Modest expectations – Three hundred and four thousand four hundred and eighty

COVID-19 comes to all. I thought I had some idea where I picked it up. I have limited contact with people, because my disability makes it difficult moving around, especially when there are steps. Until you are disabled, you do not realise how difficult it is to avoid them; the world is not a level field.

The virus is harassing my upper respiratory system, and it has been a challenge to dislodge the tenacious phlegm. The whole picture is that of congested misery.

On Wednesday last, we drove from Swan Hill to Albury, a distance of about 400 kilometres. Lunch was a Cornish pasty and coffee in the shade of pepper trees in Wycheproof.

By the time we arrived in Albury, I had developed a cough, and initially my RAT was negative; but next day it was positive.  The inevitable march of the Virus through the house had commenced.  By the weekend, we were all RAT positive. For us, it was inconvenient to say the least to be away from home, but at least we were isolating ourselves.

I was prescribed Lagevrio (molnupiravir). Paxlovid (nirmatrelvir/ ritonavir), the other antiviral drug, was contraindicated.

Of course, there are no controls to confirm whether Lagevrio had any effect, but now with the cocktail of vaccines and anti-viral capsules, I seem to be holding my own. I have just taken my last four capsules. The congestion has much improved, but is still lingering.

In Albury there has been a supply shortage of antivirals. For a time early in the week Albury may have been in danger of running out of the antiviral drugs if promised deliveries didn’t eventuate. Familiar? Here we go again. Governments blithely change the conditions for availability without determining whether there is a sufficient supply. It is a nightmare, when we – like so many others – are confined to home and depend on the drugs being delivered.

I remember my last tussle with the flu about five years ago. That lasted six weeks with a residual cough for months afterwards., I could see the long dark corridor where there are no open doors and no light at the end.

The pandemic has persisted. Public health measures are now a matter of choice in regard to responsibility. No longer any of those public measures – such as contact tracing, hand washing, masks, social distancing observed. They work, but just as our forefathers did not throw away their weapons because WW11 persisted for more than two years, there is no reason why we could not have adapted if we had had anywhere decent leadership, beyond shutting borders.

Quarantine facilities have been built at great cost, but it seems nobody has thought how to use them. This is very ironic given the decades long experience of confining boat people. Having experienced a period of being in lockdown without any ability to go out, these facilities present the opportunity to enable that group of people to have a shelter until the infective status changes.

It is amazing to see how technology, through the manufacture of new vaccines, anti-virals and diagnostic tests, even down to improved masks, has occurred.

But such improvement in the efficiencies of social practices has lagged, and we all should share the blame, not just Dr Murphy. Nevertheless, it was a time when, except for brief flashes of government accepting responsibility and not blaming everybody else, our social structures have been found lacking. The pandemic still rages; thank God for the scientists and technologists who have provided some weapons, but the virus is far from unconditional surrender.

By the way, a week after testing positive, I am still positive, albeit weakly.

Can you believe these remnants of the Dark Ages!

When I was a first-year medical graduate working at a suburban hospital, one of my earliest memories was coming out of one of the emergency bays on my way to the next when I looked up. At the end of the corridor of flapping curtains against the emergency department wall was a trolley. On the trolley was a young woman who had apparently just been wheeled in and was waiting for a bay in which she could be seen. She was very pale, very grey; she looked very sick, even from where I was standing.

Immediately, I remembered I had seen her in the emergency department the previous day.  She was complaining of a vague lower abdominal pain.

She said she was not pregnant, but she did have some tenderness in the left fornix. She was unmarried; and it was a time when if you were unmarried and under the age of 21, there was a mixture of denial, stigma in her history, and yesterday she had not looked unwell, certainly not as she was now.

I could suspend belief or rationalise why I had missed the diagnosis, so obvious as I looked at her with that grey pallor of impending disaster.

In those days, when you graduated you were considered fully fledged. That was it. Your training wheels had been removed. You could practice unsupervised after you had been through six years of undergraduate education.  I had stuffed up. Looking at her lying on a trolley I knew that I had missed an ectopic pregnancy. I had stuffed up.

I moved with the speed of a penitent, and I immediately ordered that she be taken to the operating theatre. The senior obstetrics resident was alerted and in turn the general practitioner obstetrician. The operation to remove the ectopic pregnancy was successful. Nobody stood around, arguing her clinical diagnosis. They just saved her life; no problem.

I learnt a lesson that day; and my peers were forgiving. It just confirmed  that if you stuff up, admit it and learn; then recriminations are somewhat superfluous. There was none of the huge panoply of undertaking root cause analysis or any of the fancy names designed by bureaucrats to define the scapegoat , the sacrificial offering to protect the system from the predations of legal jackaldom.

Where am I leading? Ectopic pregnancy requires termination for the health of the mother. The embryo is developing outside the uterus, and undiagnosed or untreated will eventually cause a catastrophic haemorrhage and maternal death.

When I was a young doctor, chemical treatment of ectopic pregnancy did not exist. The drug methotrexate was introduced to destroy the ectopic pregnancy. Methotrexate can kill a wide and diverse number of targets, including the ectopic embryo. Usually given in a single injection, methotrexate has a cytotoxic effect on the trophoblastic tissue – the cells that enable the embryo to stick in normal circumstances to the uterine wall.

Methotrexate treatment of ectopic pregnancies is considered safe, effective and cheap, with no major side effects. Intramuscular methotrexate has the advantage of tubal conservation and saves patients from requiring surgery. It is easier to administer than intraoperative route, which these days is laparoscopic and hence needs expertise.

Now what is happening in the Redneck States of the America?

In addition to surgical abortions, anti-abortion laws in some states such as Texas have also banned several drugs that can be used for inducing abortions. Among the medicines banned under these laws include drugs such as methotrexate, mifespristone, and misoprostol. Besides inducing abortion, these medications are also used for the treatment of other conditions.

Moreover, these laws allow the state to prosecute health care prescribers and pharmacists for dispensing such abortion-inducing medications.

Recent reports suggest that the reversal of abortion rights has also indirectly impacted women who use these medications for conditions other than for a medication abortion.

Although States such as Texas have banned these medications for terminating pregnancies, the laws permit the use of these drugs for miscarriages and ectopic pregnancies.

However, the fear of penalties, including being criminally charged, has resulted in some pharmacists refusing to dispense these drugs for the above.

In addition to ectopic pregnancies, methotrexate can suppress the activity of the immune system and is used in the treatment of autoimmune conditions, including rheumatoid arthritis, scleroderma, and lupus. Methotrexate is also used for the treatment of inflammatory bowel disease and a variety of cancers, including breast cancer, lymphoma, leukemia and lung cancer. Depending on the nature and severity of the disease, the dosage required varies; for a period I was prescribed the drug but in a far lower dose than required for neoplasia – or ectopic pregnancy for that matter.

Nevertheless, in these anti-abortion States , believe it or not, there are reports of disrupted access to methotrexate for patients with autoimmune disorders. Some rheumatologists have stopped renewing prescriptions for methotrexate, and moreover pharmacists are refusing to dispense.

Paradoxically, methotrexate can cause birth defects.

This has had a knock-on effect. The risk of birth defects and the lack of access to abortions have made rheumatologists wary of prescribing methotrexate to women of childbearing age with these concurrent diseases. As one source has said: “Frankly, methotrexate is one of my go-to medications for any number of diseases, including rheumatoid arthritis, psoriatic arthritis, systemic lupus erythematosus, myositis, and systemic sclerosis. I expect that some rheumatologists will understandably worry about prescribing methotrexate to patients because if the patient inadvertently became pregnant, the foetus has now been exposed to this medication. This is really worrisome as methotrexate is a very effective medication that we rely on to treat a number of debilitating and serious autoimmune diseases.

Indeed.

Justice John Roberts

Now America has John Roberts as the de facto Surgeon-General. He presides over a Supreme Court which could be reasonably considered is now the legal equivalent of the untreated ectopic pregnancy – eventually if left alone it will all end up in tears – however you pronounce it.

America remains untreated. We await the death of this motherland in the eventual haemorrhage of a Constitution constructed when the population had a median life expectancy of 35 years.

Eventually, the blood of all is shed. See, your gloves, Chief Justice Roberts, are smothered in the blood of your country, shed for no-one but the hubris of your colleagues.

The Unsinkable Molly White

Anissa Gardizy a 35 year old reporter on the Boston Globe. Her short biography states that Anissa Gardizy is a general assignment business reporter. She graduated from Emerson College with a B.S. in journalism and took economics classes at Framingham State University. Prior to joining the Globe full-time, Anissa was a co-op on the business desk, and she held internships at the Telegram & Gazette in Worcester and The Information in San Francisco. 

Below is her recent profile of Molly White, who had to take time out because of her robust criticism of cryptocurrency. She has been verbally attacked; which probably means she has obviously come too close to the festering centre of cryptocurrency activity.

Ms Gadizy writes:

Depending on whom you ask, cryptocurrency is either digital snake oil or revolutionary technology. Crypto markets have plunged in recent weeks and everyone is looking for answers.

So it makes sense that a website dedicated to documenting mishaps, failures, and scams in the industry is suddenly taking off. And who’s behind it? Molly White, a 29-year-old Wikipedia enthusiast and former HubSpot employee who has emerged as one of the industry’s most pointed critics.

How the 2016 Northeastern University graduate, who lives in the Boston area, came to be one of the most listened-to people on crypto and blockchain tech is complicated. But it started in the past year, when the field became impossible to ignore.

The price of bitcoin surged to an all-time-high of nearly $70,000 in November. Ads for crypto companies were featured during the Super Bowl. Celebrities changed their Twitter profile pictures to non-fungible tokens, or NFTs. Some of White’s friends began quitting their traditional tech jobs to work for crypto firms.

White, a longtime Wikipedia editor on the side, started to research the technology. But the more she learned, the more she realized crypto was being marketed as something everyone should be getting into, despite a history rife with fraud, scams, and predatory marketing.

“[I was] seeing people get screwed over again and again and again,” White said. “There wasn’t a permanent record of what was actually happening and how poorly a lot of these projects were ending.”

Her first instinct was to start writing Wikipedia articles about crypto and the related field of web3.” But she quickly realized Wikipedia wouldn’t be the best place for her work — among other things, it would have required her to take a neutral approach.

“I have a pretty strong opinion,” she said.

Software engineer Molly White at work on her laptop

So late last year, while working full-time at HubSpot, White created a website called “Web3 is Going Just Great”. (The name is as sarcastic as it sounds, with the longer version ending with “…and is definitely not an enormous grift that’s pouring lighter fluid on our already smouldering planet.”) On the site, she chronicles  sometimes several times a day — bad things happening in crypto.

“There’s a narrative that’s become so loud and pervasive, that everyone should be getting involved in this,” she said. “It feels like I have this obligation to speak out about it.”

And others are listening.

She is regularly quoted by national news outlets, was a guest lecturer at Stanford University, and has advised US senators, including Senator Elizabeth Warren, on blockchain and cryptocurrency.

As White has learned over the past year, criticizing crypto isn’t easy. In a space known for unwavering optimism and “bro culture,” she’s the outspoken opponent pointing out its problems.

White has been the victim of online harassment, doxxing (when private information is revealed about someone), and threats of violence. As a result, she doesn’t share much identifying information about her family or where she lives.

White, who grew up in Maine, started editing on Wikipedia around the time she was 13. “My family knew I was doing it, and to some extent my friends knew,” she said. “It was kind of just like, ‘Oh, that’s one of Molly’s weird hobbies.’”

Though she got started writing about her favourite bands, White now focuses on controversial viewpoints and male-dominated spaces, including right-wing extremism and “involuntary celibates,” or incels. She has also served on the site’s arbitration committee, which settles its toughest disputes.

Andrew Lih, a Wikipedia veteran who has known White since she was a teen, said most editors concentrate on topics they take a personal interest in. White, he said, tackles things “she absolutely doesn’t like.”

“She wants to make sure the record has the best information,” he said.

Lih credits White’s rise to her ability to present information in a way that is digestible. On her crypto website, she writes in a terse, matter-of-fact style and uses hashtags such as #yikes, #badidea, and #hmm. She isn’t condescending or alarmist, either.

Unlike some critics, White doesn’t think all crypto is a scam. Rather, she believes there has been an explosion of “really scam-y projects” that downplay the risks. She worries crypto is being cast as a “ticket to financial freedom” to people who don’t have money to lose.

According to data published by the Federal Trade Commission, more than 46,000 people have reported losing over $1 billion in crypto to scams since the start of 2021.

Long term, White believes crypto will likely exist as a niche, speculative vehicle for high-risk takers.

Most people would agree that regulators need to address crypto scams for the industry to be viable. More controversial is White’s sceptical view of blockchain, crypto’s underlying technology, which has been hyped in recent years as a potential cure-all for problems related to Internet security, privacy, and financial systems. Blockchains are public, electronic databases that are distributed across a network of computers. The technology is intended to be immutable (meaning records can’t be modified) and decentralized (meaning data are stored across the network and not held by any central party.)

Proponents believe blockchain tech could eventually transform everything from financial systems to social media, creating a digital world where individuals have increased control over their own data. Many people refer to this blockchain-based vision as “web3.”

There’s been a proliferation of venture capitalists, startups, and politicians touting its potential, including a growing cluster in Boston. Late last month, hundreds of people attended an all-day summit on web3 on the top floor of the MIT Media Lab, put on by venture capitalist John Werner. It drew industry heavyweights, including cryptographer Stuart Haber, who co-invented the blockchain.

But White doesn’t think blockchain is revolutionary technology. Last month, she and a group of about two dozen computer scientists, researchers, and academics, signed a letter to US lawmakers to express their concerns about the field. Signatories included well-known technology figures like Harvard lecturer and cryptographer Bruce Schneier, Boston-based entrepreneur Miguel de Icaza, and software engineer Grady Booch.

“By its very design, blockchain technology is poorly suited for just about every purpose currently touted as a present or potential source of public benefit,” they wrote, calling it a “solution in search of a problem.”

White’s critics say the technology is in its early stages and will improve. But she disagrees, noting that the two most popular cryptocurrencies have been around for more than a decade. She also thinks blockchain, by design, contains inherent flaws — such as the inability to edit or delete data — that will make it difficult to use and potentially even harmful.

Greg Raiz, managing director of Techstars Boston — which just launched a crypto accelerator program with Boston-based blockchain firm Algorand — disagrees with White’s assertion that crypto is past its early days. In fact, he said it feels like “we’re still in the first inning of this game.”

While he doesn’t think blockchain will be the “solution to everything,” he isn’t writing off its potential to address social, monetary, and business problems. He added that criticism of web3 is “super healthy.”

“Any type of unbalanced exuberance toward a technology isn’t great,” Raiz said.

Sounds that he is pronouncing an “Amen” to the unsinkable Molly.

Parliamentary staffing

The first reaction to the protesters of the newly-elected backbenchers – not aligned to any particular party – to a reduction in the four advisers to one  in line with other back benchers, was that of the howls of the deprived. Really, you poor diddums – only one adviser and four electorate officers. When perceived as privileged already, complaining about the level of the porks, is one way to lose the electorate, especially before you have even placed your toe in the political water. I was surprised when Dave Pocock started the Whimper.

In 1973, the Leader of the Opposition had a Press Secretary, a Principal Private Secretary (PPS), a Deputy Private Secretary and an Assistant Private Secretary. There was one other adviser who was from the government and picked up much of those tedious jobs and fashioning questions on notice and an add on to the Parliamentary Library. Needless to say, we were all male, and the secretarial staff who did all the work were women. I was the PPS. However, the Leader of the Opposition was thus limited to four advisers, including the Press Secretary – not one backbencher.

I believe it was more important not to interfere with the electorate staffing. For senior members of any party the electorate secretary is very important to remind even the Prime Minister that he represents an electorate, even if it may be traditionally very safe. Nowadays that cannot be guaranteed. Thus, the electorate office is an important bastion. In the case of the backbencher, especially those who have gained their seat by the adroit use of social media to win the popular vote, their activity will be augmented by an electorate office, government funded. Cathy McGowan in the northern Victorian electorate of Indi is an important bellwether since she developed an electorate office system, which was shown to be transferable to her successor, Helen Haines.

Cathy McGowan

As the sociologist Max Weber observed, charismatic leadership is very dependent on the individual’s appeal, but in her case McGowan (an unlikely charismatic) was able to “bureaucratise” the electorate staff so her successor did not need to change the systemic aspects of the McGowan legacy. In other words, the model was robust enough to survive the transition from one to another strong-willed woman.

McGowan concentrated on her electorate and where she thought relevant generalised the needs to that of Australia. Maybe the fact that she came from a large cohesive family provided her with a model for an electorate office, but whatever it was, her electorate brew worked.

Developing her model from an electorate base provides a challenge for the new raft of independents, whatever their colour. She had a strong personal appeal, which translated into strong personal loyalty by her staff. She did it with a strong electorate profile, which contrasted with the dysfunctional style of her predecessor.

A backbencher needing Canberra advisers is presented with the aspirant jetsam seeking to float as a successful “factional candidate” onto a red or green parliamentary cushioned sinecure. At this pupa stage the adviser may be more akin to N’drangheta Consigliere admixed with a tincture of Undergraduate Puerilism. Policy development is not one of the skills of this Canberra hybrid. More, it is a question of hanging out, gossiping, and covering the underlying boredom of those without any constructive thought coupled with outbursts of anti-social behaviour – sexism,  drunkenness and sexual harassment.

Policy becomes a joke; so-called policy becomes exercises in plagiarism – or just the “smart-arse” taking the role of the cynic – tearing down all constructive thought on the grounds that they are protecting Absolute Truth – otherwise excused as the role of the Devil’s advocate. Undertaking policy development is a skill, imperfect at best. It is a special quality requiring knowledge, so you know that you are not re-inventing policies that have been shown not to work, and enough knowledge to provide objectivity in an ocean of bias coupled with an ability to write clearly and succinctly. These skills lie outside the normal skill set of the normal adviser appointee.

Staffers aplenty

Well, minimising the number of advisers minimises the number of people designed to irritate and thus it seems leaving it at one each for all backbenchers is probably about right. Only need one person to get your dry cleaning, run errands, and ensure that the backbencher has his or her ego combed daily.

Mouse Whisper

Don’t know whence it came. Just a scrap of paper with the title “Death of a Babyweight.”

…needless to say, the comment was met with gales of laughter, but then that was another time when the sun shone and they were feckless and shallow students; and yes, the Associate Professor was as Federico would say a total bunghole who played the World for cheap laughs a person who always knew the mouse to kick – and now lies increasingly forgotten – someone essentially trivial. 

Perhaps you will understand the allusion, illusion and in the end the confusion.

 

Modest Expectations – Lionel Messi

The recent visit of the Prime Minister to Makassar in the Sulawesi, reminded us of the links of the Makassan traders with the northern Aboriginal people well before European discovery. It is a neglected area in the study of the cultural influence of these people.  Thus, I thought it interesting to reproduce below a bark painting which I bought some years ago on Mornington Island in the Gulf of Carpentaria. You be the judge of the cultural influences at play in this painting. 

In a tortuous vein

I had a pleasant surprise the other day. This is a lesson in clinging onto a view of what you think you know, and what is in fact reality. You may be dying, but you think tomorrow you will be better. I was reminded of the time leading up to the diagnosis of my underlying disease nine years ago. There was a delay in instituting therapy, and I was largely to blame – but not totally.

This time, my legs have been beset by increasing peripheral oedema, two swollen angry red calves and feet, compounded by the sub-fascial swelling on the soles of my feet.

Overnight, the swelling has always decreased, but the level of that reduction in oedema has slowed since the start of the pandemic because of weight increase and closure of hydrotherapy facilities. I dislike exercise especially if it is painful. Hydrotherapy provided a relief from the pain. My legs began to become more and more oedematous. Nobody offered the panacea I was looking for.

Over this period, there had been mention of vascular specialists and compression stockings but, as I now realise, I need for those who advise me to be assertive and not be ambivalent. The latter gives me an excuse for inaction.

I visit a plastic surgeon, who regularly checks me for skin lesions. I mentioned my legs; and once he saw how bad my legs apparently were, he said he had a vascular surgeon colleague whom I should see urgently.

Nearly ten years ago, it was an orthopaedic surgeon who looked at me, ordered tests, and by the next Monday, due to a fortuitous cancellation, I was able to see a consultant rheumatologist, who immediately confirmed the diagnosis the orthopaedic surgeon had considered, but which had been missed by a variety of other doctors. I might add I had seen another orthopaedic surgeon a week or so before and he offered to replace my knee joint almost immediately without any tests. That is the danger of being referred to a specialist, who may be technically brilliant but would have most certainly have ensured a very stormy post-operative passage for myself.

On this second occasion, it was a Thursday afternoon, and by Monday morning first thing, I had an appointment to see the vascular surgeon.

Now this vascular surgeon is young. He shares a clinic with three others. To the best of my knowledge he is not owned by an American hedge fund. He is actually into the business of helping people, not trading a commodity for financial gain.

Vascular ultrasound image

Under one roof, I had an ultrasound of my lower limbs’ vascular system, a consultation where the specialist did not expect to sit across a desk in a consulting room – inspected, interacted with the allied health professionals, recommended compression stockings. These and the applicator were on hand and my wife was taught the optimal way the stockings should be applied. As she said, looking at me meaningfully, she did read the instructions and watched the video in addition to the initial demonstration.

All in less than two hours – a one-stop shop. We had the compression stockings and the applicator.

Here was a local product where any Medicare benefits paid remained onshore, able to be reinvested. How different to those diagnostic imaging and pathology companies allegedly repatriating Medicare payments overseas.

Over 20 years ago, the Australia Institute in a discussion paper analysed the growth of corporate medicine foreshadowing the decline in standards as the profit motive became the prime driver in health care.

As the growth of corporate medicine grew so did Medicare become the ATM, not only for private entrepreneurs but also for the States, which were up to their filing cabinets in cost-shifting. As many of the purchasers were underwritten by overseas investors, the consequence increasingly will be that Medicare funding, which should remain in Australia, ends up in overseas tax havens.

The problem is that the medical profession has ceded control and hence independence to its corporate masters. As somebody who was involved in the various Inquiries in the regulation of the Medicare Benefits Schedule, I have always regretted that the AMA gave up this privilege, which meant that there was not any regular mechanism to alter the Medicare benefit, which was constantly misrepresented as a fee rather than a financial patient benefit the government provided for payment to the doctor.

During my time at the AMA, the discrepancy between the Medibank (then Medicare) benefit and the fee charged was symbolised by the AMA annual recommended list of medical fees. This was a guide, not an instruction by the AMA. Nevertheless, it maintained a relevance, which has only persisted after the introduction of gap insurance when the private health funds, initially prohibited, were able to re-enter the medical insurance market.

John Deeble, Medicare pioneer

After 1984, when the AMA abandoned the regular fee for Medicare benefit Inquiries, it became a matter for every medical specialty to negotiate for themselves. The problem for some of the medical specialties was a function of what happened following the Nimmo Inquiry in 1969 into health insurance which was that benefit relativities were based on what were the fees charged by each specialty; and these relativities naturally created distortions in the market as technology made a number of items of service much cheaper to perform. In 1977 it was clear that technology advances with automaton replacing manual testing was enabling pathologists to make a bonanza from Medicare payments. This Inquiry into the Pathology Medibank Benefits was the first instance of government intervention into these relativities.

The AMA, through the Inquiries, had effectively maintained control over relativities. It provided a form of “flawed order” even though some of the Medicare benefits were well in excess of the underlying cost of the service while some other areas of the profession had done badly.

Thus, from an exercise where the AMA and the Government were in an edgy if not directly confrontational relationship, then there was none.

As I found out henceforth from the AMA relinquishing its position, it became a matter of having a good cost accountant to negotiate with government. With the growth of technology, while the value of the professional component of the medical service remained important, in some areas of the service there were both a substantial technical and a capital component. The “technical” component includes the cost of the scientists, the technicians, the allied health professionals including nurses required to provide services which were not medical, and “capital”, such as the cost of linear accelerators, MRI facilities and so forth.

Not all capital costs are covered. For instance, disposables were inherent in the delivery of the professional component, and not differentiated into any of the other Medicare benefit components. In fact, most of the cost of these has been borne by the hospital. Even now re-usable devices and prostheses lie outside the cost of the service.

Enter the world of the entrepreneurs, more interested in cash flows and profit rather than patient care. Some of the first were medical graduates, like the criminal, the late Geoffrey Edelsten, who gave the whole area a bad name; but it is the multinational companies that have moved behind a wall of cost accounting to dissect the Medicare schedule to exact the greatest profits, and in so doing, to enable Medicare funding to be sent to tax havens overseas.

Some may say how outrageous such a comment is; but the easiest way to deal with Medicare funding is to prohibit any profits that those companies who benefit in any way from exporting those profits.

This vascular surgeon, whose expertise spreads far wider that just advising on varicosities, demonstrated the one-stop shop advantages, which I frankly did not expect, and another fact – you don’t need to run late if you are a doctor.  And you do not need to be a multinational corporation; his rooms were modern and located within a religious hospital.  Good God, on second thoughts, located in a multinational corporation!

Such a thought in no way diminished my satisfaction with the service.

I, the Cryptosexton

I read about this complicated thing called Cryptocurrency. After riding the Algorithm Hobbyhorse around in my Virtual Nursery, I realised that cryptocurrency must be like a bit of barter behind the tog room at school. Hidden from the authority, a packet of Senior Service for two packets of brown Capstan; but not requiring the electrical power requirements of a small city to accompany the transaction.

But this cryptocurrency surely must be more complicated than that, and thus have more benefits.

Apart from plugging cryptocurrency into the cyptocharger, I decided to call it Tulipcoin. I was tempted to use “Lillionarcissus-coin”, which was the name for “tulip” before this Turkish corruption of a Persian word for “turban” was adopted. But that name was too long, would use too much power.

I thought by calling my cryptocurrency after such a famous flower, irrespective of the corruption implicit in the name, I would honour a previous occasion which may have arisen in a crypt.

Jan Breughel the Younger’s view of tulipomania

The whole saga of the tulip bubble was well expressed years ago in the 1999 book “Tulipomania”. The basic cause of the exorbitant prices which the tulip bulb reached in sixteenth century Netherlands was somewhat eccentric. A Flemish merchant found tulip bulbs in a cargo of cloth from Istanbul, thought they were onions, ate most of them and planted the rest.

The resultant blooms were overwhelmingly beautiful and attracted the eye of wealthy Dutch burghers.

The tulip is thus the most captivating of flowers, and like so many products of the Levant, this was the favourite flower of Süleyman the Great, who not only cultivated the wild variety but also initiated the science of breeding hybrids.

Thus when the tulips bloomed, the Dutch, who had the time and were a very wealthy nation due to their trade in the East (the Dutch had a monopoly on nutmeg for instance), were intoxicated by the flower; and the tulip became the signature of these prosperous people.

As was written in Tulipomania: “In 1633, the flowers served no economic purpose other than relieve the cold wet spring with petals that promised a change from the grey mist”.

Initially they were not only desirable but scarce. They attracted gardeners and the few connoisseurs, where scarcity was compounded by the search for perfection. At one stage when a skilled worker could expect 250 guilders in a year, a single tulip bulb was traded for over 5,000 guilders. A small basket was worth more than an Amsterdam mansion. It took three years for the bubble to burst, which it did in a spectacular fashion in 1637.

One of the reasons for this was that many of the tulips had been infected with a virus, which did not necessarily diminish the spectacular colours but certainly lessened the life of each infected bulb. What’s more by that time trading in bulbs had spread throughout the community into every tavern across the country. One of the supposed benefits of cryptocurrency is to be able to bypass “stodgy banks”. Just like being able to buy a cheap TV at the local pub.  But here it was the tulip bulb.

The value of the bulb during this hectic three period provided a way to extricate oneself from, if not poverty, at least to being able to afford a decent house -only if you sold early.  However, given where many of the transactions took place as the author of Tulipomania wrote: “The trade was conducted for the most part in a haze of inebriation.

How appropriate! My Tulipcoin placed into such a market – drunk with power but where the mist has yet to lift?

Reprise

I wrote the following italicised in my blog on 15 January 2021 in a vain attempt to promote Craig Reucassel to stand against Falinski. My sentiments yet have been reflected in the deserved dumping of this Morrison sycophant, despite all the protestations.  Subtly, my choice reveals my deep-seated prejudice, born of over 80 years in a male-dominant world. I suggested that a high-profile male with a formidable record in climate change and waste management should mount the challenge. I discounted the fact that he lived far away in the Sydney inner west.

Dr Sophie Scamps MP

I congratulate Dr Scamps (pronounced Scomps), who has been a high-achieving, very well qualified general practitioner who both lived and practised in the electorate, before successfully challenging Mr Falinski in the recent Federal election. My sense of his vulnerability was correct, but I got the gender of the new Member for MacKellar wrong.

I would suggest one of the New South Wales’ seats held by one of the Trump neophytes would be perfect for him, given that upending Abbott showed the way to do it. Maybe Falinski, whose seat is MacKellar, would be the way to go. Falinski is the typical Liberal Party hack toeing the party line.

As Falinski said in his maiden speech full of the pieties expected:

And so a politician is accountable to their community – I am accountable to you.

Mr Jason Falinski

Wrong, he is beholden to his masters, never voted against any government.  He has a voting record which would please Donald Trump – he should be vulnerable to somebody with the Reucassel values. I would love to see them debate why, for instance, Falinski has inter alia disagreed recently with the proposition:

“The Prime Minister to attend the House by 2 pm Tuesday 8 December to make a statement to advise the House whether Australia is speaking at the Climate Ambition Summit and table any correspondence with the summit organisers relating to whether Australia is speaking at the summit.”

This is but one example, but Falinski’s voting record is reprehensible to any person who is genuinely Liberal.

Reucassel is genuinely concerned with climate change and the world becoming a rubbish dump. He should be elected to Parliament to pursue this goal and hold the government to account.  Falinski seems unwilling to do so. Is it Mitch* Falinski, or is that your second name?

*Mitch stands for that annoying Kentucky Senator, who pleads propriety but unquestionably has supported Trump. Dr Scamps reminded the electorate of the false nature of the so-called moderate Falinski’s voting record.

Janus was an EU Politician with the head of Boris Johnson

As an impotent observer of world affairs, I fret over the ambivalent attitudes of politicians over the fate of Ukraine. Angela Merkel defends her legacy in stalling the entry of Ukraine into NATO by saying that, at the time in 2008, the Ukraine was controlled by a pro-Soviet Government.

The root problem was that most governments wanted Zelensky to disappear into some hedonist exile, and he has proved to be very inconvenient.  He wanted to defend the sovereignty of his nation. Suddenly, the Ukrainians had a leader, an uncompromising charismatic leader who, in a matter of 100 days, has differentiated a country from the neighbouring Russians. The ferocity with which the Ukrainians have responded to the Russian invasion contrasts with the bloodless coup where Russia took Crimea back from the Ukraine eight years ago, and have defined a country, which no matter the outcome will never again be just a “Little Russia”.

Zelensky has thus created that which most Ukrainians have always believed; and that is Ukraine as an independent nation. He has ensured this affirmation occurred in the full glare of the World spotlight.

Putin has been revealed as a primitive hominid intent on destroying the world’s energy and food supply as he dresses up as Peter the Great, an absurd travesty of the human condition.

The New York Review of Books provide a comparison of sorts in critiquing yet another book about Anne Frank. The contention is that if only the same courage epitomised by Zelensky had been on display during the time leading up to Anne Frank’s death in a Nazi concentration camp, she may have survived. As has been pointed out, because of the lack of any ongoing focus on Dutch Jews in particular, she was always in peril.

Anne and her Diary

As part of the analysis, a harsh judgement was made about Queen Wilhelmina in that she failed to stand up to the Nazis and fled to Great Britain. She had maintained Dutch neutrality during WW1; but the only indication of her attitude to the plight of Jews was she insisted a Jewish refugee camp prior to WWII be moved further away from her summer palace than it was originally planned.

The American Government declined to give the Frank family a visa to travel to New York via Cuba in 1941. It provides an unsettling view of a country, with a quick trigger for invading non-European countries, and yet basically ambivalent against European aggressors. President Biden’s halting support of Ukraine could be the USA in early 1941. The Allies did not bomb the railway lines to Auschwitz. A matter of unimportance in the scheme of things!

Russia seemed to have infiltrated the top levels of government, politically, socially, financially, corruptly – a passage facilitated by Trump and scattered within the Conservative Party, those that worship the Infantis Johnson. However, there would not be a country in Europe where the malign Putin influence has not infiltrated.

As a result, maybe NATO could imprint the head of Janus as an emblem in acknowledgement of this influence given the way they have responded to the Russo-Ukrainian War.

Mouse Whisper

I was on a field visit when I heard a regional ABC reporter talking to a local farmer about the cost of a box of cauliflowers. He was selling them for $80 a box.

“What was the usual cost?” she asked.

“About $20 a box.”

“Oh, they’re double the cost then.”

Good to see the ABC is maintaining its standards.

Great value at twice the price, or is that four times?