The Great Bazby

I saw the Great Gatsby this afternoon. It's loyal to the words of F Scott Fitzgerald's novel (which I only read the previous week), although the glitz and the glamour and the imaging were definitely Baz Luhrmann and Catherine Martins'. The acting seemed fine, with Leonardo playing the larger than life Gatsby, and Cathy Mulligan playing a very beautfil Daisy. Neither quite convinced me, probably because Leonard is even bigger than his character (which is hard to imagine), and Mulligan gets the beauty right, but doesn't quite seem the innocent/manipulative character in the novel. Joel Edgerton as Tom is great, and Tobey Maguire is the everyman character, in the style of Jimmy Steward crossed with Peter Parker.

The cinematography is fabulous. It may have been filmed in NSW, but you wouldn't know from the pictures (although the huge number of Australian Actors gives it away, especially when Jack Thompson appears in an opening scence). It's beautifully filmed, and the parties at Gatsby's are beyond anything I could have imagined.

While I enjoyed the showier parts of the movie, I thought it was only a story about that. There doesn't seem to be a strong moral in this, just a sad ending. There doesn't seem to be a judgement on flashier times, because in a way, it's too beautifully presented and celebrated. Nick's character is neglected, and Miss Baker may as well not be in the movie, while Myrtle is purely a token part.
Gatsby claims near the end that he built the mansion for Daisy out of his imaginings.  Which is what Baz Lurhmann has done for us.  While Gatsby failed to impress Daisy, Lurhmann succeeds in impressing us.

Dalek was genuinely surprised this morning.  This doesn't happen often when you're of a race that has had emotions genetically modified out it.  Searches in the extensive Liberal Party Policy suite have revealed a policy on Global Warming.  The Supreme Dalek called for further analysis...

It turns out that it isn't really Coalition policy.  The Nats are pretty straightforward on the issue, it ain’t happening and they oppose doing anything about nothing (unless there are grants involved).  They would make good Daleks if they weren't such losers.

But the Libs do have a policy (and they always roll the Nats when they are in Government, see for instance various Rural Adjustment Schemes under John Howard that paid Skaro Farmers off but never stopped the inevitable roll of Kaled domination).

Today the Australian Financial Review (AFR) ran their interview with Greg Hunt who expounded on Coalition Policy.  Unfortunately the AFR article is behind a paywall, against which a disintegration gun appears to be useless, although some of the juicer bits were exposed:

“But amid calls from business for more details of its direction action policy, opposition climate change spokesman Greg Hunt has revealed a future Coalition government would now issue a white paper after the election to consult on its implementation.”

So if you’re confused by our policy, don’t worry, after we are elected we’ll put it together.  Dalek presumes we’ll see the same from Treasury spokesman Joe Hockey and others.  Why not just quote Joh-ros and say “Don’t you worry about that” and be done with it?

“… he also now believed the Coalition’s $3.2 billion policy would achieve even more abatement to meet Australia’s 2020 emissions reduction target of 5 per cent through activities like revegetation.  This is despite doubts from some experts he claims to have relied to estimate potential abatement.”

Because, believe it or not, the Coalition is actually committed to the same emissions reduction target that Labor is committed to.  So he needs to find a policy that can achieve something, and for less than the Carbon Price.  Otherwise it’s either a fairly ineffective policy, or a fairly expensive policy for what it does, and someone will be revealed as having no clothes (or at least revealed to have only ever had on a pair of speedos).  For those who are interested, the Grattan Institute has estimated the cost at up to $100 billion.
But worry not about the cost, because:

“Of the estimated abatement from the fund, more than 50 per cent (85 million tonnes) is from increased soil carbon.

Mr Hunt said the estimate of potential abatement was based on “real world” estimates from a range of sources, including the Energy Efficiency Council* …He also highlighted a paper by CSIRO scientist Michael Battagalia on the potential of soil carbon to achieve emissions reduction.

“It talks about a 20 per cent reduction in Australia’s emissions per annum on a conservative basis for at least the next 40 years,” Mr Hunt said.  “I think that has not been given the importance it deserves.”

But Dr Battaglia … told the AFR that while soil carbon had potential it was not proven how bit that contribution would be to emissions reduction.  He said the 20 per cent figure could be achieved after 40 years.

Our assessment is between now and 2020, even with a concerted effort, we could achieve a 5 per cent reduction only with the top end of the range of estimates and a whole range of economic and social considerations such as trade-offs with other land uses, commodity prices,” Dr Battaglia said.

Energy Efficiency Council chief executive also distanced his organisations from the estimates cited by the Coalition.

“Right now it’s unclear if the Coalition’s direction action plan will deliver much energy efficiency””

Dalek is always surprised when the Libs site the CSIRO, given how they have attempted to pwn the organization ever since they embraced the non-science leadership of the followers of Dr Pell.  This sort of selective usage could lead to trouble for Greg Hunt, who did after all do his Honors (sic) thesis in Carbon Trading and has had to do his best since to avoid modification.  This may explain his confusion of the word “conservative” with optimistic projections that would have made Bob Brown double-check the figures.

Dalek’s recommendation in future is to make sure you cite eminent scientists from the select Universities of Climate Denial (which must surely exist somewhere and are willing to say anything for the promise of a research grant), or Policy organisations run by failed Liberal staffers.  Failing that, the mutants and I are sticking to science.  But we’re genetically programmed that way…

The long closed White Bay Power Station was open this weekend, bringing every amateur photographer in Sydney out in droves. Previously I had photographed it from the outside, but the fence of barbed wire made it clear that the authorities weren't going to let us in to have a look around. In the 21st Century things considered dangerous such as a wall or a door are secured from all view, especially when the bureaucracy can't actually make up their mind what they want to do with it.

So it appears they have made up their mind about one thing, it's not to be demolished. As an icon of Sydney's history, it is nearly as attractive as Cockatoo Island (which is much bigger, more historic and scenic, and definitely worth the day trip if you have the chance) but it's location at the end of the Pyrmont Anzac Bridge just before Balmain makes it much more accessible. The Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority which is in charge of the Power Station may well allow more tours in the future, and hopefully they will allow longer stays, and there might be more room than the presence of several hundred photographers allows.

The Power Station has several different areas you can look at - The Turbine Hall (and Pump House) which had restricted entry, the Boiler House, the Ash Handling Tower, the Coal Handling Shed, an Entertainment Hall off Victoria Road, and the Admin Building next to it.

The queue for the Turbine Hall stayed continuously long during the day, and they let us through in parties of about 30 for 15 minutes. This entailed a climb up some fairly insecure stairs to the top level, and we were able to look down on the machinery that was still in the hall, and the areas where it had been (now unfortunately empty since the Turbines had been sold for scrap).

The Pump House off to the right had some lovely shadows and machinery still intact, but as most of the machinery had been removed I found it less than satisfying, so at the end of the 15 minute tour went to the Boiler House which had a broader range of machinery, and less time pressures. I estimate there was at least one photographer per square metre. Clearly a pent-up demand was being met.

The outside of the Boiler Hall presented a lovely vista up to Victoria Road, and some of the wonderful chimneys which you can see whenever you drive past. The amount of coal smoke that must have come out of these and polluted Sydney and Balmain must have been immense. At its peak it was generating over 100 MW of electricity, and powering industry in the area as well as trams, trains and housing.

While I have tried to show some of the more scenic pictures, part of the fun of these old industrial places (Alcatraz being my other favourite) is photographing the rusting old machinery. My set of flickr slides shows some lovely abstract textures and another flickr contact also has some wonderful photos.

Hopefully this wonderful power station will be open again to us more often than once a decade.

Other Peoples Programs

Programmers have always had a hard time with OPP. Its never the way you want it, and there is this primal urge to rewrite. And yet of course most programs in the world work, do what their programmers wrote them to do, and will work better if left alone than if rewritten.

But there's always the exception, which I've battled all this week. If a program is so badly written that you can't use it, what use is it? Will rewriting fix it. My program de jour was a Cheque Audit report which only shows the transactions that it likes, not the transactions it thinks are wrong.

This is the problem with SQL in some ways. Its great to be able to join 7 different tables together and toss in some neat critiera and get back piles and piles of data, but I think its a bit wierd to put that into a curosr and then omit entries you really don't want. Because the join also implicitly rejects anything that isn't part of the join. So if you don't see a record, is it because it wasn't in the driving SQL or at the rejection point?

So I gave up in the end and left the program alone. I've written an audit report which audits the data underlying the report on the assumption that when the data is wrong the original report doesn't work, but when it's right it's fine. We'll see.

10 Reasons why Civilisation IV sucks.


10. Can't chance your galleys in the ocean.

9. It requires more CPU and memory than Pirates did. Its bigger, its bolder, and its slower - do they think we are we all users who buy the latest PC every time there is a new release of Doom?

8. Dialog boxes won't accept Enter to get out. You have to mouse to Ok and press it.

7. Map is hard to read. Very pretty, but not as iconic as Civ III.

6. Can't tell units apart. They used to wear uniforms and appear in one colour. Now they carry a flag. A bit like trying to identify the players on a football field.

5. Can't climb mountains. Where are the Von Trapps when you need them?

4. You don't get told you've got civil disorder. You just see a pile of smoke.

3. Doesn't prompt for the latest Wonders that you can build, just the Wonder it thinks you can build. You're then out of pocket when you discover someone else has built it 3 turns later and you could have been building something better.

2. Arbitrarily zooms in and out.

1. It doesn't matter what I do, I still can't beat Bob in PBEM.