Penguin unearthed

Moving

2006-08-01T20:22:00.000+10:00

After reading how easy it was to move to wordpress from Landismom , and complaints from Tjilpi about how he hates commenting on blogger, I've decided to move. So the new site is:

Penguinunearthed

http://penguinunearthed.wordpress.com

See you over there!

Flexible working

2006-07-29T21:22:00.000+10:00

I've been pondering, after my last post, just how feasible it is to have a workplace with different attitudes to working hours.

It's a horrible time of year right now, which exaggerates the problem, but I'm working in a workplace which has (at one extreme) someone who sent me emails at 1.30 am and 3.30 am on different days this week, and who was in at 9 the next morning both times, and someone who works for me who works in the office two days a week and from home one other day. I'm in the middle; I almost always leave the office by 5.30, but work at home in the evenings a fair bit.

I used to be someone who worked long hours when necessary (my personal record was six hours between leaving the office at night and arriving the next morning), although I've never been the most extreme anywhere I've worked. I used to get paid for it, too; I worked in a place where the bonus system did reward the hard workers, with reasonably good ways of checking that the hours were productive. But I used to really resent those people in the same office who declined to work long hours; that meant that the flexible people had to pick up the slack; always. What I wanted at the time was for the shorter people to still work longer if we had too much to do; what usually happened was that I worked twice as hard, and they usually worked their shorter hours, as they had carved out the right.

Can you only make flexible hours work if everyone works short hours? What if you have a few people who are willing to work slavish hours? Can you make it work if you pay them for it? Or is the only way to get flexible hours for the (substantial) minority who want them, make sure that nobody works stupid hours? Or, to put it another way, are we destined to have two kinds of companies - the family friendly and the not family friendly, with two quite different kinds of workers?

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When I was the person working somewhat stupid hours, I didn't mind them that much because I loved my work, I worked with friends, and E was also working stupid hours, so I was often going home to an empty house (no kids at that stage). Not to say that I always enjoyed them, but I think it's important to acknowledge in this kind of debate that some people really do enjoy their work, and quite like the hours it entails.

Fathers and children

2006-07-23T07:12:00.000+10:00

The ABS released a study (as part of their annual social trends review) of fathers and how much they are working these days. In previous posts, I've trawled through various ABS products to find out how many stay-at-home dads there are. This study answers the question - 3.4% of families with children under 15 had a father not working while the mother worked full or part-time. A further 6.3% had neither parent working.

The ABS didn't analyse how many families had a mother full-time and father part-time (our arrangement) but about 7% of fathers in total are employed part-time, and that's an increase from 4% in just over 10 years. I think that's the big story. I'm on an email list for mothers who work with the dad at home, and I'd say about half of the dads in that group actually have some paid work. So looking just at stay-at-home dads who don't do any paid work is going to miss lots of families where the dad is the primary carer (a very popular pattern with the genders reversed).

But for fathers and mothers working full time, the use of overtime has increased in the last few years. So the world of work is polarising even more into part-time and very full-time jobs. My personal preference for how we would manage our family would be for us both to have serious part-time jobs. But employers would much much rather have one very full time person than two good part time people.

David Maister had a great post on this topic, in which his view (as a consultant to professional services firms, rather than the whole world of work) is that the whole organisation has have the same view about "intensity" (I think he means willingness to drop everything and work), or it won't work, the organisation is in conflict. And from an organisation's view, if you have an unlimited pool of people that you can choose from, I'm not sure that I disagree. But the world isn't like that; if you're trying to choose great people for your organisation, sometimes you have to compromise, and I think I'd rather compromise on intensity than some other things like the ability to talk to people.

Wal-mart

2006-07-15T20:53:00.000+10:00

There's been a fascinating discussion at Slate (via 11D) about whether Wal-Mart is good or bad for the US. Go and read it, but my take is that at least some of the argument boils down to:

1 Wal-mart reduces prices by driving a hard bargain everywhere, but particularly on one of their biggest costs, wages. That makes some people better off (by a little bit) as they pay less for the things they buy.
2 It also pays badly and has horrible conditions - they should pay more to their employees and either charge higher prices (reducing item 1) or make lower profits - thereby benefiting fewer people at the expense of the many.
3 The government should have better benefits for those people who have horrible Wal-mart type jobs, so that there isn't as much income inequality

It reminded me of the shock to my system I got when I was chatting to my New Zealand cousins about their cars. One of them had a Mazda MX5 (a car I have always admired - if I really cared about cars, I would probably have owned one by now). It had cost him, a couple of years old, about half as much as exactly the same car would have cost here in Australia. That's because New Zealand opened up their second hand car market to imports about 10 years ago, and gets all of Japan's cast offs (Japan also having right hand drive, like us, and having very strict road rules about old cars). And they have absolutely no tariffs on new cars either.

Of course, that means that they have no car industry, and the workers who used to make cars in New Zealand don't have jobs. New Zealand doesn't have much industry any more, so unskilled jobs aren't exactly easy to come by.

So which is better? A few people not having jobs and being miserable, and the rest of the country having cheaper cars and a better standard of living? Or more jobs for unskilled workers at the expense of more expensive cars for everyone (and over a reasonable period, a car can be a major expense of a household budget, particularly for poorer people).

I don't actually think there's an easy answer, but I do think that most arguments you see (from either side) tend to ignore one side of the argument. Either they tend to ignore the costs to the rest of society from higher prices by tariffs and increased wage costs, or they tend to pretend that the human cost from unemployment and wages that aren't really enough to live on isn't really worth considering if there's a profit to be made somewhere.

Stylish geekdom

2006-07-14T21:34:00.000+10:00

My cousin's in the International Maths Olympiad, which is currently on in Slovenia. It's a competition for those who are under 20, haven't been to university yet, and with those conditions, are the top mathematicians in their countries, and hence the world. Six contestents per country.

After we found the picture of my cousin, my parents and I amused ourselves by seeing if we could find the country with the most stylish contestents. You wouldn't expect the mugshots from an International Maths Olympiad to exude style, and they don't. But after a random sample through the countries, we decided that the Italians were the most stylish geeks on the planet (and they even have a girl in their team, for extra style points!).

Depends on what you mean by style of course. The Saudis looked suitably exotic, while the Austrians wore matching sweatshirts (which exuded geekiness). I was quite disappointed by the Finns, who I expected to exude scandinavian cool.

Actually, this entire post is probably jealousy from my lack of mathematical talent. I'll be haunting that website to see how my cousin does!

Tipping Points

2006-07-08T21:34:00.000+10:00

After my gloomy posts on global warming, I had to link to RealClimate's recent post on tipping points - a superb summary of all the various things that might tip the planet into a new (probably unpleasant) climatic stage.

Idealism rebounds

2006-07-04T20:59:00.000+10:00

My employer has recently introduced a new policy for all sorts of family friendly stuff - among them, a "breastfeeding friendly workplace". I work in the CBD. We have employees spread across a few different buildings. They have put aside one room in one building for expressing breastmilk. Completely useless to anyone in any other building.

A bit of background - I have expressed in the workplace for six months with both of my children - first child mostly part time, second child full time working. It was important to me - I liked breastfeeding, and it was the one thing nobody else could do for them.

My belief is that the Australian Breastfeeding Association has such idealised requirements for a "breastfeeding-friendly workplace", that what ends up happening is a fairly useless lip-service.

Their requirement is for (among other things) "A clean, private room with a power point, lockable door, comfortable chair, refrigerator, hand washing facilities and breastpump storage area." This tends to reduce, rather than improve the availability of breastfeeding facilities in the workplace.

At my former employer they spent six months refurbishing the old first aid room on a single floor. For me, the six months delay, plus the fact that the floor wasn't my own (and every five minutes counts, when you're trying not to miss the evening feed that night) meant that I just made my own arrangements without any workplace support on my own floor.

In my experience, all you need is:
- a private lockable room (i.e. nobody can see in from the outside of the room)
- a powerpoint in the room
- a chair and table in the room which is reachable from the powerpoint
- a fridge on the same floor
- toilets on the same floor (so you can wash your hands)
- the room is guaranteed bookable for a set period each day

For most white-collar workplaces, even in these days of open plan offices, all that's needed to make that work is to make sure that you can't see into one of the meeting rooms, and that anyone (even the junior employees) can book that one.

If that was the ABA requirement, then it would be much easier for employers to comply, they wouldn't spend six months figuring out how to do it (find a new room that was never used for anything else, buy a new fridge, install a sink), and there would be more rooms available.

For me, I arranged that for myself (I was senior enough to be able to demand the refurbishment of our floor was slightly changed to make one meeting room's glass door not transparent) and the fact that I could go quickly and express, meant that I was more likely to do it twice a day, rather than once, and I kept my supply up for longer (both times supply failures was what made me stop).

I'm sure whoever is responsible at the ABA thinks they're doing the right thing by asking for perfection. I think what that means, though, is employers think it's all too hard. The employees who are senior enough, and/or feisty enough to figure it out for themselves, and ask for something reasonable, manage to work through it. The others get ground down with the hassle, and end up giving up earlier than they would like.

Corporate vs Consulting

2006-07-01T21:01:00.000+10:00

My recent work move was from consulting life into corporate life. I've been there before, but a while ago. Something I really noticed when I moved back is that there are far more "mature"workers, at all levels, but particularly at the junior end. In consulting, whether articulated or not, most firms operate some kind of "up-or-out" policy. If you don't look like you're going to get that next promotion, the firm doesn't want you. So you end up with a pyramid structure, not just by level, but also by age. Whereas corporate life has always had room for the person who doesn't get promoted. You stay there, and sometimes (not as often as in the past) you are even valued for your corporate knowledge.

I probably have a tendency to over-glamorise. Corporate life has treated "mature"workers really badly over the years in ways of redundancies and restructures. But what I hadn't really realised, is that at least they treated them moderately well in the first place. Consulting now seems a bit unhealthy to me, with its unwillingness to place any value on experience, unless it makes you capable of doing the very top job. Ruthlessly removing those people who are in the bottom half of the pool may make for a better structure (and better leverage, for those partners at the top), but it doesn't necessarily make for a wonderful human environment.

Book Review - Field Notes from a Catastrophe

2006-07-01T19:59:00.000+10:00

Today's book review (I'm not promising weekly any more!) is Field Notes from a Catastrophe - Man, Nature and Climate Change, by Elizabeth Kolbert. It is a fairly slim book, based on a series she did for the New Yorker in 2005, and I read it after reading the review on realclimate, a blog by climate change scientists which attempts, as far as possible, to give a non-political review of the science of the various sensationalist discoveries that appear in the press.

I found it, surprisingly, even more convincing and simultaneouslly depressing than Tim Flannery's book (see my earlier review here). The book is a set of, as suggested in the title, field notes from various trips Kolbert has made to places where global warming is very clearly happening. Then in the second half she talks about what the US is doing about it.

The most obvious place is the arctic, where she describes life in an Alaskan inuit village that will have to be moved away from its current island location because the combination of changes in sea-ice and increased storm surges are starting to render it uninhabitable. The scariest part of the arctic visit is the description of permafrost that hasn't melted for millions of years now melting - hard to blame anything other than global warming for that.

I did have a vague idea that the arctic was where things were happening. But the are happening more quickly than the modellers have predicted, and that is very quickly indeed, because of the feedback loops that happen when ice starts to melt.

In her second half of the book, Kolbert has a hilarious account of her meeting with the US Under Secretary of State for Democracy and Global Affairs - Paula Dobriansky. She is responsible for explaining the Bush administration's position on global warming to the rest of the world. She appears to have three phrases, which were pretty much all she said during the 15 minute meeting; "we act, we learn, we act again", "we view this as a serious issue" and "we have a common goal and objective, but we can take different approaches". Fairly platitudinous when said once, but must have been pretty frustrating listening to each phrase three or four or five times.

Kolbert talks about the politics of it, and comes to a conclusion that the problem with global warming is that everything takes so long. It seems likely that eventually everyone (even China and the US) will take it seriously enough that they act. Unfortunately, but that stage, we may have reached the point of no return. We're currently at 375 ppm carbon dioxide in the atmosphere (up from 315 in 1958 when good measurement started). The scientific consensus seems to be that at around 450 to 500 will be the point when catastrophic change (such as melting the Greenland and Antarctic icesheets) will be inevitable. But they won't happen then; they could take another 50 years. So in the meantime, we, the people who elect our politicians, will think shorter term than that, and won't be willing to make the big changes in lifestyle required to stop things happening.

There was an article in the Economist a couple of weeks ago, talking about a talkfest which looked at where you could best spend $50 billion to improve the world. The conclusion was that global warming didn't make it onto the list. Basically, because the solutions are very expensive, the payoff (in terms of avoidance of catastrophe) is so long term, and the costs are so uncertain, we should spend our money on things like improving breastfeeding rates, which has proven costs and benefits.

I don't disagree that improving breastfeeding is important. But I think these models of costs and benefits are failing to model the costs properly. One piece of modelling described in the book is the change in rainfall in continental US under two fairly accepted climate change models. The rainfall that emerged from the models was low enough that California water-resource managers didn't think there was any way they could find enough water to support California. If you put into your cost models a reversion of large parts of the US to desert, would wipe-out of the US economy be sufficient cost worth spending the money?

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In the meantime, I do continue to make poor choices from an environmental point of view. We replaced our hotwater system with another electric one this year; not because we didn't want to spend the money on a solar system, but because the hassle involved was too great - we'd have to get council approval to change the roof of our heritage listed house. And much as I'd like to replace our roof with solar panels when we have to replace it in the next few years, I can't see us seriously doing it - again for the hassle factor. But at least we only have one car, and we catch public transport all over the place.

Antipodes

2006-06-25T08:58:00.000+10:00

I've been reflecting, during the World Cup, at how good we Australians are at watching sport in the middle of the night. But it's part of being a sports fan, here. We've grown up watching pretty much any world class sport in the middle of the night. Think Ashes tests, Wimbledon, US & French Open tennis, Olympics, FA Cup finals, various Golf tournaments etc. etc. And of course the World Cup of Football.

When I lived in London, I suddenly realised that the rest of the world doesn't really do that. Although every now and again there is something on the other side of the world, it's not a standard part of being a sporting fan. A combination of a lot of Australians being fanatical enough about sport to actually watch something in the middle of the night, and that there is very little world sport actually happening in our own time zone.

Just that, by itself, probably gives the average Australian a much better appreciation of the size of the world than people in most other countries. We're not necessarily any more cosmopolitan, but we know from an early age, that exciting things happen in other parts of the world. ____________________________________________

For myself, I have never gone without sleep to watch golf (or even watched it voluntarily), but I have gone without sleep to watch everything else on my list above. And I'm not that much of a sports fan, really.

Introversion

2006-06-21T21:29:00.000+10:00

Via JennyD, I found an on-line Myers-Briggs personality test. I did it out of curiosity to see if my rating would have changed from when I did it 10 years ago at some work love-in. It hadn't, I'm still INTJ - Introverted, intuitive, thinking, judging (the opposites are extroverted, sensing, feeling, perceiving). Each of the 16 possible categories has some wonderful description and adjective that you can model yourself on so that you feel good about yourself.

Doing it knowing what the categories are gives you a slightly different view of what it all means, and I found it interesting when I got to the introversion questions. There are two quite different aspects to introversion, as defined by this test: do you like being the centre of attention? Do you like being with other people? For me, the answers are definitely not, and yes, I really enjoy being in a group of people. But for E, he is an introvert the other way round - he's quite happy being the centre of attention, but needs some time to himself to recharge after being forced into a big group.

It's interesting watching our kids - C takes after E and loves being the centre of attention, but will wander off with a book in the middle of a party. D seems to be taking after the extroverted parts of both of us, so far.

To me the two aspects are so different that it's almost strange that they are both labelled "introverted".

Fandom

2006-06-13T20:06:00.000+10:00

I loved reading Fever Pitch, (one man's story of the highs and lows of being an obsessive Arsenal fan) when I first found it, but I never thought it would apply to me.

But watching the World Cup last night with Australia spending most of the match futilely trying to match Japan's controversial goal before coming good in the last 10 minutes with 3 glorious goals, I was reminded, unexpectedly of Nick Hornby's description of how, when you're a fan, you spend most of the time hating your team for their ineptitude. Every time Australia wasted time passing the ball to each other outside the penalty box before being tackled by the Japanese defence, or alternatively took hopelessly inaccurate shots at goal, I was inwardly cursing their hopelessness.

I realised that the Australian men's soccer team is one of my few experiences with real fandom. I'm not a serious fan in the Nick Hornby mold, but I have come to care. Probably that experience of watching Australia throw it all away in the last few minutes against Iran 8 years ago has made it that way, but who knows what captures the imagination? Suffice to say I'm now even more jealous of my brother's tickets for the Croatia game next week. That one's going to matter.

Gifted education

2006-06-12T19:57:00.000+10:00

I've been mulling over gifted education for a while.

I think that streaming children into different ability levels is, on the whole, a good idea (that's probably the most controversial statement in this post). It probably doesn't matter that much in the middle of the bell curve, but at either end, children will learn better when they are learning with other children who learn at the same rate. Everybody is happy with doing that for sport and music; why not for book learning?

But, on the other hand, it's a good idea for children to be exposed to the fact that not everyone is the same. My son's kindergarten class has a child with Downs syndrome, who is probably operating at the level of my just-turned-three year old at the moment. I do think that it is good for everyone in that classroom to get to know him as a person, and to understand that he's a bit different. But I felt very sorry for him having to effectively sit and entertain himself as I played number bingo with his three classmates who were operating at a level that they could write numbers, and cross them off as they got called out. He has a full time aide though, so most of the time he gets pretty effective one-on-one education.

So the way in which the NSW education department suggests operating gifted and talented programs in infants and primary school - pull outs for a few lessons, rather than full on streaming - seems sensible to me. That's providing the kids who get pulled out are genuinely operating at a higher level (i.e. top 5% at most, not top 15%; probably the top 1% are the ones that really need it), and it seems sensible also to leave the kids together a lot of the time so that they get to know children at different levels as well.

But then the question is whether such programs become yet another way for middle-class parents to get more than their fair share of the education budget within state schools. If the testing for who gets into gifted and talented programs is based on achievements (like early reading), rather than some better measure of intrinsic intelligence (such as an IQ test, with all its faults), it will generally miss the children without rich intellectual home lives, and the children with english as a second language. That's not a reason not to have gifted and talented programs, though; it's a reason to make sure you have good identification methods, so you don't just get the polished middle class kids (although middle class kids can be gifted too!).

The other aspect that is often missed with arguments back and forth about gifted education is friendship. Some (not all) gifted children do find it easier to make friends with those who are also gifted, or operating at their own levels (e.g. an older child). Those children are condemned to loneliness if they never spend time with children their own intellectual ages.

From reading up on the subject, the simplest, cheapest way of providing for gifted children is to allow them to accelerate through school - start young, or skip a year or two along the way. It doesn't require any special programs, or special schools, just acceptance from teachers and schools. Although many teachers think that's a terrible idea, overwhelmingly the research supports it (see this campaigning summary of the research). Some accelerated children have trouble with their older classmates in their teenage years, but many don't, and their non-accelerated peers generally have more social problems along the way, if you do comparative research.

So that's what we've done with our older son - he started school at 4 years 5 months (six weeks younger than he was officially allowed). So far it's going great, and we don't think his classmates have really noticed yet, but I'll keep you posted.

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A couple of contrary links: Laura at 11d had a post a few months ago about how she got really annoyed by gifted education in NY, because it tended to get hijacked by middle-class parents who wanted a good education for their children, but couldn't afford private school fees. And susoz at personal political had a post about the gifted education pull-out classes at her son's school, and how she found their testing methods a bit odd, and found it hard to believe that they would do much good anyway, the way they were structured.

Slow down

2006-06-05T19:37:00.000+10:00

I've decided to slow down a bit on this blog. Notwithstanding all my crowing posts about work-life balance, it's catching up with me.

I started a new job just over three months ago, which I am finding far more interesting and enjoyable than my old job. The main thing is that I am learning, and continuously interested in what I'm doing (even when it's frustrating). But there are two side effects; firstly that in getting up to speed with a challenging role, I'm spending about an hour longer on work every day (mostly at home); and secondly, that because I'm finding it both interesting and challenging, my brain is engaged for even more extra time. So I find myself thinking about work (when not at work) far more than I ever used to.

It's a classic example of the employment phenomenen described in the book Better than Sex (which I reviewed a few months ago) - for an employer, you want someone who is engaged with their work for as much of their waking day as possible, and I am starting to become that person. I'm not necessarily moving that way voluntarily, but when you find a job interesting, sometimes it's hard not to.

So I've decided that since my home life is suffering from this, I'd rather it didn't suffer from thinking up blog posts all the time, too, so I'll only post when the spirit moves me, rather than feeling slightly guilty if I don't post every day or so. I can't imagine that I'll manage to cure my blog addiction entirely, so feel free to check in once in a while! While I've managed to cure blogging as a procrastination device in the office (largely by moving somewhere where I'm actually "engaged" (to use current HR jargon)), I find it hard to go a day without checking my favourite blogs, even just for "10 minutes" (hah!) on the way to bed.

Strollers and obesity

2006-05-27T20:49:00.000+10:00

I'm coming to the conclusion that a major cause of childhood obesity is the excellence of the modern stroller.

These days, the stroller/pram you buy when you first have a baby has enough features to last you to age four, if you wish. And if you don't wish, a new one isn't ridiculously expensive as a percentage of disposable income. And if you have another child, a tandem stroller, or a toddler seat is not that much more than a single stroller. None of that is bad, of course. And, for safety reasons, the stroller, of course, has a five point harness, which also enables you to strap most (not all) toddlers in for a while

But that's not how it has always been. Prams didn't used to convert easily to strollers - you had to prop a child up in an uncomfortable way, or buy another one. I very much doubt when I was little whether anyone could afford to buy a tandem stroller/pram when they had a second child - it would have been a much greater bite out of an income, and far less functional. And without harnesses, it would have been harder to keep a recalcitrant toddler in a pram who wanted to get out and run somewhere.

So mothers were once forced to teach their children to walk reasonable distances from a fairly early age. Their alternative was once to carry the toddler. But no longer. Wander anywhere where children might be out and about. Have a look at the age of the kids in the stroller. It's not uncommon to see four year olds. They might get out and walk for a while, but the stroller is there if they get tired.

Ever wonder why the toddler harness went out of fashion? I don't think it's got anything to do with our reluctance to treat a toddler like a dog on a leash. I think it's because a pram is a much easier way to restrain a toddler. And now that toddlers don't have to be taught painstakingly to walk sensible beside a parent at a reasonable pace, stopping at roads, they are much older before they walk as a way of getting somewhere. So when they're too old to be pushed anywhere, they are not in the habit of walking, and don't have the stamina to walk any great distance.

Of course everything above is a gross generalisation. But kids these days get less incidental exercise than their elders at a very early age, and the pram is just then later substituted by the car, when the distances get longer. Obesity is not just about unhealthy school lunches.

Crackberry

2006-05-24T18:27:00.000+10:00

Yes, I've succumbed, I've got a Blackberry. I've read many articles about how terrible blackberries are, since they encourage you to be available at all times. Laura at 11D hates the idea, after her husband has been forced to get one.

But I think that just like many other things, the effect on your life depends on a combination of you, and your employer. For me, it improves my life because I can check my emails on the bus home. And when I'm at a corporate love-in (as I was on Wednesday) I can check my emails during the breaks, and I know that nothing major has happened back at the office.

But for me, my life is majorly improved by being able to do work at home, because the alternative is to do it at the office. If I can do work at home, I can come home, have dinner with the boys, and then do some more work after they've gone to bed. If I can't work at home, I still have to do the same amount of work, but I have to stay late, and miss a family dinner to do it.

But if a Blackberry means that you end up doing just as much work at the office, and then have to do more at nights and weekends as well, they're a dumb idea.

I know plenty of people who are addicted enough to work that they will do more work by being in contact all the time. And others, like Laura's husband who are pressured into doing more. But sometimes the doom and gloom stories miss that tools like Blackberries (and my remote access to my work's computer network) can actually improve work life balance as well.

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Mind you, I probably should revisit this post in a month's time, before being too smug about my work life balance.

Childcare shortages

2006-05-23T21:09:00.000+10:00

Interesting article in the SMH today about how the lack of childcare is stopping people from working.

A few interesting points; as suzoz pointed here a few days ago, family day care is not that popular, because increasingly the higher standards and professionalism of long day care (whether real or perceived) is more popular. So there isn't as much pent up demand for family day care as there used to be.

And the big pent-up demand is for after school care. Which also makes sense. That point at which your child goes to school is, for many mothers (and fathers, maybe) the point at which it seems sensible to think about working again. But after school care is the least susceptible of all forms of care to market forces. It makes sense to have it on school grounds, so there is always a natural monopoly at each school. And it's not that easy to find carers for the odd hours, so the big listed players can't make much money out of it.

So the coalition solution of leaving the market to provide is very unlikely to work without a bit of help.

As a believer in usefulness of the market for many issues, it annoys me intensely when it's treated as a god that will fix everything, even things that have clear issues that will never be fixed without intervention - natural monopolies, externalities, imperfect information... all things that stop "the market" working. But the coalition seems to want to assume them out of existence.

Serendipity

2006-05-21T20:26:00.000+10:00

This morning, I was in The Rocks, and a band was playing - a double bass, electric guitar, a saxophone, drums and a vocalist (at the muzak end of swing, but very listenable).

I was reminded of a magic evening a few years ago.

I was working in Wellington, NZ on a company acquisition. It happened to be an all female team at that stage of the deal - the client, and three consultants. After a long day, we went out for a quick bite to eat, and were strolling back to our hotel when we walked past the foyer of a theatre, which had a swing band in its lobby bar. It was three or four 20 something guys. I can't remember the instruments exactly, but they were young, enthusiastic, and fantastic. We sat at a table close-ish to the front, and drank it in. We stayed for ages, and chatted between sets about our lives, but during the sets, just enjoyed the music. There were a few people dancing, mostly with panache - a bit of jive, since this was before salsa got big.

Wellington then was only just getting a nightlife; these days Courteney Place is full of fabulous bars and restaurants. But then, part of the magic of the night was the fabulous serendipity. Expecting nothing, we ended up with the perfect evening.

Running

2006-05-20T20:20:00.000+10:00

I've decided that I do need to get fit again. I had all these good intentions about getting into good habits when I started my new job in February; but then I got pneumonia, and my doctor gave me a stern lecture about not exercising until I was totally better. It's been nearly three months now, so I thought I could risk a run this morning (having tested myself by running all the way to the ferry two mornings ago). It probably would have been a new personal worst time if I'd timed myself, but I'm glad I did it.

Every time I go for a morning run, I remember why I like it. The harbour was as still as glass; the runners and walkers were polite and smiled at each other; and when I got back home I felt energised for the day.

In the past, when I've been working ridiculous hours away from home, I've always made a point of going for a run in the morning. It seems to energise me more than an extra half hour's sleep would. But I can never get into that habit at home. I can't think of anything that'll change that now, but I am going to try and go for a run at least one out of two mornings on the weekends again.

Starting young

2006-05-18T20:02:00.000+10:00

I was doing a puzzle with D this evening (who is just 3). It was about a farm, and he asked me "where is the farmer?". I pointed out the woman who was putting hay in a wheelbarrow. He said "girls aren't farmers".

I'm amazed by this, as we have a series of books about "Mrs Boot the Farmer" (who appears to be a single parent of two children), as well as quite a few picture books with a mix of male and female farmers. We had a discussion about it, and he appeared dubiously convinced that both men and women are farmers. C tried to help me by saying from his older brother position of superiority that girls and boys aren't farmers, but I think that made D more determined to stick to his position.

I really thought that we were doing well in subverting the dominant gender stereotypes. Clearly more effort is needed.

Names

2006-05-17T20:31:00.000+10:00

The US has released their stats on names for 2005. I found a link there via some blog or other, and went back to check on my name the year I was born (I wasn't born in the US, but I wasn't born in Australia, either). I reckon from my own personal experience, that Jennifer was the most popular name in Australia in 1967. In my residential college at university, 8% of the women were called Jennifer (or Jenny or Jen). But in the US, Jennifer was only the 10th most popular name in 1967. It only became number 1 in 1970, and then stayed there for another decade.

Freakonomics has a interesting section on baby names, where he reckons you can trace the class system in action by watching a baby name move from the upper classes down to the middle classes, and to the working classes, and then out of fashion.

I wonder whether the names Australians are likely to choose (of all classes) are ahead of the US? Or am I guilty of over-analysing my (admittedly sparse) data. Strangely enough, we never managed to export Kylie to anywhere else.

Australian Club

2006-05-16T19:22:00.000+10:00

I was taken to lunch at the Australian Club today. It's quite a strange phenomenen. In a modern (well 60s) office building, the club has three or four floors decorated in late Victorian english style (to ape the London club it is trying to be). I was in the guests dining room, didn't make the inner sanctum. I enquired of my host how he became a member, and discovered to my amazement that it was a men-only club! I had no idea they still existed, and said so.

Apparently some of the men-only clubs around Sydney are debating whether they should let women in because their membership is declining, but this club is still going OK, even though the average age of members is mid-60s.

I'm not sure that letting women in would make that much difference; even my host said that clubs were really needed back in the days that there weren't many restaurants around town; these days, it's much easier to take someone out to a nice restaurant somewhere.

There are probably fewer people around these days who would be impressed with an invitation to an "exclusive" club - even letting aside the sexist aspect (which certainly didn't impress me once I realised). And if the average membership is in their mid-60s, the quality of the business contacts is probably not as good as it might once have been.

So hopefully these clubs will whither into a genteel decline, as they become irrelevent.

Mothers' Day

2006-05-14T20:54:00.000+10:00

I've always hated the idea of Mothers' Day. It has always seemed so commercialised and meaningless. The recognition aspect has completely fallen by the wayside, and now it's just about commercialism. Lately it seems to have got even more commercialised, so that it is now compulsory for all mothers to be taken out for a fabulous dinner (forget breakfast in bed).

I used to wonder whether I would miraculously convert to being in favour of mothers' day once I became a mother, and hence eligible for all the pampering. I haven't. Even when I was in hospital with a new baby on mothers' day, I found the whole thing faintly ridiculous.

The one aspect of it all that has slightly crept through my barriers is loving the handmade things my boys are bringing home from pre-school and school. It was wonderful to watch C's excitement as he told me not to look under his bed where he was hiding my present.

But I was soon brought down to earth as we were walking through our local shopping centre, with C (an early print addict) reading out all the mothers' day ads and telling me that I must buy a card and present for my mother. Brainwashing starts young these days.

Book Review: Neal Stephenson

2006-05-13T20:49:00.000+10:00

This week's book review is a survey of Neal Stephenson's work. I've lately been on a kick of re-reading all our Neal Stephenson books, partly prompted by tigtog's rave review of SnowCrash. Tigtog's rave was mostly about one of the main characters, YT (a sexy intelligent kick-ass woman), a variant of whom appears surprisingly often (surprising for cyber-punk, which often only has women as sex interests for the male protagonists) in Stephenson's novels.

SnowCrash is Stephenson's most famous seriously sci-fi work, and probably one of only two that actually fits the cyberpunk description. It's a fun romp through a dysfunctional future as imagined in the late early 90s - its descriptions of virtual reality, and the internet (the metaverse) are pretty impressive for something written so long ago. As seems to happen with about half of Stephenson's books, his research is too obvious for me (he is obsessed with linguistics, and while it's interesting, it got a bit turgid after a while). But this book established Stephenson as a major cyberpunk author to rival William Gibson, although Gibson has stayed much closer to the genre since.

My favourite in the properly science fiction description, by a long way, is The Diamond Age. This is further into the future, and although full of technological imaginings, the most interesting thing about the book is Stephenson's imagining the way in which different societies might deliberately organise themselves - with the strongest part of this being his ode to Victorian English culture and why it makes sense. Although the ending is incredibly weak (it seems as if he just lost interest, and tied up the knots - probably was rich enough to avoid proper editing), 98% of the book is great and thought provoking.

Cyrptomnicom, to me, again shows signs of lack of editing. While Stephenson's writing is enjoyable, this book suffers with too much of the research being on the surface. My brother, who writes software for a living, loved this book. For me, who left serious mathematics behind about twenty years ago, the stuff about cryptoanalysis became a chore after a while.

But the best, by far, of Stephenson, is the Baroque Cycle trilogy. This is a tour de force of three volumes set in the late 17th and early 18th century, with Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz, and many other key scientists (Huygens, Franklin, Hookes, etc etc) as key, human characters. It is an incredibly human story with two main characters - Eliza and Jack - both from humble beginnings, who dance in and out of European scientific, economic and political history gaily and with penache.

Although, just as in all his other books, Stephenson has clearly done a mammoth amount of research, in this case, the research helps, rather than hinders the plot and character development. After reading these books, actual history of the period is disappointing - you've already read all the facts, and the story isn't written as well.

In my re-read, I've become a confirmed Stephenson junkie (I do have all his other books, but this review was already too long). His strengths - great characters, very funny dialogue, and interesting ideas; weaknesses - over use of research (sometimes) and very weak endings when he seems to get sick of the book. But the strengths far outweigh the weaknesses, and I've enjoyed the re-read.

Tangent: An interesting discussion on book snobbery on Larvatus Prodeo has Neal Stephenson talking about how literary authors don't take him seriously because he's made too much money.

Market forces and childcare

2006-05-11T20:20:00.000+10:00

The AFR this morning had an interesting article about the budget plans to improve childcare.Apparently, the way in which this government will improve childcare is to "improve market intelligence".

"Family and Community Services Minister Mal Brough is adamant that leaving the
provision of childcare to the market will solve problems of undersupply, despite
the industry warning that market forces have failed so far....Mr Brough said
he was confident more family day-care providers would open when the government
was able to give them up-to-date information about levels of supply and demand."

This "solution" seems to suggest that family-day-care providers (who remember, are only allowed to care for a maximum of five children at a time, in their own house, and often that includes one or two of their own), are such accomplished business people that they will go to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, check out where there is a gap in the market, move house to that location, and then start up their new business.

Really? Could it be that the reason that there are few family day care providers in the areas that need them - areas which have a lot of two-income families - is because only two income families can afford to live there? And family day care does not provide a wonderful income, particularly if, as is often the case, two of the children are your own.

The government is pinning its hopes on new family day-care services opening
in areas of undersupply when rules preventing the duplication of care are
abolished.

A separate article in the AFR today has the headline: "It's the same old message to mothers: stay at home". This article shows that, as usual, dual income families have received less from the budget than single income families with the same income. The AFR says that "Treasury analysis of how the family tax benefits and tax cuts will be distributed has confirmed working mothers are still better off staying home."

I think that's the real story.

Perception of risk

2006-05-09T21:47:00.000+10:00

I've recently gone from being a PAYG taxpayer (pay tax quarterly, generally get an interest free loan from the tax office for six months for your tax, but in charge of making sure you pay the right amount of tax) to being a PAYE taxpayer (tax is deducted from my pay before I ever see it.

I've been very relieved to go in that direction.

Even though I have lost an interest free loan from the tax department, I have significantly gained in certainty about the amount I owe, and to me, that's worth more. I wouldn't have expected to feel this way when I first got the chance, five years ago, to go PAYG - the chance of an interest free loan is surely worth a lot? But to me, certainty is worth more.

I've always been a bit superior (only privately, of course), when I watch people investing in cash when they should be investing in a long term equity style investment. But watching myself behave fairly irrationally over my tax uncertainty has given me a whole new appreciation of perceptions of risk.

What makes a good playground?

2006-05-08T22:47:00.000+10:00

I went to a fantastic playground on the weekend that I'd not been to before, which made me wonder - what do you need in an ideal playground? For me, you need:

a pretty big space for running around with a ball
either a fence, or a big area which you can easily see before you get to the nearest road or other hazard
interesting play equipment - things like a sandpit, a huge climbing frame, a game of snakes and ladders on the pavement, a big slide
Equipment for toddlers and bigger kids, preferably somewhat separated
The bigger kids equipment is too difficult for toddlers to play on (usually a climb to the first level does the trick)
A good regular supply of kids (not too many, or too obnoxious) so there is someone to play with
a nice spot for the adults to sit that you can see everything from
shade
picturesque location
takeaway coffee close by

In making this list, I realise that I'm incredibly lucky. Apart from the takeaway coffee criterion, I can think off hand of five or six playgrounds that fit most of this within a few kilometres of my place. I can even walk to one or two. Here's a couple of examples:

Kesterton

Berry Island

When I read Miriam Peskowitz's book The Truth about the Mommy Wars, one of the anecdotes that surprised me was her story of a group of parents in Atlanta pitching together and raising money so their local playground could become functional again. Here, our local council does it from the rates, most of the time. My local council is proud of its playgrounds (although it does tend to focus too much on the toddler end), but I've been to playgrounds in a few places in Sydney now, and they're generally pretty good. They're one of the small, unsung things that glue together a neighbourhood.

Older mothers

2006-05-06T20:32:00.000+10:00

The world press has faithfully reported another milestone in older mothers - Britain's oldest mother at the age of 63. She's 7 months pregnant with a donor egg. The articles are all full of disapproval of how someone can become a mother at that age - a small section on the added complications of pregnancy, and a much larger section on how she will be too tired to play with her children properly, won't live long enough to care for them etc, etc.

In general, from my own experience (my grandfather was 54 when my uncle was born, and was starting to be too old to do the vigorous playing he had dreamed of doing with his son - according to my mother) I'm somewhat wary of parents being too old. It's an individual thing, and given that I was 34 and 36 when my two boys were born, I can't throw too many stones.

But I find it incredibly annoying that none of this is ever said when an older man becomes a father. A few examples:

Rupert Murdoch (aged 72 when his most recent child was born)
Neville Wran (couldn't find details, but was at least 50, I think quite a lot more when his two children with Jill Hickson were born)
Paul McCartney (aged 60 when his most recent child was born)

Or don't fathers really matter in a child's life?

Medical care

2006-05-05T21:51:00.000+10:00

I'd really like to write a thoughtful post about healthcare. I'm too tired, tonight, though. So I'll just point you to a few US links.

Stayin' Alive has an excellent series on what health insurance is, and why it's a misnomer to call it insurance.
Half Changed World has a post on why she thinks the latest small reforms to health funding in Massachusetts won't work.
Annika is a child who so far has come through some terrible illnesses with health insurance, but her luck is starting to run out as the reinsurer of the fairly small health insurer who insurers her family starts to run out of patience.
And this story from Badger is the scariest of all.

I think I'm reading too many US blogs on this topic, because I'm starting to think that our healthcare system is pretty good.

But I don't our health funding system is sustainable long term - I read something this week talking about various ways in which it's falling apart, but I haven't been able to find it again. I'll bookmark this to write some more.

Lost potential

2006-05-03T20:57:00.000+10:00

I was watching re-runs of The West Wing last night, and much of the plot revolved around Toby Ziegler, and the fact that he was born in 1954.

My uncle Richard was born in 1954. He was only half a generation older than me - my mother's much younger brother. He died in a car accident when he was a bit younger than I am now, and every now and again I am reminded of the loss of potential. If Richard was alive now, I imagine he would be very successful in whatever field he was in - perhaps not quite the White House Director of Communications, but that's hard to top from New Zealand. He topped New Zealand in his final year of school, and was just as successful at university.

I last saw him just as I was starting my career. Because we lived in different countries, I have quite distinct memories of conversations with him, very different to each other, as they were separated by 2 years each time, which for me particularly, meant big changes in how I was thinking, and what I was doing at the time.

Alone of anyone in my extended family (my brothers and cousin came later), he was in the corporate world, and successfully. I was just starting out, and I still remember him casually asking me questions about my job, and the company I worked for, and how my career path might move. That conversation opened my eyes to the much bigger picture of corporate life that existed outside the narrow confines of an actuarial department.

I imagine that if he was alive today we would have a lot to talk about, and I would have a huge amount to learn from him.

This post is about Richard at work; there was far more to him than that; but imagining him the same age as Toby Ziegler made me wonder, as I often do when I see someone successful that age, what Richard would have done had he lived.

Book Review - The Men who stare at Goats

2006-05-02T20:40:00.001+10:00

This week's book review is The Men who Stare at Goats, by Jon Ronson. It's hard to tell what to think about this book. Ronson is a UK journalist (for the Guardian), who investigates the US military's dabblings in alternative culture and the paranormal over the years; or at least as much as he can find out.

Highlights include the story of a hippy who created the "First Earth Battalions" within the US military (an attempt to seriously win the hearts and minds of the enemy by understanding them which seems to have mostly gone by the wayside); the story of Abu Ghraib inmates being played "Barney the Dinosaur" music over and over as part of a carefully selected set of music designed to unsettle them, and many other cases of attempted psychological warfare by the US Army. The very unsettling part of all of this is that much of the psychological warfare seems complete lunacy, but it segues seamlessly into the hiring of prostitutes to torment religious moslems in various US detention camps (Guantanamo Bay being a prime example).

I read the book torn between complete disbelief that any of it could be true (the goats of the title were stared at by a number of different military types in the attempt to kill them by mindpower alone; one claimed success), and shock at some of the meaner aspects of psychological warfare that were actually attempted.

In an organisation as large as the US Army, you can almost understand that it's worth spending a small amount of money on psychic stuff; what, after all, if it was true? Then they would have a monopoly on it. But mostly what comes through to me is outrage that such fruitcakes can be anywhere near having a power of life and death over anyone on this planet.

Ronson's evidence is quite thin, and is mainly hearsay, but in allowing his interview subjects to speak for themselves, he has an effective style that is more powerful than if he added his own commentary.

It's a thin book, and a quick read, but entertaining and horrifying at the same time.

ANZAC Day

2006-04-25T21:19:00.000+10:00

There has been a rash of articles this year talking about Anzac Day and how it has become Australia's national day. My grandfather was an Anzac (a New Zealander - this has never been just about Australians). He wasn't at Gallipolli, but he spent a few pretty horrible years in France on the Western Front, where he was pretty lucky to escape intact. So in one sense, I feel part of the Anzac tradition.

But in other ways, the Anzac day traditionalism excludes a whole lot of people - Larvatus Prodeo has a post today that says this better than I could. E's grandfather also fought in World War I - as an officer in the Austro-Hungarian army. E's father fought in World War II - as one of Tito's partisans in Croatia - nominally on our side, but by the time he came here as a Displaced Person, Tito had become a communist and therefore bad, and E's father was excluded from right-thinking Anzac celebrations. So E has never felt particularly part of Anzac Day - although his other grandfather fought in World War I on the British side, it was simpler just to forget the whole thing.

So in some ways Anzac day can become a bit of a celebration of old Australian nationalism - have a look at the celebrated young faces in the crowd at a dawn ceremony, and it won't look particularly multicultural. But with a bit of imagination, it doesn't need to be that way. One of the best things about Anzac Day has been the way that, by being based on a losing campaign, it was about the futility of war. And the Anzac tradition, today, celebrates some great things about the Australian character - the daggy celebration of people who were willing to have a go and the ability to separate the heroism and sacrifice from the sometimes questionable political decisions that made them necessary.

And there are many Australians, E's father included, who are here because of the stupidity and futility of war. The RSL has got a lot more sensible about that in recent years - allowing soldiers of other countries to march. I'd like to think that Anzac Day will evolve to be simultaneously a celebration of the heroism of soldiers around the world, and a mourning of the lives cut short by the stupidity of war.

Fashion Industry

2006-04-24T20:39:00.000+10:00

50% of Kathmandu, the clothing company, has just been sold by the founder, Jan Cameron. It made me ponder, in fashion week, just how snobby the fashion press is. Fashion week press is usually accompanied by articles about how Australian designers are just about to make it overseas, and isn't it great that those Parisians and Londoners are starting to notice us. Usually, there's an article about how some new name is being stocked in Browns, as if that proves how smart and sophisticated we are.

Meanwhile, Billabong, Rip Curl, Quicksilver, and even Mambo, make good money and export real original Australian style (not copycat European fashion) around the world. But they're generally only noticed in the business press.

____________________________________________________

Kathmandu, of course, is a New Zealand company (even though crikey, which alerted me to the sale, failed to mention it), but it's founded by someone born in Australia, who now spends half her time here, so as usual, that makes it an Australian company if you're writing in the Australian press.

Benefits of global warming

2006-04-23T20:46:00.000+10:00

I've just had another idyllic Sydney day - a bushwalk by the harbour this morning, followed by a relaxing coffee in the sunshine - all brought to you by global warming.

It used to be that this time of year in Sydney was colder and wetter than the average now. Today wasn't that warm (21 degree maximum), but you can pretty much rely on having a fine day these days. And in the last two weeks, we've had two days over 30 degrees.

Right now, my life is probably improved by global warming - although I don't like the hotter summer, the rest of the year Sydney is fantastic, because it's warmer and drier. I can see why there are large swathes of the world thinking "global warming - how bad can it be?" - if you have the horrible winters they get in parts of the US, you'd be in favour of global warming, too.

But the main dam in Goulburn has just run dry. If you live in Goulburn, you're restricted to 150 litres of water per person per day for the foreseeable future. If you go a bit further up the coast of NSW, you're getting to places that are getting increasing storms, and are starting to get the chance of cyclones. Australia has probably got more to lose than most countries, but you couldn't tell by what we're doing about it.

Scripture

2006-04-18T19:55:00.000+10:00

Now that C is at school, he does scripture once a week. As an atheist household, we were pretty against the idea, but the alternative was spending the time colouring-in with the other children with weird parents, so the three weird parents in the class agreed to rotate the children one term at a time through the four options (Anglican, Catholic, Bahai and Jewish).

The problem with this exercise in comparative religion is that everything is, of course, presented as fact. So we weren't really prepared for C telling us seriously on Friday that Jesus died on the Cross at Easter. It's the heart of the Christianity, so of course Easter got a fair bit of attention (even if it is a bit gory), but we didn't really know how to handle it - we ended up downplaying it. When I started correcting C's interpretation (no, Jesus died on the cross on Good Friday, not Easter Sunday), I think E was slightly concerned about reinforcement (disclosure: I went to Sunday School and Church weekly until I was 16 or 17, so I'm at least educated in the details).

Still, we've got it easy compared with one of the other sets of parents - their son insisted that they go to church on Good Friday and Easter Sunday, and has been telling his parents that he can feel God's love, which they're find a bit difficult to figure out how to react to.

Book Review: Nowhere People

2006-04-16T21:12:00.000+10:00

This week's book review is Nowhere People, by Henry Reynolds. Henry Reynolds is probably Australia's most prominent exponent of what its opponents call the "Black Armband" school of colonial history. The Black Armband school of history (as contrasted by its originator, Geoffrey Blainey, with the "three cheers" school of history) focuses (in its opponents' views excessively) on the various wrongs that were done to the aboriginal people of Australia during white settlement:

The 'black armband' view of our history reflects a belief that most Australian history since 1788 has been little more than a disgraceful story of imperialism, exploitation, racism, sexism and other forms of discrimination. (John Howard - 1996 Sir Robert Menzies Lecture).

To me, the argument seems to be over focus, rather than fact. One thing that Henry Reynolds did in one of his earlier works was make an attempt to count the number of Aborigines who actually died from various frontier confrontations, add them up, and compare them with the number of Aborigines who lived at the time. Reading the detail of his books, it's hard to argue with his conclusion that there was a guerilla war going on at various times and places during the early days of Australian settlement; one which was almost overwhelmingly won by white people due to a combination of superior numbers, firepower, and occasionally, germs. That doesn't negate one of the other historical passions of Australians - that the ANZACs were a brave and heroic fighting force in World War I and particularly Gallipolli; but maybe it tells you that some of them had prior experience.

I've been a big fan of Henry Reynolds since I found his first books maybe 10 years ago (he's been writing a lot longer than that), so if you can't already, you can tell which side I'm on.

Anyway, back to this book. This book is a history of "mixed-race" people in Australia, and focuses on how much international theorising about mixing races affected the way in which mixed-race people were treated here. It has some high-level review of international thinking during the early 1900s, and then talks about the ways in which that thinking very much influenced the decisions of most state governments to try and separate mixed-race children from their aboriginal parents (an episode commonly known as the stolen generations). It's clear from the source documents, that Reynolds quotes quite extensively, that this was more than just children being removed from parents who neglected them; in most cases, the children were stolen forcibly and the state neglected them worse, and for ideological reasons.

The book is then topped and tail with Reynolds' story of his own family - it seems likely (although he doesn't and never will know) that Reynolds' grandmother had a fair bit of aboriginal ancestry.

I found the book heavy going; Reynolds seems to revel in finding quotes that sound unbelievably racist to modern ears (international ones talking about quadroons, mulattos, etc and the mongrelisation of the race), but apart from piling them on top of each other, doesn't do much with them. While he has a good high level survey of the stolen generation timelines, I've read better outlines of the facts elsewhere.

Sadly, the book didn't do that much for me; I suspect that Reynolds' personal interest has overtaken the need for good editing. Or maybe I'm just too politically correct (and squeamish) to be able to read that many racist documents in one sitting.

Household delegations

2006-04-15T22:04:00.000+10:00

E is not feeling the best today, so I volunteered to take the boys and do the weekly shop. He decided against it, so we all did it together. The reason he decided against it? He didn't trust me to do it properly.

This is a classic (reversed) gender stereotype - the housewife (to use the word deliberately) refuses to delegate tasks to her husband because he is no good at it. Any discussion of who does housework (which includes both genders) will contain men complaining that their female partners don't trust them to do things properly, and it's their own fault that they have to do the work themselves.

My experience makes me realise that at least some of the housewifely refusal to delegate is sensible - E was behaving quite reasonably not to trust me with the shopping. Although I would have brought adequate food, and we wouldn't have starved for the week, the fact that I don't cook to speak of, and don't make the boys' lunches means that I am unlikely to have an instinctive memory of the state of our various staples (for example, we needed cream for tonight's dinner, which E cooked, and muesli bars for C's lunches as we had just run out). And on Tuesday, when I was back at work, he would have been the one stuck with my choices.

Any household is going to have some tasks that are done by just one person - generally other members of that household are not as good at them. The hard part is to understand and recognise the specialisations, not get sucked down into the gender stereotyping of them. I think we are both much happier with our current housework specialisation now that we have chosen it, rather than as it was when we lived in London, when I was more often the cook and the shopper by default, and did a worse job because I wasn't particularly happy with being the one who decided what we ate every night. Mind you, we had a lot of takeaway then, so I didn't exactly have a hard job! Perhaps it's just that I'm not cut out for being in charge of a household.

Or maybe it's just me who is happy because I do less of the housework than I ever have before? I'll have to see what E thinks.

Income inequality

2006-04-13T21:09:00.000+10:00

A recently published summary of the HILDA survey got a fair bit of press - the AFR and the SMH both did front page stories on Wednesday, and both picked completely different angles. So I had to go back to the source, to see what interesting nuggets I could pick out.

The Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey is a household-based panel study which began in 2001. It collects a stack of information about people - their income, wealth, families, whether they are in the labour market etc. etc, and it follows people - a longitudinal survey - so you can see what happens to them in successive years. They've done it three years in a row now.

There is a very interesting section on income and wealth mobility over what is quite a short period. The survey looked at household's income rankings (after tax and government benefits, and adjusted for household size). Over the three annual surveys, 10% of the top two deciles of income moved to the bottom half of the income distribution, and 8% of the bottom two deciles moved to the top half of the income distribution. Single mothers, though, even though they pretty much started at the bottom of the distribution, were very unlikely to move up in the period.

Using similar measure, the survey goes on to look at households in poverty (defined as income 50% below the median income - a generally used international standard - and even though it is relative, it can still vary substantially - depends on the level of inequality in incomes). Incidentally, this poverty level is $12,362 per equivalent person in a household, with first adults counting as 1, second adults as 0.5 and children under 15 counting as 0.3 of a person. So in my household (two adults, two small children), the total household income poverty line would be $25,960, or just under $500 a week.

Although 20% of the population was poor during at least one of the three years surveyed, only 3% was poor during the entire period. Around 12% were poor at any one time. This implies better mobility than I would have expected (although still a high rate of poverty, given that this includes government benefits, which are the current government's answer to the problems of big income ranges in the work force). Single mothers are the least mobile group of poor people, being less likely to move up the ladder, and more likely to be in the bottom deciles to start with.

The person most likely to be poor is a single elderly person (40 - 50% chance). Then after that is the single mother household (25%) and the lone person household. Elderly couples are about as likely as the population to be poor. Given that elderly couples, single mothers and single elderly people are all supported by government benefits, it says some interesting things about how benefits are targeted. Personally, I would rather that households with children in them were targeted than elderly couples, but then I'm not that likely to end up a poor elderly person, so it's easy for me to say.

I may pick some more out of this survey later - it's got all sorts of interesting snippets in it.

Female writers

2006-04-13T15:41:00.000+10:00

Lazy blogging, but I found this very interesting meme from Under the Ponderosa. I had to add an extra categorisation - for books which I own, but haven't got around to reading, because there is an embarrassingly large number of those.

Bold the ones you've read.
Italicize the ones you have wanted/might like to read.
-Place a dash if you own the book, but haven't got around to reading it
??Place question marks by any titles/authors you've never heard of
*Put an asterisk if you've read something else by the same author.

* Alcott, Louisa May–Little Women
Allende, Isabel–The House of Spirits
Angelou, Maya–I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
*Atwood, Margaret–Cat's Eye
*Austen, Jane–Emma
?Bambara, Toni Cade–Salt Eaters
? Barnes, Djuna–Nightwoodde
-Beauvoir, Simone–The Second Sex
Blume, Judy–Are You There God? It's Me Margaret
* Burnett, Frances–The Secret Garden
*Bronte, Charlotte–Jane Eyre
Bronte, Emily–Wuthering Heights
Buck, Pearl S.–The Good Earth
Byatt, A.S.–Possession
? Cather, Willa–My Antonia
? Chopin, Kate–The Awakening
* Christie, Agatha–Murder on the Orient Express
? Cisneros, Sandra–The House on Mango Street
Clinton, Hillary Rodham–Living History
? Cooper, Anna Julia–A Voice From the South
? Danticat, Edwidge–Breath, Eyes, Memory
Davis, Angela–Women, Culture, and Politics
Desai, Anita–Clear Light of Day
Dickinson, Emily–Collected Poems
? Duncan, Lois–I Know What You Did Last Summer
*DuMaurier, Daphne–Rebecca
* Eliot, George–Middlemarch
? Emecheta, Buchi–Second Class Citizen
? Erdrich, Louise–Tracks
Esquivel, Laura–Like Water for Chocolate
Flagg, Fannie–Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe
Friedan, Betty–The Feminine Mystique
Frank, Anne–Diary of a Young Girl
- Gilman, Charlotte Perkins–The Yellow Wallpaper
Gordimer, Nadine–July's People
* Grafton, Sue–S is for Silence
? Hamilton, Edith–Mythology
* Highsmith, Patricia–The Talented Mr. Ripley
? hooks, bell–Bone Black
? Hurston, Zora Neale–Dust Tracks on the Road
? Jacobs, Harriet–Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
? Jackson, Helen Hunt–Ramona
Jackson, Shirley–The Haunting of Hill House
Jong, Erica–Fear of Flying
Keene, Carolyn–The Nancy Drew Mysteries (any of them)
?Kidd, Sue Monk–The Secret Life of Bees
Kincaid, Jamaica–Lucy
Kingsolver, Barbara–The Poisonwood Bible
? Kingston, Maxine Hong–The Woman Warrior
? Larsen, Nella–Passing
* L'Engle, Madeleine–A Wrinkle in Time
* Le Guin, Ursula K.–The Left Hand of Darkness
Lee, Harper–To Kill a Mockingbird
Lessing, Doris–The Golden Notebook
* Lively, Penelope–Moon Tiger
Lorde, Audre–The Cancer Journals
Martin, Ann M.–The Babysitters Club Series (any of them)?
McCullers, Carson–The Member of the Wedding
? McMillan, Terry–Disappearing Acts
? Markandaya, Kamala–Nectar in a Sieve
? Marshall, Paule–Brown Girl, Brownstones
Mitchell, Margaret–Gone with the Wind
* Montgomery, Lucy–Anne of Green Gables
? Morgan, Joan–When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost
Morrison, Toni–Song of Solomon
? Murasaki, Lady Shikibu–The Tale of Genji
* Munro, Alice–Lives of Girls and Women
Murdoch, Iris–Severed Head
? Naylor, Gloria–Mama Day
Niffenegger, Audrey–The Time Traveller's Wife
? Oates, Joyce Carol–We Were the Mulvaneys
? O'Connor, Flannery–A Good Man is Hard to Find
? Piercy, Marge–Woman on the Edge of Time
Picoult, Jodi–My Sister's Keeper
Plath, Sylvia–The Bell Jar
?Porter, Katharine Anne–Ship of Fools
* Proulx, E. Annie–The Shipping News
Rand, Ayn–The Fountainhead
? Ray, Rachel–365: No Repeats
Rhys, Jean–Wide Sargasso Sea
Robinson, Marilynne–Housekeeping
? Rocha, Sharon–For Lac
Sebold, Alice–The Lovely Bones
Shelley, Mary–Frankenstein
Smith, Betty–A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
-Smith, Zadie–White Teeth
Spark, Muriel–The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
Spyri, Johanna–Heidi
? Strout, Elizabeth–Amy and Isabelle
Steel, Danielle–The House
Tan, Amy–The Joy Luck Club
? Tannen, Deborah–You're Wearing That
? Ulrich, Laurel–A Midwife's Tale
? Urquhart, Jane–Away
* Walker, Alice–The Temple of My Familiar
? Welty, Eudora–One Writer's Beginnings
Wharton, Edith–Age of Innocence
* Wilder, Laura Ingalls–Little House in the Big Woods
- Wollstonecraft, Mary–A Vindication of the Rights of Women
* Woolf, Virginia–A Room of One's Own

Responsibility

2006-04-12T21:52:00.000+10:00

I haven't bothered commenting on the AWB royal commission before, mainly because it seemed too depressing. Once again, a government has done the wrong thing and brazened it out because the voters don't really care about the technicalities, and they have enough "I didn't know stuff" to hide behind.

The latest evidence from Mark Vaile and Alexander Downer, and tomorrow, John Howard makes the whole thing worse. Alexander Downer cheerfully acknowledged that he could not recall being told about the issues surrounding AWB, and that he had not been concerned. And he thinks this lets him off the hook! What annoys me most about this is that the federal government, rightly, expects more from anyone running an organisation of comparable size in this country.

When National Australia Bank was taken to the cleaners by four foreign exchange traders in the bowels of the organisation, did anyone seriously think it was a reasonable excuse for the Managing Director to say "sorry, I didn't know our controls were broken?". No, he resigned. Not content with requiring that level of responsibility from the person who is leading an organisation on a full time basis (fairly similar to a minister, I would say, in level of responsibility), they also require it from a Board, which is operating on a part-time basis in an oversight role (which would be equivalent to the full cabinet, in this context). And institutional investors also expect that level of accountability - the Board of NAB has almost completely turned over since that loss, in a fairly public and messy way.

Corporations Law does not allow directors to use ignorance as an excuse. They are responsible for asking the right questions, and creating an organisational culture that means they are likely to get the right answers, and be told spontaneously if there is something they should know. We should hold our government to no lesser a standard.

Cooking

2006-04-10T21:02:00.000+10:00

At cake this afternoon a colleague was telling me this long involved story about his family, which ended with his six year old son telling his mother she was a hero and giving her three cheers for cooking tacos. So my colleague ended by telling me that all I had to do to get my boys to cheer me was to cook tacos.

He was a bit non-plussed when I told him that I never did any of the cooking in our house. To the extent that I backtracked and mentioned cooking pasta occasionally (true, but only the assembly kind). None of my colleagues are deliberately sexist, but he clearly had a "mother = cooking" mindset for home life, even though, like him, I am the work outside the home parent in my household.

Not sure what the point of this story is (I'm procrastinating from the work I brought home this evening) but it is nice to subvert the dominant paradigm occasionally, even if in a subtle way.

Book Review - The Great Influenza

2006-04-08T20:32:00.000+10:00

This week's book review is The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History by John M Barry. The book is the story of the "Spanish Flu" - in 1918 and 1919 (depending on where you were in the world) a deadly influenza swept the world, killing between 50 million and 100 million people.

The book tackles this from a totally US angle, topping and tailing the main story with stories of how US medicine changed from being close to being based on folklore, to being a scientific enterprise understanding the immune system and the way in which bacteria and viruses work. But the main focus of the book is the way in which politics, both on a local, and a national scale, managed to make the government responses not just inadequate, but, in many cases, contributory to greater death rates.

The outbreak started towards the end of world war I, which meant that US troops were packed like sardines into troop trains, ships, and training camps, creating the best possible environment for the spread of the deadly disease. And the focus on winning the war meant that almost always, anyone who tried to stop the transport of troops was howled down as being unpatriotic. And in many towns and cities, censorship and the desire to avoid panic meant that newspapers totally downplayed the epidemic, or said that the worst was over, at the same time as people were dying in every neighbourhood, and cities were running out of coffins - Barry argues that the contradictions made people panic worse.

I found it riveting, and terrifying. Surprisingly (as it's been years since I read a book about actually doing science), I found the bits about basic medical science fascinating, and it made me want to read more (always the sign of a well-written book). And the disaster stories were just the right mix of broad sweep of history and the individual tragedies. The story of someone having to hand the body of their 8 year old son wrapped in a sheet (no coffins available) to a wagon collecting dead bodies was almost impossible to read. But the stories with statistics of the various army camps and the number of deaths they had in impossibly short periods of time were unputdownable.

It made me wonder why this whole episode doesn't live in the collective memory the way World War I does. I've never read a fiction book that mentions it; I've never had parental or grandparental stories handed down, it's almost as if it happened much longer ago.

Barry has some theories about that too - mainly that the whole thing was just so unbelievably horrible that nobody could bear to write about it. While it was happening, everyone was too busy, and afterwards, you just wanted to forget it had ever happened.

Barry mentions in passing that the Australian experience was much milder than the US one (because we managed to quarantine the country for long enough that when it finally got in, the virus had mutated to a milder version), but because our experience was post-war related censorship, there was far more press about it. He also mentions in passing a story about Wellington, NZ being completely deserted and every hospital totally overwhelmed, so it certainly hit both the countries where I'm likely to get folk memories from.

Depending on where you were, and when the virus hit your area (it took 6-12 months to get around the world, and varied in virulence during that time), as well as how much you had been exposed to influenza in the past, the death rates varied from well under 1% (very early or late in the epidemic) to up to 25% (obscure pacific islands at the height of the epidemic) of the population. Some Inuit villages in Alaska were completely wiped out, as the people who didn't die starved to death because they were sick for too long to get food. Individual city episodes generally lasted around 2 months. I imagine if you had better public health (i.e. close the schools, etc at the first sign of infection) that the death rates would be lower, but the episode would last longer.

It seems, from the research, that this is the worst strain in the last 400 years or so, so we'd have to be pretty unlucky to have an experience this bad again. Influenza is still a pretty scary disease, though.

Part time work

2006-04-06T20:33:00.000+10:00

I went to a lunchtime presentation today from one of last year's AFR Boss Young Executives of the Year, Jane Adams. She is a COO at a recruitment consultant, and is part-time - works three days a week (which was not part of the criteria for the award). She talked a little bit about how she manages being part-time, which she views as a very tricky skill.

She said that she tries very much to downplay it. She doesn't have a picture of her daughter on her desk, and she asks the admin staff not to mention it when she leaves on Thursday for her four days at home. She also asks them talk to her about changing her days, rather than refusing meetings on her days off. She also spends a lot of time being contactable on the phone or email at home.

I didn't ask this question, but it does sound as if she manages it by working more than three days a week, in reality. It is great that someone with such a senior role is working part time in a public way (it was mentioned in the magazine article about her award), and she is probably working to the same extent as someone full time in such a senior role.

I was talking to a colleague on the way back, and neither of us could imagine a way we could do our current roles part time. There is just too much interaction with others needed. If I worked in a less centralised company, with more meetings by phone, then maybe I could get away with doing some from home. But I do spend most of my time in meetings.

History

2006-04-04T20:48:00.000+10:00

C has come home from school lately telling me about our local history:

"We are white people. The white people came in ships from far away, and the aborigines who were here before moved to where Ayer's Rock which is in the middle of Australia".

His story is a very simplistic one, as befits a kindergartener, but it makes me very uncomfortable. For a start, two of the kids in his class are asian - do they get the same spiel about being white people? And, of course, there are aboriginal people in Sydney - not many around where we live, but not far away. And the aboriginal people who were here before the First Fleet didn't just move to central australia in an accommodating way - they died of smallpox, or were gradually forced off their traditional hunting grounds.

I'm assuming all that history came from the teacher rather than other children (who is american, but I doubt if it would make any difference), and I'd like to think there was a way it could be explained that was both understandable for a kindergartener, and not misleading about what actually happened, and continues to happen.

I'm not sure what, if anything, to do about it, though. Talk to C about the real story when we have enough time to chat about it, I think.

Book Review: Westpac: the Bank that Broke the Bank

2006-04-02T07:44:00.000+10:00

This week's book review is Westpac: the Bank that Broke the Bank, by Edna Carew. Westpac started out as the Bank of New South Wales, Australia's first bank in the early 1800s. By the 1980s, it had become Westpac, Australia's biggest bank, with global aspirations, and a dominant position in many markets.

By the early 90s, it was a shadow of its former self, having narrowly escaped insolvency, (ironically rescued by AMP, which went through a very similar experience 10 years later). Edna Carew writes the story, having had huge access (but not authorisation) to most of the key Westpac players throughout the experience.

I read this book when it first came out, in the mid 90s, when I knew little about banking (just your average educated consumer, really) and enjoyed it then. But in the last few years, I've been educating myself fairly intensively about banking, particularly risk management in banking (as I think actuaries have a lot to add there), and thought it might be worth rereading. It didn't disappoint.

I was astounded at some of the things that Westpac didn't know about its risks. For example, it did not have a picture, across the whole organisation, of its total exposure to any given company. It was possible for there to be major loans from Westpac, its finance subsidiary AGC, and various other smaller subsidiaries, without anyone in each bit knowing about the others, let alone a central risk manager knowing about them.

It was also really interesting to read the culture of arrogance that Westpac had at the time. It took a lot for many of the Westpac senior people to believe that they didn't know everything about their organisation. One anecdote that pointed this up was when Standard & Poor came in and started asking questions about Westpac's total credit exposure to various companies. Westpac didn't know, and the senior people started to realise that other companies would. But before that, if you'd asked them, they would have said that they were experts at managing credit risk.

It's a lesson to any organisation that something that was world's best practice 10 years ago isn't necessarily best practice now. You have to keep on top of the latest thinking, and not be arrogant about what a wonderful organisation you are in. I do find that there are companies that are very arrogant about themselves, and I don't think they are necessarily the ones that an outsider would say were the best in their industry.

This is probably only a book that would be interesting to someone in financial services. But to me, it was fascinating.

Are books passe?

2006-04-01T20:26:00.000+11:00

I read an article in the last couple of days quoting David Maister (guru to professional services firms) as saying that he's never going to write another book, and he rarely reads them any more, either. Instead, he's become a blogger, and says that he gets his best information from other blogs, or maybe magazine articles. The original article, which probably set this off, is actually much more insightful than this, and an interesting comment (from a new convert) on the whole blogging experience from a business perspective.

I had a quick look at his blog, and I think he's basically using it as a forum for shorter magazine articles (when he was just an apprentice guru, he published magazine articles in the American Lawyer, before people were willing to give him a book deal). What he's writing is very polished, and thought through - certainly more than this blog, and more than most of the blogs I read.

To me, blogging is a new medium, not just a replacement for other, older ones. The interaction, between commenter and blogger, on the best blogs, makes it completely different from a magazine or newspaper, and the rough draft nature of many blogs create an immediacy that other media simply can't match. David Maister is the kind of writer that thrives from that interaction, but it's a big stretch from that to say that the book is passe.

I love having a new text-based medium, but, just as television didn't kill film, but added possibilities, blogging adds variety to the many ways we humans communicate with each other.

I'm still going to add David Maister to my bloglines feed. While I was in professional services, I found him the most insightful business writer I've read by a considerable margin. In a 30-second trawl through his blog, I found a post on leadership vs management for professionals that I'm going to go back to for inspiration later.

Am I ageist?

2006-03-31T20:37:00.000+11:00

I've managed people older than me for most of my working life. They've mostly been only a little bit older than me, or else I've known them for long enough that I've forgotten that they're older than me by the time I manage them.

I've realised lately that I feel uncomfortable with the idea of hiring someone too much older than me to work for me. It's particularly difficult for me if it's someone I've known since I started working (and was clearly junior to them) but even if not, it's a struggle for me.

It's a combination of difficulty in feeling justfied in being someone's boss if I'm older than them, and a bit of prejudice about the ability of workers significantly older than me to adapt to the modern world (since I'm being honest). That last one is completely unfair. I've seen quite a few older workers who are proud of their inability to use a computer, but they're usually the ones that are senior enough that they can get away with that kind of silliness. The more junior ones, the ones who might work for me, are usually just as capable of using a computer as anyone else doing their job might be.

I think the answer to my question is yes, I am ageist, but as I become aware of it, I hope that I can avoid being ageist in any way but my thinking.

_____________________________________________

I probably started thinking about this because for the first time in my life I'm working for someone younger than me. Only by six months, but I'm sure it won't be the first time.

2006-03-30T20:13:00.000+11:00

I don't think I'm nearly this intellectual (or this depressed) via Pavlov's Cat :

You're Prufrock and Other Observations!

by T.S. Eliot

Though you are very short and often overshadowed, your voice is poetic
and lyrical. Dark and brooding, you see the world as a hopeless effort of people trying
to impress other people. Though you make reference to almost everything, you've really
heard enough about Michelangelo. You measure out your life with coffee spoons.

Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

Infrastructure

2006-03-30T19:47:00.000+11:00

Ross Gittins has a great column in the SMH yesterday about infrastructure (hospitals, schools, public transport etc), and why it is that the great services end up being provided for the people who can most afford it. I'm a great example - I live in a place where I have the choice of bus, train or ferry to the city, I have a major teaching hospital within five kilometres of my house, and some of the top schools in Sydney are within walking distance.

The point Ross Gittins makes is that the richest people live in suburbs like that because they are desirable suburbs. Their great facilities pushes up the prices in that suburb, rather than the services being provided because the rich people live there. So the government ends up providing great services to richer people because they can afford to live where the services are. If I were to downsize to a cheaper part of Sydney, I would be giving up a lot of that infrastructure.

And when an attempt is made to move the facilities to where the people actually need them (a prime example is hospitals out in the western suburbs where the majority of the people live) the articulate inner-suburbanites are very good at stopping any services moving out of their areas.

So even though public provision of services like health and education is an attempt to even the playing field, our government would have to be far more active than it is in providing services to the poorer areas and taking away services from the richer areas (after all you've got to pay for it some how) to make that happen.

Of course it's not just an accident of purchasing power. In Sydney, public transport provision basically stopped being built at around the time of World War II, so you can tell exactly how old your suburb is by its transport provision. Train - pretty old, or on a major country line. Public bus - not quite as old, or else in a place that is impractical for trains. Private bus - occasional provision for commuters in new suburbs. Nothing at all - the last 30 years or so.

It is a shame we don't occasionally have state governments with a bit of vision.

Work Life Balance

2006-03-28T22:05:00.000+11:00

In our executive team today, we had a bit of a discussion about work-life balance, and how to maintain some sense that work-life balance was possible in our environment (one which at least some of the time, there are a bunch of people working ridiculous hours to meet a deadline like business planning or year end reporting).

The thing that rang true to me is that the most important thing is the culture (around the place, but often driven by the senior people). If you get a bunch of people subtly (or not so subtly) competing to send the email at the most anti-social hour, or having spent the whole weekend in the office, it's pretty hard to talk about work-life balance in any way that doesn't promote cynicism.

If, on the other hand, you have a group of people working similar hours, but who are more embarrassed than proud of their long hours, and who might just take the odd afternoon off in the days when they're not as busy, then you get to a point where a real meaningful aspiration for everyone is some kind of work-life balance. So it's seen as a point of pride that the whole team managed to work a short week, and get away at 4 on a Friday for drinks (or something) rather than as a point of pride that someone managed to send an email at 1 am.

I don't have any answers, but I don't think people outside this kind of culture realise just how difficult it can be to turn it around, when everyone in the culture has grown up that way (in their working life at least).

Over-using the hospital system

2006-03-27T19:14:00.000+11:00

I had a scary night last night. D (aged 2 and three quarters) woke up at 2 am needing to go to the toilet, was trying to yell out to get help, and discovered that he couldn't talk, and could barely breathe. So I heard some strange barking noises, went to investigate, and discovered a terrified child who was trying to simultaneously breathe and pull his shorts down. I was pretty sure (from the barking) that it was croup, but two years ago, when D had croup, I got a pretty severe lecture from the nurse treating him that if he had trouble breathing, I should take it very seriously.

After a brief confab with E, I called 000, and an ambulance came and took them both to hospital. He was absolutely fine - by the time the ambulance came, he was just wheezing a bit, and after some drugs at hospital, and an hour or so of observation, they were sent home in a taxi.

I'm now wondering whether to feel guilty about over-using our wonderful health system (all completely free, by the way). Should I have waited the extra two minutes it would have taken to make it clear that a drive to hospital would have been adequate (rather than an ambulance)? Should I have then given him some ventolin (from previous wheezing episodes), and put him to sleep in our room and listened to his breathing all night instead of using getting the hospital to check him out?

Certainly any parent of a child with asthma would deal with that kind of breathing trouble pretty regularly, I imagine. They would probably laugh at my alarm. But they would also have strategies to deal with the little episodes, that I don't have. I also know that asthma, left untreated, can kill a child (it put one of my cousins in intensive care for a few days at age 20), and D has shown wheezing tendencies in the past.

Upper-middle class parents like me are more likely to have the sense of entitlement that leads them to just call the ambulance, rather than feeling a burden on the system and waiting until it's clearly a matter of life and death.

So which is right? The over-use of the hospital system to make sure nothing terrible happens, or rationing yourself to make absolutely sure it's necessary?

Most studies of the rationing of health care that happens when patients are charged for it show that patients don't have enough understanding to decide which treatments are necessary, and which are not. The trouble is that charging for it is unlikely to change the use. I would still have called the ambulance, even if it cost me a fair bit of money, and the parent who is already worried about being a burden on the system would be even less likely to, as they would have the added worry about being able to afford it.

Freakonomics

2006-03-26T22:06:00.000+11:00

This week's book review is Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist explores the Hidden side of Everything, by Steven J Levitt and Stephen J Dubner. I've seen this book reviewed all over the place, and knew it was the kind of book I would devour very quickly.

Steven J Levitt is an economist who likes looking at everyday problems. A few examples of the conclusions he has drawn in various papers that are discussed in this book:

swimming pools are much more dangerous than guns (there are 100 times more child deaths per swimming pool than per gun in the US)
legalised abortion is the reason that crime has substantially reduced in the US (the babies who would have grown up to commit the crimes were aborted)
baby's names start in the upper class, and gradually filter down to the lower classes, by which time they are a clear signal of a baby/child's lower class status.
real estate agents behave in a way which will maximise the selling price when selling their own house, but when selling a client's house, they will minimise the selling time.

I enjoyed the book, but it does feel quite lightweight. I imagine that the various learned papers it's based on have more evidence to back the conclusions, but with most of the conclusions, I just wanted to argue with the evidence. In particular, the abortion/crime linkage seemed full of unwarranted assumptions, and completely lacking in comparisons (places where abortions hadn't been legalised and crime hadn't fallen, with everything else including the economy and the drugs of choice remaining the same).

If I had time, I would probably go and find his original paper about that, and the baby names, and read it carefully, but as it was, it felt like a book that was too lightweight for me. And I don't especially like my books heavyweight, but maybe when it involves numbers, I'm more discerning.

It's the kind of book that will be in the library (it's quite popular), so I'd recommend borrowing it, not buying it (as I did).

Why don't women make Partner?

2006-03-24T20:24:00.000+11:00

Laura at 11D has a post wondering why women don't make Partner in US law firms (inspired by a NY Times article).

From my experience, I don't really think it's that different a question from asking why women don't make it to senior roles in business. Some law firms (I don't believe all of them) have a bit of an approach to promotion that if you're not devoting your life to work, then you don't deserve promotion. But every investment bank I've ever seen in action is like that, and you never see articles about the dearth of women in investment banking. And many corporates are like that too. Accounting firms (at least in Australia) have a smaller proportion of female partners than law firms, but at least partly, that's because partner is a more senior role in an accounting firm (law firms have, broadly, 1 partner for every five non-partner professionals, but accoutning firms aim for more like 1 in 10).

The most specific thing about the law (and more broadly, professional services firms) is that mentoring is very important - you learn by working with someone more senior than you, and you need to be chosen by someone to get that intensive training. But it's only a matter of degree. Most successful business people will talk about the mentors they have learned from. It's just more obvious that it's necessary in a professional services firm.

Some of the commenters over at 11D suggest that the fault is with the women - they're not ambitious enough, or view the hours they have to put in as a chore, rather than with excitement.

My view is that the causes are complex (of course!)

- in an environment when there are few senior women, it's hard for women to get good mentoring, as both men and women are often more comfortable mentoring someone of their own sex (if I look at the people I have mentored informally over the past five yeras, the majority have been women, even though my junior colleagues have been more often men)
- in any career, but particularly professional services, the big demands in terms of hours often come in your late 20s early 30s - many women are thinking about children at that age, more than men, and not sure they are willing to put in that time, so they consciously or unconsciously reduce their ambition
- simple sexism shouldn't be ignored. Just as men are more likely to pick men as the talented up-and-comers to mentor, they can be more likely to rate other men highly in performance appraisals. Particularly, they can be likely to assume a man has ability without strong evidence, while women generally have to show stronger evidence of their ability. I realise this one is a strong statement, but I've watched it happen a lot.

So is there hope? I think there is a tipping point, where there are enough women that the mentoring and sexism issues above reduce substantially. The senior women don't feel so outnumbered that they have to be "one of the boys", and are able to make a difference. Probably about 25% is enough. In my experience, at that point, I don't feel like an outsider any more.

And the companies that get there earlier will have a competitive advantage, as they will have a bigger talent pool to choose from.

Exercise

2006-03-23T19:53:00.000+11:00

This weekend is the annual corporate triathlon in Sydney. I'm really sad not to be doing it this year. It's a combination of moving jobs at around the time when the entries went in, and the doctor telling me not to exercise too early after my bout of bronchial pneumonia a month ago.

I've done it every year since 1997, with the exception of 2003 when I was eight months pregnant. I even did it four months pregnant in 2001(when I was in denial about how much my life was about to change by having a baby). It's the most consistent event I've done of all the events I've tried since I got into running. The distances are short enough that you don't really have to be fit to have a go at it (the winners take about half an hour), but you have a great sense of accomplishment when you finish. The course is on the same course as the Sydney Olympic triathlon, including a swim in Sydney Harbour, which, although it scares some people (the thought of sharks) I think is the highlight of the day.

And it's just at that perfect time of year in Sydney when it's not too hot, but the water is still warm from the summer, and the days are (mostly!) clear and crisp. I'll have to come back to this post next year when the entries go in, to make sure I do it.

Cyclones and climate change

2006-03-22T19:57:00.000+11:00

In the wake of Cyclone Larry, I'm surprised that there hasn't been much press about global warming and increased cyclone activity. It's sensible, because you can't possibly blame one cyclone on global warming, but sense never stopped the media before.

So it was co-incidental to read a summary of the recent research and press on RealClimate - there's a reasonable amount of dissent, but most scientists believe that the increase in cyclones is real, and that it is related to the increase in sea-temperature in the last 50 years.

But if you are an insurance company, the major reason why insurance claims from cyclones has increased over that time is that there is more insured property in cyclone prone areas. And the reason why Australia, even though we have a vast coastline exposed to cyclone risk, hasn't had as bad a time with cyclones than the US over that time (even counting Cyclone Tracy, I think the US would be worse off as a % of GDP lost) is because a lot of our coastline is thinly populated. Larry has caused horrendous damage, but if Innisfail had been a big city like Miami, it would have been much much worse.

So if you're thinking about moving to the coast, you should realise that if you go to the tropics, you're going to need to be protected against cyclones in future. And you should also realise that cyclones are going to come further south (in our case) than they used to - Byron Bay perhaps shouldn't be the ageing hippy's choice after all!

Book Review - The Truth Behind the Mommy Wars: Who Decides What Makes a Good Mother?

2006-03-19T20:42:00.000+11:00

This week's book review is The Truth Behind the Mommy Wars: Who Decides What Makes a Good Mother? by Miriam Peskowitz.

I'm way behind on this one. Elizabeth at Half Changed World reviewed this nearly a year ago, and Rebel Dad has been trying to googlebomb the term "Mommy Wars" to this book as he is convinced it is the only sensible commentary on the topic.

I was really looking forward to this book, as I had read a lot about it (all favourable) about it when it was first published. And really, it is far more sensible than most, because it talks about how the real issue is how difficult it is to raise children in an environment where the workplace just doesn't believe in the family's existence (except as a photo on someone's desk).

The book weaves anecdotes with the many women (and some men) Peskowitz interviewed about how they were raising their children, and combining that with the need for a family income. There are as many solutions as there are families, but nearly all of them suffer from the difficulty of combining work with a family in any meaningful way. I really enjoyed the book - it was an easy read, and it was nice to read something that I mostly agreed with. And it was great to read something that didn't just assume that work and family issues are only about upper-class New Yorkers and whether they drop out of the workforce. And yet...

I read this immediately after reviewing Kidding Ourselves, by Rhona Mahoney. And, for me, it suffered by comparison. It was covering similar ground, but Mahoney's book was chock full of statistics, with a bit of anecdote, while Peskowitz's book was all about the anecdote. It's unfair of me to criticize it for that - that's how she set out to write the book, and she interviewed a lot of people from all different races and classes (in the US of course, but you can't have everything!). But still. I'm an actuary. I like statistics.

For me the book suffered also from what felt like an airy conclusion that the workplace needs to change to make it more family friendly, and part-time work more feasible for all kinds of jobs, without really giving any kind of concrete way in which that will happen, except for really US-specific things like making health care not so dependent on full-time jobs. From a country like the US where there isn't a lot (legally) different between part-time and full-time jobs, just how many hours you choose to work, I think it's easy to be seduced into the idea that part-time jobs will magically appear once you remove the obvious barriers.

It's not that easy - the way in which professional (which is a broader and broader category these days) work has changed in the last 30-odd years in ways that make it less family-friendly, but the reason is not just an unreasonable conspiracy against the family. Some of the changes involve the greater proportion of workers who are "knowledge workers" - the more you can engage their brain and keep them thinking about work every waking moment (preferably at the office, but even at home), the more productive they are.

I would love to work in a more family-friendly world (and the average Australian workplace is more family friendly than the US, at least in a legislative sense, if not in actual flexibility), but too many of the articles and books I read about this topic seem to think that if we ask for it enough we will just get it.

I found Better than Sex - how a whole generation got hooked on work, which is much more of a business book, to be a more interesting exposition of how we got into such a family unfriendly place. It doesn't have solutions either, but it does acknowledge some of the problems - the reasons that employers find it easier to employ people who will put their life and soul into a job and don't have a life outside the office. You have to acknowledge these issues to fix them.

But back to the "mommy wars" - the main point of this book is that the "mommy wars"* should really be defined as parents against the workplace - what creates the animosity is the sheer difficulty of being a parent, seeing your children, and anyone in the household having a job that demands your life without giving anything back. And it's a point that needs to be made often, so I'm very glad this book was written.

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*actually even the name says that this war is about the US - I've found it very hard to write "mommy" numerous times in this post

Commonwealth Games

2006-03-19T07:29:00.000+11:00

I've never been exactly sport obsessed, but the sports I follow and enjoy are generally Olympic sports, rather than the rugbies or cricket. (partly because I do enjoy watching women compete at elite level - tennis is the only sport that gets even close to equal time for women compared to men outside the olympics).

But even given that, I can't get into the Commonwealth games. It's just too far away from the best in the world. Last night the women's gymnastics was on, which I had to watch. Unfortunately Channel 9 decided many others had the same idea, so I watched the entire telecast from 7.30 to 10.30 before they put any of it on.

There were one or two events that were clearly pretty close to world class (both women!) - women's pursuit cycling (Olympic champion against World Champion) and women's 100m swimming (Olympic champion against world record holder), but most were clearly a long way away.

In the gymnastics, the bronze medal was won by a gymnast who fell on all four apparatus. That's a pretty damning indictment on the quality of the competition.

Happy St Patricks Day

2006-03-17T21:18:00.001+11:00

I'd completely forgotten it was St Patrick's Day today until I got into work and one of my colleagues was wearing a bright green shirt and matching tie. It actually looked quite good - and he isn't even red-headed!

I enjoy St Patrick's Day. The wowsers probably say it involves too much alcohol (and it probably does), but it seems to me to be a better model for a national day than most. Certainly compared to our own very conflicted celebration that is only a celebration if you don't think very hard about the anniversary that we are actually commemorating. St Patrick's Day is a straightforward celebration of intrinsic Irishness that anyone who can claim a vague relationship to the country can join.

Of course Australia is full of people of irish background; and as a national stereotype, we do love a drink (although that's not nearly as true as it used to be), so it is a perfect celebration for us. No commitment needed except the vague willingness to wear green.

My father tells me that I have one thirty-second Irish ancestry, so I figured that was enough for a quick drink down the pub after work today.

Hats

2006-03-16T19:43:00.000+11:00

For at least ten years now, in Sydney, government primary schools have had a no-hat, no-play policy. There is a hat as part of the uniform, and if you don't have it with you, you can't play in the playground. It's extraordinarily cute on masse - particularly the kindergarteners.

I live in an area brimming with high schools (mostly private) and I realised the other day, though, that only very old-fashioned private high-school students seem to wear hats. I was wondering if they wear their hats at school when they have to, or whether it's just too hard to have compulsory hats in high schools.

Since my boys were old enough to notice, I've taken to wearing a hat whenever I make them wear one. Gradually, we'll probably all modify our behaviours to set a good example to our children, and we'll be back to everyone (sensibly) wearing hats in the street again.

Job share

2006-03-14T20:04:00.000+11:00

The AFR has an article today (subscription only as usual) about job sharing. It is very favourable, basically saying that most of the myths about how hard it is and complete rubbish. A few myths:

- it costs too much
- takes twice as long to supervise
- needs a perfect match to work properly
- too hard to communicate with two people in one role.

The report (with research from consulting firm Catalyst) suggests that not only are these things not true, but you don't need a formal cross-over day either - a handover telephone call is enough. I'd love this to be true. Apart from any long term interests I have in family friendly organisations, I have a real shortage of good people and if I could add to my pool by using part-timers, it would be particularly good.

I have had one experience, though, and it was mixed. A secretary in my team (not my own) was a job-share position. They even had a whole handover day. There were still things that got lost in handover. I probably had high standards, as when each of them was full-time, they were fantastic, but I thought there was some loss of follow-through.

The case study in the article talks about the two job-sharers running a journal with the tangible and intangible "stuff they need to know" - maybe my secretary friends just needed to be slightly more organised (I suspect they relied too much on their handover day).

I'm starting to think I should do that for my job so that I keep track of my brain better day to day.

Open plan offices

2006-03-13T22:12:00.000+11:00

Jason Soon at Catallaxy has a post about open plan offices that I violently disagree with - basically saying how useless open plan offices are, and how teleworking will get everything done anyway.

I'm a big fan of open plan offices, to the point that I have just asked for my cubicle walls (marking me out as a slightly more important person than the people around me, but providing no acoustic privacy, and reducing my natural light) to be removed.

I think the difference is that in my job, collaboration is important, and adds to everyone's productivity. People learn and take in knowledge differently, but my experience is that if I spend an hour with someone explaining an issue to me, that time will be much more productive than if that person spent an hour composing a report, and I spent an hour reading it. Those interactions, writ small, are much more likely to happen if you can just wander over to someone's desk and ask them a question.

Of course, you get the occasional annoying person who talks very loudly right next to you about the weekend, but if most people around you are polite and considerate (which happens surprisingly often in an office full of professionals who are treated like professionals) then it works very well.

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The interesting thing about this for me, is that my reaction is similar to my reaction to the difficulty of making part-time work happen professionally. I believe that a significant part of my productivity depends on interactions with other people; if I'm not there half the time, then it's very hard for those interactions to take place. For some jobs it works; many it doesn't.

Book Review - Dancing with Strangers

2006-03-12T13:11:00.000+11:00

This week's book review is Dancing with Strangers, by Inga Clendinnen. It is a detailed historical narrative of the first five or so years of the white settlement of Australia. I've read Inga Clendinnen's essays before in weekend papers, and found them hard going, so I wasn't sure that I was going to enjoy this. Surprisingly, I found it excellent.

Her aim, in this book, is as much as possible to reconstruct the story from both sides - white and aboriginal (or in her words, British and Australian). What she does, while writing her historical narrative, is spend a lot of time with the primary sources. She makes it clear to the reader the process of working out a narrative from sources that often contradict, rather than (as in most books of popular history) making one interpretation and reporting it as fact. There are six main sources, which is not many, for such a momentous event, particularly as nearly all of them were consciously writing for publication and posterity.

The best example of this is a detailed deconstruction of the story of Phillip (the first Governor) being speared by Aborigines in Manly. The usual interpretation of this event is that suddenly, without warning, a group of Aborigines turned on Phillip without any reason. Clendinnen makes a convincing case, while showing her evidence from the primary texts, that what actually happened was that Bennelong was making a power grab and creating a ritual spearing event in a standard response to Phillip and his people's many recent offenses.

Ths book makes pretty clear that Phillip, and many of his officers, started the colony with very good intentions towards the Aborigines, even if they didn't create a treaty, or legally acknowledge prior ownership of the land by a hunter gatherer culture. But it chronicles what seems to be an inevitable slide towards conflict from both sides, because the cultural gulf between the two sides was just too great.

What I find interesting is that this is a classic example of the post-modern history hated by many traditionalists, in that it clearly shows how much history is in the eye and interpretation of the beholder. For example, from John Howards's Australia Day address:

"And too often, history, along with other subjects in the humanities, has succumbed to a postmodern culture of relativism where any objective record of achievement is questioned or repudiated."

But it is the kind of book that would have created real understanding in my school study of this episode of history, because it creates empathy for both sides - both the early Aborigines and the early British settlers appear to be real people, as opposed to the cardboard cut-out stupid native or racist British stereotype they usually were, depending on who was telling the story. Done this well, there should more post-modernism, not less, in school histories, and those for the general reader.

Market forces

2006-03-10T21:29:00.000+11:00

I've moved to a different part of town, and I've been noticing that coffee is 10% cheaper there. I'm trying to figure out why that is. I used to be on the fringes of the tourist district, in an area that was full of investment bankers. Now I'm closer to the shopping district, and I think the average person working there is probably paid a bit less.

So I'm trying to figure out whether it's demand or supply that's changed the price. I think it's probably demand - the investment bankers don't care how much they pay for they coffee so the demand is inelastic. But it could be supply - there are coffee shops everywhere in my new part of town, so there's usually more choice in the same block.

I know the fact that I can tell you the price of coffee in at least ten coffee shops within a block of each of my old and new offices is not something to be proud of. But at least it's got me thinking about economics.

Jennifer and Gentlemen

2006-03-09T20:29:00.000+11:00

I've moved jobs lately, and my predecessor was male. I've noticed that many of the emails that he sent me to get me up to speed with things were originally addressed to "Gentlemen". Very early on, one of my frequent correspondents sent me an email addressed to "Jennifer and Gentlemen". I think he thought I was over-reacting when I asked him not to send things like that. He's a nice guy, and was genuinely seeking information when he asked me what I would prefer.

And maybe I was over-reacting. But early on in my career, I was promoted to a management team where I was the only woman of about 15 people. We had a monthly, incredibly formal meeting, which the very important senior executive running it invariably started by saying "Jennifer and Gentlemen". It really annoyed me, but I was never quite sure why. The most annoying thing, though, was when after a year another woman joined the team. He never opened the meeting formally again - just started with the first agenda item.

After reflection, I realised that what annoyed me was the pointedness of it. It wasn't enough that I was (very obviously) the only woman in the group. The pompous senior executive had to point out the weirdness of it at every meeting, in a subtle way that nobody could take issue with. He probably wouldn't have realised that that's what he was doing, but he was clearly quite taken aback with having a woman on his team.

I'm pretty sure my current colleague was genuinely just moving on from addressing his emails to "gentlemen" (he's english and wears three piece suits in summer, so he has eccentric formality on his side as an excuse). But I'm glad I asked him to stop. I just asked him to figure out a greeting that didn't single me out. Hopefully that request will make him think next time.

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Now that I'm catching up on my blog reading, I've remembered that yesterday (International Women's Day) was blog against sexism day. I've been really stressed about work lately, so I forgot, but it is still (just) March 8th somewhere in the world (maybe Hawaii??). This post is probably a bit frivolous, but contains one of my most annoying sexism at work stories, so thought I'd put it in anyway.

Places I've been

2006-03-04T20:43:00.000+11:00

Here's a map of all the places I've been in the world:

create your own visited countries map

I found it via a bunch of US bloggers who did the equivalent for the US states. The thing I found interesting when ticking the boxes is Asia. I had thought I had been lots of places in Asia (for work), but I realised as I was filling it in that I've really just touched the surface. Because I've done work relating to quite a lot more places than I've been (Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, India, Philippines for example) I feel like I know the place. But I don't really. But funnily enough, the map looks like I'm an Asian old hand because on the strength of four or five visits to Hong Kong, totalling less than two weeks time there, I've been to the whole of China. The power of political change.

South America is the place that's missing I feel I'd like to go next. Every time I see it on the Amazing Race, they are in another really cool place that I had never heard of before. I do work with quite a few South Africans, and although they're happy they've moved here (crime mainly), their homesick story of the natural beauty of places like Capetown make me want to go there too.

Global warming

2006-03-03T22:05:00.000+11:00

I was reading the New Yorker this evening. The article on Katrina and New Orleans and the aftermath really struck me. There are a whole lot of causes of Katrina, and reasons why there is a good chance New Orleans as a city will never be rebuilt properly again. Part of it, as the article makes clear, is just about building a city on the delta of a mighty river. But part of it is that with the combination of potential increases in sea levels, major increases in storm frequency, as well as the general poverty of the place, the chances of enough people taking a risk with their financial futures and rebuilding there to remake the New Orleans of legend are pretty slim.

Unlike the overdramatic headlines I've read about various tiny islands being "the first casualty of global warming"*, when we look back in 50 years time, New Orleans may well be the casualty we remember - the city that was lost.
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* when you look past the headline, the only island I've seen that involved actual evacuation was to a higher spot on the same island, where the people lived before westerners valued beachfront more than security - it will come, but it hasn't yet in a serious way.

Obesity again

2006-03-01T19:26:00.000+11:00

The ABS has released their regular survey of Australians and their health. There is a wealth of detail in there, but 62% of men, and 45% of women (up 4% each from 5 years ago) were overweight or obese. Mostly, the increase is in the obese proportion, as people move from normal weight to overweight, and then again to obese. I've realised again that my eye has got used to people's new proportions. One of my colleagues mentioned to me the other day that he was classified obese (BMI marginally over 30). If you'd asked me before the conversation, I wouldn't have said he was overweight. But then if 62% of Australian men are overweight, that's the man you're used to looking at.

Just to put it into perspective, one of the health conditions asked about is diabetes. Right now, 3.5% of the population has it (or knows they have it - most estimates are that as many people again have Type II diabetes without knowing about it). Last survey, five years ago, it was 3.0%. It may not sound like much of a change, but it is a 15% increase.

History

2006-02-27T21:29:00.000+11:00

I'm in a new role which (in my small industry) means I'm running across a whole lot of people that I last saw 5-10 years ago. I'm constantly having to remind myself that just because they weren't particularly helpful/good/on top of things (insert negative adjective here) doesn't mean that they aren't now. In fact, some/ many of them have proved to be very impressive with the passage of time. One I saw at a meeting today was very earnest, junior and prone to repeating his bosses (fairly inane) comments 8 years ago. Now he's making constructive suggestions that bring the meeting back into usefulness.

My reminder to myself about keeping an open mind usually comes with a simultaneous internal reminder of what I was like, professionally, 5-10 years ago and a hope that their memory is less vivid than mine.

Book Review - The Weather Makers

2006-02-26T11:48:00.000+11:00

This week's book review is The Weather Makers by Tim Flannery. I decided, when choosing my books for the Christmas holidays, that I really should find out what was really going on with global warming. I was sick of reading the carefully set out pro- and anti- columns in the Sydney Morning Herald. I wanted to know some facts.

I remembered, quickly, after starting the book, that Tim Flannery, while an entertaining and insightful reader, has never been known for a careful weighing up of the evidence on both sides. While he accumulates evidence carefully and scientifically for his own side, the other side usually gets short shrift. Among other things, Tim Flannery is on record as saying that Australian can only support 8 million people, which I do find hard to believe. He's definitely on one side. Global warming exists, and most of his book describes the mechanisms carefully, and how different scientists have figured out those mechanisms. It's only getting towards the middle of the book that he starts setting out some evidence for why you should believe the (many) scientists who say so as opposed to the (few) scientists who don't.

Nevertheless, even reading with a sceptical hat on, it's an excellent book. The most convincing part, to me, of the reality of global warming, was the section about quaint journals. There are many private journals of natural phenomena - for example one English family recorded the dates of the first frog and toad croaks they heard on their estate every year between 1736 and 1947. Two researches (Parmesan and Yohe) created a huge study of as many of these observations as they could find. They asked two questions - is there any underlying trend evident in all of the regions, habitats and organisms documented? And if so, is that in the general direction one would expect? They found that there is little evidence of a trend before 1950, but since then there is a poleward shift in species' distribution, of around 6 kms per decade, and an advance of sprint activity of 2.3 days per decade. One of the most remarkable examples is a shift in habitat of 35 Northern Hemisphere butterflies. This kind of evidence is convincing to me, as it is the natural world responding in sensible, selfish gene, ways, to climate change in ways that improve their likelihood of survival.

The other aspect of the politics of climate change that is only briefly mentioned in this book is how the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Flannery points out that given the level of consensus required for this panel to write a report, the fact that the IPCC's assessment reports are pretty strongly pointing out that global warming is going to happen:

"There is new and stronger evidence that most of the warming observed over
the last 50 years is attributable to human activities.... Projections using the SRES emissions scenarios in a range of climate models result in an increase in globally averaged surface temperature of 1.4 to 5.8°C over the period 1990 to 2100. "

After reading the book, I found myself very angry at the way my local press (SMH and the Australian) had managed, using lazy journalistic methods of choosing opinions from each side for "balance", to keep me thinking for far too long that global warming wasn't as bad as the doomsayers were saying.

In this case, the media underplays, rather than sensationalises, the issue. Rather than doing its job of digging up the real facts, or at least weight of evidence to provide information to its readers, the media just finds an expert from each side to make a case every now and again and implies, without saying so, that each side is equally valid. I see through that strategy for intelligent design vs evolution - why didn't I see through it for this issue, which is far more important?

Not, of course that there is much I can do about this. But if I get the time, I will be researching solar electricity for our house. We'll need to replace our roof some time in the next few years. If we can make ourselves 70-80% self-sufficient, that would at least do something. It would also insulate us against what are likely to be sharply rising electricity prices, once governments do start taking this seriously.

Interesting further reading:

John Quiggin debates this issue with some hard core anti-global warming people
Real Climate is a commentary site on climate science by working climate scientists for the interested public and journalists.

Medicine

2006-02-22T20:41:00.000+11:00

After a recent bout of illness I realised a bit more why some chronically ill people don't get medical care for cost reasons. In two days I've been to the doctor twice, had an X-ray, and got 2 prescriptions - $230 in round numbers. I'll get about $120 back, but if I had any financial issues, the cashflow would be quite tricky. If I was badly off, I could have gone to emergency, I suppose, but people doing that is one of the reasons Sydney's hospital system struggles to cope through every winter.

My doctor will bulk bill for low income chronically ill people. He's very nice, too. But I would hate to have to throw myself on my doctor's mercy - open my lack of money to him just to get treated.

Of course, reading Moreena's story about how after her daughter Annika has had a million dollars this year of health care, she's faced with ruinous insurance premiums, despite having as good a health insurance policy as it is possible to get in the US, I have absolutely nothing to complain about (if you want to help, have a look at this page). Our health funding system is wonderful by comparison. But I can see how ours is creeping from being good for everything except very elective conditions (e.g. plastic surgery) to redefining elective quite a long way up the spectrum of sickness.

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My illness, plus starting a new job last week (great timing!) is why I haven't posted for a while. My apologies, to anyone who reads regularly!

Comparisons

2006-02-12T21:53:00.000+11:00

We've kept a diary for our two boys since they were born. I love looking back on it and reading, but it does facilitate comparisons between the two of them. I usually find that when I think D is drastically behind C in some developmental milestone he's actually at about the same point, it's just that my memory has failed to go back longer than a year (there are 20 months between them). But occasionally, I will find that one of them has mastered something way earlier than the other (e.g. jumping off the sofa, to use an example that most people don't worry about too much).

I'm sometimes not sure that I want that information. If I'm not careful, one will become the sporty one, and one will become the mathematical one etc. etc. in my head, and it will be a short step from my head to being a family truism, bought into by all members, including the boys.

It's impossible not to compare them sometimes, but I'd like to make sure I don't put them each in a box they find it hard to get out of. And comparison seems to make that more likely.

Water policy

2006-02-11T22:05:00.000+11:00

Today's SMH has an article comparing the water that has been saved from water restrictions in Sydney (78 billion litres pa) with the amount that would be available from a de-salination plant (45 billion litres pa), or the new miracle cure, groundwater (30 billion litres for three years).

While you can't get a new 78 billion litres pa as easily as the first 78 billion, it does show that the simple measures are often the best. If Sydney-siders were seriously encouraged with the simple things that could save water inside the house (dual flush toilets, low flow showers), I imagine there would be more savings available.

Instead, the government seems to have decided that groundwater (renewable every thousand years or so) is the solution. On current projections, it will tide us over to 2015, so that's OK then. I'm sure most current NSW ministers expect to be living in Sydney then. It's less than 10 years away! Don't they have any thought for the future? Instead, the Utilities Minister, Carl Scully, said this week he would consider easing water restrictions from level 3 to level 2 if dam levels reached 50 per cent of their capacity.

Why we need women in parliament

2006-02-10T20:51:00.000+11:00

I was really happy to see that the RU 486 bill had passed the senate. This was the Bill to end the Health Minister's veto over the approval of RU 486 as an abortion drug. It passed 45 to 28, so I was suprised to see the commentary that it was expected to be a close vote in the House of Representatives. Then I had a closer look at the votes. The female senators voted 23-3 for the bill. The male senators voted 25 to 22 against.

I doubt that this is the only issue that a conscience vote would give such a huge gender split for. But even without an explicit conscience vote (which happens rarely - the last one was in 2002), having women in parliament changes the complexion of the issues that get airtime (as witness the recent statements by a number of senior Liberal women on the inadequacy of childcare in this country).

Unfortunately, the proportion of women in the House of Representatives is much lower than the Senate. So we're not out of the woods yet.

For my own future reference (in case I can be bothered voting below the line in the senate next time) here are the NSW senators who voted against:

Concetta Fierravanti-Wells (Liberal), Michael Forshaw (ALP), Bill Heffernan (Liberal), Steve Hutchins (ALP), Sandy Macdonald (Nationals), Ursula Stevens (ALP).

Back to blaming the parents

2006-02-09T20:58:00.000+11:00

There was an article in the SMH yesterday about how we are wired for aggression.

Richard Tremblay, professor of pediatrics, psychology and psychiatry at the
University of Montreal, says children are never more violent than between the
ages of two and four. But with the help of their parents most learn how to
control their natural aggression by the time they start school. "The question is
not how adolescents learn to be bad, it's how they learn not to be bad."

But by age four, despite greater exposure to potentially violent media, he said, aggression in children waned. The self-control, and social and emotional skills children learned in the preschool years were vital, he said.
...
"By the time children are school age, the frequency of use of physical aggression depends almost entirely on the environment they have been brought up in."

So we're back to blaming the parents for the bad behaviour of their children entirely. The expert calls for more early intervention in the form of helping parents through the toddler years. But it seems to me that this kind of research is just another example of the "society has nothing to do with it" school of childraising. An aggressive child at any age is deemed to be due to early parental shortcomings, not other factors that bear on their lives at older ages.

Sexism

2006-02-08T12:47:00.000+11:00

For what feels like the 50th time today, I got a letter addressed solely to me from one of the boys' activities. This one was from the music classes they both went to last term. It really annoys me. Every single one of their activities (swimming, playgroup, music etc etc) was set up by E. He did the research, called them up, filled out the forms, and took them along. Occasionally I go along if I happen to be on holidays at the time. So who do they send the letter to? Me! In the case of one of the activities, I have literally never been there, or spoken to anyone involved.

It's laziness, and if I complained, I'm sure they would think I was being petty, but it's not petty at all. It should be possible for a man to be the primary carer without having to fight for the status with every single service provider.

Books

2006-02-08T12:22:00.000+11:00

I've been home on holidays for the past two weeks, and trying to sort out a few things. Yesterday, I tackled books. I read a book a few years ago talking about the ideal to organise books. One of the (all very sensible) things it said was "always leave room for expansion. Put some ornaments in between books, so that you can fill them in later".

Well in our house, for probably the last 10 years, the problem is figuring out which category can now safely be put in a box in the loft or (even harder) given away to Lifeline. We had quite a good period for 2-3 years after we went from the more-money-than-sense-no-kids phase to the single-income-with-a-mortgage-and-two-kids phase, but we're back to our old book buying habits as we gradually figure out which of the things we gave up we really still like (actually that's mostly my fault - E is still much more sensible). This time, I managed (just) to get things more sorted out by putting some toys away in the playroom that had been occupying valuable bookshelf space.

I really need to get into the habit of using the library. The trouble is I'm a sucker for good book marketing, as done by good bookshops (easy categorisation, shop recommendations, latest releases highlighted etc) and libraries just aren't as good at that. I know I can learn how to use a library and find my favourite kinds of books (I got quite good at it when I lived across the road from one 15 years ago), but it takes more effort than I can be bothered with these days.

Book Review - Kidding Ourselves: Breadwinning, Babies, and Bargaining Power

2006-02-06T20:41:00.000+11:00

This week's book review is Kidding Ourselves: Breadwinning, Babies, and Bargaining Power, by Rhona Mahoney. I first read about this book on Half Changed World, and then it was one of the main sources sited by Linda Hirshman in her recent controversial piece on the failures of feminism, and lastly Bitch PhD reviewed it in her blog.

Well thanks to Half Changed World, I put it in my Christmas holiday reading list, and loved it. Unlike other feminist books I've read lately it's chock full of actual research and actual statistics, rather than anecdotes (although she's got a few of those too).

It's a comprehensive analysis of the root causes of why women tend to end up doing most of the housework and childcare in most couples, even two-income ones, even if they started out with fairly equal expectations pre-kids.

The bulk of her book boils down to the argument that at the point when most couples have children, the dice is loaded against the woman in the couple when it comes to sharing responsibility for the child, and usually by extension, the housework.

This is because fundamentally few women really, deep down expect to be the breadwinner, and don't make choices that will help them be in that position. They will tend to:

choose courses at school that they like, rather than ones that are economically good ones (e.g. mathematics and science)
marry up - even if they have done a hard course, they will marry someone a bit older. That person will then be almost certainly making more money than them (by virtue of being in the labour force longer) at the point when they have children
within their career, choose options that they know will later be easier to do part-time (e.g. many female doctors becoming GPs)

So once you get to the point of children, you have a couple where the man earns a bit more than the woman, and the woman is more likely to have the kind of job that she can fit around children. So in a couple like that, the woman becomes the primary carer by default, because it makes sense.

The book is framed in economic language, and has a great chapter on negotiation, in particular, talking about the best alternative to a negotiated agreement (BATNA). Basically, this is what happens to each person in a negotiation if they fail to agree. For example, if nobody can agree who will clean the bathroom, one person's BATNA might be a dirty bathroom, where another's might be that they clean it.

Once a baby is born, a woman's BATNA suddenly becomes an awful lot worse than it was before. Suddenly they are attached to the child (on average a woman is more attached to a baby at birth than men - biology is good for something) and their earning power is reduced. And many decisions get made in that context, such as the amount of external childcare needed, and who is going to take primary responsibility for the baby outside childcare, that once set in stone are hard to undo.

So this book is very clear on why we are still where we are after quite a long period (say 30 years?) when overt discrimination against women was not allowed.

It is less strong on what can be done to fix it. Mahoney's preferred solution is to move to a situation where women and men are equally likely to be primary carers. To get to that point, she thinks that it has to start at the top (as it is easier to live a good life on one income at high incomes, and men are less likely to make the necessary sacrifices at the beginning than women) and gradually filter through generational change. Things that will need to change include women making educational and career choices that acknowledge the chance of being a primary breadwinner, and high earning women respecting men who would like to look after children.

My preferred solution (in my own family at least) would be high status part-time jobs, so that a couple can live on one income that is earned by two people, but that seems even more pie-in-the-sky than Mahoney's solution (even though it is, ironically, how Mahoney's family works). The world of work doesn't have to change as much in Mahoney's solution (although it does some - fewer female primary breadwinners are willing to work 80 hour weeks than male primary breadwinners in my experience).

As I was reading the book, I was thinking smugly at various points "well I didn't make that mistake" - for which I think I can thank my parents, and innate competitiveness, mostly. But I realised at the end that I had never, until I got there, internalised the possibility that I could be the primary breadwinner for a family. I had always assumed I would support myself, but there is a whole extra level of stress that comes with supporting a family that most men don't even notice, because they've always assumed that they will be doing it.

If I, who has been very career focused from an early age, can find being a breadwinner stressful, there's a fair bit of culture change needed before we get to Mahoney's preferred world. But I'd really like to see it happen.

The dog ate my post

2006-02-06T20:27:00.000+11:00

Honest, I did have a post between the 2nd and 5th of February. But blogger ate it. It was about John Howard and whether he knew about the wheat farmers, so if I was a conspiracy theorist, I would be convinced it was his fault. But blogger has been having problems, so that's probably what it was.

The content was pretty much the same as this from the AFR (quoted in Crikey today):

"In contrast, the kickbacks from AWB did exist, as demonstrated in the current enquiry by Terry Cole QC. And what has been the reaction of the government? Has anyone been sacked in the intelligence agencies or DFAT? The answer is no. Instead, the Office of National Assessments has been rewarded with a doubling of its staff under a director general who publicly insisted it did a good job on WMD.
Obviously, no heads should roll in DFAT until the Cole enquiry has to opportunity to establish who knew what and when. To date, Cole has focused on the “culture” of corruption within AWB. But what about the level of gullibility, or the extent of any cover-up, within DFAT? Alternatively, have ministers quietly let it be known there are some things they don't want to be told about?"

It's hard to believe that this government is as innocent and in the dark as it says it is, when it hasn't done anything about it now that it knows the awful truth.

Private education

2006-02-06T09:59:00.000+11:00

There was an opinion piece on private education in the SMH in Spectrum on the weekend, which I can't find online. Unfortunately, I've thrown out the paper, too, so you'll just have to cope with my rantings informed by unreliable memory.

The author starts by saying that private education in this country is now unquestionably superior to state education. She doesn't believe that that was the case in her generation. She proves this with a few anecdotes about her children's and her own education (I hate anecdote formed analysis - here is a link that would have made the point much more strongly - in NSW over four years 93- 96, the average HSC mark for government schools in english, maths and science was 5% lower than the average mark for the state as a whole*).

She then goes on to blame a few things for the gap. Her main culprits are

feminism (implied, not stated) - now that women can access lots of good careers, and not just teaching or nursing, all those women who would have become teachers 30 years ago have gone off for better paying careers
the state sector's overwhelming beauracracy that makes it impossible to reward good teachers (examples given were of an acting deputy principal who couldn't be confirmed even though the school wanted him because it wasn't yet his turn, and a very good maths teacher who got made head of her private school department while still in her 20s).

I think she has a point about careers for women (although I now know quite a few women with school age children who have decided to retrain as teachers as the career has a comparatively good work life balance), which would suggest that the answer is to pay teachers more to make it a more prestigious career for women and men. Of course there are so many teachers that this would be very expensive and difficult politically.

To me a major issue is the number of children who have been taken out of the state system. There is quite a lot more being spent on education, but it's being spent privately rather than publicly. Certainly the people who have taken their children out of the state system want to have more control over how their money is spent, but this means that politically, those who care most about the education system and their childrens' education and have the political and financial resources to do something about it are, on average, in the private system. So the people who are left are the ones who don't campaign enough to get the state school system fixed up well enough to give parents more say in how their educational dollar is spent.

The Economist had an article a week or so again arguing, in effect, that it was snobbish to imply that only middle class cared about their children, and so school vouchers would work for everyone because everyone would take the time to choose the best school for their child. This ignores the very real issue that not every parent has the english language skills (particularly here in NSW), let alone the bureaucracy-navigation skills to find the right school for their child. I'm sure every parent cares about the education their child is getting, but many don't have the sense of entitlement or skills to try and achieve the best education possible.

It does seem very big-brother-esque to force people to stay in the state system to keep their political clout. But Australia does seem to be one of the few countries which funds the private system to such a large extent. Most other countries, if you want a private education, you have to fund it all yourself. I would rather that we tried to capture the dollars that people are spending privately and use them to improve the whole system.

For myself though, just like many of my well-off, state educated peers, I will not sacrifice my children to ideology. I would much rather use the state system if possible, but if it becomes clear that my children would get a better education privately, I would move them privately in a heartbeat. I can afford it, and I wouldn't hesitate.

* Yes, I know that this analysis ignores the possibility that it's only the kids who would have done well anyway go to private schools, and the state schools are left with the ones that are never going to succeed in the first place. Nevertheless, it's better than an anecdote about one child, and 5% is a very big gap, particularly when it's a gap against the whole state (including state school), so the actual gap with private schools is more like 10%.

Educational equality

2006-02-05T21:00:00.000+11:00

There's been a bit of a storm recently about how boys are falling behind at school. So, being the mathematical type, I went on a search for some statistics about how girls are doing at maths these days. After all, if boys are falling behind, girls must be doing better at everything right?

I had a look at the NSW records for who was doing 4 unit (the highest level) maths these days. In 2004, it was 60% boys, and 40% girls. In 1991 (the earliest I could find statistics) it was 65% boys, 35% girls.

For the highest level of english, in 2004 it was 66% girls, 34% boys. In 1991 it was 73% girls, 27% boys.

So for both english and maths, the proportion of each gender at the highest level has become more even (albeit not far enough, in my view). Actually, I was quite astounded by the maths proportions, as I'm sure it was a lot less even in my day (mid 80s).

What I have read about this so far (and I'm interested now, so I'll come back to it) suggests that broadly what has happened in NSW is that high socio-economic girls have started to reach equality with the equivalent boys, because the education for the high achievers has got better at understanding the individual. And you can see that in the statistics above (not that high achievement always corresponds with high socio-economic, but there is a correlation). And low socio-economic boys have slipped behind. So if there is a problem, it tends to be at the bottom end, with those who have low socio-economic status to start with.

Which tends to mean that all those hand-wringing commentators are worrying about the wrong issue. The boys whose educational impoverishment they are bewailing are at the high socio-economic end of the spectrum, most of the time.

I don't have a conclusion yet, but I'm sure I will be paying a lot more attention to it, as the mother of two boys.

Naked self interest

2006-02-02T19:36:00.000+11:00

The SMH a couple of days ago had a story about Australian Business Limited's suggestion of how the NSW state government should cut spending, improve efficiency and cut business taxes. OK so far, so good. I tend to agree that the NSW state government hasn't exactly spent its money wisely in the last few years - just look at our train system, and our education results. So I wouldn't be surprised to see a business proposal to spend the money more wisely on (say) infrastructure or better training for apprentices, that kind of thing.

But this proposal appears to be naked self interest. They've gone through the NSW budget with a fine tooth comb for cuts to things that won't hurt businesses - "under the plan, students would pay an $80-a-year levy for school travel passes, Sydney Water pensioner concessions would be halved and public housing rents would rise. The group wants the $50-per-child back-to-school allowance abolished along with the program to reduce class sizes for children in kindergarten, year 1 and year 2, pending an evaluation... It also proposes cutting disability services, TAFE spending and road maintenance, and abolishing the NSW Film and Television Office, the Privacy Commission and the Office of Women."

And what do they propose to spend the money on? Snuck into the end of the story is "It also proposes cutting payroll tax in NSW from 6 per cent to 5.25 per cent by 2008-09 ($1.5 billion)."

To me, this would have a lot more credibility if it spend valuable analytical time on the things the state government does badly that create headaches for business. My examples would be things like improving the TAFE system to help employers train employees, improving the public transport system so that employers wouldn't have employees being late for meetings all the time (and could actually use trains instead of taxis to get to meetings), facilitating the provision of childcare places where they are needed instead of in areas that tend to have lots of stay at home parents...

But all these are complex, require complex solutions, and might even require funding in the short term. But instead the ABL proposes cutting TAFE spending and road maintenance, the kinds of things that are an investment in our future and would improve the balance sheet of the state. Much easier just to ask for a reduction in payroll tax, and continue to run down the infrastructure of NSW so that future generations of taxpayers will have to pay for our lack of maintenance.

Gender and children

2006-02-01T20:03:00.000+11:00

Jody at Raising WEG has a fascinating post about boys and the toys they choose. She has much better comparison points than me (she has triplets - two girls and a boy), and has posted about her boy's toy choices, and his peers' reaction to them. One thing she said which I found interesting was that "The little girls are far more flexible than the little boys, there's just no question about that one." In her examples, it certainly seems true. And yet...

My boys, particularly C, the four year old, seem more able to exercise their femininity than their female friends. C's four year old girl friends tend to play princesses and fairies, and like to draw, and dance and sing. C, while he loves trains, and rockets, also loves the colour pink and dressing up in crowns and using a magic wand. Of course, I know C better than I know his friends. He tends to do the feminine things in the comfort of his own home rather than with his friends (although we have a great picture of him playing dress-ups at playgroup). Maybe the others (most of whom have older brothers) secretly play with trains and rockets at home.

Before I had kids, I was pretty convinced by my feminist reading that gender was pretty much 95% nurture. I saw a great example of that on a BBC program about childhood development where they gave a baby dressed alternately in pink and blue to people to play with. The pink baby got cuddled, and told how beautiful "she" was. The blue baby got stood up and told how strong "his" legs were. It was a striking difference.

And I could go on and on about behaviours that are described one way or the other depending on whether boys or girls do them. My favourite example is when two kids say to another one "you're not our friend". When girls do it, it's sad how early girls these days start bitchy behaviour. When boys do it, it's just an individual example of bad manners, and treated accordingly.

But there are more subtle differences that I find hard to explain with nurture. I've certainly increased my proportion that comes from nature rather than nuture after parenthood and watching them develop (I'm not sure how far, though...) My boys do seem to need to run around more than their girl friends. There does seem to be a drift to only have friends of the same gender. And is the fact that both my boys only role play with trains as characters, rather than dolls or teddy bears, just because they are interested in trains, or because they have never been interested in nurturing behaviour?

Pink

2006-01-30T19:43:00.000+11:00

I took my boys to the playground this morning, and stumbled on a local mothers group - mostly girls. The children (10 or so) were mostly 3 or 4, with a few siblings in attendance. Every single girl was dressed in bright pink - either the whole dress, or both the top and bottom. I have no real evidence for this, but I can't help thinking that this is more extreme than it used to be.

Why are girls forced so emphatically into very gender specific clothing at such a young age? And more worryingly to me, I'm wondering what has caused such a retreat into femininity for all those girls. The clothes weren't impractical, but they were very pink. I knew a few of the mothers, and I didn't get the sense they were the kind of women who think a woman's role is only to be feminine and girly. (I've never met that kind of woman, but according to every Sunday supplement article you read about mothers, they do apparently exist).

Maybe it's just another example of the consumer society gone mad. We're all richer now than we used to be (and clothes are cheaper), so we can afford to buy clothes for every occasion and give into our children's desires. Or maybe every mother does secretly want to dress her daughter in pink, and I've forgotten now I've had two sons.

Book Review - Secrets of the Jury Room

2006-01-29T20:44:00.000+11:00

This week's book review is Secrets of the Jury Room by Malcolm Knox. Malcolm Knox is the SMH's literary editor, and a few years ago got himself on a jury in a fairly serious criminal trial.

This book is the result of that trial. It doesn't tell the story of it, exactly, as Knox was forced by the defendant in that trial to completely disguise the trial so he (the defendant) couldn't be identified. That's my main irritation with the book - Knox was so (obviously) annoyed by this, that he spends far too much time talking about the arcane legalities about what you can and can't reveal about the jury room.

That aside, it is fascinating. I had expected a fairly pedestrian discussion of the trial that Knox himself was on. And there is a pretty interesting (but completely fictional) trial and jury described in the book. But at least half of the book is a readable, and serious, discussion of jury trials, their advantages, disadvantages, and the politics of them. Knox has talked to as many former jurors as he could (without soliciting - you are not allowed to ask jurors to tell you anything, they have to volunteer it) and read every piece of research (there isn't much) on the workings of juries in Australia. He's also read the US research, but thankfully doesn't use it too much, even though it must have been quite tempting given how little there is in Australia. He has talked to judges and barristers about what they look for in juries when trying to persuade them, and how they decide who to challenge during jury selection.

The eventual conclusion is that juries are an important, but very under-recognised part of the legal system. Most people who have been on juries were sceptics about whether they are a good decision making process, until they have been on one, when they see everyone, including themselves, taking the process much more seriously than they expected, and particularly being quite shaken up by the impact they are having on someone's life.

I've been on two juries (one of which, interestingly, was hung because of a single holdout juror) and I do agree that my fellow jurors took the process more seriously than I expected them to. There were some fairly base prejudices on display in my first trial - fortunately they cancelled each other out as the Aboriginal defendent was found not guilty, due to what seemed pretty obvious police verballing.

I was glad that this book contradicted the research that I read before going on my first jury - I had read that prospective jurors who look intelligent are likely to be challenged - but the way the Australian system works (challenges being solely on the basis of someone's name and appearance) tends to mean that challenges are based more on gut feel, and occasionally some ethnic similarity or difference.

The book ends with a set of recommendations about how to make juries work better ranging from the important (tell juries what they can and can't ask for in the jury room - many juries don't know that they can ask for the transcript of the trial, and judges are reluctant to tell them, because they think juries won't pay attention if they know they can get a transcript later) to the completely mundane (give jurors a meal allowance instead of providing inedible sandwiches every day).

He particularly points out that there are very few hung juries that have one single holdout juror, so abolishing the requirement for unanimity is unlikely to save the courts very much time, but may well change the dynamics of a jury room in a way that will lead to ganging up on people to change their mind in a situation where you have one too many holdouts.

Unfortunately, the political process being what it is, it's hard to imagine anyone changing their view of what to do about jury trials based on a book by a literary editor of the SMH, even one with a law degree, however well researched.

Indoctrination

2006-01-28T21:15:00.000+11:00

Our local issue is Graythwaite - a six acre estate in the middle of North Sydney currently used as a nursing home. There is a local campaign going on - posters everywhere, and stalls at all of the local markets. My four year old has been asking what it's all about, so we've been telling him that it's about saving a beautiful old building from being knocked down by builders (largely true - see a fuller explanation below). So now if the subject comes up (and sometimes even if it doesn't), C will tell you all about this beautiful house and how it needs to be saved.

I've always been faintly queasy about children being used for political purposes, but I can't really see how we could have avoided this one, except to refuse to answer his questions. But it makes me realise how easy it would be (right this minute) to make him believe almost anything we wanted him to believe (subhuman status of ethnic groups, for example).

Graythwaite estate is six acres and includes a magnificent house built in the 1830s and was given to NSW in 1915 by Sir Thomas Dibbs to be used as a convalescent home for the wounded Anzacs. It has gradually been run down by the NSW Health Department, and is now in a terrible state and not suitable to be used as a nursing home, so they need to do something with it. The revenue maximising route would be to sell it off to the highest bidder - likely to be Shore school (which is right next door). I'm not a big fan of born-to-rule private schools (of which Shore is a leading example) so I'm not in favour of them getting another six acres to spread out on.

It would also mean that the buildings would quite likely be demolished, and the land would not be able to be used by the public (no school in its right mind is going to allow public access in these days of pedophilia hysteria).

So there is a local group trying to save it (which would mean North Sydney Council buying it for not necessarily the highest offer), which has been doing all the campaigning.

Women's participation in the workforce

2006-01-27T20:57:00.000+11:00

There has been a frenzy of comment in the US blogs I read about a recent article arguing that

"Half the wealthiest, most-privileged, best-educated females in the country stay
home with their babies rather than work in the market economy"

Further research by US demographers (as opposed to anecdotally interviewing women who announced their marriages in the style section - good statistical method!) suggested that the "child penalty" (i.e. the reduction in participation rate from having children) in the labour participation rate had closed in the US in the last few decades.

In Australia, as this week's AFR magazine points out, women with children are quite a lot less likely to work than those without, particularly women with degrees. NATSEM is a research centre associated with the University of Canberra that does a lot of microeconomic research, and recently has teamed up with AMP to provide some fairly definitive data.

Although the participation of women in the labour force has increased steadily in the last 20 years (from 45.7% to 56.7%), the participation of women aged 25-44 with dependent children has dropped in the last 10 years (1993 - 2003). And the proportion of women working full-time, with or without children, seems to have almost uniformly dropped in that time. Older women (45-64) with or without dependent children are much more likely to be working than they used to be.

Looking at women working full-time, the "child penalty" is by far the greatest for women with degrees - a 25% difference in full-time participation between women with and without dependent children. For women with no post-school qualifications, they are actually more likely to work full-time if they have children than if they don't.

So what's happened in the last few years is that women are more likely to be working than they used to be, but less likely to be working full-time, and that mothers are less likely to be working, even part-time, than they were 10 years ago. The "child penalty" for full-timers hasn't changed, though. It seems that what's happened is that women have generally cut back on their hours - full-timers to part-time, and part-timers to nothing (particularly if they have children). And older women (likely to be mothers of older children) have got back into the workforce in increasing numbers.

Without income and status statistics about the jobs, it's hard to tell if women are "wasting" their degrees, as Linda Hirshman said in her original article. But the increasing participation of older women in the labour force suggests to me that there is hope that women are taking some serious time off to have their children, but it isn't forcing them out of the workforce forever.

Child obesity

2006-01-25T21:26:00.000+11:00

There has been a huge amount of publicity of increasing proportions of children being overweight and obese. The studies often add that obesity is much more common in poorer children, for a variety of reasons (including access to exercise as well as healthy food). So I've been assuming that where I live (not a poor area) is pretty much as it ever was.

I was clearing out my study the other day, and stopped to look at my old school photos. The thing I noticed was not so much that the children looked thinner, but that child that I remembered as "the fat kid" actually looked quite normal to me now. There weren't any children that I went to school with that I would stop and think - gee that child is fat. But they were certainly teased unmercifully for being fat at the time.

It's probably just as hard being "the fat kid" at school as it ever was. But if you are "the fat kid" you are probably at least 20% heavier than you would have been thirty years ago.

Zig Zag Railway

2006-01-24T20:17:00.000+11:00

I was up at the Zig Zag railway on the weekend (explanation - 4 and 2 year old boys obsessed with trains) and realised what an impressive achievement it is, not so much building it originally, as the work involved in restoring it.

The Zig Zag railway was a tricky part of the railway built over the Blue Mountains. Tricky, because it was at a very steep point, and trains are notoriously bad at going up and down hills. It was built in the 1860s, and by 1910, engineering had moved on enough that it was easier to build a tunnel (with more than one track, as the single track had become a bottle-neck).

In 1972 a group of enthusiasts (the kind of people in anoraks who I would probably be amused by if I met them face to face) decided to rebuild it. By 1975 they had run their first train, and by 1988 (with the help of some Bicentennial Grants) they had rebuilt the whole 8 kilometres.

The impressive part is how much was done by a group of amateurs. A serious distance of track, that had not been used for more than 60 years was rebuilt by volunteers. And not just rebuilt. They've sourced quite a bit of rolling stock of which the main steam engine is merely the best looking. I might not laugh quite so much next time I see a bunch of train-spotters at a fete - they're probably volunteering their time in more worthwhile ways than I am.

Book Review - Better than Sex: How a whole generation got hooked on work

2006-01-22T20:36:00.000+11:00

This week's book review is Better than Sex - How a whole generation got hooked on work, by Helen Trinca & Catherine Fox (who edit the Australian Financial Review's Boss magazine).

Helen Trinca and Catherine Fox are journalists who write about the world of work very much from a management perspective. They are also women (one a mother of three children including twins) and are much more leftwing than I expected for two women who edit a magazine called Boss. Each month, Boss magazine brings the latest management theories to the eager professionals in Australia's capital cities, and publishes interviews with the latest pin-up CEO or visiting US management professor. So it's very much on the side of capitalism.

This book manages to interpret that theory (much of it clearly faddish, but not all of it) and explain how we got ourselves into this position. The "click" moment for me was the chapter which talked about how pleasurable work often is for people.

"...most of our generation stuck it out, gradually being seduced by the notion that work was an important part of life, an end in itself"

and why

"Many jobs have been made more interesting because workers have to engage more directly with clients... The upshot is workers often feel they are a real part of the drive for success and profits...For a company, capturing the emotional energy of an employee is seen as a huge plus...Organisations have a big investment in encouraging you to deny your private life and look to work for the energy and excitement of play and intimacy"

so companies have gradually, and for sensible business reasons, had more and more reason to engage the hearts and minds of people. And workers find that more interesting - if you are working on something that is interesting enough that you think about it in the shower, then you enjoy it more. The downside is that the rest of your life suffers, and if you want that rest of your life to take up a big part of your week, then your employer isn't getting the emotional investment it wants from you.

I have been reading a lot of impassioned discussion (most of which I agree with) about how much of a waste of talent it is that the world of work, particularly for professional jobs, is such a full time world. There's no room for part-timers or even 40-hour-a-week-ers any more. This book is a good way of seeing it from the business side, and I will be rereading it to see what, if anything, I can do about it in my business life, because for better or for worse, I'm one of the ones trying to figure out how or whether I can employ that wasted talent.

Water - when will we run out?

2006-01-20T12:18:00.000+11:00

I was very excited this week when I logged on to the Sydney Water dam update - we've had the best week since last July! So this week, we had enough new water in the dams to cover us for six weeks of normal consumption. It's still not enough, though. We do seem to be in a new, lower rain environment that if it keeps going, will see us run out of water in around six years.

So I was outraged this morning when I read in the Sydney Morning Herald that the government has been sitting on what seems to be an excellent and cheap way of substantially improving our water supply;

"Under the confidential proposal by the gas company AGL, disused gas mains would deliver recycled water to industry."

There has been a lot of talk about the willingness of Sydney residents to drink recycled water - politicians say they won't be, many activists say they haven't been asked. But it does slightly miss the point. To purify sewage to the level that it can be drunk is pretty similar to the level of effort required to purify seawater. So Bob Carr's famous description of desalinated water as "bottled electricity" applies almost as much to recycled water - if it is for drinking. But a lot of water used in Sydney is used by industry, so it doesn't need the same level of purification. So figuring out creative ways of getting grey water to industry seems a hugely worthwhile exercise that seems to have gone by the wayside in the public strategy.

I can't honestly think of a good reason for this proposal not to be explored. Even with my cynic's hat on, I didn't think Macquarie Bank was that enthusiastic about the desalination plant being built.

When to kiss

2006-01-19T21:42:00.000+11:00

I had a farewell discussion with someone at work today. He's fifteen years older than me, a really nice guy, and I've worked hard to get him to take me seriously as a fellow professional, not a nice little girlie who is doing pretty well given her age and sex.

Reader, I kissed him.

I realised immediately afterwards that I had broken all the rules of business kissing. Basically, if you're a woman, don't offer a kiss to someone if you want them to take you seriously in the office. If you're a man, use it to prove your power over a woman. Oh well. It was a farewell discussion.

Phone numbers

2006-01-18T20:29:00.000+11:00

I am incapable of remembering mobile phone numbers the way everyone else does. I think I'm too governed by the way Sydney phone numbers used to be. In Sydney phone numbers used to be seven digits, by universal agreement expressed as xxx xxxx. So when mobile phone numbers came along, I used the same system - (04x) xxx xxxx. But everyone else in the universe (or at least the people I swap mobile phone numbers with) says (04xx) xxx xxx. Which completely confuses me, and means I am unable to remember theirs, and they can't remember mine. I've tried a few times to tell them my number the "normal" way. But if I do that, I can't even remember my own.

You would think, as a person who has loved numbers all her life, I could switch my thinking. But it seems to be impossible. Maybe I will have to get a new mobile phone number to do it.

Book Review - The Paradox of Choice : Why More Is Less

2006-01-17T20:39:00.000+11:00

This week's book review is The Paradox of Choice : Why More Is Less - How the culture of abundance robs us of satisfaction by Barry Schwartz.

This book's main thesis is that too much choice is detrimental to our lives - it makes us unhappy, not to mention taking up a lot of our life. He divides the world into maximisers and satisficers (the only thing I hated about this book was this word). Maximisers are those who are determined to make sure that every choice they make is the best possible one. Satisficers are those who are happy with a choice once they know it satisfies all their criteria.

Most people will display different behaviours for different choices, but if you are too much of a maximiser, then you will tend to make yourself unhappy. Not only do you spend an awful lot of time making every single decision, you are much more likely to regret the decision you made, as you have thought so hard about it that you know every nuance of the option that you didn't take.

Having more choices available will make you more likely to be a maximiser. If there are two choices, you can think hard, or not much, but in the end, the choice you didn't make is fairly obvious. But if you have ten choices, each one will have its good and bad points, and your eventual choice is unlikely to to have every single good point. So you're more likely to be dissatisfied with your choice, particularly if you spent a lot of time weighing up the possibilities (and hence thinking about the good points of all the choices you didn't make).

There are lots of other very interesting discussions about the way we make choices (for example the way a choice is framed can make a huge difference to the decisions people will make - someone is much happier prices being described as a discount for cash than as a surcharge for credit, even if the price is exactly the same - 10% cheaper for cash).

In the end, Schwartz conclues that the excessive choice available is one of the major reasons for the increase in depression and mental illness at a time when we are increasingly affluent as a society.

Interestingly, his solutions are totally personal ones. Although there is too much choice in everyone's life, his view is that the part of each person's life that really needs choice is different for each person, so all those choices need to be available to everyone. His recommendations are good ones, and made me think about the less obvious ways in which individual freedom to choose can backfire. They could seem a bit obvious or patronising if you haven't read the reasoning behind them, so I won't list them all.

On reading the book, I do think there are public policy issues that are worth thinking about, particularly in framing choices. In my own professional life, employers responsible for superannuation choice could use a few recommendations on ways to frame the choices available to employees in ways that they are likely to make sensible choices.

My first thought on reading this book was that now I knew where all Ross Gittins' column ideas have come from recently. Not true, I don't think - it must have been one particular column that made an impression on me. It could come under the category of self-help (and with it's recommendations at the end, it has probably been marketed that way), but to me it's an interesting and different philosophical take on the world.

Computers

2006-01-16T21:45:00.000+11:00

We have our main computer, with a permanent internet connection, in our main family room. It's been that way since 1997. So when our computer crashed last week, we realised just how dependent on it we had become, even with three other computers in the house. We needed it to look up phone numbers, ferry timetables, the weather forecast, settle arguments, answer strange questions from our four year old about the world...

When we first installed our computer in the family room, even our geekiest friends thought we were wierd, but I get the sense we're not that weird these days.

Housework again

2006-01-14T21:14:00.000+11:00

Nicholas Gruen in Club Troppo has devoted his weekly column to the housework issue - why do women do more than men? I blogged about this when he first posted, and this new column is far more nuanced, and well written.

One thing he does do is find some research about how unhappy people actually are with their level of housework. This study shows that 32% of women and 8% of men think their partner could do more of the housework, and about the same for childcare. To me, that suggests that we haven't reached a point where everyone is happy, but Nicholas Gruen prefers to report the statistic that only 14% of women (and 3% of men) are not very or not at all satisfied with the division of labour of housework in their house. I think there is a difference between accepting your lot, and being happy with it, that is implied in these different statistics.

Climate Change Conference

2006-01-14T20:37:00.000+11:00

The grandly named Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate met this week in Sydney. For the un-initiated, this is either (a) a sensible approach to fixing the problem of climate change without those stupid Europeans and greenies hanging around; or (b) Australia and the US putting a desperate spin on why nothing should be done about climate change in the slightest by pulling in a few big developing countries (India and China) and having an expensive conference.

I'm still pretty uninitiated on climate change - I've been trying to ignore it as I fear I will become depressed about it.

The thing that is striking me at the moment is how strange the solutions adopted are. The Europeans, who are notoriously anti market forces (see their agricultural policy, if you don't believe me), as a way of reaching the targets that they have agreed to in the Kyoto protocol, have adopted lots of creative market-based approaches (of which trading carbon credits is only the best known).

The Americans and Australians, who like to think of themselves as much more rigorous about economics, and who certainly pay lip service to market-based solutions to many quite diverse problems (health and education being two fairly large examples), have adopted an approach of picking winners (such as carbon sequestration).

Looking at these different approaches does make me suspect that the Europeans are the ones that are actually trying to do something, as opposed to have the appearance of doing something. The Sydney Morning Herald summed our approach up well: "the Australian Government's approach relies heavily on faith; it seems Australia believes industry will do the right thing because it is the right thing."

Book Review - Children of the Lucky Country

2006-01-09T20:49:00.000+11:00

This week's book review is Children of the Lucky Country: How Australian society has turned its back on children and why children matter by Fiona Stanley, Sue Richardson and Margot Prior. Fiona Stanley was the Australian of the Year in 2003, and made children the topic of the platform she was given by being Australian of the Year. The book is an expansion of the concerns Fiona Stanley raised during that year.

The book starts with the preamble that although many if not most children are doing better than they ever have before, particularly having a better chance of living to adulthood, there have been worsening rates of diseases like asthma and diabetes, and worsening incidences of depression, juvenile crime and behavioural problems. The other main issue raised in the preamble is that there is a much greater difference in outcomes between the most and least affluent than there used to be.

What follows are excellent surveys in all the trends of ways of measuring children's outcomes. Reported on are things like prematurity and low birth weight (no change in the last 30 years), childhood disabilities (gradually increasing), child abuse (increasing, possibly because of reporting changes), suicides (four fold increase for men aged 15-24 since the sixties, two fold for women that age), substance abuse (increase in harmful use of alcohol, although overall rates of drinking remain similar). Also in this section are various statistics showing that more disadvantaged children are more likely to be affected by all of the above.

There is also a great chapter on how we are running out of children. If Australian women had continued to have children as much as they did in the 1980s then we would have a million more children aged under 15 now. It doesn't have any major comments on why this matters, other than this tending to reduce our level of long term children; rightly or wrongly, you care more about the long term future when you are closely invested in it via your children. As an aside, see Bitch PhD for a great post about why children do matter to society.

At the end of a whole lot of detailed recommendations about how to make children's lives better. The top five are:

change the workplace to be more committed to workers as parents;
shift more towards prevention in all of our services;
reduce violence around children in all of society;
enhance the publicly funded school system; and
provide excellent child-care (early) at a reasonable cost to all families.

The authors are particularly concerned that the public sector and its systems have been 'kidnapped' into providing more for the needs of the well-off than of the poor.

The strength of this book is that in one place it gathers a huge amount of information about children today. I found it hard to get worked up about the recommendations, though. Not because I didn't think they were a good idea. More because none of them seemed particularly likely to be implemented. To be fair, some of the smaller, more detailed "what can you do" recommendations seemed more likely (for example for parents a suggestion is to use some of the resources in the book to get together and lobby your local council for improvements). But some seemed a bit pie in the sky (for example no worker to work more than 40 hours a week).

Nicholas Gruen in Club Troppo has a review here. His main quarrel with the book is its focus on social disadvantage (the implication being lack of money) rather than general social breakdown:

"I don’t think more money will do much at all if it isn’t coupled with insistence on individual and community responsibility, and strenuous attempts to do everything possible to resist anti-social behaviour. "

This book is a great resource, and a passionate plea on behalf of members of our community who don't get as much lobbying on their behalf as they used to. I hope its existence helps people understand the issues more. But so far, sadly, I think I've heard more about the various children's issues raised from Fiona Stanley when she was Australian of the Year than from this excellent book.

Titanic

2006-01-07T21:09:00.000+11:00

My four year old has recently become obsessed with the Titanic. It's got me wondering what it is about this story that has kept the world's interest for so long. It was a dramatic shipwreck, but there have been others. Although at the time it was the largest loss of life in a single shipwreck, since then there have been many other worse shipwrecks (although most of them were in wartime - the worst ever in 1945).

I think it was a combination of factors. War time disasters only count if they're your side (eg Lusitania). If the enemy dies, then it's just their bad luck. For those who hate hubris, the Titanic was an example of the folly of hubris - being so sure your ship was unsinkable that you didn't carry enough lifeboats. For class warriors, it was another example of the horrors of the english class structure, where third class passengers were in some cases, locked into a sinking ship. And finally, the story fires your imagination. The ship had sunk slowly enough (it took three hours) that there were many stories of individual heroism and bastardry to fire the imagination. And the media was there at New York Harbour while memories were fresh to write all the stories down.

Christmas presents

2006-01-06T19:49:00.000+11:00

I've been comparing notes with fellow under five parents about Christmas presents - how much is too much? And what should you do about grandparents who must give their children huge presents? My parents and parents-in-law are pretty good. They make a big effort to give our kids something they would like, rather than lots of stuff. If anything, they are appalled by our consumerism, rather than the other way around.

One of my friends has competitive grandparents - each trying to out do the other with more (not necessarily better) presents. She is trying to think of tactful ways to reduce the number of presents.

Having children, and buying them toys, makes me realise just how much our living standards have risen in a generation. We buy our boys toys for under $10 that would have been big Christmas or birthday presents in my day. For example, you can get a working microscope for $9.95 in our local toyshop. And the simple electricity set we bought our four year old from the local $2 shop (I think it cost $15) is about ten times better and more educational than the one my husband had at age 10 as a major toy.

So even grandparents who aren't well off can afford to buy quite good presents if they don't have too many grandchildren. But the grandchildren have probably got every toy under the sun because everything is so cheap these days!

Public vs Private Education

2006-01-05T20:28:00.000+11:00

I've been watching the 7-up series. I'm up to 28-up so far. The premise of the original, supposed to be one-off 7-up was comparing 14 7 year olds, mostly from the extremes (exclusive private school, working class east end school) of British society, and interviewing them to show how stratified people's lives were by the class they started in.

Since then, Michael Apted (a researcher on the original program) has gone back to them every seven years to see whether they turned out the way you would expect from the original interviews.

Given the original premise of the program, educational choices is a huge issue that gets explored in the interviews every time. The most sensible of the upperclass private school boys, Andrew, was asked what he thought of private schools at age 28. I can't quote verbatim, but he said something like,

"I think there are two choices. Let people do what they want with their money, and if that means buying their children the best education money can buy, then so be it - it's their money, they should be entitled to spend it. Or else, acknowledge that having those children in the state system would improve the system for everyone, because their parents would be the ones agitating to improve not just the school their children happened to be at, but the school system, and it would improve the system as a whole. And make it impossible to send your children to anywhere but the state system. And that's impossible, so we are stuck with the first option".

I've blogged about this issue for schools before, but it struck me that Andrew's second option, that he dismissed as impossible, is actually how Australian universities work. There isn't really a private system to speak of (although it exists, it's not especially prestigious) so everyone has to go to the state universities. They also have to pay fees, some of them quite large ones, if they don't get into the main entry for their courses, but there isn't really a choice to buy a "better" education with more money, as there is in the primary and secondary system.

It doesn't seem to have helped the university system particularly to have all those rich students (and their parents) involved in it. From what I remember at university, the private school types were much less likely to bother about how good an education they were getting, and much more likely to be propping up the university bar.

From what I read, the university education you get really is worse than it was 20 years ago (when I got one of the last free university educations in this country). Or maybe it would be much worse off still if there was a parallel private system that creamed off the richest students.