Semester one......OVER!!!!!

Three icy cold days with winds like I've never seen in Brisbane preceded my final two exams. Daily treks to the UQ Library were made to allow me to focus on nothing but Asia Pacific Development and Microeconomic Analysis. Each day I would return home, unable to focus my eyes properly on any luminescent object after hours of reading and writing. Never did I think it would be possible that I could spend that amount of time seated, concentrating on a topic which, although essential to the bigger picture - was not all that riveting. There must have been something else in my mind that did keep me riveted to my seat - possibly the pressure I've put on myself to perform after a very laid back and cruisy undergraduate life.

Less than 24 hours ago I was sitting at the main refec at Uni doing some last minute revising - (thought bubble) - "individual rationality constraint is setting the expected utility, based on probable outcomes due to a high effort induced under contract, equal to the utility from the second best alternative. Incentive compatibility constraint is setting the aforementioned expected utility equal to the expected utility based on probable outcomes under low effort despite contract designed to induce high effort. Substitute IR in IC constraints to solve for the wage level required to induce high effort, thereby avoiding moral hazard". Not rocket science, but with enough of these little rules and equations to remember it was going to be a tricky exam. A hot chocolate later and I was away. Difficulties due to the ambiguity that lecturers like to throw into questions was my main problem - the above formula being the most heavily weighted question with the relevant information being, as mentioned, ambiguous.

So I staggered out of that exam at 8pm, only to find a parking ticket on the car (I noticed it flapping at me as I drove home - half hoping it would fly off the windscreen to be forgotten about until a reminder notice arrived). After shoving some sausage and mashed potato into my hungry belly I collapsed in front of a very interesting documentary about Pamela Churchill (daughter in law of Sir Winston) - obviously delirious, I decided to get into bed to prepare for my next exam (8am the following morning). Twenty minutes of revising my notes somehow turned into a deep slumber and I must have groggily turned the light off during the night. Luckily I had already set my alarm in case of such turns of unconsciousness.

Six am arrived just, it seemed, as the bed was warming up and the pillows got softer. I use the same phone alarm that I first used on those cold London morning (dididididududududededede bzzzz bzzzz BIP! BIP! you remember that one Lucas!). So I dragged myself into the shower, had some excellently cooked eggs on toast then warmed my innards with a large strong black coffee. Hopped into the car and headed to uni just as the sun (as last!) was hitting the tops of the sandstone buildings. I sat in the car for a quarter of an hour re-reading my notes - (thought bubble again) - South Korea used these policies....Taiwan used these....India used these.....a developmental state is this.......democracy is not good for a developing country, benevolent autocracies like those in the Asian Tigers is the secret to ignoring self interested lobby groups and having a successful economy. Confucianism is cool. etc etc.

I checked the coins in my pocket (so as to avoid another parking ticket) and jumped out the car to buy my ticket for a couple of hours of parking. As I was closing the door I simultaneously noticed the keys in the ignition and the fact that the door was locked. I tried to catch the door, but too late - it just clicked closed before I could stop it. My immediate instinct was to throw my gloved (due to the cold) fist through the window and retrieve the keys. If it was just my car I wouldn't have hesitated in doing so - but I knew Heather would think punching a hole in her car window to be a little brash.

Now I'm not usually a coffee drinker, so after a big black coffee my nerves were jangling and it seemed like my blood was trembling with nervous energy and now adrenalin. Twenty minutes before the exam begins, no pen, no photo ID. I ring Gini from the nearest phone (the gym). She packs me a pencil case and Scott does two trips to bring me the pencil case and my passport just as I headed into the exam. Suddenly realising that I never bought the parking ticket - I rush back down to the car park and buy a ticket with the coins in my pocket - stick it under the windscreen wiper and dash back up the hill to my exam room.

Heart pounding from the exercise, adrenaline and caffeine, I sit down at my allotted desk just as the time begins. I empty my brain out onto paper, scribbling furiously for the whole two hours, hand cramping and almost wetting myself (caffeine being a diuretic). The exam ends. I leave, no euphoria yet - still high from the caffeine I power walk up the steep hill to get home, and take the Honda and a coat hanger back down to Uni.

Five minutes later I feel like a dangerous criminal as I use a coat hanger for the first time to unlock a car door. I go home, I eat, I go to the gym, I go home, I garden furiously for three hours, I have a shower, I eat, I sit down at the computer - I don't think the caffeine has worn off yet. I hope I sleep tonight.

Darfur

It was always going to happen (a blog about Darfur).

The question is, do I really need to point out the hypocrisy, ignorance and racist nationalism that is prolonging the worst humanitarian crisis of our time?

400,000 Sudanese have died during the government sponsored ethnic cleansing of the Darfur region in West Sudan. The international community has tremendous power to intervene and prevent the continued slaughter of civilians. But they choose not to. UN resolutions have been pushed through by the US and Britain, but China blocks further action and the Sudanese government resists efforts to allow a UN peacekeeping force into the country.

Where is brave George Bush and his War on Terror now? Isn't genocide even worse than terrorism? It seems the Sudan government has too much oil it wants to sell to the West (as opposed to the cantankerous Arab nationalist Saddam) and no threat of WMDs. If ever there was ANOTHER reason to pull troops out of Iraq, it is to move them into Sudan where military presence is needed.

But you know what the problem is? That kind of action isn't in the national interest of the US or Australia. It wouldn't be strategic to do the right thing because it is the right thing.

On average 21 civilians are murdered every day, almost a Virginia Tech or Port Arthur every day, in the same region. Why does everyone keep ignoring it?

Here's a question to test how racist and nationalistic you are. Hypothetically, how many Americans or Australians would you have allowed to die in order to prevent all 400,000 deaths in Darfur? Not even considering the rapes, stolen children and displaced people. Would you allow 200,000 Australians to die? Not even half the total death toll in Darfur? Effectively valuing a Sudanese person as half that of an Australian? Most people wouldn't even go that far, 200,000 Australians is way too much they think. How about as a proportion of the country's population? Sudan has roughly 36 million people, which as a proportion would mean that 226,000 Aussies would have died, would you make this trade?

Okay, to appeal to the most heartless and money hungry of you - how about if we made a trade per dollar value of each person? Using a measure of income distribution and per capita income I estimated that those 400,000 dead in Darfur have the same wealth as the poorest 12,000 people in Australia. Would you make that trade? Twelve thousand dead Australians, it seems large doesn't it - but in the place of 400,000 Sudanese it is nothing. If you still consider that 12,000 dead Australians/Canadians/Americans/British is too much then you are a filthy racist and you don't deserve to breathe the air on this planet.

The God's Must be Crazy

It was the funniest movie I had ever seen when I was little boy. And it was on midday TV the other day. Primarily slapstick there was some more subtle humour in it that would have eluded me at 10 years old. Two things stood out to me the most though.

First, the low-level of technology used in shooting it somehow added something realistic to it - less movie-like and more documentary-like. But the camera work and the shots taken was remarkable, I don't think I've ever been as amazed at the African landscape as I was at some of the footage in this movie (set in Botswana), it really was like nothing I had ever seen and was so beautiful. The African people also, filmed probably more than 20 years ago, before the ravages of AIDS had truly taken hold, seemed so much more real than any other African based film I've seen. It was inspiring dreams of travel there - which Lucas and Farah will be doing soon (and climbing Kilimanjaro!!! ah I'm so jealous).

The second feature that struck me was the story of the little Kalahari bushman. Again a subtlety lost on the younger me. His gentleness, his affinity with nature, indeed his dependence upon nature to sustain his spirit. It made me feel so separated and out of touch with the truest and most beautiful thing on the planet - nature. The importance of doing everything we can to conserve it goes without saying, that much should be obvious to the most ignorant of troglodytes. But I would love to go a step further - perhaps explaining my latent desire to be a self-sufficient farmer. Really being part of nature, understanding the intricacies of the animals, the microbes, the plants, the clouds, the turn of seasons - co-existing rather than dominating and reaping surpluses from the land. That is my dream.

I think humankind has gone too far down the path of individual comfort and leisure to be able to backtrack and choose a path of harmony. I suggest that as human consciousness becomes further enlightened we will move towards that ideal, not all the way - but closer is better.

That is my microeconomics study break. Back to it. SWATVAC at the moment (STUVAC, for NSW people).