lostwanderfound

USAdian politics appear to be getting even crazier than usual...

Got my Special Fields marks back (aka Neuroscience plus Language & Cognition): each one got the same result, HD, 89%. Quite happy with that; it should suffice nicely to make up the ground I lost on Statistics and Psychometrics. Still slightly annoyed that I didn't crack 90%, though.

Got myself into a bit of a hole with the thesis, but I think I've turned the corner on digging myself out of that one. Gonna be a busy couple of months.

Got some results back: 74% for Statistics and Research Design, 72% for Psychometrics.

Not great by my standards, but better than I was expecting for these two. So long as I don't make a total hash of my thesis, I've still got a decent chance of a first.

Seriously sick of data analysis, however. Rather wishing that I'd chosen to do my Honours in HPS at the moment.

...or have a look at the Random Postmodernism Generator.

If any of y'all are interested in hearing some seriously clued-up talk about global politics over the last couple of decades, with a particular focus on Iraq and Russia, check this out.

It's John Gray, Professor of European Thought at the London School of Economics, providing a counterpoint to the Fukuyama Neocon crew. And, interestingly for me, he's the first person I've heard who's also saying what I've been suggesting since the start of the Iraq war: it's actually all about Saudi Arabia. [1]


[1] Drastically oversimplified version of the idea: 9/11 wasn't primarily driven from Afghanistan (and certainly not Iraq). Bin Laden is very much a product of Saudi Arabia, and even the neocons in power in the US during 9/11 realised this (whether the Shrub personally has this much understanding is another question, however).

However, the US can't afford to offend the Saudis 'cos they've got the Yanks by the balls oil-wise. So, Bushco and associates start looking around for an easily-toppled oil-rich nation that they think they can transform into a new parking lot/petrol station for the US military in the Middle East, in order to free themselves to tell the Saudis to bugger off.

(that's stage 1 and 2; stage 3 was to be an attempt at deliberately stirring up a "democratic revolution" in Saudi Arabia...)

Judgements as to the wisdom of this "plan" I leave as an exercise for the reader.

The preview of my pneumonia article is already up on the web. Won't see the hardcopy until September, though.

...from the mighty xkcd.

The National:

Somewhat messed up by dramas-with-ex-girlf, but plenty of fun moments nonetheless. Highlights were the wonderful Trouble in the Kitchen [1] and the hugely entertaining The Duhks [2]. Honourable mentions also to Peggy Seeger & Mike Compton.

I had a bit of a CD splurge post-festival as well, picking up The Be Good Tanyas first two albums (Blue Horse and Chinatown). They're both wonderful, especially Chinatown [3]. Everyone should buy these; go hit their website and do it now.

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Other stuff: my Honours year is continuing to be a constant work overload experience. I'm keeping my nose above water (just), though. Neuroscience presentation next Wednesday, Thesis Research Proposal due next Friday, Language & Cognition presentation Tuesday week.

Up until yesterday, I also had the peer-review response on my pneumonia paper to worry about, but it's now been sent back for final approval. I made most of the changes that the reviewers wanted, and the ones I didn't do are mainly things that I just don't have the time to do (for example, they wanted me to expand it to cover influenza vaccination as well). If they accept it, then good; if not, it's no big deal. I'm just glad to have the thing done with...

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Other other stuff: capn_arrgh, I'm sorry I didn't get in touch with you down in Canberra. I didn't leave the festival all weekend; my evenings were spent dancing out my frustrations up in front of Trouble [4]. Woulda been nice to catch up, though.


[1] Easily the best Irish band in Australia, and their new album The Next Turn is spectacularly good by any standard. Highly recommended.

[2] The Duhks have acquired a new singer; Jessee Havey has been replaced by Sarah Dugas. There was nothing wrong with Jessee's work, but Sarah is another step up; the French influence comes through a bit more strongly now, and their version of Whole Lotta Love has to be seen to be believed. I just wish Tania would sing a bit more; her vocals on Three Fishers are wonderful...

[3] Take care in exposing any depressed friends you may have to the version of Townes Van Zandt's [5] Waiting Around to Die on Chinatown, however; that might just possibly be the most depresso-genic song ever recorded...

[4] To such an extent that on the last day of festival I had half a dozen instances of random strangers greeting me with comments along the lines of "hey, aren't you that guy who was dancing like a maniac at Trouble in the Kitchen last night?".

[5] Incidentally, the Townes biopic Be Here to Love Me is also worth seeing.

xkcd, the geekboy's poet laureate.

( Clicky for the piccy )

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In other news:

The first half of my scholarship cash has shown up (and I'm about to blow some of it on a ticket to the National). In terms of uni in general, I'm rapidly oscillating between confidence and total panic, with panic gaining the upper hand this week. Still, I seem to be gradually closing in on some usable research questions.

At the moment, it looks like I'll be investigating a couple of proposals (most notably from Kalveram and Karniol) about how prosody (ie: intonation, vocal stress, etc.) is integrated into articulatory motor programs and how auditory, visual and kinesthetic feedback can affect this system. The experiments are likely to involve doing tricky things to folks involving delayed- and frequency-shifted- auditory feedback (as well as anything else I can think up).

I just had an email back from the prospective publishers of my sole-authored article. The peer reviewers have made some comments about things that they'd liked changed, but overall it looks pretty positive. A bit of polishing, and I think it'll get up.

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Also: intro to Honours day today, including assignments of Special Fields seminars. It looks like I'll be doing Psycholinguistics and Neuroscience this year...

Home again, finally; over three weeks on the road. Probably more details later, but for now: highlights.

* Doing surprisingly well at the Woodford Slam Poetry heats. Contrary to expectations of getting chased off the stage, people clapped and cheered. Huge fun.

* Desert stars. Of course.

* Mechanical adventures: having to tow the Beemer into the Barkly Homestead behind plush_maggot's 250 (thanks to a loose wire on the ignition coil) and getting her valves sorted at a genuine underground garage in Coober Pedy (Vince is a god). And plush_maggot is doing the last leg today, owing to being held up for a day in Dubbo waiting for a new chain, set of sprockets and rear tyre to replace the comprehensively buggered ones he had yesterday.

* Cute British backpackers at Radeka's in Coober Pedy.

* Saltpans.

* The Breakaways.

* Mutitjulu, as always.

Just a quick check-in; me an' plush_maggot are at Camooweal, about to cross the border into the territory.

All is well; no spills, no major mechanical disasters (apart from my pannier frames vibrating into several bits and an occasional vapour lock from the Beemer if I run it too fast in the middle of the day).

Still on schedule, should be back in Sydney in about a week and a half.

I just mailed off the letter accepting the offer of a spot in Psych Honours for 2008.

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Off to Woodford tomorrow, then Uluru after that with plush_maggot.

My final results have just been released:

HPSC 3024 Science and Ethics 86.0% (High Distinction)
PSYC 3010 Advanced Statistics for Psychology 78.0% (Distinction)
PSYC 3013 Perceptual Systems 85.0% (High Distinction)
PSYC 3014 Behavioural and Cognitive Neuroscience 77.0% (Distinction)

Quite happy with that.

The leadership stand-off between Tony Abbott and Malcolm Turnbull amid the wreckage of the Liberal Party: Sydney's Abbott and Adelaide's Senator Nick Minchin, guardians of the "Howard legacy", used the Right's influence to keep Turnbull, the strong moderate, just out of the leadership and put Brendan Nelson, the weak moderate, in as Howard's successor.

In one of the more brutal political squelches of recent years, even the old Treasury mandarin, John Stone, a former National Party Senate leader, was moved to say of Nelson: "He reminds me of Andrew Peacock without the substance." Nelson's absurd elevation, by so narrow a margin (45 votes to 42), only makes sense if you accept that sooner or later either Turnbull or Abbott will eat him. Not immediately, of course, but inevitably.

- Alan Ramsay, in Saturday's SMH.

I'm having a good day.

I spent five hours this morning helping to get rid of the lying weasel, I found my first final semester result (Science and Ethics, HD, 86%) and this evening I'm going to the Greens election party at the Alexandria Hotel then on to the Mu-Meson Archive party at Hermann's, where they will apparently have a John Howard piñata.

As mentioned in the previous post, I'll be campaigning for the Greens next weekend, so I thought I should explain why. If you don't wanna know, feel free to skip.

The Greens are not a one-issue party; they have a range of policies across the board, most of which I'm in thorough agreement with. However, the key issue in this election is a Greens specialty: climate change.

I know that climate change has been only a peripheral part of the major party campaigns, but it really is the most important question we're facing right now. Education, industrial relations, foreign affairs, health care, the economy, whatever; all of these things are important, but they pale into insignificance next to climate change. If we don't get on top of the climate problem, nothing else matters; the best managed economy in the world is still going to go down the tubes if climate-driven changes to global agriculture, health and politics trash the whole place.

Climate change isn't some future possibility; it is happening now. The Northwest Passage is open, the North Pole is looking like the bottom of the esky after a day at the cricket and the last great wilderness areas of Australia are drying up and dying in fire.

We've already passed the point of no return in regards to completely avoiding the negative consequences, and just minimising those negative impacts requires that we take decisive action right now. We can't afford to wait for another decade or two of parliamentary investigations and diplomatic wrangling. We must start dramatically reducing CO₂ emissions today. Every minute we delay increases the cost, increases the harm and increases the danger.

We can get out of this; we do have the technological ability. All that's lacking is the political will. If climate change is allowed to spiral into truly catastrophic consequences, we can clearly say that the death and destruction to follow will be a direct result of human stupidity. This won't be something that "happened" to poor, unsuspecting humanity; it will be something that we chose to let happen.

The major parties are structurally incapable of taking appropriate action on climate change. The Coalition are ideologically opposed to acknowledging the existence of anthropogenic climate change and financially dependent on massively polluting big business. The ALP response to climate change is similarly crippled by Labor's dependence on the CFMEU and the like. Neither party shows the slightest possibility of overcoming these limitations in the time required.

The Greens aren't likely to ever be a major force in the lower house, but they can still have a strong impact. Firstly, every vote to a Greens candidate affects the distribution of electoral funding, so even if we didn't have preferential voting it still wouldn't be a "wasted" vote. Secondly, I know that a lot of my friends live in the sort of inner-city areas where the Greens actually do have a chance of getting a lower house candidate up. Just one Green in the House of Reps can do a lot in keeping the climate agenda as a central political issue.

However, the key arena in this battle is the Senate: the balance of power is once again up for grabs, and a Green-balanced Senate is the best chance we have of getting out of this mess.

Save the world.
Vote Green.

As I'll be spending 6 hours or so next Saturday morning annoying people on behalf of the Greens, I thought that today I should have a repeat presentation of my old post about democracy.

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Anybody feel like having an election night celebration on Saturday? Get together somewhere for a few drinks while we watch Johnnie go down?