NSEW

A few years ago, when quite a few of us were procrastinating during our PhD’s, we stumbled upon the Political Compass web site. It defined your political leaning not just by traditional left/right categories, but also whether you were social libertarian/ authoritarian. It then placed your position on a Cartesian grid and you could compare yourself to dictators, humanitarians, etc. Most of us turned out to be left leaning libertarians. My score was –7 (ie left) and –6.05 (ie social libertarian).

Anyway, recently I was thinking whether the following two scales would also form a compass of some sort. Maybe it’s exactly the same as the political compass, I’ll have to think about it. Here are my two scales.

1) The first one is in regards to legislative law.

After the fact ----------------------------------------- Preventative

Examples.
After the fact: The law against murder exists to provide justice after the act has been committed It is assumed that a person will murder someone whether or not the law exists.
Preventative: The law against murder exists because, if it didn’t, everyone would go about murdering willy-nilly.

2) The second scale is with respect to your social conscience.

Selfish ------------------------------------------------------ Selfless

Examples.
Selfish: You only do things to benefit yourself and this ultimately benefits society as a whole.
Selfless: You only do things to benefit others and this ultimately benefits you.

Do you think this would make a good compass? Where would you put yourself?

Aside: I think the second scale may also apply to relationships. I have seen couples where one is at one end, and the partner is at the other. Seeing these couples and how they have gone, only one seems to get hurt, the selfless one. I think you need to be on the same side for both to be happy. Is this too simplistic?

Jingo-Bingo

I can't watch the commonwealth games coverage. The 'how good is Australia' crap that they go on just gets me angry. Just to let you know, I am not a fan of nationalism, patriotism, and any of those similar isms. I judge a person on their individual merits or achievements, not on their nationality. I refuse to praise someone just because of an accident by birth. An analogy that springs to mind is the monarchy. I see no difference in monarchists who follow someone just because they were born into a particular family and so called patriots who follow someone who happens to have been born in a particular country. It' s the same line of logic.

There are 71 countries and territories competing. But why is the division at the country level? Why isn't every Australian state represented by its own team? At the Olympics, England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland don't compete as separate entities. I mean the Australian federation of states was only just successful in coming together. Image if the states competed against each other. Channel 9 would have to have a separate commentary team for each state exhibiting that parochial crap. You would only see Victorian winners and Victorian interviews in Victoria, Tasmanian winners and Tasmanian interviews in Tasmania, and so on. Victory ceremonies and anthems would only be shown in the appropriate state. Stuff the other states.

And another thing. In the individual sports, and I hate to tell you this, but competitors compete for themselves. They don't compete for 'queen and/or country'. What drives them is their desire to be their best. I have no problem with that. In fact I think that is what sport should be about. I don't give a rats about what banner they happen to compete under, I want to embrace their grit, determination and talent. This is what should be highlighted no matter where they come from. So until the coverage reflects this I don't think I'll be watching much. I won't hold my breath.

Fact or fiction

If there is one thing that gets me going, it's newspaper articles that are poorly researched. Take, for example, an article from the Good Weekend about a tribe called the Sentinelese who live on North Sentinel Island. It's an article that was first published in the London Observer under the title Survival comes first for the last Stone Age tribe world".
The last paragraph in the Good Weekend edition reads

"When the tsunami struck in 2004, the Sentinelese knew the evil spirits were up to no good. Minutes before the waves struck, tribal leaders scattered pig and turtle skulls around their settlement and hurled stones toward the ocean before gathering their baskets, bows and arrows and amulets of ancestral bones for protection.

They all survived - for how long, though, it is hard to say."


I found this hard to believe mainly because the whole article was about how isolated this tribe was and how little contact they had had with the outside world. The first question to arise was, how did the reporter know that this scenario in fact happened? I decided to check the facts.

Firstly let's look at the first contact after the tsunami struck. Two days after the tsunami, the Indian Coast Guard decided to check the damage caused to the island. The helicopter pilot saw and took pictures of a lone man firing one arrow at the helicopter. This fact turns into a group of tribesmen firing a shower of arrows. Sounds so much better then just one guy. This "fact" is now used in subsequent stories.

The paragraph states that all of the islanders survived. I'm sorry, but the author cannot definitely know this to be true. Why? Firstly, no one outside the island knew before the tsunami what the population was. The Indian government made an educated guess but that's all it was, a guess. Other guesses put the population between 50 - 250 inhabitants. After the tsunami, no outsider was able to count the population. So to say with certainty that they all survived is just fiction.

As to the story of turtle and pig skulls being scattered around by the Sentinelese, this again is just made up. No one has successfully interviewed an islander since the tsunami struck (highly impropable since no one knows how to speak the language) so it is impossible to know what they did. So where do they get this story from? It is known that that Onge tribe from another island of the Andamans do scatter these objests about during ceremonies. Onge/Sentinelese, what's the difference? Anyway, it makes for a better story. Why let the facts get in the way.

Weekend at the 'G

I spent the weekend competing in and watching the Victorian Athletics Championships at the MCG. This event was used as a dress rehearsal for the Commonwalth Games.

It was good to be out on the track and having a run. I've been at Aus. and Vic. championships before but this was different. The procedure of warming up at the outside track (Olympic Park), having to be in the call room in the bowels of the MCG 30 minutes before your race, using the 50m track that has been built in the car park under the Great Southern Stand, having your spikes checked by officials, patiently waiting in seated rows according to your lane draw, being led out onto the MCG all added up to a unique experience.

There were four rounds in the 100m, the first round had 20 heats comprised of nearly 150 athletes from all over Australia and quite a few from surrounding countries. The goal was to make it through to the 2nd round (48 athletes left) as a miracle would be required to proceed further. Mission accomplished. I didn't make it through to the semis (last 16) and only three Victorians made it to the final. But I did 'win' one thing. My coach told me that I had the fastest reaction time out of the blocks in all the 100m races. I found that very hard to believe, so I went to the results and checked the reaction times. It was true. In my round one race. And it was a legal reaction time. Not bad for a 36 year old. I'll hang my hat on that one.

Trial and tribulation

There is a strange trial going on in Italy at the moment. It involves Luigi Cascioli, an ex-trainee priest who is now an atheist, suing a current priest, Father Righi, after the priest attacked him for casting doubt over the historical legitimacy of the gospels. He decided to fight back.

His complaint is as follows:
"This complaint does not wish to contest the freedom of Christians to profess their faith, sanctioned by art. 19 of the Italian Constitution, but wishes to denounce the abuse that the Catholic Church commits by availing itself of its prestige in order to inculcate – as if being real and historical – facts that are really just inventions."

There are many who believe that there is no credible evidence outside of the gospels that Jesus was a historical figure. For example, Earl Doherty. There is interesting discussion of this on infidels.org.

The first hearing on the 27th of January contained an interesting statement from the defence. It was along the lines that the blame of a possible historical forgery is not to be put on Don Righi but on those who have sustained it before him.

Love that defence! The priest is only spoon fed. The church tells him what to say so he says it. He doesn't think for himself. It's not his fault that he doesn't ask questions about his own faith. It's almost an admission that they can't prove Jesus' historical existence.

Guess how much coverage this trial is getting in the Italian media? It's a round figure. More specifically, zero. Don't want people questioning the dogma that they have had forced down their mouths.