A column about cycling

As the scholars who study all of my Glebe columns in the nation’s most prestigious universities will know, recent instalments have focussed on my attempts to get into shape. A kind of print-based Biggest Loser, if you will. Well, the combination of Nintendo Wii and personal trainer has done wonders for me, make no mistake. But I want more. Much more. I will not rest until my body is bulging with massive musculature.

I want to be one of those guys that kicks sand in the faces of puny wimps at the beach, in fitness ads from the 1950s. I want Chesty Bonds to have to design a new range to accommodate my pectorals, as opposed to my gut. And so I have continued my relentless (okay, largely relenting, in actual fact) fitness campaign by purchasing a bicycle.

This might be something that’s later quoted, tragically, at a state funeral held in my honour (hey, Kerry Packer got one, and I’ve done more for the country than him, surely?) after an eighteen-wheeler crushes me and my trusty Trek into the Parramatta Rd asphalt. But the bike’s the best thing I’ve ever bought. It gets you around really quickly – for the kind of inner-city trips I generally do, it beats a car hands down in terms of speed. And it’s incredibly fun to ride – an essential component in any fitness plan I’m likely to stick to. I feel like a kid, zipping around the roads and doing jumps off kerbs. Well, only little jumps. Turns out I’m as much of a wuss at thirty as I was when I was eight.

Best of all, it seems to be getting me fit. I regularly finish a ride attractively drenched with sweat, and my muscles turn to jelly after I’m out on the bike, so it must be doing some kind of good. And whereas running up a virtual hill at the gym has always seemed kind of pointless, wanting to quickly end the agony of riding up an actual hill is a great incentive to push yourself further.

But there is a serious downside to riding a bike. It’s extremely scary, especially when you’re a new cyclist, and have difficulty controlling your wobbling, like me. (Although to be fair, I have problems with wobbling when I walk as well.) I know that Sydney City Council has put a lot of time into bike lanes in recent years, and I applaud that, but it’s just hideously dangerous to have cars coming up behind you, and overtaking. As a cyclist, there’s nothing you can do to guarantee your own safety – you’re just relying on cars to avoid you. And then there are the lungfuls of fumes. Shared roads are better than roads with no bike lane at all, but they’re not a great solution

So, radically changing my political opinions to suit my own convenience, I have instantly become a passionate advocate of cycleways. Bikes really are the perfect inner-city transportation system, and they combat obesity, one of our biggest health problems. Our cities are too choked with cars already. So why not get tough on cars, and shut down a few roads – or make proper, car-width cycle lanes? If we make riding bikes more convenient than driving cars for short, inner-city trips, more people will make the shift. Just think of the difference in terms of pollution and noise.

Alternatively, the easiest solution is that adopted in Japan – allow people to ride on the pavement, as long as they do so slowly. As long as you have a bell, it’s fairly safe. And it will help pedestrians get fit as well, as they leap out of the way.

Of course, none of this mattered to me before I got a bike. As a motorist, I used to find avoiding cyclists annoying. Now I know that they are precious jewels, and need to be cared for as lovingly as any baby. So I will use my enormous influence to agitate for more cycleways, and I urge you, faithful readers, to saddle up and brave the streets to put more pressure on our councils to take bold steps. Hell, if we can close roads willy-nilly for a disastrous cross-city tunnel, surely we can shut a few for bikes.

The rights and wrongs of bearing arms

Difficult week to write topical humour, you'd have to say. The news this week has been dominated by the terrible tragedy at Virginia Tech. And, apart from noting that a state whose definition of tough gun laws is restricting people to buying one a month is lucky they haven't had a problem like this before now, there isn't all that much I can say about it. As Americans might put it – sad story, period.

But this is a good opportunity to think about gun laws. And the Americans who are whinging about the gun control lobby politicising the tragedy are very wrong. What better response to the needless waste of human life than to ask ourselves whether we can stop it from happening again?

Gun laws aren't exactly a panacea, though. I've been wrestling with the issue since reading about Virginia Tech. I really want to believe that this massacre is linked to the state's lax laws, which I'm intuitively against. And I strongly believe that the post-Port Arthur buyback is one of the greatest achievements of the Howard Government, and that our point of difference with America in our attitude to firearms is something to be proud of. But it's been pointed out to me that there isn't a necessary correlation between gun ownership and murderous rampages. In Switzerland, which has one of the toughest regimes of compulsory military service in the world, every male is required to have a gun on the premises for most of their adult lives. And yet, the Swiss somehow manage to avoid expressing themselves through the medium of hails of bullets.

The same observation was well made by Michael Moore in the Canadian sequence in Bowling for Columbine, where he said that despite having similar rates of gun ownership and a nearly identical culture, the US' northern neighbours have a far lower gun homicide rate. Moore ultimately attributes America's gun problem to a kind of post-Puritan paranoia. And you'd think that for a problem of this dimension there must be some sort of psychological explanation because wen it comes to guns, Americans sure seem crazy. We're talking about a country that takes a movement headed by Charlton Heston seriously.

So, if there isn't necessarily a correlation between the rates of gun ownership and gun massacres, should America have stricter gun laws? I'd still say yes, not because every society needs restrictions on gun ownership, but because it's abundantly clear that America has a unique problem. America has similar crime rates to other developed countries, except for homicides, and most of their homicides are committed with guns. Gun ownership is incredibly casual in America – the scant Federal regulations that exist don't even cover second-hand sales or gun shows. Astonishingly, a shop in Virginia is planning to hold a gun giveaway this week even after the massacre. Just as special restrictions have been introduced in the Northern Territory to reduce the sky-high rate of alcohol consumption, it needs to be harder to buy a gun in America than it is in Switzerland.

The difficulty is, though, that most gun control regimes wouldn't have stopped Cho Seung-Hui. For one thing, he used pistols, as opposed to the semi-automatic shotguns that we banned after Port Arthur. For another, he was a clean cut college student, as the store owner who sold him a gun put it, who looked safe and didn't have a prior record of gun violence – and clearly the whole thing was so premeditated that he would have taken the time to obtain a license anyway.

What tighter gun laws would probably prevent is not so much carefully-planned massacres by the seriously disturbed, or gangland shootings of the sort we've just seen in Nagasaki despite the extremely strict gun laws in Japan, but casual gun violence – a domestic dispute boiling over into a shooting, for instance.

I don't know whether tighter gun laws really would compensate for whatever flaws in the American psyche are responsible for the massive homicide rate. There is some evidence to suggest that the introduction of tough anti-handgun laws in Washington DC in 1975 reduced the homicide rate, but it's so easy to obtain guns from other nearby states that the statistics aren't terribly instructive. Surely it would be worth experimenting with whether changing the law can reverse some of these appalling statistics.

But while the Second Amendment exists, and can be used to strike down laws such as Washington's (which were ruled unconstitutional by a DC court last month), it's unlikely we'll see any change in the gun control regime. It's an anachronistic law, dating from a time when well-armed militias were useful in warfare – whereas in an era of high-tech weaponry and nuclear missiles, the national self-defence argument seems to hold no water. Rednecks often argue that their guns are a means of warding off government tyranny – but again, it's hard to imagine what hicks with pop-shooters could do against tanks. The Second Amendment is badly out of date, but there's no telling most Americans – President Bush immediately moved to defend the right to bear arms.

Ultimately, Americans want to live in a country full of guns, and it makes them feel safe; even though they clearly aren't. They've made the society they want, and it is one in which people get shot dead at a higher rate than anywhere else in the developed world. I guess that's liberty for you.

So the rest of the world will continue to look on, appalled, as America continues to destroy itself with its precious, ubiquitous firearms. And the 32 victims at Virginia Tech will be commemorated not by efforts to prevent similar tragedies, as the victims at Port Arthur were, but by platitudes like the ones President Bush delivered at the memorial service. And that is a tragedy in itself.

A tale of two shock jocks

Last week in America, Don Imus, a popular radio host, whose show Imus In The Morning was also simulcast on TV, was sacked by both CBS Radio and MSNBC for racial insensitivity. His offence? To refer, in a moment of light-hearted banter, to the African-American athletes of the Rutgers University women's basketball team as "nappy-headed hos". Imus later apologised profusely.

Last week in Australia, Alan Jones, a pompous radio host, was criticised by the Australian Communications and Media Authority for broadcasts inciting racial violence. His offence? In the middle of an extremely explosive situation in Cronulla, to laugh when a caller suggested that "If you shoot one, the rest will run", and reading the comments of a listener who suggested that bikie gangs (who "do a lot of good", apparently) travel down to Cronulla and scare the Lebanese youth back off to the Western Suburbs.

ACMA also found, to quote the SMH article, "that comments made by Jones in his December 8 broadcast implied that people of Middle Eastern background were responsible for raping women in western Sydney."

Unlike Imus, Jones did not exactly apologise. Instead, he launched into a scathing attack on ACMA, saying that its personnel had "no talkback experience", as if somehow you have to have endured a certain requisite number of hours of listening to the likes of Jones rant in order to work out whether his words are distasteful. And he was defended not only by his radio station, but by the Prime Minister, no less.

These two stories about multi-millionaire white broadcasters exercising appalling judgement when talking about minorities, though, say a great deal about each society.

America is hypersensitive on the subject of race. I guess a legacy of slavery will do that to you – although a legacy of genocide doesn't seem to have achieved the same result in Australia. And racially insensitive comments, even ones delivered jokingly, as Imus' were, are instant career suicide. Imus' doom was sealed once the advertisers began dropping his programme in droves – even though I suspect the two weeks' suspension initially imposed by CBS combined with a sincere apology would have been a more appropriate punishment. You can guarantee he won't make the same mistake again anytime soon.

And if Imus had been employed by Channel Nine, as Tony Greig was when he made that appalling comment about an Asian wife at a wedding opposite a cricket ground, he probably wouldn't even have copped two weeks.

Men like Jones and Imus are labelled "shock jocks". But really, I've never been less shocked than when I read about Jones' treatment of the Cronulla riots. What he broadcasted was far worse than anything Imus said – and not in the least bit light-hearted. If a gang really had taken the comments Jones broadcasted seriously, blood might have been spilt. Well, more blood.

I'm not saying Jones' words actually exacerbated the Cronulla riots – his regular audience of octogenarians and cabbies probably kept well away from Cronulla throughout the incident. As, of course, Jones did, instead suggesting bikie gangs head to the area, because their opponents were cowards and would be scared away. As opposed, I suppose, to Jones' own bravery in hiding behind a microphone in a comfortable studio, sending out bikie gangs to do his bidding. But his broadcast was at best irresponsible, at worst dangerous.

I don't know that we need to go completely overboard, American-style, whenever a talk show host makes a poorly-thought out comment on race. We probably wouldn't have any broadcasters left. But I'd rather we went the full Imus than did nothing. And I'd certainly rather we had politicians like Barack Obama, who immediately criticised Imus, than a Prime Minister who thinks it's appropriate to rush to the side of a broadcaster who's tried to start a racist gang war at Cronulla Station. And worse yet, knows there's votes in doing so.

In a time of considerable social unrest, when many on both sides of an ugly feud were losing control and there was a genuine risk of loss of life, broadcasters should not be making things worse. Broadcasters have certain social responsibilities – it's part of the deal when you get a license – and Jones utterly failed to discharge his. A two week suspension would have been the least 2GB could have done to send the message that its broadcasters have to be kept to a certain standard of behaviour. Anyone foolish or malign enough to explicitly, or even implicitly, condone violence, should not be on the airwaves.

But 2GB did nothing, of course. Because Jones is the station's cash cow, with a seemingly unbreakable connection to the hearts and minds of – well, not Struggle St, but to people who are doing quite well for themselves, actually, but think they've come from Struggle St, and resent anyone who they think might take their hard-earned gains away from them. Like migrants. The Howard Battlers, in other words. And that's why the Prime Minister's only too happy to jump into the trench alongside Brigadier Jones, both blowing their dogwhistles furiously, from the same score.

And that's also why Australian advertisers, funnily enough, didn't dump Jones the way American companies dumped Imus.

Which makes this a job for ACMA. But unfortunately, what with being a faceless bureaucracy and all, they seem better at criticising than taking positive action. Rather like Jones himself, in fact. It's high time the media regulator sent round a bikie gang or two to see if they can scare him.

Jesus ruined my Easter

Friends, there was nothing whatsoever Good about last Friday. Not only was virtually everything closed, but those measly few pubs that were open were forced by a backwards law to close their doors at ten. That's right, ten. On a Friday night. Ridiculous. Now, Lord, I know You didn't have a particularly Good Friday yourself, what with that whole crucifixion and all, but that's no reason for the rest of us to suffer, is it? And, besides – for those who do believe in Jesus, what better way to say goodbye than a wake?

I thought we were supposed to be a secular society. I thought that, slowly but surely, we'd stripped back virtually all of those mawkish old-style laws that forced religious tokenism on everyone. But no. Every Easter, whether we like it or not, we New South Welsh have the best long weekend of the year, that lone double in our public holiday calendar, ruined by religion. Well, religion and shopowners wanting to go on holiday.
I've spent the last few Easters out of NSW, what with the Melbourne Comedy Festival and suchlike, so I hadn't realised the extent of the problem. Our supposedly global city becomes a ghost town between Thursday night and Monday night. A Holy Ghost town, even. Most of my favourite cafes and restaurants shut their doors for the duration. My family were pretty much all out of town, and most of my friends seemed to either be away or at the very least actively avoiding inviting me to anything interesting. In short, bugger all happened.
And yet did not Jesus die that the rest of us might live? Well? And you call the excruciating dullness that constitutes a Sydney Easter 'living'?
So I had to make do. I chose to spend much of Easter at home, playing soccer on my PlayStation and watching The West Wing, itself a quasi-religious experience. So it was not without its pleasures, I guess. But your young(ish) man-about-town likes having stuff to do as well. And the rest of the world was apparently either nesting, or at church. So I wandered in the wilderness for - well, not forty, but four days and nights. But the Devil didn't come to tempt me. In fact, temptation would have been most welcome. Particularly in the form of Easter Eggs.
Oh, there was one moment of temptation – in a moment of extreme boredom I fed thirty pieces of silver into a pokie, and got nothing in return. Yea, verily, it was a dull long weekend.
And then I came down with a cold. Which made me exceptionally grumpy. Can you tell?
No-one pierced my side, admittedly, but my nose is runny, and I'm sneezing a lot. We all have our crosses to bear.
Well, I've learned my lesson. As God hath forsaken Jesus on the Cross that day, so shall I forsake Sydney next Easter. I shall take myself off to somewhere pagan and tropical, to lie on a beach far from the maddening uncrowdedness of this city. And I shall return after some little time, visibly restored by my break. I think that's what Jesus would have done.

A column about Earth Hour

So, what did you during Earth Hour? Some friends of mine had a candlelit party down at Glebe Point, looking out across the water as the lights went out. Well, a few of the lights went out, as it turned out. Very romantic it was too, by all accounts.

I’ve no doubt that the rest of the Greens-voting Glebe readership that gave Labor so palpable a scare in Balmain and Marrickville the other weekend did its bit, and want to congratulate you for it. I raise a metaphorical glass of chai to you all.

I’m not so sure about the environmental benefits, which, as many have pointed out, were probably cancelled out by everyone who drove across town to admire the effect from a convenient harbourside viewpoint. The Australian said that the whole project saved enough electricity to be the equivalent in CO2 terms of taking seven cars off the road for a year. Which is not bad for an hour, I suppose. But gee – after all the hype, double figures would’ve been nice.

Me? Well, I helped consume a whopping amount of electricity, so it’s not really fair for me to cast aspersions on the efforts of other, now, is it? I was at the V Festival in Centennial Park, where the token concession to the effort was that Beck turned the lights out onstage for one whole song. Then again, his flu-afflicted performance was so low-energy that he must have saved megawatts all by himself.

So I did nothing. But I’d ask you to understand that my desire to help the environment, especially in a non-lifechanging way, was strong. Unfortunately my desire to see The Pixies was that little bit stronger. But seriously, anytime you need someone to flick a switch to save the planet on a night when one of history’s finest indie bands isn’t making a rare appearance, I’m there.

Oh, and the Festival put the Earth Hour logo up on the big screens a lot, presumably to remind us what we weren’t contributing to. I found it a touch ironic that they decided to use electric lights to screen the logo of a project dedicated to reducing the use of electricity.

The event wasn’t actually about saving energy, though, of course. It was about raising awareness. And it certainly did that. Fabulously influential columnists such as myself are discussing it not only in Australia, but across the world. As a PR initiative, Earth Hour was excellent.

Because it raises some very worthwhile questions. Like, why do city office blocks need their lights on all weekend anyway? And why can’t they just fit timer switches, like old-school apartment blocks, so that those who are beavering away on the weekend can turn on the light just in their areas? Closer to home, my apartment building lights its communal areas 24/7, and there really isn’t a need. There are heaps of examples, when you stop and think about it. Usually, we don’t. But for an hour there, we did.

Well, it was more like two minutes for me, in fact. Most of my mind was busy hoping Beck’s voice would improve, and that he’d do some of his non hip-hop material. But the important thing is that I did think about it, for the first time since I saw An Inconvenient Truth, was shocked and appalled and then didn’t bother to actually do anything.

You know, we snooty Westerners like to criticise the North Koreans for being backward. Many pundits have joked that if you look at night satellite photos of Pyongyang (which I recommend Googling, they’re hilarious) it looks deserted. But that’s not true. They’ve just been celebrating tEarth Decade. We’d do well, in fact, to be more like them. Well, perhaps without the brutal totalitarian rule or the famine.

But we need to consciously reduce our energy consumption more frequently than an hour a year. And if we do – and only if we do – then Earth Hour will have meant something more than an interesting visual effect to enjoy while sipping wine at a picturesque harbourside location.

I always knew I was average...

Okay, my electoral epic has now finished, and I'm back at the ol' Radar ranch commenting on whatever stories randomly interest me. And what better to write about for my first time back than myself? Or rather, people like myself. Because a new survey has found that Australians are, on average, "fat, satisfied workaholics", according to one article on the website today. Well, if the shoe fits.... (And the skintight t-shirt doesn't...)

63% of Australians are now "satisfied" or "very satisfied" with their lives. Relaxed and comfortable, even, perhaps. Which I think is just lovely. Good on us all. And even though many of us are stressed and working long hours, 77% of people say they don't want to cut back their hours. What are we, zen masters or something?

Or are we like that irritatingly smug French Buddhist monk Matthieu Ricard (see the article in Good Weekend on Saturday) who was scientically proven to be one of the happiest men on the planet and wrote a book about how we can be more like him?

A notion I immediately rejected, personally, after reading he's been celibate for decades. I've done more than my fair share of celibacy over the years and I've got to tell you, it wasn't exactly compatible with overwhelming happiness.

You can see how "fat" and "workaholic" might be fairly closely linked, of course. We're happy to throw ourselves wholeheartedly into work, but the gym's another question entirely. The number of times I've told myself I'm far too busy for such fripperies as exercise are countless, and yet I always manage to find time for delicious meals. Not that I think of myself as "fat", of course. Just generously proportioned, or perhaps endearingly chubby.

But you'd have to say it's somewhat surprising that people who are overworked and overeating are cool about the whole thing? It hasn't done wonders for my self-esteem. But I generally don't 'fess up to it. I'm far more likely to defensively say that everything's fine, while secretly wishing I hadn't lashed out on that last Giant Freddo. (Everyone has their vice. Mine is an oversized candy frog. So call me Ben Cousins.)

There are a lot of things to be happy about, though. I haven't slept with Pauline Hanson, for instance. Or failed a lie detector test about it on national television. I'll be more than satisfied with being overweight and overworked, thanks all the same. Now where's my survey form?

Dominic Knight

A column about the US primaries

What a difference an election makes. After 11 long years in the wilderness, at least federally, Labor rules the roost. Sure, the Iemma Government is at best hilariously incompetent and at worst hideously corrupt, but Kevin Rudd is clearly going to be our Prime Minister for a very long time. I don’t think his current levels of popularity would take much of a hit even if it was revealed we was having a torrid affair with Brian Burke, given his current opponent. In fact, the only surprising thing about Brendan Nelson’s 7% approval rating is that it isn’t lower.

Domestic politics is boring again. Which is probably why there’s more interest in the US primaries than ever before. And in this era of cable and the internet when we can access America’s saturation coverage almost as easily as the locals can it’s all too easy to get hooked. It’s kind of like the Ultimate Fighting Championship, only if the brutal cage fights in the Octagon lasted for two years.

So it’s no wonder our dinner party conversations are increasingly dominated by fervent discussions of the merits of Barack Obama versus Hillary Clinton. It’s a fascinating contest that still shows no sign of being resolved, as Clinton has somehow climbed off the mat in Ohio and Texas. The Democrat primary is in some respects an embarrassment of riches, given two such different and meritorious candidates, who will each make history if elected. Would you rather the first black candidate or the first woman? Will the patriarchy win, or will white power carry the day? Like the choice between smashing a Celine Dion CD with a sledgehammer or running it over with a steamroller, there are qualitative differences, but it’s ultimately a win-win.

I know that statement will attract howls of indignance from the Barack fans, because Obamamania been set in here as well. Inner-city trendies are announcing the death of “politics as usual” and chanting “yes we can” over their lattes in Glebe, Newtown and Balmain, just as they are in Greenwich Village or Berkeley. And sure, Obama is a remarkable speaker. Whereas hearing Bush struggle with the English language is even more depressing than an episode of So You Think We Can Dance, listening to Obama speak is like being hugged. And I instinctively agree with much of what he has to say about issues like Iraq, and health care, and the malaise within the American political system. But there is one huge problem with his campaign as far as I’m concerned, and that is that I’m a cynic. Obama may be the first genuinely inspirational politician ever, and capable of performing hitherto unseen magic tricks to transform Washington if elected, but I’m still far from convinced. The guy’s only been involved in national politics for six years, and he’s spent three of them campaigning for President.

And then there’s Hillary, whom everyone just seems to hate. I can’t entirely fathom this. I don’t exactly like the prospect of the leadership of the free world continuing within the purview of the Bush and Clinton families – but for goodness sake, she seems hugely competent. I know she’s a cynical politician, not a weaver of dreams like Obama, and I know that every time she cries, a committee has approved it beforehand. But I really like the idea of someone who knows what they’re doing. And despite his obvious intelligence and policy nous, there’s just something that leaves me a little unconvinced that Obama necessarily does. In the end of the day, I’d be fairly happy with either. I’d go Obama, on the basis of the Iraq vote alone, but can anyone really deny that Hillary would do a decent job?

The general election will be fascinating as well, because the Republicans have somehow nominated an interesting and worthy candidate in spite of themselves. I thought they’d be attracted to the insincere corporate charms of Mitt Romney, who is the Mormon Malcolm Turnbull, or the folksy preacher, Mike Huckabee. Then again, I’m not sure the world is ready for a candidate whose major celebrity endorsement is from Chuck Norris.

The Democrat race is far from resolved, and the match-up with the generally impressive McCain should be a treat as well. So for once, we politics junkie should be grateful to America. Because when we’re watching yet another lineball debate between Clinton and Obama, we’re not watching Brendan Nelson. And for that we should all be truly grateful.

A column about personal training

I’ve been going to the gym on and off for a while in attempt to resculpt my body into something ever slightly less reminiscent of Jabba the Hutt, but I haven’t really been getting anywhere. The prospect of staying in bed is generally too appealing in the morning, and I spend the rest of my working hours tirelessly answering my usual avalanche of adoring fan mail from readers of The Glebe. Actually, that part of my story isn’t true. And yes, this is a not-terribly-subtle hint.

Anyway, the last time I worked up a light sweat at my local gymnasium, I saw the light. In the form of a poster. It claimed that only 25% of gym users achieve the results they want, and of them, 90% of them use personal trainers.

Interesting. I generally respond well to being bossed around. Perhaps being bullied into shape by some muscular Amazon or Adonis might be the way to finally get myself into shape? Specifically, a less spherical shape.

I signed up, and found myself bowling up to the gym at the ungodly hour of 9am, ready for my date with the New Me. I don’t have much in the way of fitness gear, and am lazy when it comes to washing as well as exercise, so I was sporting extremely tatty trainers, a George Bush t-shirt that somehow never comes across as ironically as I expect it to, and a pair of what were obviously swimming shorts.

Bad idea. My gym is so depressingly full of buff blokes tirelessly pumping iron so they can get another layer of triceps on their biceps (that may not be anatomically correct, but you know what it looks like) that I felt I’d failed before I even began. I made a note to immediately sprint (well, waddle, to be more accurate) down to my nearest Rebel and stock up on swanky workout gear as soon as my session ended.

My trainer was a lovely bloke. Unfortunately, though, the first session was a fitness test, and not one involving any of the regular gym machines. He took me into a little room and weighed and measured me before making me do a bunch of sit-ups, push-ups. And by a bunch, I mean “less than a dozen”. This was to calculate my ‘fitness age’ – the age for which my physical condition would be considered normal. You may have seen the concept in an ad with Steve Waugh that’s going around where he gets the reassuring that he’s in his mid-30s physically.

Well, I’m only 30, but I’m not in great shape. So I thought I may well be up around Steve Waugh’s actual age of 41. I waited with bated breath while the computer worked it all out for me, and spat out a number.

It was 70. That’s right, seventy. Seven zero. In other words, I have the body of a retiree.

The breakdown was even more damning. I have the flexibility of a 50-year-old (ladies!), the strength of a 62-year-old and the body and cardio performance of an 80-year-old. And since the current Australian life expectancy for men is 78, I should by rights be dead.

I tried to look on the bright side. Of course, we’re talking about a fit 70-year-old. You know, a spritely older gentleman who enjoys long walks and perhaps still plays lawn bowls, when his hips are up to it. That’s not so bad, is it?

But as I moped home, my shoulders slumped and my thoughts of shiny new gym gear forgotten, I began to question the point. If my gym wants me to partake of its products and services, how does insulting me help, exactly?

And then I began to think positive. Not only could I now wear cardigans and use a walking stick, but with an official physical age of 70, perhaps I could qualify for the pension?

It certainly has been a wake-up call, though. I have vowed to persist with the gym, and try harder. With a few month of solid work and my trainer’s encouragement, I might even be able to get that pesky number down below retirement age.

A column about Iemma v Debnam

I don’t often have cause to say this, but politics is fascinating right now. Brian Burke, the infamous former WA Premier who’s known for his dodgy lobbying and even dodgier fashion sense, has Kevin Rudd in trouble for the first time, and is seriously embarrassing many a Liberal as well. Human Services Minister Ian Campbell has resigned because of Burke, presumably only until immediately after the election. Although I’m not clear whether his crime was having a meeting with the former jailbird or temporarily derailing the Prime Minister’s attack on Kevin Rudd.

The Rudd affair always seemed to me like a storm in a teacup. What, you mean pollies occasionally meet with dodgy lobbyists? Quelle horreur! So I wasn’t especially shocked that it’s largely backfired, with voters reacting by putting Labor even further ahead in the polls. I even feel a little sorry for Rudd, to be honest. Sure, he was at a dinner with Burke where he flaunted his leadership credentials. But really, do you think it’s possible for him to have a dinner with Kevin Rudd where he didn’t flaunt his leadership credentials? The opportunity to talk himself up is, surely, like crack for the Opposition Leader. I certainly wouldn’t have expected him to have been able to resist.

Really, if this is the best hit they can make on Kevin Rudd, then he’s got the election as good as won. So, Federal politics has been lively lately. As opposed to that other thing, what’s it called; ah yes, the State election.

The contest, if you can call it that, between Morris Iemma and Peter Debnam is the dullest I can remember since the last series of Australian Princess. And there isn’t even a narky former butler to put them through their paces.

On the one hand you have a government that should surely be voted out on its record, led by someone who was so obscure when he became Premier that Labor had to run an ad explaining how to pronounce his name. Below its bumbling head, the government has been absolutely decimated by scandal. And the best it can do for a campaign slogan is to virtually apologise, and claim to be heading in the “right direction”, wherever that is. If there was any viable alternative, the Iemma Government would be facing annihilation.

But instead there’s Peter Debnam, who, according to a Labor ad that seems to have been copied verbatim from one of the ones that worked so well against Mark Latham, couldn’t even run a squash court. (Although, come to think of it, could Morris Iemma?) He’s promised to cull 20,000 public service jobs, but won’t say which ones – meaning that absolutely anyone who has a family member in the public service won’t vote for him.

Then there are his crime policies, which seem largely to involve locking up people who are children, Muslims or both. It’s a cynical exercise in votemongering, only it isn’t working.

Iemma’s policies, by contrast, are extremely dull, and align with a ‘State plan’ which has been rightly criticised by Nicholas Cowdery, QC for blurring the line between governing and electioneering. And sold by a raft of publicly-funded ads in another trick stolen from the Howard Government.

Fortunately, the brief interruption that is the State election will finish soon, and we can turn our eyes back to what promises to be a fascinating contest between Rudd and Howard. I only wish Brian Burke had met both Iemma and Debnam, forcing them both to resign. It’s the only chance we have of electing an even slightly inspiring Premier.

Election mode

The SMH has invited me to blog on the State Election, so for the next four weeks you'll find me over here. Do drop by and revel in the mediocrity that is Iemma v Debnam. Cheers Dom

The problem with prostitution, as far as Seinfeld's George Costanza is concerned, is not so much the morality as the expense: "Why pay for it when you can apply yourself and then maybe you can get it for free?"
If only it were. Radar is certainly not recommending prostitution, but dating can become expensive. For a start, just trying to meet someone can cost - especially if you're not one of those romantics who believes in serendipity. (And if you were, you probably wouldn't be reading a story on how much love costs.)
At online dating site RSVP (which is owned by Fairfax, publisher of the Herald), for example, the price of love starts at $34.95. That will buy you three "stamps", although RSVP's marketing director Lija Jarvis believes it takes a $54.95 book of six to make it "very likely" for you to get a date. One stamp allows you to send an email to one profile, after which email contact with that person becomes free for 30 days.
"You're fishing where the fish are, so you're not wasting time talking to people who aren't single or who aren't looking for a date," says Jarvis, who claims online dating is more cost-efficient than going to a bar. She also says it's usually much cheaper for women than men to date online.
"A female might not spend anything and get a date because it's very similar to an offline situation," she says. "Men tend to spend more ... if you go to a bar, guys usually buy the first round of drinks. It's the same on the site. Guys tend to buy the stamps."
Those short on time could also go to a speed-dating event, where you can meet up to 12 people in one night.
"Most people get two to three matches - that's the average - and you contact those people and arrange for a follow-up date," says Anna Saunders, the general manager of speed dating agency Fast Impressions.
A match is when two people decide they like each other. Saunders says there is a 90 per cent match rate, which means on average nine out of 10 people will get at least one match. If those odds are correct, it will cost you $79 (the usual price of a Fast Impressions event) to get one date.

Then again, you may be better off leaving your wallet in your pocket, with statistics from the Harlequin Romance Report 2006 (based on surveys conducted in North America) showing 33.6 per cent of couples met through friends, 18.7 per cent at work, 17.2 per cent by chance, 15.1 per cent at a party, bar or club, and only 2.7 per cent met online - although the number for cyber couples is higher (4.8 per cent) for those aged between 18 and 34.
However, for the sake of argument, let's believe the dating agencies and say that, on average, it costs $67 - midway between the price of using RSVP and a Fast Impressions event - to get the first date. Yes, these figures are rubbery but, hey, this is a feature on the price of love. What did you expect?
Now we come to phase two: the first date. This humble writer believes having a few drinks is preferable to dinner on a first date. After all, if you don't like the person it's easier to leave if you're just having drinks. However, a Virgin credit-card study conducted last year shows men typically spend $147 on dinner and drinks on a first date plus $55 for entertainment such as a concert or a movie. Taxi fares add $28 to the night's tab. Men also spend an average $78 on new clothes and accessories and another $32 on grooming - a total of $340. The total for women, on the other hand, amounts to $292, as they usually spend less on dinner and drinks but will spend on average $10 more on grooming. So, to average out the sexes, let's say that a first date will cost $316.
Incidentally, it's worth noting that a survey conducted by RSVP on its members last year says 65 per cent of women expect a 50-50 split when paying for the first date. On behalf of men's wallets everywhere, Radar salutes them.
Now, a survey conducted by US dating agency It's Just Lunch claims there's only a one-in-eight chance a first date will call you for a second date after 24 hours. That seems a bit harsh to this journo, but if your first date was based on only five minutes of face time at a speed-dating venue or the sight of an online profile then perhaps that makes sense.
In that case, you'll be spending, very roughly speaking, $2528 (and going on eight dates) to ensure you hit the second-date phase. However, since you probably won't have to get a new haircut, clothes and grooming "essentials" every time you have a first date, let's lower the overall cost to $2048. (This depends on how frequent your first dates are. For example, RSVP found that 26 per cent of the women surveyed dated two to three people at the one time.)
So, provided the relationship has now hit a new level and won't fall apart after the second date, how much will dating continue to cost? Well, common sense dictates not all dates are going to be as expensive as the first, flash one, so let's say you'll be spending $100 for a restaurant dinner and wine for two. Also, many dates are likely to be even more casual: a pizza, DVD and some beer, for example, would cost roughly $40 for two.
Assuming there's a ratio of two formal dates for every three casual ones, based on this journo's casual survey of colleagues, you're looking at $320. Add a few cab fares and we can conservatively round the figure up to $400. In the valiant hope that women will be more likely to split the bill after the first date, that means (rubbery-figure time again) on average, people spend $200 a month on dating.
Furthermore, the RSVP figures show that one third of respondents would spend more than $200 on a partner's birthday present. Let's cut that figure in half and say you're looking at spending $100 for a birthday gift, an extra $100 for a Christmas gift, not to mention $100 for Valentine's Day ... meaning you're looking at an extra $300 all up.
Actually, that seems a bit stingy. We're hoping our readers can afford to splurge once in a while - how about we make that yearly gift figure $400, especially if you're romantic enough to spring for an extra present once in a while?
So, after the first month of meeting and having the first date, and then enough dates to secure a second date with someone, and then 11 months of regular dating, plus the final $400 on gifts, you're looking at $4715 for the first year of dating someone. Minimum. And this is assuming the second and all subsequent dates were successful and that you didn't have to start all over again, which would double the figure, minus some grooming costs.
And not wanting to put anyone off the sacred act of marriage, we're also assuming no one has proposed yet, meaning we didn't look into how much an engagement will cost, not to mention a wedding ...
Poor George Costanza. As our calculations indicate, money might not buy you love but it can certainly facilitate it.

They doth protest too much

The right to protest is vital to democracy. If the people truly govern, they should be allowed to express their dissent, and blow off steam. It's a fundamentally healthy thing. Sure, some protests are silly and wrong, and leave me thinking that the participants should probably slink home in shame until they can write new chants that don't involve the words "Hey hey, ho ho", or in fact anything invented by the Seven Dwarves. But we should all feel uncomfortable when governments tell us we shouldn't protest.

So if you asked me whether people should be allowed to hold a rally because Dick Cheney was visiting, I'd say they absolutely should. I'd go further, in fact, and say that there are few people in the free world I'd rather see welcomed with howls of protest. But while I believe the right to protest should, in broad terms, be sacrosanct, in no manual of democratic theory have I ever seen a philosopher defend the inalienable right to protest during peak hour.

And that's why I'm somewhat sympathetic to the police's decision to restrict the anti-Cheney protests yesterday afternoon. Yeah, the US Vice-President is a duplicitous worm who's masterminded a war few of us wanted. My dislike for him is such that I'd even go so far as to reverse my earlier stance and affirm that "Hey hey, ho ho, Dick Cheney has gotta go" – a view affirmed wholeheartedly by American voters in recent opinion polls.

But why must that point, as worthy as it is, only be advocated during times of maximum commuter congestion? Infuriating the public with unnecessary delays while they're trying to get home to their kids isn't exactly going to win new supporters for the cause. So why is it necessary to inconvenience half of Sydney to make your point?

Sure, I know that to most protesters, faceless commuters are mere cogs in the fascist capitalist machine, and are there to be Raged Against. But please. I would have thought that any anti-Cheney organiser in possession of at least a few brain cells that hadn't been addled by Green Left Weekly editorials might have timed their anti-Cheney rally for after the guy had actually arrived in the country.

But probably, as with so many things these days, WorkChoices is to blame. You can't just drop everything and head out for a pleasant Friday afternoon rally these days. So after work on Thursday was probably the best time. And why Town Hall, seat of a city council that had precisely nothing to do with this visit? While the activists don't like Cheney or the military-industrial complex he so nefariously represents, they weren't about to wait around for a few hours until his motorcade showed up, or get sidetracked down to the Rocks. Sure, fight the power; but only if it's at a convenient time, and on the way home.

Speaking of better places and times, though, I have to confess myself baffled about why Cheney's here now. Was John Howard too polite to ask him not to come? Of course he wouldn't have stood up to the Americans, why I am even asking? But surely the Prime Minister, who is already struggling in the polls over Iraq, needs this thank-you mission like a hole in the head? We saw him fly off the deep end to attack Barack Obama over Iraq last week, so it's obviously a sore point just at the moment.

I think it's fair to say that most Australians don't particularly care to be thanked for Iraq, because we don't want to be still there. And if we did want thanks from someone for our ceaseless acquiescence, we certainly wouldn't want it from the Dr Evil of American politics. A man so bitterly unpopular that even Halliburton probably won't want him back after he's finally done in Washington.

The other thing I've read is that the Vice-President will be trying to sell President Bush's troop increase to the Australian public and their leaders – especially now that we've made a tiny increase to our own tiny detachment. How on earth will he build that support, though? Cheney's never been the go-to PR guy. If you need someone to hide out in an undisclosed location in case Al Qaeda takes out the White House and the war's dopey frontman, Cheney's your man. But talking up the war? It'd have sounded more convincing coming from Donald Rumseld, and that's saying something.

It's a real shame that Dick Cheney's whole Australian tour isn't restricted to undisclosed locations, actually. If he was conducting his meetings somewhere underground near Pine Gap, not only would we not have to put up with his malignant mug on the news, but the protesters would be too busy chasing his motorcade through the desert to annoy us all during the commute home. It'd really kill two birds with one stone. And we all know how much Dick Cheney loves to kill birds.

Dominic Knight

Photo: Lisa Wiltse

A column about celebrity sumo

Australia’s childhood obesity crisis grows ever worse. And we can talk about the good old days when we used to play Test matches in the backyard after school all we like. The reality is that in the era of high-fat convenience foods, obesity’s inevitable. So unfortunately, what we really need if we want kids to get active is a sport that can be contested by the overweight.

Such sports do exist. Tenpin bowling has a special place in the cholesterol-clogged hearts of the morbidly obese, but it never made anyone stronger or fitter. The main point of bowling, after all, is to give us blokes a low-impact sporting diversion in between gulps of beer.

And then there’s the shot put, an activity which has been pointless ever since they invented the cannon.

But there’s one highly athletic sport where to succeed, you have to stack on the kilos. And that, of course, is sumo. I had the curious cross-cultural pleasure of attending a charity tournament on a recent trip to Tokyo, and from what I saw, every chunky Aussie kid should be encouraged to tussle with other flabby behemoths while wearing skimpy adult nappies. It’s fantastic entertainment. No, better still, it’s fat-tastic entertainment.

Whereas in most athletic pursuits, the chubbier kids are left sitting on the sidelines and made to feel inferior, sumo celebrates the gut. That’s why rikishi (wrestlers) wear such skimpy loincloths. Not for them an elasticised, gut-minimising body stocking. As every steroid-guzzling bouncer outside a dodgy nightclub knows, some things are all about size.

And there can be no better time for our tubbier athletes to consider taking up the ancient sport, because even though it’s steeped in centuries of Shinto tradition, right now foreigners are not only welcome, but dominant. The current yokozuna (grand champion) is a Mongolian called Asashoryu, and his closest contender is a Bulgarian, Mahlyanov Stefanov who wrestles under the name of Kotooshu. So a few Aussies would hardly be noticed.

The charity day went for a few yuks by pitting some of the larger sumo wrestlers against ten junior sumo trainees – it was a bit like Kanga Cricket during lunchtime at the SCG. Among the kids who got into the hallowed ring that day was, to my surprise, one blonde-haired kid. And I thought to myself – that little fella with the cheeky grin and the bulging gut? That could be Warney.

Which is not to say that the real Warney couldn’t still take up sumo. In fact, he should. His beloved meat pies would work just as well as the sport’s traditional hearty rice broth for gaining weight. And Warney may not have much sumo-specific experience, but he’s very well accustomed to wrestling with strangers in his underwear.

Come to think of it, it wouldn’t take long to put together an accomplished celebrity sumo league in Australia. What a fantastic format. Take some tubby retirees, put them through a training course, and instant reality television smash hit. It’d be like The Biggest Loser in reverse. And just think of the celebrity match-ups. Mal Meninga v Blocker Roach. Ian ‘Huey’ Hewitson v ‘Aussie’ John Symonds. And best of all, Boony v Beazley. In the words of the late, great Big Kev, who I just know could have been a sumo superstar, I’m excited.

And above all, Celebrity Sumo (to which I now own the rights, incidentally, having published this article) would teach our Aussie kids that they don’t have to stay thin to become sporting superstars. It would build self-esteem among our ever-burgeoning overweight youngsters. And that’s a good thing. Not as good as if they actually got fit, admittedly. But sumo at least will get them off their sofas and into the ring. For about thirty seconds, after which they’ll have to sit down again because of their ridiculous bulk. But still, it’s a sport. And they way things are going, it’s just a matter of time until it’s our national one as well.

A different kind of action for Prince Harry

According to one UK newspaper, Prince Harry will be deployed to Iraq with his regiment, the Blues and Royals. Which sounds like an intriguing headline until you realise that the newspaper was the Daily Mirror, and the Ministry of Defence immediately called the report "entirely speculative". Still, there remains a distinct possibility Harry will see action. Well, of course he's seen all kinds of action. But military action would be a first.

I think Harry should go to Iraq. Not just because – let's face it – he's clearly expendable. I'm always glad to see the very privileged hunkering down and giving something back, even though the idea that members of the royal family have to show their military prowess seems as old-fashioned as royalty itself. And while fighting in Iraq obviously doesn't actually help his people in any way whatsoever, given the bungled nature of the conflict, at least he means well.

For Harry, in fact, it's a fantastic opportunity. Not only for public service, not only because he apparently loves adventure, but also because it will do wonders for his shabby reputation. For one thing, Iraq's a dry country, so even a man of his incredible alcoholic prowess should be have trouble finding alcohol. And he'll be in the desert, of course – so no grass. Nor will there be many enticingly-dressed women to distract him. (My favourite thing about that photo, incidentally, is actually how drunk William looks in the background.) But Harry's greatest benefit from fighting in Iraq will be an enduring one – finally, he'll be have ensured that the uniform he's best-known for wearing isn't his Nazi one.

If Harry goes, he will be, as the Evening Standard charmingly puts it, a bullet magnet. Iraq's incredibly unsafe, of course; especially for such a high-value target to insurgents. The dozen men he would be leading could well be in more danger because of his royal status. As would the bodyguards that the article incongrously suggests he may need – surely somewhat defeating his purpose of helping the war effort, by effectively taking men away from it. In many ways, it's a foolish idea that smacks of boyish impetuousness. So classic Harry, really.

But the reason I think he should go is that if Iraq's not safe enough for him to be deployed to, then I'd question whether anyone should be sent there. The troops already fighting there are other people's much-loved sons. Even these reports have highlighted the extreme danger that the troops already face, and that can only be a good thing. Imagine how Tony Blair, who already has seemingly begun to acknowledge that Iraq was a mistake, would feel if anything happened to him. Imagine how appropriate it is would be for him to feel that bad already, given the constant casualties sustained by Britain.

Like all British soldiers, Prince Harry also has a fair chance of being killed by US "friendly fire". Wouldn't that do wonders for that overly-cosy alliance?

Historically, the royal family used to ride out and lead their armies themselves. The manly son would often be sent out at the head of the troops. Putting their own flesh and blood on the line, you'd hope, would have served to restrain the royal family as to when the troops were used. It's a far cry from today's gung-ho neocons, the chicken hawks like Dick Cheney and George Bush who are only too happy to spuriously and foolishly deploy other people's children spuriously yet bent over backwards to avoid serving in Vietnam.

Harry doesn't want special treatment because he's royal, and good for him. The British Government should accede to that wish. If the British troops stay, by all means send Harry along. And if it isn't safe for him to go, then no-one should.

Dominic Knight

The lows of the mile high club

You know, I didn't think Ralph Fiennes would be the type to go in for aeroplane-toilet nookie. I thought of him as kind of an elder-statesman, respected professional, that kind of thing. Dedicated to his craft, happily married (or so I'd foolishly assumed), and so on. And then I look up his Wikipedia entry and find he's the Prince of Wales' eighth cousin, and the whole humiliating sex scandal thing suddenly makes sense. I just hope he didn't take a leaf out of His Royal Highness' book, and tell Qantas flight attendant Lisa Robertson that he wanted to be her tampon.

The SMH's comprehensive dating column has covered off on this issue, of course, but didn't really elaborate on the etiquette when one participant is a renowned Hollywood star, and the other is a Qantas hostie. I'm sure Sam will address the issue in a future edition. But one thing she could tell you is that these assignations can end in tears. And in this instance, I hope all concerned have now aired all the dirty laundry that we're going to see aired, because this she-said, he-said-nothing, her-mates-said-something-different situation is becoming increasingly embarrassing.

I am happy to admit that I am not a member of the mile high club. I don't get the newsletter, or anything. And not just because the opportunity's never presented itself. Okay, entirely because the opportunity's never presented itself, but still – of all the places for an amorous encounter, a tiny airborne toilet cubicle would have to be one of the least romantic I can think of. It's uncomfortable enough for one person to perform their ablutions, let alone for two people to get it on. Unless you're one of those people who gets a kick out of the idea of getting caught, I'm not sure I see the point of the fabled bathroom liasons.

I won't view long-haul flights the same way after reading the piece by Imogen Edwards-Jones that the redoubtable Daily Mail commissioned to accompany the revelations about Fiennes and Robertson, though. I've generally found flying quite dull, but if you can believe Edward-Jones' months of research, they're a regular festival of sex and drug-fuelled fun. I particularly enjoyed the idea of tobogganing down the aircraft aisle aboard a tray. And I'll be checking under the cistern to see if anyone's taped drugs there.

All of which sounds like a lot more fun than an amorous encounter with Ralph Fiennes, frankly. I know that some women are attracted to guys who kinda seem a bit intense, or dangerous, but would you really want to get your rocks off with Lord Voldemort? Fiennes has played a memorable collection of psychos over the years – Red Dragon the scariest I can remember. It'd be fair to say he plays them a little too convincingly. And then, the one time he's not playing a murderer, but rather tries his hand as the leading man in a sweet rom-com, what do we get? Maid In Manhattan.

The moral of this story? Don't have sex in aeroplane bathrooms. And if you must, don't do it with You-Know-Who.

Dominic Knight

The Corby-Power race to the bottom

I don't know who to believe, the Corby lasses or Jodie Power. And really, what a dilemma. In one corner, there's the lovely Schapelle, one of Australia's favourite convicted drug traffickers (and bestselling authors to boot), and her loyal sister Mercedes. Alongside them is Rosleigh Rose, that most endearing of mothers who once quipped that she didn't mind having multiple children in jail, because at least she knew where they were. Obviously the Corbys have a special place in my heart. But then there's a new competitor for my affections, the ever-so-classy Jodie Power, who's accused all three Corby women of drug trafficking for money and gotten a big fat cheque from Today Tonight. Really, which side to back? It's almost as vexing a conundrum as choosing a favorite Daddo brother.

Due to a long-standing belief that watching Today Tonight or A Current Affair rots the brain, I have been sadly unable to review the documentary evidence first-hand. But Jodie Power does seem delightfully crass. This is someone who was at one point the best of friends with the Corbys, loudly proclaiming Schapelle's innocence to every available media outlet. Now she's had a change of heart, saying not only that Schapelle was guilty but that Mercedes and mum were filthy drug traffickers to boot. Not just that, but they used the stuff as well. As had she. Hideous revelations indeed, both in terms of their substance and how they make Power look.

Perhaps I'm being unfair. Perhaps none of us could resist airing our friends' dirty laundry, whether real or imagined, when that temptress Anna Coren came past waving her siren chequebook? Perhaps none of us are safe from having our comments analysed by a phalanx of dubious "body language experts" who inevitably achieve the conclusion that the current affairs show footing the bill wants them to? I don't know whether I'd do what she's done, but I invite ACA and TT to wave money in my direction to find out.

And really, who'd have guessed it was possible for Today Tonight to become even more tawdry after Naomi Robson left it? Of course that's what this is really about – the heated ratings battle between the Australian media's two tackiest outlets. And with ACA ahead on a technicality after Seven boned its presenter, TT has had to pull all the stops out. Whether or not the Corbys or Power were drug mules, they've certainly become tabloid mules to be flogged by Channels Nine and Seven.

The best way to resolve this dispute, though, is surely for Corby and Power to get in the ring and slug it out. No holds or dubious accusations barred. A fight to the disrepute, or perhaps even the death. And of course, for Power to participate, it'd have to be pay-per-view.

Which would only be appropriate, because the people fuelling this are the viewers that tune in night after night to see crappy claim vs counter-claim. If no-one watched, TT would have to return to its regular fodder of miracle diets and close-ups of new bras. Otherwise, while they remain in the spotlight, the biggest loser in the Corby-Power battle is surely us ourselves.

Dominic Knight

Photo: Channel Seven

Save the whales, me hearties

Arr, these Sea Shepherd guys make Greenpeace look soft. If you want to stop Japanese boats from going whaling, don't go after them in just a flimsy rubber dinghy. Do what pirates would do – go out there and ram them. Okay, so there's a bit of a dispute over who rammed who, who threw what, who issued a distress call, and whether anyone's going to be made to walk the plank. But you have to admire the conservationists' pluck. In particular, we need to recognise that this is a case where direct action seems reasonable, because despite the endless political machinations of Australia and others, nothing else seems to work.

I am a big Japanophile, and love the many non-whale aspects of Japanese food. But no-one gets carte blanche to pursue their cultural heritage regardless of environmental concerns. Japan has made representations to the IWC that a commercial minke hunt ought to be allowed. Perhaps it should, I'm not an expert. However, the IWC says it shouldn't. And if the expert global body imposes a ban, then it shouldn't be flouted with dodgy scientific institutes.

What possible justification can the Tokyo Institute for Cetacean Research have for killing 850 whales this year? What could the research possibly be into, other than how whale meat tastes when lightly grilled and dipped into soy sauce? Well, their homepage says that the research is in the following areas:

1. Estimation of biological parameters to improve the stock management of the Southern Hemisphere minke whale,

2. Examination of the role of whales in the Antarctic marine ecosystem,

3. Examination of the effect of environmental changes on cetaceans and,

4. Examination of the stock structure of the Southern Hemisphere minke whales to improve stock management.

None of which would seem to necessitate killing 850 whales. As opposed to, say, the lucrative business in packaging and selling the "offcuts" of this research, which earns a company called Kyodo Senpaku $60 million a year.

Why do they say they kill whales?

Japan's research programs involve both lethal and non-lethal research techniques such as sighting surveys and biopsy sampling. While certain information can be obtained through non-lethal means, other information requires sampling of internal organs such as ovaries, ear plugs and stomachs. For example, while the population age structure and reproductive rates of land mammals can be determined by observation over a long period of time, such is not the case for whales since they spend most of their time underwater. In this case we need ear plugs for age determination and ovaries to establish reproductive rates. Similarly, to study the interactions of whales and other parts of the marine ecosystem we need to know what they are eating. This is done by examining stomach contents.



Another example is that for pollution studies, tissue samples from various internal organs are required.

Right, so unless you examine the entrails and ovaries of hundreds of whales each years, they may die out. It's a bit like destroying a village in order to save it.

To be fair to Japan, they have got a genuine research interest in whales. If they are no longer an endangered species, then the world will probably drop its ban on whaling, allowing the Japanese and Norwegians to once more fire their harpoons into their favourite snack. So you can understand why Japan would want to source accurate data on whale populations. But if your interest is in repopulating them, again, why kill 850 of them?

Despite the claims that they are "pirates" and "terrorists", I think the Sea Shepherd folk are doing a great job. Even if they can't actually save the whales, they're seriously annoying the Japanese "research institute". I can think of no sham scientific organisation – even the Ponds institute – that I'd rather see inconvenienced.

Dominic Knight

Time for the Deputy Sheriff to turn in his badge?

George Bush hasn't got many mates left. You can't count Dick Cheney, whose idea of friendship seems to involve shooting people. Even his fellow Republicans have done their best to distance themselves from him. Leaving John Howard as just about the only friend he's still got in his corner. And, as we've seen so often before, there are no bounds to our Prime Minister's devotion to the President who indulges him like a patronising elder brother. Which is about the only reason I can think of why he'd want to get into a slanging match with Barack Obama over Iraq.

It's quite unlike Howard to get drawn into a stoush like this. In recent years, he has become quite a dab hand at statemanship, tending to rise above these sorts of controversies by saying he's not a commentator, relentlessly playing down any hint of a story. But he seems to be losing his cool lately, whether through age, the multitude of political problems on his horizon, or Kevin Rudd's strong polling. Okay, so John Howard was never cool – bad choice of words. But he's a lot less invincible than he seemed in 2004.

Obama is not even his party's nominee, so it would have been all too easy to just play down any questions about his stance on Iraq by highlighting his inexperience – the Senator's greatest political liability. But Howard took the bait, and served up the same old tripe about emboldening terrorists that we've heard the likes of Dick Cheney use before to try to shut down debate. And you can tell just how well it plays with Americans these days when you recall that the electorate has already dumped the Republicans from both houses of Congress, and Cheney – seen as the main architect of the war – has an approval rating of 29%. Even Howard's not doing that badly. At least, not yet.

Instead, a world leader has taken the greenhorn Senator seriously enough as a potential President to criticise his policy. No wonder Obama says he feels flattered. And his comments about the tininess of Australia's troop deployment only highlighted his pitch to the American people that he's concerned about how many lives are at risk. If Howard was trying to influence Americans not to vote for Obama, he will have had the opposite effect.

Howard's comments were certainly intemperate, telling Sunday that "If I was running al-Qaeda in Iraq, I would put a circle around March 2008 and pray, as many times as possible, for a victory not only for Obama, but also for the Democrats." And really, second-guessing whether terrorists would prefer a Republican or Democratic administration, and whether they'd rather there were Coalition troops in Iraq or not, is a spurious exercise. The sight of American troops all over the country is the best recruiting tool the insurgents could hope for, surely, and it's quite possible that if they left, it would help the moderates by making them seem less beholden to the Americans.

Besides, if I was Osama bin Laden – just to illustrate the strangeness of trying to see things from his perpective – I'd be a huge fan of George Bush because he allowed himself to get distracted by Iraq instead of putting his resources into killing me.

I find the talk of emboldening terrorists particularly ridiculous. Really, how much bolder could the terrorists get? They're already comfortably winning. Is there a extra boldness gear that we don't know about? Because the Rumsfeld formula of invading without adequate preparation or enough troops to get the job done is what has done the most to build up terrorist networks in Iraq.

Besides, even if we could get AC Nielsen to accurately poll the terrorists' political wishes, surely that wouldn't be any basis for policymaking. The American people showed in November that their overwhelming interest in all this is the safety of the 140,000 troops in harm's way, and the more than 3,000 that have already died. At this point, what happens to Iraq is very much a secondary consideration in American politics. So it's hardly surprising that people like John Edwards are advocating an immediate withdrawal.

John Howard is so closely associated with Iraq that I suppose he has to try and win the argument on staying the course. Given Kevin Rudd's promise to withdraw Australian troops, it is an election issue here. But the Liberals are going to have to come up with more convincing arguments than these. "Vote Republican or the terrorists win" may have cut it in the 2004 election, but it didn't work in 2006. John Howard's finally going to have to answer for the debacle Iraq has become, and this lame, Cheney-style rhetoric isn't convincing anyone.

Dominic Knight

Don't stop, look or listen to this suggestion

I'm generally a big fan of the nanny state. Seatbelt laws? Good idea. Ban on fireworks? Yep, I'll cop that. But fining people who cross the street while listening to an iPod, as suggested by a New York state senator? Ridiculous. Sometimes the media takes a random suggestion by an eccentric person who happens to have been elected to minor office far more seriously than it should, and that's what's happened here. If we ban anything, it should be paying attention to the foolish utterances of irrelevant politicians.

As ever, Pedestrian Council chairman Harold Scruby has sounded off on the incident. Scruby, who pops up on current affairs shows almost weekly, also finds time in his frenetic schedule of pedestrian-related activism to run Ausflag, another advocacy group without many runs on the board. Scruby suggests that a law might be unworkable, but says Apple and other manufacturers ought to warn consumers.

Scruby is a renowned commentator on such issues, with an extensive CV. He's a Member of the National Road Safety Strategy Panel (Australian Transport Safety Bureau), a Member of the Road Trauma Committee (Royal Australasian College of Surgeons), a Member of the Australian College of Road Safety (Formerly on National Executive Committee), and most significantly, was Formerly Deputy Mayor of Mosman and Chairman of the Traffic Committee for 5 years.

So you'd think he'd be a bit more sensible, really. Who needs Apple to tell them that with a portable music player pumping away in their ears, they won't be able to hear what's going on around them? If that's the level of obviousness for warning labels these days, then Apple might as well go the whole hog and also inform customers that the iPod is not to be swallowed and should not be used as a flotation device.

Scruby says he hasn't seen studies linking iPod use to injuries, but claims "anecdotally, it's obvious". Which surely negates his claim that we should be doing something about it, doesn't it? Because, "anecdotally", it's equally obvious that jumping off balconies is linked to injuries, but no-one requires builders to ensure they warn users against doing so. I wonder whether we shouldn attach a warning to Harold Scruby saying that anecdotally, some of his suggestions may be a little obvious.

I was glad to see the police suggesting that there was no need for a law because you "can't legislate stupidity". Perhaps not, but you certainly can legislate stupidly, and that's what Sen Kruger intends to do. Saying he's a state senator makes him sound on the same par as Hillary Clinton – but what isn't reported is that Kruger is just one of 62 state senators, and obviously a bit of a loose cannon. If those who had reported Kruger's proposal so widely had only looked at the guy's website, which hasn't even been updated since 2005, they'd twig that his ideas weren't exactly newsworthy. The innovative policy suggestions of Family First's Stephen Fielding don't make international news, thankfully, and nor should Kruger's.

We humans have removed most of the natural threats in our environment. So, in evolutionary terms, something has to work to bring about natural selection, and this is an excellent candidate. People who need warnings to tell them not to walk in front of cars while using iPods are probably best culled from the gene pool anyway.



Dominic Knight

A column about videogames

Regular readers of this column will no doubt have built up a mental picture of me that differs significantly from the caricature that the editors like to include alongside my work. You will no envisage me as dashing, debonair and handsome, and impossibly suave and svelte. Well, that’s true. Except, perhaps, that if I’m brutally honest, it would be fair to say that the svelteness thing has somewhat eluded me recently. Well, for a long time. Try about 15 years. And while the ever so slight thickening around my waist has certainly not damaged the considerable regard in which I’m held by ladies everywhere, let’s just say that there’s a little room to improve.

Like many guys, I’d like to get into shape, but only if it’s easy, fun, and leaves me with washboard abs. This is an annual New Year’s resolution for me, which I also annually abandoned on around January 4. Of course, I don’t actually intend to go out and punish myself in the gym – there are lifestyle considerations to think of. But if someone invented a way of allowing me to exercise without straying far from the couch, or even realising I was working out, then sure, I’d be up for it.

Which is why I was intrigued by the news that you can lose weight while playing video games. Now, playing video games is something I rather like. I’m rarely found kicking a ball around a park these days, but if it’s just thumb-twiddling that’s required, I’m quite the sporting hero. Perhaps this, then, was the answer I’d long been seeking for maximum fitness with minimum effort? Perhaps the cruel logic of no pain, no gain had finally been broken?

My research led me to the unfortunately-named the Nintendo Wii. Which I assumed referred to the need to supply urine samples after losing so many kilos so quickly, but apparently is supposed to mean ‘we’. It has a wireless controller that looks quite like a television remote, and do anything in the games, you have to move it around. Every system comes with a game called Wii Sports, which allows you to play tennis by moving around and swinging the remote as if it were a tennis racquet. It’s great fun, if you can somehow quell the lingering suspicion that you look ridiculous.

One of my cousins had proven quite the sensation on Christmas day with one of these machines. Apparently my grandmother tried her hand at boxing, and enjoyed it so much that she wanted to get a system of her own. I was mightily impressed. If this Wii thingy could convinced no less than my grandmother to get active – and, what’s more, throw punches probably for the first time in her life – then there could be no doubt that it would transform me into a vision of smoking hotness.

So I procured one of these magical weight-loss devices – no easy task, given that they were sold out everywhere, but The Glebe name always opens a few doors. And I set to work on the New Me. Or Mii, as the system regrettably terms it. Soon my electronic doppelganger had bested many opponents. I’d spent many happy hours pretending I was on centre court at Wimbledon, like Lleyton Hewitt during that brief period when he was any good. The kilos, I assumed, were surely dropping off. So I headed to the scales to check my progress, and discovered a major flaw in the system.

The guy who had conducted the experiment had a highly controlled diet, and played virtual tennis for half an hour a day. I had played tennis occasionally, but spent dozens of hours sitting down to play other games, snacking regularly all the while. So unfortunately the scales showed that I’d actually gained weight. Still, imagine how much more I would have stacked on if I hadn’t been playing tennis.

Video games are wonderful things, and I really enjoy playing them. So watch this space for another column about the remarkable fitness benefits of the soon-to-be-released Playstation 3.

Sucked into the Baghdad Triangle

I've taken a perverse degree of pleasure in tracking Iraq's descent into utter chaos, so I couldn't resist commenting on two bitterly amusing stories I've just read in the past day. The first beautifully illustrates the failed benevolence of the American troops, the latter the way the conflict has opened up a kind of Baghdad Triangle, into which resources and lives are sucked randomly, with no viable hope of an end. But hey, at least the stories that are starting to filter through now are entertaining. Like John Travolta's legendary schlock-Scientology flick Battlefield Earth, Battlefield Iraq is now so bad it's bordering on hilarious.

It's now common knowledge that American neoconservatives were way off in their assessment of ordinary Iraqis' attitudes to an invasion. They simply assumed they'd be welcomed as liberators instead of resented as occupiers. I think the idea might have been one of those truths they hold to be self-evident, instead of actually checking. So, because many ordinary Iraqis reacted to their presence less than enthusiastically, America has waged a battle for the hearts and minds of Iraqis, as it's always termed. And while most open military battles were won overwhelmingly by the Americans, the popularity contest is one they cannot hope to take out.

Salon tells the tale of one effort to make the Iraqis think slightly less unkindly of the Americans. Apparently, Iraqi kids constantly play soccer. So some bright spark in the figured that by handing out a batch of shiny new soccer balls, the children might stop viewing the American troops as those scary guys that carry huge weapons and blow up our houses, but instead see them as our kindly older friends who distribute goodies. And sure, that's the same kind of thinking used by pedophiles when they stuff their trenchcoat pockets full of lollies and stroll down to their local public school. But you'd imagine that in a soccer-mad country, it would have gone down fairly well.

So, the troops were given a huge truck full of boxes of soccer balls. But, to cut a long story short, the US Army managed to forget to include pumps. They tried using Humvee tyre pumps, but they didn't work. This posed a dilemma, which they passed up to the batallion colonel, who ruled that no pumps were to be ordered. So, the troops were ordered to distribute thousands of flat soccer balls to the children of Iraq. Who used them as hats, and floated them in canals. Brilliant. And then as the flat-soccer-ball convoy returned to its base, the kids started throwing rocks at it.

The spin that the Army spokesperson put on this was particularly hilarious. "To focus on the air in the balls, or lack thereof, undermines the American spirit of generosity and completely misses the point of giving," he said. Yeah, right, it's the critics that have missed the point in this story.

But as amusing a vignette about America's incompetence as this is, a story in The Guardian today goes far beyond soccer balls. Since the troops had no chance of winning Iraqi hearts and minds, the next best option, it seems, was to buy them. To the tune of US $12 billion, the largest cash disbursement ever from the Federal reserve. And what happened to this massive truckload of money? Sorry, massive multiple truckloads – 363 tonnes in fact, making our own shameful AWB payments appear positively modest. Why, it disappeared.

The extent of the incompetence is detailed in a memorandum prepared for a Senate Committee meeting. And it's breathtaking:

"One CPA official described an environment awash in $100 bills," the memorandum says. "One contractor received a $2m payment in a duffel bag stuffed with shrink-wrapped bundles of currency. Auditors discovered that the key to a vault was kept in an unsecured backpack.

"They also found that $774,300 in cash had been stolen from one division's vault. Cash payments were made from the back of a pickup truck, and cash was stored in unguarded sacks in Iraqi ministry offices. One official was given $6.75m in cash, and was ordered to spend it in one week before the interim Iraqi government took control of Iraqi funds."

And, joy of joys, we may have yet another AWB scenario, where the Coalition is directly funding people to fight against them:

The memorandum concludes: "Many of the funds appear to have been lost to corruption and waste ... thousands of 'ghost employees' were receiving pay cheques from Iraqi ministries under the CPA's control. Some of the funds could have enriched both criminals and insurgents fighting the United States."

It seems that they didn't particularly care about how the money was disbursed because it came from the Iraqi treasury. Of course. And meanwhile, the civil servants who might actually have helped with the reconstruction weren't paid for months because Iraq's banking system had been completely shut down. Is there any wonder that they're having a few difficulties winning hearts and minds?



Given the staggering extent of this disaster, which will surely become ever clearer as more investigations are conducted into the shambles that the invasion was from start to finish, it should come as a blissful relief to read today that the Pentagon is now secretly planning for impending defeat in Iraq. Which would allow all of us to wake from this collective nightmare.

Except for ordinary Iraqis, that is, who we've plunged into a probably endless civil war. I think we can safely call it that now, can't we?

Dominic Knight