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Edward Tufte kills a kitten

By Legal Eagle

I’m back to teaching, which is nice. I like teaching.

But there’s one thing I’d forgotten about: the obligatory query as to where my Powerpoint slides can be downloaded from the web. What Powerpoint slides? Long term readers of the blog know that I have problems with Powerpoint from way back.

“Powerpoint is against my religion”, I told my class with some asperity. (My religion is a very odd one. Things which are against my religion include: group work, Powerpoint slides and clowns. Thou shalt keep me away from these things if thou dost wish me to be happy. This list does not purport to be comprehensive, and may be added to at will.)

If my religion is anti-Powerpoint, I think Edward Tufte can be regarded as the prophet of that particular aspect of my beliefs. He’s written a piece on how Powerpoint led to the Spaceshuttle Colombia disaster. Now that I am a salaried lecturer rather than a sessional staff member, I might even buy his whole essay.

Anyway, a friend on Facebook directed me to this particular beauty by Mark Goetz:

(larger version here)

I’ve printed it out, and I’m going to put it on my office wall.

A Shout-Out

By skepticlawyer

We’re not in the habit of handling shout-outs on behalf of third parties, but we happen to think that this one is worthwhile and serious, and it wouldn’t be here if we hadn’t engaged in considerable vetting before hand (one reason why skepticlawyer in particular hasn’t been around much lately, quite apart from my encounter with a serious case of lactose intolerance).

So here goes:

Important: please reply.

Does sexual harassment occur within the legal profession in Australia?

Have you ever been, or do you know anyone, who has been sexually harassed at work / by someone from the workplace?

skepticlawyer has been contacted by a media researcher who is looking at the realities of sexual harassment in the workplace. She is seeking people who have been sexually harassed at work, and who have struggled with what to do and how to handle the problem.

Contact Caroline on (02) 8333 4867 if you would like to share any experiences or any viewpoints.

Confidentiality is guaranteed, and you can remain anonymous.

This research is being undertaken by a third party we rate, not by me (SL) or Katy (LE) or by our respective universities. We do, however, consider it important. If you have something to contribute, please contact Caroline.

Well, that’s one

By DeusExMacintosh

FRIENDS of an acclaimed Scottish writer have accused the new government’s crackdown on welfare benefits of being a factor in his suicide.

Paul Reekie, who, along with Irvine Welsh, was part of a wave of young Scottish authors who rose to international prominence in the 1990s, killed himself in his Edinburgh home last month. The Leith-based writer and poet, who was 48, left no suicide note but friends say letters informing him that his welfare benefits were to be halted were found close to his body.

Reekie’s former publisher Kevin Williamson believes the actions of Chancellor George Osborne, who has introduced unprecedented measures to slash Britain’s welfare bill, helped to push his close friend and literary collaborator towards taking his own life.

The founder of the Rebel Inc publishing label has sent a strongly worded letter to Osborne, linking his policies to Reekie’s death.

The letter states: “It has come to my attention that while many of my friends and I were at the funeral of our good friend Paul Reekie, aged 48, it would appear that you were giving a speech in Parliament announcing your intentions to slash the benefits paid to the poorest and most vulnerable in our society.

“I thought I would let you know that Paul took his own life. He didn’t leave a note but he laid out two letters on his table. One was notifying him that his housing benefit had been stopped. The other was notifying him that his incapacity benefit had been stopped.

“The reason I’m writing this letter is just so you know the human cost of attacking those on benefits.”

- The Scotsman

The Worm

By Legal Eagle

O Rose thou art sick.
The invisible worm,
That flies in the night
In the howling storm:

Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy:
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.

(William Blake, The Sick Rose, Songs of Innocence and Experience, 1794)

plate here

There is a canker eating at the heart of our political society. I felt that the KRudd government was interested in appearances rather than reality, but despite the change of Prime Minister, things don’t seem to have changed. And I certainly don’t feel that the Opposition is any better, or an alternative for which I can vote.

How did things come to this pass? I have decided that, in part, it is the obsession with opinion polls. I presume that when Abe Lincoln was President, he didn’t have access to opinion polls. All he could do was go out there into the public and say what he believed in, and what he thought was good for the people, and why that was. How did he find out what their opinion was? I suppose he would have had an immediate gauge if people started to pelt him with rotten vegetables or heckle him, or alternatively, if they cheered him uproariously. He had to actually speak to the public and engage with them to get an idea of what their reaction was, though.

As I’ve already said, I didn’t watch the GillAbb debate. In comments, Dave Bath wondered if Australian politics had always been like this, or had it just plumbed new depths recently.

The worm typifies the problem. It’s a blow-by-blow account of how the audience is reacting to each little thing the debaters say. Thus, pollsters can obsessively follow it and see which arguments appeal to voters more, which policies are more popular.

My disappointment comes down to this. I do not feel that either party will pursue policies that are initially unpopular but which they believe are the good of the country. Neither party is guided by belief, or principle, or by a sense that they are representing us. They just seek to stay in power by appealing to popular sentiment.

Opinion is a strange thing, though. A while back, I participated in an Insight episode on climate change scepticism (unfortunately it hasn’t aired yet, but I guess it will after the Election). At the end of the show, we were asked if we’d changed our opinion. No, I hadn’t changed my opinion, because I was still thinking about it. In fact, a month after filming, I’m still mulling over the questions that were raised in the program. I wouldn’t say that my opinion is settled, and I’m always open to further discussion. Just simply asking, “Have you changed your opinion?” (Yes/No) doesn’t cover the complexity of my response.

There have been occasions on this blog where I have taken a particular position with respect to a political or social issue, and through informed discussion and debate with other commenters and bloggers, I have changed my opinion. Sometimes I don’t change my opinion instantly. Sometimes it takes a long time. Sometimes I don’t change my opinion until after something occurs, and I see that the effects were not as bad as I thought (or that they were far worse, as they case may be). The proof can be in the pudding.

A lot of people take a while to think about their opinions too. My Dad and I develop our opinions by talking out aloud with other people. My Mum and my sister hate this. They both need to go away with the information and mull over it in private. “Why do you and Dad always ask me what I think of a movie as soon as the credits roll?” complains my mother. “I’m still thinking about it.” By contrast, Dad and I are likely to have an opinion straight away, but in talking it over with each other, we might change our opinion or firm up why we think as we do.

If I wanted to get my sister to think about something, I learned to toss the new argument or information at her much as one might lob a grenade into hostile territory, then close the door to her room and leave her in private rather than immediately asking, “What do you think about that?” She hates being put on the spot, and if I corner her with a new argument without giving her time to digest, I’m likely to hear one thousand reasons why I’m wrong. If I want a considered answer, I wait until the next day. My daughter is very similar to my sister, just a lot louder.

The point of this discursion into my family’s opinion-making habits is simply to point out that some people don’t react very well to new proposals if you don’t give them time to think about it. So naturally enough, if you ask them straight away what their opinion is on a new proposal without giving them time to digest it and research all of the available information, it’s likely that their opinion will be negative.

Bu there seems to be no attempt to explain a policy, to let people take it in and digest it, and then to discuss why it might be necessary. It’s simply presented as a fait accompli and initially, if people react negatively, they’re just dismissed. However, if they continue to react negatively in enough numbers, then the policy is dropped because it might affect opinion polls. There’s no middle ground.

Dave said, “The agenda of both appeals not to a single virtue, but to the vices, probably all of the 7 deadly sins.” My aunt yesterday said, “It seems like both parties are engaging in a race to the bottom.” I’d say rather that the politicians are playing on fears. Of course, fear always plays a part in politics, and this is hardly a new thing. Demagogues of the right and the left have long played on fear.

There’s fear about boat people, fear about immigration and different cultures, fear about jobs, fear about climate change, and the politicians are all trying to play on it. Politicians should be aware of these fears, and understand them. It’s important not to dismiss fears, even if you think they are foolish or bigoted fears. Nonetheless, politicians shouldn’t play on fears to get policies through, and fear shouldn’t the driver behind decisions. As I’ve said long ago, I decry the politics of fear:

Fear doesn’t make for intelligent, reasoned decisions: people make panicked, knee-jerk reactions based on prejudice rather than fact.

If you are seeking to persuade me that a particular course of action is necessary, don’t try to make me fearful to push me down that path. Reason with me, engage with me, talk to me.

What would my advice to politicians be? The Worm should be ignored. Politicians should focus on principle; on doing what is best for the people, not on keeping high in the opinion polls. They should be attempting to allay and address fears, not playing on them.

What’s wrong with me?

By Legal Eagle

Okay, don’t answer that question. But I didn’t watch either the Debate between our esteemed political leaders, or the Master Chef final. Thus I suspect I am in a minority of the Australian population.

I didn’t watch the GillAbb Debate because I am so shizzed off about the direction politics is going in this country at the moment. I just feel like it’s so much hot air, and unpleasant hot air at that. What the hell is happening when parties are vying to outdo each other on cutting immigration?! Take away the word “sustainability”, and I think you start to get a bit of a Hanson-esque feel. There is very little difference between the two parties, and neither are going in a direction I particularly like. They seem to be focused on the Worm rather than on a long term vision for what’s best for our country or our people.

I didn’t watch Master Chef either. I don’t have anything against it particularly; I just have other things to do of an evening (mainly PhD, and if I’m not doing that I read a book or write a blog post). Apparently it’s full of lawyers who are trying to get out of the law. Why does this not surprise me? In fact, my husband thought he might nominate me – what a dear man! – they do say that the road to a man’s heart is via his stomach, and it seems I have conquered both. Nonetheless, although I love cooking, I wouldn’t want to compete on a show. My meals are a labour of love for friends and family, and I wouldn’t want to compete in that kind of a way.

Someone was asking a lawyer friend and I whether we knew any of the lawyer contestants. Nope, I don’t think I do. Apparently one or two of the lawyers were at Clayton Utz. Both my friend and I did articles at other big firms, 10 or so years ago. We thought about it. Almost nobody we know from 10 years ago is still at a firm. They’ve gone to the Bar, or in-house, to government, to academia, or they’ve quit law altogether and become something entirely different. I’d say about 10% of my Articles cohort are still with a firm.

When I turned my mind to the firm I was at 5 years ago, I could only think of one lawyer at a vaguely similar level to me who was still there (out of 20 or so). Again, there was a similar picture. Some had moved to other firms, but most had moved out of firms altogether. My own apocryphal observations are backed up by a 2008 study, which showed similar results. I’d love to do a long range study of people over 15 years or so, and work out how long they lasted at firms, why they left or stayed, and what their career progression was.

I suppose law firms don’t have to worry about treating graduates well because there’s plenty more fodder where that came from. I can’t see how firms could be happy with the massive churn they experience (apparently roughly equivalent to an entire staff turnover after 5 years). No wonder Master Chef seems like a better option, even if you do break down in tears because your coulis has lumps in it.

As a friend who is still in practice observed glumly, many firms combine the worst of owner-managed businesses with the worst of large corporates. Partners use junior lawyers to line their own pockets, and I suspect that they don’t really care how many they go through as long as the clients keep coming and the money keeps rolling in, because nothing changes.

I just feel that the world is going crazy at the moment and that there’s a distinct lack of sense on the part of politicians, lawyers and the media. Do people (politicians, law firm partners, or whoever) get so consumed in their own reality that they start to believe their own BS? Glah. On that note, I am going to go and read a nice fantasy sci-fi book and escape from this world for a little while.

Dave New World

By DeusExMacintosh

David Cameron has launched his “big society” drive to empower communities, describing it as his “great passion”.

In a speech in Liverpool, the prime minister said groups should be able to run post offices, libraries, transport services and shape housing projects. Also announcing plans to use dormant bank accounts to fund projects, Mr Cameron said the concept would be a “big advance for people power”.

Voluntary groups and Labour have queried how the schemes will be funded.

The idea was a central theme in the Conservative general election campaign and Mr Cameron denied that he was being forced to re-launch it because of a lack of interest first time around.

While reducing the budget deficit was his “duty”, he said giving individuals and communities more control over their destinies was what excited him and was something that had underpinned his philosophy since he became Conservative leader in 2005…

Mr Cameron rejected suggestions that the plans were “cover” for substantial cuts in public services due next year and that the public were either confused by or uninterested in the proposals.

“I don’t accept that people don’t understand what this is,” he said.

Everyone was aware of the “great work” that volunteers were already doing in communities up and down the country, he said, and it was his ambition to simply expand this.

- BBC News

Too much of a value

By skepticlawyer

Legal Eagle’s post on screaming children and deafened passengers on a long-haul flight put me in mind of an interesting (offline) conversation I had with Lorenzo a month or so ago. On LE’s post, I made this comment:

I do think we have taken social disapproval of parents disciplining their children in public too far, with the result that people stuck with tantruming children are left with no sticks and very few carrots when it comes to keeping them under control. The other thing that has gone is the old ‘it takes a village to raise a child’, with the result that it becomes impossible for parents to rely on teachers or other authority figures to make genuine use of the old legal principle ‘in loco parentis’.

People desperately want schools to be better disciplined and more structured, but legislation has deprived teachers of the capacity to achieve that — this, in part, explains the flight to private schools. The hostie and pilot on M-H’s flight were stuck in a similar position, and one only has to imagine a scenario where the hostie was injured thanks to falling over the child in the aisle to add a toxic topping on top of what would be a litigation shit sandwich.

During our conversation, Lorenzo and I discussed the idea that too much of a value is usually bad. At the time, we were considering an attempt by a political philosopher to argue that the modern employment contract is a species of slavery, a topic on which Lorenzo has written engagingly and thoughtfully. My view was as follows:

Slavery represents, I think, authority, as does the employment contract. It is common, these days — when it is clear that too much of a thing is bad — to suggest that any of that thing is also bad. Slavery is authority, authority is bad, therefore anything that evinces authority (like the employment contract) is also bad.

Lorenzo describes this phenomenon as a form of ‘rejectionist moral absolutism which infects a lot of modern thinking,’ pointing out that ‘it comes from lots of people whose life is not actually grounded in making things work, except in a very narrow sense.’

One can see this ‘rejectionist moral absolutism’ playing out very widely across society. Here’s one from pharmacology and medicine.

DEM used to be able to take a particular variety of medication that controlled her nerve tremor very well and relieved the pain she experienced far more effectively than its replacements. The good medication was co-proxamol, which has been withdrawn despite being on the market for over thirty years. Allegedly (as this paper points out), it was linked to suicides and potential for accidental overdose. DEM (and millions of other MS sufferers) now no longer have access to a very successful treatment. Understandably enough, they’re not happy about it (as a visit to any message board or forum where disabled people or those with chronic pain gather soon shows).

Co-proxamol was a little bit dangerous. Because any danger is now seen as bad, it was withdrawn. The idea that people should simply be more careful when taking drugs did not seem to cross the authorities’ minds. LE has a life-threatening nut allergy. She simply has to be careful — no-one is going to ban nuts. The withdrawal of co-proxamol, I think, represents an attempt to regulate society so that it takes in every possible exception. It is a clear case of letting the perfect become the enemy of the good.

Still on the medical front, it’s even possible to overdo the ‘slip, slop, slap’:

Computer-obsessed children who spend too long indoors and over-anxious parents who slap on excessive sunscreen are contributing to a sharp rise in cases of the bone disease rickets, doctors are warning.

Drug availability, the public disciplining of children, sunscreen, the employment contract: these are just a few instances of the same thing. No doubt there are hundreds, even thousands of others. It probably seems trite to go all Aristotelian and argue for moderation in all things, but that idea does seem to have gone by the wayside in recent times, and the consequences are both expensive and perplexing (not to mention often litigious). In days gone by, the screaming child would have been smacked on the backside and given a draft of something soporific. Now, nothing is done at the most immediate level, so the aggrieved passenger goes to court, the last bastion, it would seem, of real authority in most Western countries.

If we step back and take a good long look at ourselves, it is possible to see how deeply silly this is.

What a scream!

By Legal Eagle

An American tourist is suing Qantas after she was seated next to a three-year-old child who allegedly screamed so loudly in the woman’s ear that she was deafened:

“The pain was so excruciating that I didn’t even know I was deaf,” Ms Barnard said, reliving the incident during a deposition for a civil lawsuit she filed against Qantas in the US District Court in Los Angeles.

Ms Barnard has been locked in a legal tussle with Qantas for more than a year, with the 67-year-old claiming she suffered severe and permanent injuries, including sudden sensio-neural hearing loss, from the child’s scream and sought damages for physical and mental suffering, medical expenses and loss or impairment of earning capacity.

Her lawyer, Brian Lawler, argued Qantas was negligent because the plane’s cabin and cockpit crew failed “to take all the necessary precautions to prevent the accident that resulted” in her “injury”.

Qantas’s US legal team vigorously fought the case, claiming there was evidence Ms Barnard had a hearing problem before she departed the US for Australia, and defended the flight staff and crew, telling the court: “Plaintiff’s injuries, if any, were caused by the arbitrary and volitional act of a three-year-old child. Flight attendants cannot predict when children aboard an aircraft are about to scream. There is no evidence that the child was screaming in the terminal, or on board the aircraft prior to the particular scream which allegedly caused the damage.”

Qantas referred to emails allegedly written by Ms Barnard to a travel companion prior to the Australian trip in which she admitted wearing hearing aids, and submitted a volatile email Ms Barnard allegedly wrote a day after the incident to the US travel agent who booked the trip.

“I guess we are simply fortunate that my eardrum was exploding and I was swallowing blood. Had it not been for that, I would have dragged that kid out of his mother’s arms and stomped him to death. Then we would have an ‘international incident’,” Ms Barnard allegedly wrote.

The parties have since entered into a confidential settlement. A nasty part of me wonders if this kid picked up the unpleasant vibes from this woman, and screamed in response to that.

Serious question: I wonder what measures Ms Barnard thinks the airline should have taken to avoid her injury? What could the airline and its staff possibly do to prevent a three-year-old from screaming? Maybe, channelling Catherine Deveny, she thinks kids should be banned from planes?

I get cross when parents don’t attempt to prevent their children from wreaking havoc in public places, and I try to restrain mine from doing so. I also understand that having a child screaming in your ear is unpleasant. Certainly, when I am on a plane or some other kind of shared conveyance, I try to ensure that my children are quiet and well-behaved. But unfortunately, there are limits to one’s ability to manage this. When my daughter was two, she threw one particularly appalling tantrum which lasted all the way around Coles. It should have been evident to anyone watching that I was attempting to stop the tantrum, but with no success. In that kind of circumstance, I’d like it if people showed some sympathy rather than glaring at me.

Sometimes I think Australians need to be more litigious, and more willing to stand up for their legal rights. Then I see a case like this, and I thank my lucky stars that we don’t have litigation culture like America.

The East Timor Solution

By DeusExMacintosh

Australia will hold a general election on 21 August, Prime Minister Julia Gillard has announced.

Ms Gillard – the country’s first female prime minister – said the snap poll would be “tough and close”.

The governing Labor Party elected her as leader three weeks ago after ousting her predecessor, Kevin Rudd.

The race between Labor and the conservative opposition Liberal Party is expected to focus on the economy, health, climate change and immigration.

“This election is about the choice as to whether we move Australia forward or go back,” Ms Gillard said in a televised speech in Canberra.

“Moving forward means moving forward with budget surpluses and a stronger economy.”

She said that it also “means moving forward with stronger protection of our borders and strong plan, a real plan, that takes away from people-smugglers and the products they sell”.

- BBC News

(and yes, I hate the new Beeb site design too…)

A-a-a-a-a-and…they’re off!

By Legal Eagle

Julia Gillard has called an election for 21 August 2010.

I must confess that I’ve been pretty down about politics the last few weeks. What particularly depressed me was Labor’s ill-conceived plan to palm asylum seekers off to East Timor. It showed the same ad hoc ‘policy-on-the-run’ approach that KRudd’s regime had shown before. It made me think “same pack of cards, different deal.” I really want someone to sit down and think deeply about things, not make policy on the run to win an election.

As I’ve said in a previous post, I strongly believe that a new approach needs to be formed with regard to asylum seekers. Rather than focusing on ‘border protection’ and vilifying ‘people smugglers’, in my opinion we need to reconsider our laws and the incentives which exist for people to take a dangerous and life-threatening journey to our shores. Perhaps we need to lead a push to reconsider the approach of international law to refugees altogether. The treaties were drawn up in the disastrous post-WWII period, and do not reflect the situations from which people flee in these times, so they are outdated (in this detail, at least, I agree with Greg Sheridan’s analysis in The Australian).

I felt deeply disappointed with Labor’s proposal to dump asylum seekers in East Timor. It’s not like East Timor hasn’t suffered enough already? I just think it sits ill in our mouths to say that we can’t take these people, we’ll palm them off to some struggling third world country. And I find it really hard to see how this plan differs from the Nauru plan of John Howard (cf Julian Burnside). Especially when Nauru has indicated that it might sign the UN Convention on Refugees.

There’s little difference between the major parties these days. They both look at focus groups and work out what is most expedient in appealing to swinging voters. Labor presumably raised the asylum seeker issue in relation to some poll showing swinging voters were concerned about the issue (I can’t work out any other reason why they’d raise it when it has such a small impact on the majority of us). Each party does the minimum necessary to convert swinging voters. The feeling I have is that each party will do whatever is necessary to get power, not what is best for people. The Greens retain idealism, but I do wonder how quickly that would be eroded if they actually had to run the country.

For this little black duck, it’s still going to come down to a question of which party I hate the least. Sigh. Oh well, game on. Let the fun begin.

P.S. My daughter saw a cartoon of Gillard carrying Rudd’s inert body. “Julia Gillard’s not that strong,” she said dismissively. “That’s a silly picture.” I didn’t even realise my daughter knew who Julia Gillard was, but like mother like daughter, she’s well aware of politics from an early age. Well, I guess we’ll see how strong Gillard is in coming weeks!

Update:

Great post by Derek Barry at Woolly Days about elections, democracy and the media.