Over on the Guardian’s Comment is Free I had a little promo for the Blogging for Choice day – and got off surprisingly lightly from the commenters – perhaps because there’s such a flood of Davos stuff.
But I do think it is worth saying that such events do have an impact in countering the well-funded and organiser anti-abortion campaigners.
A reported 84 per cent increase in confirmed child abuse cases in Australia is, apparently perversely, good news, in that this is being attributed to better reporting.
But then there’s this:
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children were again overrepresented, with figures showing them to be five times as likely as other children to be the subject of a substantiated claim, more than six times as likely to be subject to care and protection orders, and more than seven times as likely to be in out-of-home care.
And reflecting Australia’s dismal record on the environment – even worse on carbon emissions than the US – a star Australian scientist has been poached by California – attracted he says by the chance to really make a difference, which seems impossible in Australia.
But there is some good news: Tim Flannery has been named Australian of the Year. He’s the author of the brilliant The Future Easters, which asserted that the aborigines and other Pacific humans had begun the apparently inexorable degradation of the fragile ecosystems of the region (a thesis backed by recent fossil discoveries).
I interviewed him many years ago and was immediately struck that he was one of those very few people with an absolutely original brain. His thesis then was that Australia as a continent had a sustainable carrying capacity of less than 4 million people. (The population is now 20 million.)
Have just tried out an excellent gluten-free chocolate cake recipe – definitely recommended, at least if you are feeling flush.
OK – with two bars of cooking chocolate and five eggs you really can’t go wrong. (I didn’t manage to cancel my organic delivery order in time last week so had a surfeit of eggs – that’s my excuse.)
And I found this useful set of directions for late-night drinking in inner-north west London – brings back nostalgic memories of a rather good night in the Ruby Lounge when I was still a London newbie – didn’t know it was still going!
No one could accuse Anatole Kaletsky of being a Green, but he offers some salutory thoughts on Bush’s State of the Union address:
All three of the President’s new energy policies ideas announced on Tuesday — to increase the use of corn-based ethanol in US petrol from 5 per cent to about 30 per cent, to raise fuel-economy standards by 10 per cent and to promote “clean coal†technology for electric power generation — will distort investment and research spending, channelling the lion’s share of available resources into some of the least promising solutions to climate change.
Extracting ethanol from corn, for example, is less than one-tenth as efficient as distilling it from sugar cane. But because of the lobbying power of agribusiness in the Midwest cornbelt, the US severely restricts the import of Brazilian sugar-ethanol and will now spend vast amounts on technology and subsidies designed to undercut the sugar-ethanol technologies with far greater potential for reducing global carbon emissions at reasonable cost.
Similarly, the 10 per cent proposed improvement in vehicle economy standards is so modest that it will divert investment from the much bigger improvements in fuel consumption that could easily be achieved if US consumers could be persuaded to drive lighter and better-designed cars. The same could be true of “clean coal†technology, which may well end up far less clean than its promoters are contending and will deflect resources from nuclear and solar research.
On the American version of civil war this time: arriving in my inbox a review of Thomas P. Lowry. Confederate Heroines: 120 Southern Women Convicted by Union Military Justice. And it looks like it contains some great characters, as in this example:
Readers also learn of the remarkable case of Mary S. Terry of Maryland, who was arrested for smuggling when she was found in possession of nearly $2000.00 worth of contraband goods. Even though this was not the first time she had come to the attention of the military justice system for such offenses, the military commission trying her case initially decided to impose a fairly light punishment, requiring only that she take the oath of allegiance, accept a parole on her honor, and stay north of New Jersey’s southern border. When the commission’s decisions were sent to Gen. Lew Wallace for review, however, they provoked an exasperated and interesting response. Wallace complained that the court had imposed much too light a sentence for a woman who was demonstrated to be “an intelligent, bold, defiant, energetic, masculine Rebel, bent on mischief,” and he asked how the commission could possibly “give faith to the honor of such an unsexed merchant” (pp. 50-51), before compelling the commission to reconsider its findings. The commission responded by revising the sentence to a one-year imprisonment in a female prison in Salem, Massachusetts. As if this was not enough, it was soon thereafter discovered that there was no female prison in Salem. Consequently, Terry ended up being sent to the female prison in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, an institution that saw a number of the women whose experiences are chronicled in this book pass through its gates.
Full review here.
Seen this evening on New Oxford St (very central London): two police vehicles screaming up with lights flashing, having woven at dangerous speed through the solid traffic. Four officers hop out.
The offender. A shoulder bag left on the table of an outdoor cafe table. Their highly trained response – cautiously tug back the zip, with all of them standing in close proximity.
Mmm … where does one start?
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