Much of the discussion around health care reform, whether in Australia or the US, seems to be based upon an assumption that more medicine is better.

This recent article at The Drum by the ABC’s Michael Brissenden doesn’t quite get to the crux of the problems with the US system of “Cadillac care” (ie that a specialist-driven health system doesn’t deliver the best population health outcomes, quite apart from the costs involved).

Prostate cancer screening is an example of how too much medicine can be to the detriment of the public’s health, according to a Melbourne cancer specialist, Dr Ian Haines. He writes: Read more »

Anyone who has wandered around a News Limited building in recent times will have seen the posters about the organisation’s attempt to become carbon neutral. In 2007, Rupert Murdoch made the brave or rash promise that the multi-national media giant would be carbon neutral by the end of this year. So how’s it going?

According to this article in the American Editor and Publisher, not too bad. News Corp in the UK is already carbon neutral. In the USA the dire state of the newspaper industry has held things back but even there they are tracking in the right direction. There is doubt that it is the old ink on dead trees businesses that are the worst in terms of emissions, due to all the transport and energy involved in printing and distributing.

There’s no information here about how Australia is doing. It would be interesting to know.

We saw something in the SA election on Saturday night that you just don’t see very often in Australian elections – a major skew in the swing. Often what happens when a swing is on against a government is that there’s a slight skew, where safe government seats swing very slightly more, on average, than government held marginal seats.

The last Fed election is a good example: if we scatter the pre-election, ALP two party preferred of each government held seat against the swing to the ALP that each seat experienced, we get a big cloud with a very slight but statistically insignificant trend involved:

If we run the exact same chart for what happened on Saturday in SA, where we use the Liberal Party TPP in government held seats going into the election and scatter it against the swing to the Liberal party in each, the result is pretty amazing: Read more »

After the two weekend state elections, it’s likely that two Labor governments will be (re-)formed: a majority government in SA and a minority government in Tasmania with Greens support (unless the Greens flip to supporting the Libs).

Not that you’d know it from today’s headlines…

• ‘Rudd Faces Anti-Labor Headwinds’ – The Australian
• ‘Libs back from the dead’ – Glenn Milne in The Australian
• ‘Abbott says elections a warning for Rudd’ – ABC.net.au News
• ‘Liberals win the vote, lose the election’ – Adelaide Advertiser
• ‘Liberals hail the fabulous four’ – Adelaide Advertiser
• ‘Liberals ready to share power’ – The Australian

The only thing missing is for some muppet to point out just how strong and consistent the Liberal’s election results are across the nation – just look how often they come second!

POLITICS AND ECONOMICS

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During the last six months I’ve had to stop drinking. Pregnancy and alcohol are a “no-no,” and I haven’t felt like it anyway.

Enforced “dryness” has been interesting. It’s made me think twice about who I want to socialise with and also made me reflect on the drinking habits I’ve established over the last few years.

When you’re not drinking and hanging out with people who are, and “getting on it,” the scene quickly becomes intensely boring.

James Annan writes that their paper debunking McLean, De Freitas and Carter has been published and:

Amusingly, the comment will be published alone, without the customary Reply. Why? Because...McLean et al couldn't muster a reply that was publishable (and not for want of trying, either - it was simply rejected).

I'm sure Energy and Environment will publish it quick smart.

Ove Hoegh-Guldberg is less kind:

1) Will McLean et al. retract the paper (and will Bob Carter admit fault or even discuss the errors publicly)?

2) Will the denial0sphere and the MSM give this story (a climate change scandal!) the same coverage it has recently showered on various IPCC hiccups?

3) Will there be an investigation as Bob Carter himself and so many other skeptics have insisted on over and over again, usually in response to bogus and unsubstantiated allegations. Read more »

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Moby Dick is practically unreadable. Sez me who tried to read it just the once. But you'd think it was scribed on stone and brought down from on high by some in the literary world. I guess I just don't get it.

The white whale has become a standard trope; a metaphor for that which is sought with futility. At least that's my reading of it.

I have a White Whale. Well ... a brown arse whale. In that being the bunged up IBS kind, my frequency of actually performing a bog standard (ho, ho) bowel movement is rare indeed. The last super great one was on Halloween. Read more »

Crikey was peddling a rumour last Wednesday, which if true might see NSW Premier K-K-Keneally neutralised on the Canberra back bench or holding a federal ministry if one unnamed electorate was silly enough to fall in behind her.....
"I have heard a rumour that Kristina Keneally has been promised a federal seat if she can do a "good enough" job at the next election..."
Just what the country needs. Yet another über-ambitious pollie down in Canberra who mistakes media bites and PR spin for actual policy creation.
The ethnocentric Keneally would be a disaster on the national stage.

I’d just like to congratulate the almost 40% of Tasmanian voters who voted for the ALP, the official petulant refuse-to-participate party of 2010. Says their preferred leader, the man whose promise to advocate for their interests in parliament those 132,000 Tasmanians apparently believed when they entrusted his party with their vote, rejected Premier David Bartlett:

Labor leader David Bartlett has still not conceded defeat but again ruled out negotiating with the Greens or governing with less votes or seats. He has made it clear that if the number of seats is tied and the Liberals have more votes, they should govern.

“I won’t be approaching the Greens,” Mr Bartlett said. “I guarantee you that I’ll stick to my commitment.”

I will sit in the corner with my 40% of members of parliament and sulk. We will snipe at anything the new government tries to do. We will not participate. We will act like spoilt children who have not got their way. We will do nothing to advocate for our voters or their interests. Read more »

This week’s Flick of the Week takes us with Samuel L Jackson from his role a hit man in Pulp Fiction to his small role in the Martin Scorsese masterpiece – Goodfellas. Jackson’s role is small and ends badly, but it was the start of a pretty good decade for him – he would pick up significant supporting roles in Patriot Games, Jurassic Park and True Romance, before breaking out of the “oh he’s that guy from” roles with Pulp Fiction. I think we can safely say that when he was playing this small role, he would not have been thinking he would be the guy to get a starring role in the Star Wars films (were he at that point thinking George Lucas might make another Star Wars film). In this film he has a couple lines, and then gets shot by Joe Pesci.

First off let’s deal with the Oscar issue. Here were the films nominated for Best Picture in 1990 Read more »

Adam Kirsch in The New Republic: Read more »

Arundhati Roy in Outlook India:

There are many ways to describe Dantewada. It’s an oxymoron. It’s a border town smack in the heart of India. It’s the epicentre of a war. It’s an upside down, inside out town. Read more »

Deep Climate covers the latest in the IOPgate scandal

The controversy over the Institute of Physics biased submission to the U.K. Parliamentary Science and Technology Committee's investigation of the stolen emails from East Anglia's Climate Research Unit is about to get a whole lot hotter.

Of particular interest to Deltoid readers might be the Monckton connection (quoting Donald Oats on 8 Mar): Read more »

If Liberal campaign strategists aren’t worried about the amount of friendly-fire being aimed at Tony Abbott lately, they should be.

During the last fortnight, Abbott’s parental leave scheme brain-fart has drawn flak from Peter Costello, business groups, Our Lady Shanahan of the Stay-At-Home-Mums, Catholic and Anglican charities; and members of his own back-bench went into a mighty sulk when he sprang it on them. Last week Andrew Bolt gave Tony a slap on the wrist for his commentary that he (Abbott) felt “a bit threatened” around homosexuals. Then this weekend it’s been Noel Pearson taking exception to Abbott’s taking exception to Welcome to Country and acknowledgement of traditional owner ceremonies.

So in a period when most of the mainstream news outlets have been prepared to soft-pedal on Abbott and indulge most of his antics and tomfoolery, the biggest hits are being delivered by his own ideological fellow-travelers. That’s gotta hurt. Read more »

From The Guardian: Read more »

Socialist Alternative is very proud to announce a speaking tour of Australia by Gaza photo-journalist and founder-editor of the Palestine Telegraph, Sameh Habeeb.

Sameh covered the brutal Israeli assault of Gaza in January 2009 which killed 1,400 Palestinians and will be reporting on the atrocities that he witnessed and the international campaign to lift the Israeli siege of his homeland.

All supporters of Palestine are welcome to any of these meetings which will be accompanied by pictorial displays of relevant material. There will be an opportunity for questions and discussion at every meeting. Read more »

I was not brought up in any particular religious context. There’s not much standing on ceremony in my family. Still, if I ever go to someone else’s house, I try to make sure that I follow their traditions, whatever they may be. I just think that it’s the respectful thing to do. Secretly, just between you and I, sometimes ceremonies may seem pointless or boring to me, but if it’s important to someone else, I think I’ve got to sit there and take it on the chin. I think ceremony can actually be a very important binding process. It’s not just symbolism, it’s more than that. Read more »

The latest inquest into the death of Mulrunji Doomadgee in police custody on Palm Island – now well over five years ago – has concluded.  Once again Mulrunji’s family and the wider community will wait for findings to be published – just as they still await the publication of the report by the Crime and Misconduct Commission (CMC) in the flaws in the Police investigation into the death. 

The proceedings of coronial inquests would be obscure to most of us.  Monique Bond, a former Queensland President of ANTaR (Australians for Native Title and Reconciliation) attended the latest hearings and has provided some valuable personal impressions of the proceedings, which you can read at this link. Read more »