Disappointment

When leaving a cinema in central Croydon a little after 1am this morning, I saw a lengthy queue outside the W.H. Smith store, which was the only shop in central Croydon to have opened at midmight to sell the new Harry Potter book. (The two main bookstores in Croydon are in a mall and the mall was closed, so they didn't have the option). Given that they had been open for an hour at that point, they were selling in awful lot of books given it was the middle of the night.

While I am looking forward to reading the new Potter book, I am not so enthusiastic as to stand in a long queue at one in the morning for it. (Some people were, however. I received an SMS message in the middle of my film consisting of the words "I've got it" from a friend of mine with an Oxbridge Ph.D.) I actually ordered the book from Amazon on March, and while I received an e-mail from them yesterday morning saying that it had been posted, I am still hoping that it gets delivered on time.

In any event, at about 8.30am this morning, I heard the doorbell ring. "Great", I thought. "It's my Harry Potter book". However, it turned out to be my photographs of my Spanish trip, which I had sent to a cheap, mail order film processing place for processing. (They used some alternative delivery service rather than the post office, so the two things were not delivered by the same person).

This was quite disappointing. I had quite forgotten about the photographs, and when I had answered the door I had thought that it was my book for sure. However, as a small consolation I can offer you this picture of the Guggenheim museum in Bilbao.



Update: The book came at about 9.30am. Interestingly, rather than coming in a standard sized Amazon box, and containing a personalised receipt, as is normal with Amazon, it came in a special sized box designed for this particular book, and it also came with a mass-produced receipt which did not have my name (or the price) on it. Clearly, to make the process of getting a large number of Harry Potter books to customers on time as smooth as possible, Amazon had a large number of the books prepackaged in boxes, and they just slapped address labels on them. In any event, my compliments to them. They got the book to me in the morning on the day of publication.

As for the book, it is a bit slow so far. It takes 180 pages to get to Hogwarts. The mood feels right: there is a sense of foreboding about the fact that Lord Voldemort is back. However, to tell whether Ms Rowling is being self-indulgent or not, I shall have to see how significant the events of the first 180 pages are to the greater plot.

Thoughts on The Peacemaker (1997)

Brian Micklethwait has some revisionist thoughts on the 1997 movie The Peacemaker, starring George Clooney as a Special Forces soldier and Nicole Kidman as a government bureacrat chasing rogue nuclear weapons that have got into the hands of terrorists. I saw that movie when it came out, although it didn't make much of an impression on the world at the time. One reason I think it looks fresher now than it did then is the immediacy of what it is about. While some people were worried in 1997 about terrorists getting weapons of mass destruction, it wasn't an immediate concern of most people, and the film's subject had a lack of immediacy for most people. People doing things that the Clooney and Kidman characters were doing almost certainly did exist in 1997, but their job didn't really seem as vital as it does today, and they didn't have the level of respect and attention that they do today.

Which is interesting, because Clooney and Kidman themselves didn't at the time seem as vital as they do today either. Both of them are very good in the film, and I particularly agree with Brian that George Clooney gets his character exactly right. (Kidman is good, but I think her part is less well written. She is in reality a bureacrat, and yet she goes out in the field as the partner of Clooney's Special Forces man. I am not sure this is realistic). Both of them had been picked by lots of people to be film stars, but in both cases it took rather longer than most people had anticipated for it to happen. At the time The Peacemaker was released, both of them were more famous for other reasons than for their actual movies (Clooney for his television work, and Kidman for being married to Tom Cruise). Both were regularly playing leading roles in movies, but neither had broken through. Clooney had been in a cultish movies (From Dusk Till Dawn), a reasonably well reviewed but not terribly successful at the box office romantic comedy (One Fine Day) and a disastrous intended blockbuster (Batman and Robin). Kidman was enormously famous in Australia for her acting, but after marrying Cruise had never really broken through to mass audiences in her movie roles either. However, both actors are now enormous stars, and this affects the way we look at the film. It brings them to the foreground, perhaps in the same way that the change in people's attitudes to the subject of the movie brings it more into the foreground.

Still, I don't think the movie has a great third act. The terrorists in the movie were from or at least were connected with the war in Bosnia, and were presented as being driven to fanaticism by the murders of family members. When I first saw the film, I remember finding this made me a little uncomfortable, as a real war in which lots of people were suffering at that time was being used for a movie that was basically entertainment, and in a slightly more realistic manner than usual. It was not so much the subject, as the way in which the film sort of merged with real footage and real locations that I saw on the news.

And the ending is ridiculous. After lots and lots of cool stuff, we end up with a red digital readout counting down how many seconds before New York is destroyed, and George Clooney wondering whether he should cut the red wire or the green wire. A little more originality might have been in order, but we didn't get that.

Ah, New Zealand

Okay, I have been familiar with the concept of politically partisan weather reports for just over a week, but having the words "George W Bush. Professional Fascist" appear at the bottom of the screen is perhaps going a little too far.

Cricketing update

I will get to today's game between England and Pakistan later in the post.

Firstly, though, the Australian squads for the forthcoming matches against Bangladesh were announced. As the selectors have indicated would be the case, there is no experimentation or pulling of punches due to the low quality of the opposition. (I have one caveat about that, which I will discuss at length in a moment). Australia have announced full strength sides for both the tests and the one day matches. Steve Waugh will continue as test captain for at least one more series, as expected. (Given that he had the second highest average of any Australian batsman in the series against the West Indies, he couldn't reasonably be dropped, and the selectors probably didn't want to drop him anyway).

For a squad of 13, Australia selected seven batsmen (including wicket keeper Gilchrist) and six bowlers (four seam bowlers and two spinners). This tends to suggest that they intend to continue the side balance they used in the West Indies of six batsmen and five bowlers. Martin Love appears to be the reserve batsman, and which bowler will miss out is hard to say and will probably depend on the conditions. (The complication is that the two bowlers most likely to miss out, Bad Hogg and Andy Bichel, are both good team men, quality players, and useful batsmen). Some thoughts on the balance (which is the caveat I mentioned).

When playing test cricket, it is generally considered asking for trouble to play with fewer than six top notch batsmen. Obviously you need one wicket keeper. If these players are specialists, then you have four spots left in the side to fill with bowlers. The Australian approach has traditionally been to choose the best six batsmen available, the best wicketkeeper, and the four best batsmen.

In England, however, there has been more of a tradition of looking for an all rounder: a player who can both bat and bowl. This will alllow them five batsmen, a wicketkeeper, and five bowlers, with one player in both the batting and bowling columns. This is fine when you have a very good all rounder: someone who would likely be able to earn a place in the side as both a batsman and a bowler. In the late 1970s and for most of the 1980s, England did have such a player in Ian Botham, so this obviously worked fine for them. However, when England do not have an all rounder, they tend to see the situation as abnormal, so they select an all rounder who is not really of test standard as either a batsman or a bowler. In the last ten years, England have selected a lot of players like this, without much success.

This strategy means that England are used to having five bowlers, however, and when they do not have an all rounder, they have a bit of a tendency to replace the all rounder with another bowler, rather than another batsman. (In recent years they have done this and had batsman Alec Stewart keep wicket, to bolster the batting). Australians tend to frown on this, as they believe it makes the batting too weak. However, when Australia were weak in the 1980s, the English press spent a lot of its time expressing its bafflement at Australia only playing four bowlers. Australians were generally baffled by this bafflement, and thought that the problem was more that the four bowlers selected were not bowling well.

In recent years, there has been a trend throughout world cricket towards wicketkeepers who were also good batsmen. Prior to about 1970, this was not generally done, and wicketkeeping ability was considered paramount. (No Australian wicketkeeper had scored a test century before Rod Marsh did it in the 1970s). From the 1970s, though, the batting ability of the wicketkeeper has always been taken into account. Each regular keeper seems to have been a slightly better batsman than the one before. Somewhat amazingly, present Australian wicket keeper Adam Gilchrist is one of the best batsmen in the world, as well as being a wicketkeeper.

This did give Australia more flexibility with selections, but until this year they didn't use it. They selected six batsmen plus Gilchrist, spinner Shane Warne, and three seam bowlers. Warne was so good that one spin bowler was adequate, and McGrath, Gillespie and Lee were plenty in the seam bowling department. So four bowlers were enough.

When Australia lost both Warne and McGrath in the West Indies, they decided to take advantage of their strong batting lineup and play one fewer batsman to bolster the bowling. They played five bowlers (either two spinners and three seam bowlers, or one spinner and three seam bowlers) throughout that series. This worked reasonably (although to be honest I five bowlers without Warne was nowhere near as effective as four bowlers including Warne). The selectors did not have to drop a batsman to do this, as Damien Martyn was out injured.

Which is where we are now. The selectors can either continue with five bowlers, five batsmen, and Gilchrist, or they can go back to four bowlers (in which case deserving players, probably Brad Hogg and Andy Bichel, miss out). If they choose to stay with five bowlers, then either they have to drop a batsman or not select Damien Martyn when he is fit. As Damien Martyn definitely does deserve to be selected when fit, they have a bit of a dilemma. For now, they seem to have avoided the situation by declaring that they will give Damien Martyn more time to recover from his finger injury by not selecting him for the tests (although they did select him for the one day games). This looks like a bit of an evasion to me. I would prefer to go back to four bowlers, six batsmen, and Gilchrist as soon as possible. As it is, the hard decision is being avoided, at least partly because it doesn't matter due to the quality of the opposition. This perhaps is pulling a punch, although only a small one.

The one day side is essentially the side that won the world cup and the series in the West Indies, with Damien Martyn back in for Michael Clarke. Martyn's selection is "subject to fitness". Presumably Clarke will come into the side if Martyn fails his fitness test.

In actual games of cricket being played, England are romping home in the second one day game against Pakistan. Pakistan batted first, and James Anderson took four wickets and had quite a remarkable morning. He took a wicket with the first ball of the match, and he later finished off the Pakistan innings by taking a hat trick. In between Gough and Flintoff bowled well. The only resistance was Yousuf Youhana, who was 75 not out when Pakistan were bowled out for 185 after 44 overs. This is one of those situations where the tail really let their side down. With a player of this quality still in, Pakistan could have managed an excellent score if only someone could have stayed in at the other end. However, nobody did. Kudos to Anderson for removing the tail in such a situation.

Martin Trescothick came out blazing with the bat, and scored 86 runs of 57 balls before being out in the 12th over with the score 1/109. The innings essentially won the match. It's a shame he didn't get the extra 14 runs for a century, because that would have been a quick one. As it is, the England team have lost a couple of extra wickets, but are now crusing home. As I write, they are 3/165 off 20.3 overs. I am not expecting them to have much trouble scoring the 21 runs they need to win of the remaining 29.3 overs with 7 wickets in hand. This will be a very good win for England, who are looking a good side. My expectation is that England will win the third match and the series at Lord's on Sunday.

Update: England took another nine balls to win the match ending up with 3/189 off 22 overs. A very good win for them.

Al Qaeda and weapons of mass destruction

David Carr has some thoughts on the question of whether Al Qaeda is capable of obtaining weapons of mass destruction using them to attack a western city, and in fact whether they are capable of mounting large scale attacks any more at all. I wrote a lengthy comment giving my thoughts on the matter, which I may as well reproduce here

In 1995, the Aum Shinrikyo cult released Sarin nerve gas on the Tokyo underground. This only killed a few people because they didn't get the distribution right (and because they deliberately used a lower concentration of sarin than they could have because they did not want the people who actually put the sarin on the trains to die). This is the only instance so far of a terrorist attack using what is commonly defined as a "weapon of mass destruction". What they did do was demonstrate that it is possible (and indeed fairly easy) for terrorists with a few competent chemists to produce a very deadly chemical weapon. Thankfully, in the longer term, Aum Shinrikyo was not very dangerous as a terrorist group. (They were a fruitcake cult that was relatively easily dismantled).

On the other hand, the only terrorist group to actually cause mass destruction is Al Qaeda, on September 11, 2001. They did this by exploiting weaknesses in America's transport networks, so that America provided the weapon as well as the target. This demonstrated to us that there are organisations out there with the will and ruthlessness (and I could say, the contempt for human life, both their own and that of their perceived enemies) to mount attacks on this scale. I think it possibly also suggested that Al Qaeda lacked much technological sophistication. They didn't use their own weapons because they didn't have their own weapons. Those weapons they have used in other attacks (explosives) have been relatively unsophisticated, although they have a thing for complex logistics (multiple attacks at the same time, for instance. And a failed shoe bomb attack doesn't impress me much). The Japanese example demonstrated that with a few good chemists, you could make sarin. Al Qaeda have not tried a copycat sarin attack, and this tends to suggest to me that they don't have a few good chemists. (Sarin seems to me to be the easiest weapon of mass destruction to make, which is why I would expect them to try to make some). As Al Qaeda are a lot weaker today than they were in 2001 due to America's intense war on them, I don't imagine that they are any more capable of mounting an attack with their own weapons than they were in 2001. This is not to say that they will never be able to obtain such weapons from somebody else, but again I think it is likely to be harder for them now than it was before 2001, and they clearly did not do it then.

So, if we see further attacks from Al Qaeda, I tend to think they will be the smaller scale, attacks on embassies, bombs in military barracks or similar type attacks, or they will attempt another September 11 like event in which they exploit some weakness in our infrastructure.

Of course, I could be wrong. I am utterly terrified about the possibility that I could be wrong, and the chance that I am wrong is sufficiently large that I still favour using immense resources to neutralise what is left of Al Qaeda.

And of course, even if I am right, all I am saying is that Al Qaeda are less of a threat than some people think. The prospect of somebody else with the will to attack the civilized world and the technical skills to make sarin or something worse is still out there, and to me it seems inevitable. I think we may find ourselves with an interlude of a few years to prepare for it, however.

Spending my time elsewhere

I have a post on European banknotes, British coins, and British bridges over at Samizdata.

Update: I also have a piece on the new Harry Potter book and the demise of the Net Book Agreement.

I am finding that more and more of my writing is going to places other than this blog. (There may well be other places soon, too, some of which I may even get paid for. I will keep you posted). This blog will continue to be the home of quirky and unclassifiable stuff, and I have also decided that I will use it as a central index page. That is, anything I write for anywhere else, I will link to from here. I haven't always been doing this up to now, but from now on I will.

A positive development

The new Blogger is now working properly with Mozilla. Well done, Google and Pyra guys.

I don't ask for much

This afternoon I changed trains at Balham (the gateway to the south) on my way into central London. My caffeine level was getting unpleasantly low. Thanks to the miracle that is capitalism, there are now espresso bars on the platforms at many British railway stations, so I stopped to buy a latte. I gave the man behind the counter a five pound note, and he was supposed to give me 3.75 pounds change. Fine, but he only gave me 2.75. As is my practice, I carefully and obviously counted my change. As he saw me doing this, he apologised and gave me the extra pound.

However, he did this as soon as he saw me counting the change, and before I had realised that the change was a pound short. The only explanation for his knowning I had been shortchanged before I did was that he had done this deliberately. So, obviously, I will not be buying any coffee from that particular espresso bar in future.

If people are going to try to steal from me, couldn't they at least demonstrate some competence in doing so? Like, for instance, by waiting for me to count the change, see that it is short, and then point this fact out to them. At least in that case there would be some possibility that we could maintain the pretence that it was a genuine mistake. As it is, the acting was really poor. I am in London, the city of Dickensian pickpockets, after all. The standard of the petty theives seems to have really dropped in the last 100 years.

Cricket update

Yesterday, England played their first game of the season against quality opposition, the first match of a three match series against Pakistain, played at Old Trafford in Manchester. This was Michael Vaughan's first game for England as captain. Somewhat perplexingly, Vaughan has been given the captaincy England one day side (for which he has never performed very well as a batsman) but not the test side (for which he has performed brialliantly as a batsman). Okay, I understand why the England selectors have done it (Nasser Hussein has retired from one day cricket, and the one day captaincy has been given to Vaughan as preparation for one day tacking over the full time captaincy role) but I question the move's wisdom (I think Vaughan should be given time to get his game right before being given the captaincy).

In any event, my feelings on the game are mixed. England were unimpressive with the bat, but managed to get back into the game due to some good bowling and fielding, but in the end the fact that they had scored too few runs ultimately prevented them from winning. My verdict on Vaughan's captaincy is somewhat mixed, because in the end he made one of the cardinal errors.

In any event, England got off to an excellent start, scoring 0/45 off 6.5 overs, 1/63 off 9.5, and 2/96 off 14.5, and even 4/152 off 31.4 wasn't terrible, although by that point the had lost a wicket or two too many. However, nobody could go on with a start, their middle order collapsed, and they slumped to 8/169 off 38.5. The last couple of batsmen did the only thing they could, which was grind out the last 10 overs, and England ended up with an inadequate 9/204 off the 50 overs. Flintoff top scored with 39, Solanski got 36, McGrath 33, and Vaughan 27. They needed one or two players to go on with it, but nobody did.

When Pakistan were 0/60 off 17 overs or 1/116 off 30.2, it looked like Pakistan would romp home. However, thanks to good bowling from Anderson, Giles, and a very welcomly back from injury Darren Gough, England managed to get Pakistan to 5/158 and then 8/194. However, Abdul Razzaq and Mohammad Sami (who had impressed earlier with the ball - the man can bowl really fast) got Pakistan home with four balls to spare. A narrow win to Pakistan. Despite a good fightback, England were never terribly likely to win. They were about 20 runs short with the bat. Had they got 20 (or even 10) extra runs, they probably would have run.

And what was the mistake? The very inexperienced Rikki Clarke (playing his first match for England) bowled the last over. Even if the situation is desperate and wickets appear needed at once, the best captains manage to keep at least one over from one of their best bowlers for the very end. In practice, it doesn't make a lot of difference if Darren Gough bowls nine overs or ten early on, but it makes an enormous amount of difference if he has one left at the end. Vaughan hasn't quite got this yet.

Two more one day games between England and Pakistan between now and Sunday. Plus, we have the very interesting first test between Sri Lanka and the West Indies. Updates from me as appropriate.

They sound thoroughly westernised to me

Salam Pax has been visiting a Baghdad university, to see whether the campuses are hotbeds of free speech and potential revolution, and he finds....

And what about the students? Well most of them just don't give a damn. I sat for an hour with 10 students under a tree on the main street in the university compound and all I could get out of them was a collective, "Eh, well ... I don't know".

Movies I love

I have been reading Sophie's World by Jostein Gaardner. In this book, a mysterious philosopher starts sending letters to a 14 year old Norwegian girl telling her all about the history of the last 3000 years of western philosophy. (The story later becomes more complicated). Early on in the book, one of these letters is concludes by saying that the next lesson will move on to the three greatest Greek philosophers: Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Fine.

The sad thing, though, is that I cannot hear these three names together without hearing the voice of Wallace Shawn in the film of The Princess Bride saying "Morons!", and giggling. If you have seen the film, you will know what I mean.

Some people will have noticed that the list of books I am reading that is in the left sidebar hasn't changed much in recent months, and although several books have been added in the last few months, none have been removed. Somewhat sadly, I haven't been reading much lately, at least not in the form of books. I must get back to them.

More public service announcements

Iain Murray has moved to this new MT site. Blogger is preventing him from posting anything to the old site telling people to go to the new site. Updating your links is thus even more important that is normal in such situations. Personally I am finding the new version of Blogger to be much more reliable than the old one. (Admittedly, this isn't hard).

Dumb Movies

Okay, I went to see 2 Fast 2 Furious. Compared to this movie, the original The Fast and the Furious is high realism. However, ignore the ludicrous plot (which many critics have greatly enjoyed making fun of - suffice to say this is one of those Hollywood movies where a crime lord who needs an illicit cargo transported from point A to point B chooses to have it transported in the most conspicuous way imaginable, in this case by hiring street racers to drive it at 150 miles per hour down public roads). Just enjoy the speed, and the setting.

Yes, we are in that American world that exists in Southern California and Florida, where hip hop music is the order of the day, and everyone is unclassifiably post-ethnic. There are no blacks and whites, but just shades of brown. People speak clearly enunciated English but switch to Spanish if they are really upset, and moustaches, sunglasses, and epicanthic folds are optional.

Personally, I find this sort of setting pretty cool. So, apparently do lots of audiences. And whatever may be said for it, this film isn't bland, and a lot of Hollywood studio product is these days very bland. And the fact is large portions of America are actually evolving into this sort of place, although in reality the cars are less fast, the music is less loud, and the English less well enunciated.

What is interesting is that this kind of movie does none the less come out of Hollywood, which is run by deeply neurotic white people with MBAs who never leave the right parts of Los Angeles unless they are going to New York. The most important thing to bear in mind is that this is a sequel, and the original was low budget and a complete surprise hit, despite that fact that its target demographic was large and growing. That is, it slipped in under the radar. As did the original Rush Hour, another movie that in some ways belongs to the same milieu. And films aimed at teens have for some time been seemingly closer to America's new cultural reality than films aimed at adults. This is probably because these are the films that have fewer studio executives' eyes on them.

The bars

When I ran my blog through this poetry generator, I wasn't all that impressed with the results. Still, there were one or two good lines

The
Americans had
scored 75 not until this
many times
the greater Basqueland consisting
of the bars, I
was in So, heavily that would have two test
side, C
L.

Ah yes. The greater Basqueland consisting of the bars. That is certainly a strong mental image.

Something unexpected

When flying out of Bilbao on Tuesday, I had an unusual experience, which is that the city's airport seems to feel no need to extort money from air travellers the way many airports do. Firstly, the bus to the airport was a proper airport express: non-stop from the city centre to the airport. However, the fare was just an ordinary bus fare: one euro. Normal practice with airport buses is to charge three times the fare for any other bus, but not here.

Having got to the airport and through to the gate, I discovered my flight was delayed. I did what I normally do when a flight is delayed, which is go to the bar. I ordered a beer, and was charged 1.40 euros, which is about the same as I would be charged in any other bar in Bilbao. Upon finishing the beer, I observed that the flight was still delayed, so I ordered a cup of coffee. For this I was charged 1.20 euros, again about the same as in any other bar.

Nobody ripping me off in the modern globalised way? What is this?

(Bilbao airport is in scale and operations rather like Adelaide airport. There are fairly regular flights to all the major Spanish destinations, and occasional flights to London or Paris or somewhere like that).

Update: I have also written some thoughts on the Bilbao Metro system over at Transport Blog.

The spread of SARS

Alfred Croucher (China hand) has a very interesting article on how SARS was spread to Hong Kong from China. Some of it is speculative, but still interesting.

It is said the Index patient, a medical doctor from Guangzhou knew he had something highly infectious and got a visit to HK approved, ostensibly to attend a relative's wedding but with the real purpose of seeking expert treatment. Sadly he booked himself into the Kowloon Metropole first and actually attended the wedding before submitting himself to medical examination at the Kwongwah Hospital. His traces at the Metropole caused an extensive outbreak, as did his attendance at the wedding.


After the wedding he booked himself into the Kwongwah Hospital while warning the staff he may have a highly infectious disease. The staff there immediatly took appropriate measures and as a result no infections resulted from his stay. But Kwongwah is not by any means a specialist in infectious diseases so they arranged for the Index patient to be transferred to the Prince of Wales (POW), one of the top hospitals which specialises in infectious diseases.


At POW the staff, in their hubris, are said to have dismissed the warnings from Kwongwah and even the director examined the patient without appropriate precautions. As a result he and many other staff died while no-doubt passing on the disease to other patients.

The whole article is worth a read, particularly the discussion as to why the disease has been very easily spread in Hong Kong hospitals but not United States hospital (US hospitals have much better hygiene, and may already be taking precautions for possible germ warfare.

Socialising animals.

Brian Micklethwait had a post a couple of days ago on the education of dolphins. Essentially the point was that dolphins have culture and not just instincts and that quite a lot can be taught to them.

This is true, and it does not just occur with dolphines. Amongs related animals, different whale populations (within the same species) are know to make quite different calls and noises to one another.

And it occurs further down the animal kingdon, hence this fascinating article from the New York Times on scientists in Arizona attempting to educate condors bred in captivity about how to live in the wild. (Link via Brad Delong). A big problem is that "condors hatched in the wild typically spend over a year with their parents, presumably learning how to be successful scavengers" whereas those bred in captivity don't. Guiding orphan condors through adolescence is not an easy thing to do.

I have never seen a condor in the wild, but I have seen one or two in captivity. They are one of nature's extreme cases. They are as large as a bird that can still fly can be. They are magnificent, but they have a certain gawkiness about them. Nature is really pushing the engineering tolerances, and it shows. They lack the seemingly effortless but slightly sinister style of some smaller birds of prey, most notably eagles.

More things I learned in Spain

Supermercado means "supermarket" in Spanish.

Note to David Adesnik

Why not link to me. I have lots of posts on cricket.

Update: He did. I must try more shamelessly ask for links more often.

The importance of good design

Here we have a delightful page on the state of the art gizmos that every proper geek wanted in 1983. (Via William Gibson).

From Motorola, the first commercial portable cellular phone to receive FCC approval. The DynaTAC 8000X, which weighs just 28 ounces, works on the new Advanced Mobile Phone Service that's being rolled out, and has an LED display, memory to store thirty "dialing locations," and enough battery life for 30 minutes of talk time and eight hours of standby. Retail price: $3,995.

Ah, yes. Nostalgia. The days when gizmos were really clunky, and really expensive, and only a small corps of hard core geeks knew they existed. These days, it is amazing how many quite cool and interesting gizmos can be bought for, say, $100. Of course, the number of people who lust for tech products (particularly from the younger generation) is much larger than it used to be, and the resultant economies of scales are part of the point.

Still, I wonder whether todays products will look as clunky as these when we look back from 20 years in the future. To some extent, I think the answer is yes, but I don't think to the same extent. I think the quality of design has improved with respect to technical products, at least in some quarters. Certainly it has with respect to mobile phones. (This is pretty much the entire explanation for the success of Nokia. They got their design right before anyone else did. Their phones have never been anything special from a technical perspective). With some other products, less so.

Particularly with desktop PCs, less so. This is one product where design remains something of a disaster. Interestingly enough, Gibson in another post discusses why the computer used by one of the characters in his most recent novel uses a Macintosh G4 Cube. Essentially this is one of the few desktop PCs ever to get the design right. We are now in an age where ordinary users don't actually need the extra CPU cycles given to them by Moore's law (thanks mainly to the fact that the main bottleneck for most applications is now net connection speed and not CPU speed) and therefore a computer several years old can still be used by most users if there is some good reason for them to do so. The G4 Cube is now an old product, but its users still love it. They do so to such an extent that its resale value is something similar to its original purchase price, even though it was discontinued quite some time ago. Given that PCs normally lose their value with ferocious speed, this is remarkable.

Cricketing things that have been happening in my absence

After the end of the Australian tour of the West Indies, I commented that the West Indies looked to be improving, particularly in one day cricket. There was a caveat to that, however. The West Indies' wins had come at the end of the test series and at the end of the one day series, once these series were decided. In fact, they had won every 'dead rubber' in both series, but had lost every match when each series was still alive.

Over the last week, the West Indies have been playing Sri Lanka in the one day leg of the Sri Lankan tour of the West Indies. (Why the West Indies played a dull and seemingly endless seven match series with Australia rather than a potentially much more entertaining triangular series including the Sri Lankans, I don't know). This tour is about half the length of the Australian tour, with three one day games, and two test matches. The one day series is now over. So what happened?

Well, in the first game the West Indian bowlers kept Sri Lanka to a fairly poor 201, but then collapsed for 146 themselves, to lose by 55 runs. In the second game, the West Indies appeared to be in an almost unbeatable position when 116 from Lara and 94 from Gayle took them to 4/312 off 50 overs. However, 'almost' was the key word, and Sri Lanka got the runs with three balls to spare, after most of the batsmen chipped in.

So, the West Indies had lost all the important matches again. Not very impressive, to be honest. True to form, they yesterday easily won the match that didn't matter. Sri Lanka were bowled out for 191, and the West Indians met the revised Duckworth/Lewis target with the greatest of ease.

So far, in their home series, the West Indies have lost 6 one day internationals and won 4. This looks at least slightly respectable, but all four wins have been matches after the series was lost. They have lost 3 and won 1 test, and that 1 test was after the series was lost. They have two tests to play against Sri Lanka. The nature of a two test series means that it is not possible for there to be a dead rubber. To keep up this slightly peculiar streak of losing all matches that count, the West Indies have to lose both matches. I doubt they will, but who knows. As streaks go, this is a deeply unimpressive one. It indicates a side that can't take pressure. Lara as captain has work in front of him.

In other cricket, the second England v Zimbabwe match was a carbon copy of the first. England again won by an innings in three days. If England have anything to worry about, it was the relative failure of their top order batsmen. England were at one point 5-156 in their first innings, but thanks to Stewart, McGrath, and Giles, the middle and lower order managed to push the score to an adequate 416, which was still not hugely impressive against the Zimbabwean bowling. However, the Zimbabweans were then bowled out for 94 and 253, with Richard Johnson taking six wickets on debut in the first innings. A fairly blah result.

Lots of one day internationals now before the more interesting test series between England and South Africa. England's batting will need to improve a little for that series, but I think it probably will. I am forecasting a comfortable win for England in that series, because England are playing okay, and South Africa are in complete disarray.

A new hope

I have been moved over to the new version of Blogger. It will be interesting to see how this compares with the old one in terms of reliability and/or archive issues.

Update: There are some issues with comments not appearing on my page. In particular, it is in some instances showing up as "Comments[0]" when there actually are comments. Yaccs has a code update to fix this problem, but I am unable to install it on the public terminal I am presently using. If all goes well, I shall fix it at home this evening.

Further Update: These should now be fixed, at least in theory.

Even Further Update: I have encountered no archiving or reliability problems so far. It doesn't work properly with Mozilla, though. It detects that I am using a non-IE browser, and gives me a watered down, Blogger light version. (Of course, the old Blogger didn't work properly with Mozilla either, but in a "This isn't IE? Well I don't fucking care. I am going to behave as if it is" kind of way).

Back in London

My return from Spain was largely uneventful, but my flight was a bit late, and I then had to negotiate my way to and through London via a series of buses, and I didn't get home until 2.30am. I think this messed up my sleep a little, and I have a bit of a headache as a consequence. Therefore, no major blogging until probably this evening.

French Restaurants versus Spanish Restaurants

In France, many restaurants offer a so called prix fixe menu. This means that for a fixed price, you get three courses, and there are normally three or four dishes that you can choose from for each course. This works out much cheaper than ordering a la carte. However, drinks are usually not included, and the price of wine is often extortionate. (This is why I often drink beer in restaurants in France).

In Spain, the concept is much the same. Restaurants offer a menu del dia, which works much the same way. Unfortunately, this is usually offered only at lunchtime. However, on the positive side, drinks are included. Despite this, these meals are still somewhat cheaper than in France. If you ask for vino, you get an entire bottle of red wine with your lunch. And while wandering around Spain in the middle of the afternoon feeling somewhat pissed is not entirely unpleasant, I am still not sure if this counts as a positive or a negative.

Watching television

I have never really thought about the idea of politically partisan weather reports before, but when I think about it, it is actually fairly obvious. What do TV weather reports use? Maps. And maps are a traditional way of showing partisan politics. Many Basque nationalist signs and posters of all kinds show an outline of a map of what their ideal independent Basque nation would be. It consists of the three provinces of the autonomous Basque region of Spain, the Spanish province of Navarra, and the Basque area of southern France. (Navarra is Basque in perhaps the same way Vallencia is Catalan. The Basque language is spoken there, but in a different dialect. The two regions have been politically quite distinct for a long while. Navarra was a separate kingdom for centuries. Plus there are more non-Basques living there than in the area around Bilbao and San Sebastian. All this means that separatism is weaker there than here. And separatism is weaker in France than here, largely because the Basque people were never repressed by General Franco there. However, Basque nationalists see some future greater Basqueland consisting of the whole three areas.

Thus the weather report. The maps behind the weather girl showed the weather in the greater Basque area I described, including Navarra and southern France. This area was in a dark colour with everything else white, just as on the nationalist posters. There were no political boundaries shown in this area. And there were no weather reports for anywhere else. As I said, a politically partisan weather report.

Note to Slate.

It may well be that Pixar's great moment in the sun actually isn't now. The film they will release next year, The Incredibles, will be the first Pixar film from Brad Bird, possibly the most brilliant animator working in America today. In 2005, they will release the next film from John Lasseter, who made Toy Story and who has been the driving creative force behind the studio from the start. (Monsters Inc. and Finding Nemo have been directed by Pixar's lesser lights, amazing as it may seem) It may be that despite the fact that "Finding Nemo is Pixar's 500th home run, its 3,000th hit, its third consecutive championship: a triumph that's more important for its relationship to an entire body of work than for its solitary pleasures", Pixar have not peaked yet, and that we will hear the same thing we are hearing now, only louder, for the next two years.

Of course, it is also possible that Pixar will make a mess of their next two films, or that Brad Bird's individual style will overwhelm the fact that The Incredibles is a Pixar film, and that now will be seen as the key cultural moment. However, it is impossible to pick these moments at the time they happen, because ultimately we dont't realise how large cultural forces will be before they are over. The fact is, though, most animation fans thought that this year would simply be a year in which Pixar released a nice little film before the really serious stuff came out in 2004 and 2005.

A nice thing about Bilbao.

Unlike in many European cities, the centre of the city, the casco viejo, has not been overrun by tourists. As a consequence, the cost of owning a shop there is still reasonable. Therefore, the area is full of shops selling ordinary things: shoes, clothes, furniture, household goods, CDs and DVDs, and a nice selection of shops selling weird crap of various kinds. (Also, the area contains a vast number of bars). In most Europeans cities, the shops selling weird crap have had to move out into less salubrious neighborhoods, which is a shame. In Bilbao, though, it is all still in the old centre. Between about 7pm and 9pm, much of the population of the city seems to be walking through this area, wandering in and out of shops, wandering in and out of bars for a drink and a quick snack, and just generally having an evening walk, mainly because it is a pleasant thing to do. This is one thing that makes Bilbao such a pleasant city.

Genuine Basqueness

Today, I came back from San Sebastian to Bilbao, with a lengthy stop in Ondarroa on the way. The coastal geography is stunning, with steep hills and mountains backing directly onto the sea, with fishing towns mostly in the valleys. I chose Ondarroa because there is another bridge designed by Santiago Calatrava over the river Artibai. Again I was underwhelmed. Calatrava's most famous bridge is in Seville. Perhaps I need to go there and look at it. There was an absolutely ancient looking stone arch a little further upstream which, quite frankly, struck me as the most interesting bridge in the town.

Ondarroa was described as a "centre of Basque nationalism" in my guidebook, and it did indeed seem this way. Lots of slogans painted on the walls. I can't understand either Spanish or Basque, but I got the point. They were decrying the brutality and tactics of torture of the guardia civil (But not that of ETA), and demanding independence. The many bars of the town were filled with posters showing a map of the Basque country a different colour to the rest of Spain.

And, as has invariably been the case on this trip, the people were tremendously friendly and welcoming. I went into several bars, had some lunch, drank a little red wine, and it was almost like I was one of the locals. (The Basques, like people in the rest of Spain, seem to spend much of the day drinking a little red wine). In one of the bars, I watched a strange Basque sports program on the television, featuring what looked like an under-15s woodchopping competition, and a weird contest involving picking up large, heavy cubic objects to head height and then dropping them on what looked like a giant bean bag. The winner seemed to be the person who could lift the cubic object as many times as possible. However, there appeared to also be a later round in which the cubic object was bigger. (In fact, it had "230K" written on the side of it, so that may have been its weight).

Anyway, Guernica tomorrow.

More hassles

Earlier today, the blogger homepage showed this, black on white.

Microsoft OLE DB Provider for ODBC Drivers error
'80004005'

[Microsoft][ODBC SQL Server Driver][TCP/IP Sockets]SQL
Server does not exist or access denied.

//global.asa, line 15

This did make it hard to post.

It won't happen

Every now and then, someone in England suggests appointing a member of the royal familty to the position of Governor-General of Australia. It happened with Prince Charles 25 years ago, and it seems to be happening again with Prince William. (Link via Steven Den Beste). Well, it simply isn't going to happen. This was all actually resolved in 1931, when Sir Isaac Isaacs was appointed as the first Australian born Governor General. Prior to that, the G-G had always been British and had primary loyalty to the British government, although this declined over time. When Isaacs was nominated, the King and the British government initially didn't like the idea, but the Australian government prevailed, and at that point, it became clear that it was entirely an Australian appointment. Subsequent to that, the G-G was always an Australian, his duties were purely to Australia and the Australian government, and the British had no role in his appointment, other than the Queen ratifying the appointment. A non-Australian in the role, even a member of the royal family, is unthinkable, in much the same way and for much the same reasons that an Australian is unthinkable as President of Germany. When this sort of suggesting is made in Britain, it merely illustrates that the person making it does not understand the Australian constitutional position.

Dealing with my issues through foreign travel

A few years ago, in the course of my employment, I had a mindblowingly ghastly boss. This man had been promoted way above his level of competence, and had no idea whatsoever about the workings of a financial model he was supposed to be an expert on.

This was one thing, and if he had simply kept out of my way and let me do the work, I could have lived with this. The trouble was that he had no idea how incompetent he was, and thus spent his entire time instructing me to do things that were dumb, pointless, and wrong. Worse than that, he was the sort of person who feels the need to talk to you all day, so while I was trying to do the job properly and do enough of his pointless tasks to make him civil, he was spouting unbelievable crap at me all day long. It was mindblowingly awful.

In any event, I once commented that working with me reminded me of what Adolf Hitler had said about meeting with General Franco: that it was like going to the dentist. Working with this moron was, for me, like having to go to the dentist all day long. My very unimaginative workmates were totally unimpressed by this observation, but were actually sympathetic towards me.

In any event, I yesterday caught the Euskotran train from San Sebastian to Hendaye, just over the border with France. I would have liked to have gone further to St Jean-de-luz, but the French were all on strike, which made this difficult. However, I got out and walked around the SNCF station in Hendaye. It so happens that this railway station is where Hitler and Franco actually met on 23 October 1940, after which Hitler made that comment about Franco and dentists. Next time I have an appalling boss, I at least have a better story to tell.

Of course, people who commemorate historical events don't feel the need to put up plaques commemorating infamous events, so there is no way of knowing that this meeting took place there from looking at the railway station. The waiting room was full of American college students hoping that they would somehow be able to go to Bordeax some time soon. I was tempted to point out that Adolf Hitler had once stood probably a few feet from where they were standing and that thinking about this would maybe make the wait go faster (or not), but managed to resist the temptation.

In any event, I walked over the bridge back into Spain. There are now no customs or immigration controls of any kind: you just walk across the bridge. I then walked from the modern border town of Irun to the older border town of Hondarribia: a gorgeous little walled town. Eventually I heard some music coming up some steps, and walked down to find a nice little bar filled with twentysomething studenty types. I had a couple of beers and a very pleasant baguette filled with all manner of interesting fillings. In all, a good evening.

Blogger

Due to a missing "/" in my html, much of this site has been in bold italics for the last 24 hours. Thanks to blogger being down, I wasn't able to fix it, or indeed to post anything new.

Update: Actually it was two missing "/"s. Whenever it is that blogger chooses to update my site, this should be fixed.

This sounds like fun

This guy gives a very amusing discussion of testing whether anyone pays any attention at all to his signature on credit card slips. He starts out with fairly ordinary things, and then moves on to signing with noughts and crosses boards, Egyptian hieroglyphics, and you name it, really.

Having read this, I yesterday checked in to a hostel here in San Sebastian. I was mildly annoyed to see a "No war for oil" sign on the wall. Now, it is theoretically IYHF policy that hostels are open to all regardless of race, religion, political beliefs, blah blah blah, and this seemed mildly contrary to this policy. Largely, I just wanted somewhere to lie down, but emboldened by what I had read earlier, I decided to make some sort of statement. I signed the credit card slip "Donald Rumsfeld". Nobody noticed, or paid the slightest attention to what I had signed.

An argument for intervention

Sasha Volokh makes some comments about the Spanish Civil War, in particular that in the Spanish civil war neither side was terribly palatable, and that if the choice was communism or Franco, then Franco might have been the lesser of the two evils. As Sasha says, "Remember that when you have a war between side A and side B, side C (i.e., liberal democracy) is not a valid choice". This may be true, but we do not know how repressive communism would have ever become in Spain. Given Spain's physical location at the west of Europe, it seems unlikely that it could have ever become a satellite of the Soviet Union, so how it would have evolved, I don't know. I doubt it would have ever turned into Stalinism. (Sasha sort of says this too in his last paragraph). We know just how bad Franco was, but with the alternatives we simply do not. Sitting where I am right now, about half an hour from Guernica, Franco doesn't seem especially palatable.

And as for sides A, B, and C, I think that all three options may have been choices in 1945. America at that time allowed Franco to remain in power, and as a consequence, the Spanish were stuck with his wretched dictatorship until the mid 1970s. If the Americans had instead invaded Spain and extended Marshall Plan aid and established a democracy, things would probably have become much better much sooner.

These guys take their nationalism seriously, but their football seriouser

I've just arrived in Donostia / San Sebastian. The green, white and red basque flag, the ikurrina is everywhere, much more so than in Bilbao. However, even more prominent than that are blue and white striped flags, which are apparently the colours of Real Sociedad de Fútbol, the local team here. (I have also seen the two sets of colours combined on one flag). (And what is "royal" about the team from San Sebastian? More research clearly needed). San Sebastian is a nice, beachside town that I may well become bored with fairly quickly. It's Friday though, and I am told this is quite a party town. Bilbao was grimier but, I think, more interesting. I am impressed by the road infrastructure in this region. Getting here I went through a very impressive system of motorways and tunnels.

Update: Of course, the reason why San Sebastian is covered with such an enormous number of blue and white flags at the moment can be summarised by looking at this league table. Real Sociedad lead the table by one point with two games to play. They last won the Spanish league in 1982, and have only ever won it twice.

And I am sure guys at the Onion know this

This actually happens a lot, particularly when you are trying to do a Ph.D.

And who said the regional locator doesn't work?

You appear to be viewing this blog from Bilbao, Spain. Welcome.

Update:

You appear to be viewing this blog from San Sebastian, Spain. Welcome.

Update:

You appear to be viewing this blog from $===city===$Bilbao===$, Spain. Welcome.

Hmmmm.

I'm (finally) in the Basque country

Right. After standing for the best part of an hour in a completely crowded bus on the tarmac at Stansted airport due to the fact that a blocked toilet was discovered on the plane between our leaving the terminal and arriving at the aircraft, and after waiting another hour on the ground for French aircraft controllers to stop striking (or something) I had a perfectly uneventful flight to Bilbao, arriving around 11pm. Of course, I hadn't booked accommodation because I had expected to arrive in the morning. After walking around in Bilbao for some time (not helped by the fact that the rain in Spain falls mainly on the Pyrenees, apparently), and discovering a youth hostel that wouldn't check anyone in after 9pm (welcome to the 24 hour world city), I eventually found a pensione with an available room that was at least comfortable and not terribly expensive, and got some extremely necessary sleep - remember, I got up at 2.30 am yesterday.

This morning though, my impression of the place was much more favourable. In a way anything, Bilbao reminds me of Wellington, in that it is a city built in the valleys amongst quite dramatic hills. Unfortunately, it was dark when the aircraft landed, so I didn't see the geography around it. We did have to come through a long tunnel to actually get into Bilbao from the airport, however.

Architecturally, Frank Gehry's Guggenheim is every bit as spectacular as I had heard - a truly magnificent building. Santiago Calatrava's footbridge across the Nervion impressed me less than I thought it would. Interesting but not remarkable. (The way in which the Guggenheim building interacts with an older and much more massive partially cable stayed road bridge is very nice, however).

And one thing in particular that improved my morning. The guidebooks all say that the basques make the best food in Spain, and this seems to be entirely true. One custom is the pintxo. Walk into almost any bar, and the top of the bar will be covered with really deicious and inexpensive savoury items of really delicious food. What a fine way to have breakfast. Yum.

The city of Bilbao is in a valley through which the Nervion river runs, and in particular it is at a point where the river doubles back on itself so there is a sizeable flat area inside the curve of the river. There are rather steep slopes on either side of the river. I walked up to the top of the ridge on one side of the city, and looked over into the next valley. Fortuitously, it happened that I was looking in to the valley with the airport in it. The one runway stretched lengthwise down the valley, which was long and straight enough for it. (I wonder what was there before the airport: there is sufficiently little flat land in this area that it must have been used for something). Santiago Calatrava's airport terminal looks just like one of his bridges, with a little arch on top. It didn't strike me as a great piece of architecture either: Norman Foster's terminal at Stansted (from where I departed yesterday) is better. And it isn't a large airport - it is perhaps on a par with Adelaide or Auckland.

I like this city though. It is an industrial city that went through industrial decline at the right time to avoid modernism, and is so having some really interesting post-materials revolution architecture, engineering and design imposed upon it now.

This is a public service announcement

Troppo Armadillo, Ken Parish's fine (mostly) Australian politics site, has moved to a new home. Update your links, or even if you don't have links go and have a look, as it's a good site.

Enjoyment, hopefully

It is 2.45 am, and I am booked on a flight from Stansted Airport in Essex to Bilbao at 6.45am.(Getting there will be something of a nuisance, but it can be done). I shall be in the Basque country in Spain and maybe France for most of the next week. I am told that as long as I manage to avoid saying anything too complimentary about General Franco, ETA will likely leave me alone. The level of blogging in that time will depend on the ease and expense of internet time when I get there, but there should be some. (And it should be about interesting things). Sadly, it appears the article about introversion and Neal Stephenson has been delayed until I get back.

Update: Well, I was five minutes late for a bus from Croydon to central London, and the next one was fifteen minutes later. This led me to by five minutes late for the bus from Victoria Bus Terminal to Stansted Airport, which led me to arrive at the airport ten minutes after check-in closed for that flight. (This was still 35 minutes before the plane was due to leave. On a full service airline, that would have meant I would have still made the flight, but on a discount airline (Easyjet) there was no such flexibility). Easyjet were however good about it, as they rebooked me onto the next flight to Bilbao without attempting to charge me any extra money. They also offered to convey me to Barcelona instead, but to go there I would have had to have flown from Luton airport, and I had done enough rushing around from airport to airport for the morning. In any event, I wanted to go to Bilbao, so I rebooked onto the next flight, which is not until this afternoon. This is fine: the only reason I booked on the morning flight in the first place was because I could get a cheap fare on it, but it did mean I had got up unnecessarily at 2.30am. The other good thing about it was that I had a few hours in which to visit a good friend in Cambridge who I hadn't seen for a while, and while at her place, I could finish a half complete job application. And hey, also do a little blogging. The moral of all this is that trying to get from Croydon to Stansted airport for a 6.45am flight is a fairly silly thing to do. But hey, the ticket was really cheap.

Insane New Zealander watch

I am not sure if this guy is bearded, but whatever may be said about New Zealanders, they are the sorts of people who will do miraculous things in their back sheds, be this invent the aeroplane, make three Lord of the Rings movies, or in fact build their own home made cruise missiles.

(via NZPundit).

Australia remains a successful democracy

Jacob Levy at the Volokh Conspiracy discusses the threat that Australian federal politics will go the way of Canada or Britain, in which one major political party fades away and we get semi-permanent one party rule as a consequence. I don't personally think this is a serious danger, because the differences between Australia, Canada, and Britain are quite substantial.

Firstly, look what has happened in both Britain and Canada. In Canada, the Progressive Conservative Party had formed many governments over the decades, but in 1993 simple unpopularity mixed up with separatism in Quebec and regional unhappiness in British Columbia meant its parliamentary representation was reduced to just two seats. This made it essentially impossible for the Progressive Conservatives to function as a parliamentary party, and the grass roots organisation of the party simply withered away as a consequence. No parliamentarians meant no money, meaning no party rank and file. With no apparent possibility of the party serving in government in future, ambitious people went elsewhere, and the party has not been able to re-establish itself at subsequent elections. Nobody has been able to establish an alternative national opposition party since, and this is made much harder by separatist sentiments in Quebec, and the simple lack of common ground between different parts of Anglophone Canada. (How much political common ground do people in British Columbia have in common with people in Newfoundland? Not much).

In Britain, the situation is much the same with the Conservative Party. After a long time in power, the party became so unpopular that it lost most of its parliamentary seats. Subsequently, it had a very limited list of MPs from which to choose a shadow ministry, and these tended to be from extremely conservative and nationalist parts of the party, because these were the sorts of candidates most likely to be put forward by local members in safe constituencies. Therefore, the party looked even less relevant to voters, less likely to be elected, and thus less likely to be an organisation that ambitious people would want to join. And the vicious circle perpetuated itself to the extent that nobody in Britain takes the Conservative Party even remotely seriously any more.

That is not to say that the party can never come back. The Labour Party was in 1982 at least as irrelevant as the Tories are now, but the Labour Party now governs. However, it had to completely reform itself first. This reform involved alienating a fairly portion of the traditional party rank and file, and the Tories will have to do something similar if they ever want to govern again.

The trouble in both Canada and the UK is that parties have been defeated so heavily that the parties themselves have become disfunctional as a consequence. This has not happened in Australia

Firstly, the ALP never suffered a defeat on the scale of the Progressive Conservatives in Canada or the Conservative Party in Britain. Secondly, in Australia, a party gains its parliamentary caucus from its members of both houses, and the nature of the senate voting system means that unless a party gets less than about 25% of the vote (which is nowhere near happening for the ALP) it cannot be wiped out in the senate. And even then, the six year terms of the senate generally mean that this would take two elections. Plus, the way in which the ALP selects senate candidates tends to mean that senators are political pragmatists, not extremists.

Look at the situation. When the ALP suffered its heaviest recent defeat in 1996, it still ended up with a total of 78 members out of a total of 224 seats in the two houses (That's 34.8% of the total). At the moment, the ALP has 92 members out of 226 seats. (That's 40.1% of the total). With this many members, the party still functions well at the federal level. The ALP has been in a worse state than this on many occasions in its electoral history (1977, 1965, 1955, and so on). The ALP is an extremely resilient party, much more so than the Liberal Party. (And anyway, in 1987 the Liberal Party was in at least as bad a state as the ALP is now, and the Liberal Party did ultimately come back).

As several other people have mentioned, the ALP is in no danger of deteriorating into irrelevance the way the parties discussed did in Canada and Britain due to the ALP's (unprecedented) strength at the state level. The ALP controls all eight state and territory parliaments. This means that the ALP has power and patronage to offer young and ambitious people who want to join the party, and the needs of government in the states forces the party to remain ideologically relatively moderate.

And these state governments give the federal party somewhere to get a leader from. Almost everybody in politics has a secret (or not so secret) ambition to one day become Prime Minister, and that includes most of the members of the ALP state governments.

The problem is simply that that the ALP doesn't have a decent party leader. Mr Beazley and Mr Crean are both hopeless. If the ALP can find a decent leader, then it stands a good chance of winning an election soon after, because the party itself still has the political resources with which to do so. The Liberal government under John Howard is actually tired and lacks depth of talent. (There is a discussion of who is "the worst minister in recent memory" going on at Ken Parish's website at the moment, and several present ministers are being made fun of at great length). A credible ALP leader could beat the government, possibly not at the next election but very likely at the one after.

And if it really has to, the ALP can find a leader in one of these state governments. Unlike what happens in the US, the Australian political parties do not have traditions of state leaders transferring to federal politics. In the federal parliamentary system, people are traditionally expected to do a parliamentary apprenticeship in the federal sphere before becoming party leader. To some extent, this is the problem. Mr Beazley and Mr Crean have gained the leadership because of their party and parliamentary seniority, which is not always the best way to choose a leader. At some point, however, the party will become desperate. (I think it is fairly close to that point). At that point, it will be possible for a promising junior parliamentarian to become leader, or for a senior state figure to move to the federal sphere to take the leadership. Last time the ALP was in a similar position (in 1980), they imported Bob Hawke, a former union leader, to become leader without the usual parliamentary apprenticeship. Mr Hawke became Prime Minister barely two years after becoming a member of parliament, and led one of the best governments Australia has ever had.

This time, the ALP is more likely to import a state leader. Bob Carr, the long term Premier of NSW, has been mentioned as a possible candidate to do this. Bob Carr may not have the ambition to be Prime Minister (for one think I think he likes being Premier of NSW), but he has the political skills. Like John Howard and George Bush, he is someone who has been underestimated constantly throughout his political career, but he always seems to win. I do not like Mr Carr personally (mainly because he is the precise opposite of what Virginia Postrel would call a "dynamist"), but I quite honestly believe that if he moved to federal politics at the next election, he would be elected Prime Minister the election after that. (I wrote about Mr Carr and his possible federal ambitions once before).

And if this type of thing does not happen with Mr Carr, there are another seven Premiers and Chief Ministers who could conceivably make the move. The strength of the ALP at the state level means that the party remains strong at the grass roots level, regardless of its leadership problems at the federal level. And while that is the case, and while state politicians retain federal ambitions (as they always will) the party is never going to fade away at the federal level.

Socialising, or something

I am off to have lunch with Perry and Gabriel, and I have a half written piece on being an introvert, and on author Neal Stephenson, which I shall finish and post this evening.

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.