We went through a generation in this country where parents discouraged their children from going into trades, and they said to them, “the only way you will get ahead in life is to stay at school until year 12, go to university.” Year 12 retention rates became the goal, high year 12 retention rates became the goal. Instead of us as a nation recognising there are some people who shouldn’t go to university, and what they should do is at year 10, decide they are going to become a tradesman. They will be just as well off, and from my experience and observation, a great deal better off than many others. I think we have to change that, and it’s a very big challenge because 30 years ago, we started getting this foolish bind that everybody had to go to university. Everybody doesn’t have to go to university, and a lot of people will be a lot better off if they don’t go to university and they recognise that at age 15 or 16, and go down the technical stream.
John Howard, interviewed by Mark Riley, 2005-03-06.
November 30, 2018
QotD: A university education is not for everyone
November 2, 2018
QotD: Modern men are “the sorriest cohort of masculine Homo sapiens to ever walk the planet”
A new book claims even modern athletes could not run as fast, jump as high, or have been nearly as strong as our predecessors.
The book, Manthropology: The Science of the Inadequate Modern Male, by Australian anthropologist Peter McAllister, describes many examples of the inadequacy of the modern male, calling them as a class, “the sorriest cohort of masculine Homo sapiens to ever walk the planet.”
Given spiked running shoes, Indigenous Australians of 20,000 years ago could have beaten today’s world record for running 100 and 200 meters. As recently as last century, some Tutsi males in Rwanda could have easily beaten the current high jump world record, and bodybuilders such as Arnold Schwarzenegger would have been no match in an arm wrestle with a Neanderthal woman.
Twenty thousand years ago six male Australian Aborigines chasing prey left footprints in a muddy lake shore that became fossilized. Analysis of the footprints shows one of them was running at 37 kph (23 mph), only 5 kph slower than Usain Bolt was traveling at when he ran the 100 meters in world record time of 9.69 seconds in Beijing last year. But Bolt had been the recipient of modern training, and had the benefits of spiked running shoes and a rubberized track, whereas the Aboriginal man was running barefoot in soft mud. Given the modern conditions, the man, dubbed T8, could have reached speeds of 45 kph, according to McAllister.
McAllister also presents as evidence of his thesis photographs taken by a German anthropologist early in the twentieth century. The photographs showed Tutsi initiation ceremonies in which young men had to jump their own height in order to be accepted as men. Some of them jumped as high as 2.52 meters, which is higher than the current world record of 2.45 meters.
Lin Edwards, “Modern men are wimps, according to new book”, Phys.org, 2009-10-21.
October 25, 2018
The History of Australia
History With Hilbert
Published on 23 Aug 2017The entire history of Australia from the earliest humans until somewhere after World War II where I lost interest.
October 2, 2018
Stories From The Palestine Front – More About WW1 Trucks I OUT OF THE ETHER
The Great War
Published on 1 Oct 2018In this episode of Out of the Ether, we read a few excellent comments about WW1 Trucks and the Palestine Front.
August 29, 2018
Out of Context: How to Make Bad History Worse | World War 2
Knowing Better
Published on 5 Mar 2018Churchill was a genocidal maniac. The Japanese were rounded up into concentration camps. FDR let Pearl Harbor happen. When you take history out of context, you can make it say whatever you want – including making bad things worse.
A long list of links to sources is included, but I’m too lazy to re-link ’em all, just go to YouTube to see them. Back in 2009, I did a short fisking of Pat Buchanan’s hit-piece on Churchill’s “reponsibility” for the outbreak of WW2.
August 26, 2018
Australia’s most recent (as of Saturday) spill
Mark Steyn on the rather different and abrupt Australian method of defenestrating the sitting Prime Minister:
If you saw me on stage for our live show from the Manning Conference in Ottawa last year, you’ll know I was doing a lot of Canadian sesquicentennial gags that day: “It’s a hundred and fifty years since the Tory leadership race began…” and so forth. That was a very slight exaggeration, but it is a fact that the post-Harper Conservative Party decided to have a multi-year campaign to succeed him. In Australia, by contrast, a leadership race in the (supposedly) right-of-center Liberal Party lasts 150 seconds, if you’re lucky. They’re called “spills”, which is not a reference to the blood on the floor but is an Aussie coinage of at least three quarters of a century’s vintage for a suddenly called election: Like many of the Lucky Country’s contributions to the language, it’s very good, conveying the sense not of an ordered poll but of something more spasmodic, capricious and convulsive.
Don’t ask me why the two senior dominions of the Westminster system wound up with diametrically opposed systems of selecting their leaders.
Their chums in the UK Tories have much calmer contests in which all the alternative candidates self-destruct leaving Theresa May to inherit by default. The former Foreign Secretary, William Hague, has just said he doesn’t think increasing the party membership (I believe there are still seven nonagenarian paying subscribers) is the answer because a lot of beastly UKIP types might sign up and there goes the neighborhood. Given the results of these various contests, you might as well shuffle the winners and systems randomly between the three countries and see if you could do any worse.New Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison (photo from January 2014).
Via Wikimedia Commons.At any rate, on Friday the latest Canberra spillage broke out and kiboshed the PM, Malcolm Turnbull. Unlike the American three-month “peaceful transfer of power”, under which the Deep State has all the time in the world to set up its plans to subvert the incoming leader, in the Australian system the new bloke has twenty minutes to freshen up in the men’s room before he’s sworn in […]
Malcolm Turnbull is Australia’s most famous republican, so he’ll appreciate Oliver Cromwell’s famous words to the Rump Parliament in 1653:
You have sat too long for any good you have been doing lately. Depart, I say; and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!
It’s remarkable how long it took Turnbull’s Rump to say as much to him. I wrote yesterday that, just as Tony Abbott had been toppled by Malcolm Turnbull, so Turnbull has now been toppled by Scott Morrison. And immediately a gazillion antipodean members of The Mark Steyn Club wrote to explain that no, no, Turnbull was toppled by Peter Dutton, the conservative who moved against him, but, before he could ascend the drive-thru throne, Dutton was himself toppled by Morrison, who was a so-called compromise candidate put up by frantic Turnbullites as they were being fitted for their lamppost ropes. So, if you’ll forgive the analogy, if Turnbull is Mrs Thatcher, Scott Morrison is the John Major put up to ward off Peter Dutton’s Michael Heseltine. My old pal Julie Bishop, meanwhile, after years of serving as loyal deputy to Malcolm Turnbull, Tony Abbott, Malcolm Turnbull (first time round), Brendan Nelson, Andrew Peacock, Malcolm Fraser, Sir William McMahon, Harold Holt, Sir Robert Menzies, etc, etc, finally ran for the leadership herself, and came a poor third: She had become the Black Widow of the Liberal Party – she mates, she kills – but this time it all went awry and she shot the venom into her own leg. It’s hard to remember that in some polls of 2015, when she agreed to support Turnbull’s overthrow of Abbott, she was more popular than either man. A mere three years on from what was supposed to be a swift cleansing knife in the back, the entire party is gangrenous and pustulating.
August 3, 2018
Australian women and the military
Like many other western nations, the Australian government has mandated higher quotas for women in the Australian Defence Forces (ADF), and it’s the military’s job to make it work:
The Australian Defence Force (ADF) is comprised of the three military services: the Royal Australian Navy, the Australian Army, and the Royal Australian Air Force, all of which have been subject to increasing criticism in recent years for being dominated by straight white men. This, it is alleged, makes them, ipso facto, a petri dish for ‘toxic masculinity.’ That allegation has been lent apparent weight by the reporting of multiple gender-related scandals including the ADFA sex scandal, Jedi Council, various hazing rituals, death symbols, and HMAS Success, to name a few.
Some of this criticism has been so strident that past and present military leaders have had no choice but to commission reports and inquiries into standards and practices within the ADF, and to implement various culture change initiatives including Pathway to Change, New Generation Navy, Adaptive Army, and New Horizon. All of these initiatives place significant emphasis on greater integration of women into the respective services but offer limited reasoning other than catch-phrases like ‘diversity,’ ‘equity,’ and ‘modernising.’
All three services are now working toward a target of female representation by 2023. The Navy and Air Force are working toward 25 percent, and the Army is working toward 15 percent. The progress toward these targets, among other commentary on gender issues in the ADF, is detailed in the annual “Women in the ADF” report.
[…]
Concerns with preferential treatment do not end at the recruitment process. Fitness standards for service personnel also differ according to gender, as well as service and age. This means equally-aged men and women in each service are expected to attain different standards of fitness. This, in itself, represents a challenge since both genders complete fitness tests together and are therefore directly exposed to this double-standard from their first day of service. In spite of this policy, many servicewomen elect to continue their fitness assessment to the same level as their male colleagues which is one small contribution to reducing the cultural divide.
The rejection of preferential treatment in the ADF is not just isolated to annual fitness tests. In fact, the 2012 “Review into the Treatment of Women in the Australian Defence Force” led by then-Australian Sex Discrimination Commissioner Elizabeth Broderick includes the following passage:
ADF women strongly believe that when they are singled out, it makes it harder for them to fit in. Highly resistant to any initiative being directed solely at them, ADF women view identical—not differential—treatment as the path to delivering equality. This is most likely in part to avoid the backlash that inevitably trails any treatment perceived as ‘preferential’…
Despite acknowledging this, many of Broderick’s recommendations included gender-specific initiatives that risk being perceived as further preferential treatment, driving a greater wedge between male and female ADF personnel. Perhaps the most troubling recommendation is the targeted recruitment and transfer of women to male-dominated professions that have less female uptake. In practise, this risks techniques akin to coaxing in the recruitment process if these roles are not the preferred choice of female candidates.
July 29, 2018
A poor tank, a useless tank, and the worst tank in the world
Lindybeige
Published on 10 Jul 2018Tigers? Why talk about Tigers when one can talk about tanks that were even worse? More tank banter with The Chieftain.
Support me on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/LindybeigeA low-tech tank with fragile armour, a tank that never saw the enemy, and the tank used to teach how not to build tanks. Thanks to Nicholas Moran (AKA The Chieftain) and Matt Sampson, the cameraman at Bovington Tank Museum.
The third of these three segments was shot with my new camera, and it really shows.
Lindybeige: a channel of archaeology, ancient and medieval warfare, rants, swing dance, travelogues, evolution, and whatever else occurs to me to make.
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website: http://www.LloydianAspects.co.uk
July 18, 2018
QotD: Understanding how company profits can be used
In its fight against company tax cuts, [the Australian] Labor [Party] peddles the myth that company tax cuts are a windfall for big businesses and their shareholders, this week even launching ads suggesting [Australian PM] Malcolm Turnbull supports company tax cuts because he’ll personally benefit as an investor.
It’s a myth easily debunked. Think about it. What exactly can a company do with the extra money retained from paying less tax? It can only spend profits in two ways: paying dividends to shareholders or spending more on its operations.
Dividends are subject to tax, including withholding tax for foreign shareholders. Suggesting Turnbull or any other investor will get a windfall is a blatant lie.
In fact, many shareholders will pay more tax to make up the greater difference between the company tax rate and their own tax rate. That’s how dividend imputation works, as Labor well knows.
Alternatively, the company can spend more on things like technology, plant and equipment, funding research and development, expanding its sales force or opening new shopfronts or branches. In other words, more money paid in wages to workers and buying goods and services from suppliers.
All of that spending is also taxed. Workers pay income tax. GST [Goods and Services Tax] is collected on goods and services. Suppliers pay company tax or income tax themselves.
Lower company tax simply allows a business to use more of its money on something productive before the money is collected by government.
Nyunggai Warren Mundine, “Bill Shorten’s Labor would kill the reforms of Hawke and Keating”, Financial Review, 2018-06-26.
July 17, 2018
Australian General John Monash I WHO DID WHAT IN WW1
The Great War
Published on 16 Jul 2018John Monash was one of the most capable commanders of World War 1 but his rise to fame didn’t come unopposed.
July 6, 2018
The First Modern Battle – The Battle of Hamel I THE GREAT WAR Week 206
The Great War
Published on 5 Jul 2018Meet us at the Tank Museum: http://bit.ly/TankMuseumFanMeeting
The Battle of Hamel is considered as the first modern battle. Masterminded by Australian general John Monash, it included meticulous planning and integrated tanks, artillery, airplanes and infantry into one cohesive strategy.
June 21, 2018
Extra Scenes! James May Explains Boomerangs | Earth Lab
BBC Earth Lab
Published on 23 Aug 2013James May discusses wings and propellers in these extra scenes from why boomerangs always come back.
June 16, 2018
Who will think of the children Australian civil servants???
A tale from Catallaxy Files that’s sure to tug on your heartstrings:
In Canberra today, the Australian Greens announced a new tax fairness policy to remedy a design fault in the current system.
According to the Greens, it seems that it is only Australian public servants (local, state and Federal) who have been able to negotiate salary increases. As a consequence, because of their increased salaries, public servants are constantly pushed into higher tax brackets with the result that impost of bracket creep disproportionately falls on them.
Independent economic research has confirmed this phenomena. The Australia Institute economists have models showing that up to 80% of Commonwealth bracket creep tax receipts are paid by Australian public servants.
The Australian Greens believe that just because public servants earn more than private sector workers, they should not be required to pay more tax. Australian Greens’ Treasury spokesperson Adam Bandt said:
Australian public servants should not be forced to carry the brunt of government spending, including spending on other public sector salaries. This is a role for the private sector. It is manifestly unfair that just because public servants have been able to extract additional salaries that they should be forced into higher tax brackets.
In response, the Australia Greens have announced the Tax Equalisation and Redistribution Designation (TERD). Under the TERD, full-time, part-time and casual public sector workers will be subject to a separate tax schedule with a flat 15% rate for income above $500,000. Public servant income below $500,000 will be tax free.
Of course, it would be even simpler for accounting purposes just to exempt the civil service from paying tax at all — we might expect that to be a Green Party policy plank in a year or two (or even our own NDP, who have a lot of support from our unionized civil service).
Reminder: Catallaxy Files is not a parody site … although this particular story is a parody. Not following Australian politics closely, I only twigged when they got to the acronym for the program…
June 5, 2018
The Landings At ANZAC Cove And Suvla Bay 1915 I THE GREAT WAR On The Road
The Great War
Published on 4 Jun 2018With thanks to Mr. Ali Serim for making this episode possible.
Indy and our guide Can Balcioglu explore the northern landings sites of Gallipoli where the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) landed in 1915.
June 3, 2018
“[Libertarians] are the great optimists of the world”
At Catallaxy Files, Australian senator David Leyonhjelm has a guest post, covering the contents of his maiden speech:
When I became the first overt libertarian to be elected to the Australian Senate in 2013, I thought I would use my maiden speech to try and sum up my world view. In this speech, I outlined why I believe the role of governments should be limited to the protection of life, liberty and private property. I tried to highlight the importance of personal responsibility, the dangers of creeping government interference, and the fundamental right to be left alone so long as we’re not harming anyone else.
If I were to give an elevator spiel to someone who wanted to know more about libertarianism, I’d simply tell them that “a libertarian believes you should be able to keep more of your stuff and be left the hell alone”. It sounds too simple to work, but it does, and that’s what is truly great about it.
When you look at nations that slash government red tape, protect private property rights and safeguard civil liberties, you see societies where opportunity abounds, people escape from poverty, and civil society flourishes.
In fact, these policies have done more to lift people out of poverty than any government program anywhere. Free markets and free trade are responsible for one of the most remarkable achievements in human history: from 35% of the world’s population living on US$1.90 or less in 1990 to 10.7% in 2013, according to the World Bank.
As I see it, those who believe in a limited role for governments and the promotion of personal freedom, aka libertarians, are the great optimists of the world. An optimist would never dream of dictating how and when someone else should do something unless it was to prevent harm to another person. An optimist would never look at someone more successful and seek to grab some of their income or wealth. An optimist would never want to see more restrictions on our everyday lives.
Conversely, people who seek to control others, to take more of their earnings, and to redistribute it according to their values, tend to have a pessimistic view. Only a pessimist could look at society and think, we need more control over the daily lives of others. Only a pessimist would think their better off neighbours should be taxed more heavily or that their hard earned should be used on even more government programs.
A lot of the people who fall on the left side of Australian politics will probably decry the fact that I think they’re pessimists. They’ll say they’re the ones with a true and caring heart, and that redistributing wealth is a lofty goal because it helps those in need. This is demonstrably false, as all the evidence shows, but I will happily admit that such people have a heart, if not brains. The old saying, “if you’re not a socialist at 20 you have no heart, but if you’re still a socialist at 40 you have no brains”, still explains a lot.
