Just about the end

On August 30 last year, the Australian cricket team played a one day game against Pakistan in Nairobi in Kenya, winning by 224 runs, the first game of a triangular tournament also involving Kenya. Since then, they have been playing more or less continuously. That tournament was followed by another one day tournament, the ICC Champions Trophy, in Sri Lanka, a three test series against Pakistan (played in Sri Lanka and the United Arab Emirates after the Australians decided it was too dangerous to play it in Pakistan), five tests at home against England, a triangular tournament at home against England and Sri Lanka, the World Cup in South Africa, and this present tour of the West Indies featuring four tests and seven one day internationals. That's nine months of continuous cricket. Some players were injured or dropped at some point in that schedule, and other play in the one day side but not the test side, or vice versa.

Today, Australia play the last of their seven one day games against the West Indies, before finally getting a break.

However, this is a long time to be on the road. IN the nine months, Austrlalia have played 12 test matches (ten wins, two losses) and after today they will have played 36 one day matches (30 wins, one washout, four losses, one still to be played). That's a fantastic record, but it is worth looking at the actual losses. The two test matches were both dead rubbers after Australia had won the series. Of the one day losses, only one was in a match that mattered, the ICC Champions trophy semi-final against Sri Lanka on 27 September. (Australia were also unfortunate that the one day final against Pakistan in Kenya a couple of weeks before was washed out, so they technically didn't win that tournament either). The second loss was also against Sri Lanka in Australia on January 9, when Australia were in no danger of missing the final of the series.

The third and fourth losses were the two most recent matches against the West Indies, both after the series was lost. I have already written about the first of these, but the second was on Friday. Gilchrist got Australia off to a great start with the bat, but then wickets were lost and they at one point had slumped to 7/193 off 40.1 overs. However, Bichel then managed some good hitting, and the total was taken to a reasonable 252 off the 50 overs. This was one of those scores which would have been enough if nobody batted really well for the West Indies, but which wasn't going to be if someone did. And someone did, although it wasn't who we expected.

Australia bowled well, and kept taking wickets. For most of the innings it looked like Australia would win. However, opener Wavell Hinds simply kept batting, and didn't get out. Every now and then he hit one of the bowlers for six, ending up with six of them. He kept up the run rate, and scored 125 not out, getting the West Indies home with 8 balls to spare.

Not to take anything away from Hinds (who really was superb) Australia really should have won this one. If the Australians had scored 20 more runs (which they really should have given the start) they would have won. Had Brett Lee caught an easy outfield catch when Hinds had about 50, Australia would have won. Had Lee bowled more tightly towards the end and not bowled wides and noballs, the match would have gone down to the last couple of balls. (I am most irritating with the Australian batsmen though. The middle order is still a little suspect. We really could do with Damien Martyn back. And to be quite honest, Australia have not replaced Mark Waugh very successfully yet. In test matches, this is a good reason for sticking with Steve Waugh for another season. Two open spots in the middle order it too many, as we saw in the final test against the West Indies.).

Australia were sloppy, and they lost because of this. It is clear that they are tired and want to go home. Hopefully they can raise themselves to finish the tour on a winning note today. I think they probably can, but it would be a little disappointing if they cannot. A 4-3 margin would suggest that the series was close, and it really hasn't been. It would also be a little annoying to see a 30-2 record reduced to 30-5. That said the players do look tired, and most of their (few) losses of the last nine months can be blamed on this.

After this, Australia have a month off, before a home series against Bangladesh in July in Cairns and Darwin in Australia's north. I can't imagine they will find this stressful, as the opposition will be easy to beat, and the games are being played in tourist resorts. Presumably most of the players will dump their families in nice hotels in Cairns for the duration of the cricket. After that, Australia are off again until October, when there is a home series against Zimbabwe, followed by a one day tournament in India in November, a home test series against India in December, a home one day tournament in January, and then in immediate tour of Sri Lanka.

In short, the grind begins again in October. Australia had planned to also play in a one day tournament in September , but they have just withdrawn from this due to the players wanting a rest, despite the fact that they would have been very well paid for it.

I actually have relatively little sympathy for the players here. They are doing what they have always wanted to do, and are being paid very well for it. That's more than most of us can claim. However, they are being worked pretty hard for it.

I am going to watch the match and drink some beer. A brief update on the result later. There is plenty of other international cricket not involving Australia being played over the next few months, and I shall likely be covering it, although not to the same level of detail.

Update: And Australia lost the game. In fact, they were thrashed. The top order batting was disappointing, with Hayden and Gilchrist going early, both to poor shots, and Ponting retiring hurt after being hit by a quick ball somewhere around the waist level. Lehmann and Symonds then scored a few runs, but Symonds' dismissal for 48 led to another little collapse. For the first time in his brief career, Clarke looked a rank amateur today, firstly being given not out caught behind after hitting the ball more than a little bit - if ever walking was called for, this was the time - and then coming down the pitch, missing, and being stumped by miles when he should have still been playing back and getting his eye in. With the departure of Harven soon after, things looked bad at 5/133, but Lehmann and Hogg played very well to give the Australians something to bowl out. Lehmann eventually scored a fine 107 off 109 balls. I am not Lehmann's biggest fan, but after this, I have to concede he at least deserves a spot in the one day side. Hogg also batted the best he has since that one day final in Melbourne on Australia Day, and scored 53. With three or four overs to go and these two batting, it looked like Australia could have scored 260 or 270, but more wickets fell and they ended up with 8/247. Gayle, more famous for his batting, took 5/46 - his best bowling in a One Day International. The West Indies bowled well, and Lara's captaincy was imaginative and astute - the best I have seen from him.

This never looked like being enough. As it was, Gayle and Hinds put on 116 before Gayle was out for 60. Lara came in, and he and Hinds just went about their business, winning the match with 6.3 overs to spare. Lara scored 75 not out, and Hinds 103 not out, his second hundred in a row.

What can I say. The West Indies played very well today, and Australia didn't. Australia have lost more one day internationals in the last week than they had in the previous year. This was a pretty feeble end to the tour, and I'm not especially impressed.

Still, the West Indies are much improved over what they were 18 months ago. Clearly, they have the nucleus of a good side. South Africa (who simply played badly) have for some reason got all the sympathy for having missed out on the second round of the World Cup through "bad luck", but the side that was genuinely unlucky was the West Indies, who suffered from defaults, upsets, and bad weather. They played very well at times in that tournament, and again played well at times here. They may be some sort of a chance for the next World Cup in four years.

We can see whether this improvement lasts. Although Australia's season is over, the West Indies' isn't. This Australian tour of the West Indies is about to be followed by a Sri Lankan tour of the West Indies. Conceivably, this will be good to watch.

Posting elsewhere

I have piece on Salam Pax over at Samizdata. No time for anything else today. (I didn't really have time for that, either).

Tesco may have better logistics, but Sainsbury's have better beer.

I'm just having a bottle of Sainsbury's Blonde Ale, a Belgian style Blond Ale brewed from Lincolnshire barley and Kentish hops in the same microbrewery in Greenwich where they brew their Bavarian style wheat beer. Slightly less blonde and slightly less alcoholic than something like Hoegaarden, but very good indeed - rather better than the wheat beer in my opinion - and my compliments to Lord Sainsbury.

More on British Sunday trading laws.

Following up what I was saying about these a few weeks ago, supermarket chain Tesco have just opened a new mini-supermarket a couple of blocks from where I live. This has all the departments you expect in a larger supermarket (fresh fruit and meat, groceries, prepared meals, liquor, even an on premises bakery) but has a floor area of almost exactly 280 square metres. This is the maximum size that a British store can have and be allowed to open all day on Sunday. (The store is open 6am to midnight, seven days a week). Clearly, the supermarket chains are now quite adept at cramming everything they want to offer into a shop this size. It will be interesting to see just how much business the new store does after 4pm Sundays, because every other (larger) supermarket nearby closes at that hour. This may be a large amount of the rationale for the new store.

This is an interesting example of how things such as shopping hour regulation can affect building design, but it is all very silly.

Update: The other factor that is crucial in getting a supermarket business to work on a very small floorplate is the quality of your logistics. If you have a large selection of goods in such a shop, then you are going to only be able to carry a small number of each item at any one time, and you are going to have to restock much more frequently than is the case if you are running a larger shop. Also, you are going to have be be able to keep track of just what is selling how fast and what needs to be restocked when. This is only possible with modern computerised inventory systems. Tesco are the leader in the supermarket business precisely because their logistics systems are the best in the UK, and it is interesting to see this example of additional flexibility in store design that they have due to this.

Further Update: After five days, the new Tesco store looks a success. Every time I go in it appears to be doing a roaring trade, despite the fact that there is a larger Tesco probably 15 minutes walk in one direction, and a Sainsbury's 15 minutes walk in the other. This is London for you. Lots of people do not own cars. Twice I have seen a large delivery truck parked outside, and this evening a staff member was wandering around restocking various shelves, so I seem to have been right about the logistics issues. The store's first Sunday is in two days, and I will drop in at about 6pm to see what business is like then.

What does this prove? Well, for one thing, Tesco is very well run. If I had figured this out ten years ago and bought shares, I would have made a lot of money. As it is, this fact is now well and truly priced in.

Even Further Update: (Sunday June 1). Yes, the shop did appear to be doing a roaring trade this evening. It's (small) carpark was packed, too, suggesting that customers had come from further afield than during the week. There you have it. The Sunday trading laws have not prevented Tesco from selling people groceries on a Sunday, but have merely made it less convenient and more expensive for Tesco's customers. (This little Tesco store uses the standard way that supermarket chains make their little urban stores more expensive while pretending not too - which is they have the same "normal" prices as their larger stores, but no weekly discounts at all. (Indeed, few discounts of any kind, although I did get a perfectly decent pizza marked down due to being close to its "Best By" date, which made a perfectly pleasant dinner).

The Statute of Westminster again

Steven Den Beste has some observations on the role of the British King or Queen in Canada and Australia. Most of the things he says are right, however there are one or two issues outstanding, so here goes.

I believe that de jure the British Parliament actually did some power over Canada before the Canadians actually wrote and ratified a constitution about 30 years ago. Until that point, the actual charter for government in Canada was a grant of power from the British Parliament called the "British North America Act". But de facto the British Parliament had none and I don't recall hearing of any attempt by the British Parliament to try to exercise any such influence in the latter half of the 20th Century. (Not that it would have done them any good to try.)

As one of Den Beste's Canadian readers points out at the bottom of the post, the British Parliament's de jure power was removed in 1931, when the British parliament passed a law called the Statute of Westminster. In this act, the British parliament specifically gave up the right to legislate for "the dominions" of the British empire (Australia, New Zealand, Canada, South Africa, Newfoundland, and Ireland (which was not yet a republic)), unless the parliaments of these countries specifically asked for it.

The "specifically asked for it" clause was necessary because in some instances the dominions did not have the full legal structure of independent nations. In particular, Canada's constitution was the British North America Act, which could only be amended by another act of Westminster. Therefore, if the Canadians ever wanted to change it, the British had to be involved. This "involvement" would contain no actual influence over the legislation, but would just consisted of passing whatever bill they were asked to pass. Australia did not have this particular problem, because our constitution contained a provision for amendment via referendum, and we could therefore sort out any legal difficulties without involving the British.

However, it is still more complicated than this. In Australia, the Statute of Westminster was viewed with some ambivalence, as Australia believed that if it became fully independent the British might be less willing to defend Australia in a war with Japan. For this reason, the Statute of Westminster was written in such a way that it did not apply to Australia until Australia passed another act of its own parliament officially adopting the statute. This did not happen until 1942, when Britain had failed to successfully protect Australia from Japan and Australia wanted to be absolutely certain that its troops were only subject to Australian law.

Plus, the Statute of Westminster only applied to the federal government in Australia (although in Canada it applied to all levels of government) . In theory, even after its adoption the British parliament could legislate to overrule Australian state law, but not federal law. This was not cleaned up until the Australia Act of 1986, which was an act passed by the British parliament on the request of the federal and state parliaments in Australia, the purpose of which was to remove all the little colonial anachronisms from Australian law and ensure that it would not be necessary for teh British parliament to legislate for Australia (even on request) again.

Finally, there was and in some cases still is one other form of colonial legal connection between Australia, New Zealand, Canada etc and Britain, which has to do with law courts. For many years, the highest court of appeals in dominion legal cases was a British court (the Privy Council of the House of Lords, in London). Appeals to this court were abolished from Canada in 1949, from South Africa in 1950, from Australia for federal cases in 1975 and state cases in 1986. In New Zealand, however, the right still exists, as it does from a number of other former British colonies too small to have a permanent supreme court of their own.

Update: Ken Parish points out that the Privy council is not technically part of the House of Lords. (This is in fact implied in the name - the Privy Council was originally a private council of advisors to the king, separate from parliament). The court I was talking about is the "Judicial Committee of the Privy council", which is a different court to the "Judicial Committee of the House of Lords", which is the highest court of appeal for British domestic matters. The two courts have mostly the same members, however.

I'm just a reptile

Although the number of visitors to this site has been fairly stable for the last couple of months, I continue to move steadily up the Blogosphere Ecosystem. At the moment I am a Slithering Reptile, and I come in at number 679. Someday I hope to be an Adorable Little Rodent.

Everest Panorama.

James Russell points to this stunning 360 degree panorama of Mt Everest (Quicktime required).

I have seen that view. Not from the top of Everest, but from a few kilometres away, and a couple of kilometres lower in altitude. From my best vantage point, it was not possible to see as far into some of the valleys as is possible from Everest, and there were still a few peaks above and level where I was.

But the basic effect was the same. There were mountains all the way to the horizon in all directions, and from altitude of over six kilometres, the horizon is a long way off. The clouds were below me rather than above me, and the immensity and beauty of it all was simply overwhelming. There are so many peaks that some of them barely have names, while still being tall enough that they would be world famous if they were on any other continent.

I do also like the climber's observation that he was having extraordinarily vivid dreams about olives. I didn't have dreams about olives, precisely, but high altitude does do something to your drams. Whatever you dream about, you dream about it vividly. I don't know why that is.

Update: I initially messed up the link to the panorama. This is now fixed.

Eurovision wrap up

As everyone who cares knows by now, the Turks won, and the British entrant came last and managed the rare achievement of scoring Null points. (There has been speculation as to whether this had anything to do with Britain's position on the war. I think maybe partly, but not entirely. After all, Israel scored some points. As far as cultural domination is concerned, it's interesting to see how the amount of French in the event has declined. Even a decade ago it was pretty much completely bilingual. These days it is only the French themselves holding out).

Adam (whose links are bloggered) has mind blowingly detailed and funny coverage. He was watching Eurovision in Australia. In Australia the contest does not go out live, which would be from 5am to 8am on Sunday morning, and SBS television instead runs it on Sunday evening. Traditionally, they have just played the British coverage with the delightful Terry Wogan commentary, but for some reason in recent years they have felt the need to Australianise it. Two years ago they cut the program up and tried to put some local colour (Latvian-Australian drag queens and the like) between the songs. They received a lot of complaints, and last year went back to the traditional broadcast. This year, however, they felt the need to send one of their own "personalities" to Latvia to do his own commentary, which is why Adam keeps referring to the "SBS bogan", an expression that is probably not translateable out of Australian English, but I suspect my non-Australian readers do get the drift. There is a reason why Mr Wogan's commentary should be left on the broadcast, which is the same reason that the BBC has been getting him to do it for 30 years (or something). He is really good at it.

Anywway, back to the contest, and in particular the great Austrian.

Incidentally right after the contest we tried to inform ourselves on his (Alf Poier's) homepage and got a "server overloaded" message. I think the world has found a new hero.

Personally I did something that was a Eurovision first for me. I picked up the phone and voted for him. Alf is cool.

Next year I need to attend an actual Eurovision party with lots of alcohol.

Update: Although the Greeks and Cyproits did give one another maximum points, as usual, both countries gave a substantial number of points to the Turkish entrant. Does this indicate some kind of a thawing, or did they just like the Turkish dancers? Most of the Baltic states gave a few points to the Russians, too, although there did seem to be a certain amount of anti-Russian sentiment amongst the live audience in Latvia. Watching the Eurovision voting and figuring out when and how it is influenced by several thousand years of history, is always interesting, at least.

We live in interesting times

The Australian Department of Foreign Affairs has travel alerts of some kind on 129 countries, which is nearly two thirds of the countries of the world. (Given that these include China, India, The United States and Indonesia, which are the four most populous countries in the world, it must be well over two thirds of the world in population terms). This is a record. Some of this is due to terrorism, some due to SARS, and some due to the individual features of the individual countries. Some of these strike me as a bit harsh on countries that are actually pretty safe. ("One of the highest rates of traffic deaths for a developed country" for South Korea. "Street Crime" for Estonia. "SARS risk" for Italy). Others strike me as perhaps understated. ("Risk of Terrorism" covers everything from places that I think are fairly safe to places that I really wouldn't visit at the moment).

The basic point is that we live in an unhappy time. Sadly, this is very true.

I have said before that someday I would like to drive from Rome through the former Yugoslavia, through Greece, through Turkey, through Lebanon, Israel and Palestine to Egypt. (This would be a "modern civilization trip, in which I could see many of the important sights of the last 2500 years. A trip to Iraq would be an "ancient civilization" trip). With all the things on the way, that would be a wonderful experience. It isn't going to be possible to do this with a reasonably level of risk for a long time, however.

I wonder if Natalie has any idea what this means?

This is undoubtedly the strangest Google search to ever end up here.

Update: No, I certainly don't know what it means. That was why I was asking.

Cricketing Update

New Zealand ended up winning the one day tournament in Sri Lanka. In the final against Pakistan, the Pakistanis scored 198 thanks to 70 not out from Younis Khan. This would not normally be a good score, but by the standards of this tournament it is okay. New Zealand appeared to be scoring the runs without the slightest difficulty when they were 2/151 with Fleming on 65 and Styris on 22, but both batsmen were suddenly out and Pakistan looked to once again have a chance. Wickets continued to fall as the match went on, but Pakistan couldn't quite take them fast enough. New Zealand won the match by scoring 6/200 off 45.2 overs, in the end a comfortable win, to take the tournament.

This is only the second time in their history that New Zealand have won a one day tournament of three sides or more. Part of the reason for this is that New Zealand tend not to hold such tournaments at home, which is not their faul, but it is also that they haven't always had the best cricket team in the world. My compliments on their effort in this tournament. They played good cricket against good opposition.

All around, this was a pretty good tour of Sri Lanka for New Zealand, although undoubtedly they would have preferred to get a result in the test series.

In the first test between Zimbabwe and England, England scored a perfectly fine 472 in their first innings, largely thanks to 137 to Mark Butcher and 69 to debutante Anthony McGrath, who looked absolutely delighted when interviewed after the innings. Zimbabwe were then bowled out for a deeply unimpressive 147. What was encouraging for England was the bowling. Hoggard bowled extremely well for 3/24 and Anderson took 5/73 on debut, including two wickets off successive balls (both bowled), and both bowlers were very accurate. Four of Anderson's five wickets were out bowled, and so far it's a very impressive debut. Following on in their second innings, Zimbabwe are doing better at 1/62, but it doesn't matter now. Unless there is a lot of rain (possible but not likely) the match is lost.

Finally, Australia are today playing the fourth one day international against the West Indies in Trinidad. Michael Clarke has been retained after his 75 in St Lucia the other day. Australia won the toss and batted, and are off to a great start. At present, Hayden has 40 and Gilchrist 26, and Australia are 0/72 off 16.2 overs.

Update: Australia won that one day international, thanks to another unbeaten half century from Michael Clarke. Just when we thought that Australia did have a chance of a clean sweep in the series after all, the West Indian batting came out firing the next day. Thanks to a fast 80 from Brian Lara and 79 from Wavell Hinds, the West Indies ended up with 5/290 off their 50 overs. This was too much for the Australians, who kept losing wickets, were never quite able to keep up with the runrate, despite an excellent 77 from Andrew Symonds (who seems a completely different player to the one he was before the World Cup). Australia ended up with 9/251 off their 50 overs and lost by 39 runs. The Australian winning streak ended, but at an still amazing 21 matches.

On the other hand, in the England v Zimbabwe test, Zimbabwe collapsed feebly soon after I wrote what I did, being bowled out for 233 in their second innings to lose by an innings and 92 runs. Butcher somehow took four wickets and McGrath three. Neither would be considered test standard bowlers by most people, so Zimbabwe were pretty pitiful. Still, credit to England, who did play quite well in this match.

A follow up observation

Natalie Solent observes the following

I don't really think that there have been any Arabs or Ashanti for many decades who wouldn't recognise a pair of trousers. Who is there left? A few tribes in Papua New Guinea, perhaps. About ten to fifteen years ago I saw a film of such a tribe being contacted for the first time, but I haven't heard of any such event since then. In our lifetimes the world finally did or will become one. Future historians will be able to state the exact day it happened.

Guns, Germs and Steel author Jared Diamond told a story in one of his other books about setting out to the most remote corner of some Pacific island or other, to meet what he thought were the most isolated people in the country, and possibly in the world. After a couple of days of pushing through dense jungle, he reached his destination, and was greeted warmly by a local. Diamond's sense of achievement at reaching this place was dampened somewhat by the fact that the person who greeted him was wearing a University of Wisconsin sweatshirt.

I doubt there are any people at this point who have had no contact with civilization. For one thing, we simply know so much more about the surface of the earth than we did even 15 years ago. Everything inch of the earth's surface is photographed and mapped in detail. This is a new condition. Until 10 to 15 years ago, once in a while we heard stories about contact between populations of people who had been cut off from civilization for a while and it looked like a first contact, but even in these cases, investigations would often suggest that the true nature of the encounter was blurrier. It would turn out that someone had left the tribe in question 40 years ago and came back seven years later with stories of civilization, or similar. People are too determined to trade with one another and to explore to stay cut off for long, unless there are truly dramatic geographical barriers in the way. I am not sure we will ever know the exact day when we all became one, because I think the process was more gradual than sudden.

It seems that the last substantial population of people to have been cut off from the rest of the world were the highland peoples of New Guinea, of who the outside world was completely unaware until the 1930s. This was a case when there were dramatic geographical barriers. There may have been small isolated groups after that, but World War II pretty much spelled the end even for these, I suspect.

Other gigs

I have a brief piece over at Samizdata on Zimbabwe and the Henry Olonga affair.

The next Australian election

Please note that this speculation as to when the next Australian election will occur and how involves a fairly lengthy discussion of Australian constitutional and electoral law. Non-Australian readers may not be all that interested. Or maybe they will be. It depends on the individual.And yes, I am continuing to redefine "light blogging"

Ken Parish has some thoughts on an article by Ross Gittins about the timing of the next Australian federal election. Gittin claims that the next election will likely be a double dissolution, and that this is likely to be held in the second half of 2004. Ken agrees that a double dissolution is likely, but disagrees about the timing, partly for pragmatic legal reasons, partly for reasons concerning the dates in which a double dissolution can legally occur.

I actually agree with Gittins rather than Parish, but before I get to that, let's answer the question "What is a double dissolution?".

Well, as I have mentioned before, the Australian senate is one of the most powerful upper houses in the world. Senators are elected to six year terms, and half of them are up for reelection every three years. It has the right to reject any piece of legislation, including money bills. When the constitution was being written in the 1890s, the question was much raised about what should be done to provide a solution if there was a deadlock between the houses. Perhaps appropriately, this was a subject of much disagreement between various parties at the constitutional conventions of the 1890s. The resulting compromise was section 57 of the Australian constitution, which essentially says the following

If a bill is rejected by the senate, and the same bill (with or without amendments) is rejected again three months later, then the Prime Minister may call an election of both houses in their entirety - that is the whole House of Representatives and the whole Senate (rather than the normal half-senate) are up for re-election at once. (Both houses are dissolved: hence a double dissolution). If the new senate rejects the bill again then a joint sitting of both houses together may be convened, and if a majority of all the members of both houses together vote in favour of the bill, the legislation can come into force.

(Earlier in the constitutional conventions, a proposal that came close to being enacted was that in the event of a deadlock between the houses, a referendum should be held on the specific law, and that if voters were in favour of the law it should be enacted. However, the final convention ultimately decided on the version of section 57 we ended up with. However, some state constitutions (eg that of NSW) allow laws to be decided on by referendum in this way).

As the Senate has half as many members as the House of Representatives, and as the House of Representatives is elected on a single member constituency base and the Senate is elected using proportional representation, majorities are generally much larger in the House of Representatives than in the senate, and the government usually has enough votes to control a majority in a joint sitting. (For instance, at present, the numbers would be Government (Lib/Nat/CLP) 117, Oposition (ALP) 92, Other 17, meaning that the government would have a majority of at least 8 in such a vote. Opinion polls suggest that the government's majority would increase if an election was held now).

No government in more than 20 years has had a majority of the senate in its own right, and therefore the parties have had to negotiate with the minor parties (normally the left of centre Australian Democrats, although this party has now more or less self destructed). This was less of a problem for the Labor governments of 1983 to 1996 than it has been for the conservative (Liberal Party) government under PM John Howard that has been in power since 1996. Howard has still managed to get most of his legislative passed, but at times considerable compromise has been necessary. (For instance the consumption tax isn't quite as broad as Howard would have liked, and the government has been unable to get legislation through the senate to privatise the 51% of telecommunications company Telstra that is still government owned).

But, as Ross Gittins mentioned in that article Ken linked to, the policies of the parties appear to have diverged sharply in recent months. The government has higher education and healthcare reforms it wants to pass, it would seem that it would like to cut taxes some more (which would hopefully include a cut in the ludicrous 48.5% top marginal rate), and the government would like to sell remainder of Telstra. The government appears to be building up a stockpile of legislation that can be used as the trigger for a double dissolution and the application of section 57 above. I am sure that PM Howard feels that this is his chance to have a final big legislative impact before retiring, which it seems likely he will do within three or four years, although he clearly isn't going to retire immediately.

Now, we get to the question of the timing of this double dissolution. The various possible timetables for the next federal election have been summarised in this nice little note from the parliamentary library. The pertinent details are that when a double dissolution is held, the following half senate election is due a maximum of three years subsequent to the July 1 that occurs before the double dissolution, and in order that the results be declared so that the new senators can take their seats on that day, in practice the election must be held by mid May. Therefore if a double dissolution occurs after July 1, 2003, and before July 1, 2004, the election after that (which would almost certainly include a House of Representatives election at the same time), must be held by 27 May 2006. On the other hand, if a double dissolution took place after July 1, 2004, the next election would not be due until 2 June 2007. (These dates are based on the requirement that the results be declared in time for the new senators to take their seats on July 1, the electoral commission's present claim that it can declare the results within four weeks, and the fact that the election must be held on a Saturday.).

However, there is another complication. A double dissolution must take place no less than six months before the expiration of the House of Representatives. This means that the double dissolution must occur by 11 August 2004. Ken argued that this means that there would only be a very short windown between July 1 and 11 August on which a double dissolution election could be held "in the second half of next year". However, as I pointed out in his comment section and he referred to in an update to his post, the constitution says that the dissolution must occur more than six months before expiry, but doesn't say anything about the timing of the election (other than that parliament must meet at least once every twelve months, implying that the election must occur within about eleven months). The relevant piece of law is actually the Commonwealth Electoral Act, which essentially says that the election must occur not less than 33 days and not more than 68 days after the dissolution, with the added proviso that the election must take place on a Saturday. This means that the last possible date for an election after a double dissolution next year is in fact October 16, giving an ample window in the second half of the year during which the election could be held.

Essentially, Howard has 3 options. Either

(1) He holds a double dissolution before July 1, 2004, in which case the election after that must be held by 27 May 2006

(2) He holds a double dissolution between July 1, 2004 and October 16, 2004, in which case the election after that must be held by 2 June 2007.

(3) He holds a conventional House of Representatives and half senate election. The latest date on which this can be held is 16 April 2005. (This is later than most people realise)

If Howard goes for option 1, and holds a double dissolution before the middle of next year, he extends his time in office by only thirteen months over what it could be if he didn't hold an election at all. Politicians are very concerned with how long they can stay in office, and do not like having to fight more elections than they really need to. Purely from the point of staying in power, this is taking a lot of risk for a mere extra 13 months, even if it does give you the ability to enact a lot of legislation. In addition, assuming Howard was to go to the polls in December 2003, this election would only be two years after the previous one, and the one after that would only be (at the latest) two years and five months after that. The Australian electorate does not like early elections. Having two consecutive terms of two years or just over would not make the voters happy. (The electorate on the whole does not understand the intricacies of double dissolutions and electoral timetables, but does understand that it is supposed to have an election every three years. The Hawke government suffered quite a bit in 1984 from being perceived as going to the electorate too early, even though this was mostly the fault of the previous Fraser government, that called a double dissolution in March 1983). Of course, if John Howard is intending to retire, then this might end up being Peter Costello's problem rather than his.

On the other hand, if the double dissolution election is held in September 2004, then it will appear to the electorate that Howard has gone very close to his full term (2 years and nine months). The election following that would be in May 2007, and we are again fairly close to a full term (2 years and eight months). The potential electoral damage is much smaller. The party spends less time actually fighting elections.

Simply, it is going to take at least until December 2003 before Howard has all his triggers for a double dissolution ready. Holding the dissolution then would lead to all the problems above. Wait another six months until the start of July, and all these problems go away. The temptation to wait is likely to be very strong, because there is a lot to be gained by waiting. Also, the longer we wait, larger the pile of legislation that can be built up, and the more the senate can be demonised for its obstruction. (Plus there is that fact that Ross Gittins is known to be quite well connected. He probably does know what people in the government are saying).

Of course, if the electoral mood looks like changing, then Howard might jump if he thinks he can win and doesn't think he can win later. However, at the moment, this does not look likely to me. The opposition looks hopeless, and I think it is pretty certain to stay hopeless for at least another year.

I could of course be wrong. The only person who knows what John Howard is thinking is John Howard. (Well, maybe also Janette). I'd still be willing to bet Ken a beer that the election occurs after July 1, 2004.

Update: I have changed a couple of approximate dates to exact dates in the above in order to be internally consistent, as I was previously using approximate dates in one place and exact dates somewhere else.

Time Out

I am off to see The Matrix Reloaded. Annoyingly, the film is being released here a week after many other countries, so my Australian and American readers have probably seen it already. (Of course, Britain doesn't get Finding Nemo until October). My expectations are only moderate, as the consensus seems to be that the original was better. As I have written before I found the original entertaining but profoundly dumb.

Update: The film was once again profoundly dumb, and full of the sort of pseudo-intellectual dialogue that gives you that fabulous "That sounds really profound, and I am sure it is really deep if I understood it" feeling, when it actually makes no sense at all. The first 60 minutes or so were deeply tedious, but once they got into the Matrix itself things improved somewhat. The set piece with Keanu Reeves fighting 100 Hugo Weavings was kind of cool, and the freeway chase was technically stunning. However, the film had a very different look from the first one, particularly if you are Australia. In the first one, you go into the matrix, and you are obviously in Sydney. The locations are all familiar when you know the city. In the sequel, you go in the matrix and you are in an obviously computer generated (or at least very computer enhanced) city. The freeway chase is like one of those computer car racing games where you drive around a trace and computer generated scenery that bears some resemplance to that of the real world but isn't quite exact zooms past above the track. When we see Keanu flying above the city, it looks like a tremendously well rendered version of what someone who has been playing Sim-City for six months has ended up with. There actually are one or two buildings that are genuine Sydney landmarks if you look carefully, but they have been rearranged location wise, and a large amount of computer generated stuff placed all around them. It makes a certain amount of sense that a computer generated world would look like a computer generated world, but this is different from the first movie. The best thing is that the film is, in the end, a visual tour de force. A great amount of money has been spent on it, and the money is all up there on the screen. Still, it's a really dumb movie pretending to be a smart one. And that combination is always in many ways annoying.

Looking forward to Finding Nemo

Apple Computer cofounder Steve Jobs has an almost unique position in California. He is the only person who has managed to be both a Silicon valley mogul and a Hollywood mogul simultaneously with any level of success. Sure, there have been other companies that have attempted to play successfully in both markets, but it has generally ended in tears, or at least unhappiness. Steve Jobs is not Bill Gates, but Apple is still here after 25 years, and given that people have been predicting the company's imminent demise since 1979, that is no small achievement. And the film studio he owns, Pixar Animation Studios, is the finest producer of animated films for Hollywood by far.

I have written about Pixar before, but their record remains perfect. The have made four feature films (that have been distributed by Disney): Toy Story, A Bug's Life, Toy Story 2, and Monsters Inc.. All four have been enormous hits, and critical favourites. By the standards of the film industry, four from four is extremely unusual, and this success has come at the same time as things at Disney's traditional animation business have gone badly wrong.

Pixar have a new film, Finding Nemo due to be released in the US at the end of next week. This has been less anticipated than their previous films, for an interesting reason. Their next film after this one is going to be The Incredibles, to be released late next year. This is to be directed by Brad Bird, who in 1999 made The Iron Giant, based on Ted Hughes' childrens book The Iron Man, before being hired by Pixar after Warners did a terrible job of promoting it and it subsequently flopped at the box office. However, it is considered something of a masterpiece by many people, and Bird (who also created the characters of Krusty the Clown and Sideshow Bob on The Simpsons is widely considered to be a genius in the animation world.

Some film geeks will say that The Incredibles is the film they are most looking forward to of any to be released in the next few years. For this reason, the release of Finding Nemo next week has almost seemed a bit lacklustre, even though nobody has heard anything bad about it.

Finally, Finding Nemo is being shown to critics. The advance word on it is actually that it is great, and Pixar have done it again. The film will be another enormous hit. Given the amazing technical quality of Pixar's films, and the great storytelling sense of their filmmakers, this will be pleasing. Hopefully the film will finally win the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature for Pixar. Although the award has been going for two years now and Pixar are by far the best American studio making animated films, circumstances have meant they are yet to win. Surely for this year they will. And if The Incredibles is as good as everybody hopes, they will again for next year. This would only be fair.

Update: This review at the Chicago Tribune agrees with me about the golden age. And in fact, Finding Nemo seems to be the best reviewed film of the year, or close to it. (I can't think of anything else this well reviewed. Can anyone else?)

Brief cricket update

The one day tournament in Sri Lanka goes on. In the last two games, New Zealand beat Sri Lanka in a close but low scoring game, and Pakistan beat New Zealand in a slightly more convincing fashion, although it was still tight. This has been a tournament of low scores and ball dominating bat. I don't know why the pitch is like this, but this is something worth investigating. Despite all three teams ending up with a won two lost two record, Sri Lanka miss out and Pakistan play New Zealand in the final on Friday due to Sri Lanka having the least bonus points. I think the bonus point system as it presently operates is quite fair (unlike the different system that was in operation until a year ago), as it means that Sri Lanka miss out because their defeats were heavy and their wins narrow. However, it seems somewhat redundant. Net run rate indicates this already, and if there were no bonus points and net runrate was used, the result would have been the same: a New Zealand v Pakistan final. I prefer systems that are as simple as possible (as long as they are fair), and net runrate is fair. The bonus points are just an unnecessary complication.

Meanwhile, the third game bewtween Australia and the West Indies is today. Australia have rested Adam Gilchrist and Brett Lee, and Michael Clarke and Nathan Hauritz come into the side. After his fine debut in January, Clarke has had to wait for his second game for Australia. Hopefully his response to all this will be to have a big game.

The first test between Zimbabwe and England starts at Lord's tomorrow. Lots of people are expected to show up to demonstrate against the presence of the Zimbabwean team. My sympathies are with the protestors.

Update: Clarke did all right. Batting at five, he came in at 3/79 in the 17th over and stayed to the end, scoring 75 not out off 100 balls as Australia scored 4/258. He was involved in two big partnerships, one with Symonds and the other with Bevan. Clarke looked a little short of match practice, but played one or two lovely shots. It may have been that Australia didn't get as many runs in the last 15 overs as they should have, as Bevan and Clarke both found the gaps in the field for the ones and twos without scoring that many boundaries. It's probably best to have someone who can hit fours and sixes (eg Symonds) in at the end, and batting Clarke and Bevan at 5 and 6 may sometimes not lead to this. Still, some good bowling from Hauritz removed much of the top order, Lara got out bowled to a bad shot of Bichel, Clarke took 3 catches (ultimately ending up with the man of the match award and Australia won by 25 runs. That's 20 one day games in a row.

A sad day

The last ever episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer will be broadcast in the United States this evening. I have enjoyed this more than any other television program, ever. I have an essay in my head explaining why, but I don't presently have time to write it, and my beloved readers will thus have to wait a couple of weeks.

The blogosphere moves on

While some people in the world of journalism sneer at bloggers and their supposed lack of accountability, people from the blogging world continue to raise their profiles in the mainstream media. Still, I wonder what was in the other 7000 words that Mr Den Beste's editors at the Wall Street Journal cut out.

David and many commenters at Samizdata have responded actually already, but accountability and fact checking are a great strength of blogs, not a weakness. Even on a small blog like mine, I will be fact checked to death. Mistakes will not stand. People will suddenly appear in the comments box with amazing amounts of expertise. Sloppy thinking or intellectual dishonesty simply won't stand. Remarkably, such things as the Jayson Blair saga tend to suggest that these things are actually easier to get away with in the general media. In the blogosphere I can write all the inaccurate crap I like. However, if I do, people will firstly tell me it is inaccurate crap, and then they will stop reading it.

Cricketing Update

The test series between the West Indies and Australia is over, but the scheduled series of seven one day internationals has now started, with a double header having been played in Kingston Jamaica over the weekend. Australia's one day specialists have flown in for the event, including Michael Bevan, Ian Harvey, and Andrew Symonds. The players in both the test and one day sides probably feel more like going home, as they have been playing more or less continuously since August last year.

The key question going in to the series was just how much longer Australia could keep up their winning streak. Prior to the series they had won 17 one day internationals in a row, easily a record. Quite frankly it seemed unlikely that Australia could win all seven games and keep the winning streak alive. However, if they could, their next three games after the series would be extremely easy games against Bangladesh in July, so that would probably mean extending the streak further to an astounding 27.

Australia probably still won't win all seven games in the series, but after two games this weekend, it still remains possible, because Australia won both games and the winning streak is now 19 games.

In Saturday's game, the Australian top order was only so-so, but 50s from Ponting and Lehmann had Australia at 5/183 off 39.4 overs. This is one of those positions from which things can rapidly go bad if you lose more wickets quickly, but which is fine if you don't. As it was, Australia didn't, and fine innings from one day specialists Bevan and Harvey led to Australia ending up with a very good 5/270 off the 50 overs. After a rain interruption, the target was revised to 208 off 37 overs. The West Indies were always a little behind the run rate required, and lost regular wickets, eventually scoring 8/205, losing by just two runs. This wasn't quite as close as it looked, because the West Indies needed about 14 off the last over and 7 off the last ball, and a couple of fours late in the final over when it was too late made the margin look better. A fairly comfortable win, although Australia were a little sloppy in the field. Harvey completed a fine all round performance by taking 3/37 off 7 overs.

Both Darren Lehmann and Ian Harvey had to withdraw from today's match with injuries. Many people would have thought that this would be a great chance to give young potential star Michael Clarke a game, but not the selectors. Instead they brought in two bowlers, Bichel and Gillespie.

Personally, I think this created a side that was a little unbalanced and was potentially a little weak in the batting department, but this didn't matter especially, for the bowlers did a great job. The bowlers were all great, with McGrath thankfully returning to something near peak form with 4/31, Lee taking 2/22, Hogg 1/27 off 10, Gillespie 1/28 off 9. West Indies were all out for a miserable 163. Australia had absolutely no trouble knocking off the runs, losing only two wickets. Hayden and Ponting scored fifties, as Australia won with one ball short of 15 overs to spare. An absolutely crushing win.

Australia didn't look sloppy today. Perhaps a clean sweep is still possible, although with Sarwan and Lara in the West Indian team you think they will likely pull off a win somewhere. Still, Ponting remains in great form, and McGrath no longer looks underdone. It's a shame McGrath couldn't have spent his time bowling his best rather than sledging last week.

In the one day tournament in Sri Lanka, the home side won a low scoring match against Pakistan. Sri Lanka batted first, and were at one point at 8/139. Eventually they managed to scrape together 172, thanks partly to a useful 19 from Muttiah Muralitharan. Muralitharan then completed a fine day by taking 5/23 to bowl out Pakistan for 160. Sri Lanka now top the points table in that competition, but are still in some danger of missing out on the final, due to having no bonus points from their three games, whereas the other sides each have two. That means if all three teams end up with two wins, Pakistan meet New Zealand in the final. Sri Lanka need to either beat New Zealand, or hope that New Zealand beat Pakistan.

More on the HIV viruses

Following up on what I said about the HIV viruses last week, I notice that the Economist has an article on HIV-2, the other HIV virus, in this week's issue. Essentially, the article says that new research suggests that the HIV-2 virus crossed over from the species of money called the sooty mangebay twice, once around 1940 and the other time around 1945.

Loosely, viruses evolve over time. If a virus is in the human population then over time the number of variants will steadily increase. If we make some assumptions about the speed of mutation (and better still, have tissue samples contain versions of the virus that are known to come from particular places and times) we can map the evolution and spread of the disease. In particular, we can see when various strains of the virus diverged from each other. If we have two different strains of the virus, and research suggests that they diverged from each other in 1940, say, then there are two possibilities. Either the disease was present in humans before 1940, or the disease was not present in humans until some time after 1940, but it crossed the species barrier on a number of different occasions. If you can find lots of intermediate strains of the virus also present in humans, then this pretty much rules out the second option, unless the species barrier has been crossed on a vast number of different occasions. Presumably the researchers have looked at all strains of HIV-2, and have found that they can trace them all back to having evolved from two common ancestors, but cannot trace them back to any strains intermediate to those two. Hence we have the conclusion that the species barrier was crossed twice for HIV-2.

This compares with the more common (and more contagious and more deadly) HIV-1, which has clearly crossed over into humans at least twice, once in the form of the HIV-1 Group M (for main) virus, that appears to have crossed over from chimpanzees to people in the Congo area, and the HIV-1 Group O (for outlier) virus, that appears to have crossed over from chimpanzees to people in the Cameroon area. We know that Group M was present in Leopoldville (now Kinshasa) in Congo in 1959, because a study of stored blood samples found a positive sample from that time. We believe that Group O was present in 1961 in Cameroon, because a Norwegian sailor who visited Cameroon in 1961 later died of the disease (the earliest known AIDS case), and the virus present in stored tissue samples from his body is consistent with the Group O form of the disease most common in Cameroon today. It seems likely that the disease must have been reasonably common in Cameroon at that time for a foreigner to have become infected (or perhaps he was just extremely unlucky - there was not an AIDS epidemic in Cameroon for a couple of decades after that).

In recent years, researchers have claimed that studies of the differences between various strains of the virus, and knowledge about the speed with which viruses evolve suggests that groups M and O may have crossed over into human beings in the 1940s or even the 1930s. However, the techniques used by such researchers are in some ways problematic. The key question is really how fast do viruses change, and is the speed different in humans than in chimpanzees. The precursor to HIV-1 does not kill chimps. The precursor to HIV-2 does not kill sooty mangabeys. However, when a virus from one species of primate gets transferred into another, then the virus usually is harmful. This tends to suggest that at some point in the past there have been epidemics due to these kinds of diseases in primates, and the primates have evolved so as to become resistant to these particular diseases (or the viruses have evolved not to be harmful to these particular primates, which makes perfect sense, because if a virus's host dies, the virus dies too) and the ultimate consequence has been that we have ended up with primate species with endemic harmless retroviruses.

What am I getting at here? Well, this process is slow. For this to be the case, the viruses must have been present in primates for thousands of years, if not tens or hundreds of thousands of years. The viruses are very well adapted to their host species. They are probably fairly genetically stable, having found an evolutionary niche. Transfer them to another species and they do not have their evolutionary niche any more, and it may be that they have evolved faster. So it may be that the speed of genetic evolution is affected by the species jump, making the uncertainty about when viruses diverged highly dependent on when the species jump actually occurred.

So what do we know? We know for sure that both forms of HIV-1 were present in Africa by the late 1950s. (A third form of the virus, HIV-1 Group N, has recently been discovered also in Cameroon. It seems likely that this form of the virus crossed over later than the other two, although nobody is certain).

What else can we deduce from this? Well, as I said in my previous post, if the viruses have been present in chimp and sooty mangabey populations for thousands of years, there is something remarkable about the fact that species jumps of very similar virus occurred at least three (and apparently five) times in a few decades of the 20th century. This has to do with changed human activity of some kind. I find the frequently argued idea that the transfer occurred via hunting and eating of other primates unconvincing, as this has also being going on for thousands of years, and I find it beyond belief that the species jump never occurred over this period (or that it repeatedly did so without the diseases becoming endemic). The more I read the less convincing I find the polio vaccine theory - the times become less convincing, and the places also become better matched simply with the locations of primate populations rather than the places where polio vaccines occurred. (And there is no evidence that chimpanzee kidneys actually were used in the cultivation of the vaccines). However, something deeply peculiar happened. Mr Hooper is quite right about this. It is quite understandable for the medical establishment to want to blame it on natural causes, but for me to actually believe this, I need a convincing explanation of why AIDS did not become a human epidemic prior to the second half of the twentieth century. If HIV had only crossed the species barrier once, I could believe that it is simply a matter of this being a very unlikely occurrence. If very similar strains of the disease had crossed the species barrier in a short time from the same species, I could believe that the virus had suddenly mutated to make the cross easier. However, similar but different viruses crossed in a very short time. I find this impossible to explain, unless I believe that some new means of transmission suddenly became available to existing viruses. And I don't know what that was.

I am busy

Blogging is going to be extremely light for the next two weeks. I will try to stick to my daily posting schedule, but it may be that my "posts" end up being just a couple of sentences.

Eurovision Song Contest

Adam at the Supermercado Project has a preview of tonight's Eurovision Song Contest. I usually watch the show for its surreal camp goodness, but I may or may not have time to watch it this year. It would be a shame if I missed it, because not only will our favourite Russian schoolgirl lesbians be competing, but I also need to find out whether the opening of border crossings over the Green Line will affect the tradition of Greece giving 12 points to Cyprus and Cyprus giving 12 points to Greece (almost certainly not, I suspect). Plus, there is the annual opportunity to see the people of the Germanosphere demonstrate that they do in fact have senses of humour, as for some reason they tend to take the contest even less seriously than does everybody else. Adam is particularly taken by Austrian entrant Alf Poier, and his truly remarkable lyrics, which I cannot help but repeat.

I like most animals on this earth
But I really prefer little rabbits and bears

Soon all birds and beetles will die
But Adam's in bed with Eve busy reproducing

Rabbits live in the woods
Cats in the meadows
And cockroaches
Live under tiles

Little rabbits have short noses
And kittens soft paws
And Mother Holle likes her wool
From the african dromedary

The difference between animals such as apes and primates
Is no bigger than between noodles and pasta

But whoever wants to know more about animals should study Biology or inform himself on my homepage

Some animals have wings
And others have fins
Some live outdoors
And others in cans

Small rabbits…..

Sadly, I am not capable of knowing whether they are more or less extraordinary in the original German. Informing myself using the resources of the BBC homepage, I can however discover something about the man's personal philosophy.

My song is a hymn for individualism and against collectivism. I am also for balls and against circles, for corners and against edges, for trees and against the forest. In my performance it is not so much the song that counts but the moral attitude behind it. Whoever votes for me is against being standardized and cemented in by 'European Banality'.

Actually that sounds like a pretty good Samizdata Slogan of the day.

Update: Adam also refers to the highly fashionable Estonians who will be singing their song "Eighties coming back". Actually, I wasn't aware that the eighties had happened the first time in Estonia.

Further Update: It has been pointed out to me that the Eurovision song contest is in fact on next week, not this week. Damn. No Russian fake schoolgirl alleged lesbians for me. This is a lesson that you shouldn't believe what you read in the blogosphere.

One question

Are Carroll diagrams harder or easier to mutilate?

Russians scientists confirm national stereotypes

This is great.

Russian scientists claim to have come up with a novel way of warding off Sars - a double shot of vodka.

Experts from the Medical Academy, in Moscow, believe the worldwide commotion over the virus is over-exaggerated.

Leading scientist Anatoli Vorobijev, from the department of microbiology and immunology, says the daily consumption of 10 centilitres of vodka should be enough to ward off the life-threatening epidemic.

(via Gweilo Diaries).


Next week: Scots confirm whisky will ward off Sars. University of Bordeaux researchers confirm red wine will ward off Sars. Researcher in Munich recommend beer for warding off Sars. Australians don't have the slightest &*£$%ing idea what wards off Sars, but will continue drinking all these things anyway.

Thoughts on the looting, or lack of it

Regular readers will know that I got extremely upset about the apparent looting of the Iraqi National Museum. It is now clear that the looting was on a much smaller scale than was reported at the time. I am profoundly grateful that this is so, and that many more of Iraq's cultural treasures are intact than it appeared.

I still think that if looters had been going in and out of the museum for two whole days, and 70000 to 150000 artifacts had been stolen, it would have been negligence on the part of the American forces and their commanders if they had done nothing about it. However, it is now clear that this did not happen, and that the number of stolen artificats was actually in the tens to hundreds, and many of these thefts may have been inside jobs of one kind or another. In this case there is no reasonable way that American forces could have stopped the looting, and the forces were in no way negligent. I still think that Don Rumsfeld's statement about "How many vases could there be?" shows profound ignorance about ten thousand years of history of Iraq, but that isn't really the issue here.

All that said, even if only 20 artifacts were taken it is still likely that the cultural damage due to the looting is quite considerable. As Jay points out, if you steal the 20 most important artifacts from almost any museum, you have likely taken a large portion of the total value of the collection, at least in financial terms. However, it seems clear that the looters knew what they were looking for, and that they stole specific items so that they could sell them to "collectors" (sneer quotes fully justified, I think) rather than just plundering in the hope that they might be able to get something indeterminate for them later. This hopefully means that the items were mostly not damaged in the looting. The number of items looks sufficiently small that trying to recover a fair proportion of them doesn't look quite so hopeless. If the Americans monitor the borders and the art trade with very strict instructions what to look for, then hopefully some will turn up. Any American soldiers or officials who succeed in recovering any of these artifacts deserve tremendous praise. I hope I will see at least some of this.

However, what I now want to know is where the hell did those news stories about 70000 and 150000 arifacts being looted come from? Was Jayson Blair writing about the subject? Were these stories simply being made up by people at the BBC who wanted to make the Americans look bad? Was it Ba'athists wanting to make the Americans look bad? I do not know how it is possible to confuse 20 or 200 or even 2000 items with 150000. And why did the whole media report the stories like this? Why was there so much credulity all the way from Iraq to me. Someone does need to investigate.

What race is Bart Simpson?

The answer to this controversial and important question was actually once answered by the Reverend Lovejoy's daughter Jessica.

Remember, I'm the sweet, perfect minister's daughter, and you're just yellow trash.

What could be more definitive than that.

Greeting Cards and Triplets?

Yesterday, I was in a newsagent buying some stationery. While there, I walked past the greeting cards section. Personally, I never buy greeting cards tailored for a special occasion (except at Christmas), but instead I simply buy cards without any words on them and write my own words. The principal reason for this is that I find the words provided by the card manufacturers to generally by cringe inducingly awful in their banality. (No, I'm not cheap. I am actually a greeting card snob).

In any event, yesterday I saw a card with the words "Congratulations on your triplets" amongst the cards intended to be given to new parents. I was quite surprised by this. Rates of multiple births vary from country to country, but typically something like one in 7000 to 10000 births are naturally triplets. I have known plenty of twins, but never in my life have I met anyone I have known to be a triplet. (I must have met a small number that I have not known about). Thus unless the newsagent stocks a selection of cards for new parents numbered in the thousands, I think they are unlikely to ever sell that one.

On the other hand, the numbers of multiple births have increased considerably due to (a) mothers getting older and more importantly (b) use of fertility treatment. It is harder to find statistics on the effects of this in terms of frequency. However, what interests me is whether the presence of this card indicates that the number of triplets has increased so much that the card companies genuinely think that it is worth their while to produce cards for triplets, or whether it simply indicates that someone at the card company does not understand statistics. (Given the number of different events greeting cards are produced for nowadays, I would have thought that a proper statistical alalysis of how many cards you need to stock and of what kinds would be relatively important by now).

The urge to go and visit shops that sell prams and ask how difficult it is to obtain special ones for triplets is something I will now resist the urge to do.

The West Indies continue to fight, and look like winning.

The fourth test between Australia and the West Indies is nearing completion and it has been the best match in ages. I have only written about day 1 so far, and I only have time for a brief discussion of days 2 to 4. Essentially, after Australia were bowled out for 240 in the first innings, Australia fought back. The West Indian first innings was an odd one, with the Australians taking wickets at one end, and Brian Lara looking majestic at the other end. All the Australian bowlers shared the wickets, with particularly good work from Bichel. Lara managed to score 68, before hitting a catch off Bichel. When it looked like the middle and lower order would combine with Lara to add enough runs to get the West Indies some kind of a lead, Brett Lee ran Jacobs out brilliantly for 26. Lee fielded off his own bowling, saw that Jacobs was out of his ground and threw down the stumps at the batsman's end before he could get back. I have seen many bowlers attempt this kind of dismissal, but this is one of the first times I have actually seen the bowler succeed. My compliments to Lee here. In any even, the West Indies also scored 240, and the two teams were precisely even on the first innings.

Australia's openers came out really firing, and Langer and Hayden put on a tremendous partnership of 273. Langer and Hayden both scored centuries. From there, Australia should have scored at least 500 and put the match out of reach. However, when Langer was out, Gilchrist (who had been promoted up the order - either because he was a player Waugh had faith in, or to unnecessarily get quick runs), Love and Lehmann were all out quickly. This left us with Hayden and Steve Waugh batting. Fine. I have faith in both these players. But then Hayden was stupidly run out. And then the tail was again out quickly. Glenn McGrath showed some resistance for the final wicket, but he was eventually out with the score on 417. Steve Waugh was not out 45, having not quite boosted his career average back to 50, although he is getting close (49.83). Basically though, it wasn't very impressive. Lehmann and Love failed under pressure. I would rather have one Ricky Ponting or Damien Martyn than both of them. The tail, which is supposed to be much stronger at batting than most tails, failed to support Steve Waugh when he was batting well, and he was stranded on 45 not out. The first job of tail order batsmen is to ensure that any specialist batsmen still not out can score to their potential. If a tail collapses quickly that effectively reduces the number of specialist batsmen from six to five. Here it reduced it from six to about five and a half. (Three and a half if you don't coun't Lehmann and Love. I am being cynical today). The middle order and the tail both collapsed twice in this match, which was not impressive. The target should have been at least 500

However, the West Indies were set 418 to win. No side has ever successfully chased a target that large to win a test match, and it should have been enough. But, the West Indian batting lineup is strong. Ganga, Lara, Sarwan, Chanderpaul, are all capable of scoring runs against most attacks. The danger in this series has always been that more than one of them would perform in the same innings.

The West Indies took the score to 0/47 at stumps on the third day, but Gayle, Smith, and Ganga were all out quickly on the second. Australia had Lara, Sarwan and Chanderpaul to get through, essentially. Lara put together a good partnership with Sarwan, but again Lara was out in the 60s when looking majestic, this time bowled by a big turning legbreak from MacGill. Sarwan and Chanderpaul then came together, and put on an outstanding partnership of 123. Sarwan eventually scored his second test century, a fine 105, before being caught and bowled by Lee. Jacobs was given out caught next ball, clearly incorrectly. (The umpiring has been terrible in this series). A bad break for him, but the West Indies were six wickets down with 130 runs still needed. It looked like Australia were close to being home. Banks was dropped - an easy catch at slip missed by Love off Lee - in the next over.

And after that, Chanderpaul continued to bat magnificently, and Banks supported him ably. By stumps, the partnership was 83 and the score was 6/371, with the West Indies needing only abother 47 runs and Chanderpaul on 103 not out, his eighth test century and second of the series. The West Indies really should win from here. However, given the Australian ability to come back from the dead that was demonstrated at times in the World Cup, nobody can write them off.

Australia have a habit of taking a wicket or wickets very early on a day, or very early in a session. To win from here, they need to to the same thing here. My strategy would be to throw the ball to Brett Lee and to tell him to bowl a couple of really fast yorkers and see what happens. Lee has the ability to rise to an occasion. I am thinking of the second VB series final against England a couple of months ago. England looked like winning, but Lee came back on and really pulled something special out of the bag to remove the last few batsmen and win the match for Australia. It wouldn't surprise me too much to see him do it here. It is also possible that his pace could make it easier to score runs and this move will lose the match, but it is worth a try. If the match is lost in such circumstances, I will not blame him so much as batting that went wrong in both innings. And Love will really rue dropping that catch.

If a wicket falls in the first 15 minutes, the finish of this match is going to be really exciting, with a win for either side or a tie all being possibilities. If Chanderpaul and Banks can bat out the first half hour, the West Indies will probably be home.

Meanwhile, in other cricket, there is a one day tournament going on in Sri Lanka between Sri Lanka, New Zealand and Pakistan. So far New Zealand have resoundingly beaten Pakistan who have resoundingly beaten Sri Lanka who have less resoundingly beaten New Zealand. As the tournament has bonus points that means that New Zealand are ahead of Pakistan who are ahead of Sri Lanka on the points table. Each side has to play each other again before the final of that tournament, so really anything could happen there.

Update: And the West Indies did win: the game. When Chanderpaul was caught behind off Lee after ten minutes of play, with only one run added to the overnight score, it looked like it might be Australia's day after all. However, Banks and Drakes batted sensibly to get the West Indies over the line without the loss of any further wickets. In an hour and a bit of good tense cricket, we had a couple of near edges, one mistimed pull shot which went up in the air and could have come down anywhere but came down away from the fieldsmen, one close but probably correctly not out LBW appeal followed by an enormous six from Drakes, two extremely close LBW appeals off successive balls (the first of which looked absolutely plumb, the second of which also looked out on the replay, but for which the Australians only appealed half-heartedly, perhaps because it wasn't as good a shout as the one the ball before) and a couple of French cuts near the stumps that went for four. I think Steve Waugh made a small blunder in not bringin Glenn McGrath on earlier. As it was he ended up bowling only one over, but it was a really good over. Still, very well played by the West Indians. However, Australia really should not have lost the match from a position where they led by 273 in the second innings with ten wickets remaining. The middle order batsmen did let the side down. Once again, Australia have lost a match after the series was decided.

The main thing that the West Indies can take from the series is the thought that their batting looks much improved. Ganga, Lara, Chanderpaul and Sarwan potentially form the nucleus of one of the best batting sides in world cricket.

A good site

I wasn't aware of Aaron Oakley's Bizarre Science site until he linked to me yesterday and sent a hundred or so visitors my way. Thanks for that. The site has some good stuff, too. Aaron is today discussing the pointlessness of the Victorian government spending money on wind power generators that cost too much, spoil the view, and quite probably take out at least a few innocent birds.

I can however observe that there is one positive benefit of these wind generators. When I went for a trip along the Victorian coast about 18 months ago, I drove past the existing set of wind power generators near Port Campbell National Park. I was mildly curious, so when I reached a carpark, I stopped and got out for a look. Like many people driving along the Victorian coast, I decided this was as good a place as any to take a break. I discovered that for three or four dollars I could go for a tour of the site, which involved getting in a Land Cruiser, going up close and presumably being told lots of eco-waffle. I declined this great opportunity. However, the little booth selling tickets also doubled as an espresso bar. I was able to buy myself an excellent latte, which made the next portion of my drive much more enjoyable.

I am suspect that building wind generators is not a cost effective way of bringing better coffee to rural Victoria, but this is one side benefit none the less.

China or India

Natalie Solent links to Chris Bertram talking about British school history textbooks playing down the extent of the catastrophe that was Mao's Great Leap Forward. This just makes me think of another bugbear of mine, which is that of the two countries that between them have more than a third of the world's population, why is it that China gets so much more press (and in some ways better press) than India? This is not to say that China deserves less press. I personally find the country fascinating, and I find it extremely interesting that a large portion of the world's manufacturing has moved to the southern coastal portion of China near Hong Kong.

However, when I think about the relatively success of the two countries, particularly with reference to the sorts of things that Natalie is talking about, an extremely fundamental question comes to mind, and that is "In which country would prefer to have spent the last 50 years?". It is a phenomenally easy question to answer. During the Cold War, India at times cosied up to close to the wrong side, India is too bureacratic, and for many years India adopted a foolish economic system of "self-reliance", that reduced the country's economic dealings with the outside world and consequently reduced economic growth very significantly. However, the country has had no mass starvation, and there has been no large scale repression of citizens. In the last ten years the economy has improved, the middle class has grown, and Bombay has grown to be one of the world's larger sources of popular culture. It hasn't been as big an economic success story as China (although when discussing this point, it is always worth remembering that most Chinese statistics are made up), but progress has been quite positive.

If you move on to the question "In which country would you rather live today?" the question is perhaps less clear cut, but the arguments in favour of India are still pretty strong. In terms of things like basic liberties, India is far ahead. (Obviously it is better to be rich or middle class in either country than poor in the other). There is less arbitrary authority in India, more freedom of speech, and a more accountable legal system. (These things are far from perfect, but I am comparing to China). India has political and legal institutions that are capable of evolving into the institutions that can support an advanced economy. It is highly questionable that China does. If China is ever to become a proper member of the modern world, at some point it has to cease to be an authoritarian state. As a minimum, this change will be painful. The worst case scenarios involve considerable bloodshed. (A relatively peaceful transition can perhaps be done. Smaller formerly authoritarian states such as South Korea and Taiwan have managed it. However, it is by no means assured). China's economy for the moment is helped by the country's relatively good infrastructure, which India lacks. However, an infrastructure building binge is actually a relatively short term deal, providing someone is willing to provide the capital. (China had the good fortune that in the 1990s, people were willing to provide the capital. The global economy is now much less full of people willing to do this). However, if the financial situation is right, it's a ten year project. However, I think it has to happen at some point. When it does, India is a country about which we should be enormously optimistic.

My main feeling I think is that India has managed to remain a democracy for the last 50 years, and that is no small achievement. The country deserves more credit that it gets for this.

Surrealism

No this isn't actually going to happen. But a Bollywood musical about an Indian space mission written by Bruce Sterling is something that would make my decade.

And I am '100% a Dutchman'

Rod Marsh says he is '100% English'.

(Okay, he did qualify that by saying 'in cricketing terms').

Why you should continue reading Salam Pax

He is great at describing little details of places and situations.

The streets markets look like something out of a William Gibson novel. Heaps of cheap RAM (stolen of course) is being sold beside broken monitors beside falafel stands and weapons are all available. Fights break out justlikethat and knives come out from nowhere, knives just bought 5 minutes ago. There are army sighting thingys, Weird looking things with lenses. And people selling you computer cases who tell you these are electric warmers, never having seen a computer case before. Really truly surreal. Software CDs, Movie CDs and cheap porn. And a set of 5 CDs called [the crimes of saddam] it has things from halabja, the footage they have taped during 91 while squishing the uprising after the war and other stuff about Uday, there is one whole CD about Uday. Have not seen any of them yet. They say there is some gruesome footage on them but the Uday CD is not as juicy as you’d think.

Interestingly enough, William Gibson himself, who is a fiction writer who is great at describing little details of places and situations and knows that this is one of the best ways of capturing the mood of a place, has been much taken by the Salam Pax's writings over the last couple of months. It is clear that this is the type of situation that he finds interesting, and the type of situation that thus finds its way into his books. (See Gibson's blog here, here, and here).

Of course, when Salam Pax himself observed that it was like something out of a Gibson novel, it then got a little weirder. Gibson described this as a "peculiar frisson for yours truly". Gibson himself is in a way drawn in, and having visualised a world somewhat like the present in 1983, Gibson is drawn in to its actual making, almost like the way in which Coppola and De Niro were drawn in when real life gangsters supposedly started aping those of the characters in The Godfather in the early 1970s.

Gibson goes on to praise Pax's writing ability, and discusses how the reconstruction is likely to give Salam Pax much better material to write with than did the actual war. He goes on to talk about logistics.

If WIRED was really on their game, they'd parachute Mr. Pax a solar-powered laptop and whatever satellite-cellular rig he'd need to blog daily, *right now*. Then leave him the hell alone, except, possibly, for a simple banner proclaiming "SALAM PAX'S BLOGGING-TACKLE PROVIDED GRATIS BY WIRED MAGAZINE AND [NAMES OF MANUFACTURERS]".

This is genuinely a good idea, and of course if someone at Wired Magazine (or somewhere else) was to read Gibson's blog and actually do this as a consequence, then the feedback would get even more complex. This was sort of on my mind when I wrote the other day that the Guardian needs to pay Salam Pax for publishing two pages worth of his blog. Legally (and morally) there is no issue here. Salam Pax is clearly entitled to be paid, and as I suspect the Guardian is not the only newspaper in the world which has published his writings, the amount of money he is entitled to be paid would be at least a few thousand dollars by now. His various complaints about the cost of internet time would be alleviated quickly by the simple payment of the money which he is already owed. Salam Pax is famous in the outside world, and at some point the world is going to find out who he is and this is going to intrude on his life. There might be free computer gear, but there are also going to be things like interviews and book contracts - even if the book is simply a book of the blog. As to whether this will destroy the innocence of the blog, I don't know.

Gibson's writing started out being about artificial intelligences attempting to use rogue computer hackers to not so much take over the world as to earn their own identity within it. The focus was initially about technology obsessed people. As time has gone on, his books have become more and more about media obsessed people. This pattern has followed the modern economy: the last ten years have to some extent been about the media and the technology Gibson was originally talking about meeting one another. (Gibson always knew this, and even his earliest fiction - for instance the short story The Winter Market in Burning Chrome is at least partly about this, but it has become more overt in his later writings). The fact that Salam Pax, and I suppose Iraq in general is making the same journey, only much faster, is what makes Salam Pax such a Gibsonian figure. The fact that he seems actually aware of this makes him even more Gibsonian.

(Just one final observation. In Neuromancer, published in 1983, Case, the main character, towards tthe start of the novel is attempting to fence the "three megabytes of hot RAM" in his computer. At the time, Gibson was more interested in the relationships people had with technology than the technology itself, and although his descriptions of technology come across as plausible and cool most of the time, this was something of a clanger. Three megabytes of RAM was not that much even at the time, and RAM was a boring commodity even then. Nobody would have expected it to be the sort of thing that high tech thieves would be after (and, three megabytes was obviously woefully inadequate for the technology of the world Gibson was describing). Therefore, "three megabytes of hot RAM" is something of an in joke amongst people who know Gibson's novels well. Salam Pax hasn't just made a reference to Gibson, he has made a little bit of a joke indicating that he knows his novels well, and has at least suggested that there is a subculture of Gibson fans in Iraq).

Such is the weirdness of the modern world.

Update: Nick Denton has now said some of the same things, and Glenn Reynolds has linked to him. If the technical issues at Samizdata were resolved and my posting privileges were sorted out, I would have posted it there rather than here, and Glenn Reynolds would have seen it, and he may have linked to me instead. Of course, that site has enough readers already, so in that case I wouldn't have needed the link.

Such is the unfairness of the modern world.