The Nuclear Option.

There’s been talk recently about the potential closure of Hazelwood Power Station, one of the country’s oldest power stations and its worst polluting relative to the amount of energy generated. The Greens have said that they want it simply shut down, as soon as possible, and with the way things are looking they may win the balance of power in the Victorian legislature next month. Labor has paid lip service to the idea, suggesting reducing Hazelwood’s load. Right-wing commentators have suggested that if the Greens do manage to shut it down, the electorates that voted for them should have their power supply cut off in order to absorb the loss of power. This is no more than I’d expect from them, but their rhetoric does raise the question of where we’d get our power from; Hazelwood provides a quarter of the state’s power. My house has solar panels on the roof, but not everyone can afford to install them, even with the government’s rebates, even given the fact that they pay for themselves both in savings and in revenue from power sold back into the grid.

Frustratingly, though, the one party that is actually taking a stand on global warming by demanding that Hazelwood be shut down, is also flat-out terrified of the only plausible way of doing so without adversely affecting our supply of power in the short- to medium-term: nuclear power. While nuclear fuel is not technically a renewable resource, Australia’s uranium supplies would last a lot longer than coal, and more importantly nuclear power doesn’t release colossal amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere the way coal (especially brown coal, which is mined and burned at Hazelwood) does. Solar power, even in this sunburnt country, is too capricious to use without enormous storage batteries, which we don’t have and which have never been tried on anything like the scale required. Wind power has many of the same problems. Ultimately, of course, a migration to renewables must take place, but nuclear can give us a lot of the breathing room we need to make this possible.

Nuclear power is far safer than coal. While nuclear accidents have the potential to be dramatic and catastrophic, coal power kills far more people — not just in absolute terms, but per unit of energy produced. There are ways of producing nuclear power that do not produce waste that must be managed for millions of years. There are ways of producing nuclear power without any risk of weapons-grade material going “missing”, because no such material is involved in their use. There are ways of producing nuclear power that actually produce more nuclear fuel as a byproduct. There are ways of producing nuclear power that use thorium as a fuel, which is safer, more easily obtained and handled and more plentiful than uranium.

Of course great care must be taken. But why are we so terrified of something that could replace all the coal-fired stations in the country in a matter of not decades but years?

Christianity: the Great Irony.

Almost from the very beginning, Jesus’ ideas were hijacked. The metaphysics and mythology that go along with his story were elevated at the expense of the man and his message. Whether this was deliberate or accidental, the advantage of this as a means of control for the church is clearly seen. When one considers the nature of his actual teachings, which were extremely anti-authority, pro-individual, anti-wealth, and pro-charity, the irony is most amusing.

You can quote Jesus in support of a lot of ideals, from libertarianism to socialism to monarchy. This isn’t to say he would support them himself, merely that he can be quoted in favour of them. But ceremony, submissiveness and conspicuous consumption, three things that have marked the Catholic Church for roughly 1500 years and the American Protestant churches for most of their existence, are not among them.

Some Christians have recently got wise to this, at least in theory. But the irony has remained, and progressive Christian culture today resembles nothing so much as the followers of Brian in Monty Python’s Life of Brian — the words are “you are all individuals, and you should think for yourselves”, but the message is still “follow our particular interpretations and additions to what this book says, or else”. After all, you need to at least be seen to take account of what the Bible says if you’re claiming to follow it, but you also need to hang onto your own authority. And even if it isn’t chic to threaten apostates with hellfire or damnation, at least in the more mainstream churches, that threat is still on the books, so to speak — and the sense of community helps keep the flock in check, too.

So this post goes out to every Christian whose views don’t align with his church’s. If your church preaches creationism and you accept science, or if it practices homophobia and you don’t, or if it does anything at all with which you don’t actually agree, you degrade yourself by belonging to it. You have two options. The first, and probably better if there are others who are in the same situation, is to bring up your issues and change the church’s attitude from the inside to more accurately reflect those of its members. The other is to reject it and strike out on your own. Remember that that’s why Protestantism existed in the first place — people sticking to their principles rather than going along with the whims of authority. Of course, this applies not only to Christianity — that’s just the faith I’m most familiar with.

I have no idea what Jesus would be like if he were around today. But I very much doubt that he would be a churchgoer, or an affiliated Christian at all.

Keeping the Bastards Honest.

Has nobody ever tried suing a politician for reneging on an election promise?

Of course, they’re very good at weaseling their way out of such situations. It’s a politician’s job to be popular, to be convincing, and to make excuses. It’s easy to cost a project at ten million when you’re in opposition, and then “realise” that your figures were off by an order of magnitude once you get elected to implement it. You won’t be voted out of office for another few years yet. The populace will have forgotten your broken promises by the time the next election rolls around. They’ll know that you probably did break some promises, but so did the other guy. It is, in many depressing ways, a race to the bottom.

It may well be that we’ve left it too late to do anything about it now, certainly in our current system. We all get offended when a politician backs down on a promise we hoped they’d keep, but nobody’s surprised at any of it. A court could easily rule that election promises are not binding contracts for the very reason that nobody expects them to be honoured. While this would break advertising standards and violate common decency, it would be a case of the law recognising that which already de facto exists.

On the other hand, it may not be too late. If I’m offered a deal, and I honour my end of the bargain, I expect the other party’s end to be honoured too, and legally it shouldn’t make any difference who the other party is. The only problem here is that none of the parties I support will ever form government, at least in the near future, and I don’t know how one could claim to have honoured one’s end of the bargain with a major party without having preferenced it first. Might there be any way that the electorate as a whole, as represented by someone appointed for the purpose, could do it?

This Is What Happens When You Buy From The Lowest Bidder.

A series of emails regarding the train-wreck that is Melbourne’s public transport ticketing system (and that I’m sure we all hope will remain a figurative train-wreck only).

From: myki Customer Care

To: Oolon Colluphid

Date: 20 October 2010

Dear Oolon,

Due to a recent auto top up failure of $10.00 on your myki (card number ███████), your myki has been blocked. [Oops. I ran kinda low in my debit account. No big deal, I'll just top up manually.] We require your account to be topped up with this amount and then your myki be returned in order for us to re-activate your myki. [What?] Please be advised that we are unable to electronically unblock your myki after receiving your online payment. In the future, we hope to have this functionality to unblock a myki electronically. [But you have the functionality to block one?]

The $10.00 was added to your myki balance on the 16/10/10, but we were unable to deduct this payment from your credit card. [Seriously? Who thought it would be a good idea to credit my account before payment was cleared? And did it seriously not occur to anyone to, I don’t know, simply cancel the erroneous credit even if the system was that stupid?] After we have returned your myki, unblocked, please update your credit card details for Auto top up if they have changed.

You can make the $10.00 credit card payment on your website account. Just go to” Manage my card” and you will see the Debt Settlement page, from there you just follow the prompts.

Please post your myki to the following address, to ensure quick return of your myki. A stamp is not required, as this is a reply paid post box.

myki Customer Care

Reply Paid ███

LAW COURTS VIC 8010

We apologise for any inconvenience this may have caused.

myki — it’s your key. [Not if you just changed the locks on me it isn't.]

Regards,

myki Customer Care Team

---

From: myki Customer Care

To: Oolon Colluphid

Date: 21 October 2010

Dear Oolon,

Thank you for settling the debt resulting from a recent auto top up failure.

You may be unaware, that we are unable to electronically unblock your myki after receiving your online payment. [You emailed me yesterday to tell me so. I admit that someone with a stronger allergy to bullshit than mine might have taken 24 hours to process the mindbuggering stupidity involved here, but either way reminding me isn’t going to help.] In the future, we hope to have this functionality to unblock a myki electronically.

We aim to return your myki to you unblocked as soon as possible. Please post your myki to the following address. There is no need for a stamp as this is a reply paid post box.

myki Customer Care

Reply Paid ███

LAW COURTS VIC 8010

We thank you for your patience and cooperation regarding this matter.

Regards,

myki Customer Care Team

---

From: Oolon Colluphid

To: myki Customer Care

Date: 21 October 2010

I was not informed that my myki would be blocked should an electronic payment fail to go through, nor of this fault in the system that requires me to post it in, when I bought my myki. For that matter, I find it quite implausible that it can be blocked remotely but not unblocked in the same manner. I will find it very inconvenient to be without the card even if it were returned in the post the day after I send it, and I've been informed by a friend that this happened to him and his myki was not returned for several weeks. I think you appreciate that I would rather not take that chance. If you are genuinely unable to unblock my card remotely, I request that you send me a replacement card instead.

I appreciate your prompt reply.

---

What.

Anyone else think this is as ridiculous as I do? It’s the 21st century, guys. Get on the ball.

Apology.

Posting this from my phone, as I haven't had access to a computer for the last couple of days. I have a post planned for today but it's going to have to go up tomorrow. See you all then!

The Parent Licence: Update.

Just a short entry today, because I’m running a little late, but I read these articles this morning and thought I’d share. It could be that we’re heading toward implementing the Parent Licence sooner than I could have thought possible.

Call to sterilise parents who abuse kids

NZ mayor in call to sterilise underclass

The group Mr Geschke refers to is known as Project Prevention, which deals with drug addicts. I read an article on the BBC a few days ago about its introduction in the UK after years of operation in the USA; unfortunately I can’t find the link now.

Of course, the proponents of these ideas are being publicly derided for them — the founder of Project Prevention has been labelled a Nazi, and it looks like Geschke’s facing similar slurs, not helped by his Germanic surname — but it’s a start. It’s also, I believe, largely a matter of PR: people don’t want to be seen to support such a radical, authoritarian proposal. In private, the majority of people I’ve spoken to have voiced cautious or even more commonly enthusiastic support of the idea.

Heaven and Hell.

Contention: That heaven and hell cannot coëxist in the same universe.

This argument draws largely on the same premises as the concept of “degrees of separation”. Take the saying “hell is other people” and turn it on its head. It is reasonable to expect that most people would not be content in heaven unless all their closest friends were there with them. (It doesn't matter if they don't arrive straightaway - they have their earthly lives to live out first, and some theologies hold that no matter when you die, everyone enters heaven at the same time because heavenly ‘time’ is different from earthly time — this also has the side-effect of allowing God omniscience without denying human free will. It also doesn’t matter exactly what your definitions of heaven and hell are, so long as they fit the overall category of “places of utter reward and punishment where you go depending on how you’ve lived in life”.)

Now, even assuming each and every one of those friends deserve to be in heaven too, they will want all their friends with them too. We can assume the heavenly deserts of every friend to a certain small number of iterations, if we began with a very saintly, intelligent and discriminating person to begin with - but the process goes on forever and our saintly person is a friend of a friend of a friend of (to the whatever power) someone who by the moral standards of even the most lenient judging God does not deserve a place in heaven, if the last judgment is to be at all meaningful. I mean, what sort of test is it where you are guaranteed to pass?

And if you were sent to hell, the exact same argument applies. So there could be heaven (if God is blindly kind, and doesn’t judge us after all), or hell (if God is sadistic and evil and everything we’ve been told he’s not). But there doesn’t seem to be any reason for either of them to exist any more.