Snippets - nostalgia, industry policy and the importance of shared returns

In the midst of the chaotic aftermath of the Arab spring, I almost missed the fact that Tunisia had ratified a new constitution. The process has been sometimes chaotic, but it seems to have been a considerable success in the end.

Ramana (Going To Seed.) has been to a reunion of his old business class. Paul Barratt, too, has been caught up in aspects of his past; A day trip to Dangar Falls takes us back to January 1962; Those were the days takes us to his early days in Canberra; while On final for Armidale introduces you to our joint home town. Somewhat unexpectedly, Armidale was named top third Australian visitor destination for 2014. Paul's nostalgia trips are dangerous, given our shared history.

Email during the week from Karl Reed during the week reminding me of some 1984 events. At the time, we were trying to introduce new approaches to encourage the development of Australia's electronics, aerospace and information industries.

This diagram from the 1980s provides an overview of the areas we were interested in. Karl's focus was especially on the computing sector, reflecting both his academic interests and his role in the Australian Computer Society.

I argued at the time that industry policy constantly failed and was bound to fail because it was either too general (economy wide horizontal measures) or to firm or industry specific to be be really effective.

Part of the solution lay in taking a broad but related group of industries, focusing on shared opportunities and problems, integrating the policies affecting the group, thus facilitating development. Note the way that the diagram integrates manufacturing and services and links together broadcasting and TV with communications and information services. The internet had yet to arrive, but by the mid eighties the key convergence trends were emerging, as was the digital revolution. How might Australia best take advantage of these new opportunities, recognising that in a let the flowers bloom approach, we couldn't assume that the flowers would bloom in Australia. In fact, they didn't beyond a few scraggly blooms! 

This work has a certain resonance today as the Australian Government wrestles with industry and firm specific issues in automotive and fruit canning. The Government has no intellectual or policy framework for dealing with these matters beyond the traditional tension of let the market prevail vs specific industry or firm assistance.

At his place, Winton Bates has taken a brief respite from his blogging holiday with  How do peaceful societies come about? I think that one message I take from Winton's post is the importance of shared returns. Winton puts it this way:

If you want to start a virtuous cycle where peacefulness supports the growth of economic opportunity, you first need to have sufficient numbers of people who are able to perceive of opportunities to engage productively in mutually beneficial activities, and hence, to want to live in peace.

It's not an especially profound message, but I think that it is an important one. Shared benefits are central. 

King hits, alcohol, bias and subtlety in Australian politics

Tonight just a round-up.

The appointment of Peter Cosgrove as Australian Governor General has been widely welcomed. However, New Matilda wonders (How Will Indonesia Take Cosgrove?) about the Indonesian reaction. John Menadue took a similar position - Is another Indonesia faux pas imminent?.

I must admit I did wonder about the wisdom at this point, given current sensitivities and General Cosgrove's role in East Timor. I suspect that he is well enough known as a person at official level that this will work its way through.

In NSW, the O'Farrell Government has gone the law and order route in trying to combat "alcohol and drug violence", effectively forced into it by campaigning in the main stream media. I quote just the first bullet point. You can find the full release here:

This tough and comprehensive package includes:

• Eight year mandatory minimum sentence for those convicted under new one punch laws where the offender is intoxicated by drugs and/or alcohol, plus new mandatory minimum sentences for violent assaults where intoxicated by drugs and/or alcohol;

This means that a sober bikie who king hits someone gets treated more leniently than a silly young person. Frankly, this is silly stuff of the type we have come to know and love from all NSW Governments (and other Australian governments of all political persuasions). They go the narrowly defined penalty route because they feel it's about all they can do and it's immediately popular. But it's also totally stupid.

Like many Australians, I am worried about alcohol fuelled violence. I was going to say a few years back, but it's more than that, oldest had an eighteenth birthday party. We did the right thing as defined. We hired security people. We had door checks. We let the police know. And then a few young drunken yobbo gate crashers actually damaged the venue where we were holding the party.  It was a bit of a nightmare.

Much later, I thought that we had done the wrong thing and its partly connected with the way that we as a society have shifted responsibility. In the new society, eighteen has become the new fifteen or younger.

As parents, we wanted eldest to have a good time. We took responsibility for organising, worrying about rules and risks. That was arguably wrong. It wasn't our party.

What we should have done is hand over key responsibility to eldest and her key friends. This is H's party. You organise it. You control. We help. Could they do it? Of course they could. They know the people, they know the scene. We didn't.

The blood sport that is Australian politics leaves little room for either nuance or subtlety. Mr O'Farrell's sledgehammer is one example, Foreign Minister Bishop's comments on the Australian-US relations (We’re all the way with USA) appears to be a second. There are different ways of putting things, depending on your target audience. Did Ms Bishop intend to grab the headlines she did with their focus on the US vs China? I wonder. In any event, it wasn't helpful.

Mr Abbott's apparent spray against the ABC (Prime Minister Tony Abbott says ABC not on Australia's side in interview with 2GB) is grabbing today's Australian headlines. The similarity between Mr Abbott's and Ms Bishop's views on Edward Snowden and the timing suggests a collaborative approach.

I suppose I should declare my own biases here without arguments in support.

Do I think that the ABC should have run the Snowden material? No, I don't. Do I think that the ABC has a centre left bias? I don't know that the ABC itself does as an organisation. I do know that many of the reporters and commentators on the ABC do as measured by my own reaction to their stories and opinions. After all, one of my favourite ABC programs is Counterpoint. The very fact that the ABC has to have a single alternative view program is instructive.

Do I support Mr Abbott's spray against the ABC? I do not. I thought that it was actually un-prime-ministerial and also unwise. Later, I will come back to this and to a fundamental and, I think, insufficiently recognised shift in Australian political commentary and analysis that has changed the political dynamics. For the moment, I will defend my ABC!   

Finishing with Indonesia, the Jakarta Globe reports (Indonesia Facing Populace Larger Than US Revives Birth Control) on  Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono desire to have families stop at two children to prevent a burgeoning population overwhelming schools and services. Indonesia's population is already 250 million and could double by 2060. That's a lot of people!

The article is worth reading for what it says about the dynamics of the situation in Indonesia. Australia has to manage those dynamics.

Freedom in the playground

In New Zealand, it appear that a university experiment in common sense, School ditches rules and loses bullies. has had some unexpected results. This was really a breath of fresh air.

When the girls were at school, I fought as best I could to give them what used to be a normal life, at least something approaching the freedom I had known. It was a little easier In the first part of their life before risk aversion became totally dominant. Later, it became very difficult indeed.

Hat tip to Legal Eagle for this lead. Mind you, Katy, lawyers have a lot to blame for all this.

The Neanderthal within us

In January I referred (Lewis on the Indo-European controversy) to my feeling of discomfort that came from reading Martin Lewis' posts on the Indo-European controversy. My discomfort came from the realisation that elements of the controversy and the underlying models had affected the things I studied and hence my thinking in ways that I hadn't quite realised. On this, I said in part:

Lewis's central focus in this chapter is on linguistics and the way that linguistic analysis has influenced and been influenced by other debates. His time period extends to the present day. This is where the discomfort came in, for I studied some of the things he talks about at school and university. I used those atlases. I looked at some of the concepts in my studies. Now I wonder a little about the possible distortions created in my own thinking.

Anatomical analysis, the differentiation between peoples based on physical appearance and especially on skeletons, has always been problematic. It continues to be used because in many cases skeletal remains are the only evidence we have, despite the advances in DNA technology.  Yet the classifications used actually derive from and in turn influenced the debate that Lewis is talking about. You see my problem?

When I wrote this three weeks ago, I hadn't properly realised how much science had moved on, in so doing turning our views of the human past on its head.

Over on Helen Dale's Facebook page a commenter, Brian Hanley, directed me to a blog that I had never seen, John Hawke's blog. John described his blog in ways that I could identify with:

I started writing this blog for two basic reasons: first, because there are some really interesting issues in paleoanthropology that are not well covered in the mainstream science press, and second, because I needed a good way to organize my notes.

It turned out that the solution to the note-taking problem also made a nifty solution for writing about interesting issues. Blogging software is one of the best methods of content management around. It became very simple to take notes on things I was reading, spice them up with a bit of information and context, and blog about them. In large part, what you see here are my own notes, the very ones that I use to write my research papers and books.

This is a very, very good blog written by a highly skilled academic who makes the results of new work in his field accessible to the lay reader. And what work that is. It is turning our understanding of the evolution of the human species on its head.  As a simple example, Neanderthal man is not dead but living within us in our genes, if in varying proportions between human groups.

Do have a browse!

The importance of silliness - being silly together is the best foreplay

Today is Australia Day. I really don't want to write about it. Three threads come across my various streams: those who call it invasion day and do things like burning the constitution as a symbolic act; those who treat it as a somewhat jingoistic national celebration; and those who just want to party. I suppose I'm with the latter!

So while I won't write on Australia Day, I wish India and Indians a happy India Day. The dates are the same.

In a tweet, @bossy_boots99 wrote "being silly together is the best foreplay." I think that's dead right.

I am, by nature, a fairly  serious person. I can also be very self-absorbed. That's caused difficulties in relationships. That's why being silly together is so important.

When you are being silly with another person or persons, two things happen. The first thing is that you are focused on them, for they are your audience; their responses determine the success of what you do; you move outside your own space. The second thing is a release of tension; laughter breaks out and, if you laugh, balance is restored.

It works at work. Try it sometime. You will generally find that it leaves people feeling better. It might be something as simple as Happy Monday. It might be a simple performance, a slightly exaggerated story or dance.

In personal relations, it breaks through the dross that inevitable gathers around relationships. We become locked into patterns. Being silly can break or at least ease the pattern.The other person laughs and relaxes; intimacy reappears.  

Try it sometime. It mightn't work the first time, but it will work!

Saturday morning musings - woozy musings on a competitive world

I often wake very early. By nature, I am not an early riser. However, there was a period in my life when the only free undistracted writing time was between 4 and 6am. That period has passed, but the habit of waking early has become entrenched.

Up a little after 4am and feeling somewhat woozy, I staggered to the kitchen and turned the jug on. It's been a very busy, busy, week. I don't know about you, it depends on your age, but as I get older I find that I can't quite maintain the same pace.

Objectively, I'm still no slouch. I still wrote thousands of words this week across print and electronic outlets. As a university student, I found a two thousand word essay a challenge. Now I write the equivalent of several such essays each week, all outside the time bounds set by daily work needs.

The world changes. I know that must seem dreadfully obvious, but it's still true.

I was interviewing this week. It was a short term contract project officer position, low level. I looked at the CVs and blinked. In fact, I read them several times. Every single applicant was grossly, I mean grossly, over-qualified for the position. Some had been out of work for almost twelve months. We interviewed four. 

My fellow interviewer, the boss of the area, looked at me and said "I wish that I could employ them all!"  I agreed. Put the four together and you would have a very powerful team.

Want project management skills? Try multiple qualifications in project management with capacity demonstrated in multiple projects. Want mapinfo? Got it. Want high level Excel?  Got it. Want statistical capacity in analysing the results of major national data collections? Got it. Want to set performance standards, develop contracts and then manage contracts against standards? Got it. Want to map a process so that you can improve it? Got it. And so it goes on. 

Remember, this is a low level position we are talking about, 

Interestingly, what you didn't get was experience in managing others, That rarely happens now. This wasn't necessary for the position, but once you would would have expected such capacity and experience  with the roles that these people had carried out. Management used to be considered important. We have redefined this from existence.

Water boiled, I carried my cup across to to the computer and started to explore the internet. There was some interesting stuff, but this will have to wait until later.     

Problems with science education

Rod Holland writes one of my favourite blogs, Northern Rivers Geology. In a recent post, Our Clarence-Moreton Basin and Middle-Earth, he reports that a researcher from the University of Bristol has released a paper comparing the climate of Earth with that of Middle-Earth (As in Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit).

There was one quote that I really liked. Reporting on one aspect of the study, the researcher concluded that "Mordor would have had an inhospitable climate, even ignoring the effects of Sauron".

In terms of the continuing discussion on the review of the Australian curriculum, Rod wrote a comment on Monday forum - how would you introduce Gaia worship into schools?. Subsequently he apologised for letting his anger get the better of him. Still, I think that the comment is worth running in full because it does illustrate process problems. Comments follow the quote;

Rod wrote:

Step 1 - introduce education of the using "popular science"... e.g. Environmentalism and String Theory.

Step 2 - make the "hard sciences" unpopular by creating a "geek" stereotype.

Step 3 - Since so few people study the "hard sciences" stop teaching these because they are now uneconomical or;

Step 4 - replace "hard sciences" with "popular sciences" to keep the number of science students (and teachers artificially higher).

Step 5 - Find that "science" teachers now can't understand "hard science" and therefore dumb down maths, physics, chemistry etc to home finance, welding, and pollution studies respectively.

Step 6 - come to the realisation that we are no longer teaching science but philosophy and therefore include concepts such as Gaia as integral to the learning experience

Step 7 - Science is now destroyed since "science" is now dominated by un-disprovable philosophical hypotheses.

Science education is bit of a sore spot.

I do not know to what degree this is an accurate reflection of the process that has happened. Still, I suspect that Rod has a point re the dynamics of the process. This holds independent of the current debate about the Australian national curriculum.

Part of the problem lies in the crowded nature of the curriculum, including the focus on process. There is less and less time to study content in depth, making it harder to achieve higher knowledge levels in particular areas.

I suspect, too, that part of the problem lies in misplaced expectations. Some subjects are simply harder, especially at a higher level. You can't dumb down a subject without penalising those capable of achieving at a higher level. With much higher participation rates at higher school and university levels, you have to set subjects studied at levels that best suit the majority of students. The inevitable result is a dumbing down process.

Maybe with some subjects you just have to set a high bar independent of demand, then let the results flow regardless.

Stop the boats, rot the relationship?

When writing as an analyst, I generally (not always) try to divorce my personal views from my writing. Still, there is something rather depressing about the way in which the Australian Government's aggressive stop the boats policy seems to be complicating relations with Indonesia, playing into domestic politics in both countries.

This story from the ABC, Indonesia probes asylum seekers' burns as Scott Morrison rejects 'sledging' of Navy, together with this story from the SMH, Tony Abbott to Indonesian President SBY: We will continue to secure our borders, will give you a feel for some of the reporting on the Australian side. This piece by Stephen Grenville in the Lowery Interpreter blog, The role of the press in Australia-Indonesia relations focuses on the attitudes of the Australian

On the Indonesian side, the Jakarta Globe reports Indonesia Steps Up Patrols, Lashes Out at Abbott for ‘Sovereignty’ Statement, while the Jakarta Post headline reads Tension with OZ escalates as RI deploys warships. The Jakarta Post also reports in TNI gears up, sets sights on foreign threats on plans to restructure the Indonesian Defence forces to increase defensive and potentially offensive capabilities. I quote from that story:

House of Representatives defense, intelligence and foreign affairs committee member Susaningtyas Handayani Kertopati said the TNI should strengthen its “outward-looking” approach at a time when there were signs of escalating threats.

“The greatest threat will obviously be from Australia,” she said.

Just recently, Australia apologized to Indonesia after its border patrol boats entered Indonesian territorial waters without permission in their bid to stop migrants.

A Defense Ministry official has warned that Australia’s “tow-back” policy may soon ignite conflict.

In the midst of all this, Australia appears to be trying to counter at Indonesian grass roots level: Australia to Aid Jakarta, Makassar in Water Management Programs. One wonder about the success of these efforts.

In the end, Mr Abbott may well stop the boats; he is prepared to be ruthless enough. However, I do worry about the longer term costs to both countries. 

And the winners in all this? The Jakarta Globe and Jakarta Post whose on-line Australian readership seems to have grown very rapidly! 

Postscript

Today (Friday 24 January 2014), the Australian media is full of this story. Some of the reporting is quite breathless; look at this piece from Robert Gottliebsen -  How Indonesia will control Australian migration. This is actually very silly stuff. Note the use of the Jakarta Post as a primary source.

In the Australian Financial Review, Laura Tingle's We are prepared for a clash, Jakarta warns is far more objective.  Note again the use of the Jakarta Post as a primary source.

Far more damaging to the current Australian Government is a later opinion piece by Laura Tingle in the same paper, "Australia crosses a thin blue line of credibility." I can't give a link. Why more damaging? Well, based on my reading of her pieces, Ms Tingle is hardly a bleeding heart liberal.

The underlying question she poses is can you believe the Australian Government or, indeed, the Australian Defence Forces? Her answer appears to be no. I actually find it incredibly hard to believe that Australian Defence Force personnel would force asylum seekers to hang onto hot engine pipes while being towed back.

But that view has absolutely nothing to do with the question of whether or not I would trust the Australian Government when it asks who do you believe? I certainly wouldn't trust the Australian Government on this issue. It spins porkies. My view is simply based on my judgement of Defence personnel. 

The Government is fighting back as best it can, This report on ABC, Government claims five-year record in stopping asylum seekers from reaching Australia, is an example. However, I don't think that it matters beyond a hope that it will be true because of the need to avoid complicating things further, including the risk of inadvertent military clashes. Who would have thought that a purely domestic issue, if a key campaign pledge, would be mishandled to such a degree that it becomes a major foreign policy problem?

Mr Abbott may still win this one in purely domestic political terms if the boats stay stopped. However, that success would come at a price of a damaged relationship, a wounded and distracted Government. Mr Abbott has spent political capital that he needed to bring about other changes. 

Mind sailing, curiosity and the curious case of Canterbury

Continuing from yesterday's mind sailing theme (Mind Sailing), one of the interesting things about the human brain lies in its patterning ability. To understand and remember things, we have to impose order, to create links. The more links there are, the easier to understand and to remember. Further, once we have created a pattern, we look for things to slot in that will reinforce that pattern. Things that don't fit in are ignored.

This can have odd results. Conspiracy theories are a case in point. I have known a good many conspiracy theorists. Once the theory - the pattern - is established, the holder goes in search of things that will support the theory, leading to some weird and wonderful results. Sometimes, just often enough to make me cautious of all rejection without checking, the theory proves to be correct in whole or part.

All societies have explorers, people who feel restless and want to learn or experience new things. The young warrior In Aboriginal Australia who, restless at the daily routine, goes travelling is an example.

European society in the eighteen and nineteenth centuries was full of explorers driven by insatiable curiosity to find new things, to extend the bounds. I am not talking just about those who actually travelled in physical terms. Behind them lay hundreds of thousands, millions, of people who shared the thirst for discovery in one way or another. They bought the books and magazines, they created or laboured in the new factories, they emigrated to find a better life. The results were not always good, but the end result was one of the transformational points in human history.

All human exploration begins in the mind, begins by wondering. That is where mind sailing comes in. We wonder, then we plan or just write. 

A remarkable thing occurred on New Zealand's Canterbury Plains in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. The population was very small, measured in the hundred's of thousands. Yet, somehow, that place became the centre of an intellectual endeavour that influences the world to this day.

Physicist Lord Rutherford of Nelson, to give him his official title, is an example, but he is not the only one. By nature, I am insatiably curious. I wonder why Canterbury should have been such an intellectual centre? Was it something in the water? Remember, pound for pound, Canterbury greatly out weighed Australia in the same period.

As with all these things, it was probably a combination of factors. looking at the people and the history of the period, there seems to have been a complicated interlock between intellectual freedom, curiosity, a desire to achieve and the availability of competitive channels that allowed people to advance.

The last was critical. We are dealing with a world where only a small proportion of people had access to university education, but those who did had relatively greater opportunities than exist in today's mass competitive world. 

Mind Sailing

kvd wrote a comment that I thought was worth reproducing in full:

"Hi Jim

I started out this a.m. with every intention of distracting you, but instead got distracted myself.

In searching for a reference to my intended distraction, I somehow ended up on Schulz: The 5 Best Punctuation Marks in Literature which of course meant that I had to refresh my understanding of participle, and that lead me somehow to JS Bach's "it's not difficult - you just have to hit the right note at the right time, and the organ does the rest" - which itself is quite a remarkable view of genius - no?

And the above voyage took a little over an hour, before it struck me that what I was doing was 'mind sailing' - a phrase I now claim authorship of (noting the dangling, but ignoring it for the moment).

Anyway, what I wanted to mention was a small book I've just finished reading which I think you would find quite interesting: "One Good Turn: A Natural History of the Screwdriver and the Screw" by Witold Rybczynski. Do make a note of it; one hundred pages of enlightenment about the evolution of a very common household and workshop tool.

Oh, and I nearly forgot to say thank you reproducing my photograph: evidence yet again that there is no job too small that it can't support a supervisor or two :)

kvd"

Mind sailing, I like that. It's quite descriptive and describes what many of us do, if not always to the same extent as kvd! Note the careful use of the colon in the last paragraph, a sign of the influence of the Schulz piece; that piece is worth reading.

I actually discovered the full use of punctuation quite late.

kvd, I haven't heard of Rybczynski. There seems to be something Polish in the air at present; Radwanska won the tennis last night. I actually like histories of domestic items. They inform the bigger picture. 

Monday forum - how would you introduce Gaia worship into schools?

It seems that Nauru has deported its sole magistrate, while also refusing its part time Chief Justice a visa to enter the country.

Meantime, Minister Pyne has defended his curriculum review, while Liberal MP Craig Kelly has used his public Facebook page to announce (and here) his discovery that the national history curriculum mandates Gaia worship in schools. ''This ideology, this neo-pagan religion is set to be indoctrinated into all Australian children,'' Mr Kelly warned.

''With the business community expressing concerns about the inadequate literacy & numeracy skills of school leavers, and with Australia falling down the international rankings for educational standards - it's great to know that the new Rudd/Gillard/Greens NATIONAL CURRICULUM ensures that GAIA worship is preached to all Australian children.''

I first came across the Gaia concept some years ago via science fiction. Yes, SF has indeed had an influence on me! Perhaps reflecting that influence, Mr Kelly's statement created very strange visions in my mind, of students in kaftans sitting cross-legged in a heavily incense laden atmosphere facing an Indian image. Okay, certain aspects of my past may be coming out.

Still and just for fun, how would you teach Gaia worship? Feel free to go in any direction you like. Word pictures would be good.

Welcome to visitor 200,000

Last month I clicked over 100,000 visits on New England Australia. This morning, I clicked over 200,000 visits on this blog. I couldn't work out just who it was. A stats problem. Still, it's a biggish number. Who would have thought it when I was just trying to get somebody, anybody(!), to come.