moon phases

Started this before change to "New Blogger", as backup in case of trouble with digiphoto blog "In a Small Dark Room", or rants & links blog "Hello Cruel World" . Useful - at one stage Dark Room was there, but like the astrophysical Dark Matter, we could't see it ... better now, but kept Just In Case.

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There is nothing. There is no God and no universe, there is only empty space, and in it a lost and homeless and wandering and companionless and indestructible Thought. And I am that thought. And God, and the Universe, and Time, and Life, and Death, and Joy and Sorrow and Pain only a grotesque and brutal dream, evolved from the frantic imagination of that same Thought.
Mark Twain (letter to Joseph Twichell after his wife's death)
[me, on a bad day]

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WRITER'S LINKS
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(and my Wish List)

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One Month on  
Dustday + 30

Previous Dustday entry (Dust Day (23rd September, 2009) in Sydney)



It used to be a nine-days' wonder. Everything's faster now.

Labels: climate, dust, events, photos, statistics, Sydney

More ... [permalink] posted by Mez at 4:09 pm

 
This comes under "We Told You So"  
Women stretched to snapping point
Adele Horin
July 4, 2009

The 1.5-earner family became the predominant form between 1997 and 2006, from 35 per cent of all couples with children under five to 46 per cent. But life for parents grew harder and less equal. By 2006, all parents were more likely to report feeling stressed

"There was reduced gender equity and strikingly increased reported time pressure," the study found. Based on 772 families in 1997 and 652 families in 2006, and using Australian Bureau of Statistics data, the research will be presented at the Australian Social Policy Conference next week.

It shows part-time working mothers put in as many hours overall as full-time working mothers - when paid work, housework and child care were tallied - and worked longer than their 1997 counterparts.

The Howard government promoted the 1.5-earner model with family tax policies that provided most benefits to single-earner families and to couples with an 80:20 income split.

.

Labels: politics, society, statistics

More ... [permalink] posted by Mez at 1:15 am

 
elisem: the day after Fourth Street happens to be Mammalversary  
Have been thinking again — dangerous, that — Chris and I were together some 6 years (after knowing each other about a year); he's been dead a bit more than 6 years now. (I'll be coming up to being 'widowed' longer than knowing him pretty soon.) He's been one of the most important things in much of my life for coming up to 13 years. It seems a long time.

Labels: politics, statistics, USA

More ... [permalink] posted by Mez at 1:10 am

 
USA Presidential Election statistics  

Nixonland - Rick Perlstein - Book Review - New York Times

Bring Us Apart
by George F. Will
Published: May 11, 2008

"Perlstein considers it significant that before the 1972 election, in which Nixon carried 49 states, James Reston wrote that “barely over one in four adult Americans will have voted for the winner in 1972. ... The consequences of that kind of a minority presidency are hard to foretell.” Actually, such “minority” presidents are not unusual. In 1980, when Ronald Reagan carried 44 states and defeated President Jimmy Carter 489-49 in electoral votes, Reagan won the votes of 26.9 percent of American adults. The winners of the 1996, 2000 and 2004 elections received 24 percent, 24.1 percent and 28.2 percent, respectively."
…
Perlstein’s thesis is that America became Nixonland because of “the rise of two American identities” in the 1960s — actually between 1964, when Johnson won 61.1 percent of the vote, and 1968, when the combined votes for Nixon and George Wallace were 56.9 percent. Perlstein says Nixon’s legacy is the “notion that there are two kinds of Americans. …”

Labels: books, politics, statistics, USA

More ... [permalink] posted by Mez at 11:57 pm

 
Statistics in Wonderland  
The Fallacy of Averages OR Spreading it Around?
[NOTE: If you can suggest a better title, I'd be glad. Am not happy with any I've given it.]
Take a happy group of 10 survivors on the bead economy.

When we first meet them the bead distribution is:
One lucky beado with 90 beads;
one poor beader only 10;
eight get 50 beads each.
Total 500, average 50 beads.

'Big Boy Beado' gets tax cuts and subsidies - funded by cutting general public physical and social infrastructure and ‘middle class welfare’ - does beadstock option speculation - partially funded through cutting company workforces, and wages and conditions, &c. of average working beaders (moving beads from them to him*). ‘Disadvantaged’ Beadie gets social equity beadfunding from the government to 15 . One lucky / clever / cunning BeadHolder more than doubles his to 110 (maybe in Microsphere shares or real beadstate).

Now we have:
BBB with 225 beads instead of 90;
DB gets 15 instead of 10;
BH has 110 instead of 50; and
seven little beaders only have 25 where they had 50.
Total 525, average 52.5 beads each.

"We’re ahead!", cries the Tribal Council. "Average beads are up!" and "The poor are better off!" and "The pie is bigger!" they crow.

But 7 of 10 are worse off beadwise, & underlying social/infrastructure support for all is less. Even the poorest is worse off compared to the highest (earlier 10/90 (=1/9th) is greater than current 15/225 (=1/15th)).

Which do you think is a happier & more cohesive group; before or after?

[*If they do have shares, or their superannuation trustee has, their dividends or equity increase is far less each than that of a very large beadshare holder - rather like the difference between what you personally could do with the $3-$4/week recent average tax cut and what the government could do with the total]

Labels: Australia, industrial relations, politics, society, statistics

More ... [permalink] posted by Mez at 12:39 am