Lunatics and Asylum

Two news reports from the USA make compelling reading, when put together.

Put simply, a five year old boy killed his little sister with a weapon marketed to parents as a suitable gun for children, and the US senate defeated gun control legislation supported by the bulk of American citizens.

These two events are almost incomprehensible to rational human beings, but both are reality.

The NRA is fond of saying that the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.

I wonder which of these (good guy and bad guy) describes the little boy and his sister.

The USA’s own version of the Taliban is celebrating. There is an uncanny resemblance between the videos released after a Taliban assassination and the chest beating emanating from the Houston convention.

It’s happened - the lunatics have finally taken over the asylum.

Thoughts on Bullying

This week the topic of bullying seemed to come up in most of the schools I worked in.

The notable exception was a small (eight kids) school in the middle of nowhere.

One comment made me think about gender balance in schools.

The comment (from a female principal) – “It always happens in the boys’ toilets”. She was talking about boy on boy bullying – most of it physical, of the push and shove type.

My memories of the principalship are that one of the best strategies to cut down the intensity, duration and frequency of these incidents is through close supervision, especially in the playground, and especially around the toilets, or in places teachers usually avoid. I developed a bit of a reputation when I was on duty for patrolling these places (usually invisible from the admin block) to the point where at one high school my nickname was “Ninja”.

It used to work, but of course back then, there were male teachers available to supervise the boys’ toilets and other hidden areas. It’s a big ask for female teachers to supervise boys’ toilets, especially in secondary schools. It simply doesn’t happen.

So one major barrier to controlling bullying is a chronic lack of male teachers. I work in many schools were there are simply no males. Even the cleaners and Janitors are female.

Put simply, this is a problem.

Efforts to allow some kind of affirmative action strategy to normalise the gender balance are generally frowned upon.

That’s a shame.

Until gender balance, a critical element of school culture is considered, efforts to eliminate the problem have not been serious.

Goose and Gander

My bride found this, and posted it on Facebook.

Like me, she's a teacher.

It's another picture that says a thousand words - in this case about the politicisation of education.

It's worth noting that no research has ever shown a link between teacher bonuses and student outcomes.

Those advocating this as a solution to all our schooling problems are as ignorant of the motivations of the bulk of teachers as the voucherists are.

Gun Nut Logic 2

The Daily Show: John Oliver Investigates Gun Control in Australia - Part 2

A duty to remember

Coxy, Greenie & the sign

My Anzac Day post this year originally appeared in the Adelaide Advertiser in 2009.

It was written by Graham Cornes, who, like me, was a member of 5 Platoon B Company, 7RAR in 1970, when the battalion was on its second tour of South Vietnam.

Whilst I didn't really know Graham (the time when we were both in 5 platoon was brief), his recollections and reactions are very similar to mine.

It's also a very well written piece.

 GRAHAM Cornes was 21 when he landed in Vietnam in early 1970, a conscript with the 7th Battalion of the Royal Australian Regiment. Last month, he went back.
ABOUT a dozen of us from 5 Platoon, B Company, 7RAR, were assigned to set an ambush at the junction of two tracks just north of the Horseshoe. It was an unusual size for a squad because we normally operated as a platoon - three sections, or about 30 men. But the sections of a rifle company in Vietnam were always under-strength because illness, casualties or leave reduced their numbers, so the squad was very probably two undersized sections, commanded by our platoon sergeant. As we laid out the pits, set the machine gun positions, established lines of fire and placed the Claymore mines, we noticed the unmistakeable stench of rotting flesh.
The mortar fire controller, another sergeant on his second tour, after warning us, started to reconnoitre outside our position. Within minutes he and two scouts had located the source: a dead Viet Cong soldier in an advanced stage of decomposition. He was the unluckiest soldier of all as he was obviously the victim of a random artillery or mortar shell. It's unlikely he knew what hit him as he lay sleeping in a makeshift bed between two trees.

We had to search him, unpleasant as it was, which revealed the normal VC equipment - his wonderfully simple and reliable AK47 assault rifle, a sinister garrotte, with which he could silently despatch his enemy, some meagre rations, one of those string hammocks that they all carried, and his papers. However, this time there was something much more spectacular: thousands of Vietnamese piastre, the local currency. He was obviously a VC tax collector who went from village to village extorting money from the villagers or accepting donations from the local sympathisers.
We hurriedly scraped a shallow grave in the nearby crater and gingerly lowered him into it. However, before the corpse could be covered, the sergeant leapt into the pit and, with his bayonet, prised a gold filling from the lifeless skull. "He won't be needing it," he said, as if to justify his actions. So inured were we to such barbarity, that no one thought twice. Someone even laughed.
The tracks are long gone, reclaimed by the jungle, but the question always nags me: "Is that shallow, despicable grave still there, concealing some mother's son?" It's not funny now.
There was more to the story, because all captured enemy equipment, papers and money were required to be handed to the battalion's intelligence officer. However, about an hour later, the patrol commander came to each man and handed him the equivalent of $70 Australian in piastre. Who knows how much the two sergeants kept. Given that our weekly salary in 1970 was $55, including combat allowance, nobody handed it back. Blood money!
Going back
I always knew I would go back. Even when I was weary to the point of collapse; hungry to the point of emaciation; dehydrated, filthy and angry.
Even when I was terrified - I knew I would go back.
Vietnam is a spectacularly beautiful country, and old soldiers inexplicably seek to return to their old battlefields. In the opening scenes of Spielberg's blockbuster Saving Private Ryan, the most realistic war movie ever made, the American veteran stumbles tearfully to the grave of the fallen hero who had saved his life 50 years before. We all want to go back.
However, if it was closure or absolution that I was seeking, I didn't find it.
They said we were the best-prepared and best -equipped soldiers to leave Australia. Our Commanding Officer, Lieutenant Colonel Ron Grey wrote: "No unit to leave Australia had the opportunities for preparation that we had in 7RAR - and we had not wasted them. I knew that we were ready."
It didn't feel like that. For the first month we floundered around, sometimes with no idea what we were doing or where we were. One of our first casualties died, not of battle wounds, but of heat stroke because of the ridiculous, ill-conceived expectations of our commander.
Nothing prepares you for jungle warfare. Our equipment was appalling. The jungle-green uniforms were always heavy and wet. You threw your socks and jocks away after three days on operation because they fell apart anyway; our leather GP (general purpose) boots became waterlogged - a sodden, pulpy mass; the Armalite rifle, with its floating firing pin, jammed repeatedly; the barrel of the M60 machine gun, the most important weapon in the section, overheated, wouldn't eject the empty cartridges and often jammed. Our rations packs were shocking and failed to provide basic sustenance. In the dry season, water supply sometimes depended on which puddle in a dry creekbed you could find.
But we had been brainwashed, and so imbued were we with the spirit of ANZAC, of mateship, and of defending this oppressed country, that we didn't know any better.
Our most reliable companion was the 7.62mm SLR (self-loading rifle). It never let us down, although even that was cumbersome in close quarters.
We saw a lot of Vietnam from the air in 1970. Dense tropical jungle, stands of that horrible, spiky bamboo, mountain ranges, oceans of rice paddies, and row after row of ordered rubber plantations, a legacy of the hated, brutal French who started the whole mess. At least they left their rubber - and their bread. Vietnam has magnificent bread.
There were obvious signs of war where the landscape was pock-marked with bomb craters. Then there were the effects of defoliation; grotesque brown tracts of dead forest where Agent Orange had been sprayed. Imagine taking a knife and carving a gash across the face of a beautiful, flawless woman. It was as stark as that.

Read the rest.

Lest we forget.

Review - Uniden iGo Digital Camera

Regular readers may recall this post.

The police were unable to prosecute this ratbag because they didn't have sufficient evidence. Hence when I read a review of one of these gadgets, I followed up.

The end result was a purchase, and I've been using the thing for a while now.

Once I'd figured out how to set it up, I've found it useful and reliable.

The video posted shows the quality.

The owner's manual is useless and reads like it was poorly translated from Urdu, but I persisted until I got it right. The biggest problem was setting the date and time imprint.

This feature is important, as it renders any video collected useful from an evidence gathering point of view.

The thing sits on the inside of the windscreen and if you mount it carefully in front of the rear vision mirror it is almost invisible and has no impact on forward vision.

It's upside down in this pic.

There are two lenses, one shoots forward, the other to the rear. In a ute, this rear vision feature works well. In a sedan, it would be compromised by the rear seat passengers, if there were any.

So you can shoot footage of tail-gaters if necessary.

It starts up and shuts down automatically if you have the power cable in the outlet, and it records in 5 minute grabs which remain stored until overwritten, in the same fashion as a black box recorder in an aircraft. It has plenty of storage. A recent trip of 150kms did not exceed storage capacity.

If something is recorded that you want to keep, you can press a button to lock it in.

They retail for $150, but I bought it for the on-line price ($25 less) at Harvey Norman's. Most big retailers will negotiate around the on-line price.

By the way, despite what the review says, there is no "delete" button.

Gun Nut Logic

John Howard on gun control.