Kookaburra

Ratbag right still looking for witches

Mike Carlton keeps delivering solid observations wrapped in his own particular punchy style. On ya Mike.

A puerile tactic of the ratbag right in this country [Australia] is to denounce any critic of President George Bush as anti-American. Oblivious to the echoes of McCarthyism, the ratbags see this as a besetting sin.

I wonder, then, what they will make of Wesley Clark, the retired four-star US Army general who came out this week to run for the Democratic nomination in next year's White House election.

Hard to pin him as anti-American. He topped his West Point class in 1966 and was decorated in Vietnam. He ended his military career as NATO's supreme commander in the campaign to save Kosovo's Albanians from the horrors of ethnic cleansing. For good measure, he was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, with a master's degree in philosophy, politics and economics.

And he has been a trenchant critic of Bush's ill-planned invasion and occupation of Iraq, with its hubristic, neo-conservative assumptions that America can order the world to its whim.

"Once again, at home, Americans are concerned about their civil liberties," Clark said as he announced his candidacy. "For the first time since the Cold War, many Americans no longer feel safe in their homes and workplaces."

No such truths, though, will satisfy the ratbag right. Hans Blix, the former chief UN weapons inspector, told the BBC this week that the US and Britain had discredited themselves with "the exaggeration, the spin, and the hyping" of the intelligence on weapons of mass destruction.

"In the Middle Ages, when people were convinced there were witches - when they looked for them, they certainly found them," he said. [Source: Mike Carlton, Sydney Morning Herald]

Yes another criticism of the Bush administration, not a criticism of the US and it's people. There is a significant difference which is lost on the most rabid who see the world in black and white terms. "You're either with us or against us." It's never that simple.

Solar Window Shades

Wired News writes about an interesting energy idea being worked on by Anna Dyson, who teaches architecture at Rensselaer:

Imagine sitting at your office desk, looking through floor-to-ceiling windows. You look past dozens of tiny, translucent, 1-centimeter silicon squares suspended about every square foot or so between dual windowpanes. The little squares shift like automated, almost invisible Venetian blinds. The miniature squares follow the sun's rays, so they don't impede the view in any direction.

The entire module -- a clear plastic pane between two glass panes -- functions like a translucent sundial, letting you tell time with its shadows.

The glare that once bounced off your computer monitor no longer exists. And the sun's intense heat, which once led to window-shade tug-of-wars with co-workers longing for a little natural light, no longer beats down on you. You comfortably tap at your keyboard under natural, abundant, ambient light.

But there's a lot more going on than meets the eye. These photovoltaic window shades quietly capture the sun's rays of heat and light, focusing them into the small silicon squares, also called solar chips. The chips convert the light energy into electrical power and feed it into the building's electrical system; the energy goes into the heating and cooling systems.

Dyson said a single solar cell will cost about 25 cents. The cells are situated about a square foot apart and will have a "way more than 50 percent" energy-conversion rate, she added. Typical solar panels have a conversion rate of less than 20 percent.

[E M E R G I C . o r g]

Slim Dusty checks out

After the sad loss of US country music legend Johnny Cash, Australia has just lost someone at least as iconic - Slim Dusty.

He stood heads and shoulders above all other Australian musicians in terms of longevity and recording success. Despite country music super stardom he remained incredibly modest and unassuming throughout his career.

As so unfortunately happens it's only when you read an obituary that you realise the true dimensions of many people. Slim wrote his first song at age 10 and adopted his stage name at age 11 (he was born David Gordon Kirkpatrick in Kempsey, New South Wales)

Slim scored his first hit in 1946 with "The Rain Tumbles Down in July". His career really kicked on with the gold record "Pub With No Beer" (1957) (a pub being short for a public bar).

The lyrics feature a cast of characters much as does Billy Joel's Piano Man (1973).

The Pub With No Beer at Taylors Arm which inspired the song is still running. Today it does have beer - (heading up that way soon so may have to pause for a cleansing ale.)

Slim went on to record 105 albums and was still producing hits until very recently.

"The presenter of the ABC's Saturday Night Country program, John Nutting, says Slim may hold the world record for the most country music albums.

"He was working on his 106th [album] at the time of his death. For someone singing and playing a guitar and singing bush ballads, I think that has never been equalled anywhere in the world."

He will be honoured by a state funeral and our Prime Minister was quick to eulogise, Slim as a one-off and a great Australian.

Mr Howard says he had a special style that set him apart. "It was the distinctive Australian character that he brought to country music that marked him out and for almost six decades he's been an institution in this country and won such affection," he said.

Reviewing my collection I now realise that while I have Johnny Cash and Hank Williams Snr, I don't have any of Slim's works - must fix that.

In Australian terms he was more significant than Hank Williams (though partly that's because Williams only had 4 years at the top - sadly dying at 29). Slim was much more laid back, less melanchonic and he simply and effectively chronicled life as it was in the Australian country in the middle years of the 20th Century.

I guess the last time I really 'saw' Slim was the closing ceremony of the 2000 Olympics Games in Sydney. Despite a massive world wide TV audience and possibly the largest venue he ever played in he was just himself as he delivered a simple but stirring rendition of Waltzing Matilda (Australia's national song but not our anthem). A great public performance to go out on.

More on Slim at abc.net.au

Hurricane Isabel - great pics from NASA

NASA has some excellent images of Hurricane Isabel as it approaches the US coast. Satellite pictures show the awesome power of this hurricane. NASA have also produced a movie (MPEG) which animates together 8 days of satellite pics.

The Hurricane looks like some monster from the movies slowly lumbering towards the US east coast. I hope for the sake of the people nearby that the Hurricane doesn't prove to be as monstrous as it looks.

Get the latest news on Hurricane Isabel via Google News

Isabel is the first major storm to hit the East Coast since Hurricane Floyd in 1999 which left 56 dead and caused $US 4.5 billion in damage. Hurricane Andrew in 1992 left 26.5 billion dollars of damage and 41 deaths. [Source: abc.net.au]

IMF fuels growth fetish with 4% prediction for 2004

IMF sees signs of global economic recovery

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) now forecasts growth of about 4% in 2004.

But it warns that the world remains dependent on growth in the United States, where there have only been weak signs of improvement in the past few months.[Source: www.abc.net.au]

Feeling better? Happy to have some more economic growth? It's not a bad thing to have, but growth is not the answer to all of the world's ill. Yet so many Governments and economists focus on it as if it is.

Why are we so obsessed about growth? This topic is well explored in
Growth Fetish - which I still rate as my Book of the Year.

If you live in Australia it's available in all good bookstores. For the rest of the world... sorry Amazon doesn't have it yet. You can order it from the publisher here. Or if you live in the US, an Amazon affiliate can supply it.

Beatles to release de-Spectorised "Let it Be"

Let It Be was the last album released by The Beatles. It was unfortunately produced after they had effectively split and the mix was not to the likings of at least Paul McCartney who disagreed with the final mixing of several songs.

Phil Spector was contracted to edit down hundreds of hours of material into the final album. In so doing he applied his "wall of sound" approach to several tracks including the string arrangement on "The Long and Winding Road".

According to Rolling Stone, a fresh mix (without the heavy hand of Spector), is to be released in November as, "Let It Be - Naked".

"I was listening to it recently, and it was really great," Beatles drummer Ringo Starr told Rolling Stone earlier this year. "I've been away from it a long time too. It fills my heart with joy to hear that band that I was a member of. They were just great. And also, the quietness of the tracks: It's a beautiful CD."

"Paul was always totally opposed to Phil," Starr said. "I told him on the phone, 'You're bloody right again: It sounds great without Phil.' Which it does. Now we'll have to put up with him telling us over and over again, 'I told you.'"

Along with Starr and McCartney, another figure who welcomes the Let It Be reissue is veteran British producer Glyn Johns, who engineered the original sessions. "My version of [the song] 'Get Back' actually was released fairly quickly as a single," he told Rolling Stone. "And my version of [the song] 'Let It Be' was also released, before Phil Spector puked all over it. And I hope you quote me on that. If you hear 'The Long and Winding Road' without all that schlock on it, it's fabulous just like it is."

Cheese eating surrender monkeys

As a schoolkid I was taught to chant "Sticks and stones will break my bones but names will never hurt me." as some sort of talisman to ward off the evils of name-calling. At the time I was more worried about the sticks and stones!

But bones heal (cf my left leg), while verbal taunts persist, often for generations.

It could just be my own warped view of the world but it seems to me that the most persistent name callers are from the right of politics.

In Australia, for my liberal (small 'l' liberal) views I am labelled by right-wing commentators as a member of the 'chardonnay swilling elite'. Not a particularly stinging insult but it does have the effect of marginalising more liberal views. For the record wine consumption in Australia has tripled since the 1940s while beer consumption is declining [source: Australian Bureau of Statistics] Australians consume 19.8 litres per capita - so chardonnay drinkers are mainstream. Indeed the demographically (and thus politically) dominant 'baby boomers' much prefer wine over beer. [Source: Lion Nathan presentation - PDF]

I digress. What got me started down this path was the frequent references to the French as "Cheese Eating Surrender Monkeys".

Apparently it is a line from "The Simpsons" which Jonah Goldberg, of National Review proudly claims credit for popularising. It has also been aired on Fox News and in other mass media.

Wikipedia provides some broader discussion of the topic "Anti-French sentiment in the United States".

It is a complete puzzle as to why the French were so targeted by negative press when they said 'non' to a UN sanction invasion of Iraq. After all Germany and Russia were in the same position, and unlike France were 'enemies' during wars in the 20th century. France has been a long standing ally of USA, indeed they joined in the American Revolutionary War in 1778 siding with the Americans against the British.

Interesting historical aside

In World War I, Germany declared war on France on 3 Aug 1914. America declared war on Germany on 6 April 1917 - 977 days later.

In World War II, Germany effectively declared war on France (and the United Kingdom) by invading Poland on 1 Sep 1939.

Germany then invaded France on 13 May 1940.

On 11 March 1941 (302 days later) the US Congress passed the The USA responded by enacting "The Lend-lease Act", a program to "sell, transfer title to, exchange, lease, lend, or otherwise dispose of, to any [country whose defense the President deems vital to the defense of the United States] any defense article". The equipment so provided was an immense aid to the Allies.

From what I can find the first US troops deployed in the western sphere of WWII were landed in Morocco (a French protectorate) on 8 Nov 1942, some 909 days after France was invaded. (Update: 50 American Rangers participated in the failed assault on Dieppe - Operation Jubilee - on 19 Aug 1942).

No question that World War I and II would have been even more horrific and longer without American involvement. However America chose when to enter the war and did so after 557 days of war in WW II and 977 days of war in WW I.

Yet when France declines to join the US war on Iraq on Day 1 they are called 'Cheese Eating Surrender Monkeys' and French Fries are renamed Freedom Fries in US Government cafeterias.

Now the US is bogged down in Iraq (honestly who didn't see that coming?) calls go out to the United Nations (and thus France) for help.

Now let me see... Gulf War II started on 20 March 2003. The next US Presidential election is 2 November 2004. Hmm ... 594 days. It's not out of question for France to decline to help out for 595 days!

To add to the name calling Eclectism grabbed this dialog

From a press conference with Richard Boucher (spokesman for the State Department):

QUESTION: Mr. Boucher, do you have anything on the proposal for the creation of a European Union military headquarters in Brussels independent of NATO -- something that have angered the United States, according to reports?

MR. BOUCHER: I'm not quite sure what proposal that is. You mean the one from the four countries that got together and had a little, bitty summit?

QUESTION: That's exactly it -- and Belgium insisting to this --

MR. BOUCHER: Yeah, the chocolate makers.

(Laughter.)

What a wonderful little piece of diplomacy that is — deriding Belgium, France, Germany, and Luxembourg as "chocolate makers" and mocking their "little, bitty summit."

It's an ugly, ugly situation. Indeed it could be argued that hundreds are dying (in Iraq and elsewhere) due to this and other ridiculous name calling.

Either our leaders should grow up or we'll have to send them all to their rooms! (if only it were so simple)