It's not simple, is it?

Modelling the complexities of nature is not a simple task, nor a certain one. We keep finding new, surprising things to factor in to our calculations... The big blue ocean is getting noisier. Sound can now travel further than it did a century ago, thanks to carbon emissions that have made the oceans more acidic.

OTOH, this is not a reason to throw our hands in the air and say, "too hard". Rather it should egg us on to further discovery and understanding. And quickly, before our planet says "enough".

Catching up with ABC iView

When your STB lets you down, at least there's ABC iView on the PC... but now I want it streamed live, not delayed ;-) Well actually I should just update my DVB-T STB with a harddrive and make a PVR out of it... but that's too many abbreviations for me today!

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The dangers inherent in correlating data

Now this could be a fascinating insight or simply way off beam. Without further research on the topic to persuade me otherwise, I'm going for the latter. It's nonsense: Although political views have been thought to arise largely from individuals' experiences, recent research suggests that they may have a biological basis. We present evidence that variations in political attitudes correlate with physiological traits. In a group of 46 adult participants with strong political beliefs, individuals with measurably lower physical sensitivities to sudden noises and threatening visual images were more likely to support foreign aid, liberal immigration policies, pacifism, and gun control, whereas individuals displaying measurably higher physiological reactions to those same stimuli were more likely to favor defense spending, capital punishment, patriotism, and the Iraq War. Thus, the degree to which individuals are physiologically responsive to threat appears to indicate the degree to which they advocate policies that protect the existing social structure from both external (outgroup) and internal (norm-violator) threats.

Correlations are tricky things. There's no causation here, just a coincidence of data. Yes, it seems convincing, but how deeply does it go? Tip it around - perhaps instead of your 'political leanings' being linked to your physical reactions and thus being biological in origin, perhaps instead what you learn as political animals over time shapes your reactions. We would need to delve very deeply here - and longitudinally, from birth - to find what actually comes first - be it the so-called 'hard-wired' response (suggested but unproven here) or the politico-social viewpoint. Ask yourself, does the correlation expressed here vary by language type and skill, by culture, and by experience? Have they checked? How could they check?

There's also a danger that someone will believe this to be "true"and use it to "prove" some case that socially-aware and caring people are "cowards" or "fearful" and thus not to be trusted with decisions or in situations where shock, awe or force may be involved. Or maybe it's all true, who knows.

unsupportable statements 101

Forbes has weighed in with a biggie: All's not doom and gloom once you venture off Wall Street. In fact, there are some positive signs in the "rest of the economy." Dropping oil prices are good for the airlines; everyone still needs toothpaste and shaving cream.

What am I on about? The glib, throwaway statement that"everyone still needs toothpaste and shaving cream". Well no, they don't. We got away without both of those things for a very, very long time; and plenty of people have found good reasons to not need them today, either. Food and shelter, yes; toothpaste and shaving cream? I don't recall seeing those in any hierarchy of needs.

Puerile, gutter-level fun drops audience

I have to laugh when the puerile, self-indulgent antics of the "Footy Show" is outrated by the public broadcaster's knee-jerk attempt to balance right and left-wing views, the surprisingly watchable "QandA": But at least someone was watching, as The Footy Show recorded one its worst ratings performances of the year in Sydney with less than 200,000 tuning in. It was again beaten by the ABC's interactive political debate show Q&A, which had 249,000 viewers to The Footy Show's 191,000, pushing The Footy Show into fourth behind Law and Order: SVU and Ghost Whisperer.

Maybe the TV audience is growing up. Shame Channel 9 can't get their collective heads around that idea!

Guitar gadgets: Line 6 'Backtrack'

An inline memory device that records your guitar playing as you go, with the ability to mark the bits (and I do mean bits) you want to keep and dump to your PC. There's a microphone option, too. Always on, BackTrack begins recording as soon as it detects a signal. Just plug into the quiet 1/4-inch input and start playing. And use the 1/4-inch output for immediate playback. Just set it and forget it for total inspiration control. Pressing the “Mark” button designates what you just played as special and separates it for easy review. The Forward and Reverse buttons provide instant recall of marked and non-marked ideas. It has a Gig of on-board flash RAM.

Alternatively you could also just run your guitar through your PC (using iAxe or some other USB interface) and save as you go, but that's a heftier option, especially if you are playing away from home.

Words, words, words

Today's misused word, or perhaps the word I choose to bolt down and tickle to death today is tactile. Tactile generally means 'perceptible to the sense of touch' or, perhaps, something close to 'tangible'. At a stretch you could make it more abstract, giving tactility to language for example, but I wouldn't recommend it myself

I mention it because a motor noter at Fairfax wrote: The dash is slightly soft to the touch, giving a more tactile feel than the harder plastics typical of competitors.

Now I'm all for the evolution of language and the constant mutation of meaning, but what's going on here? The writer is saying that a soft dash is somehow by degree more tactile, ie 'more' perceptible to the touch, than a harder one? If this is possible, which I doubt, wouldn't a softer plastic actually be ever so slightly less tactile? In fact this is all codswallop, either you can feel it or you can't, surely? Either it's tactile or it's not.

I gather the author of this nonsense, Toby Hagon, just wanted to say the softer plastic was, indeed, softer than a harder one, and nicer to boot. Groan. Just keep him away from the thesaurus, pleeeease!

Should we laugh or cry?

Interesting take today on fairness and equity in society by a community group spokesperson in Camden, NSW:The president of the Camden/Macarthur Residents Group, Emil Sremchevich, told Fairfax the Catholic plan "ticks all the right boxes", even though he was yet to see its development application. "Catholics are part of our community so we should be supporting it on this basis alone," Mr Sremchevich told Fairfax. "To become part of the community, you need to live in the community. You can't just turn up."

Apparently this Mr Sremchevich believes people of a Catholic disposition definitely reside in Camden, whereas Muslim folk come from "elsewhere". Not sure how he "knows" this, perhaps he did a door-by-door survey of everyone in the district. And the local Muslim believers of course owned up to the inquisitors immediately and honestly; or perhaps simply lied, as one suspects non-Catholics may do. (Oh dear, and me not at all a Catholic, either.) In any event we are assured there are no people of the Muslim faith anywhere near Camden, so why they wanted a school there in the first place is just plain weird.

Mr Sremchevich is surprisingly not at all discriminating with regard to what is being built. If it's proposed by a Catholic group it gets immediate approval without further consideration, according to his quoted words. That certainly speeds up the development process, doesn't it? (Who needs the previous planning minister Frank Sartor when you have this bloke in charge.)

I certainly agree with Mr Sremchevich that his is not a racist stance. Mr Sremchevich said he was not being racist. He is not discriminating by race, rather by religion. Hey, isn't there a law against that, too?

If quoted correctly, Mr Sremchevich surprisingly admits to being "a beast": "Why is it xenophobic just because I want to make a choice. If I want to like some people and not like other people, that's the nature of the beast," he said. Being "a beast" may be a good thing, but I'm not sure of the context. Mr Sremchevich should however seek assistance in defining "xenophobia" as he may be a tad unclear on what 'a fear of foreigners' may actually mean. It may not mean that he's afraid of them, per se, because he's obviously a brave man to say these things, but perhaps any dislike of people from outside one's own area or district of locale, zone of comfort or belief could fit the bill. I'm just trying to help.

Even more surprisingly he is advocating dividing suburbs up along car ownership lines, proposing gated communities for particular brands: "It's very simple: people like some things but don't like other things ... some of us like Fords, some of us like Holdens." I'm not sure if the Holdens (a GM brand, btw) can traverse Ford suburbs (or Territories, a local Ford joke ha-ha) and vice versa. (Shame I didn't fit a Chevy Suburban gag in there too but Aussies don't actually buy cars that big, I hope). It's unclear if Camden will be deemed a Ford or Holden suburb by Mr Sremchevich, or which brand will subsequently be forced to leave the suburb.

Camden was a nice township when I last visited. They have a splendid little semi-rural environment with an interesting history. It's also close to transport and forever threatened by over-development. Whilst I favour preserving the theme and flavour of such quaint townships on the outskirts of Sydney, it would be a shame to see it isolated from the rest of Sydney, walled up and gated from intrusion. If everyone did that we'd have a lot of unnecessary fear and loathing of the people "outside", which of course would be everyone else.

Hyundai derivative, Ford and VW original... yeah, riiight

From the increasingly annoying drive.com.au... And as compression ignition sales grow, it's no surprise that aggressive Korean manufacturer Hyundai is leading the assault. The evidence is the i30 CRDi, a stylish (albeit derivative) small car that is well equipped, space-efficient and part of a model line-up selling well in Australia's most popular segment.

It's great that smaller, less thirsty cars are in the spotlight, but why slap Hyundai around just because? Somehow the almost-identically styled and packaged Focus and Golf are not instantly labelled "derivative", even though they are clearly derived both from previous models in their own stables, and also generally in the marketplace. They all have hatches, drive the front wheels, are similar boxes with subtle curves. None of them actually add anything new that we haven't seen before. So exactly what is drive.com.au getting at? That Hyundai's somehow not "worthy" enough is how I read it.

This is typical motor-noter weariness and laziness but please, please get over it.

Neither spelling nor logic a forte

What can we learn from nineMSM today? Apart from the ubiquitousness of gossipy trash, we now know that good spelling is no longer guaranteed. I usually don't care, but it's just so bleedin' obvious!!

The other obvious thought is that it's a non-story. Of course banks won't guarantee a rate cut just because - and even if - the Reserve Bank adjusts its cash rate target. It's a target, a hint, and little more. It certainly makes it more likely that rates will come down but it's not a given. Why beat these stories up? Why does the old media try to make the banks look like the bad guys, especially when lots of us home owners own shares in these banks and don't want them to make bad commercial decisions?

Oh yeah, these old fairy stories still resonate with lots of people, that's right. And the old media no longer care about reporting the truth, they just want to feather their own nests. Got it.