The decline of generosity:

Katherine Stuart writes: Re. “Daniel Petre: the decline of generosity” (yesterday, item 2). I finally attended a high school reunion a couple of weeks ago. There had been others, but for once I wasn’t on the other side of the world and I was curious. I made plans for a quick getaway, just in case. I hadn’t kept in contact with anyone from my high school, in a country town in northern New South Wales whose main claim to fame is an annual festival of the flowering of an imported South American species of tree. At 18 I couldn’t wait to get away from the place — and my classmates.

So I was astounded to be suddenly surrounded by recognizable faces I’d known since early childhood in most cases, and to find that they had grown up into solid citizens with families, jobs, grandchildren — all contributing very positively in a variety of ways to their communities through their work or in other roles. Sadly eight were dead, and about 80% were happily settled in their second or third marriages/relationships, the remainder in their first marriages. Towards the end of the evening we danced to music from the 70s in a ring, with each of us taking turns to shine at its centre, cheered on by the others. It was all very “tribal”.

The following day those of us who could stayed for a barbecue lunch at the home of a guy who’d been happily married to the same local girl for close to 30 years. We reminisced about how we’d experienced each other and our teachers. We spoke frankly from the heart, and remarked on how fantastic it was to be able to meet like this and talk so openly about our lives. Because we’d spent so many years together, we knew each other inside out. When we had to leave, we hugged and kissed each other like extended family. We’ll be doing it all again in two years.

Daniel Petrie’s article decries the decline in generosity, our increasing self absorption and lack of connection with community. But I would argue that he is going the wrong way about trying to do something about it with his list of externalized conditions.

Community is a life-long learning process, starting vitally with the groups of contemporaries that we become part of by default in our schools. In Sweden where I lived for many years, as far as possible school classes even keep the same teacher through grades 1 to 6, and frequent reunions of those classes are commonplace. Groups in general are vital to the way Sweden functions — socially, politically and economically. Reconnection with our early groupings can be a vital way of rekindling our community/generosity bones, mainly because they remind us of who we actually are. Community, like charity, needs to start with you.

I would argue that in fact we are not sufficiently focused on our own needs, but all too willing to let some external party determine what we want or need — shock-jocks on the radio, large corporations, advertisers — when we should be demanding more in.

Dave Eccles writes: Seriously have you guys been on the Christmas turps a little early? I stopped donating to all NGOs that used paid organisations like “The Cornucopia Consultancy” a couple of years ago and Petre’s Marxist/Leninist crap in yesterday’s email is authored by a guy who runs an organisation — Netus — financially backed by News Ltd and who previously worked for PBL!

I find it abhorrent enough that organisations like Cornucopia who land the sponsorship on behalf of the NGO get to keep the first 12 months of donations. Yes I’m talking about Oxfam, yes I’m talking about Amnesty International, yes I’m talking about The Australian Red Cross. So this piece is really about a pot calling the kettle black.

From Netus website: “We [Netus]  are uniquely placed to do this, through the combination of our team’s strong track record in establishing successful technology businesses in this market, and the financial backing of News Ltd.”

What’s next an open letter from John Howard on reviving Student Unions? This isn’t a big idea, it’s a big stinky turd of a piece.

The Royal Engagement diversion:

Nic Maclellan writes: Re. “Rundle: from Di’s dead hand, a ring for commoners everywhere” (Wednesday, item 3). Guy Rundle, like other journalists who write wry republican commentaries on Prince Will’s engagement, should take the next step — have a look at what reports are released on the day of the announcement, to bury them in the media hubbub about a royal wedding.

In the UK, it was the report from the Redfern Inquiry, where since 2007 a UK barrister has been investigating the removal of organs from deceased nuclear industry workers for use in medical research between 1962 and 1991.

The inquiry was established in 2007 “into the circumstances surrounding the analysis of human tissue by UK Nuclear Organisations and establish whether or not these analyses were carried out following the correct and proper procedures and whether the data obtained was used appropriately and with the necessary consents.”

In addition to organs taken from Sellafield workers, organs from 12 staff at other nuclear sites at Springfields, Capenhurst, Dounreay and Aldermaston were also analysed at, or at the request of, Sellafield. The liver was removed in all cases and one or both lungs in all but one. Vertebrae, sternums, ribs, lymph nodes, spleens, kidneys and femurs were also stripped in the majority of cases. Brains, tongues, hearts and testes were also taken on the advice of the medical officer at Sellafield.

The inquiry finds that “families’ views about organ retention were not always sought, and that very few families knew that organs were taken”. The report notes that British pathologists were “profoundly ignorant of the law” for ethical lapses in scores of research projects.

Sport and anti-siphoning:

Lawrie Colliver writes: Re. “Sorry, but anti-siphoning isn’t new paradigm-friendly” (yesterday, item 1). As a sports fan, I am getting sick and tired of the Free to Air stations carrying on about the threat of Pay TV.  The FTV’s hoard rights, don’t show important events live and worse, make out they are showing stuff live and actually lie to their audience.

Examples include:

  • Missing Darren Gough’s hat-trick in 1999 at the SCG Ashes Test because the 6pm News was more important (which still happens)
  • Showing Day Night One Day Internationals played on the east coast on THREE HOUR DELAY in Perth (surely taking the piss but its true)
  • Not showing several Lleyton Hewitt Wimbledon matches LIVE (and not allowing FOX to) because the Footy Show is more important on a Thursday night
  • Abandoning an important US Open Tennis match at 6am, involving Mark Philippoussis (score was 3-all in first set) so the Today Show can go on and again not allowing Pay TV to show it Ten
  • One HD having the rights to the recent Ryder Cup and showing the same Commonwealth Games vision on Ten, Ten Digital, One HD and One HD Digital when surely one of the four channels could have gone to the Golf live
  • And to top it off, Friday night AFL on 90 minute delays in AFL states (SA VIC) when FOX subscribers in NSW, QLD and ACT can watch it live on Channel 513 No wonder people are turning to dodgy Internet sites to pick up the slack…

I could go on with this rant but won’t. It’s time for either digital channels to be able to show stuff live, when the main FTV’s need to bail for news or for Pay to pick up what isn’t shown live. Let’s hope Senator Conroy has some idea about what sports fans have to put up with and makes the necessary changes.

Gay marriage:

Cameron Bray writes: Re. Ken Lambert (yesterday, comments). The argument that gay marriage “subverts” heterosexual marriage would be too ludicrous to contemplate if it wasn’t a tiresome old saw regularly trotted out by those shoring up the dyke of “traditional marriage”.*

Marriage is a personal commitment by two people to each other. If that bond can be demeaned, let alone undermined, by giving other people — who you probably won’t ever meet — the same right, then it’s not much of a bond.

If anything subverts heterosexual marriage, it isn’t gay marriage — you’re if you’re not gay you won’t ever need one — it’s no-fault divorce. The idea that marriage isn’t forever, isn’t binding and can be ended by mutual agreement, that is what undermines marriage — as the divorce statistics annually demonstrate.

If the anti-gay marriage push had the real courage of their stated convictions — if Christian, traditional, procreative, death-do-us-part, god-witnessed matrimony really needed protecting — then they would pursue reform of the Family Law Act. But they’re not, so it isn’t about that. It’s just good, old-fashioned “what they do in their own homes is one thing (and it’s disgusting) but do they have to rub our noses in it” homophobia.

*Pun intended. Sorry.

American housing crisis:

Niall Clugston writes: Re. “Gottliebsen: a damaging flood of US money” (yesterday, item 20). Robert Gottliebsen suggests the USA needs “something like a home buyer’s grant or some other mechanism to get Americans to borrow money to buy houses and lift prices”. This might work, though an increase in credit seems like a hair of the dog cure.

I think a better remedy, and one cheaper for the American taxpayer, would be a moratorium on mortgage foreclosures.

Obviously this would help struggling families and bolster the parts of the economy based on mass consumption. But it would also benefit the banks. Foreclosing on a mortgage which has “negative equity” is not a good option for a bank: it is just the least worst.  The bank can’t recover its principal and will struggle to sell the house at any price, particularly if it is in a newly developed ghost town. A moratorium would convert a bad debt into a frozen asset that could be thawed out by government edict when the crisis passes. It would prevent evictions, end the glut of empty houses, and end the downward spiral of prices.

So will Barack Obama do it? No, of course not. He is a conservative lame duck, scared of being seen as leftwing. And he’s right. Americans will not stomach any dilution of their precious principle of private property, and therefore are condemned to be sucked deeper and deeper into the vortex.

Cholesterol:

Geoff Russell writes: Ella Vayted Lavelle (yesterday, comments), maybe you were lucky in finding a consultant who said you were fine. Maybe not. People with “normal” cholesterol levels have heart attacks everyday of the week.  What is certain is that normal advice on how to reduce cholesterol with diet and exercise is almost guaranteed to make only small differences.

If you want a cholesterol level that makes a heart attack a virtual impossibility, then much bigger (and more pleasurable) changes are required. Check the following scientific
paper.

Open the full paper and look at the picture on the third page … huge changes in which of your genes are on and off, and these changes are made by diet and exercise.
The diet used in this research is pretty much a vegan diet, it turns a bunch of cancer promoting genes off and turns a bunch of cancer fighting genes on. This kind of diet can also “flush out” arteries over a period of a couple of years.

Elizabeth Blackburn (remember the Aussie who got a Nobel in 2009) works with this group of researchers also.