RailCorp’s stringent controls have caused huge delays in the building of carriages…

…with Australians it’s mainly technical requirements. We think the burden is not necessary.

NSW laws require that an eight-carriage Waratah train must be built to withstand a head-on collision at a speed of 55km/h without any structural damage or passenger injuries. In China the bar is set at 10 km/h.

As pointed out by a fellow workmate, one can only wonder what the accident and death rate is on the Chinese railways compared to Australia. The old Sydney trains are very worn out and need replacing, but I would rather wait a year to get things right rather than a rush job that could result in serious problems.

Below are some of the photos I took on my recent week in NZ. The location of the photos are Taupo, Orakei Korako and Rotorua.

Until now I have been sitting on the fence in the dispute. Having been only studying at the university for six months I did not have enough information to form a complete opinion. However, given the actions of the Vice-Chancellor over the last few days I have now come down in full support of the union.

In the email and the accompanying video the Vice-Chancellor fails to address one of the major issues in the dispute, long term casual contracts for research staff. At the moment staff can be at the university for ten years or longer and never have a contract that provides them employment for more than a year. There are very few companies that I know that keep staff on perpetual fixed term contracts. Always having the threat of not having a job is not going to make a workforce very happy.

The actions of the Vice-Chancellor of UNSW over the last week in relation to the result bans have not sought to provide a quick resolution to the industrial dispute, instead they have sought to deliberately make it worse. Locking senior academics out of the university is a really petty move and will only cause the ill feeling between the academic staff and the university administration to increase.

If UNSW really want this dispute to go away they need to lift their lockout of staff and they need to focus on the issues that really matter rather than spinning amateur videos to students to try and win hearts and minds. The problem with trying to win hearts and minds is students are very thicked skinned and we can see right through the bullshit.

P.S. Next time you make a video to distribute to students from the Vice-Chancellor at least make sure the website address is right. myunsw.edu.au does not exist. It is my.unsw.edu.au

Dear students

You would be aware of the National Tertiary Education Union bans on the transmission of exam results and student assessment for semester one.

While only a small percentage of staff is taking part in this industrial action, we are concerned about the impact this action is having on students who have not yet received their results and we are working to minimize any disruption. I would appreciate you taking the time to watch this two minute video so I can let you know what measures the University has put in place.  I’ve also taken the opportunity to give you all a brief background on some of the issues involved in this dispute.

Yours sincerely

Professor Fred Hilmer
President and Vice-Chancellor

This morning I had a brief discussion with some of my colleagues regarding the Australian police force and how they operate. There are some very clear differences: all front-line police officers carry guns, all front line officers carry Tasers, all front-line officers carry pepper spray.

I still remember the controversy around the introduction of pepper spray around a decade ago in NZ and then the more recent introduction of the Taser (something I have been sceptical of). I certainly do not believe that all front-line officers in NZ should be armed at all times, I can only see a sea of controversy erupting as a result of this: crazy nut-cases taunting police into suicide by cop, cops drawing their weapons in inappropriate circumstances (as seen a number of times with the Taser in both NZ and Australia), and the threat criminals feel by an armed police force and subsequently increasing their own “protection” with even more guns and weapons.

However, the latest shooting follows on from the Napier Siege of last year where an officer was killed and the 2008 killing of an officer working undercover. In all three cases there is a common link, unarmed officers confronting criminals with drugs. This is where the NZ police need to get a lot smarter.

Gone is the day where you can send in two unarmed cops to do a drug bust and the respect for authority will just see criminals roll over. If NZ police are going to do any form of drug raid or operate in areas where people are taking drugs there is a very clear need for them to be armed. Going into a gun fight with pepper spray is never going to work out.

KiwiRail says the platforms are of a shorter length because of “constraints on keeping the line away from nearby apartments”, electric trains could run to Onehunga but people would only be able to travel in the front two of the three car trains.

Not only is Auckland 100 years behind most of the developed world in getting an electric rail system (remember that Britomart is the only underground diesel railway station in the world!) we can’t even get the size of the platforms right. This would be funny if it wasn’t so sad.

Meanwhile in Sydney next week sees the commencement of the 4th Metrobus route from Bondi to Chatswood with 80,000 people per week capacity. The Metrobus system in Sydney has been a great success with bus running so frequently they don’t need timetables. In Auckland there has been the Link bus for a number of years working on this system, but how about seeing it on routes like the Northern Express, Dominion Road (ARTA are launching the “B.Line” here), Great South Road, New North Road, Great North Road.

There is a reason why “Public Transport” in Auckland has been called an oxymoron and this stuff up in the length of the train platforms is yet another example of it.

”I believe the overwhelming evidence is that Taser are being used appropriately by NSW Police.” The trial showed numerous examples of the weapon’s usefulness. – Alan Clarke, Assistant Police Commissioner

How does this align with a report obtained by the Sydney Morning Herald that reports such inappropriate uses as:

• Stunning a handcuffed child at a juvenile detention centre.
• Stunning two suicidal people covered in fuel, which can be ignited by a Taser blast.
• The repeated stunning of a compliant man who presented no threat and was surrounded by members of the riot squad.
• There were cases of people being hit by a Taser as many as six times, and others where police appeared to use the weapon to make argumentative but non-threatening people comply with directions.
• In one case a sergeant drew his Taser when he encountered two young men spray painting. He drew the weapon, he later said, because one of the vandals was carrying an extendable paint roller and he was ”unsure what their reaction would be to his presence”. He did not fire the weapon.
• A mother was accidentally hit when police fired at her son in one incident and a police officer was accidentally stunned in another.
• Police also pointed Tasers at groups of people, including protesters inside the Villawood Detention Centre, despite Tasers being acknowledged as an ”inappropriate” weapon for use against crowds.
• Police also appeared habitually to misuse the weapon in its ”drive-stun” mode, in which the Taser is held against the target’s body and causes pain without incapacitation.

Although they are quite controversial Tasers are a much better alternative to lethal weapons in maintaining law and order. However, they are a weapon much like, if not more threatening and damaging than, a baton. If you substituted the word Taser for the word baton in the above examples then it is more than likely that police offers would be in court facing assault charges.

It is the role of the police to keep the peace, but they need to do so in a way that shows respect for people, all people, and not jump to conclusions about people and abuse the power entrusted in them. I doubt many people dispute that policing is a dangerous and sometimes life-threatening job, but there is never a justified reason to abuse power. Describing the misuse as “numerous examples of weapon’s usefulness” is some of the best doublespeak I have seen.

The biggest problem with refusing to release marks is that the main impact of this action will affect students far more than it effects the university. This step has seen students become political prawns in a petty dispute. While I support the right for members of the union to strike, and I certainly believe in their cause I do not see how bringing students into the crossfire is going to get the staff onside with anyone. However, I believe the actions in response by University management will only seek to inflame the situation further. Tit for tat is never a good way to resolve conflict.

If the staff really wanted to force the university’s hand they would place a ban on submitting papers and attending conferences. This would see a far bigger impact on the university’s reputation, standing and income. I do not believe that the NTEU would even consider this course of action because more than any lost income the action would directly affect the standing of its own members within the global academic community. But surely that is what industrial action is about, standing up for what you believe in, putting your reputation and standing on the line? Rather than using students as cheap political ammo the NTEU should focus on where it hurts, research output.

Here lies a peculiar problem relating to assessment in our schools. Assessment under NCEA is standards-based. Student attainment is measured against objective standards rather than against each other.

For those of us who teach NCEA, it is obvious there are major anomalies in the results generated under this system. The pass rates for work marked internally are usually much higher than for external assessments, usually done under exam conditions. There are also significant discrepancies in pass rates for different subjects and for different units within a subject.

Any use of NCEA marks for entrance to university will need to come from externally assessed units only. This is the only way to guarantee a fair comparison between students.

It is ridiculous to try to equate a unit of knowledge in physics with a unit of knowledge in economics or graphics, in terms of difficulty. Yet the results this system generates are going to become very important in determining whether a student gains entry to a tertiary course.

This problem is not an issue with NCEA, it is a factor in any education system with different subjects. The easiest way to deal with this is have prerequisites for programmes that require certain subjects. For instance to get into a Bachelor of Science you would need a certain number of credits from 3 of the following subjects: Calculus, Statistics, Biology, Chemistry, Physics. Furthermore to get into a major in biology you would need a minimum number of credits in year 13 biology. This is very similar to how the old Bursary system used to work and can be easily reintroduced.

To rank students a system similar to that of a grade point average can be used where Achieved = 1, Merit = 2, Excellence = 3 this is summed and then divided by the total number of credits available for that subject – typically 24, but if you excluded internal assessments it will be less. Using this system would encourage all students and schools to teach the full course load to students rather than selectively excluding some units of work like they currently do.

The ODT article continues with this example:

Here’s a simple illustration of the problem faced by a university admissions officer. Two prospective students apply for entry to a degree. One candidate has 2 excellences, 2 merits, 10 achieved and 6 not achieved in his final results. The other pupil has 3 merits and 17 achieved in her results. Who is the superior candidate?

Under a simple GPA system the first student would score:

(2 * 3 + 2 * 2+ 10)/20 = 20/20 = 1

The second student would score:

(3 * 2 + 17)/20 = 23/20 = 1.15

Under this simple GPA system the second student would be ranked superior to the first student. I believe that this is a fair system, even though on initial look the first student had scored two excellence marks they had also failed 6 credits which is over 25% of the marks available, whereas the second student had passed all units of credits just not with any form of distinction.

NCEA is fundamentally flawed in that it does not allocate marks to students and instead just consists of four buckets that students are classified into. This means that any form of ranking among these buckets will be controversial and there will always been anomalies where one very good student will miss out and another not so good one will scrape through. But this is the unfortunate nature of the beast that is NCEA and until someone has the vision and the willingness to fix the madness these problems will continue.

On Friday morning’s Sunrise TV show there was a discussion about racism and they gave the dictionary definition of racism as:

“The belief that each race has distinct and intrinsic attributes; The belief that one race is superior to all others”

Now I am not of the politically correct belief that any comments about any race is instantly racism. In fact I believe there are differences between races, these have developed as cultural differences in some cases genetic differences based on the local world in which people have lived over a long period of time (a good study of this is Jared Diamond’s book Guns, Germs and Steel). However, these differences do not make one race superior to another instead it makes us different, in exactly the same way that as humans we are all unique and special just like everyone else.

What is more interesting is looking at the excuses people make for making racist remarks. In the case of Andrew Johns his excuse was that he was merely rallying the troops with a pep talk. In the ARL case it was brushed aside as merely being an in-joke.

Closer to home someone I know wrote a blog post the other day in which they referred to “gweilous”. I have been around enough south east asian friends to recognise that as an extremely offensive racist comment towards “white people”, in fact Urban Dictionary* defines it as this:

Gweilo is Cantonese. It translates as ‘Ghost Man’ and is used to describe a Caucasian foreigner.
Although most of China is familiar with this word only Cantonese speakers use it as a derogative way of describing a white person.
It is considered highly offensive in Mandarin China and with some white people.

When I asked the author of the blog if they knew the meaning of that word they replied that they did and the reason why they had chosen to use it was because they were in a bad mood. That begs a question, is a bad mood a good enough excuse to use foul language? I think not.

There are always times when we lose our cool and say things that we regret at a later date but there are certain words that no matter how bad a mood you are in you are fully aware of the meaning of and there is simply no excuse for the use of.

In the case of Andrew Johns he lost two coaching jobs as a fall out from his comments, so far the ARL coach has kept their job, and the blog post was taken down – with me being accused of over analysing things.

Is taking offensive at racist comments an overreaction? Or should we take offence more often to stamp out racism?

*I know Urban Dictionary is not a real dictionary but it was the clearest, simplest and best definition I could find.

The federal government is hiding controversial plans to force ISPs to store internet activity of all Australian internet users – regardless of whether they have been suspected of wrongdoing – for law-enforcement agencies to access.

The next thing they will try is for everyone in the country to wear a GPS tracker so we always know where people walk, drive, train or cycle so that we can fine them when they jaywalk or fail to indicate.

As every day goes by it seems the Rudd government is becoming more and more successful at achieving the impossible – losing the next election. For me being a computer geek all it means is that I am much more aware of my actions online and wherever possible I am using encryption for data transfer. It is not an argument about having nothing to hide and therefore needing no privacy. It is a matter that the government wants to data mine our every single action, watch our every single step and monitor every little thing we do in our lives.

I have no issue with sharing my browsing habits with people who I opt to share it with; more often than not I opt into anonymous data sharing of software usage. However, this is not what the government intends, what the government intends is complete mind control of its population. This is not censorship, censorship is a public list of banned material and the reason why they are banned which is debatable in court, this is well beyond censorship and amounts of thought control. The government is not telling you what is blocked, why it is blocked, or any way of being able to appeal sites being blocked. All in all it is a very scary idea that you would expect from a mad dictator not a democratically elected government.