Click here, Turkish citizens, admirably are on the streets howling "genocide" at the actions of the Chinese government in Xinjiang province.
Today I took an all to rare opportunity to actually be a tourist for just a little while. Actually I've managed to kill three birds with one stone today. First I've satisfied a long held fanboy urge to visit the site around which one of my favourite (and first ever) computer games is based, secondly I've kept my dad happy by visiting the memorial of his hero, and thirdly got some excercise/took a break etc.etc.
What I'm talking about is the Jim Clark memorial at Hockenheimring, which is about 10km from my current residence.
By the way, I now have dreadlocks if I haven't mentioned it before, but if I have, here's a photo. So, the second accomplishment, the fanboy thing. When I was merely a boy, I used to spend far too much time on my family's 486 playing a game called 'Grand Prix' by Geoff Crammond. The story behind this game is pretty amazing given that Crammond basically designed it ALONE. Nonetheless, it was a great game, and one of my favourite tracks was of course, Hockenheim, and it felt great to actually be able to walk around a place I've only ever seen in digital form before.
But finally, the point of this post, how to successfully cycle there. Well, if you move to Germany, it's more than likely you will eschew a motor vehicle and use your bike for transport. If on the odd chance you want to visit Hockenheim and come from the direction of St. Ilgen-Sandhausen (there is an S-Bahn station here) or Leimen, where I live, then it would be handy to know of a way to get there that is relatively short compared to riding along the road.
Start at the St. Ilgen-Sandhausen bahnhof here
View Larger Map
At the end of this blue line, you'll be faced with the M5, oh by the way, you will have ridden alongside the causeway which you will now follow... under the bridge... of the M5 all the way to the track. Basically, that is all the advice you need. You can ride either side of the causeway, because there is a dirt track along most of the way, however at some points you will need to ride along the embankment. Eventually you will come to what is now a small dam, or more accurately, a dustbowl, it looks like this
This is what is left of the Clark chicane, and the view is looking back in the direction from which you have come. Basically you are now on what used to be Hockenheimring. Simply continue along the dirt path that lead you here, it will very shortly lead to a sealed road, turn left and follow it for about 1km (it will turn slightly right to again follow the original circuit) and then where the new hairpin is, on the left, bam there is the Clark memorial.
Don't do what I did which was to get lost at the intersection after the clark curve and turn right and head to Oftersheim, which was idiotic, because I must have wasted a whole hour in the wild around the place. But the track though is somewhat deflating, because it was a glorious monument to speed in it's day, three small chicanes was all there was stopping what was essentially a flat out circuit once you left the start-finish complex. Anyhow, as a green-head, it is better that they are allowing the unused parts of the circuit to be reclaimed by the local forest.
Hope this helps if you are a fan of Jim Clark and are in the area...
It really hit home over the weekend just how pathetic the media tend to be when it comes to what they choose to report, what snippets or their reporting stick in the minds of those who read it, and how the media don't just "report the news", but create a positive or negative feedback loop that either enlightens society to the ways of the world, or dumbs us down to the level of play dough.
Alternet have a great story on just this point this morning, but I will say a few things of my own. When Michael Jackson first burst onto the scene, the media hyped him, and the Jackson 5 up to the point of demi-gods. Naturally, this attracted a number of fawners to his side, who then inflated his ego, and ultimately created the strange entity that was the so called, "Prince of Pop."
The media fed on this and stoked the fire further, effectively what they did was created a musical icon that they could always turn to if they needed a story to report on a slow news day, never once thinking about how big a part they played in creating the story. I think the analogy is what you might call a self fulfilling prophecy.
Anyhow, my point here is that you can see the mental laziness oozing from the mainstream media websites and newspapers when people like Michael Jackson die, or do something otherwise spectacular. It's an amateurish way to describe it, but my High school physics teacher always said about quantum mechanics that when you measure the quantum system, you irreversibly change it. The media don't seem to bear this in mind when they report "celebrity news," or any news really, they just don't get that what they're doing is actually telling the public about how pathetic they are, and not telling the public how big a role they played in creating the story and thus how irrelevant it really is.
Because the facts are this. You have the biggest pro-democracy rally occuring anywhere in the world in Iran at the moment (G20 has nothing on Tehran), Zimbabwe is still a mess, Darfur, Burma, North Korea.... And what, of all of the world's news makes the internet crash?? Michael Jackson. If you know anyone studying journalism at university, or is about to enter the workforce as a journalist, in whatever form, please please please, beg them not to do anything in the field of celebrity news. Implore them to think of the long term, of how their readers will remember their work when they retire, will they be a journalist the world remembers for uncovering the next Iran-Contra scandal or will they be part of the paparazzi army that got the first pictures of TomKat's baby???
If you were a journalist, what would you rather be covering???
I strongly doubt it. In fact, what are we supposed to eat and why do we continue to consume meat given all the problems it causes. I'm not pretending to be an expert on human evolution, but I'm going to make a few assumptions based on some logical observations.
It's becoming somewhat more frequent of late for some people to ask me, about my travels and choice to work away from the land of my upbringing, "have you changed?"
It's been a month now, exactly, since I moved to Heidelberg. What have I got to say about the place and leaving 24 years of your life behind, flicking a switch and giving it a go in a foreign land? Well, not that much really, there are of course moments when your head spins, but I think I'm too logical a thinker to not be able to handle anything that comes my way.
Of course it's difficult to get to know people, not because people aren't welcoming, but not being able to introduce yourself in a non-amateur manner and speak and listen to people like it were second nature is annoying, but it's not like I didn't expect that, and I know that time will provide the solution to those problems.
I miss my racing of course, it hurts even more knowing that if I wanted to get back into it, it would require a good year before I find a van, a house with a shed and most importantly a bike, all of which costs money, and it's a sore point to know that all those things are back in Brisbane where it took a lot of time and pain to acquire them, grrrr!
What about my political feelings these days? I don't know if I can vote over here, but I doubt I can because I'm on a stipend and I don't think I'm paying tax, and as the saying go's, "no representation without taxation." There are a series of elections coming up this year though, there are the local council elections (kommunalwahl), then I think there are State elections, and then finally a Federal election at the end of the year.
All of that is beside the point though, because I don't really care too much any more about politics in general, and this is no real surprise given the situation. Of course I still have my opinions and I'll continue to voice them here as I have done throughout the past two years, but really, with no chance to actually involve myself in the local community (due my language deficit) why bother?? The most 'action' I can take is donating to Avaaz.org or something, because I couldn't even volunteer at a soup kitchen here.
Speaking of language, I have realised since I've been here that for a foreign person to do the reverse of what I have done, go to Australia to pursue their career, you'd be insane to do so without being quite proficient at English. Of course for most people in the scientific field, this is an absolute given, science is an English only domain these days, but in general, if you're seeking a new opportunity in Australia and can't speak English, forget it, because there is no such thing as a second language in Australia.
I don't like the way some in Australia, like John Howard did, complain about people not knowing English, but now I know what it's like to have the shoe on the other foot, I'm just very fortunate that most people here actually know English quite well, so they don't see it as much (if at all) of a burden to speak to you in English. My advice, let's start getting a few more languages compulsorily taught in school, starting in Grade 5 and going right through to grade 12. I learnt Japanese at school, but I probably only did it for a few hours per week for four years, I'm sure I could pick it up again, but it's basically gone now. I definitely think that German should be taught, because it is very similar to English, but also Spanish because it is widespread throughout North and South America.
Anyway, enough about the past, what can I say in one word to sum up my first month here on the continent proper.....
Normal. Entirely normal, I've done a few touristy things, I've found a group of chaps to go DH biking with, work is interesting, I'm a bit bored at night because I don't have any friends I can just hang with (and because my computer is mostly at work) and that's about it. Some people tend to define their life by their experiences, and I think that often-times overseas travel for work can get a bit overrated (overseas travel for holidays on the other hand are a different matter) when one looks back on their life. I'm not getting any more or less out of life here than in Brisbane except for the one major factor that I have a great opportunity for a stimulating PhD at one of the best institutions in the world (the offices are a bit drab though!) and that makes all the difference.
On the train to Hohenzollern the other day, I was asked why I chose to come to Heidelberg, the girl who asked expected the typical answer of "see the world" and all those hollywood cliches, but it was the work that drew me here. If there was a university in the middle of Siberia offering the same pay as here with an equally interesting topic, I would have gone there just as quickly as I came here.
I don't intend to project the idea that the reasoning behind my choice is the way we should all make such career decisions, it's an underlying philosophy that I must educate my mind to the fullest extent so I can have as big an influence on the world as possible, going somewhere for the scenery just won't cut the cheese in fulfilling that goal.
Tomorrow I move to Heidelberg in Germany to begin my career as a research scientist. Though I guess it began in an unpaid sense when I started my Masters at the end of 2005, it is now kicking into top gear, as after some 6 or so years of university education, I now finally have a paid position in the field I have trained for.
Hopefully, I can perform competently enough in the first six months to prove to the decision makers at the university that I'm worthy of being accepted for a PhD, which has been made slightly easier this week by the decision from Applied Optics to publish a manuscript that I have long been waiting to see accepted.
Anyhow, I've left the blog unattended in the last few weeks because I've been intensely studying up on what I'll need to know for my position there, and I can't imagine I'll be all that focussed on it either in the next few weeks. So go find someone else to bother until I return to my normal blogging schedule.
Ponder for a moment, the philosophical implications of this story
Initially, before I thought to analyse a little deeper into this seemingly cut and dried tale of animal cruelty, I was shocked by the degree of misery these cattle would have been put through during their lives and, I'm hoping, quick merciful deaths. Another impulse reaction was that the owner of this farm should have the book thrown at him, and thankfully he will.
Then I thought a little deeper. How is it that this chap can be indicted for cruelty to animals causing their death, when society on a much broader, far more industrial scale commits the same supposed crime every day, every time we munch down on a piece of meat? How is it any less cruel to herd cattle onto a truck, in confusing and stressful situations, ship them across the country and send them to either an electrified or high pressure bolt through the head death?
If you've seen a documentary about how abattoirs function, it doesn't matter how humane the technique supposedly is, it is confronting and it's the kind of thing that makes you want to turn away.
What then to make of this circumstance? Sure this farmer needs locking away, but it's a case like this that must compel the rest of us to think about our interaction with our laws. On the one hand, our society has crafted animal cruelty laws, yet on the other, we consume meat like there's no tomorrow. The more into my vegetarianism I get, the more philosophical implications of it that I unearth.
There is a pretty simple way out of this economic crisis at the moment, though none of the G20 leaders dared speak its name. Clearly people have stopped buying, consumers, who themselves make up most of the 'employee' section of society have found that they just don't want to pay for anything they don't need any more. The Bank of England, in it's attempts to make people get rid of their cash (before it devalues) have decided simply to print more money, like the idiots that they are.
An inflationary monetary system demands constant growth to repay debt. There being more debt than actual money in the world, any central bank and government that wants to participate in our current economic system must ensure that consumption perpetually increases and hence our demands on the planet's resources perpetually increase etc. etc.
As long as world leaders can accept that an economy that doesn't grow isn't a failed economy, but is itself a different type of economy with a different form of prosperity, the sooner we will drag ourselves out of recession. On the other hand, there wont be any more big bubbles, where a few people get very rich very quickly, but only scant few of us are lucky enough to ride those kind of waves, so we needn't worry if we never see another dotcom bubble.
To kick start the global economy, to stop jobs being exported to cheap or even slave labor, manufacturers in the UK and elsewhere need to recognise that the buyers of their product would be much more willing to re-up their pruchase orders if their products were cheaper.
DUH, I hear you say, but what are the ways in which products can be made cheaper? One is to lay off staff, so that a business owner can maintain a profit margin, whilst incurring fewer wage expenses, this is what we are seeing now. Solution two is to cut off profits altogether, make sure that the price a product is sold for is only enough to cover the labor and other expenses required to make it. The short of it is, no cream for the business owner (Or a solution somewhere between both).
How can this be accomplished? There are a lot of companies currently under administration. In the search for buyers, the first people the administrators should be turning to is the employees of the business itself, in order to form a co-operative. For a company that folds, laying off 200 employees, each of those employees could be handed the keys to the business, to produce their goods, not for profit.
Paying out the previous owner could be acheived either through the pooling of employee savings, or by entering a covenant such that a cut of the sale price returns to the previous owner for a certain period of time to cover the cost of purchasing the business, though you would expect that the employees would be getting a bargain once an administrator is in charge of selling it.
Now that it's running as a co-op, the profit margin disappears, the cost of the products falls, and hence the product is now more attractive to the consumer, spurring consumption down the line, creating jobs in the wider economy. If we don't make it easier for co-operatives to form, business owners WILL take their factories overseas where they can pay employees FAR less.
Ask your leaders what they want for society, profits for the multinats or jobs for all?
I've now been to two of the biggest protests that cycle around the world, APEC 2007 and now the G20 summit of 2009. I'll begin, as I did with APEC, with photos...
What surprised me about this protest is how peaceful it was, it was organised by the Stop the war coalition, which was part of a broader set of 4 protests on the same day. It was a nice little day out in London, I'd say though I've gone to less trouble getting to a protest before and had a more satisfying day of it.
On our route from the US embassy to Nelson's column, nothing got out of hand, and the police that were supervising our group were great, they were not intimidatory or as inciteful as some police groups (See this story too and this link for some good news about action on police intimidation).
Still, the crowd was concerned with a broad range of issues. Stopping regularly on the route to shout the usual slogans of "shame, shame, shame" at RBS branches, Tesco and McDonald's, as well as of course the main focus of the now unreported occupation of Palestine and Tibet.
Certainly there were some good speakers, and the RBS and Bank of England certainly received some cumuppence for their role in driving the global economic collapse. Stating the obvious though it is, the media do skew these stories making most of middle England concerned more with the minor aggression during the protests than the very excellent reasons for defacing the RBS.
I would have liked to have been at the banking district protests, but I was on a tight schedule with the train, maybe next time.
I'm not much into keeping tabs on music, but when it comes to Rage, Zack de la Rocha or Tom Morello, I'm on it like a fly. Zack's concoction with Jon Theodore has culminated in the release of this music video for Wild International, released just the other day, check it...
I'm dissappointed. That's basically it really. When it comes down to it, this election has proved to me, given my investment in Queensland politics over the years (though thankfully not any more), that voters, and the public in general have probably become entirely numbed to any sense of taking action.
I would have to say that Queensland voters really are putty in the hands of those who wield political power, and not the other way around. Of course, a unicameral parliament and Optional Preferential voting has assisted this in many regards, but it's frightful to think of how un-enthused the public has become at demanding more from it's government.
The Bligh government has been on the nose for a while now, but voters have handed the ALP a slap on the wrist, losing only 6 (or so) seats. In a capitalist society, competition is supposed to produce good products. We, the consumer, by our lackluster approach to demanding decent government performance are ensuring that politics in Queensland will never produce a good product. Forget all the hogwash you may hear about the supposed instabilities of a hung parliament that could have resulted from this election, if there is one thing that it would have made Bligh or the Borg work harder and really compete to produce the goods for Queensland, it would have been a hung parliament.
I'm just glad I'm not involved in Queensland Politics any more...
In case you missed it, here's what was making headlines in my part of the world this week. I am basically flabbergasted. If you are looking for a reason why, go here, download the whole thing, and flick to page 51 and start reading the section "The revenue of Government." The book I'm talking about is one I have mentioned previously, What has Government done to our Money, by Murray Rothbard.
Here's a quick summary, of what happens when government prints money. Her Majesty's government is foolishly trying to revive a patient, a modern capitalist economy, that died in theatre months ago, though when this patient was alive, it required of its organs (you and I) to compete ferociously with each other for the privilege of purchasing useless mass produced goods at a rate that would, in time, drive some of us into a debt spiral from which the only escape is the declaration of bankruptcy and the knock on effects that follow.
Clearly this patient couldn't have had an infinite life expectancy. In Australia's experience, though the government wasn't in debt, almost all of the growth in the past decade had been financed on borrowed money, the writing was on the wall years ago, it is something I spoke of when I ran for parliament in '06, it can't go on forever, eventually, the people who buy the products made from Australia's expanding (on loans) resource sector will run out of cash, and eventually build up debts that can't be repaid, and the growth will end. All the while the economists who crunch the numbers for the big corporations are certain that things will function as normal, China and India will order the same amount of material from one year to the next, and the world will continue to be reliably flooded with GAP t-shirts and bug eyed sunglasses.
Hence we have what we see today. Why then is inflating the money supply the worst thing that the Bank of England could possibly do, at least for you and I. The answer is simple, a responsible, slightly inflationary government (aiming at say 3% inflation per year) expands and contracts the money supply according to how GDP expands and contracts. If GDP drops, the rate at which money is printed SHOULD drop, or even reverse direction, if the situation warrants it.
Although inflation is well known as a silent and subtle tax in itself, it hurts the majority of the population, those on low incomes and fixed salaries because we are the ones who enjoy the use of the new money last. Rothbard says it best...
"As the new money spreads, it bids prices up—as we have seen, new money can only dilute the effectiveness of each dollar. But this dilution takes time and is therefore uneven; in the meantime, some people gain and other people lose. In short, the counterfeiters and their local retailers have found their incomes increased before any rise in the prices of the things they buy."
When and if this near death patient recovers, we may well have gotten over the problem of a lack of liquidity, but we will then face the altogether more daunting task of hyper-inflation.
There aren't words to describe how gob-smackingly stupid the collective response to this crisis of capitalism by Western governments has been. This to me is the latest and most greivous chapter.
A few days ago, February 6 to be precise, a milestone passed for perhaps the United State's most unfortunate political prisoner. Leonard Peltier had the misfortune to celebrate 33 years behind bars for a crime he didn't commit. You can read the full story of his imprisonment here, to save me going into it.
A few things I'd like to point out about this anniversary is this, first is the utter lack of media coverage regarding his imprisonment. A quick search on Google news, which archives over 25000 sources returned only 38 reporting something to do with his recent bashing at a penitentiary or anniversary of his imprisonment.
The second subject to note is whether Obama will grant the man clemency, but it seems doubtful, I would say that it would have been easier for John McCain to commute Peltier's sentance than it is for Obama, lest Obama be accused of counter racism, or something equally as crazy.
Peltier's case shows how far the world needs to progress when it comes to dealing with indiginous peoples. The terror the FBI rained on the Oglala region in the years before the incident that lead to Peltier's incarceration is reminiscent, to me, of Palm Island, and the subsequent, and highly distasteful jailing of Lex Wotton.
All I can say is, we see injustice everywhere, especially at the moment with the global financial crisis, ESPECIALLY here in the UK with government takeovers of banks, AND ALLOWING THE IDIOT DIRECTORS TO LEAVE WITH GOLDEN HANDSHAKES. How bad to things have to get for us to change the way we react, to change the way we talk to our neighbours and friends about it, and hopefully change the way we vote?
If you're too lazy to write an email to your local MP about such issues, at least do something when it comes time to vote. There is nothing more depressing than hearing people say they want to vote for Ralph Nader, or The Greens, or anyone who will genuinely bring change simply because they feel it's a wasted vote. The true waste is not changing your vote, because that will more surely than anything else, entrench injustice.
I'll pick up where I left off on this post. As of the 31st of January I am no longer a resident of Australia. The reasons for my leaving I will explore shortly, but for now, I am living in Perranporth, Cornwall. This isn't permanent however, in about 6 weeks time I'll be leaving the cosy and very comfortable lodgings of my Godparents to take up what I hope will be a mega successful PhD in Heidelberg in Germany.
Why have I left though, who would want to leave all the sunshine, warm weather etc. etc? Well, to be honest, I've never felt like I'm an Australian citizen really, living in Australia was nice, but surely no more preferable than living anywhere else, except say a country currently engaged in civil war for example. It might seem strange to say that, but my home is Earth, and wherever I go on this planet is home.
I'm also confident about saying that living in Australia is no better than living anywhere else, because I guess I believe in the saying, "life is what you make it." If you're a sadsack, it wont matter if you lived in Buckingham palace, you'll find a reason to be sad.
What I've said so far just makes it sound like I've up and left for no other reason that to simply see the world, but this isn't the case. I had neither strong feelings to stay in Australia, or to travel, because essentially my career aspirations are to become a well rounded researcher in a considerably interesting field of physics. There was certainly the opportunity to do that in Australia, but somewhat predictably, the government of that country (yes I've taken to calling it 'that' country, think Bill Clinton and I did not have sex with 'that' woman) decided I was unworthy of any funding support. Not only that, but it also decided that the group I was going to do the research for was also unworthy of financial support, and it also decided to knock back a good friend of mine who had achieved the second highest grade in his honours year (I by the way hold a research Masters, which my two examiners passed with the highest and second highest scores).
About 95% of the other academic staff and students I spoke to about my chances of success for a scholarship were extremely confident, the other 5% were simply cautious. Everyone I spoke to about the research proposal put forward by my group for broader ARC funding was confident of success, so being beaten down like this is cause for dissolusionment with the entire approach that Australia takes to scientific research.
I wont go in to my PhD proposal or my groups ARC proposal, but they were both rock solid. It makes sense then to take a bit of assertive action when you get slapped across the face like that, and I have, hopefully, I'll never do another peice of research or pay another dollar in tax to the Australian Government ever again, screw em.
So for the moment, I'm on a six month probationary period at the University of Heidelberg, and after that, if I'm good enough, I'll be put on for another 3 years to complete my PhD.
Here's to me I say!
Enjoy some photos!
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