Quip of the month

Smile, breathe and go slowly.

  Thich Nhat Hanh

Once more in transit

The first step in any journey is often taken long before it formally begins.   For me it usually starts with memories of past journeys---the time in England when I got lost on the morning of my son's wedding, the panic I experienced in Paris, when I nearly missed meeting up with a school-friend, because of misunderstood French instructions, the day all planes in London were grounded by a terrorist threat and I was stranded in Crete with my English grand-children, those happy days in Pakistan, before it descended into its current fragile state and all those moments in far-off parts of the northern hemisphere that have given me a sense of home-away-from-home.   

Tomorrow I am off again on a journey to see my grandchildren in England.  Which means, of course, a long flight.

Suspended here in coma land

so far above all friends and home

that life itself seems left behind

time has me trapped, inert, confused

in dimmed half light in shadow land
                                 

and all around the strangers flit                                 

they come and go, unknown, unreal

they make me eat, they do their rounds

a kind of hour glass they become 

they mark the time like silent sand.

For here time’s dressed in strange new garb

which does not fit its normal frame
it is not day, it is not night
not what’s below, not what’s behind, 
not yet the time of when we land.

So far above each travelled land
time cannot be the way it was
before my zones of numbed existence
were crossed to meet my children’s children.

           The price I pay to hold their hand.

The end of Osama

When we're fighting a war in Afghanistan to destroy terrorist training camps that are actually inside the land of Pakistan (our ally), it is only to be expected that the iconic terrorist Osama bin Laden will be captured near Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan and within cooee of an elite military academy and an important military base.   It is doubly ironic that he was captured and eliminated on the order of that well-known softie, Barack Obama, who (we're supposed to believe) wasn't really born in the USA and is, in fact, a secret Muslim!

Peace in our own time?

The bands are playing Waltzing Matilda all over Australia this morning over ninety years on from that first Anzac day. And still young Australians are fighting far from home in today's conflict zones, while in the Middle East yesterday's battlegrounds now witness the slaughter of citizen protesters by their own rulers.

A professional journalist !

The CSIRO last week released their report on the Home Insulation Program begun in 2009.
As many would know, the reality of the Home Insulation Program (HIP) was always very different from that suggested by easy, sensational media headlines.  Using the CSIRO data,  Possum Comitatus here provides a model for how the MSM could have reported  this important public policy in a numerate and objective way.  He has found that :
         the Home Insulation Program reduced the short term fire rate by   approximately 70% compared to what was happening before it.  It was over 3 times safer than the industry it replaced in terms of the numbers of fire experienced within 12 months of getting insulation installed.
        the long term rate for the post-12 month period is already starting to average around the 0.66 fires per 100,000 houses installed mark, compared to the 2.06 fires per 100,000 houses installed seen from the pre-HIP industry installations.

In short, the HIP was safer over both the short term (the fire rates over the 12 month period from installation) as well as the longer term (the residual long term fire rates that occur from 12 months after the insulation was installed).
 Another enlightening Possum  blog.

Update:  See also here (Grog's gamut--Shouting fire from a pre-Budget theatre.)

Remembering Yuri

50 years ago this week Yuri Gagarin became the first man to journey into space, thereby launching the space race and a decade of competition between the USA and the USSR to explore space, to reach the moon and eventually to collaborate on space stations and work together beyond earth in space.  This was truly one great step for humanity.

Making budget cuts (US Style) 2

There has been a lot of attention this week on the possibility of a shut-down of the US government because of deep political divisions over budget cuts.    And it did seem that the final bargaining appeared to be more about ideological issues than about monetary cuts. 


However, this battle is a mere skirmish compared to what is likely to occur, if the next Republican Budget plan is any guide.  This (Ryan) plan proposes:
        $4.3 trillion in spending cuts over the next 10 years.

Two-thirds of these cuts come from programmes aimed at low-income Americans: Medicaid, food stamps, grants for low-income students etc.     [Medicaid cuts of $771 billion, $1.4 trillion from repealing the health reform law's Medicaid expansion and its subsidies to help low-income people purchase health insurance etc]

       

       $4.2 trillion proposed in new tax cuts

The top rate goes from 35% (under Bush) down to 25%, lower than at any time post New Deal.
 The enormous cuts do essentially nothing to balance the budget: 98% of the proposed savings  from spending cuts go to finance new tax cuts.

For good measure the Republican plan also repeals the Dodd-Frank reform of financial regulations, passed (July 2010) after the recent GFC meltdown.