Sunday, 11th of March, 2007

Genius, I tell you.
via Talking Squid – thanks Chris!

Saturday, 10th of March, 2007

Find out what political party your views are closest to, and where you sit on the political spectrum.
You can take the test here. It’s quite worthwhile because, a bit like the Political Compass people, they acknowledge that “left” and “right” mean different things whether you take them economically, socially or indeed in terms of what they call “traditional values”.

My results are here
Not surprisingly, I identified myself as far left and a Greens supporter, and that’s what I am. I’m not as far left as I might have though, but I felt that as I was answering, choosing to go with Agree rather than Strongly Agree with a number of statements where I felt I’d prefer a more tempered position than the one stated. I’m sure if I did again tomorrow I’d get a slightly different result, and it’s worth noting that the test is in “beta testing”, so once they tweak the questions a bit more, I may end up a bit further along to the left than I did (and I think I probably do belong even further left).

This is interesting though: the cumulative results and analysis page. As of writing this post, the distribution of people’s self-perceived preferred political parties was:
34% ALP, 23% Libs, 22% Greens, 13% Dems, and the others.
However, according to the test results, the distribution should be more like:
29% Greens, 26% Dems, 12% Libs, 11% ALP, etc.
On the one hand, this may show a certain bias in the building of the test, but on the other hand I think it also shows that a lot of people are probably considerably more aligned with the Greens than they might think…

Tuesday, 6th of March, 2007

So the Independent Australian Jewish Voices website was launched a few days ago. I signed up, as did the rest of my family, as we’ve been quite disturbed by the one-sidedness of “Jewish” representation in the media for some time.
Any readers of my blog will know that I’m neither anti-Israel nor a “self-hating Jew” or something, but I am by no means happy about all of Israel’s actions on the world stage. And the trouble is that it’s by no means obvious to the world at large that the Jewish community has multifarious voices (indeed, in Israel itself there is constant vigorous debate, but who would know, from an outsider’s perspective?). Unfortunately when anyone, Jewish or not, criticises Israel in any way — however balance — there is a predictable and immediate uproar from certain prominent sectors of the Jewish community, usually purporting to represent Jewishness, Jews as a whole.

Cue the IAJW launch. The reactions chronicled in this SMH article couldn’t be a better advertisement for why “independent” voices are needed from the Jewish community — and not just those of Antony Lowenstein, who is a signatory but by no means the only voice on offer. Let’s hear the statement from good old Colin Rubenstein of the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council, always good for an over-the-top quote:

“Some of the individuals are clearly committed to the delegitimisation of Israel,” said Colin Rubenstein, the executive director of the council.

“They’re simply using their Jewish ethnic background. It is clearly a small number of Jewish-born individuals who make their Jewishness known while they are being critical of Israel,” Mr Rubenstein said.

Hear that? “Jewish-born individuals”, what the frak? Somehow I thought that since the Holocaust, all Jewish-born individuals were Jews, all ethnic Jews were Jews. I guess I was being naïve huh? Clearly anyone who wants open discussion of Israel and the Middle East is no longer fit to call themself a Jew.
How disgusting.

Sunday, 4th of March, 2007

…and back to linklogging again. Just a link to a very thoughtful article by Vancouver philosopher Stan Persky on Dawkins’ The God Delusion, which makes some good points in its favour against its critics on the more-or-less atheistic side of the fence. Persky admits that the book could have been better, but that it probably does a good enough job for now, in the context that it’s not meant to be an all-encompassing piece of philosophy or theology — it’s meant to be a middle-brow polemic aimed at giving believers a way out. It’s consciousness-raising, as Dawkins puts it.
A remarkable number of the reviewers of The God Delusion, as with Dennett’s Breaking the Spell before it, simply have not read the book. Which is kinda funny, and kinda sad… (and of course completely unsurprising).

Thursday, 1st of March, 2007

Barry Jones on why “It’s not too late to save the political process”.
Let’s hope he’s right. If Labor gets in at the next federal election (let’s hope so!) then they’ll need to be held up to as much scrutiny as the Libs ought to be being held up to now.