Bill Kerr

OLPC's XO-3 tablet

2012-01-13T00:41:00.000+10:30

"if it works"

It sounds too good to be true that Nicholas Negroponte could deliver on both the most amazing computer hardware and also the holy grail of education - teaching reading without adult help.I would love to hear more detail about this software based adaptable reading program from anyone who knows more.

As part of a two-year project to study educational development among young children in developing countries, researchers will collect data from XO-3 tablets used by three-to-eight-year-olds in India, Tanzania and Sierra Leone. Software on the tablets will record audio and video and adapt a reading platform to the needs of the children without human intervention. The project will study how children interact with the tablet and will aid in the study of tools for self-learning and critical thinking among children. One goal is to provide basic comprehension and reading, which is important in countries where teacher training is inadequate.

"In the reading experiment, where we ask can a child learn to read on his or her own, we imagine many hours of use per day, as many as six or eight. Frankly, the reading experiment may be the most important thing I have ever done....if it works," Negroponte said.
- OLPC's XO-3 tablet to debut at CES

Footnote:
I looked up an old blog where alan kay said something about this during his 40th anniversary of the dynabook speech:

BUT, when Nicholas started up the OLPC project my heart sank, even as I supported it ... because if it's tough to get good mentors in the USA then it's really tough out in the Third World ... no user interace today can find out who its user is, what its user knows, what it can do ... it can't find out what level of reading the user can do and help find out the next level of reading

Australia's red centre

2012-01-12T16:13:00.000+10:30

From my daughter's recent trip: Adelaide to Uluru

ending the groundhog day of educational reform

2011-12-31T22:36:00.000+10:30

Some notes on a talk given by Noel Pearson on the launch of his book, Radical Hope, in September, 2011 :
Bringing Explicit Instruction to remote aboriginal schools in Cape York, Queensland

Primary school education was the hardest domain for us to penetrate. NAPLAN results over the past 3 years provided useful evidence to break out of failing education programmes. We could say to professional educators: “We can no longer leave the future of our children in your hands”. We could end the groundhog day of educational reform

The grandmothers in Cape York are more literate than their grandchildren. The Missions had succeeded in teaching children to read and write in their own indigenous language. Over the past 40 years indigenous children have become illiterate in both their native and English language

We arrived at the conclusion that in the Reading Wars, the Explicit Instruction / Phonics side of the war was correct.

MULTILIT (Making Up Lost Time in Literacy) and all Explicit Instruction programmes have their genesis in Direct Instruction, an American programme developed by Professor Siegfried Engelmann at the Universities of Illinois and Oregon. In early 2009 we visited the USA and subsequently formed a partnership with the American National Institute of Direct Instruction.

We established this programme in two Cape York primary schools: Aurukun and Coen. The programme consists of Class and Club. Class is the western curriculum. Club is indigenous culture.

The compulsory school day runs from 8:30 to 2:30. This is followed by a voluntary programme which runs from 2:30 to 4:30.

The new programme commenced on January 28, 2010. The first few months were marked by chaos, controversy, revolt and alarm. But eventually things settled down. There were 65 kids in the Time Out room one week. Then there were 3 kids the following week. This transition marked school acceptance of the new programme.

There is regular coaching of teachers in the required methods every 3 months. Each week there are mastery tests of the previous 5 or 10 lessons. Students do not move to the next level unless they achieve a 90% achievement score.

Every Tuesday morning there is a conference with coordinators in the USA with the Principals of Auruken and Coen. The operating assumption is that if the student has not learned then the teacher has not taught. There is no alibi for the teacher. The Principals main task is to lead instruction.

When kids experience success, then behaviour changes and interest engages.

Aurukun was possibly the worst school in Queensland. In 2009 police were called to the school 160 times, for a school of 230 students. The attendance rate was 30%. We are now 18 months into this educational reform.

FURTHER INFORMATION FROM THE Q&A SESSION AFTER PEARSON’S TALK:

Welfare System
The welfare system must be reformed from unconditional welfare to conditional welfare. Parents must meet four conditions to continue receiving welfare:
1. send children to school
2. children free from abuse or neglect
3. meet housing tenancy obligations
4. don’t break the Law

The welfare system has been funding dysfunctional lifestyles. The Commonwealth government has been paying for people’s drug habits. There has been unconditional financing of dysfunction. Welfare is not a wage, it is social assistance which comes with conditions.

Trust Accounts
Trust accounts were created to cover educational expenses (uniform, tuckshop, equipment, computers). The money comes from the parents. They are completely voluntary.

At Coen there was a 100% signup to the trust accounts. The trust accounts now contain $1500 per child and over 1 million dollars in total. The swift uptake of trust accounts persuaded us that parents care deeply about their children’s education.

Results
We use DIBELS (Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy), which is more informative than NAPLAN, to assess the progress of students. This tells us that:
- the top 30% is progressing at double mainstream speed
- 50% are progressing at above mainstream speed
- poor attenders continue to have poor results

Lack of Support from Education Department Bureaucracy
A Cairns Principal who was prepared to run a Direct Instruction stream was banned from visiting Aurukun by the Department!!

What sort of teachers are required for Direct Instruction?
The DI programme has been described as “teacher proof”. For Pearson the biggest surprise was that they are making progress with the stock, standard issue Queensland trained teacher. As long as the teacher is amenable to the program there are good results. However, teachers college has not taught these teachers how to teach reading!

sources:
audio: Noel Pearson: Radical Hope (the above notes are made from this extract)
video: Radical Hope Book: A Talk by Noel Pearson (the whole talk including an informative Q&A session)

alyawarre scratch file

2011-12-20T22:57:00.000+10:30

I used Scratch to make a tiny multimedia dictionary (voice, pictures, words) for the Australian indigenous Alyawarre or Alyawarra language. It's available here. Three girls from wiltja provided the words and their voices. Alyawarre tribe is near Tennant Creek.

The words are:

kungar = blue tongue lizard
numa = snake
loget = goanna

I always remember the insightful words of Noel Pearson:

"Keep our diverse languages and cultural traditions by excelling in education and digital technologies, the only means of arresting the decline of our ancient and oral traditions"

chess swings and roundabouts

2011-06-17T19:22:00.001+09:30

My chess results have been quite erratic of late. Currently I'm playing interclub in South Australia for the Modbury Club. I'm busy so for preparation all I really do is go through some tactical exercises in the Combinational Motifs book by M. Blokh, beforehand.

Last Tuesday I played against the new State Champion, Goran Srdic, and lost.

We did a quick post mortem after the game and Goran revealed that he thought his position was always good. I had played a risky move 16 which enabled him to cleverly win the exchange. Nevertheless, he had weak pawns and I had the 2 bishops so I thought I was still doing ok. His move 28 looked strong but I had thought of a brilliant reply, which I played. I thought he would have to give up his queen but he didn't. My attack petered out and he won the endgame easily.

This game stayed in my head, particularly the position after move 31. I recaptured his knight so I wouldn't fall too far behind on material. I was short of time. Eventually, a better move came to me without even setting up the position. It looked like I was winning now. How exasperating!

I setup the position to confirm my mental analysis and I'm pretty sure I'm correct. I could have won this game as a brilliancy against the new State Champ. Oh Damn! Here is the game.

White: Bill Kerr
Black: Goran Srdic
1. Nf3 d5
2. g3 Nf6
3. Bg2 Bf5
4. d3 c6
5. O-O h6
6. Nc3 e6
7. Nfd2!
I saw this maneuver in an online GM game a while back and liked it. White's e4 cannot be prevented and his pieces are well co-ordinated
7. __ Be7
8. e4 Bh7
9. Qe2
Black is now reluctant to develop his QN at d7 since then e5 from white would force his other night back to g8. So he decides to expand on the queenside instead.
9 __ a5
10. Kh1 Na6
Preparing f4. Since black has played __ a5 I didn't think he was planning to castle on the queenside so I'm going to attack him on the king side or centre.
11. f4 Nd7
12. exd!
Black has delayed castling and is vulnerable on the K file
12 __ cxd
13. f5! Bxf5
14. Nxd5 exd5
15. Rxf5 O-O
Initially, it looks like white will win the QP but that doesn't work out because black has a strong reply in __ Nb4. After thinking for 15 minutes I played a risky move.
16. Nf3?!
Possibly 16. c3 immediately is better
16. __ Bf6!
17. c3 Re8
18. Qf1 g6!
Winning the exchange
19. Rxd5 Nc7
20. Rd6 Qe7!
I was half expecting __ Nb5 here with a possible draw by repetition. (21. Rd5 Nc7 etc.) but Goran has seen further ahead than me this time
21. Bf4 g5
22. Ra-e1 Ne6
I had missed this move during my move 19 calculations
23. Rdxe6 fxe6
24. Bd2
Nevertheless, I have one pawn for the exchange and his pawns are weak and his king position is shaky. I thought the position was even but Goran thought he was winning.
24. __ Qd6
25. d4 e5
26. dxe Bxe5
This removes an important defender for the black king. But if he takes with the knight then 27. Nd4 is awkward
27. Nxe5 Nxe5
It would have been smarter if I withdrawn the B to c1 on move 24. Now I would have had more options.
28. Be3 Nd3
I saw this coming and initially it looked strong. But then I realised I could exploit the vulnerable position of the black king, with a great move!
29. c4!?
Probably 29. Re2 is good too. But this roll of the dice was worth it!
29. __ Nxe1
30. Bd5+
At this point I thought Goran would give up his queen and thought that would end in a draw by white implementing a perpetual check. 30 __ Qxd5 31. cxd5 Rxe3 32. Qf6 Ra-e8 (anything else looks too risky) and white has perpetual check. But Goran still thought he was winning.
30. __ Kh8
31. Bd4+ Re5

This is where I missed the win. I played the obvious 32. Qxe1 which gave black time to organise his defence. After 32 __ Ra-e8 33. Qe4?! Qf6! 34. h4 Kg7 35. Qg4 Kh7 black went on to win easily.

White missed a brilliant thirty second move which would have forced a win. Can you see it?

xo deployment in australia

2011-02-28T19:09:00.005+10:30

View One Laptop Per Child Australia in a larger map

Legend:
Ear-marked or has expressed interest for deployment
Scheduled for deployment
Partial deployment
Full deployment - one laptop per child

One laptop per child australia has done a good job of deploying to remote aboriginal communities. This is best viewed at Google Maps but even in this version if you click on map icons you can obtain more detail of the deployments.

strange times

2011-02-28T18:25:00.000+10:30

I guess that 2011 will go down as the year of the glorious Middle East democratic revolutions!

I have been doing most of my blogging at the Strange Times collective over the past three months. Here are links to some of my posts:

shock tactics in alice

No fly zone demand for Libya

the vlog that helped spark the egyptian revolution

The marxist theory of crisis

Hans Rosling’s fast forward history

the achilles heel of capitalism

a puzzle for some

Resources for studying “Capital” with emphasis on Value theory

As far as I can tell my future posts will be more frequent there and less frequent here.

Build Your Own Blocks

2011-01-30T17:11:00.001+10:30

Build Your Own Blocks (BYOB) is an extension to the visual drag and drop programming of Scratch. It adds custom blocks, recursion, first class lists and procedures to the original.

The developer is Jens Mönig with design input and documentation from logo legend Brian Harvey.

There is a make a block shape in the Variables section. When you click on it an easy to use block editor comes up. First up, I made a block that draws squares, then followed up with a hex block and a star block. Here they are:

I am following a sequence suggested by Jens and Brian in their paper, Bringing 'No Ceiling' to Scratch: Can one language serve kids and computer scientists?

The next step is to draw a V shape with a randomly chosen decoration at each end. In a text based logo language this would look like:

to v
left 45 forward 50
run pick [square hex star]
back 50 right 90 forward 50
run pick [square hex star]
back 50 left 45
end

The tricky bit here is how to implement the line: run pick [square hex star] visually. Initially, I couldn't figure that out but my friend Tony Forster helped me with it:

And here is the whole v procedure, in visual block form:

This procedure draw shapes like this, (running it 3 times with different starting positions):

The next step illustrates how to do recursion in BYOB! Recursion means that a procedure calls itself. Here it is:

There are a couple of places where vee might randomly call vee causing the procedure to loop back on itself. Since it is random (item any) then the result are varied and unpredictable. Here are a couple of the more complex results:

As well as the paper by Jens and Brian make sure you read the manual which comes with the download, too.

The Climate Fix by Roger Pielke jnr

2010-11-10T01:02:00.000+10:30

Here is my summary of his main points so far:

we will need VASTLY more energy in the future
the amount of CO2 we pump into the atmosphere is a big problem - both AGW and biogeochemical effects
so we have to decarbonise the energy supply, aka reduce carbon intensity C output / energy consumed (see Kaya identity section for more detail here)
decarbonisation makes sense from other perspectives too, eg. energy security for some countries (from a policy perspective it is important that there are some short and intermediate term gains from the pain or costs of policy)
the public will not accept a big C tax designed to change energy consumption behaviour - they will vote out any party that introduces it
small steps are better than grandiose plans that end up being rejected
there is not a linear relationship between climate science and government policy, Scientific findings in complex social issues do not dictate policy. Politics in a democracy requires public support. A non linear or oblique approach might work. The direct approach has failed (Copenhagen)
the public will accept a small dedicated C tax (rising slowly over time) to fund R&D; there is consistent public support for some action on climate change but not dramatic action which will alter standard of living
We need more R&D because present technology is not sufficient to do the CO2 reduction that is required – taking into account future economic growth and removal of CO2 from the ocean to reduce harmful biogeochemical effects, as well as from the atmosphere
Since the above steps do not provide a guarantee for targeted CO2 reductions then a backstop is also required
CO2 air capture and storage (remediation) is a potential backstop, which could reshape the climate debate, one of the targets for further R&D

the Nobel family has dissociated itself from the economics prize

2010-11-09T22:23:00.000+10:30

One of the most annoying things is to read or hear an economist's views promoted because they have won the Nobel Prize. Hence, it is refreshing to hear that the Nobel family has dissociated itself from the economics prize

There are some good spoofs on this at Improbable Research:

2010 ECONOMICS PRIZE: The executives and directors of Goldman Sachs, AIG, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch, and Magnetar for creating and promoting new ways to invest money — ways that maximize financial gain and minimize financial risk for the world economy, or for a portion thereof

2009 ECONOMICS PRIZE: The directors, executives, and auditors of four Icelandic banks — Kaupthing Bank, Landsbanki, Glitnir Bank, and Central Bank of Iceland — for demonstrating that tiny banks can be rapidly transformed into huge banks, and vice versa — and for demonstrating that similar things can be done to an entire national economy.

brain plasticity

2010-10-23T17:56:00.000+10:30

Norman Doidge has written a book, The Brain That Changes Itself, about brain plasticity which has implications for our education system in general, those with learning disabilities and for senior citizens. Note the comment in the Kerry O'Brien interview below where it is argued that the decline of rote learning of long poems has contributed to declining oratory skills.

These theories developed in conjunction with Michael Merzenich have a great deal of scientific support. Check out the Norman Doidge video (on the brain and neuroplasticity, in 3 parts) and Michael Merzenich videos (TED talk, google talk) on the web.

Here is an extract from a 2008 interview with Doidge:

KERRY O'BRIEN: You write that humans instinctively were on the right track in the age of rote learning in education and you cite Abraham Lincoln's skill as an orator as an example. Can you elaborate?

NORMAN DOIDGE: Sure. In the '60s, there were things that were part of a kind of classical education that people did away with 'cause they thought that they were irrelevant like an almost fanatical attention to elocution and handwriting, or memorising long poems. But, it now turns out that what these activities did is they exercised very important parts of the brain that allow you to think in long sentences, have deep internal monologues and a certain amount of grace in all kinds of expression. And probably a lot of damage was done by doing away with these exercises that were there for good reasons we didn't understand.

KERRY O'BRIEN: You mean that they have reduced the scope of the functions of a child's brain as they grow to adulthood?

NORMAN DOIDGE: Yeah. The simplest example would be memory of long verses of poetry. It allows you to speak in public and have long, deep paragraphs of thought in private. When you reduce the amount of memory in those processors, we're reduced to a world of sound bites.

KERRY O'BRIEN: So, somebody else might say, well, you know, the kind of oratory of a Lincoln is simply a lost art. You would add to that; you would say it's a lost art …

NORMAN DOIDGE: That can be recovered.

KERRY O'BRIEN: ... but a lost art that was lost in the way we learnt, which you connect to the plasticity of the brain.

NORMAN DOIDGE: Most definitely.

KERRY O'BRIEN: Does mainstream science take it as seriously as it should?

NORMAN DOIDGE: I would say that mainstream neuroscience is now smitten with neuroplasticity as the new revolutionary paradigm that is giving us great insights in the levels of activity that are going on in the brain. And an example of it is just the following amazing fact: that when you think thoughts or learn something, you actually turn on genes inside the nerve cells in your brain to change the number of connections between those cells. You can double them in a matter of hours between nerve cell A and nerve cell B. So, what we've discovered with neuroplasticity is that consciousness can direct genetic expression, and neuroscientists are looking at all the sort of points along that trail from consciousness, ultimately to structural change in the brain and altered behavioural expression as one of the chief tasks right now.
- Kerry O'Brien speaks with Norman Doidge

crises of capitalism (David Harvey)

2010-10-17T22:56:00.000+10:30

This talk contrasts five different mainstream theories of the economic crisis with David Harvey's Marxist analysis. He build the talk around the rhetorical device of a question which the Queen asked the London School of Economics: How come you guys didn't see the crisis coming?

The very entertaining RSA ( (Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce) artistic animation enhances the presentation considerably.

ethical consumption debunked (Zizek)

2010-10-17T20:08:00.000+10:30

I love the way this Slavoj Zizek talk is animated by RSA (Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce) and some of his argument about how post 1968 capitalism offers redemption for the consumer through ecological sound purchases is spot on, too.

Some snippets, just phrases:

... the anti consumerist duty to do something for the environment is included (in your purchase)

Starbucks coffee ethics ... good coffee karma

... through a consumerist act you buy your redemption of being a consumerist

He then quotes extensively from Oscar Wilde in a polemic against all charity. Some of that was challenging but overall I wasn't so supportive of that section. It is one thing to expose phony "ethical consumerism" but I don't think all efforts to reform the system from within are misguided. "One laptop per child" is a good example of reform from within initiated by philanthropists which empowers the recipients.

Capital chapter one (Laurence Miall's blog)

2010-10-16T19:51:00.001+10:30

Capital by Karl Marx, Chapter 1 - blog by Laurence Miall

Laurence writes in an entertaining (and self deprecating, not claiming to be a Marx guru) manner replacing Marx's commodities of linen and coat with the more modern examples of gasoline, iPads and cat kibbles.

I think his summary of the most difficult chapter of Marx could be improved by a deeper analysis of the value form. I cite some references below which I found particular helpful in coming to grips with this. Here are some extracts from Laurence's article with comments:

para 10: “David Harvey really saved my pea brain from total meltdown here. It turns out that value is socially necessary labour time. This is to say that what gives a commodity value is the labour that went into it”

This is true but incomplete in that it is limited to the magnitude and substance of value. Value also has a social form (the capacity to be exchanged as an equal with another commodity) as well as a substance (embedded abstract labour) and magnitude (socially necessary labour time).

para 11: “And lastly, what gives my cat kibbles their exchangeability is the fact that they hold value: their value is that they provide a use-value for somebody else (in this case, for James, because he can feed my yummy cat kibbles to his own cats)”

This mixes up value and use value in a way which muddies the concept that value is a historically contingent social form, a social construct which eventually took on the form of money. In another type of society (pre or post capitalist) the cat kibbles would not have value at all. Imagine a society where your neighbor James just took the cat kibbles (no exchange) and that wasn’t regarded as theft. There is enough cat kibbles for everyone, no scarcity. Without exchange there is no value.

para 22: “Furthermore, the quantities are pretty arbitrary too. What makes 20 pounds of linen the basis of comparison? Why not 50 pounds? Or one pound?”

Those quantities in the general value form are not arbitrary. They are equivalents of socially necessary labour time required to produce those various commodities.

para 28 David Harvey quote: “People under capitalism do not relate to each other directly as human beings; they relate to each other through the myriad products which they encounter in the market.”

An issue which I found difficult to understand in Marx – in the same sense that Laurence qualifies Harvey’s quote - was Marx’s use of the word social in phrases like “socially necessary labour time” and in the commodity fetishism section, particularly the phrase “… material relations between persons and social relations between things”. My understanding now is that the use of the word social here relies on:

a restricted sense of social to mean exchangeable on the market – not social in the more general sense of human social interaction
the historical transformation of things into social forms, eg. products of labour become commodities, which as well as having use values are exchangeable (and hence social in that restricted sense)

So, appreciating value as a historically contingent social form I think adds a deeper dimension to Marx's analysis as well as helping to fathom out some of the ways in which he expresses himself.

Reference:
Marx, Karl: The Value-Form: Appendix to the 1st German edition of Capital, Volume 1, 1867 (link)
Rubin, Isaak Illich: Essays on Marx's Theory of Value, esp Ch 12: Content and Form of Value (link)

Geoffrey Canada

2010-10-13T10:57:00.002+10:30

I've been participating in a discussion with Tom Hoffman about the Harlem Children's Zone and Geoffrey Canada's role in the Waiting for Superman video (which I haven't seen in full). I wrote this initially as a comment on the thread but it became too long for blogger's word length restriction, so I am publishing it here. I knew a little about Geoffrey Canada from past discussions and initially updated my knowledge by watching this 2008 video interview with Charlie Rose:

I also watched the Oprah Education Panel Continues the Discussion After the Show (link), featuring Geoffrey Canada and some others, which was fascinating. (The Charlie Rose interview provides a better look at Canada's overall world view and the reasons he has formed a political alliance against "big labour"; might be worth summarising in more detail at some stage)

No one raised the fundamental question which is that the problems of social class cannot be solved within a system which by its nature and day to day activity continues to generate those problems on a greater scale than any solutions within that system. Canada was not critical of government and praised Obama's "Race to the Top". Nor can such a big nation wide problem be solved by philanthropy as Tom points out, the pockets of Gates and Zuckerberg (Facebook entrepreneur who has become a recent education philanthropist) are miniscule compared to what is required nation wide. Also Canada buys into the great American empire rhetoric which is populist and misleading when it comes to solving this problem for America as a whole. His empire rhetoric is more apparent in the Charlie Rose video.

Nevertheless, Canada's analysis of educational problems for the disadvantaged and what to do about it are correct. High expectations, early intervention, build parental support into the package, longer school day, teacher accountability (even though we might argue about how to do that). This is along the same lines (progress without progressivism) of the scheme proposed and now being implemented by Noel Pearson in Cape York, Australia for the most disadvantaged Australians. Pearson is not so dependent on philanthropy because Australia differs from the USA in that respect but he has ended up allied to what is regarded as the "right" because they are more practical than "correct". That political alliance seems to go with solutions within the system too.

IMO you can't really polemicise in an all round manner (black and white, they are bad and we are good) against people who are trying to help the Disadvantaged in the here and now and at the same time describe yourself as "progressive". Because what progressives do is help the Disadvantaged. Part of the logic flowing from this is criticism of the Union, since the role of the Union is to protect working conditions. If you are working very long hours on moderate pay for the sake of the kids then that is not what Unions are on about. This part is tricky because good teachers do work long hours on moderate pay for the sake of the kids.

Davis Guggenheim, the film director of Waiting for Superman also made An Inconvenient Truth. The parallels here to me are striking. Identify a real problem but through exaggeration completely muddy the waters about a real solution on a macro level.

the battle for the high moral ground of education

2010-09-29T18:09:00.001+09:30

The Wrong Conversations

Will's blog is about learning innovation using the read/write web. This particular blog advocates caution in dealing with the political encroachment of the education standards juggernaut on teachers. This struggle is reaching fever pitch in the USA with the release of Waiting for Superman which pushes for Charter Schools sponsored by wealthy philanthropists and its promotion on pop shows such as Oprah.

Will Richardson: involvement in political struggle drains energy from innovative learning
Tom Hoffman: a defensive, vigorous, noisy political struggle by teachers is essential, if this is lost then all is lost
Gary Stager: presents an alternative plan for a more just distribution of educational resources, The Stager Plan
Scott McLeod: firing bad teachers is not the solution but it is something that progressive educators do have to support (amongst other good points)
Stephanie Sandifer: Where is the student voice?
Brian Crosby: After a decade of NCLB (No Child Left Behind) primary teachers are scared, so scared they don't even want to know what is happening politically to education

My thoughts:
I can discern not two but at least three or perhaps four distinct positions here.
(1) innovative learning using technology
(2) public schools have failed to meet the needs of the Disadvantaged including basic numeracy and literacy, Charter schools and derivatives of Teach for America are the answer
(3) defence of public schools for the public good, teacher rights and strong unions to support those rights
(4) The Stager Plan

All points of view can and do claim the high moral ground. In reverse order:

The Stager Plan fails the Hegel / Engels test. Although everything that exists deserves to perish it won't actually perish until the social reason for its continued existence is eliminated. Everything that exists also exists for a reason. A revolution in schooling cannot eliminate class society; class society can only be eliminated by a revolution in society. In other words The Stager Plan sounds fair but it ain't going to happen unless a lot of other things happen first.

Teachers have a right to sanity and reasonable working conditions. I can see some merit in Teach for America public service but it's never going to scale successully. By the organisations own admission the inductees have only to work like slaves for 3 years as a stepping stone to a "higher" career.

Tom Hoffman's suggestion for noisy protest is good but is that going to happen at a time of economic crisis that isn't going away? At such times people who are fortunate enough to be still working become more insecure and less liable to protest. Unless things become really bad - another Depression - when you reach the point that a huge minority have little to lose by really vigorous protest.

The critics of public school have a point, more often than not public schools do fail the Disadvantaged. The more you are disadvantaged the more they are likely to fail you. This doesn't mean that Charters promoted by the wealthy will necessarily do any better (for the Disadvantaged), although a few will if they are put together in the right way. Damaged kids bring their damage to school in such a huge way that any repair of that damage, by the school system, is usually only partial. As already stated superman and superwoman don't scale.

Computer technology can be used for innovative learning (either Papert constructionist style or Richardson et al read/write web style) or they can be used to do the data crunching required for standardised testing and league tables. From a teaching point of view the former requires high knowledge levels (epistemological use of technology). From a political point of view the latter is very attractive as a ready means of measurement and control of teachers. So, we shouldn't be surprised that the latter use is gaining ascendancy.

Teaching is a profession whose advocates can appeal for legitimacy to the the noble aspects of the human spirit, the desire to learn new things. From the point of view of the ruling class this makes teachers hard to control. Hence when computer technology produces the data which offers the opportunity to control teachers they are bound to use it for that purpose. That is one of the main goals of the capitalist class, to control its workers.

All sides will continue to claim the high moral ground.

Noteworthy link:
It's not a revolution unless someone gets hurt

I think it is becoming increasingly clear that our current system of education is going to go away. There are simply too many societal pressures and alternative paradigms for it to continue to exist in its current form
- Scott McLeod

climate: the triumph of the blogosphere

2010-09-28T09:38:00.000+09:30

As well as Judith Curry's excellent climate blog, Climate etc I just discovered that Richard Tol, economist, has a climate blog too: IPCC5 KEY ECONOMIC SECTORS AND SERVICES

He is an IPCC author who is critical of many aspects of the IPCC and has a wicked sense of humour to boot, for instance:

I would add two things, though. Firstly, Pachauri apparently does not trust IPCC authors and editors to be mature enough to say sensible things to journalists. Most of us have PhDs, after all, and many are full professors. We might just slip into juvenile language and compare people to Hitler, accuse them of practicing voodoo, or recommend they rub asbestos in their faces. Better to leave communication to the IPCC leadership, who would never say such things
- Letter from Pachauri

Rajendra Pachauri is Chair of the IPCC.

The blogosphere is maturing as more expert people who have become impatient with formality, bureaucracy and who have a desire to widen the democratic process come on line. My other favourite climate blogs are Pielke jnr and Pielke snr.

critique of crisis theory

2010-09-27T10:17:00.001+09:30

blog: A Critique of Crisis Theory (from a marxist perspective)

I like the approach and admire the research effort of this blog. The author, Sam Williams, has spent many years studying political economy and is systematically addressing the many and varied interpretations of Marx on crisis theory. He points out that Marx's analysis was unfinished and of course much has happened since Marx's death. His goal is to fill in some of the gaps in Marx's crisis theory as a guide to younger people who will make the future.

Read these sections for starters:
About Me and This Blog
The Problem: Marx Didn’t Leave Us a Completed Crisis Theory

extract:

These writings are built on the foundations of “Capital,” a work that at least in Germany is becoming a bestseller once again. But “Capital” itself, though it lays the foundation, is not a book about the periodic crises capitalist production goes through. Nor is there a section within “Capital” dealing with such crises, as is generally the case with works that popularize the theories of “Capital.”

Since Marx and Engels put so much emphasis on crises in the Communist Manifesto and other works, this omission at first seems surprising. Marx had planned to crown his economic work with a book on the world market, the state, competition and crises. As is well known, Marx did not have the time to write this work. It is, of course, impossible for any other person to write the work Marx might have written if he had had the time.

Of course, you will have to read a fair bit of the original Marx and probably some interpretations of his theory of value as a precursor to understanding the issues discussed on this blog.

Update (28th September): Note the Anti Duhring reference to overproduction (in The Problem: Marx Didn’t Leave Us a Completed Crisis Theory) - that markets can't keep up with continually expanding production which is compelled by the capitalist system - and Sam's implied disagreement with "Marxists" who don't grasp that overproduction is still the key to understanding crisis:

Indeed, many—perhaps today most—Marxists largely disagree with Engels and Marx as well, and deny that industrial overproduction is the essence of the cyclical economic crises that mark the concrete history of capitalism from 1825 onwards

My own study still has some way to go but I look forward to reading Sam's efforts to sort out the issue of whether the current crisis is due to overproduction or financialisation of the economy, an issue which I don't yet understand.

Is there an education crisis in your country?

2010-09-26T12:32:00.003+09:30

Some thoughts on reading
SCHOOLWORK by Nicholas Lemann
and
How there can be and NOT be an educational crisis in the US by Mark Guzdial

Three reasons why you might say there is an education crisis in your country:

1) We aren't as good as Finland. Your country is falling behind other countries on the international PISA test scores (link)

Finland envy is relatively new because PISA tests, the technical ability to compare educational achievement in different countries is relatively new. What does it mean? My guess is that Finland as a society values education and social equality higher than other OECD countries. For example, to become a teacher in Finland you need a Masters Degree and they are more generous in their treatment of Disadvantaged students and cater better for their needs at a younger age.

So, if your country is not like Finland there are grounds for saying there is an education crisis. If you are near the top of the PISA list then you might claim there is not an education crisis.

2) The gap b/w the knowledge rich and the knowledge poor is increasing, there is a long tail of educational under achievement for the Disadvantaged. For example, Australia does alright on the average PISA scores but we do have a long tail of disadvantage.

This one is driven by social class and a sense of social justice or fairness. Australian education is quite unfair because the children of poor people who live in low socio economic areas end up being grouped together in school classrooms. It doesn't matter how good the teachers are, these classrooms can't compete - other things being equal - with the children of wealthy parents who end up being grouped together in Private schools which have a completely different classroom environment.

So, if you can access the wealthy Private schools or the few elite government schools (the way it works in Australia) there is no education crisis but if you can't then there quite possibly there is a crisis in your classroom.

3) There is a perception that desired education goals (however they are defined) are not being matched with desired educational attainment. eg. declining enrollments in maths and science courses, with maths and science being seen as desirable by observers and not particularly desirable by many students. Or you might think computer programming skills or some other computing skills are really important in today's world and be frustrated at how poorly these skills are lagging in education systems.

(update 27th September: This section could be much expanded especially in a qualitative sense.
eg 1. Alan Kay has argued there is not a real computer science.
eg 2. The current economic crisis reveals that the real science of political economy has been suppressed in higher education for many years - a great evasion of past findings has been occurring
eg 3. the global warming issue has revealed that there is a crisis within the culture of science and how it connects to the politics of policy formation)

So, if you can complete any old course and get a job there isn't a crisis. But if you are worried about the education system delivering a good education to all citizens based on your view of high quality education then there is.

Conclusion: Education crisis doesn't really exist on a country by country basis. update 27th SeptemberRather the education crisis is a barometer of an underlying crisis in social class and depth of awareness of knowledge development issues in your country. Finland is on top because there is less class division and a more caring attitude to the disadvantaged.

Education crisis exists on the basis of social class and your attitude towards knowledge. The education crisis is a class crisis and an epistemological crisis. It really depends on your point of view of the sort of society you see as desirable, so it cannot be measured "objectively".

Lemann downplays the crisis because his outlook is middle class, the crisis does not directly touch him the way it touches the disadvantaged. Guzdial, from his perspective in computer science and epistemology, acknowledges a crisis of sorts but there is no reference to the importance social class in his article.

related:
maths education crisis in Australia - the long tail of underachievement
curriculum reform will not improve education without quality teachers

The Australian: carbon tax better than a crazy-quilt

2010-09-24T15:02:00.001+09:30

You have to take notice when the Economics Editor of The Australian (aka the right wing mouthpiece of Rupert Murdoch and his unsavoury fossil fuel loving fellow travellers) calls for a carbon tax:

A general carbon price - most likely a carbon tax - is needed if only to counter the crazy-quilt risk from the balance of power Greens and country independent
- Worried about big slugs? Try a carbon tax

The reasoning goes that with all the inefficient climate change induced indirect taxes happening there is a need to rationalise the whole process.

some features of the crazy-quilt:
- "green car" subsidies to the motor vehicle industry
- uncertainty pushes up prices
- an initially low C tax is better than an expensive ETS
- renewable energy costs more, so a 20 percent target by 2020 is expensive
- Labour's failed home insulation scheme was indirect and disastrous
- ditto for Labor's "cash for clunkers" promise
- Independents such as Windsor are promoting rural protectionism, which can't survive in the long term
- low income earners could be compensated for increased electricity prices

superwoman crashes

2010-09-24T09:15:00.001+09:30

I noticed when watching the Waiting for Superman movie trailer (link) that it was made by the same people who made An Inconvenient Truth. Hard hitting documentaries that oversimplify complex issues and then hit you over the head with a baseball bat.

Michelle Rhee promised to crash through and reform schools in Washington D.C. who were failing disadvantaged kids. She was given unconditional backing by Mayor Adrian Fenty.

Fenty has now lost his bid for re-election, which was widely viewed as a referendum on Rhee.

Diane Ravitch points out (Why Michelle Rhee and Adrian Fenty Lost) that Fenty was supported by white voters but lost the black vote. The media has blamed teacher unions but as Ravitch insists black voters can think for themselves.

So, the people who Rhee was going to help have turned against her. This to me is a vote against the notion that changing inequality and poverty in society can be fixed exclusively at the school level. Social class cannot be turned around in class, it's a wider social issue. It doesn't mean that we shouldn't try and good teacher do their best. But it does mean we have to face the wider social reality. Kids come to school and do not leave their baggage and damage in a blue bin at the gate. (thanks pat thomson!)

In her article Ravitch links to a Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup poll which shows that the Obama / Arne Duncan policies on school reform, which include elements of the Rhee approach such as sacking Principals in schools which are judged to be failing, are losing favour.

However, this article also points out (scroll down to the Bright Spots subheading) that the public still supports improving the quality of teaching and some form of merit pay. People want reform and school improvement but not excessive crash through draconian approaches that target teachers as the only problem in school achievement. I notice a quote there from Barnett Berry who has been studying the issue of how to reform disadvanted schools for years:

“There is far more interest in supporting teachers than firing them or paying them on the basis of test scores,” said Barnett Berry, the president and chief executive officer of the Hillsborough, N.C.-based Center for Teaching Quality. “It doesn’t mean the American people don’t want a results-oriented profession. They do. I think they are more tuned in with the needs of the field than some of the policymakers who are making the rules and regulations.”

Related: Staffing high needs schools (outlines Barnett Berry's ideas in more detail)

Update: Grading 'Waiting for Superman' The introductory paragraphs are spot on:

Here's what you see in Waiting for Superman, the new documentary that celebrates the charter school movement while blaming teachers unions for much of what ails American education: working- and middle-class parents desperate to get their charming, healthy, well-behaved children into successful public charter schools.

Here's what you don't see: the four out of five charters that are no better, on average, than traditional neighborhood public schools (and are sometimes much worse); charter school teachers, like those at the Green Dot schools in Los Angeles, who are unionized and like it that way; and noncharter neighborhood public schools, like PS 83 in East Harlem and the George Hall Elementary School in Mobile, Alabama, that are nationally recognized for successfully educating poor children.

You don't see teen moms, households without an adult English speaker or headed by a drug addict, or any of the millions of children who never have a chance to enter a charter school lottery (or get help with their homework or a nice breakfast) because adults simply aren't engaged in their education. These children, of course, are often the ones who are most difficult to educate, and the ones neighborhood public schools can't turn away.

You also don't learn that in the Finnish education system, much cited in the film as the best in the world, teachers are—gasp!—unionized and granted tenure, and families benefit from a cradle-to-grave social welfare system that includes universal daycare, preschool and healthcare, all of which are proven to help children achieve better results at school.

In other words, Waiting for Superman is a moving but vastly oversimplified brief on American educational inequality. Nevertheless, it has been greeted by rapturous reviews.

helpful climate change overview

2010-09-21T09:47:00.000+09:30

It is not as sexy to be a doubtist (white flag) rather than an alarmist (green flag) or denier (red flag). Doubt.

But quite possibly climate scientist Judith Curry presents a superior overview of the science of climate change than the way IPCC findings are presented to us. I found this exchange (starts here) on her blog helpful:

Bart Verheggen:

My major issue though is this:

For the remainder of this century, what natural forcing or variability could plausibly rival the relentlessly rising anthropogenic forcing in magnitude? Is there evidence at all for that being plausible? If so, is that evidence really as large as the evidence showing that greenhouse gas forcing will exceed the likely bounds of natural variability (if it hasn’t already)? Or alternatively, so you really believe that an equal portion of the climate change over the next 90 years will be caused by natural variability versus caused by natural variability/forcing?

I haven’t seen any plausible evidence for such.

Judith Curry:

Bart, the issue for the 21st century is this. NOBODY in the IPCC has tried to actually predict 21st century climate change. What they have done is conduct scenario simulations for adding greenhouse gases into the atmosphere over the next century. They do NOT predict 21st century solar variability or volcanic eruptions. They do a poor job at simulating the observed modes of natural internal climate variability (e.g. the multidecadal ocean oscillations).

So what the IPCC simulations basically say is that, if the solar and volcanic forcing remains fairly neutral in the 21st century, then CO2 warming will dominate and they provide specific projections for these scenarios. The elephant in the room is that no one is predicting the natural variability for the 21st century (we don’t know how to do it, basically).

So even if we knew the CO2 sensitivity perfectly (which we don’t), we don’t know how to estimate the natural variability piece, which could be smaller, equal to, or larger in magnitude than the greenhouse forcing. If equal to or larger in magnitude, then during some periods greenhouse warming will be cancelled out by natural variability and in other periods greenhouse warming would be the same sign as the natural variability.

We already know what the natural variability looked like in the 20th century, no big surprises but still an unexplained increase between 1910-1940 and decrease between 1940 and 1970. We have no idea what 21st century natural variability will look like, but already we are seeing surprises from the sun re sunspots. So this is why I bumped up the size of the white for the 21st century.

and in a follow up comment from Judith:

IMO, too much emphasis and focus has been given to greenhouse forcing, and insufficient focus on natural variability and land use changes

and:

The two candidates (apart from volcanic forcing) are solar variability and the natural internal variability of the coupled ocean atmosphere system, e.g. the multi-decadal and longer oscillations such as the NAO, PDO, etc. Not to mention abrupt climate change, which has been documented in the past to occur without any obvious external forcing.

NAO = North Atlantic Oscillation
PDO = Pacific Decadal Oscillation

not a triple crisis IMO

2010-09-17T23:31:00.003+09:30

update 20th Sept: For the full dialogue b/w me and steve see comments 13, 18, 21, 22, 25, 26, 28, 30, 32, 55, 56 at Can capitalism save the planet?

I left a comment on Steve Keen's blog in response to his recent talk at the Can Capitalism Save the Planet? forum. I only watched the first 9 minute video on his blog (link). I didn't like his triple crisis scenario that economic crisis, peak oil and global warming will combine to create a disaster by mid Century. This is a departure from Steve who up to now has focused on debt deflation and the instability of capitalism developing the ideas first advanced by Hyman Minsky. In response to another complaint in the thread Steve linked to a pdf (A comparison of Limits of Growth with 30 years of reality) by Graham Turner which argues that the Club of Rome Limits to Growth scenarios are being validated.

My comment is #13:

I had a quick look at the Graham Turner paper you linked to. I don’t believe that a computer model at this stage of their development could accurately predict a catastrophe by mid century.

You promoted a triple crisis view in your talk – economic crisis, peak oil and global warming. Each of those issues has its own complexities and specifics. But the computer modelling aspects of the global warming thesis is not its strong point. I read James Hansen’s book and he does not base his dire predictions on computer modelling -he specifically says they are not reliable enough yet – but relies much more on paleo-climate evidence. In light of this how anyone could say that a computer model will predict trends 100 years into the future is beyond me.

You create a bit of dilemma for those who want to discuss this further. Your blog is about debt deflation but in your talk the triple crisis theme was strong. I think the evidence for capitalisms instability is overwhelming but the other issues require extensive discussion in their own right and in how they connect to the economic crisis.

In your response to johnyh I think the issue you are missing is that there is not a linear relationship b/w the science of peak oil and global warming to the policy actions that might be taken in response to that science. The issue is not so much that the science is wrong (although I don’t think there is a consensus on these issues) but that alarmism at the policy level may not be warranted in response. In that respect I would argue that those issues are quite different from the economic crisis

update 18th September: Steve has replied to me as follows, comment #18:

I agree my talk does create a bit of a dilemma for this blog, so I’ll relax my resistance to discussing global warming here for a short while; but I’ll start by putting my position in perspective, in particular about the role of computer modelling here.

We need a bit of a perspective on what that particular computer model–World 3 and its developments that generated the results in Limits to Growth–were actually doing, and what I have come to agree is a fundamental blindspot in the human psyche (I think Sirius here first put this to me), our inability to grasp the impact of exponential trends.

If there is a fixed resource–say land area–and our use of it is growing exponentially and doubles every ten years, and after 100,000 years we have grown to the point where we are consuming 50% of the land, then in 10 years time it will run out.

If we somehow manage to increase the amount of this resource, or say improve our efficiency of use of it by a factor of four, that will buy us another 20 years. A thousand-fold increase in efficiency will buy us an extra century.

So the model was not as such trying to “predict trends 100 years into the future” as to say that IF exponential trends of usage continue THEN given the feedback between exponential trends and fixed inputs, a crisis will occur sooner rather than later. The models also acknowledged that we could perhaps improve our efficiency of usage of fixed resources (though not as a “magic bullet” but as another exponential trend over time), and that if we did and we reduced other factors as well exponentially (pollution) while reduced some pressures to sub-exponential growth (population), we could probably sustain an indefinitely improving standard of living.

That was written in 1972, and almost 40 years later it is manifestly obvious that we haven’t done any of that (save a continuing tapering in population growth which is still nonetheless growing); if anything we’ve increased the intensity of our exponential loads on the planet.

So the models were not so much a prediction as a warning that we had better come to understand the dilemma of exponential growth on a finite planet sooner rather than later. I don’t think there is much doubt that we have failed to do that, and the “climate sceptic” position, though it’s not consciously trying to refute that proposition, is in effect delaying us coming to terms with it.

My reply back to Steve #21:

Thanks for relaxing the guidelines.

I agree that there are always limits to exponential growth and that not everyone understands exponential growth. However, peak oil is not a problem given that we have long term energy alternatives, such as nuclear. The real problem here is the lack of R&D being devoted to energy alternatives. Nuclear would also solve the problem of excessive CO2 entering the atmosphere.

The real problems here are economic (nuclear is still more expensive than fossil fuels) not environmental.

I tend to agree with John McCarthy (progress and its sustainability) that in the case of energy supply the limit is roughly a billion years since nuclear can supply our energy needs for at least that time and in the case of population it “will eventually be limited by a sense of crowdedness rather than by material considerations”

categorisation of uncertainty

2010-09-16T14:32:00.001+09:30

Interesting essay and comment thread about Doubt on climate scientist Judith Curry's new blog.

She proposes an Italian flag model inviting participants to cast their percentages wrt focus questions or hypotheses on their opinions about evidence for (green), evidence against (red) and uncertainty / unknowns (white):

She outlines a couple of hypotheses, one from the IPCC and one of her own about climate in the 21st Century and provides her own percentage estimates in the different categories for these. Her position is even handed in attributing climate change equally to human and natural factors with the uncertainty (white area) being dominant in her judgment.

Her main aim is to emphasise the uncertainty of much of the science in contrast to the name calling between "alarmists" and "deniers" that spoils much of the debate.

Roger Pielke snr left a comment there drawing attention to his hypotheses 1, 2a and 2b, which is an alternative way forward for the discussion. I have blogged about the Pielke snr hypotheses earlier

One of the critical comments, from Dan Hughes, concluded:

I don’t get the litmus-test question or the Italian-flag approach. I think we need to get a much better handle on many of the critically important aspects. While a top-down problem can be specified based on very little truly understood information, and even mis-information, and even not-applicable information, successful solutions are always, and I do mean always, based on extremely well-understood bottom-up information

I think that's correct from a scientific point of view but Judith is making an attempt to at least dampen down an acrimonious discussion which has got out of hand.

I left a comment there drawing attention to other ignorance categorisations, which I have blogged about in the past:
Five Orders of Ignorance
we don't know what we don't know

Actually, my main thought wrt the Italian flag categories was that it could be applied to other areas outside of climate science, such as political economy. In response to this focus question:

Will the current economic crisis develop into something akin to the Great Depression?

My guesses on this one are:
Green (evidence for): 20 percent
White (unknowns, uncertainties) 60 percent
Red (evidence against) 20 percent

I say guesses because the distinction b/w evidence and belief is not clear to me. Evidence is evidence that you believe in.

wild rivers notes

2010-09-12T23:35:00.000+09:30

The key issue on wild rivers is the choice between pristine wilderness for the benefit of urban greenies or managed development for the benefit of the indigenous australians. This basic difference in outlook is the main thread which runs through the debate.

On what principles should the future of Cape York be based? Marcia Langton outlines the difference between the extreme environmentalist position and the managed development position:

In the context of Cape York, some conservationists argue that the only sustainable types of activity are those that preserve the ecological value of the region. This is an extreme interpretation of the concept of sustainability, which in the mainstream usually encompasses three tenets: environment, economy, and equity. These tenets are viewed along a continuum, where meeting the needs of the present does not compromise the ability of future generations to meet their own needs (see Brundtland Report, UN, 1987).
- - Bligh's callous land grab by Marcia Langton, April 11, 2009

I have read a lot of Noel Pearson - particularly on the broad issue of the way forward for Australian aboriginal people. Do a search on this blog for "noel pearson" and you will find quite a few articles. I have heard him speak once and he is a brilliant and inspirational orator.

Recently, my assumption that noel pearson was progressive was challenged wrt his stance on the wild rivers issue.

Dave Kimble left this comment on my blog (link):

Your argument assumes that Noel Pearson has progressive views - he does not. He, like Abbott and Katter, wants to see indigenous land strip-mined for bauxite, instead of it being kept in its current pristine condition, which offers so much potential for "green development" - development that doesn't destroy the land.

The only developments that might be knocked back by Wild Rivers legislation are those that would damage the water catchment. Do you seriously think the local communities want to damage their sacred land?

Strip-mining is old-fashioned conservative thinking. Progressive thinking is very much in line with indigenous ways - loving the land and caring for it. That is why Greens have always supported Native Title and indigenous rights.

I'm not an expert on wild rivers or law or the details of Queensland politics and I live far away from Cape York but I am willing bit by bit to develop my understanding of these issues further. Based on my reading from afar here is my response to the points raised by Dave:

1) On the assertion that Noel Pearson supports destructive mining:

Asked about mining in the area, Mr Pearson said each case had to be assessed on its merits and there was potential, if strict environmental conditions were met, for mining to benefit local communities.

"We have to preserve the ability of these communities to develop economic enterprises in the future," he said.

"There is no road out of poverty without an economic base."
- Green group backs Wild Rivers review, January 14, 2010

I agree with Pearson here

The issue of mining is further complicated by the fact that the wild rivers legislation does not ban mining in the first place. There is a loop hole.

The tragedy of the whole situation is that current mines are exempt from Wild Rivers legislation.

So Rio Tinto, which takes 80 per cent of water from the Wenlock River can continue to do so, even when it is declared a wild river.

And there is no blanket ban on mining for the future.

Wild Rivers has a provision for mining "if it is of state significance".

A May 2009 newsletter from Tress Cox lawyers about the implications for mining and petroleum activities says mining activities which exist at the time of a declaration are not affected until they are renewed or amended, that the Aurukun and PNG Gas projects are exempted, and that amendments to the act in 2007 "opened the door for certain mining activities to proceed if the Minister provided consent"
- - Rivers of tears, September 19, 2009

As for bauxite mining which Dave is worried about it is going ahead anyway, the wild rivers legislation has exempted it, as pointed out by Noel Pearson to a Senate committee:

I pointed out that the vast areas around Weipa -- bauxite mining leases held by Rio Tinto and proposed to be given to Chinese government company Chalco -- were exempted from Wild Rivers laws precisely because the Queensland government would never have obtained Rio Tinto's agreement. Rio would never agree, so its area gets exempted from Wild Rivers.

Meanwhile, the state imposes Wild Rivers on the blackfellas. Which of the two kinds of landowners is actually doing anything that might affect the environmental health of rivers on western Cape York?
- Cape York Aborigines go into a divided wilderness, April 10, 2010

2) On the assertion that "The only developments that might be knocked back by Wild Rivers legislation are those that would damage the water catchment"

That isn't what I am reading.

Aboriginal traditional owners do not want large-scale environmental destruction in their river basin areas, such as dams, but the wild river gazettals are a terminal threat to their economic future and will deny them the right to the most basic improvements on their land. It is likely that they will not be allowed to build boat ramps
- Bligh's callous land grab by Marcia Langton, April 11, 2009

Points taken from another article which lists 23 complaints about the wild rivers legislation:

11. Wild Rivers places unreasonable restrictions and bans on economic opportunities including animal husbandry, agriculture and aquaculture in “high preservation zones”. There have been no studies of the possible economic impacts.

12. Government declared High Preservation Areas on Indigenous Lands without prior advice to the landholders and without consultation with landholders.

13. The burden of Wild Rivers falls much heavier on Indigenous land holders than non-Indigenous landholders. Most Cape York non indigenous landholders hold limited purpose leases such as for cattle grazing
- Why they’re wild about wild rivers by Michael Moore

Another article from the grass roots:

On the Department of Environment and Resource Management website and on that of the Wilderness Society, which proposed the Wild Rivers move, assurances are given that native title will not be affected, but Bruce says this is not so.

He joined his mother, and Aunty Martha Koowarta, the widow of the late John Koowarta, in Cairns on September 9 to hear Professor Greg McIntyre SC speak to JCU students about native title, and ask him about the effect of Wild Rivers on their rights.

Greg was the lawyer for the high profile Mabo case and that of the late John Koowarta versus the Bjelke-Petersen government.

He says there is a special provision for protection of native title rights in Wild Rivers legislation but that it is vague.

He believes Wild Rivers will have a severe impact on native title rights because it takes away indigenous people’s choice as to what they can do with their land.

"If an area is declared wilderness, the indigenous people won’t have the right to make decisions about the land," Greg says. "It also converts common law into a licence regulatory regime."
Any applications for development would have to be made through the Integrated Planning Act.
"There are processes of approval with local authorities and state-wide planning schemes," Greg says. "There’s a high level of complexity."

For Dorothy Pootchelunka, a Wild Rivers declaration, which has placed a blanket high preservation zone on her homeland and which she personally was not consulted about, means she may not be able to continue making baskets and selling them to galleries around the country.
A weaver, Dorothy has always made the baskets and other traditional accoutrements such as mats and feather flowers for traditional ceremonies.

She learned the art of weaving from her grandmother and she now teaches it to the young girls at the arts centre in Aurukun.

Dorothy is now afraid she won’t be able to gather the materials in the bush such as dyes and roots necessary for her trade.

"It would appear it would be a problem because there are stringent controls on the taking of vegetation for commercial purposes," Prof McIntyre says.

It’s not the only way Wild Rivers could affect Dorothy.

She currently lives in Aurukun but she would like to eventually return to Cape Keer Weer, where her family is from, to live out the rest of her days.

There she may want to build an outhouse, but the building of outhouses now has to be applied for under Wild Rivers legislation.

"Outhouses are areas where families could go and stay and have access to their traditional lands," Bruce says.

"They might put in a market garden so they could grow fruit and vegetables, very low impact stuff."
- Rivers of tears, September 19, 2009

There are some other issues here too

The ability of the Queensland government to get it right:

The gazettals will not deliver what the public expects: good management of the river basins and protection of biodiversity. On the contrary, these measures will leave these rivers unmanaged and at further risk of degradation. Just as detrimental to the marine and riparian biodiversity of the cape are the recreational fishermen, who are able to enter these vast areas fully equipped with large refrigerated trucks, use dynamite in the rivers, leave waste along the rivers, and who often leave fires alight that turn rapidly into bushfires that burn out thousands of hectares. The Wild Rivers Act and gazettals will do nothing to prevent this environmental destruction.

It has been the case for almost four decades that none of the conservation areas in the cape has been adequately managed by the Queensland government. The National Parks and Wildlife Service would have one or two rangers based at some of the national parks, but their ability to manage these vast areas is severely limited.
- Bligh's callous land grab by Marcia Langton, April 11, 2009

Who actually understands the area better, the aboriginal people or The Wilderness Society?

The Wilderness Society would have the Australian public believe that the cape is a wilderness where the Aboriginal population and local graziers are a threat to pristine environments. The photographs they use of the beautiful wetlands, riverways and coastlines are usually on Aboriginal land where Aboriginal rangers patrol to ensure that recreational fishermen, poachers, smugglers and drug dealers, and drug plantation operators do not establish camps and conduct their illegal activities. The rangers have been reporting the activities of such types to the authorities for more than 20 years. Most of these real-life situations on the cape are not part of the Wilderness Society story about the fantasy land they describe as a wilderness.

The Wilderness Society members do not live in the cape. Nor do they depend on the cape for their livelihood, lifestyles and traditions. And they never will. They are playing with thousands of people's lives by remote control.
- Bligh's callous land grab by Marcia Langton, April 11, 2009

another reference:
Red tape adds insult to injury by Peter Holmes a Court, who took the trouble to visit Cape York and inquire.

when the right is progressive and the left is conservative

2010-09-11T17:15:00.000+09:30

Right crucial to Aboriginal reforms
Read the whole thing. It's a masterly example of Noel Pearson's optimistic threading of the policy needle as a result of his deep understanding of Australian politics.

Noel Pearson points out that Bob Katter and Tony Abbott are crucial to and supportive of indigenous rights. This goes against the general trend of "progressive" media opinion that Bob Katter is a loony who hates gays and delivers death threats to his enemies at airports and that Tony Abbot is a die hard conservative catholic with no genuine feelings for social justice. On the other hand it is Labour and The Greens who have formed an alliance which denies aboriginals their basic rights to use the land in Queensland.

About Bob Katter:

Bob Katter is a pioneer of the transformation of the Right. He was a member of Joh Bjelke-Petersen's Queensland government with which Aboriginal people had so many bitter disputes. But Katter initiated the very reforms in land title and housing that we are pursuing today. Katter was 25 years ahead of his time.

In recent weeks Katter has been driven by conviction and passion, having taken the unique step of elevating indigenous policy to the top of his list of political priorities. It was a great moment when Katter said at his press conference on that chaotic Tuesday that "indigenous affairs was a very burning question for me".

"My reputation and my history was staked upon what happened there and I'm not going to walk away from it."

About Tony Abbott:

Abbott understood at an early stage that our argument was that Aboriginal disadvantage is not different to disadvantage in the non-indigenous mainstream, but is an extreme case of the effects of passive welfare and substance abuse epidemics....

The other big question where we need to achieve bipartisanship is a national settlement between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians. Abbott's private member's bill to overturn the Queensland Wild Rivers legislation is one example of the fact that Aboriginal rights is not a clear-cut Left v Right issue, where the Right has no positive contribution to make.

It was heartbreaking to us that the Labor Queensland government made a deal with the Greens about a conservation regime that is being enforced without the consent of the traditional owners.

Abbott's bill would restore traditional owners' property rights that were infringed by the Wild Rivers legislation...

Last year I wrote a Quarterly Essay explaining our education policies, which aim to make sure that all students in Cape York become fully numerate and literate in English, and receive high-quality secondary and tertiary education.

But I also wrote that for the sake of Australia's soul, contemporary forms of Australia's own indigenous languages and cultures must survive and develop.

The most encouraging reply to my essay came from Abbott. He wrote: "Pearson has the capacity to surprise both his backers and his critics. His call for a longer school day so that Aboriginal children can receive a sound general education is a challenge to the political Left. His bigger challenge, though, is reserved for the Right. Pearson wants the longer school day also to accommodate serious, sustained teaching in traditional Aboriginal culture and language.

"The challenge," Abbott continued, "for those who have been Pearson's philosophical fellow travellers up till now, is to accept that biculturalism, at least for Aboriginal people, is a worthy object of Australian government policy and is worth paying for [my emphasis]. Because it is unique to our country, support for Aboriginal culture is a responsibility of Australian government.

"In his final scripted speech as prime minister," Abbot concluded, "John Howard acknowledged how far he'd come in his attitudes to Aboriginal issues. Undoubtedly, his late flowering friendship with Pearson was a key factor in his personal journey from resistance to engagement. Over the years, Pearson has prompted quite a few conservative Australians to a change of heart. He's now inviting us to go a little bit further than the former prime minister was prepared to, but it's a project that we should be ready to support."

Pielke snr: global warming halted 2004-2008

2010-09-11T14:38:00.003+09:30

If you only have time to read one paper that provides an overview of Pielke snrs position then I recommend this one:
Have Changes In Ocean Heat Falsified The Global Warming Hypothesis? – A Guest Weblog by William DiPuccio, May 2009 (link)

Most of the angst against Dr Pielke in this Skeptical Science thread is based on his statement that "global warming halted on this time period" (2004-08). I would say that one of the roles of scientists is to identify better measurement tools - in this case the Argo system for measuring ocean heat in joules - and to base their analysis on those tools. This is what Dr Pielke has done. He has not concluded that global warming or increased CO2 in the atmosphere is not a problem but that the ocean heat measurement findings illustrate that our understanding is still quite limited.

Pielke snr:

If the ocean data is further corrected for the period 2004 to 2008, I would, of course, change my conclusion.

The more important issue, however, is the recommendation that upper ocean heat content in Joules be used as the primary metric to monitor global warming.(comment 15)

If climate change deniers take some of his statements out of context to promote their cause that is a separate issue. Climate change is not the same thing as global warming. It would be a sad day if scientists censored themselves because their scientific finding might be cherry picked by others with different agendas.

The main issues that seem to arise from this analysis are:

Some tools are better for measuring global warming than other tools. The best available tool we have at the moment is the Argo measurements of ocean heat content, measured in joules. The reliable data from this device begins in 2004.
Ocean heat warming as measured by Argo indicates that global warming has halted since 2004
Hansen's GISS model and the IPCC models are not accurate
We still can't accurately predict the future of climate but the tools are getting better and our ability to do so will improve in the future

Pielke snr:

Thus since 2003, there has been little if any global warming as diagnosed using ocean heat content. Since ocean heat content change has been shown to be a robust metric of global warmng and cooling ... the IPCC models clearly are not accurately predicting this global climate metric on this time scale (sea level budget over 2003-08)

Possibly the underlying reason why some people are annoyed with Dr Pielke is that he questions the reliability of IPCC models and so destroys the myth of a consensus of all scientists speaking with the same voice on the issue of global warming. Since many people find it difficult to differentiate b/w the science and politics of global warming they criticise Pielke for what they see as the political implications of his scientific analysis because they believe that there is a linear relationship between scientific findings and political action.

I went through a number of relevant post on Pielke snrs blog and wrote these brief summaries. This might be helpful for those too busy to do all the reading to see how the argument has evolved

Comment On Weblog Titled “Josh Willis On Climate Change: Global Warming Is Real” April, 2008 (link):
Pielke criticises Willis for not facing up to the implications of his data. Global warming has not occurred in the atmosphere over the past four years, the computer models are wrong, if ocean heat is in the deeper ocean then it is not available for warming.

New Information From Josh Willis On Upper Ocean Heat Content, May 2008 (link)
Technical discussion of uncertainty of ocean heat data. Pielke links (but the link is broken) to Climate Science weblog in support of his belief that "The analyses performed by Josh Willis and colleagues should be the gold standard used to monitor global climate system heat changes"

Is There Climate Heating In “The Pipeline”? MARCH 5, 2009 (link)

By “unrealized warming in the pipeline”, they mean heat that is being stored within the ocean, which can subsequently be released into the atmosphere. It is erroneous to consider this heat as ”unrealized warming”, if the Joules of heat are actually being stored in the ocean. The heat is “realized”; it would just not be entering the atmosphere yet

Have Changes In Ocean Heat Falsified The Global Warming Hypothesis? – A Guest Weblog by William DiPuccio, May 2009 (link)
This one provides a great overview of the challenge provided by ocean heat measurements to the IPCC "consensus" of monotonic heating caused by AGW:

... the current lapse in heat accumulation demonstrates a complete failure of the AGW hypothesis to account for natural climate variability, especially as it relates to ocean cycles (PDO, AMO, etc.). If anthropogenic forcing from GHG can be overwhelmed by natural fluctuations (which themselves are not fully understood), or even by other types of anthropogenic forcing, then it is not unreasonable to conclude that the IPCC models have little or no skill in projecting global and regional climate change on a multi-decadal scale. Dire warnings about “runaway warming” and climate “tipping points” cannot be taken seriously. A complete rejection of the hypothesis, in its current form, would certainly be warranted if the ocean continues to cool (or fails to warm) for the next few years

Comment On EPA Response To Reviewer Comments On Ocean Heat Content, Dec 17, 2009 (link)
Jim Hansen's GISS model was accurate for an earlier time frame (ten years or so preceding 2003) but is not accurate in light of the ocean heat data since then. The EPA is in a state of denial of the scientific facts.

Further Comments Regarding The Concept “Heating In The Pipeline”, MARCH 9, 2009 (link)
Critiques an argument at Brave New Climate that we ought to slow down the reduction aerosols in the atmosphere on the basis that climate change is a bigger threat than the detrimental health effects due to aerosols. The BNC argument is based on incorrect "missing heat in the pipeline" thinking.

Further Comments on The Inadequate EPA Response To Reviewer Comments On Ocean Heat Content, Dec 23, 2009 (link)
Further technical discussion to demonstrate that heating has not occurred to the extent claimed by the EPA

Comment From Josh Willis On The Upper Ocean Heat Content Data Posted On Real Climate. Dec 29, 2009 (link)
The data for ocean heat change is much less reliable before 2004 than after 2004, when the Argo system became the dominant source of information.

My View Of The Terminolgy “Heating In The Pipeline”, Jan 5, 2010 (link)

The basic issue is whether the term “heating in the pipeline” refers to heat that is sequestered for a period of time deeper in the ocean only to reappear later in the atmosphere, or if it refers to a continuing assumed radiative imbalance until the atmosphere warms.

I do not conclude that the first perspective is an error in the physics, but it is not, in my view, what is meant by the terminology “heat in the pipeline”

Continued Misconception Of The Concept of Heating In The Pipeline In The Paper Vermeer and Rahmstorf 2009 Titled “Global Sea Level Linked To Global Temperature”, APRIL 13, 2010, (link)
Further misleading uses of the phrases “heat in the pipeline” or “unrealized heat”

Is There “Missing” Heat In The Climate System? My Comments On This NCAR Press Release, APRIL 16, 2010 (link)
Reprint of email exchange between Pielke and Trenberth about different studies and whether there is missing ocean heat below 700 metres.

Trenberth’s [and co-author, NCAR scientist John Fasullo], however, are grasping for an explanation other than the actual real world implication of the absence of this heat.
First, if the heat was being sequestered deeper in the ocean (lower than about 700m), than we would have seen it transit through the upper ocean where the data coverage has been good since at least 2005. The other reservoirs where heat could be stored are closely monitored as well (e.g. continental ice) as well as being relatively small in comparison with the ocean.
Second, the melting of glaciers and continental ice can be only a very small component of the heat change (e.g. see Table 1 in Levitus et al 2001 “Anthropogenic warming of Earth’s climate system”. Science).
Thus, a large amount heat (measured as Joules) does not appear to be stored anywhere; it just is not there.

There is no “heat in the pipeline” [or "unrealized heat"] ...

Further Feedback From Kevin Trenberth And Feedback From Josh Willis On The UCAR Press Release, APRIL 19, 2010 (link)
Further detailed discussion b/w Pielke, Trenberth and Willis about the reliability and implications of ocean heat measurement. Trenberth and Willis argue the case against placing too much reliability on this data and Pielke snr argues the case for.

Some further references recommended by Pielke snr (peer reviewed papers):

Sea level budget over 2003-2008: A reevaluation from GRACE space gravimetry, satellite altimetry and Argo (link)

Assessing the globally averaged sea level budget on seasonal to interannual timescales (link)

consistency is not always a good thing

2010-09-09T11:57:00.000+09:30

The psychological desire for consistency can lead to irrational shouting if not moderated by an internal censor which regularly checks other viewpoints and arguments. It also helps if we understand that what we think we know represents only a small fraction of what we could know.

I like alan kay's idea of the unsane, the mental state where our ideas don't fit reality, the map doesn't represent the territory. We like to think of ourselves as mostly "sane" and contrast that with a few "insane" personal moments or the more permanent state of a few unfortunates. But the "unsane" idea makes room for a different self perception. What if more often than not we are unsane? (our human condition "from space")

Legal Eagle: Climate change, scepticism and elitism

I’ve thought long and hard why people get so dogmatic on this issue. In my experience, it tends to generate “threads of doom” on blogs like few other issues (apart from Israel/Palestine or abortion). I find fervid “believers” of either extreme a little scary. When I first got interested in this topic, I visited a few blogs run by “climate change sceptics” and “climate change believers” and I was really freaked out. Basically, they just shouted at each other in a way that was not conducive to dialogue. I was scared to even contribute to either side.

I think people get so aggressive about the position they’ve taken on climate change because they have a desire to be consistent. In Influence at page 57, Robert Cialdini says:
A study done by a pair of Canadian psychologists uncovered something fascinating about people at the racetrack: Just after placing a bet, they are much more confident of their horse’s chances of winning than they are immediately before laying down that bet. Of course, nothing about the horse’s chances actually shifts; it’s the same horse, on the same track, in the same field; but in the minds of those bettors, its prospects improve significantly once that ticket is purchased. Although a bit puzzling at first glance, the reason for the dramatic change has to do do with a common weapon of social influence. Like the other weapons of influence, this one lies deep within us, directing our actions with quiet power. It is, quite simply, our nearly obsessive desire to be (and to appear) consistent with what we have already done. Once we have made a choice or taken a stand, we will encounter personal and interpersonal pressures to behave consistently with that commitment. Those pressures will cause us to respond in ways that justify our earlier decision.
Once people have bet on a particular horse, they become convinced that the horse will win (whether it be the “sceptic” horse or the “believer” horse). But the fact of the matter is that neither position is certain. I think that many people on both sides could do with standing back a little and taking it a bit less personally...

Roger Pielke snr elaborates

2010-09-09T10:05:00.003+09:30

wrt, my previous post (the most reliable measure of AGW), I didn't explain that I read the Pielke snr paper because of a dialogue between him and a guest writer, gpwayne, at Skeptical Science, a site which focuses on review of peer reviewed papers about global warming . Subsequently, The Skeptical Science dialogue has become more interesting since in a follow up post by gpwayne Pielke snr has robustly joined the conversation and posted several comments to the thread. The relevant post is Pielke Sr and scientific equivocation: don't beat around the bush, Roger. Pielke snrs comments are # 15, 26, 35, 40, 48, 49, 64, 66, 83, 86, 94, 100, 109, 114, 115, 156, 157, 160, 167, 171, 173, 186, 194

Here are some extracts, the SUBHEADINGS are mine

EXPLANATION OF OCEAN HEAT MEASURED IN JOULES BEING THE BEST MEASURE OF GLOBAL WARMING
#15
A simple analog is a pot of water on the stove. When the burner is on, heat is added in Joules per second which results in the temperature increasing. By measuring the total heat of the water in the pot at any time, we can diagnosis the average rate of heating between sampling times. This integrated assessment is much more accurate than seeking to measure the heating rate itself.

In terms of the climate system, the heating rate is the global average radiative imbalance (which is made up of the radiative forcings and feedbacks). The difficulty of monitoring the fluxes, as contrasted with the integrated heat changes, is discussed in a series of weblog posts involving Kevin Trenberth and Josh Willis on my weblog...

"[T]here are several major reasons that the assessment of the earth system’s heat budget is so valuable.

• The earth’s heat budget observations, within the limits of their representativeness and accuracy, provide an observational constraint on the radiative forcing imposed in retrospective climate modeling.

• A snapshot at any time documents the accumulated heat content and its change since the last assessment. Unlike temperature, at some specific level of the ocean, land, or the atmosphere, in which there is a time lag in its response to radiative forcing, there are no time lags associated with heat changes.

• Since the surface temperature is a two-dimensional global field, while heat content involves volume integrals, as shown by Eq. (1), the utilization of surface temperature as a monitor of the earth system climate change is not particularly useful in evaluating the heat storage changes to the earth system. The heat storage changes, rather than surface temperatures, should be used to determine what fraction of the radiative fluxes at the top of the atmosphere are in radiative equilibrium. Of course, since surface temperature has such an important impact on human activities, its accurate monitoring should remain a focus of climate research (Pielke et al. 2002a).”

The recent data (2004-2008), according to Josh Willis, is quite robust in showing no global annual averaged upper ocean warming.

GLOBAL WARMING IS A SUBSET OF CLIMATE CHANGE, THEY ARE NOT SYNONYMOUS
#26
On the issues, you seem to be assuming that climate change is synonymous with global warming. Global warming, however, is a subset of climate change.

"Global warming" occurs when Joules accumulate within the climate system, of which the oceans is the largest reservoir for heat changes within the climate system.

I agree that other climate indices have changed (e.g. Arctic and Antarctic sea ice), but these are not direct measures of global warming. ...

GLOBAL WARMING HALTED FROM 2004-2008

... the statement such as "there was no global average warming in the upper ocean from 2004 to 2008" are consistent with his analysis. If they find an error, of course, that would need to be changed, but until it is, it is a robust, peer-reviewed scientific finding.

I still feel you are missing my main point. With all of the remaining unresolved uncertainties and systematic biases in the land surface portion of the multi-decadal global surface temperature trend ... we should move towards the more appropriate global warming metric of heat which is Joules, most of whose changes occur in the ocean. The ocean below 700m does not seem to be a major reservoir for this heat, as discussed in the web posts I sent in my first Comment.

IPCC MODEL PREDICTIONS NOT ACCURATE

Even with the remaining issues with the quantitative accuracy of the ocean heat content measurements, it should become the primary metric to diagnose global warming and as a measure to compare with the IPCC models. Until about 2004, the comparisons between the GISS model and the upper ocean heat content changes, for instance, were quite good ...

Since 2004, however, the model predictions have not been as good. Perhaps, this is a short term effect associated with natural variability. If so, we should see a resumption of heating rates that were seen up to 2004. This comparison with models, as a test of their accuracy, is the basic scientific method of hypothesis testing.

# 40
The statements that "global warming halted on this time period' and "global warming of upper ocean halted on this time period' both are correct ... (for the time period 2004-2008)

A PARTICULAR CAUSE FOR CONCERN ABOUT CO2 IS BIOGEOCHEMICAL EFFECTS

... to conclude that I have ever not been concerned about the addition of CO2 and how it affects the climate system misrepresents my perspective. I am particularly concerned with respect to the biogeochemical effects of added CO2 ...

WE DON'T FULLY UNDERSTAND THE CLIMATE SYSTEM

This does not mean that future global warming will not occur. However, to better understand the climate system, we need to understand why this halt occurred. Moreover, we need to see if in the coming years the heating will be amplified so as to catch up to the model predictions.

GLOBAL WARMING HAS OCCURRED OVER THE PAST 50 YEARS
#160
From all of the available evidence, time slices for today compared with 50 years ago clearly indicate that the upper ocean is warmer at present. Also, the OHC time changes is by far (~80%) the largest reservoir of global warming and cooling and can be used to diagnose the annual average global radiative forcing in Watts per meter squared.

the most reliable measure of agw

2010-09-08T19:16:00.000+09:30

A broader view of the role of humans in the climate system

Roger Pielke snr makes the point that ocean heat, measured in joules, is the most reliable measure of global warming. The ocean is the largest reservoir of heat change on Earth.

Temperature is not such a good measure. There is a time lag between radiative forcings and temperature, in the oceans or in the atmosphere. Unlike heat content temperature does not involve mass and so temperature is not an accurate measure of heat storage.

The study by Joshua Willis shows no significant change in ocean heat content over the period 2003-2008. Four years is a relatively short period of analysis but this finding does raise questions about our level of understanding and does contradict projections by the IPCC and James Hansen.

Pielke snr argues that regional factors such as drought, floods and hurricanes are independent of global radiative imbalance. However, these events are influenced by natural changes (El Nino,etc.), human alteration of the atmosphere, landcover and aerosols. These factors are regional, not global. The regional factors are more important than the global factor of increase in greenhouse gases.

Humans are altering the climate but the change is more diverse and complex than depicted by the IPCC. Policies that focus exclusively on CO2 reduction to control the climate are misguided. The IPCC is too radical about CO2 and too conservative about other ways in which humans are altering the climate.

chess win

2010-09-08T12:49:00.004+09:30

I won the City of Adelaide chess competition. Details here, including links to the games. In the game I lost to Bob Cowley I had a dead won position but forgot to press my clock and lost on time! On the other hand I was lucky against Fedja Zulfic and Edgar Mdinaradze, who missed winning chances in games which fluctuated.

I could write this up from the perspective of learning a particular and competitive skill, if anyone is interested in that side of it. It might be useful from these points of view:

those wishing to improve their chess
the role of chess computer programs such as Fritz or Rybka and online chess websites, which is the new thing I had to come to terms with
the spin off of improved learning in one domain to improved learning in another domain

Apart from that winning is good for self confidence, but sadly in competitive games like chess one person winning means the other person doesn't. But there is learning involved here too, the learning which comes from losing - and I am no stranger to that!

the problem with Labour

2010-09-08T09:23:00.004+09:30

The problem with Labour is that its rhetoric of social justice is never matched by deeds. Noel Pearson understands these issues. The whole article (Failed party in search of a purpose) demonstrates that:

this is not a recent problem, that John Button analysed it in 2001 but was ignored
that Pearson understands the dialectical method, the clear identification and inter penetration of opposites, and applies it in this speech to concepts such as leadership and social justice

Extract from Noel Pearson's 2010 John Button Oration at the Melbourne Writers Festival:

Today Labor is more sparing in its deployment of these two words: social justice. While social justice is still part of Labor's intra-mural pieties - a useful rallying cry for the true believers in front of the nation at large - the concept is muted and liturgical.

If Labor were to say what it was about, why could it not simply say that it was about economic prosperity and social justice? The truth is that it cannot. And the problem is not with the notion of economic prosperity: plainly, Labor stands for it and everyone is clear on its meaning.

It is the social justice part of this formula that Labor could not sustain. It could not because the notion of social justice is completely elusive and has for too long remained undefined by those who say they were and are all for it. Both the end state of justice and the means by which that end state is supposed to be achieved is utterly undefined.

And all attempts to cobble together a definition of what contemporary Labor politicians mean when they deploy the words social justice would just confirm to their liberal conservative opponents that Labor has in mind yet another great socialist project that will end in waste and tears.

How is it that a concept that has travelled with the social democratic project through such a long and storied history has ended up so equivocal? Why does every attempt at articulation sound like someone either sincerely wanting or insincerely promising utopia?
- Failed party in search of a purpose

update: full text of Noel Pearson's 2010 John Button Oration - "Nights when I dream of a better world: Moving from the centre-left to the radical centre of Australian politics" (link)

china's hunger for education

2010-09-07T12:42:00.000+09:30

parents who have travelled with their children to enroll for university in Wuhan, in China’s central Hubei province, bedding down for the night in a campus gymn made available to those who cannot afford hotel accommodation

source: West is trounced by Chinese aspiration

intellectual journey

2010-09-06T08:58:00.000+09:30

The intellectual journey we decide to go on in the end is not a product of the extent of our intelligence or our curiosity about the world. The decisive factors are social class outlook, the time we choose to spend on slow, deep thinking (reading and thinking about book length analysis) and an intangible which could be called "conquering spirit"

A friend sent me this article (Busted: Stories of the Financial Crisis) by Joshua Clover in The Nation.

He starts with Milton Friedman, Ayn Rand and Alan Greenspan then proceeds to Hayek, then Zizek, then reviews an entertaining book about the current economic crisis written by a novelist, John Lanchester:

credit default swap: "It's as if people had used the invention of seat belts as an opportunity to take up drunk driving."

and so on.

But Joshua Clover does not stop there because the analysis is not complete. He goes onto discuss Marx's Capital and modern interpretations by David Harvey, Ben Fine and Alfredo Saad-Filho because the current mainstream analysis is inadequate.

"Not surprisingly, economists cannot borrow, even at low levels of interest, the insights most needed: the basic understanding that capitalism's flaws are internal to its own logic and can't be whisked away by another round of financial regulation or everybody promising to be less of a creep. It is indeed a compulsion, and it ends poorly"

I wonder how many others are taking a similar intellectual journey. It is unusual to see this sort of honest self reflection in the mainstream media.

current assessment of climate science and policies (Pielke snr)

2010-09-04T11:30:00.000+09:30

For a current assessment of the state of climate science and policy conclusions that flow from that see Pielke snr's recent Summary Of Climate Science Issues and follow his links for more detail. Here is an abbreviated summary:

the science:

humans do effect the climate in various ways, not only global warming
CO2 is important but IPCC focus is misleading, they focus too much on CO2 and computer modelling
computer modelling of futures is too inexact to be useful at this stage
global average surface temperature is an inadequate measure, ocean heat, measured in joules, would be a superior measure

policies:

funding of computer modelling in the hope of achieving accurate predictions decades into the future is a waste of money
focus on brute force CO2 reduction to achieve a more stable climate will achieve little
climate policy should be mainly separate from energy policy
vulnerability analysis, risk and disaster prevention are underutilised policy options

Bernanke's admission and Keen's critique

2010-08-30T10:45:00.000+09:30

Bernanke has admitted that the "recovery" has stalled:

In sum, the pace of recovery in output and employment has slowed somewhat in recent months, in part because of slower-than-expected growth in consumer spending, as well as continued weakness in residential and nonresidential construction
- The Economic Outlook and Monetary Policy, August 27

Steve Keen's analysis (What Bernanke doesn’t understand about deflation) is that although Bernanke has read Irving Fisher (who was burned by the Great Depression but then underwent an intellectual transformation) he didn't understand him fully:

You would think Bernanke, as the alleged expert on the Great Depression—after all, that’s one of the main reasons he got the job as Chairman of the Federal Reserve—had read Fisher’s papers. And you’d be right. But the problem is that he didn’t understand them—and here we come back to the belief problem. The Great Depression forced Fisher—who was also a Neoclassical economist—to realize that the belief that the economy was always in equilibrium was false. When Bernanke read Fisher, he completely failed to grasp this point.

You can read Irving Fisher's analysis of the Great Depression here (pdf, 21pp):
The Debt Deflation Theory of Great Depressions (1933) by Irving Fisher

climate change essential reading

2010-08-29T11:18:00.001+09:30

I asked Roger Pielke jnr which papers he would recommend to explain why he recommends a low carbon tax to fund R&D into energy alternative and not taxation from general revenue for this purpose. On the carbon tax issue he recommends:

An Analysis of a Technology-led Climate Policy as a Response to Climate Change by Isabel Galiana and Christopher Green (pdf, 68 pp)

For a general outline of the approach taken by Pielke jnr and his associates he recommends:
The Hartwell Paper, pdf 42 pp

He also has a book in the pipeline, The Climate Fix. The first 50 pages, with only a couple of pages missing, are available at the amazon look inside feature and provide a pretty clear picture of where his argument is heading.

If the policies advocated here had been taken up by Rudd or Turnbull then perhaps they would not have ended up in the political meat grinder. They also differ significantly from the current policies of The Greens (anti development), the Coalition (our current technology is sufficient to do the job) and Gillard's ridiculous citizens assembly (we lack conviction so pass the buck).

If only some of our politicians would grow a brain, the solution is there waiting to be found.

peak oil discussion

2010-08-29T09:21:00.000+09:30

Peak Oil Discussion

I'll keep my eye on this discussion thread over the next few days. Discussions at Brave New Climate often reflect a wide range of opinions some of them well informed. The lead article is well researched. There is a cautionary editorial at the beginning from Barry Brook, the owner of BNC.

My current not very well informed opinion is that peak oil will only become a severe problem if we fail to develop nuclear power. We are failing to do this in australia since the Labour Party and The Greens especially won't go near it and public opinion is against and not being challenged much. For now in Australia the anti nuclear fear mongers have won. But other countries such as China, Russia, France etc. are going ahead and will develop nuclear further. Over time it will become cheaper than alternatives, but the time line is not possible to predict

Renewables can't supply the energy we need. In the long term our energy future is nuclear.

In the meantime the evidence for the likelihood of severe economic crisis independent of energy concerns is growing stronger so I continue to focus my study in that direction

michael perelman's analysis of the economic crisis

2010-08-25T22:06:00.000+09:30

I watched the above video, which is part of a series he is making on the economic crisis. The video presentation is of poor quality but I quite like his calm or laconic style of delivery. Here is a summary of the main points:

The overall or inherent tendency of the economy is towards falling marginal costs and high fixed costs, in other words for the economy to enter a deflationary spiral. (aka the tendency for the rate of profit to fall, although Perelman does not use that phrase) Perelman outlines 6 reasons for this and also discusses the contradictions involved in some of the factors. Another central point he stresses is the importance of competition between companies in the trend towards lower prices. When faced with this reality companies or governments have these options:

1) Launch price wars without reinvestment, keep that going for as long as possible.

2) Global labour arbitrage, cutting wages and benefits, by off shoring

3) Compete by investing in new technology. This increases output (overproduction, although he does not use that word) and causes prices to fall. One of the problems here is that in a competitive environment business throws away technologies before they have paid for themselves, to replace them with even newer technologies.

4) Governments may intervene to blunt the effects of competition by fiscal and monetary policy. One negative of this is that when the economy is going well then companies will tend to not invest in new technology and the economy then stagnates on the supply side. Another tendency is for governments to indulge in military spending for mainly economic reasons, aka military Keynesianism

5) The strengthening of intellectual property law, creating cartels, is another response to increased competition. One effect of this is to severely limit the development of science and technology. There is a disencentive for others to follow in the footsteps of the original creators. The violation of intellectual property rights leads to high legal costs for those who try to break through this barrier and creates uncertainty.

6) Growth of the financial sector. Once again this is contradictory. It is true that many companies need credit to get off the floor. However, valuable resources are siphoned off into the financial system. For example, during the dot com era a good number of physicists and mathematicians went into the financial system, rather than doing anything directly productive. Finance itself becomes a disciplinary force on business. Business ends up following finance more than it follows markets. A business may cut back on R&D because that creates a cost with an uncertain payoff. If your profits are low then financial players may come and take over your company.

The Invisible Handcuffs is the name of Michael Perelman's forthcoming book. For his intellectual biography and descriptions of his other books see his intellectual biography page. On that page, summarising one of his books, he again stresses the problem associated with competition:

On a deeper level, this book calls the conception of competition into question. I show that intense competition is equivalent to a depression, yet most economists believe that competition is good and depressions are bad.

mick jagger elections

2010-08-21T13:31:00.003+09:30

If you vote for Abbott there is a huge risk you'll get Gillard. If you vote for Gillard there is a huge risk that you'll get Abbott. If you vote for the Greens there is a huge risk you'll get Gillard (preference deals).

Since there wasn't much difference between Labour and the Coalition to start with and since Labour then backtracked on most of the small differences that did exist, then this election is even more strongly tweedle-dum and tweedle-dee than usual.

Democracy means something in countries where religious fundamentalism is a real issue (if the Taliban becomes government again if Afghanistan then religious fundamentalism runs that government) but has become a bore in countries where modernity is clearly established . Democracy is something people are literally dying for in undemocratic or recently democratic countries (Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Burma (Myanmar), North Korea, China, Zimbabwe, South Africa) but is something people are bored to near death with, at least in Australia, since we are given no real choice on election day. Britain recently was no different and in the USA Obama has turned out to be just another Democrat politician. All the major parties are Mick Jagger parties: "I can't get no satisfaction"

Some brief thoughts on some of the "issues" of the campaign:

The economy - both parties pretend that the crisis is over and have promised a quick return to a surplus; this won't happen
Boat people - it's disappointing that it is an issue at all but it would not be such an issue if we felt secure economically
Mining tax - nothing wrong with taxing the wealthy more but the fear factor exists again because of economic insecurity
Climate change - a realistic political solution has been worked out by Pielke jnr but hasn't filtered through yet to the mainstream parties; the reactionary Greens on the other hand want to turn the productivity clock back
Broadband - one of the few issues where Labour's policy is superior but, on the other hand, Conroy also wants to censor the internet, so he needs to be censored himself

At some point the political boredom will turn into something else. When the economic crisis really hits then the promise of both parties to restore the surplus will look particularly hollow. Which in the end brings home that capitalist democracy is limited by the system which it serves.

money, liberty, credit, crisis

2010-08-18T12:28:00.002+09:30

John Weeks has three great quotes on his home page which sums up the spirit of our times:

"When the accumulation of wealth is no longer of high social importance, there will be great changes in the code of morals. We shall be able to rid ourselves of many of the pseudo-moral principles which have hag-ridden us for two hundred years, by which we have exalted some of the most distasteful of human qualities into the position of the highest virtues. We shall…dare to assess the money-motive at its true value. The love of money as a possession…will be recognised for what it is, a somewhat disgusting morbidity, one of those semi-criminal, semi-pathological propensities which one hands over with a shudder to the specialists in mental disease ..." [J M Keynes, ‘The Future’, Essays in Persuasion 1931]

"Unhappy events…have retaught us two simple truths about the liberty of a democratic people. The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it comes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism - ownership of government by an individual, by a group" [Franklin D Roosevelt, message to the US Congress 1938]

"In a system of production, where the entire continuity of the reproduction process rests upon credit, a crisis must obviously occur — a tremendous rush for means of payment — when credit suddenly ceases and only cash payments have validity" [Karl Marx, Capital III, p 490]

Hitchens - Charlie Rose interview

2010-08-17T16:14:00.003+09:30

Follow the link for an excellent video (I can't embed it) interview by Charlie Rose of Christopher Hitchens:
http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/11168

From this interview you obtain a real sense of why Hitchens is so highly regarded as a significant public intellectual - intelligent, deep knowledge of history as well as current affairs, masterly orator, sense of humour, ability to think on his feet and recall detailed argumentation, principled, sometimes contrarian, loyal to his friends and awareness of his own strengths and weaknesses.

We need more public intellectuals like Hitchens.

materialist dialectics

2010-08-17T12:25:00.002+09:30

Alfredo Saad-Filho provides a good explanation of materialist dialectics in chapter one of his book, which is available on line The Value of Marx(pdf). I've only read chapter one of Saad-Filho so far but this might also be a good modern guide to reading Capital. Chapter one of Capital is the most difficult and for most mere mortals a guide is necessary.

I thought I had understood dialectics through reading Mao's philosophical essays many years ago but now realise that I hadn't understood the initial non obvious phase of concept formation, particularly the importance of history and abstraction in that process. eg. how in Capital Marx identifies the concept of value.

I suspect the disagreements from non marxists and misunderstandings from "marxists" that have followed are partly to do with not understanding the method used. There is a section on method in A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy but it is not particularly thorough. Marx applied a method to analyse the internal workings of capitalism but only left hints as to what his method was, rather than a full explanation, for whatever reason. This footnote from EP Thompson towards the end of chapter one of Saad-Filho provides the explanation:

‘We have often been told that Marx had a "method" ...and that this constitutes the essence of Marxism. It is therefore strange that ...Marx never wrote this essence down. Marx left many notebooks. Marx was nothing if not a self-conscious and responsible intellectual worker. If he had found the clue to the universe,he would have set a day or two aside to put it down. We may conclude from this that it was not written because it could not be written, any more than Shakespeare or Stendhal could have reduced their art to a clue. For it was not a method but a practice, and a practice learned through practising. So that, in this sense, dialectics can never be set down, nor learned by rote.’

US economy is worse than Greece

2010-08-13T11:58:00.000+09:30

U.S. Is Bankrupt and We Don't Even Know It: Laurence Kotlikoff

Laurence J. Kotlikoff is a professor of economics at Boston University

IMF annual review of US economic policy:

"The U.S. fiscal gap associated with today’s federal fiscal policy is huge for plausible discount rates ... closing the fiscal gap requires a permanent annual fiscal adjustment equal to about 14 percent of U.S. GDP"

To correct this fiscal gap would require doubling of US taxes, which is politically not yet possible

How can the fiscal gap be so enormous?

Simple. We have 78 million baby boomers who, when fully retired, will collect benefits from Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid that, on average, exceed per-capita GDP. The annual costs of these entitlements will total about $4 trillion in today’s dollars. Yes, our economy will be bigger in 20 years, but not big enough to handle this size load year after year.

This is what happens when you run a massive Ponzi scheme for six decades straight, taking ever larger resources from the young and giving them to the old while promising the young their eventual turn at passing the generational buck.

Herb Stein, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under U.S. President Richard Nixon, coined an oft-repeated phrase: “Something that can’t go on, will stop.” True enough. Uncle Sam’s Ponzi scheme will stop. But it will stop too late.

And it will stop in a very nasty manner. The first possibility is massive benefit cuts visited on the baby boomers in retirement. The second is astronomical tax increases that leave the young with little incentive to work and save. And the third is the government simply printing vast quantities of money to cover its bills...

And bond traders will kick us miles down our road once they wake up and realize the U.S. is in worse fiscal shape than Greece.

Pakistan's infrastructure

2010-08-13T10:46:00.001+09:30

The deluge, which was many times the usual monsoon and fell farther north and west than usual, has exposed the lack of investment in water infrastructure, including big dams, much of which was built in the 1960s. The removal of forest cover may also have allowed rainwater to drain faster into the rivers.
- Swamped, Bruised and Resentful

Global warming may have contributed to the disaster in Pakistan. But then again it may not have. Spending money on essential infrastructure now is going to save more lives than pronouncing certainty about things that are not certain. For a more informed perspective than mine see Pielke snr:
Follow Up On Weather Channel Interview Of Kevin Trenberth and Roger Pielke Sr
A Way Forward In Climate Science Based On A Bottom-Up Resourse-Based Perspective
Extract:

The IPCC, unfortunately, ignored this bottom-up, resource-based focus, and instead completed an inappropriately narrow top-down CO2-centric viewpoint based on multi-decadal global climate model predictions; e.g. see the movement from WG1 to the WG2 reports, which culminated in the WG3 report

and Pielke jnr:
Catastrophe Catnip

Journalists are drawn to the notion that greenhouse gas emissions increase the human toll from extreme events like Ulysses was drawn to the sirens. The connection between the two is made despite a robust scientific consensus -- and lack of evidence to the contrary -- that no signal beyond increasing societal vulnerability has been detected in increasing disaster losses, much less attributed to the effects of accumulating greenhouse gases

creativity doesn't count

2010-08-13T10:06:00.001+09:30

Some thoughts on reading The hot young teacher they hired instead and Tom Hoffman's response

There is a difference b/w monopoly skills (a worker being indispensable) and general adaptability skills (being flexible enough to "go with the flow" on the job). The former is allowed but never fully recognised, the latter is essential to the ongoing continuity or reproducibility of the system.

Monopoly skills, indispensability, is anathema to capitalism. Sooner or later all workers have to be replaced.

Some creative workers may develop monopoly, indispensable skills. For example, a brilliant English teacher may develop outstanding skills in developing, delivering and assessing a course in Holocaust literature (well worth reading). But when it comes to the ongoing continuity of the system this does not count. The cheaper replacement teacher does not have to have these indispensable skills. In the final analysis creativity does not count, the system does not like it.

This is implicit in teacher training courses, which have a requirement of general skill level and adaptability but not brilliance or excellence in any particular area. Exceptional creativity just does scale in a system or sausage factory of mass production. And when this transfers to on the job skills then hard work - to the point of modern day slavery, not having a real life outside the job, see Martha Infante's ridiculous comment which triggered Tom's rage - and adaptability, being able to do a wide range of different tasks to a good enough standard, are more valued than deep creative brilliance.

The ongoing historical trend of the dynamics of capitalist production is in the direction of deskilling, simplifying and where possible human labour being converted into machine labour.

David Harvey has a great section in his book Limits to Capital, Ch 4.2 The Labour Process, where he explains Marx's words about the social process that goes on behind the backs of producers which reduces skilled to simple labour.

It is true that brilliant, creative individuals such as Mark Shuttleworth, Paul Graham, Nicholas Negroponte or Brewster Kahle can make personal fortunes by creating and selling their inventions to capitalists and then using their wealth for the public good, more or less. The system cannot eliminate creativity completely. Other brilliant individuals make fortunes as entertainers in sport or music. The system also needs to keep us entertained and distracted. A deeper analysis would require a further elaboration of these categories. But I believe the general trend is clear, as illustrated by Beth Aviv's tale. These issues are also raised by Tom Friedman's book The World is Flat, where he talks about plain vanilla jobs being exported to the developing world through globalization and that to retain your job in the industrialised world you need to develop some special, indispensible skills. However, David Harvey takes this analysis further than Friedman.

hitchen's

2010-08-10T13:34:00.000+09:30

Christopher Hitchen's is making the best of it but the prognosis is not good.

He has also written about his cancer and treatment regime: Topic of Cancer

Huh?

2010-08-07T12:03:00.001+09:30

So Labour sacked the unpopular and unelectable Rudd and appointed the popular Gillard as Prime Minister so they could win the upcoming election. But now the "popular" Gillard has made Abbott the Coalition more popular than she is, so the "unpopular" Rudd has stepped forward to campaign more broadly in order to convert the now unelectable Labour into electable Labour.

political economy as theatre

2010-08-06T11:36:00.001+09:30

Some writers (Roughtheory) argue that Marx's Capital is really theatre, that illustrates the absurdity of the human condition, at least in our current social and economic system. Marx does talk about the capitalist as capital personified and much more along those lines. Like everything else with Marx this idea has been both much discussed and much distorted. But to be a capitalist you do have to devote a significant portion of your life to reproducing and nourishing capital, a "mere thing". In one sense that "mere thing" takes over the life or significant parts of the life of a human.

Capital is difficult reading. I wonder if it could reach a wider audience if aspects of it were presented as a play.

Although not as conceptually ambitious this has been done to an extent by Lucy Prebble with her play about Enron:

Here is an extract from an article based on an interview with the playwright Lucy Prebble:

...the whole financial basis on which Enron rose and fell was "that most theatrical of entities, just a game, an illusion, a system of belief". ... Jeffrey Skilling, the disgraced former CEO of Enron ... begins full of the airy belief that he has reinvented the world on his own terms, and ends beset by his own demons as that world crashes around his ears ... what is extraordinary is that we had all watched this happen with Enron nearly a decade before and yet still we wanted to believe in the illusion of financial miracles

Skilling: I have to check the stock price.
Daughter: Why?
Skilling: Because that's how daddy knows how much he's worth.
Daughter: Why?
Skilling: Because the market tells me.
Daughter: Why?

It's nearly time for Australia's Great Financial Crisis

2010-08-06T10:40:00.000+09:30

Neither Labour nor the Coalition will be announcing a policy about this in the current election campaign.

Steve Keen warns that Australia is heading for a collapse in housing prices which will devastate our economy.

The relative percentages of home loans making up the assets of banks in the UK, USA and Australia are:
UK 17%
USA 15%
Australian Commonwealth Bank 49%

See the slides 21 and 22 of the presentation linked to from this Keen article in May: Excellent presentation on Scribd on Australian housing

In a more recent article (Thanks for the Manna) Keen writes:

There is however one important way in which house prices do differ from shares: the first sign of trouble is not a sudden drop in prices, but a fall in the number of sales and an increase in the length of time it takes for properties to sell. That sign was evident in the data from the last year or so, which is why I argued that a fall in house prices was imminent in a previous article on Business Spectator. Now that the data are unequivocal, the following processes are likely.

Firstly, with an increased stock of unsold houses on the market, buyers are likely to take yet more time to make a decision—which will add further to the backlog. If prices are falling, why hurry? The urgency will leave the buy side.

Secondly, so-called investors—whom I prefer to call speculators, since 90% of them have bought existing properties rather than built new ones—will start to consider whether they should swap from the buy side to the sell side. After all, no-one in their right mind buys an investment property in Australia for the rental returns: it’s capital gains or nothing DownUnder. Do you capitalize on gains to date, or hang on hoping that the upward trend will re-assert itself once more?

Given the skewing of our market away from owner-occupiers and towards speculators in the last two decades, this second effect could cause a sudden increase in the number of properties on the market—at just the same time that buyers have become more relaxed about closing a sale. It’s this sort of process in an asset market that is why asset prices don’t “taper”—or “plateau”, to use a word from an earlier time.

I expect these two processes to lead to an accelerating rate of decline in house prices now, as they did in the USA when “Flip That House” ceased being a winning trade.

what rote and relevance both lack

2010-08-02T14:18:00.001+09:30

Educational approaches tend to flip flop between rote learning and relevance or surface motivational learning. Although both of these have their place what they both lack is a deep understanding of the actual subject knowledge being taught. The reason little progress is made in educational reform is that it is really hard work to deepen subject knowledge. It doesn't scale. It would require us as a society to take education far more seriously.

Teaching in higher education requires that we continually develop our understanding of our subject. As a young lecturer, I remember feeling constant frustration about my inability to get my students to grasp the meaning of simple concepts such as “society” and “the social”.

I still feel a twinge of embarrassment when I recall my early futile attempts to go beyond very formal expositions about the difference between nature and nurture. It was only after a series of disappointing episodes of miscommunication that I decided to spend some time reading about this subject to see if I could teach it more effectively.

It was while reading the introduction to Karl Marx’s Grundrisse one evening that the proverbial light bulb was switched on. The passage that did it was about the socially mediated meaning of eating: “Hunger is hunger, but the hunger gratified by cooked meat eaten with a knife and fork is a different hunger from that which bolts down raw meat with the aid of hand, nail and tooth.”

A week later I tried it out in one of my seminars. “Even an apparently biological act like eating is socially mediated,” I explained, before elaborating on Marx’s example. Did it work? Almost immediately one of my Nigerian students pointed out that “you Europeans worry about overeating while we in Africa are concerned about not having enough food in our belly”.

A few minutes later another student raised the question of eating disorders. “It is unlikely that people in the Stone Age knew very much about anorexia,” she posited. By the end of the seminar, the students had begun to internalise the concept of “social” and I learnt how to teach this subject more effectively.

It was not the magic of the Grundrisse that achieved this revelation. I could have gained inspiration from numerous other texts. For me, what was significant about this episode was that I finally learnt to treat a problem of teaching as an issue that was inseparable from matters to do with my scholarship
- Feeding a fine hunger by Frank Furedi

This also helped me understand why I am taking time off work to study political economy. I simply was not satisfied with my depth of understanding of society and how it works. The way in which apparently simple concepts like "eating" change their meaning as a result of changes in the productive forces and relationships in society relates closely to how we understand concepts such as value, labour and capital as well.

update: Frank Furedi on authority in schools Radio interview, There's a crisis in adult authority in our schools (15 minutes)

Is Women's Weekly against Labour?

2010-08-01T11:17:00.000+09:30

Chris Uhlmann:

There is something disturbing about the cover of the Women's Weekly, adorned by a beaming Prime Minister.

It's beautiful, glossy, near perfect. It's also utterly contrived.

It's disturbing because the makeover is a metaphor for the Labor campaign.
- Labor policy make-up melting in political spotlight

I agree with Chris Uhlmann's analysis of the Labour campaign. It just seems to me that Labour has been like this - phony - for a long time but now it has become more obvious.

Is even Women's Weekly now working against Labour?

the honest broker, discussion

2010-08-01T10:22:00.002+09:30

Roger at Face Value
Pielke versus Schneider

update, 2nd August: also The Honestly Broken and And in the End ( the comments are part of the essential reading)
update, 5th August: The Honest Broker (this one is at Pielke jnrs blog, Michael Tobis joins in at comment 63 and there is some to and fro with Pielke jnr after that)

Great discussion here, in the comments, between Michael Tobis, Roger Pielke jnr and others including Richard Tol about Roger's book The Honest Broker.

What is the nature of science, the nature of politics and how do they interrelate?

Extract from an informative review of The Honest Broker:
Roger A. Pielke, Jr., The honest broker: making sense of science in policy and politics:

(Pielke) develops four idealized roles for scientists in the policy process. The pure scientist attempts to remain detached from politics and policy, focusing only on research without consideration for its use. The science arbiter answers scientific questions for decision makers but avoids considering normative questions. The issue advocate uses scientific information to advance a specific political agenda or policy alternative. Finally, the honest broker of policy alternatives expands, or at least clarifies, the scope of choice for the decision maker through the integration of knowledge and a broad consideration of possible alternatives.

and

Pielke argues that the decision contexts in which scientists operate range from “Tornado Politics” to “Abortion Politics.” By Tornado Politics, Pielke means a context characterized by limited choices, agreement about values, and high certainty about the relationship between available alternatives and valued outcomes. Thus, a group of people deciding whether to seek shelter from an approaching tornado is engaged in Tornado Politics. In contrast, by Abortion Politics, Pielke means a context characterized by a large number of possible alternatives, competing goals and values, and uncertainty about how alternatives relate to valued outcomes. Pielke (p. 43) posits that scientific information can help “assess decision alternatives” in situations involving Tornado Politics, but it can only “justify decision commitments” in situations involving Abortion Politics. This is because, Pielke argues, scientific information only compels action in instances without substantial value conflict—science cannot reconcile conflicting values.

From the discussion at Michael Tobis's blog, Pielke jnr said "If you think that you are in a debate that can be resolved in some manner through appeals to science, you are wrong."

I have just ordered my own copy of The Honest Broker

The Michael Tobis blog discussion is about whether climate change is a Tornado type discussion (mainly empirical) or an Abortion type discussion (mainly about values). Since it does fit the latter category, Roger is correct IMO. We would end up achieving more useful results (for example, more research into energy alternatives such as the Boron car, serious development of pilot nuclear programs like the Integral Fast Reactor) if believers became less zealous about the necessity of achieving CO2 reduction targets in definite timelines.

The public believes in AGW but is not prepared to alter their lifestyle to achieve reductions. The demise of Rudd and Turnbull illustrate the non productive nature of a radical "must do" stance on this issue.

Also scientists should not pretend to be certain about projecting trends 50 years ahead, the should acknowledge the uncertainty involved in such projections (and the state of the science in general) more openly. For evaluation of the science itself I recommend the Pielke snr blog.

Marx: ego is not a dirty word

2010-07-28T13:58:00.001+09:30

What did marx say about human nature?

This issue came up in a recent discussion here but it also comes up all the time whenever you mention communism or socialism. Someone I spoke to recently said:

Even if the whole world was socialist or communist then it would eventually revert back to capitalism because that is human nature

And in a comment on this blog Mark Miller said:

The problem I see with Marxism is it assumes that human nature can be molded and changed. Where Marxism has been tried it runs into what I'd call "the wall of human nature". It doesn't achieve its stated goals, because imperfect people are involved in the enterprise. Inevitably the same qualities that Marxism tries to overthrow: greed, the hunger for power over others, end up controlling the enterprise. I think Lord Acton's maxim holds true no matter what structure is tried: "Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely." Such efforts to create a society where everything is parceled out equally and no one has more power than anyone else is continually frustrated, because human nature keeps getting in the way.

I recognise these opinions as "popular wisdom" but wasn't actually sure what Marx did say about human nature, so I looked it up and here is part of what I found, part of a polemic against Max Stirner:

"Communism is simply incomprehensible to our saint because the communists do not put egoism against self-sacrifice or self-sacrifice against egoism nor do they express this contradiction theoretically either in its sentimental or in its high-flown ideological form; on the contrary, they demonstrate the material basis engendering it, with which it disappears of itself. The communists do not preach morality at all, such as Stirner preaches so extensively. They do not put to the people the moral demand: love one another, do not be egoists, etc.; on the contrary, they are well aware that egoism, just as much as self-sacrifice, is in definite circumstances a necessary form of the self-assertion of individuals. Hence, the communists by no means want,... to do away with the "private individual" for the sake of the "general," self-sacrificing man....

Communist theoreticians, the only ones who have time to devote to the study of history, are distinguished precisely because they alone have discovered that throughout history the "general interest" is created by individuals who are defined as "private persons." They know that this contradiction is only a seeming one because one side of it, the so-called "general," is constantly being produced by the other side, private interest, and by no means opposes the latter as an independent force with an independent history - so that this contradiction is in practice always being destroyed and reproduced. Hence it is not a question of the Hegelian "negative unity" of two sides of a contradiction, but of the materially determined destruction of the preceding materially determined mode of life of individuals, with the disappearance of which this contradiction, together with its unity, also disappear."
- Personal, versus General Interest, from Selections from the remaining parts of The German Ideology by Marx and Engels

Labour: no guts no glory

2010-07-27T13:26:00.003+09:30

Q&A: Monday 26th July (video 55 min, expires in 13 days)

Includes Malcom Turnbull (who lost his Deputy Leader position through supporting Rudd's emissions trading scheme), Christine Milne (Deputy Leader of the Greens), Penny Wong (Climate Change Minister)

This is well worth watching to see how Julia Gillard's reworking of the climate change policy is playing out. Penny Wong was very much on the defensive in attempting to justify Labour's backsliding on an issue where the public does want some action. Contrast this with Penny Wong's personal gutsy stand on the gay and asian issue in the same program, which received strong support.

After watching this I felt it possible that Labour might lose this election owing to their perceived inability to take a tough stand on any issue. This might trump the calculations of the Labour Union back deal manipulators who gambled on the women's vote. Time will tell.

Some very brief observations:

The Greens falsely claim that renewables can do the job
Malcom Turnbull is incorrect to suggest that China is going green (at the end)
None of the parties support nuclear energy, which is the best direction to head in as an alternative
There is general ignorance about the real state of the science, which I believe is best depicted by Pielke snr

Roger Pielke jnr keeps a close eye on Australian climate policy (and everywhere else for that matter). For his analysis of the Gillard policy, see: julia gillard lays out her approach, particularly his comment that:

When will politicians learn that climate policies are a political loser if they require that people "transform the way we live and the way we work"?

I left a comment on his blog, #11.

growing wealth disparity

2010-07-16T11:05:00.001+09:30

I regard growing wealth disparity as uncontroversial and an indictment of the system which produces such disparity. I'll just quote an extract from David Harvey's Limits to Capital which provides substantial evidence for growing wealth disparity:

"According to the UN by the mid 1990s the net worth of the 358 richest people in the world was then found to be equal to the combined income of the poorest 45 per cent of the worlds population - 2.3 billion people. The world's 200 richest people more than doubled their net worth in the 4 years to 1998, to more than $1 trillion, so that the assets of the world's top three billionaires were more than the combined GNP of all least developed countries and their 600 million people.... The share of the national income taken by the top 1 percent of income earners in the US more than doubled between 1980 and 2000 while that of the top 0.1 percent more than tripled. The income of the 99th percentile rose 87 percent between 1972 and 2001 while that of the 99.9th percentile rose 497 percent. In 1985 the combined wealth of the Forbes 400 richest people in the US was $238 billion with an average net worth of $600 million, adjusted for inflation. By 2005, their average net worth was $2.8 billion and their collective assets amounted to $1.13 trillion - more than the GDP of Canada. Much of this shift has been due to rapidly rising rates of executive compensation. In 1980, the average chief executive made about $1.6 million a year in today's dollars but by 2004 this had risen to $7.6 million." (p. xi, Intro to the 2006 Verso Edition)

I quoted an extract of Harvey's figure on a reddit thread and received this reply from mrhymer:

"Wealth is not a finite pool that all humans pull from. There is no evidence that if the millionaire in Dubai releases his wealth back into the wild that it will ever find the hand of the poor man in Bangladesh. So studies highlighting the gaps and distributions are foolish post hoc, ergo proctor hoc arguments."

For a more detailed outline of Harvey's views where he does connect the increasing of wealth disparity with the evolution of the capitalist economy into neo liberalism try this interview. I don't agree with all of Harvey but his analysis of the effects of neo liberalism seems sound to me.

blogger comment length restriction

2010-07-16T07:41:00.000+09:30

It seems that blogger now has a comment length restriction of 4096 characters.

"There is a flaw in Blogger comment code, that makes the deletion process abort, with large comments. Spammers were exploiting this flaw, to create undeletable comments. Blogger is protecting us from undeletable spam comments, by preventing long comments"
- nitecruzr

It would be better if blogger fixed the flaw in their comment code. Some bloggers like to discuss issues at length.

Christopher Hitchens has oesophageal cancer

2010-07-12T22:50:00.000+09:30

You can read his brief announcement, interesting comments from those who love him and bad taste comments from those who hate him, here: An Update from Christopher Hitchens. I admire him for his outspoken support for the Iraq war and wish him well in his battle against cancer.

Related:
the irony of September 11th
waterboarding: DIY

capitalism: for and against

2010-07-12T10:14:00.001+09:30

I responded to LinuxLiberty on a reddit thread (source), which began with a misleading quote from John Maynard Keynes.

LinuxLiberty:
It is kind of amazing that capitalism even needs to be defended given the enormous amount of prosperity it has brought to the world. While I won't say the U.S. is an example of free market, in particular like the rest of the world it has a Marxist banking system that repeatedly fails, but it has brought enormous amount of prosperity to even poor people. Look even most poor people live in a house an apartment that has indoor plumbing, electricity, AC, a color television, a DVD player, a phone, a computer with Internet, and many poor people own cars. If you own all of those things that puts you in the top 10% of the rest of the world. The average person in China can't even afford a color television much less a car.

The biggest problem with capitalism is it turns people into spoiled brats who can't even comprehend what a rough life or poverty is.

billkerr:
It's true that capitalism has been the most productive system to date. However, there are also some problems with it, which I would summarise as follows:

it can't avoid major economic crisis, eg. the last Great Depression and the next one, soon
it has deformed or crippled the nature of work, especially the way factories operate
the wealth disparity b/w rich and poor continues to increase
it promotes the unsustainable dream that you can create more money from money

pielke snrs hypotheses regarding climate change

2010-07-09T12:44:00.000+09:30

From Roger Pielke snr, who favours hypothesis 2a, that whilst CO2 is significant it should not be elevated above other climate forcings:

Hypothesis 1: Human influence on climate variability and change is of minimal importance, and natural causes dominate climate variations and changes on all time scales. In coming decades, the human influence will continue to be minimal.

Hypothesis 2a: Although the natural causes of climate variations and changes are undoubtedly important, the human influences are significant and involve a diverse range of first order climate forcings, including, but not limited to, the human input of carbon dioxide (CO2). Most, if not all, of these human influences on regional and global climate will continue to be of concern during the coming decades.

Hypothesis 2b: Although the natural causes of climate variations and changes are undoubtedly important, the human influences are significant and are dominated by the emissions into the atmosphere of greenhouse gases, the most important of which is CO2. The adverse impact of these gases on regional and global climate constitutes the primary climate issue for the coming decades.
- Invitation On Assessing Three Climate Hypotheses

Roger Pielke snr invited feedback on these hypotheses following criticism of them at Real Climate: What do Climate Scientists Think? (See Comments 36, 43, 49)

Pielke snr has now published the feedback he has received about the different hypotheses: Feedback On My Invitation On The Three Hypotheses Regarding Climate Forcings

I did post comments (and received responses) to John Cook’s blog: A Scientific Guide to the 'Skeptics Handbook' , which does seem to make an honest attempt to evaluate evidence about climate change, about Pielke snrs invitation to improve his hypotheses.

32. billkerr at 11:11 AM on 2 July, 2010
hi John,
Have you considered the choice b/w Pielke snrs invitation and hypotheses 2a and 2b? (Invitation On Assessing Three Climate Hypotheses) You seem to support 2b judging by your handbook's CO2 emphasis but 2a may be a better fit for the evidence

Hypothesis 2a: Although the natural causes of climate variations and changes are undoubtedly important, the human influences are significant and involve a diverse range of first order climate forcings, including, but not limited to, the human input of carbon dioxide (CO2). Most, if not all, of these human influences on regional and global climate will continue to be of concern during the coming decades.

Hypothesis 2b: Although the natural causes of climate variations and changes are undoubtedly important, the human influences are significant and are dominated by the emissions into the atmosphere of greenhouse gases, the most important of which is CO2. The adverse impact of these gases on regional and global climate constitutes the primary climate issue for the coming decades.

Response: I hadn't seen Pielke's hypotheses. It seems to me 2a and 2b aren't mutually exclusive - any climate scientist would agree that CO2 is not the only driver of climate and that we need to take into account all forcings. The reason for the emphasis on CO2 is because it is the most dominant and fastest rising forcing. The emphasis on CO2 in the Scientific Guide is also necessary as the 'Skeptics Handbook' fails to recognise the many lines of evidence that more CO2 forces up temperature - this is a somewhat more extreme stance than the more nuanced views of Roger Pielke Snr.

50. billkerr at 10:03 AM on 3 July, 2010
#32 and #33

John,
When you say "The reason for the emphasis on CO2 is because it is the most dominant and fastest rising forcing" you are supporting Pielke snrs hypothesis 2b and rejecting 2a. They are mutually exclusive by my reading.

Doug and John,
The Real Climate discussion that Doug links to predates Pielke snrs invitation for people to improve the wording of the hypotheses if they feel the wording is inadequate, as claimed by Eric in the Real Climate discussion. This Pielke snr post, which also predates the invitation, condenses the different viewpoints

study political economy

2010-07-07T16:11:00.000+09:30

Given that we are facing the greatest economic crisis in 80 years it is a good idea to begin some serious study of the fundamentals of political economy.

great depression looms

2010-07-07T12:53:00.002+09:30

Mainstream economists Ambrose Evans-Pritchard (Telegraph) and Paul Krugman (New York Times) are now saying we are heading for a version of another Great Depression.

Investors are starting to chew over the awful possibility that America's recovery will stall just as Asia hits the buffers. China's manufacturing index has been falling since January, with a downward lurch in June to 50.4, just above the break-even line of 50. Momentum seems to be flagging everywhere, whether in Australian building permits, Turkish exports, or Japanese industrial output.
- Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

There is a difference of ruling class opinion about how to deal with the ongoing economic crisis, either to introduce austerity measures (as in Greece and some other Eurozone countries) or to print more money. Both of the above authors advocate more stimulus and are dismayed at the growing trend to austerity measures.

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, With the US trapped in depression, this really is starting to feel like 1932, 04 Jul 2010

Paul Krugman, The Third Depression, June 27, 2010

Update (12th July 2010): Greenspan Says Economy May Be Undergoing a `Pause'

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said the U.S. economy may be undergoing what he called a “pause,” and that he can’t rule out the possibility of a so- called double-dip recession ... Inventory accumulation “has stopped” and production “has flattened out,” the 84-year-old former central banker said.

australian democracy

2010-06-26T15:39:00.000+09:30

Australian Labour Party faction speak about Rudd (anonymous):

"This crypto fascist never bothered to build a base in the Party and now that his only faction, Newspoll, has gone, so has he."

So, the great moral issue of our age is not climate change but the need to retain political power, not only government power but also factional power inside the Labour Party.

There is little difference between ex PM Rudd and new PM Gillard. The main reason for the change is that the factional bosses of the Labour Party seized their chance to remove Rudd who had refused to play their game by ignoring them whilst relying on his direct electoral popularity (which faded once he renounced his climate change scheme). Ironically, Gillard has little time for the factions either but when presented with the opportunity to become PM she couldn't resist.

More:
Labor's shadow men stuck knife into Rudd
Gillard: stooge for the party bosses

overcoming narrow economics inertia

2010-06-09T12:35:00.002+09:30

Because of the 2008 economic crisis I decided to study political economy seriously, something which I had previously put into the too hard basket. This study was and is difficult for me and was proceeding too slowly so I have taken time off work this year to move it along.

After over 6 months of reading and searching I have finally found a modern book which meets my needs:

From Political Economy to Economics: Method, the social and the historical in the evolution of economic theory by Dimitris Milonakis and Ben Fine. Check out the contents page at this amazon link using their look inside feature (one page of contents is missing at google books, why do they do that?)

I'm about a third of the way through but have read enough to say it is very good.

Tracing the history of how the methodology of economics went so wrong provides insight into a big part of the solution of what to do to repair the enormous damage that has been done. And the damage goes back over a century. Obviously there is a need to make many new economists political economists who understand how it should be done, rather than universities continuing to churn out narrow econometrics experts, who don't understand the big picture. How are we going to overcome a hundred years of narrow economics inertia? Make a start by buying and reading the above book.

btw I'm now buying books through The Book Depository since they have free delivery, which saves a lot.

corruption of the language

2010-06-07T16:33:00.001+09:30

Terms such as "social capital" and "human capital" represent a corruption of the language we have to think about social and economic issues. Once you understand that the origin of capital itself is social (accumulated surplus value extracted from labourers) then it doesn't make sense to have social or human capital that is distinct from a fictional non social capital. This is explained in a far more detailed and sophisticated manner by Ben Fine and Costas Lapavitsas in this article: Social Capital And Capitalist Economies (pdf 18pp)

Aborigines need to turn radical

2010-06-05T11:37:00.000+09:30

We need more gutsy Pearson type political leaders in Australia rather than the spineless back room dealing, phony labour party types such as Anna Bligh (Queensland Premier) and Kevin Rudd (Prime Minister)

Aborigines need to turn radical

Bligh has ignored Macklin's attempt to broker a peace deal.

It is not possible to convey the intensity of the feelings I harbour for these bastards. It is not their contempt for Aboriginal people. It is not their utter lack of principle. It is the torment of our own powerlessness that gets me. The powerlessness of Aboriginal people to hold a position of dignity in this state - in this country, which is supposed to be our country, too. How can the 3 per cent mouse deal on a level playing field with the 97 per cent elephant? How can Aboriginal people be dealt with fairly in a governmental system in which we have no adequate representation?

...

If this leader of this system of government in Queensland has done anything, she has made the choices clear for our people. Either there is structural reform that accords to Aboriginal Australians sufficient power to hold our own in the institutions of government in this country, or the Aboriginal rights movement will have to become more radical than it has ever been.

The proper Latin meaning of radical is root. The root cause of our malaise as a people is the torment of powerlessness we endure at the hands of those in power, who see us as nothing more than a mendicant people.

Bligh redoubled our awareness of our condition this week. We either become steadily weaker and sicker as a result of this torment, or our call for power must become more radical.

progress without progressivism

2010-05-29T10:43:00.003+09:30

Scripted lessons start a classroom revival

Radical learning program changing Aboriginal kids' lives

Australians are aware that Aurukun in far north Queensland is a social and educational disaster zone. Nearly everyone puts it into the too hard basket.

The articles above provide some hopeful evidence that the method of Direct Instruction designed by American Zig Engelmann and introduced into Aurukun by Noel Pearson is proving to be effective. Aboriginal students are learning to read. This may not sound remarkable for anyone ignorant of the realities of remote aboriginal communities. But it is remarkable.

To establish this progress Pearson has had to break all the rules of what is regarded as being progressive.
- imported a program from the USA
- plans to extend the working and teaching day
- carefully scripted instruction rather than freedom to explore
- classes organised by ability and not by age

The second article points out some of the teething problems:

the workbooks have come under fire for containing American references, while the direct instruction method was cited by five teachers as their reasons for leaving Aurukun earlier this year

If we achieve progress by methods that are not regarded as progressive then it is time to rethink what progressive is.

Further reading:
It's beyond bad in Aurukun
radical hope: education and equality in australia
Some magic bullets for education
Teachers vote with their feet on Cape York curriculum
Bureaucrats take over Pearson's school plan
Jump-start for Aboriginal education at 'tough-love' school

scientists: neither angels or devils

2010-05-18T10:47:00.002+09:30

Roger Pielke jnr runs a great blog on the connection between the science, politics and policy making of the global warming issue.

If our future ex politicians Kevin Rudd and Malcom Turnbull had been aware of him then they would not have so much egg on their faces now

Some say that AGW demands immediate policy action. eg. James Hansen has participated in demonstrations against the opening of new coal plants. Others say that the science has now been exposed as a fraud, following the climategate emails. Pielke's position is that the science and the policy can be detached, that good future energy policy can be developed despite the unavoidable uncertainties that accompany the science. The scientists are neither angels or devils. Like everyone else they are caught up in the machinations of our capitalist society. (the last sentence is mine, not Pielke's, who is a blue dog Democrat)

I left this comment on Roger's blog:

Just a thank you for your great blog

thanks for link to pdf (The Development of the U.S. Global Change Research Program: 1987 to 1994), your early detection and analysis of the issues of the connection b/w science and policy is noteworthy

great doghouse cartoon too - I admire the way you combat the slings and arrows of your critics with calm detachment and humour

your blog is a great model of those who advocate (1) transparency (2) open engagement, including engagement with critics (the judith curry principles)

roots of oppression

2010-05-05T15:22:00.001+09:30

roots of oppression

in case you haven't seen this, it's an amazing and very comprehensive photo gallery with commentary by a Dane, Jacob Holdt, hitchhiking around USA, some years ago.

Extract from Chapter 1:

Traveling in such a deeply divided society inevitably was a violent experience:

4 times I was attacked by robbers with pistols,
2 times I managed to avoid cuts from men with knives,
2 times frightened police drew guns on me,
1 time I was surrounded by 10-15 blacks in a dark alley and almost killed.
1 time I was ambushed by the Ku Klux Klan,
several times I had bullets flying around me in shootouts,
2 times I was arrested by the FBI, and 4 times by the Secret Service.
I lived with 3 murderers and countless criminals.....
...but I have never met a bad American!

That I survived I owe to my stubborn belief in these words by Jose Marti:
You must have faith in the best in people and distrust the worst.
If not, the worst will prevail.

steve keen: asking why

2010-04-27T12:47:00.000+09:30

Steve Keen has successfully completed his Australian house pricing awareness walk from Parliament House, Canberra, to the peak of Mt. Kosciuszko. There are now posts and photos from those who walked with him going up on the walk site. David Lawson who trained in neo classical economics, then worked in Real Estate and has now abandoned those things. Nina Shedrin a former Russian rocket scientist who is worried about her daughter's generation becoming trapped in a house mortage. More to come.

Steve Keen is doing an amazing job of alerting people to problems in the economic system and encouraging them to dig deeper. His personality is described by David Lawson:

After spending time with Steve Keen on his journey from Canberra to the top of Mt Kosciousko, I have come to know him as a man who always asks the question ‘why?’ He thrives on the challenges that life has to offer, both physically and mentally. Clearly an extremely intelligent man, he also has heart of gold, strong morals and a great sense of humour. There is no wonder why he pursues the work he does

IPCC consensus unravels from within

2010-04-23T22:37:00.000+09:30

Judy Curry's Q&A about the CRU Oxburgh investigation findings and her repeated assertion of IPCC corruption is well worth a read: an inconvenient provocateur

Combine that with Pielke snrs blog posts about fundamental issues and we see that the IPCC consensus is unraveled not just in the eyes of ranting sceptics but from within, from peer reviewed published climate scientists

Where does that leave us? Back to where science is treated as a contested method or methods of investigation and not as a source of authoritative pronouncement.

Dan Meyer: maths teacher

2010-04-19T18:35:00.000+09:30

How to convert text book word problems which spoon feed too much into problems that students will have a conversation about and go onto solve with slower but deeper thinking. Even better, Dan is an entertaining presenter who combines humour with socially important knowledge and modern technology.

Steve Keen walk begins today

2010-04-15T09:37:00.000+09:30

Steve Keen's regular blog: Debt deflation
Debunking Economics website
Keen Walk to Kosciuszko

Steve Keen begins his protest walk against Australian house prices, today, starting from Parliament House, Canberra. This arose because he lost a bet in predicting that Australian house prices would fall and they haven't, so far. Read the links above for more detail.

I admire the way in which Steve Keen has turned a bad bet into a good thing, a protest to raise awareness about the state of the Australian economy. He has generated a lot of interest and support with many people joining him on his walk.

I'm interested in Steve's ideas about Minsky, Fisher, Sraffa, Marx etc and have been reading his extensive online publications in trying to deepen my understanding of political economy arising out of the current and ongoing economic crisis.

Steve Keen is the sort of public intellectual we need. He puts his ideas up for public scrutiny and engages in public debate about them through his blog. I have read enough to understand that econometrics which dominates my local university curriculum (and apparently many others) is a narrow subset of what economic study ought to be. Clearly there needs to be a revolution in university economic departments to bring in the theories of thinkers such as Minsky or Marx who predicted that capitalism would always be an unstable system.

monkeys challenge God

2010-04-12T13:36:00.000+09:30

Put the Pope in the Dock by Geoffrey Robertson

This article puts the legal case for holding Pope accountable for covering up child sex abuse and that it is doubtful that he can claim immunity as a head of state. The initiator of this move was Christopher Hitchens. Richard Dawkins elaborates in a letter to the Sunday Times which gave him the credit with a headline that made him seem personally grandiloquent.

The Pope should not be above the law. Human mental evolution has continued since 1860 (Huxley versus Wilberforce)

Arundhati Roy: not looking away

2010-04-10T13:56:00.001+09:30

On the news in between the latest road accident and the football results you might hear how the Indian Army has marched into a forest region to wage war against the "maoist extremists".

If you are curious and would like to hear the inside story then read Arundhati Roy's beautifully written Walking with Comrades. Arundhati Roy is a Booker Prize winning author (The God of Small Things)

I’m going to get a history lesson. Or, more accurately a lecture on the history of the last thirty years in the Dandakaranya forest, which has culminated in the war that’s swirling through it today. For sure, it’s a partisan’s version. But then, what history isn’t? In any case, the secret history must be made public if it is to be contested, argued with, instead of merely being lied about, which is what is happening now.

Feynman: utter honesty required

2010-04-03T18:15:00.001+10:30

The following Richard Feynman quote was quoted in a climate change discussion at Roger Pielke Jnr's blog. Roger's blog provides a whole range of excellent and seems to me reliable information about "problems" (including corruption) with the IPCC official science. Roger and his other guest contributors think that global warming is an important issue but argue that it is being managed poorly by most politicians and many scientists. Highly recommended for anyone interested in the overlap of the AGW issue with the economics, science and politics of it.

The Feynman quote and the whole article applies to any serious search for truth.

CARGO CULT SCIENCE by Richard Feynman

It is interesting, therefore, to bring it out now and speak of it explicitly. It's a kind of scientific integrity, a principle of scientific thought that corresponds to a kind of utter honesty--a kind of leaning over backwards. For example, if you're doing an experiment, you should report everything that you think might make it invalid--not only what you think is right about it: other causes that could possibly explain your results; and things you thought of that you've eliminated by some other experiment, and how they worked--to make sure the other fellow can tell they have been eliminated.

Details that could throw doubt on your interpretation must be given, if you know them. You must do the best you can--if you know anything at all wrong, or possibly wrong--to explain it. If you make a theory, for example, and advertise it, or put it out, then you must also put down all the facts that disagree with it, as well as those that agree with it. There is also a more subtle problem. When you have put a lot of ideas together to make an elaborate theory, you want to make sure, when explaining what it fits, that those things it fits are not just the things that gave you the idea for the theory; but that the finished theory makes something else come out right, in addition.

In summary, the idea is to try to give all of the information to help others to judge the value of your contribution; not just the information that leads to judgment in one particular direction or another.

Charlie Perkins

2010-03-19T17:38:00.000+10:30

There was a program on ABC TV last night about Charlie Perkins (1936-2000), an Australian aboriginal activist. It was very moving. It was narrated by his daughter.

The thing about Charlie Perkins is that there was never any bullshit but also he knew how to handle himself politically, he would make his point directly but not overstate it. He was a very effective advocate for aboriginal people in an Australia that was racist but then gradually emerged from racism.

There is a website, Charles Perkins, with video clips and extracts from the documentary. I read some of the transcript of an interview with Perkins towards the end of his life. This bit about how he represented the aborginal people in presenting to the Queen against the wishes of Malcom Fraser, the Prime Minister, is very funny:

And the next minute, the Queen comes around, stops, and who should be behind her, but big Malcolm. Well Malcolm was looking at me as though he wished I'd fall through a big hole in the ground. You know, his eyes were just riveting, and he waited for me to pull out a petition and everything. And I ... and the Queen come and said, 'Mm, Mr Perkins?' I said, 'Yes'. I never bowed, because I don't believe in that stuff. And I said, 'Eileen, don't you curtsy or nothing', I said, 'Just treat her just the same as everybody else', you know, and we did. We treated her with respect. I said, 'Yeah, good to see Your Majesty. Good to see you in Australia, and I'd like to, as an Aboriginal person, welcome you to this country'. And I said, 'You'll find no problem from us. We'll treat you decently'. 'Oh', she said, 'Thank you very much for that'. And of course, Fraser's going, [SHAKES HEAD] you know, and others around him are all screwing up their fingers, wishing to throttle me, I would presume. And then I said to her, 'I'll tell you what, you know, it's ... I was going to give you a petition, but I'm not going to give you that tonight, but I'll tell you what it's about. But I gave it to your right hand man, that Sir Something or Other, and he was a nice fellow, and he took it and he said that you're going to read it, is that right?' She said, 'Yes, I've given my word. I'll read that petition'. And I said, 'Well, that's good. That's all I wanted to know, and I won't embarrass you or nothing, but I'll tell you what I'll do. The Aboriginal people asked me to give you a present from us, not from the Australian Government, from us Aboriginal people', and it came off my walls by the way. It was a boomerang and a shield I took, because we couldn't find it in time, and I said, 'But it's a boomerang and some shield and things like that, we think are very important. It's got Aboriginal markings on them', but I said, 'We'll give it you, but please, would you not put it down back in your shed, down the back, you know, where people like yourself get a lot of important things, and you put it down the sheds, or back rooms, and so on. Can you hang it in an important place in Buckingham Palace?' I said, 'That's why we'll give it to you'. She said, 'I'll do that'. I said, 'Yeah, if you do that, then you can have them'. She said, 'All right'. So she ... and I said, 'Well now, I got nothing more to say. I've got no petition and that. That's all I want to say, and welcome to Australia again. Nice to see you'. And you know, 'Come again any time you like'. So, of course, the other lads were waiting out their says, so we moved aside, and then she went on, you know, and I just waited until the right time, and Eileen and I just sneaked out and then went home.
- full interview transcript

Hansen's book and sea level increase

2010-03-14T11:40:00.065+10:30

Reading James Hansen's book, Storms of my Grandchildren, has convinced me that AGW (anthropogenic global warming) is a real problem. I won't attempt to summarise the book except to say that it is an outstanding example of clear science communication to the public.

I haven't looked closely at the issue of species extinction yet but Hansen and other research convinces me that the threat of rising sea levels is real and that the IPCC estimates are conservative. Sea level rise is difficult for humans to adapt to since so many people and important cities are located around the coastline. I hadn't thought about this much before. I had thought that Climate might or might not be changing but the IPCC maximum projection of 59cm in the next century was a maximum and was sufficiently far off in the future to be not a major problem.

Hansen points out that sea level stability has been with us for approximately 7,000 years and that this provided enormous advantages for the emergence of civilisation, such as increased fish breeding around the coasts providing a high protein diet for a settled population. He also uses paleoclimate data to point out that in the previous interglacial, the Eemian, 140,000 years ago, at one stage the climate was only 1 degree Celcius warmer and the sea level was 4-6 metres higher. See Fig. 3 (source)

My thinking was guided by the idea that everything changes continually anyway and in general new technological discoveries can be used to overcome new problems as they arise. I still think this is correct as a generalisation but I can't think of anyway in which new technologies would overcome a significant sea level rise for millions of people. Of course, it's possible / probable that sea level will rise anyway, sooner or later, and we will have to adapt. But it seems that we have reached the point where we do have some control over the climate and should collectively exercise that control.

Back to the present, the evidence from the GRACE satellites (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment) and other data indicates that the ice sheets in Antarctica (especially West Antarctica) and Greenland are losing mass at an accelerating rate. The GRACE figures are in gigatonne per year and the mass loss is accelerating over the period measured (2002-09) on both sheets:

In Greenland, the mass loss increased from 137 Gt/yr in 2002–2003 to 286 Gt/yr in 2007–2009, i.e., an acceleration of −30 ± 11 Gt/yr2 in 2002–2009. In Antarctica the mass loss increased from 104 Gt/yr in 2002–2006 to 246 Gt/yr in 2006–2009, i.e., an acceleration of −26 ± 14 Gt/yr2 in 2002–2009.
- source

A central issue is the inertia of the oceans and the ice sheets. Ice begins to melt slowly but the rate accelerates over time. Ice in the wild has different dynamics. Ice flows, ice can get dirty, moulins can form to accelerate the destruction etc. With oceans the warming process is much slower overall but the quicker part is early rather than late. These combined inertias create the threat that if you go past a tipping point, which we can’t predict, then you can’t recover from it. We may be letting systems which are controllable to an extent slip out of control. With so many people living in coastal regions then anything faster than the IPCC predictions would be a real concern for future generations.

I still think that economic and industrial development is very important for everyone, especially for the developing world. Since we have the nuclear energy option I don't see any reason for pessimism about the long term energy future for humans. However, the present problem is that nuclear is more expensive and subject to excessive regulation owing to the widespread fear of anything nuclear. These issues have been and are being discussed in detail at Barry Brook's blog, Brave New Climate.

At the moment I'm particular interested in the threat of rising sea levels. I found another excellent blog, Getting skeptical about global warming skepticism which has a series of posts about this question. This amazing page lists 94 skeptical arguments and links to responses to all of them based on reviews of peer reviewed papers by John Cook, a Queensland physicist. Here are some of the links to Cook's blog which directly or indirectly look at the issue of rising sea levels:

Sea levels aren't rising
Ice isn't melting
How much will sea levels rise in the 21st Century?
Is Greenland gaining or losing ice?
It's the ocean
Arctic ice melt is a natural cycle
Does ocean cooling prove global warming has ended?

Reading these references makes me think that the IPCC maximum estimate is a conservative one and the sea level may well rise faster than that. This video provides an illustration of how the ice sheet dynamics might work, explains the reasons for IPCC conservatism and looks at some of the paleoclimate data. The section right at the end is overly alarmist but overall it's worth watching:

james hansen

2010-03-01T11:18:00.001+10:30

I've booked into the James Hansen presentation on March 11th in Adelaide, South Australia.

I've started reading his book, Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth About the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity. Here are some preliminary thoughts:

The full title of his book seems ridiculously melodramatic. I say this because we have a solution to worst case global warming scenarios (nuclear power) and Hansen knows about it and devotes a section in his book to it, pp. 194-204

Nevertheless, so far I'm very impressed by the way he lays out the big picture science in Chapter One. More on this later, hopefully.

I like the way in which he presents his differences with contrarian Richard Lindzen in Appendix 1. I was particularly interested in this because I have been influenced by Lindzen's articles.

Hansen explains that he is a shy person who would prefer to stay out of the limelight and just do the science. But because others can't explain the issues properly he has decided to speak out publicly more.

In the video clip below I think he is a bit too eager to blame the fossil fuel industry for clouding the picture. It would be better if the promotional video confined itself to the science.

living with offence

2010-02-21T11:37:00.006+10:30

Kindly Inquisitors: The new attacks on free thought (1993) by Jonathan Rauch

Frances Widdowson (Offended by Offence) has recently reviewed this book on her blog. I liked her review and also the Kirkus review at amazon books. I haven't read the book. These brief notes are based on the reviews.

In our civilised democratic society (not Iran, China, etc.), the modern day equivalent of the Inquisition are the philosophies of egalitarianism and humanitarianism

ie. the principle of the Inquisition was that people with wrong or hurtful opinions ought to be punished for the good of society

egalitarianism - the beliefs of all sincere people deserve equal respect
humanitarianism - one must never offend

Taken separately and in particular when combined these outlooks undermine the pursuit of scientific truth by introducing a variety of mental and ideological barriers to free and open discussion. This is explained more in the reviews.

It is essential to learn the hard discipline of living with offence that will inevitably follow from this approach rather than fudging the quest for truth out of fear of offending others or being offended ourselves. Words might offend but as long it remains just words then we need to accept it and either argue back or move on, not try to censor it and to reject philosophies which attempt to censure open, vigorous discussion

Previous: This book reminds me of Frank Furedi's book, "Where have all the intellectuals gone?" which I did read and review
truth slips from view in the sea of post modern knowledge
how the left became conservative

economics of nuclear energy

2010-02-17T18:56:00.006+10:30

Irrespective of other concerns (safety, disposal, proliferation of weapons) the generally accepted wisdom about the cost of nuclear generated electricity is that it is more expensive than electricity from coal or other fossil fuels.

I thought this as well until I researched it. Here are some notes

France is the number one country in the world which generates electricity from nuclear power. France derives over 75% of its electricity from nuclear energy. Their electricity costs are very competitive in Europe. France is the world's largest net exporter of electricity and gains over EUR 3 billion per year from this. (Nuclear Power in France)

In the 1970s in the USA electricity from nuclear power was sometimes cheaper than coal. But this situation reversed itself in the 1980s which led to many planned nuclear power stations being abandoned. The reasons for this are clearly documented in an online book, published in 1990, The Nuclear Energy Option, by Bernard Cohen. Here is a brief summary of his Chapter 9:

construction time for nuclear plants doubled from 1971 (7 yrs) to 1980 (12 yrs), which in turn doubled the costs
labour costs also doubled with the biggest increases being professional labour

(these figures corrected for inflation)

So, the cost of nuclear plants quadrupled in 10 years and as a result they were no longer built. The main reason for these increases were regulatory ratcheting (excessive) and regulatory turbulence (the latter being having to change things after the project has started and hence more expensive)

According to Cohen it was accepted wisdom by the utilities in the USA before the over regulation of the 1980s that nuclear would be cheaper than coal and would replace coal.

"Many utilities seek cost analyses from economics consulting firms, some utilities have their own in-house economists to make estimates, and banking organizations maintain expertise to aid in decisions on investments. From the early 1970s until the early 1980s, all of their reports found that nuclear power was the cheaper of the two. For example, the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is the largest electric utility in the United States. Its profits, if any, are turned back to the U.S. Treasury. It maintained a large and active effort for many years in analyzing the relative cost advantages of nuclear versus coal-burning power plants, consistently finding that nuclear power was cheaper. The 1982 analysis by the Energy Information Administration, a branch of the U.S. Department of Energy, was the first to find that coal and nuclear were equal in cost; their previous analyses found nuclear to be cheaper. By 1982, these analyses were mostly discontinued, since it seemed unrealistic for a utility to consider building a nuclear power station, or even to hope that it could be done without regulatory turbulence"
- Ch. 10, The Nuclear Energy Option by Bernard Cohen

Tom Blees also discusses and updates answers to these questions in his book Prescription for the Planet. One of the important points he makes is that the modern reactor designs (Gen III and Gen IV) employ passive safety using molten sodium as a coolant and consequently do not have to operate under high pressure, except for the steam portion of the system in the turbine room. This means that significantly fewer valves, pumps and tanks are required compared with the older reactors. This lowers construction costs.

The other main point made by Blees about high costs in the USA (compared with France and some other countries) is that the nuclear industry there has yet to agree on a standard design and each new design has to jump many regulatory hurdles all of which pushes the cost of the process higher.

Thanks to Barry Brook's blog I recently attended a debate in which Tom Blees participated. Subsequently, I bought a few copies of his book and have distributed them to friends who are interested in discussing these questions.

I notice that the Obama administration has just announced a loan guarantee intended to underwrite construction of two nuclear reactors in Georgia. If the project goes forward, the reactors would be the first begun in the United States since the 1970s.

From what I have read I conclude that electricity from nuclear power could be as cheap as electricity from coal.

update 4th March: After a fair bit of discussion on threads at Strange Times (Technology, development and c... c... c... climate change) and Brave NewClimate (Do climate sceptics and anti nukes matter?) I have changed my mind again. In general nuclear is not cheaper than coal unless extra costs such as a carbon tax are (in the future) added to coal.

our energy rich future

2010-02-15T21:38:00.006+10:30

The importance of numbers, from John McCarthy's sustainability of human progress site

The fission of an atom of uranium liberates about 10 million times as much energy as does the combustion of an atom of carbon from coal. I fear that to many people, the impression made by saying 10 million is about the same as if I had said 10 thousand or 10 billion.

One cannot understand policy issues without taking numbers seriously. If the number were 10 thousand, we probably could not afford nuclear energy. If the number were 10 billion, there would be no need for a significant uranium mining industry, and the waste problem would be trivial.

In another part of his site McCarthy quotes figures from Bernard Cohen demonstrating that nuclear energy can supply human needs for billions of years into the future. Although there is no reference to Bartlett type exponential growth here (which is not maintained in real life indefinitely, anyway) the calculations do demonstrate that there is no scientific reason to fear an energy deprived future.

david mackay: do the arithmetic

2010-02-10T10:45:00.003+10:30

John McCarthy: He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense. (Progress and its Sustainability)

I'd forgotten a lot of my basic physics, so here is a refresher.

Power is the rate of energy conversion, or, the rate of doing work. This applies to both mechanical power, measured in joules / sec and electrical power, measured in watts

Work is done when a force is moved through a distance (W=F*D)

Mechanical force = mass * acceleration, the UNITS are kg.metre/sec/sec or Newtons
Mechanical work = force * distance, the UNITS are newton.metres or N.m or Joules
Mechanical power is work divided by time, or, Work / time, the UNITS are N.m /s or Joules / sec

Electrical power is measured in Watts. 1 Watt = 1 Joule / sec. A watt is also a volt.amp. Watts= Volts * amps

To obtain electrical energy then multiply the power * time. The UNITS here could be joules or watt.seconds. The normal units for larger amounts of electrical energy are KW.hrs. To convert watts to kilowatts divide by 1000, to convert seconds to hours divide by 3600 or 60*60.

We need to have an internalised way of having a feel for these values. A joule is the energy or work required to lift a small apple one meter straight up. If you perform that action in one second then that is equivalent to a watt or joule/sec of electrical power.

The small apple weighs 0.1 kg
The acceleration caused by the earth's gravity is roughly 10 m/sec/sec (9.8 m/s/s more accurately)
The distance we move the apple through is 1 metre
Work = force * distance
Work = mass * acceleration * distance
Work = 0.1 * 10 * 1
Work = 1 joule or 1 Newton.metre or 1 kg. metre ^2 / sec ^2, where ^2 means squared

Some other joule practical examples at the wikipedia joule page

A 40 watt incandescent light bulb produces forty joules of energy per second or the equivalent of lifting 4kg of apples 1 metre in one second. Fluorescent or LED lights achieve a similar effect with much less energy.

How much energy does a 40 watt incandescent light bulb use in one day?
40 * 24 / 1000 = 1 KW.hr energy used in one day

How much energy does the average person in an industrialised country use? The figures here are for the UK

Answer: The equivalent of 125 of these light bulbs running all the time

How many wind turbines would it require to meet the energy needs of everyone in the UK?
Answer = 600,000, which would cover half of the UK. The UK currently has 2408 wind turbines

How many nuclear power stations would it require to meet the energy needs of everyone in the UK?
Answer = 300. The UK currently has 10 nuclear power stations.

Here is a video from David MacKay illustrating the need to do the arithmetic. Irrespective of whether you are an alarmist, denier or somewhere in between you still need to do the arithmetic and basic physics to intelligently discuss these issues:

David MacKay is the author of Sustainable energy - without the hot air. He has recently been appointed the UK's Department of Energy and Climate Change Chief Scientific Advisor.

thoughts on the nuclear debate

2010-02-06T12:00:00.008+10:30

Debate: "Should we consider Nuclear Power as a response to climate change?"

Affirmative:

Professor Barry Brook, Sir Hubert Wilkins Chair of Climate Change, University of Adelaide, and author of the blog Brave New Climate

Tom Blees, President, Science Council for Global Initiatives and author of the book "Prescription for the Planet."

For the Negative:

David Noonan, Australian Conservation Foundation

Dr Mark Diesendorf, Deputy Director, Institute of Environmental Studies, University of New South Wales".

I bought Tom Blee's book Prescription for the Planet. Tom was a very effective presenter due to his extensive research and personal contact with a wide range of people deeply involved in these issues allowed him to communicate telling and interesting anecdotes - and he has a wicked sense of humour, which was much needed on the night

The majority of the audience was anti nuclear (2/3rds or 3/4) but thanks to the work done by Barry Brook on his blog, Brave New Climate, there was a significant pro nuclear presence

Mark Diesendorf was energetically aggressive in his attack on nuclear power as an "idealistic fantasy". He argued that renewables could completely replace fossil fuels by 2030 and presented a slide showing the growth of various renewables illustrating how this could be done.

I felt this slide was dodgy but didn't know enough to refute it. Mark also made a big issue of his expertise and criticised Barry for pronouncing outside his field of primary expertise.

Aspects of this slide were challenged by Barry Brook. How could geothermal grow so quickly when on another slide Mark had shown geothermal at the R&D stage in Australia and that new technologies took 40 years or so to reach large scale commercial stage. Mark had used this to argue that IFR (Integral Fast Reactors) was pie in the sky, so Barry's counter was quite effective.

There was other to and fro along these lines, some of it amusing. Barry pointed out that renewables only made up 1% of the world's energy. Mark responded that it was unfair to take a world average because some European countries had a much higher percentage. But Mark had earlier criticised Tom Blee's example of ineffective solar panels in Germany as "cherry picking" because Germany had a cold climate. This sort of exchange confirmed my belief that you need to have a firm grasp of the arithmetic to engage intelligently in this debate. I've read this page (Renewable energy cannot sustain an energy intensive society) of Barry's site and downloaded Ted Trainer's pdf from that page to improve my own knowledge here

David and Mark were unreasonably dogmatic in their anti-IFR stance. The issue of urgency was used in an irrational way, given the reality of the failure in Copenhagen and the certainty of developing countries like China and India to continue using massive amounts of fossil fuels. Even if IFR does take 50 years to develop on a large scale (in itself debatable) then that is not a reason not to develop it. There is a can do and a can't do mentality and wrt IFR their attitude was totally can't do on technical grounds alone. They want a total roadblock on nuclear power. They spent quite a bit of time on this, irrespective of their other objections.

Barry took a realistic economic approach that coal would not be replaced by alternatives until a cheaper alternative emerged - and the best shot for that was nuclear.

Mark disputed that but admitted that his renewable futures would be more expensive. For me this was the real "idealistic fantasy", his repeated statement along the lines that people power would convince governments to change.

The other main objection from the anti-nuclear side was proliferation. What emerged here was that IFR reactors do not produce weapons grade plutonium and there are other more effective means of producing weapons grade plutonium, such as high-speed centrifuge technology. I felt the pro-nuclear side was on shakier ground here since more IFR reactors will lead to more transport around the world of weapons grade plutonium (as a start up fuel) and so the probability of it falling into the hands of terrorists will probably increase.

Mark said that nuclear power was 14% of the world's electricity production and declining. Barry offered a bet that the nuclear percentage would increase but Mark declined to accept it. Good move, Barry!

So, it boiled down to who was living in the "real world" and who was living in "fantasy world"

scratch challenges update

2010-02-04T23:01:00.003+10:30

Numbers 12-14 are new. Scratch is a free download

1) Use the Letter shapes to write your first name on the page. Then introduce some special effects such as making the letters wobble and change their appearance.

2) Point, click and move
Make an object both point and glide towards the mouse position when you click on the stage
Hint: Motion > point towards
Hint: Sensing > mouse down?

3) Make Dan or Anjuli or Cassy or ballerina dance to a beat, using all of their dance shapes. Include a suitable background that changes colours as the lights flash.

4a) Make two animals have a forwards and backwards conversation
Hint: Use broadcast, (ask for help if you don’t know how broadcast works)
4b) Make it an interesting conversation with each animal speaking at least 3 times and making gestures too

5) Make a sprite gradually grow in size and then shrink

6) Make 2 different balls move around on the stage
a) the first ball moves in straight lines but bounces randomly whenever it hits the edge
b) the second moves randomly, gliding from one position to a new random position continually

7a) One sprite chases another sprite around the stage. The first sprite moves in straight line but bounces off the edge randomly. The chasing sprite chases the first sprite but is moving slower.
b) Extension – if the chasing sprite catches the other sprite then it says something sensible and makes a suitable sound

8a) Play all the different drum sounds automatically
Hint: create a variable for the drum number
b) Extension – keep recycling through all the drum sounds automatically

9a) Count down on a timer. A rocket takes off when you reach zero
Hint: Use the number icons in the letters folder
9b) Your rocket has pulsating exhaust and disappears at the top of the screen

10) Add, multiply or subtract two variable numbers
Hint: Just to do addition only you will need 4 variables: firstNum, secondNum, answer (computer calculated) and myAnswer (human calculated)

11) Variable coloured squares
a) Write a script that can draw a square of any size
Hint: Make a variable for the side length
b) Use the variable square script to draw a series of square with variable sides, with a single click
c) Now add variable pen colour and pen shade to the variable square script and use it to draw a variety of different coloured squares, with a single click

12) Draw lines of random thickness in random directions with random colours. The pen must be lifted up and moved for each new line.
Hint: pen group contains set pen color, set pen size, pen up, pen down
Hint: colours range across the spectrum (ROY G BIV) starting with red = 0. There are about 190 colours in total and you need to display them all!

13A) Make a race
a) choose two suitable sprites, they must have at least 2 costumes to simulate motion
b) the sprites move at random speeds, you can’t predict the winner
c) make a finish line, using a new sprite is best
d) suitable background music
e) when the winner crosses the finish line it announces that it won
f) reset scripts to start again

13B) Extension: Make it a multi-lap race, the number of laps can vary
g) make a variable to set and count the laps (use this on just one of the sprites otherwise you will be counting the laps twice)
h) use “x position” with an if tile rather than “if on edge bounce” to manage the turning and lap increase value
i) hide the finish line so that it only appears for the final lap

14A) Play the scales on a piano
a) Check out the sound > play note tile
b) Teacher has supplies a graphic of a keyboard. Import it to your scratch project.
c) Program the computer keyboard so that it plays a series of notes on the piano keyboard
d) As the notes are played alter the keyboard graphic to make it appear they are being pressed and they revert back to blank when the key is released
e) Add some suitable background graphics

14B) Extension
f) As the notes are played a sprite dances to the tune created by the notes, ie. each note triggers a particular movement
g) The names of the notes are spoken by a new sprite as they are played
h) Find a way to play ALL the notes on the keyboard

We don't deserve this, Julia Gillard

2010-02-03T16:41:00.004+10:30

source of graphic

OK, I spent 6 years or so teaching at a School in one of the most disadvantaged socio-economic areas in metropolitan Australia. And so I can empathise strongly with how teachers at that school would feel about the new Australian government MySchool site when they see how their low NAPLAN results (Paralowie) are prominently in RED when compared with ALL schools , even though the similar so called like school results are displayed in far lighter shades.

Just let me say that Paralowie had the most enlightened administration and the most creative teachers I have ever had the privilege to work with. Teachers who understood that the main source of educational disadvantage was socio-economic and worked very hard to turn things around for as many students as they could.

And guess what. It will be the same long after Julia Gilliard has left politics and has retired on her parliamentary pension to some upper class suburb somewhere.

Further reading: League Tables Increase Social Segregation and Inequality by Trevor Cobbold, pdf

Previous blog: sbs-insight: should-schools-test-results-be-made-public

Previous article:
OPTIMISM AND REALITY IN DISADVANTAGED SCHOOLS

More temperate but well researched blogs, even though I have no idea where Darcy gets the thought that Gillard and Rudd are well intentioned:
MySchool: Part I
MySchool: Part II

is it nuclear or newclear?

2010-02-03T14:20:00.003+10:30

I like this approach to the global warming climate debate:

1) Rapid human economic development is good (not argued here) and inevitable (you aren't going to stop China, India etc. from developing)

2) The only valid alternative to fossil fuels for our energy needs is nuclear power. This is really a matter of doing the arithmetic. According to The Integral Fast Reactor – Summary for Policy Makers (IFR Summary article) , which is written from the POV of keeping CO2 under 450ppm, then we will need to produce 1 GWe per day of new clean power every single day for the next 25 years.

3) The integral fast reactor (IFR) is the safest and most efficient form of nuclear power about. It was invented by Charles Till in 1965 (Plentiful Energy and the IFR Story) who led a team which produced a small (non commercial) fast reactor which ran for 30 years without incident. Unfortunately, this program was shut down by Bill Clinton’s administration in 1994 for political reasons. In Congress, the main argument against (by John Kerry) was civilian nuclear proliferation (which I suppose is a valid concern today as well – although the end product of IFR is not suitable for weapon production I’m less certain about the fuel inputs, still researching)

4) So if you are a climate alarmist then you should support IFR (as James Hansen does, see Science Council for Global Initiatives)

5) If you are not an alarmist but support future human development then you should also support IFR, not so urgently but essential for the future.

There is a debate happening in Adelaide, Australia, this Friday presented by The Australian Solar Energy Society, Sustainable Populations Australia and The Zero Carbon Network, will see a debate on “Should we consider Nuclear Power as a response to climate change?” with Mark Diesendorf and Helen Caldicott for the negative and Barry Brook and Tom Blees for the affirmitive (The Nuclear Debate). I've booked a seat.

For more information about IFR do some reading from this page of Barry Brooks blog, Brave New Climate.

Tom Blees video, part 2 of 3:

"The poor are a goldmine"

2010-01-28T16:00:00.004+10:30

Fattest hand is first in the till

Noel Pearson is a great, fearless writer who combines deep analysis with scathing, excoriating description. By now much of his analysis of how passive welfare makes things worse for aboriginal people has filtered through to mainstream consciousness. In the above article he elaborates on a misunderstood aspect of his analysis. The aboriginal industry is made up of people who benefit before any aboriginal person benefits. Although some elements of welfare are essential it can easily reach a point where the helpers are taking responsibility out of the hands of the recipients. Once this becomes a problem it is hard to undo because many of the helpers would then become unemployed. Pearson is much more in touch with this than I am and far more scathing.

After quoting African-American economist Thomas Sowell, "The poor are a goldmine", Noel Pearson goes onto illustrate how this aphorism applies to indigenous Australians:

The leviathan of government bureaucracies make the payday lenders, the drug dealers and sly grog sellers pale in comparison with their commandeering of the income streams that are nominally allocated to the indigenous poor on the ground ...

So the first problem is an age-old one of ever-pullulating bureaucracies: like maggots engorged on a roadside carcass, whenever there is a new budget line the frontline departments of government serve themselves first. This is the real Aboriginal industry ...

The second form of welfare - passive service delivery - was not understood at the time of our critique, and has little public policy understanding even today. When we say that a large part of our welfare problem is government service delivery, people do not understand what we mean. After all, service delivery is supposed to be what is needed. Aboriginal disadvantage supposedly needs to be fixed by more comprehensive and more co-ordinated service delivery.

This is how you end up with 400 service providers for just 1200 people.

Our point that indigenous passivity is very much a consequence of government service delivery has been completely lost to the debate on indigenous policy.

The problem is that essential and beneficial government service delivery is mixed up with a vast panoply of services that displaced Aboriginal individuals, families and communities taking up their own responsibilities.

What my opponents and sceptics from the Left have failed to understand is that when we talk about disempowerment being the singular and devastating feature of Aboriginal Australia, we mean that our people have had their responsibilities taken away from us. Responsibility is power. If we want our people to be empowered, then we need to take back the responsibilities that the welfare state has stripped away from us.

fascist regimes are undermined by the internet

2010-01-15T12:01:00.004+10:30

I may no longer be able to say that Google does some evil.

XIAO QIANG, director, China Internet Project, University of California at Berkeley

XIAO QIANG: Well, this -- we really should put this context of the Google event in a larger context, which is, it's not Google vs. China. It's more Internet vs. the authoritarian regime, the Chinese authoritarian regime, because, fundamentally, the Internet is an enabler.

It's empowering people the capacity to organize information, to effectively use information, and also to work together, collaboration, and even mobilize collective actions.

From those point of view, Google's services and products are just, for those leading services, empowering people to do so. And the Chinese government fundamentally cannot live in peace with such empowering factor of technology. Therefore, they cannot live in peace with Google, period.

So, when the Internet is getting larger and larger in China, the Internet users are more and more politically active, and the political speeches have become more and more proactive, then the government has to intensify its censorship measure higher and higher degree, and then to the point that the company like a Google cannot take it any more. So, this is fundamentally an issue of China's government vs. Internet.

Whether Google is there or not, the story will continue.
- Google's Threats to Leave China Renew Censorship Concerns

The offical Google blog announcement: A New Approach to China

Ethan Zuckerman has a more detailed analysis: Four possible explanations for Google's big China move:

Google decided to stop being evil
Google retreated from a very tough market
Google abandoned Chinese users
Google is about to join the front lines of the anticensorship wars (very interesting)

ignoble award in economics

2010-01-13T10:42:00.002+10:30

Real World Economics Review blog is running a competition for the ignoble award in economics:

With other learned professions entrusted with public confidence, such as medicine and engineering, it is inconceivable that their professional bodies would not at the very least censure members who had successfully persuaded governments and public opinion to ignore elementary safety measures, so causing epidemics and widespread building collapses.

To date, however, the world’s major economics associations have declined to censure the major facilitators of the GFC or even to publicly identify them. This silence, this indifference to causing human suffering, constitutes grave moral failure. It also gives license to economists to continue to indulge in axiom-happy behaviour. Nor has the economics establishment offered recognition to those economists who were not taken in by fads and fashion and whose competence, if listened to, would have prevented the collapse …

The nomination, evidence and final winners procedures are explained at the site.

Click here to see recent nominations with some comments / reasons. So far, nominations include Greenspan, Bernanke, Summers, Prescott, Fama, Stigler, Friedman, Scholes, Geithner, Sachs, Krugman, Samuelson, Stiglitz and Gordon Brown / Ed Balls

Real World Economics Review is a communal blog for alternative economists. See their About page for more detail, including pdf downloads of papers to recent journals.

the aftermath of financial crisis

2010-01-04T12:42:00.004+10:30

What we can expect on average from historical precedents of severe financial crises:

Real Housing Prices will drop by 35.5% and take 6 years to recover
Equity Prices will drop by 55.9% and take 3.4 years to recover
Unemployment will increase by 7% and take 4.8 years to recover
GDP will drop by 9.3% and take 1.9 years to recover
Real public debt will increase by 86% over 3 years

This is based on a historical study of 22 major banking crises in different countries for which data was available

Most of the crises in the study group were regional (with the exception of the Great Depression which was included). So the current crisis may be worse in this respect:

The global nature of the crisis will make it far more difficult for many countries to grow their way out through higher exports, or to smooth the consumption effects through foreign borrowing. In such circumstances, the recent lull in sovereign defaults is likely to come to an end. As Reinhart and Rogoff (2008b) highlight, defaults in emerging market economies tend to rise sharply when many countries are simultaneously experiencing domestic banking crises.

Source: The Aftermath of Financial Crisis by Carmen Reinhart and Ken Rogoff

steve keen's 2010 prediction for the economy

2010-01-01T10:30:00.006+10:30

Steve Keen's concludes his 2009 retrospective with a prediction for 2010:

My expectation is that, some time during 2010, the disconnect between the financial markets’ euphoric expectations and the hard reality of a deleveraging private sector will bring the optimism of both “born again Keynesian” neoclassical economists and the markets to an end. Growth will not resume once the stimulus packages are removed, since deleveraging will then assert itself in the absence of government stimulus. Falling debt will subtract from growth, as it once added to it, and unemployment will start to rise again.

I expect that governments will react to this as they did in 2009–by turning on the stimulus packages once more, while continuing to ignore the private debt levels that caused the crisis in the first place. They will “turn Japanese”, to coin a phrase–since this is the same thing the Japanese government has been doing for two decades since its Bubble Economy burst at the end of 1989.

This process may repeat itself two or three times before serious attention is finally turned to the Ponzi-dominated financial sector’s parasitic impact on the real economy. But for now, the parasites are clearly still in control of the host

Unique visitors to Keen's blog have increased from 15,000 to 50,000 per month during 2009. I'm one of the new ones.

Steve Keen is a prolific Australian economics writer and publishes most of his material, including his university course, on line, see Debunking Economics. He supports a Post Keynesian or Minsky analysis of the economy, that capitalism is a fragile system in its internal dynamic (Financial Instability). One aspect of Keen's work is that he connects Post Keynesian analysis to Marxist dialectical philosophy, arguing continuity between the ideas of Marx and the ideas of Minsky (The Minsky Thesis: Keynesian or Marxian?).

I have bought and am reading the mobipocket eBook version of Keen's book and have recently ordered a couple of books by Hyman Minsky (1919-1996), that have been recently republished in the light of the crisis:

Goethe quote

2009-12-22T11:55:00.006+10:30

Every school of thought is like a man who has talked to himself for a hundred years and is delighted with his own mind, however stupid it may be.
(J.W. Goethe, 1817, Principles of Natural Science)

From the Schools of Thought page of the History of Economic Thought site. I think that site is a very good starting point for serious economic study.

update (25th December): Here is a counter balancing quote, from the HET introduction page, also from Goethe

Somebody says: "Of no school I am part,
Never to living master lost my heart,
Nor any more can I be said
To have learned anything from the dead."
That statement - subject to appeal -
Means "I'm a self-made imbecile."
(J.W. Goethe, Den Originalen, 1812)

Paul Samuelson developed Frankenstein

2009-12-15T23:27:00.003+10:30

Economist Paul Samuelson has just died (age 94) so there was some coverage about him on the PBS NewsHour (my favourite news source) tonight.

As part of my economic study I am currently acquiring an overview of the mainstream neo-classical schools (they argue amongst each other). I'm impressed by the History of Economic Thought website. They have a summary of the various schools of thought which is more coherent than wikipedia. Wikipedia is not bad but tends to be more muddled and padded than the HET site.

Anyway, according to the NewsHour interview with David Warsh, Paul Samuelson was one of the four most influential economists of the 20th Century, the others being John Maynard Keynes, Milton Friedman and Kenneth Arrow. (Late Economist Samuelson Bridged Math, Money). From what I've read Samuelson was very good at developing mathematical arguments to update and refine Keynesian type government interventions into the economy.

Given his importance what he said about the current crisis, at the start of it, is interesting:

PAUL SAMUELSON: I'm really very realistic about the mess that we are in. People compare it with the Great Depression. But the Wall Street shenanigans this time are much worse. And people like me, who lived through the Great Depression, as a young, budding, kind of bright economist, are in great demand because the other people don't have a clue as -- as to what this kind of situation is.

PAUL SOLMAN: Well, what did Wall Street do this time that it didn't do last time?

PAUL SAMUELSON: This is the first time ever that this happened after the -- and I have to use my words very carefully -- fiendish, Frankenstein monsters of financial engineering had been created, a lot of them at MIT, some of them by people like me.

And these are marvelous things which can be used to spread risks rationally, and, in that sense, reduce riskiness. But the Frankenstein part of the story is that they also are marvelous things, Samson-like, to blind you. You don't know what you're doing. All transparency disappears. What's happened this last eight years is an absolutely unnecessary thing.

neither an alarmist nor denier be

2009-12-09T20:46:00.005+10:30

Richard Burton once when approached by a beggar quoted Shakespeare:

"Neither a borrower nor a lender be -Shakespeare"

The beggar responded:

"Get fucked - Henry Miller"

That's pretty close to how I feel about the global warming pretend debate.

James Hansen sounded convincing on Lateline when interviewed by fellow alarmist Tony Jones. When I watch a seemingly reasonable and well researched scientist like Hansen I start to think who am I to question this?

But then when I read a counter argument by Richard Lindzen, a qualified environmentalist, (The Climate Science isn't Settled) then I wonder why the ABC takes the easy path of having an alarmist interview another alarmist. Why don't they set up a real debate between Hansen and Lindzen?

The ABC has already decided on the truth and present us with a carefully massaged version

It is still best to be neither an alarmist nor a denier. I would describe myself as a lukewarmist. Perhaps I should set up a political party but lacking the stridency and certainty of those who are sure it would not receive many votes.

Lindzen:

The notion that complex climate "catastrophes" are simply a matter of the response of a single number, GATA, to a single forcing, CO2 (or solar forcing for that matter), represents a gigantic step backward in the science of climate. Many disasters associated with warming are simply normal occurrences whose existence is falsely claimed to be evidence of warming. And all these examples involve phenomena that are dependent on the confluence of many factors.

Our perceptions of nature are similarly dragged back centuries so that the normal occasional occurrences of open water in summer over the North Pole, droughts, floods, hurricanes, sea-level variations, etc. are all taken as omens, portending doom due to our sinful ways (as epitomized by our carbon footprint). All of these phenomena depend on the confluence of multiple factors as well
- The Climate Science isn't Settled

Lindzen's argument conforms with my belief that sustainability, although in some cases maybe a desirable goal, is not a possible goal. There is no ideal climate for the earth, there has never been any long term stability in the earth's climate or anything else for that matter. The idea that we can achieve this is ludicrous.

Previous blogs about this:
the case for unsustainability
the left and right of global warming
the problem of too much bullshit

Chicago 10

2009-11-24T22:13:00.004+10:30

This has been out for a couple of years but I only saw it recently on late night SBS documentaries.

It's a very smooth rendition of the Chicago 1968 Hoffman / Yippie / Black Panthers (Bobby Seale) trial

1968. I lived through that time and the anti Vietnam war street demos. It was a historical hinge point. This documentary perturbed me because I lived through somewhat similar events in Australia - the sometimes violent protests, trails and gaoling of draft resistors and demonstrators. I feel like saying you have to see this documentary to understand those times. Maybe that's true, I think it is, but if you didn't experience things like this then maybe you wouldn't understand it anyway - because 1968 was such a radical break from the past. If you don't understand what life was like before 1968 then is it possible to understand 1968?

On the one hand NLF flags in the Courtroom and on the hill. On the other hand the pro war voices trying to depict hippies as commies or stooges, which just didn't gel.

I've seen previous versions of the Chicago trial. The previous versions had a different focus - mainly on the gagging and chaining of Bobby Seale by Judge Hoffman.

This one was different and possibly overall more accurate. It presented the Yippies as the main players of protest and Bobby Seale as almost an afterthought. There was new footage in there for me. Ginsberg's bad poetry, Norman Mailer shots and much more.

Two forms of protest or "rage against the machine". The Yippies with fun and drugs, the Panthers far more serious and fight fire with fire. Back then I read their literature avidly trying to work out where I stood. Cleaver: Soul on Ice; Jerry Rubin: Do It! In the end I agreed with Timothy O'Leary (the LSD professor) when years later he was asked why he left the hippies, replied: "I never really like the hippies anyway" LOL

The judge makes all these terrible errors - like chaining up and gagging Seale who was demanding his constitutional right to defend himself. Everything operates on a more subtle level today

I think the struggle goes on but the forms of struggle vary immensely over the decades. The Yippies and the Panthers were very romantic and exciting and I can't escape those feeling when I watch that old footage.

my fake farewell speech

2009-11-24T21:36:00.005+10:30

Due to various push and pull factors (one of them being the need to study political economy thoroughly) I am planning to take a whole year's leave in 2010. This got me thinking as to what I would say to my teaching colleagues at the inevitable staff meeting if I was retiring. I've watched all those other teachers retire and now it's (almost) my turn. Since I'm not I won't get to give the speech but here's a draft of some thoughts about it (short version). btw I'm a secondary teacher.

The life of the soldier has been described as long periods of boredom interspersed with short periods of terror.

aside: maybe the life of some students is more like that of the soldier than the teacher but these days more accurately described as long periods of boredom (as in "this is boring") punctuated by long periods of playing with their mobile phones. If I was to resort to uncharacteristic sarcasm then I might describe them as the you-twit-face generation (thanks rob!), the achievement of dynamic overlap of you tube, twitter and facebook.

At any rate, for the last cottage industry, teaching is the most contradictory of professions

There is:

magic - the magic of a great lesson
the almost magic of the almost great lesson - where after describing the wonders of the Hubble telescope penetrating the mysteries of the Universe, a student comes out the front, you think you have inspired him to ask a deep question, but instead s/he says "Can I go to the toilet?"
discovery - the continual discovery of new learning ideas and new student personalities, in the final analysis teaching is a great privilege
the need for courage - unexpected confrontation, sometimes serious, can and do strike from a clear blue sky. I didn't realise that Nietzsche was a teacher in a Disadvantaged school until I saw this quote: "Whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger"
frustration and aggravation - aka the Department and their representatives
attrition - in the end it wears you down

On the magic days it's the best job in the world. On the need for courage days you wonder why the hell am I doing this

Best story. At the end of an excursion one teacher explained to me that when she went to primary school in her class there was a cupboard labelled "teachers cupboard". She thought that at the end of the school day after the kids had gone home that the teacher got into her cupboard and waited there until the next day!

Best compliment. One student once nicknamed me the detective. I asked why and he said, "You never give up on a case"

(in house anecdotes left out)

Marx is thorough

2009-11-24T20:55:00.003+10:30

It has been sitting on my bookshelf for 30+ years. Because of the economic crisis (not yet over), I finally got around to reading Part One of Capital by Karl Marx. It took me many hours. It demands the slow, deep thinking mode.

The thoroughness of Marx is very impressive. I think I now understand what an everyday commonplace commodity is and so I see the world in a different way. That's one thing that good thinkers do; they make you see the commonplace in a completely different way.

I hope it doesn't take others 30+ years to get around to it.

Dan Willingham's book

2009-11-08T21:45:00.005+10:30

I was impressed earlier by some you tube videos and articles by Dan Willingham (some summaries here) so when I discovered that he had written a book I bought it

Why Don't Students Like School? A Cognitive Scientist Answers Questions about how the Mind Works and What it means for the Classroom (2009)

From the Introduction:

Repetition is good for learning but terrible for motivation

This quote and book is a timely reminder for me that teaching is a complex balancing act, there is no one true way. Also, the claim that we have learnt "more about how the mind works in the last twenty-five years than we did in the previous twenty-five hundred" is credible. And Willingham makes a brave attempt of translating these discoveries into worthwhile "Implications for the Classroom" in every chapter.

So far I've read two chapters and skimmed the others. Below is a thumbnail of what each chapter discusses.

Chapter 1: Although we are naturally curious our minds aren't naturally good at thinking and often avoid thinking

Chapter 2: Background factual knowledge is essential for skill development (Content precedes process)

Chapter 3: Memory is the residue of thought. If we want students to remember things then work out a way for them to think about those things.

Chapter 4: Abstraction is hard. We understand new things in the context of things we already know and most of what we know is concrete knowledge.

Chapter 5: Expertise. Extended practice is essential to become proficient at a mental task.

Chapter 6: There are no short cuts to teaching expertise. Cognition early in training is very different from cognition later in training.

Chapter 7: Learning Styles. Children are more alike than different in terms of how they think and learn.

Chapter 8: Slow learners. Children do differ in intelligence but intelligence can be changed through sustained hard work.

Chapter 9: Teachers. Teaching like any complex cognitive skill must be practiced to be improved.

The book title, Why Don't Students Like School?, is a little sensationalist. This book does contribute significantly to the answer of that question but the main point is better expressed in the long subtitle.

radical hope: education and equality in australia

2009-10-17T08:16:00.004+10:30

Radical Hope: Education and Equality in Australia
It's in the latest Quarterly Essay ($17). It's over 100pp, they have just one big essay per issue.

It's a must read IMO. I'll try to explain why.

The genres are: education - learning theory - politics - social class - philosophy(dialectics) - disadvantage - indigenous australians - history

Although Pearson is an aboriginal activist and theoretician this is more an essay about social class than an essay about culture and race issues. Pearson does discuss the latter at some length and his essay is much enriched through that discussion, but the crunch issues focus around social class.

From a young age I've had the belief that schools and school systems are well constructed shipwrecks designed to select the best swimmers. That education is a subset of social class and that education alone can not overthrow social class.

The purpose of education is production and reproduction. Production is churning out the next generation of capitalists and workers, from elite to low skilled jobs. Reproduction is the reproduction and legitimisation of our existing class structure.

This truth is reflected in public Schools by techniques for managing but not educating the bottom 25% of students. It is also reflected in Society by our division between elite fee paying Private Schools and Public Schools and in many other ways. Teachers in Australia have a relatively low social status, poor working conditions / pay compared to other professionals and hence more often than not teaching does not attract high performing graduates.

But, although social class is the bottom line here, none of the above is set in stone because capitalism is a dynamic system that continually generates new ideas, knowledge and new forms of activism to tackle inequality.

One aspect of Pearson's essay is that it does provide a good summary and discussion of methods used in the USA (Charters, Teach for America, KIPP, The New Teacher Project, Geoffrey Canada, Michelle Rhee, Joel Klein etc.) which has had more diverse approaches to educational reform than Australia

In this context Noel Pearson is a deep analytical thinker and pragmatic activist who is doing his best to raise up aboriginal Australians who have been treated so badly. He understands all the above but still tackles with insight and determination the most intractable of problems.

What policies and methods might be successful in achieving good educational outcomes for the mass of indigenous Australians?

He advocates a "No Excuses" approach combined with the methods developed by Siegfried Engelmann (Direct Instruction) and Kevin Whedall (MULTILIT). He has also been influential in the formation of Teach for Australia.

Pearson's superficial critics label him as a Rightist. Pearson analyses this phenomenon as well. Why is it that the middle class humanistic Left comes up with solutions to our worst social problems that make things even worse?

Education is not Pearson's primary field of expertise. There are other alternative educational approaches he does not mention and perhaps has not analysed. For instance, there is no mention of Piaget, Papert, Bruner, Alan Kay or Liping Ma.

One crucial point here is the need to scale basic educational reform, meaning basic numeracy and literacy. The methods advocated by the authors in the previous paragraph require highly skilled educators.

Pearson is not prepared to wait around for one or several generations waiting until we train up skilled teachers to go to remote rural locations. He agrees that teacher quality is the central issue for education reform (p.39) but he is looking beyond that truth to what can be done now to improve education for those who have missed out.

This is an essay which I would like to discuss more with those who have read it and thought about it.