say the agency is studying the problem with an updated model.
It all adds up to a daunting set of long-term economic, engineering and political challenges just to maintain the status quo. Higher levees, a massive coastal-restoration program and even a huge wall across New Orleans are all being proposed. Without extraordinary measures, key ports, oil and gas production, one of the nation's most important fisheries, the unique bayou culture, the historic French Quarter and more are at risk of being swept away in a catastrophic hurricane or worn down by smaller ones.

Why did no-one listen?

"Prescience sucks." So a very wise person told me yesterday, in reference to my three month old piece (now much cited, of course) about the catastrophe that could befall New Orleans from a direct Cat4 or 5 hurricane strike. I must say, I agree whole-heartedly with this individual's assessment.

But if prescience sucks, the lack of reasonable foresight is a far, far worse flaw. And I think that at least in part, the tragedy now playing itself out must be blamed on this very human shortcoming. Let me explain.

In writing my own piece about New Orleans' vulnerability I interviewed, among others, LSU hurricane expert Ivor van Heerden, one of many scientists who has been thinking about this disaster-waiting-to-happen. When you talk to van Heerden, he tends to put things in very stark terms. He has been doing so for years.

Now, even CNN has finally gotten around to talking to van Heerden, in the process of spinning out worst case scenarios for New Orleans. Here's what the scientist says:

"This is what we've been saying has been going to happen for years," he said. "Unfortunately, it's coming true."

It is tragic, truly tragic, that someone like van Heerden now has to say, "I told you so." But the fact is that he did tell us so, and so did many others.

As always, Wikipedia is the best place to go for updates. Beyond feeling for the people of New Orleans, we really need to find out not what else out there are we ignoring in the same way. President Bush remains on vacation.

the Habsbush empire?

Chapter 2: A History of Spain and Portugal

There are certain intriguing parallels between the circumstances and historical patterns of tenth-century Al-Andalus and sixteenth-century Spain. Both empires were launched, as is customarily the case with expansionist systems, before their respective societies had reached their fullest cultural development. Both emphasized imperial expansion and foreign issues to the detriment of internal problems. Neither achieved a fully integrated civic entity: the Umayyad caliphate was not effectively integrated, and the Habsburg monarchy was pluralistic, revealing centrifugal tendencies. Both strongly emphasized religious issues in mobilizing for expansion; religious orthodoxy was later stressed by both in their periods of political decline. The renewed assertion of reorganized military power marked the last generation of strong government and the prelude to civic decline (compare al-Mansur and Olivares). The full flowering of Andalusi culture came after the collapse of the caliphate; that of Habsburg Spain, at least in esthetics, after the apogee of politico-military power under Felipe II. A major difference between the two was that the economic prosperity of Al-Andalus survived the passing of the caliphate. Seventeenth-century Spain exhausted its economy in war; the Muslim taifas never organized the military strength that their economies could have supported.

The precedent is not exact, but then it never is. Comparisons between George Bush and Felipe II are not unknown in the Spanish-speaking world. If anything the Habsbush project is even more hapless than Habsburg Spain. The Habsburgs never made it their business to occupy a country in order to hand it over to a Habsburg enemy.

ABC calls a spade a pick axe

DFAT defends efforts to help Aussie jailed in Fiji. 23/08/2005. ABC News Online

The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) is rejecting claims it is doing nothing to help a man from Warrnambool, in Victoria, being held in Fiji on gay sex crimes.

Thomas McCusker is serving two years for charges relating to homosexual acts, after he had a relationship with a Fijian man whilst holidaying in the country.

Under Fijian law, sex between two men is illegal.

I would have thought it's quite a long way from consenting sex to the schlock horror phrase 'gay sex crimes'. Almost as far, in fact, as the treatment of Schappelle Corby who is charged with acts that actually are crimes under Australian law, as pposed to McCusker, who would be innoncent under Australian law.

As a passionae promoter of good governance in the Pacific, Jhn Howard could be expected to passinately promote observance of Section 38 of the Fiji Constution:

(2) A person must not be unfairly discriminated against, directly or indirectly, on the ground of his or her:
(a) actual or supposed personal characteristics or circumstances, including race, ethnic origin, colour, place of origin, gender, sexual orientation, birth, primary language, economic status, age or disability; or

Washington rorted the ISG interim report

The Bush administration has justified the greatest intelligence failure of modern times by blaming it the intelligence bureaucracy for misleading intelligence. Bush came into office committed (if not publicly) to invading Iraq. He demanded intelligence from the CIA and other US security agencies. They gave him intelligence which supported his policy. Mysteriously, Bush is now horrified that they gave him in the intelligence he wanted. The Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade has now dealt with the issue of what Australia knew and when we knew it.

As usual, information known to the Departments of Defence and Foreign Affairs mysteriously failed to reach any minister. They really should beef up their management skills. After all, it's not as though the Howard government would have objected to being told about US efforts to interfere with the ISG report. The Man of Steel would certainly have mounted the nearest pig and flown to Washington to make an immediate protest.

Iraq really seems to have generated an unusual level of mysterious failures.

4.7 Mr Barton explained that the external pressure being applied on the team was to prepare a report that did not honestly reflect the evidence they had gathered—that matters were not to be included in the report because they were 'too politically difficult'.5 He told the Committee:

I was responsible for the coordination and oversight of the March report. It was circulated to capitals for comment, and I received feedback from Washington, London and Canberra. The comments from Canberra were constructive and largely editorial and caused me no difficulty. London, however, suggested that we add certain material. I believe these additions were designed to leave the impression that WMD might yet be found. This would have been contrary to our views. The CIA also sent suggested amendments. Many of these were quite useful, but there were two amendments that were blatant attempts to change our findings.

To the credit of Charles Duelfer, the head of the ISG, these attempts at changing the nature of the report were rejected. Nevertheless, it was still a poor report in that it did not say what by this time we knew… In my view the report was symptomatic of a wider malaise in the ISG. At that time there was no real objectivity in the investigation and it seemed to me that a lot of the direction, particularly in the chemical and biological areas, was coming from Washington.6

Barton was one of several protest resignations over US interference in the interim report. We are asked to believe that the resigning officers did not tell the government why they were resigning. The committee found:

4.28 In addressing the terms of reference, the committee is unable to find sufficiently strong evidence to suggest that the ISG was unable to report frankly and fearlessly on what they had found. Mr Barton's evidence indicates that there were attempts to influence the ISG but there is no corroborating evidence.

4.29 From the evidence, it is clear that Mr Barton and Dr Gee discussed their concerns about the work of the ISG with the Australian Representative and Mr Quinn in Baghdad. Evidence also shows that Mr Barton raised concerns about the function of the ISG and its March report with government officials on his return to Australia in March 2004.

4.30 According to the evidence, it is likely that Dr Gee may also have alerted officials to similar concerns on his return a few weeks earlier. Dr Gee would not appear before the committee to confirm, deny or comment on Mr Barton's claims and would not provide the committee with a copy of his letter of resignation which allegedly referred to his dissatisfaction with the influence being exerted on the ISG. Government officials similarly refused to comment on Dr Gee's letter of resignation or on the meetings held between Dr Gee and the Minister for Foreign Affairs and between Mr Gee and the Secretary of Defence and other officials regarding his letter of resignation.

4.31 It is unclear how the Department of Defence or the Department of Foreign Affairs responded to information provided to them suggesting that influence was exerted on the ISG when preparing its March report. The silence from both departments indicates that there was no follow–up.

Just another footnote to the strange history of how the Global War on Terror mysteriously turned into the Global War to establish an Islamic Republic of Iraq.

star names

Alun (great name, pity about the U) is serialising Star names and their meanings, a learned tome from 1899. I started reading because my favourite cousin has the good luck, or whatever, to be named after Alpha Scorpii. On the other hand, if I hadn't found it I'd be missing out on vital knowledge like:

In the year 1252 Europe resumed its old position in astronomical work by the compilation of Los Libros del Saber de Astron0mia, the celebrated Alfonsine Tables, by Arabian or Moorish astronomers, at Toledo, under the patronage of the Infante, afterward King Alfonso X, El Sabio, the Wise, and the Astronomer, of Leon and Castile, who” abandoned the crown for the astrolabe and forgot the earth for the sky.”

These Tables and their Latin translations are strongly Arabicized, as plainly appears in our modem star-titles drawn from them; while the whole work is in the main only copied from Ptolemy with some necessary correc tions. But it probably fairly represents the science of the Middle Ages, and was in use until at least the 16th century; for Eden,[2] in 1555, quoted from Gemma Phrysius’ On the Maner of Fyndynge the Longitude: ” Then eyther by the Ephemerides or by the tables of Alphonsus . . .” Various editions have been printed: the first in 1483, two hundred years after Alfonso’s death; again, in 1492 and 1521, all at Venice and in Latin; in 1545 at Paris; in 1641 at Madrid; and, lastly, splendidly reproduced there in 1863 -1867, in the earliest accessible Spanish text, with illustrations, supposed copies of the original.

It was this Alfonso who has so often been condemned for his remark:

Had I been present at the Creation, I would have given some useful hints for the better ordering of the universe;

but as he was speaking of the absurd Ptolemaic system, it does not seem so irreverent now as it did before Copernicus’ day. Carlyle quoted it in his History of Friedrich II of Prussia,

that it seemed a crank machine; that it was pity the Creator had not taken advice!

and said that this, and this only, of his many wise sayings is still remembered by mankind.

a warm day in Siberia

Climate warning as Siberia melts

The world's largest frozen peat bog is melting. An area stretching for a million square kilometres across the permafrost of western Siberia is turning into a mass of shallow lakes as the ground melts, according to Russian researchers just back from the region.

The sudden melting of a bog the size of France and Germany combined could unleash billions of tonnes of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere.

The news of the dramatic transformation of one of the world's least visited landscapes comes from Sergei Kirpotin, a botanist at Tomsk State University, Russia, and Judith Marquand at the University of Oxford.

Kirpotin describes an 'ecological landslide that is probably irreversible and is undoubtedly connected to climatic warming'. He says that the entire western Siberian sub-Arctic region has begun to melt, and this 'has all happened in the last three or four years'.

What was until recently a featureless expanse of frozen peat is turning into a watery landscape of lakes, some more than a kilometre across. Kirpotin suspects that some unknown critical threshold has been crossed, triggering the melting.

Western Siberia has warmed faster than almost anywhere else on the planet, with an increase in average temperatures of some 3 degrees C in the last 40 years. The warming is believed to be a combination of man-made climate change, a cyclical change in atmospheric circulation known as the Arctic oscillation, plus feedbacks caused by melting ice, which exposes bare ground and ocean. These absorb more solar heat than white ice and snow.

Similar warming has also been taking place in Alaska: earlier this summer Jon Pelletier of the University of Arizona in Tucson reported a major expansion of lakes on the North Slope fringing the Arctic Ocean.

The Climate of Man

Traditionally, the men in Shishmaref hunted for seals by driving out over the sea ice with dogsleds or, more recently, on snowmobiles. After they hauled the seals back to the village, the women would skin and cure them, a process that takes several weeks. In the early nineteen-nineties, the hunters began to notice that the sea ice was changing. (Although the claim that the Eskimos have hundreds of words for snow is an exaggeration, the Inupiat make distinctions among many different types of ice, including sikuliaq, 'young ice,' sarri, 'pack ice,' and tuvaq, 'landlocked ice.') The ice was starting to form later in the fall, and also to break up earlier in the spring. Once, it had been possible to drive out twenty miles; now, by the time the seals arrived, the ice was mushy half that distance from shore. Weyiouanna described it as having the consistency of a 'slush puppy.' When you encounter it, he said, 'your hair starts sticking up. Your eyes are wide open. You can't even blink.' It became too dangerous to hunt using snowmobiles, and the men switched to boats.

Soon, the changes in the sea ice brought other problems. At its highest point, Shishmaref is only twenty-two feet above sea level, and the houses, many built by the U.S. government, are small, boxy, and not particularly sturdy-looking. When the Chukchi Sea froze early, the layer of ice protected the village, the way a tarp prevents a swimming pool from getting roiled by the wind. When the sea started to freeze later, Shishmaref became more vulnerable to storm surges. A storm in October, 1997, scoured away a hundred-and-twenty-five-foot-wide strip from the town's northern edge; several houses were destroyed, and more than a dozen had to be relocated. During another storm, in October, 2001, the village was threatened by twelve-foot waves. In the summer of 2002, residents of Shishmaref voted, a hundred and sixty-one to twenty, to move the entire village to the mainland. Last year, the federal government completed a survey of possible sites for a new village. Most of the spots that are being considered are in areas nearly as remote as Sarichef, with no roads or nearby cities, or even settlements. It is estimated that a full relocation will cost at least a hundred and eighty million dollars.

People I spoke to in Shishmaref expressed divided emotions about the proposed move. Some worried that, by leaving the tiny island, they would give up their connection to the sea and become lost. 'It makes me feel lonely,' one woman said. Others seemed excited by the prospect of gaining certain conveniences, like running water, that Shishmaref lacks. Everyone seemed to agree, though, that the village's situation, already dire, was likely only to get worse.

US: climate deal complements Kyoto

US today insisted that its surprise announcement last night of a new pact over clean energy technologies with other five countries was not a threat to the Kyoto emissions treaty.

A deal between the US, Australia, China, India, South Korea and Japan was announced late yesterday in a statement by the US president, George Bush. The news prompted widespread surprise - not least in Downing Street.

Details of what the pact involves were still sketchy today but its explicit aim was to promote the invention and sale of technologies ranging from "clean coal" and wind power to next-generation nuclear fission with the aim of reducing pollution and addressing climate concerns.

The announcement of the New Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate received a mixed reaction, alarming many environmentalists. Critics noted that the partnership, which apparently comes after a year of secret talks, is not binding and sets no targets for reducing pollution.

By contrast the Kyoto protocol, signed by 140 countries to cut emissions of carbon dioxide, which experts believe contribute to global warming, is legally binding.

Some time, hopefully quite soon, alleged conservatives, whose real position is that the market rules everything by magic, are going to have to confront real tipping points, not the shibboleths they keep announcing as sure signs of victory in the Iraq side-show. The balance sheets are going to look fairly grim as these positive feedbacks, which the UN Clmate Change Panel has not yet incorporated into its models, start kicking in. The going rate on a wrecked planet is fairly steep. The Bush administration is extremely good at announcing these US-led initiatives. Actually doing something is less their style.

cosmic beatup

Charles Sturt University has a video feed of the Deep Impact Nasa/ESA mission. The plan is to bang a heavy projectile into a comet and force it to give up the secrets of its interior.

Ask not for whom the turd blossoms...

MSNBC Analyst Says 2nd Source Confirms Karl Rove as Plame Leaker

'I revealed in yesterday's taping of the McLaughlin Group that Time magazine's e-mails will reveal that Karl Rove was Matt Cooper's source. I have known this for months but didn't want to say it at a time that would risk me getting dragged into the grand jury.

'McLaughlin is seen in some markets on Friday night, so some websites have picked it up, including Drudge, but I don't expect it to have much impact because McLaughlin is not considered a news show and it will be pre-empted in the big markets on Sunday because of tennis.

'Since I revealed the big scoop, I have had it reconfirmed by yet another highly authoritative source. Too many people know this. It should break wide open this week. I know Newsweek is working on an 'It's Rove!' story and will probably break it tomorrow.'

If it gets confirmed this is going to generate a blogquake. Karl Rove, also known as Bush's Brain, is the second most powerful figure (after Dick Cheney) in the US administration. His loss is going to be a crippling political blow. I expect RSS feeds to melt down within the next 11 seconds or so.

The Martians are us

The War of the Worlds: Book 1, Chapter 1, The Eve of the War

And before we judge of them too harshly we must remember what ruthless and utter destruction our own species has wrought, not only upon animals, such as the vanished bison and the dodo, but upon its inferior races. The Tasmanians, in spite of their human likeness, were entirely swept out of existence in a war of extermination waged by European immigrants, in the space of fifty years. Are we such
apostles of mercy as to complain if the Martians warred in the same spirit?

Somewhere between the ads and the final credits, it's probably worth remembering that the Tasmanian genocide provided one of the models for HG Wells' Martians.

more perfect unions

Spanish MPs legalise gay marriage

The Spanish parliament voted yesterday to legalise gay marriage despite protests by Roman Catholic clergy and conservative groups. Spain is now one of only four countries in the world that grant gay couples the same status as heterosexuals, and is the only traditionally Catholic country to do so. It joins the Netherlands, Belgium and Canada, which approved gay marriage on Wednesday. 'Today Spain is a more decent country, because a decent society is one that does not humiliate its members,' the prime minister, Jos�Luis Zapatero, told parliament after the 187-147 vote, which was followed by loud applause, hugs and tears of joy by gay activists.

'This law will not engender evil,' he continued, referring to church opposition, 'it will save human suffering'.

Canada approves gay marriage

Canada last night became the third country in the world to approve gay marriages when MPs passed a historic bill granting same-sex couples equal rights to those in traditional marriages.

The bill was passed by the Canadian House of Commons despite strong opposition from religious leaders and conservative MPs.

Gay marriage is already legal in seven provinces in Canada, but the new legislation grants same-sex couples the same legal rights as heterosexual couples nationwide. The Netherlands and Belgium are the only other countries to allow gay marriages.

The bill - drafted by the minority Liberal party government of the Canadian prime minister, Paul Martin - has been hailed as a step forward for human rights.

"We are a nation of minorities," Mr Martin said. "And in a nation of minorities, it is important that you don't cherry-pick rights. A right is a right, and that is what this vote tonight is all about."

The legislation split the Liberal party, with 158 MPs voting to pass the bill and 133 against. The junior cabinet minister Joe Comuzzi, responsible for development in northern Ontario, resigned on Tuesday rather than voting on the issue.

Hasta mañana

It is possible for major political parties in western democracies to enact equality on their own intiative without suffering a loss of public confidence.

This may sound obvious, but there remain hundreds of Australian politicians who do not understand it.

And why?

Because the leadership of Australia’s LGBT community has failed in its duty to educate decision-makers and the public about the merits of reform, and about how it can be achieved.

I say “failed” because recent polling in the LGBT community in Victoria shows overwhelming support for marriage equality, greater even than for de facto relationship equality.

An LGBT leader who does not represent this aspiration to their fellow Australians is not doing their job.

In 2004 Australia joined the US in moving in the other direction. Last year's marriage inequality bill would not have become law without the votes of Labor senators. It is a grave pity that Mark Latham did not discover the need for Labor to stand for something until after he had assisted the Man of Steel to enact 'No Poofters!' into law.

the I-word

Zogby poll

President Bush’s televised address to the nation produced no noticeable bounce in his approval numbers, with his job approval rating slipping a point from a week ago, to 43%, in the latest Zogby International poll. And, in a sign of continuing polarization, more than two-in-five voters (42%) say they would favor impeachment proceedings if it is found the President misled the nation about his reasons for going to war with Iraq.

The Zogby America survey of 905 likely voters, conducted from June 27 through 29, 2005, has a margin of error of +/-3.3 percentage points.

Just one week ago, President Bush’s job approval stood at a previous low of 44%—but it has now slipped another point to 43%, despite a speech to the nation intended to build support for the Administration and the ongoing Iraq War effort. The Zogby America survey includes calls made both before and after the President’s address, and the results show no discernible “bump” in his job approval, with voter approval of his job performance at 45% in the final day of polling.

I hope the US Congress has the courage to include the Nuremburg offences of crimes against peace and war crimes.

Tip via Left Coaster.

By Sappho, out of Oxyrhynchus

Weekly book reviews and literary criticism from the Times Literary Supplement

Parts of three of her poems are represented. As usual, all are in a fragmentary state. But the second one, it turned out, had been partially known since 1922 from an Oxyrhynchus papyrus of the third century ad, and by combining the two texts we now obtain an almost complete poem.

When we had only the Oxyrhynchus portion, we had only line-ends, preceded and followed by line-ends of other poems, and it was not clear where one poem ended and the next began; the left-hand margin, where this would have been signalled, was missing. That question is now settled. We have a poem of twelve lines, made up of six two-line stanzas. The last eight lines are virtually complete. The first four are still lacking two or three words each at their beginnings. But we can make out the sentence structure and restore the sense of what is lost, if not the exact words. Here is the poem in my own restoration and translation. The words in square brackets are supplied by conjecture.

'[You for] the fragrant-blossomed Muses' lovely gifts
[be zealous,] girls, [and the] clear melodious lyre:

[but my once tender] body old age now
[has seized;] my hair's turned [white] instead of dark;

my heart's grown heavy, my knees will not support me,
that once on a time were fleet for the dance as fawns.

This state I oft bemoan; but what's to do?
Not to grow old, being human, there's no way.

Tithonus once, the tale was, rose-armed Dawn,
love-smitten, carried off to the world's end, handsome and young then, yet in time grey age
o''ertook him, husband of immortal wife.'

Meanwhile, it seems that Narcissus actually came t a fairly sticky end.

The ugly end of Narcissus

Narcissus was so beautiful that vast numbers of men (not Echo and other females, in the newly discovered poem) fell in love with him. However, such was his egocentricity that he spurned them all, leaving a trail of heartbreak behind him. Finally, a rejected suitor persuaded one of the gods to deal with him. Narcissus was made to stare for ever at his own image, reflected in a pool of water. The more he stared, the more desperately he fell in love with himself.

According to Ovid, Narcissus - pining from a broken heart - wasted away and died, whereupon he turned into the world's very first narcissus flower. However the earlier version has now revealed that the original myth probably had a less peaceful, more violent denouement, ending in bloody suicide.

The papyrus fragment is one of tens of thousands that were found in the late 19th and early 20th century in ancient rubbish dumps at Oxyrhynchus in Egypt. These dumps, now fully excavated, are the world's largest source of ancient writings, accounting for 70 per cent of all known literary papyri. Many are kept at Oxford but the majority have still not been fully transcribed and translated. It was during work on these remaining manuscripts that the Narcissus fragment was found.

Dr Henry thinks it likely that its author was Parthenius of Nicaea, a Greek from what is now western Turkey. He appears to have been born sometime around 100 to 90 BC and was taken prisoner by the Romans during a war in Anatolia in around 73 BC. He ended up in Italy, where he became the Roman poet Virgil's tutor.

Narcissus either worked for the Bush administration or wrote an ancient blog.

The Onion 2056

The Onion 2056

CANBERRA, AUSTRALIA Following months of terror at the hands of hot-rod-piloting punks, Australian Prime Minister Kellen O'Neill handed power to Lord Humongous, nominal warlord of the leather-clad marauding barbarian horde Monday. 'Just walk away!' said Humongous, the official 'Ayatollah of Rock 'n' Roll-ah,' speaking through his vehicle's PA system from the smoking ruins of the city center. 'I will spare those of you who surrender your possessions and your precious juice. Just walk away, and live.' Humongous is expected to share at least a portion of his dominion over Australia with midget genius The Master, who several sources said 'runs Bartertown.'

I'm confused. I thought Lord Humongous seized Canberra in 1996.

partying on the seventh continent

Antarctica party atmosphere heats up

In what has become a tradition, Australians living on Antarctica will spend tonight celebrating with a mid-winter party on this, the shortest day of the year.

Festivities include digging a hole in the ice for those brave or foolhardy enough to take a very chilly dip.

At Australia's Mawson Station, Dr Geoff Bennett says the party atmosphere is already taking hold.

'The swimming hole's dug, the ice rink is poured, the lobsters are defrosting, people are pretty relaxed, there's a few beers in the fridge,' he said.

'The weather's a bit blowy - it's 44 knots, but only minus four, which is pretty warm for down here.

'We've been normally around minus 20, so if the wind calms down we'll go for a bit of a swim.'

Dr Bennett says he is among those planning to take the plunge, in one of the more light-hearted traditions of Australia's Antarctic involvement.

On a more serious note, Dr Bennett says the effects of the long, dark days can take their toll.

'You sort of start withdrawing into yourself to a degree - it's almost intrusive when you've got to actually socialise and do other things, so it's funny sort of withdraw into yourself,' he said.

Medical circles talk about a so-called seasonal effected disorder, where people actually go to the point of depression simply through lack of sunlight.

Mawson Station has a webcam that lets you take in all the excitements of Antarctic culture without having to brave the current temperature, -8.0c. And I just know you always wanted to hear an Emperor penguin sneezing.

Kiwi Carnival

If the New Zealnd blogosphere can manage a Philosophy, et cetera: Kiwi Carnival, we should mount one as well.

Does Nicola Roxon believe divorce is the disunion of one man and one woman?

B.C.'s first gay divorce granted

Two women who got married in Parksville two years ago have been granted a divorce by a B.C. Supreme Court judge in Nanaimo.

Gay and lesbians in B.C. won the legal right to marry in 2003, sparking a wedding boom.

Among the gays and lesbians who decided to get married was a woman who can only be identified — by court order — by her initials, J.S.

But the marriage didn't work out. And J.S. filed for divorce last year.

But she says she was shocked to discover that while her same-sex marriage was legal, she wasn't allowed to divorce — because the Divorce Act only allowed a man and a woman to part. That's what led her to the Nanaimo courthouse on Wednesday to change the law.

Madame Justice Laura Gerow agreed the divorce law discriminated against gays and lesbians.

And with the stroke of a pen, she granted the divorce — and changed the law to define a married couple as any two persons.

'I just floated out of the courthouse,' says J.S. 'I'm ecstatic.'

Well, the Martin government survived its confidence votes so the Canadian marriage thing will roll on for a while longer. More British Columbians in same sex marriages will get divorced. At some point it will become part of the landscape and most of us will be asking ourselves what the fuss was about.

Canada headed for general election?

MP O'Brien throws wrench into night of confidence votes

London-Fanshawe MP Pat O'Brien has issued an ultimatum, saying he and an unnamed Liberal MP will vote against the minority Liberal government in a series of confidence votes Tuesday night unless the same-sex marriage bill is delayed.

If they carry out the threat, Paul Martin's government could fall, pushing the country into a summer election campaign.
O'Brien, who left the Liberal caucus this month to sit as an Independent over the gay-marriage issue, told CBC News that he will continue negotiating with Liberal officials in the hours before the voting begins at 10 p.m. EDT.

He wants a promise, in writing, that the passage of the same-sex marriage bill will not happen until after Parliament resumes in the fall.

Canada's Martin Probably Will Survive Votes Tonight

Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin, who is relying on the support of political opponents to govern, probably will survive a series of votes tonight aimed at letting Parliament adjourn on time for summer recess.

Balloting on 18 measures, including amendments to this year's budget, will begin about 10 p.m. Ottawa time and last for two hours, said Al Toulin, a spokesman for Liberal House Leader Tony Valeri. Martin can count on enough backing to keep power, said Michael Behiels, an expert on Canadian politics at the University of Ottawa.

``We can all rest for the summer,'' Behiels said in a telephone interview. ``If the government falls it's going to be by accident.''

Martin's Liberal Party has had the support since April of the socialist New Democratic Party on budget bills, helping to stave off efforts by other opposition parties to topple his minority government. The two parties combine for 151 seats in the 308-seat parliament. There are four independent members of parliament, three of whom are former Liberal Party members.

Most of the votes today are deemed matters ``of confidence,'' meaning a loss in any of them could trigger the collapse of the government.

Last month, Martin overcame by one vote an attempt by the opposition Conservatives and the separatist Bloc Quebecois to topple his government. Support for the Conservatives has since waned, lessening the likelihood they'll press for elections, said Peter McCormick, a political science professor at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta.

Gay marriage may seem, to sober what's-in-it-for-me Australians, a weird issue on which to fight a general election. The Martin government's readiness to do just that speaks volumes about the importance the two nations give human rights.

the secret way to predeployment

The Secret Way to War

In the United States, on the other hand, the Downing Street memorandum has attracted little attention. As I write, no American newspaper has published it and few writers have bothered to comment on it. The war continues, and Americans have grown weary of it; few seem much interested now in discussing how it began, and why their country came to fight a war in the cause of destroying weapons that turned out not to exist. For those who want answers, the Bush administration has followed a simple and heretofore largely successful policy: blame the intelligence agencies. Since 'the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy' as early as July 2002 (as 'C,' the head of British intelligence, reported upon his return from Washington), it seems a matter of remarkable hubris, even for this administration, that its officials now explain their misjudgments in going to war by blaming them on 'intelligence failures' — that is, on the intelligence that they themselves politicized. Still, for the most part, Congress has cooperated. Though the Senate Intelligence Committee investigated the failures of the CIA and other agencies before the war, a promised second report that was to take up the administration's political use of intelligence — which is, after all, the critical issue — was postponed until after the 2004 elections, then quietly abandoned.

Meanwhile, the Downng Street memo has led in Australia to zero, zip, nada questions to the prime minister about the point at which Australia joined this charade or was made aware that the intelligence had been fixed. The Man of Steel did go to all the trouble of inventing the word predeploy to explain why Australian forces were all placed in Iraq ready to go as soon as London and Washington declared that the inspections we now know they hadn't wanted and wouldn't accept had failed.

Is there a gene for bad argument?

Spirituality Explained? Reflections on Dean Hamer’s The God Gene

This climate propelled Dean Hamer’s The God Gene into some measure of prominence (cover of Time, October 25, 2004). Let’s deal with the title right away. Pretty unequivocal, no? The God Gene! Already on page 8, however, Hamer inserts a disclaimer: “There are probably many different genes involved, rather than just one. And environmental influences are just as important as genetics.” Hamer is nothing if not savvy: this measured estimation is too tepid by half for marketing a book (or making Time’s cover).

What are we to make of Hamer’s retreat from the bold confidence of his title? By invoking environmental influences, does he mean to embrace what anthropologists like me call a social constructionist explanation? That is, does he admit the importance of how we are raised and loved and guided, for explaining why humans everywhere tend to embrace some notion of God, gods, or spirits? (I get really riled when any cultural universal is automatically assumed to be an instinct; cultural factors can explain many universal human behaviors.)

Science writer and blogger Carl Zimmer is unsatisfied with Hamer’s page 8 retreat. He suggests a title that more accurately reflects the book’s contents: A Gene That Accounts for Less Than One Percent of the Variance Found in Scores on Psychological Questionnaires Designed to Measure a Factor Called Self-Transcendence, Which Can Signify Everything from Belonging to the Green Party to Believing in ESP, According to One Unpublished, Unreplicated Study.

To fully understand what Zimmer means by his mock title, it’s important to see the distinction Hamer makes between religion and spirituality. Religion is “belief in a particular God, frequency of prayer, or other orthodox religious doctrines or practices.” Hamer isn’t interested in measuring a tendency to be religious, as it turns out: “If our intent had been to measure religiousness rather than spirituality,” he writes, “…[w]e might have explained how often people attended religious services, for example, or whether they took their children to Sunday school.”

In other words, Hamer conflates religion with a narrow set of institutionalized practices. This is problematic for a huge number of reasons I won’t enumerate here, since Hamer’s focus is on spirituality. Spirituality is self-transcendence, the capacity for experiencing the self at one with the world, and can in turn be measured via a fine-tuned questionnaire that focuses on self-forgetfulness, transpersonal identification, and mysticism. All this jargon aside, the key point for Hamer is that once you’ve got the questionnaire answers, all you need next is... DNA!

Are gender differences predetermined?

Female strengths usually include better verbal skills, precision manual dexterity, emotion decoding and "landmark memory," defined as the ability to recall objects and their locations within a confined space. (Yes, there's research backing up the cliche about men staring into the fridge, asking "Honey, where’s the ketchup?")

If you believe that socialization -- the molding power of our environment -- is the main cause of gender differences, consider this: Berenbaum's data on girls with CAH point to the power of sex hormones, particularly those we're exposed to prenatally, in shaping our choices and aptitudes as children.

As a group, the girls in Berenbaum's study tend to prefer toys more typical for boys, show more interests in sports, have better spatial ability, and show less interest in infants and dolls than girls without CAH. Despite the hormone-balancing medication they've received since birth, exposure to high androgen levels during brain development in-utero seems to have a lasting masculinizing effect.

"The question is 'How does that happen?'" asked Berenbaum. "It's very complex. Despite some of my own data, I certainly wouldn't make a direct equation that hormones cause you to like trucks." And, she added, laughing, there's no dishwashing gene.

"Yes, there's evidence that biology does influence behavior that shows sex differences," said Berenbaum. "It's also true that, for all behaviors studied, the distributions for males and females overlap on a continuum. Nevertheless, the differences are observed consistently."

Don't rule out the impact of socialization on gender though, cautioned Berenbaum. "What happens to most people is that we start out with small biological differences which send us off on different environmental trajectories. Socialization then magnifies the differences until they become bigger over time."

"Let's take interest in babies, for instance," she added. "Say as a girl you have a slightly increased predisposition to be interested in babies. So you hang around babies. You get comfortable with babies. You get lots of rewards for hanging around babies -- getting paid and praised for babysitting -- so after a while, a slight preference becomes a strong interest because it's magnified by the experiences you have."

That close dance between nature and nurture may be what "makes it hard to answer this question" as Berenbaum put it. A self-described feminist who believed, as a grad student in the 1970s, that gender differences would be leveled by changing social norms, Berenbaum is quick to point out that genes -- like anatomy -- are not necessarily destiny.

"I think that some people are afraid to think that genes influence behavior because it therefore means we can't change it, but that's not correct. I would argue that if we know the genes that influence a certain behavior, it might be easier to change them with an environmental intervention because we would know what we'd be targeting.

This stuff gets set up for cartoon debates all the time, where social constructionists argue for nurture alone and biological determinists argue for nature alone. Then someone trots out the reductio ad Hitlerum, throws in a liberal dose of the appeal to consequences, and it all ends in tears.

The obvious answer is some combination of the two and the boundary between them is going to move around a lot over the next couple of decades. Hamer's God gene strikes me as extremely silly, and this would not be the first time Hamer has produced research so qualified, uncertain and poorly sampledas to be meaningless. Barenboim's perspectives strike me as considerably more persuasive and certainly more nuanced.

Size does matter, but on the other hand...

I seem to have got sucked into a fairly passionate thread on the nature or nurture of sexual orientation at Larvatus Proteo. In the course of trawling up references I discovered a fun comparison of handedness and sexual orientation. The truly daring seeker of knowledge can pile into Sexual orientation and handedness in men and women: a meta-analysis (large PDF).

There's also some slight evidence from Kinsey that gay men have longer penises, but (before you reach for a ruler) the finding is subject to the following caveat:

These findings are open to criticism because the measurements were made by the subjects themselves at home and not by an independent observer. (Gay men might be more tempted to exaggerate than straight men, or they might be more aroused by the sight of their erect penises, thus causing stronger erections.)� If correct, the result is inconsistent with the simplest form of the prenatal hormone hypothesis, which would predict gay men's penises to be smaller. There are various ways one could make the findings fit the hypothesis, but it may not be worth dwelling on this until a replication study has been done - which could be a while.