The new remake of Battlestar Galactica is one of the better shows coming out of the US at the moment, but I was pleased by this report that the series will end after the next season:

‘The upcoming fourth season of Sci Fi Channel’s “Battlestar Galactica” will be its final one after all…Ending “Battlestar” with the upcoming 22-episode fourth season was a creative decision made by the hit show’s executive producers Ronald Moore and David Eick…”This show was always meant to have a beginning, a middle and, finally, an end,” Eick and Moore said in a statement Thursday.’

One of the interesting contrast between a lot of US and UK series is the shorter more focussed runs of UK shows versus the long and ongoing runs of US series. The Office in the UK ran for two six-part series, while the US version is in its third 20-part series. This allows the UK series to be more tightly focussed and to end before the creative spirits of the writers dry up. The US style series can seem to go on forever, with plots going in ever tighter circles without really advancing the plot (I think Lost fits into the category).

In this context I think it is great that they are declaring an end to the series.

I saw a quote (and I cannot remember where), it was Peter Garrett describing the Howard Government as poll-driven with regards to climate change. Obviously Garrett meant this as some kind of insult or criticism, but at the same time, isn’t being poll-driven one of the great success of democracy? Isn’t the three yearly poll – the election – the defining feature of democracy? Don’t we want all our government’s to be poll driven?

Of course, we also look for leadership in our politicians, and if leadership for politicians means having a positive vision and advocating for it – despite what the polls might say. And this leads to conflict, between doing what the politicians believes in, which voter admire, and doing what the voters want (expressed through polls). This is the central task of the political leader, balancing these two.Whether anyone particular policy is too poll driven is hard to define, but I guess if the polls have put global warming front and centre for this government then that is probably a good thing.

It appears that the recent train/car crash in rural Victoria was caused by the truck driver racing to beat the train over the crossing – report in the Herald Sun. Unfortunately it was not something so easy to fix as faulty lights or bad road markings, but rather human failings, both the inability of a person to judge time and distance, and their lack of judgement to realise they were calculations they should not be making. Poor judgement is a difficult and expensive thing for Governments to fix.

The issue of level crossings in Victoria is one of those vexing public policy issues. The death of eleven people in a level crossing accident is a tragedy that every member of the public in the State feels. In particular, we could expect to see emerge over time a grieving family (or families) campaigning for better barriers at level crossings, “so this can never happen again”.

However, the underlying problem is that it is just too expensive to do so. There are 2,500 level crossings on Victoria and putting automatic barriers costs $800,000 (well, that is what they reported on Radio National). That gives a total cost of $2b. This would swallow up all the money from every other policy proposal by the State Government for the next 5 years – no new hospitals, no new hospital beds, no environmental initiates, no social policy initiatives.

No Government will make that kind of commitment, not just because it is bad policy (in the sense that it is not an efficient allocation of resources – a lot more lives could be saved by spending that kind of money elsewhere), but it is also bad politics, spending all your spare cash on an issue that, in the cold light of day, will fade after a month to be replaced by the next set of issues on the tip of the presses tongue.

The most likely outcome of all this will be some kind of compromise proposal that throws some money at the problem (but far less that required to eliminate the problem), maybe proposal to accelerate the level crossing upgrade program over the next five years. This will have little impact and will not really placate the activist campaigners. But it is the kind of compromised outcome our system of Government creates, and it that respect it is not a bad thing.

What appears to be a giant sea monster has washed up in New Zealand.

Update: The original link has died, so I have found some information on the original item and posted it below.

A 14-metre, tentacle-covered mass has horrified and fascinated Waikanae beachgoers this week.
However, Conservation Department community relations programme manager Stacy Moore said it was actually a lot of goose barnacles (Lepas anatifera), each about 30 centimetres long with a shell attached to each long pinkish tube. They were stuck to a piece of wood or rope. Goose barnacles were carried on driftwood, rope or the bottom of ships. Timber cast ashore was often completely covered with the barnacles. The barnacles prompted one of Britain’s strangest ancient animal beliefs. The heart- shaped shell was believed to resemble the head of the barnacle goose, Branta leucopsis. Because the geese rarely nested in Britain, no one saw the eggs or nests, prompting the belief that the geese grew up on the planks of ships and emerged clothed in feathers and flew away.

In The Age Editorial today they returned to that reoccurring chestnut the obesity problem and the advertising of junk food to children.

“Yet today we face a challenge to our own opposition to the nanny state. It is the question of junk food advertising aimed at children and whether it should be banned, or at least restricted. Until now the Howard Government has rightly refused…It is not that long since libertarians argued passionately against banning cigarette advertising or laws requiring individuals to wear seatbelts in cars. Yet, decades after these changes, the net effect of these reforms has been of almost incalculable benefit to our society….Unless we take more aggressive action, an obesity epidemic could be another public-health disaster just over the horizon. Prevention is better than cure. The best way to prevent obesity may well include developing a better way to market food and drink treats which, consumed in excess, can cause so much unhappiness.”

It interesting how the focus of the editorial is on some kind of liberty/health trade-off, as if they are the only two choices in this debate. This is exacerbated by a quote from Tony Abbott:

“The point I make is that we’ve got to accept a certain amount of sub-optimal outcomes because we live in a free society and, to some extent, people need to be able to make their own mistakes.”

It is of course, practically axiomatic that in a free society people need to make their own mistakes. I am not sure it is best to describe these types of outcomes as “sub-optimal”. This makes it sound as if the Government mandating personal behaviour is the “optimal” outcome that allowing liberty is somehow less than. Obviously this is not always, or even mostly, true. If it was then Communism would be a raging success and the Soviet Union shinning light of modern society.

This is not to say that Government intervention cannot work, but it doesn’t always, or even often. The success or not of of Government intervention depends on nature of the problem, the mechanisms of action, the available options and tools, the effectiveness of those tools, etc

The public health experts like to use tobacco as a demonstration of the effectiveness of this type of intervention, but i cannot help feel that that was a more straightforward issue. Tobacco causes cancer, therefore reducing smoking reduces cancer.

Isn’t obesity a more complex problem, caused by changing lifestyles – access to more and different food, more processed food generally, less exercise, etc. How all these interact and have changed over time is not clear, and whether banning junk food advertising would have a significant impact is also not clear. I suspect much large societal changes (for example driving kids to school, rather than walking) are in effect here, rather than advertising.Not that there is necessarily anything wrong with a ban, the liberty of commercial food firms to advertise to children, is not a liberty I would worry about loosing, but it surely must have some chance of success to make it worthwhile.

This list of ‘Predictions of the Year 2000′ from The Ladies Home Journal of December 1900 makes for interesting reading. This particular prediction caught my eye:

“Prediction #22: Store Purchases by Tube. Pneumatic tubes, instead of store wagons, will deliver packages and bundles. These tubes will collect, deliver and transport mail over certain distances, perhaps for hundreds of miles. They will at first connect with the private houses of the wealthy; then with all homes. Great business establishments will extend them to stations, similar to our branch post-offices of today, whence fast automobile vehicles will distribute purchases from house to house.”

The noticeable, and lamentable, aspect of this is that it didn’t occur. The great promise of pneumatic tubes has never been fulfilled, except perhaps to move cash from checkout chicks to the back office at supermarkets. And yet there is a dire need for some contraption of this sort, a sort of personal delivery or movement system. Currently we pollute our urban environment with millions of lumps of steel noisily pumping out poisonous gases and smashing into one another. there has to be a better way! And what better way than to replace motor vehicles with mass transport and pneumatic delivery systems! All underground! Now that is the future!

I think PZ Myers says it pretty well:

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/06/restricting_abortion_is_just_a.php

Julian Sanchez is an American non-dogmatic libertarian who writes a blog “Notes from the Lounge”. One of the great things about the blog is how well he thinks and writes (apparently due to studying philosophy, as did Matt Yglesias).

Anyway, my main point really was to point at a little writing, well, tick (like a verbal tick) that Sanchez uses. I always find the irony delicious. For example:”Amy Phillips at iLiberty.org has a handy dandy roundup of various paternalistic initiatives on the ballots this week, and how they fared, from winking at dope-smokers to milking cigarette smokers. Read it, for your own good and for the children.”

From a report in The Australian:

“A TUBERCULOSIS-infected American has pleaded for forgiveness after sparking an international health alert by criss-crossing the Atlantic while infected with a rare, drug-resistant strain of the disease.”

The gist of the story is that a American man found he had TB (an infectious disease), was warned not to travel, but still travelled by plane to Europe for his wedding, where he found he had a highly drug resistant type of TB and the US Government had put a all points bulletin out to prevent him from flying, so he flew to Canada and drove across the border to the US.

In his defence his wife said: “Just imagine being in a foreign country and being told that your government is going to leave you there. You’re just going to die.”So in essence, he thought that the European health system would not be sufficient for him, so he flew on a plane, putting hundreds of other lives at risk, so he could get to the US, even though his own Government didn’t want him to.Michael O’Hare declares this to be sociopathic behaviour.