FTTN vs FTTC: my methods and decisions

Since it’s been criticized, here are some personal notes on the methodological choices I made in estimating the rate of BT’s FttC rollout for the ABC in an Australian context.

Why use exchange areas instead of population?

1.    Verifiability – While it would be possible to verify BT’s household-coverage claims, it would need someone willing to part with around $10k to buy a data license and carry out the analysis.

The number of cabinets installed by BT provides no base for comparison: Australia doesn’t have a design yet.

On the other hand, the number of exchanges serving VDSL2 is published in the UK, and ADSL2+ in Australia.

The only assumption I made here is that a hypothetical FTTN would need to replicate ADSL2+ coverage to satisfy the public.

2.    Geographic equalisation – Using exchange areas equalises the vexed question of the geo-demographic differences between Australia and the UK, an issue which I’ve worked on for six years in various projects.

Britain and Australia have nearly the same number exchanges – 5,000 or so – yet the UK’s exchanges serve 40 million households, Australia’s 7 million. The UK’s exchanges are bigger (in terms of lines served) but smaller (in terms of geography served).

Why did I select 2009 as the start date for the UK FttC, and 2010 for the NBN?

That’s much easier to answer: the deployment of commercial pilots provides an equivalent date for the two projects.

The NBN has proceeded very much in the public spotlight – the implementation study, the establishment of the company, the design decisions, the maps, the appearances in Estimates and so on. We knew a lot about the design process before the launch of commercial services in 2011.

BT’s process is a black box, by comparison. We do know that its first commercial pilots occurred in 2009, but between that date and the official launch of commercial services, we know very little about how much work went on. For example:

-    How many cabinets were ordered, delivered, and put through acceptance testing?
-    How many locations went through site preparation so as to enable rapid installation when cabinets were available?
-    What resources were devoted to network design, site selection, training, contractor selection, and ramp-up planing?

And so on.

Without an understanding of the pre-launch effort, I think it’s quite reasonable to use the commercial pilots as “Year Zero” of BT’s rollout since I can be certain that all that “underground” work was going on at least as early as 2009, prior to the commercial service launch in 2010.

Since everything else was based on public sources linked in the article, I don’t feel the need to explain the other sources further.

Google Glass: the next tech press cargo-cult

The tech press rarely, if ever, sees the downside of a gadget when they begin hyping it.

iTunes turned property (the CD) into a license without a whisper. E-readers did the same with books – complete with revocation of licenses, lending / gift restrictions and so on. Smartphones work hard to eliminate privacy. Games platforms are trying to do away with ownership of games, just as iTunes did with CDs.

The lesson repeated but never learned is simple: gadget-makers have a result in mind when they design things. They’re not acting at random. The licensing models are worked out by lawyers before the product is launched; strategies exist.

And we come to Google’s Project Glass: the gadget is getting lots of love before it even exists, and there are no downsides.

Google once wanted to “organise” the world’s information. Nothing wrong with that, as an ideal.

But there are dangers in encouraging Google to own every possible information-delivery channel right down to the eyeballs.

Sure, won’t it be cool? Someone wants to design an app that will estimate the weight of vegetables in the shop, just by looking at them. Wow! (Dude, there’s a set of scales just over there.) Someone wants to give you a heads-up map (because it’s so much trouble actually knowing where you’re headed).

There will be ads, the inevitable ads, and data collection: because you won’t get your cool “augmented reality” (by the way, one of the most odious expressions the tech sector has contrived) for free.

You can bet that such considerations would be in tech journalists’ minds, considering that they completely missed the downsides of iTunes etcetera years ago?

No. They’re worried about whether Google Glass will (a) arrive soon enough for them to write reviews of them and (b) whether they will brand the wearer as a “geek” and therefore never take off.

It has, as I hinted in the headline, a characteristic of the cargo cult. Google will drop its next wonder on the waiting tribe, who construct a religion around their own dependency.

About shooting in national parks

Last night I complained about the state governments “shooters in national parks” policy on Twitter, sparked a bunch of replies, and rudely went to bed during the discussion, so here’s my thoughts. I have a busy day, so this will be quick.

1.    Is it affecting tourism?

Yes. I own some holiday cottages in Wentworth Falls (Bunjaree Cottages, here). People are asking about it – “will there be shooters around?” – even though the Blue Mountains National Park isn’t on the list. They’re worried. It’s easy to dismiss them as uninformed, but that’s the way of the world.

2.    Am I anti-gun?
In public places, most certainly.

3.    “Gun owner” isn’t the same thing as “gun nut”
When I use the phrase “gun nut” I am referring to a particular mindset: the ideology-from-the-NRA lobby groups.

I know people who go target shooting, and I know farmers who keep a weapon to deal with feral pigs, wild dogs, injured animals and the like. They aren’t pining to head out for a weekend swapping between gun and bow-and-arrow (and in the case of farmers, they greatly resent having wild pigs brought into their district just to provide targets for shooters).

4.    It’s worked fine in New Zealand
Actually, there have been deaths. Rosemary Ives in 2010, and Dougal Fyfe 2011, to identify two.

5.    The national park shootings will be properly supervised

If you travel down the Hume towards Goulburn at the right time on a Friday night, you’ll see the suburban 4WDs loaded up with weapons and beer.

I know country people who call in the family from the verandah at night if there are shots in the distance, because they’ve had bullets come over hilltops and whack the house.

And I’ve seen the roadside gatherings with the guns lined up against the cab of the ute while the roo-hunters stop for a beer.

Yes, I think fears of a future with guns in national parks are justified.

About that British Telecom Fibre-to-the-cabinet case study...

Since British Telecom’s fibre-to-the-cabinet rollout is the example Mr Turnbull favours, let’s take a look at it.

Question: Does the rollout deliver high speeds?

BT currently claims a maximum of 80 Mbps over copper. As always, with a copper-based technology, “your mileage may vary”.

Question: Can customers upgrade to fibre?

Answer: Yes, in some cases.

Question: What’s the fibre-to-the-cabinet reach?

Answer: Currently around 60 percent of the UK population.

Question: How many exchanges are required to deliver that reach?

Answer: Around 1,300, if this list is accurate: http://www.samknows.com/broadband/exchanges/bt/fttc.

Question: How long did the rollout take to reach 1,376 exchange areas?

Answer: Around four years. Call it 340 exchanges per year – at which rate, Australia would have VDSL2 services replicating current ADSL2+ services in, oh, about 8 years. Give or take. Your mileage may vary…

The absolutely inescapable point of this little conceit is simple: Australia is not the UK. Pack 60 million people into Victoria; concentrate them tightly enough that you still have farmland and (in Scotlant) tundra; deliver broadband in a way that your rural users complain they can’t get it, and then use that as a model for Australia.

As I said, if Australia were to match the UK’s rollout rate, we might match its KPIs, but the actual Liberal Party target for fibre-to-the-whatever would take nearly as long as the NBN.

But I don’t blame Malcolm Turnbull. I blame the supine, spavined, sleepwalking slackness of journalists who by hell should be smart enough, Google-savvy enough and care enough to actually test the case study. The research took me a little bit of down-time, not enough to justify asking someone to pay me for – which is why this is a blog post instead of an article.

Off yo' asses, my colleagues. Research or retire.

You want cuts? Cut the Joint Strike Fighter

OK, I’ll give you the cuts. One cut. One cut to rule them all.

The massive boon-doggle, scam, sham, snake-oil shake-down called the Joint Strike Fighter.

For a $35 billion commitment, Australia has so far received nothing, nada, zero, zip, the cube root of sweet bugger-all, except.

Oh, yeah.

Except for a gap in our “air superiority” between the retirement of our current fleet of baby-killing flying machines and the touted-since-the-1980s next-generation of baby-killing flying machines.

All on the presumption that a quarter of the world is waiting, itching, champing-at-the-bit to wage war on Australia.

Just to remind you: the JSF talks started in the 1980s. The money Australia has so far handed over have achieved nothing more than development work on what looks, to all intents and purposes, like a complete failure that won’t be delivered in its current form, nor to its current timetable, nor to its current price.

The F-35 finally managed its first flight in 2006, two decades after it was conceived. Right now, its airworthiness is under question, not for the first time, because it can’t fly through thunderstorms for fear of lightning strike. Its delivery date remains as uncertain as its eventual capabilities. 

Its price is as excremental as the whole veil of bury-the-skeleton secrecy over who-scammed-who in twenty years pf vile alchemy turning the manure of bad public policy into the gold of shareholder value.

And Australia remains irrevocably committed to it.

To defend Australia.

Here are two snippets of fact for you.

1. Australia is a continent
2. In all of recorded history, no continent has been successfully invaded by a strike force, except in the presence of an overwhelming international coalition

Prove me wrong.

Now, in the defence of a continent that probably doesn’t need defending, since it’s cheaper for (say) China to buy what it wants from us than to take it by force, we’re committed to pouring good money after bad, into a project of notorious non-delivery and malfeasance, because of a commitment to an ally that won’t turn up if China turns hostile (do you truly believe that America would spark a nuclear war over the arse end of the world?).

Just to emphasise: at this stage, Australia has a $35 billion commitment to a development project in the USA. Say it slowly to yourself. Savour the ironic stupidity, the medalled mendacity, the cynical theft that this entails – and the naïf cultural cringe and fearful “yellow peril” idiocy that keeps our budget nailed to a failure.

The JSF isn’t a bloody jet fighter. It’s a massive subsidy to American industry, disguised as a military program. Australia doesn’t need to sling $35 billion in, just for the privilege of knowing that some good ol’ boys still eat well. What about keeping the money here and doing some good with it?

“Retail suffers in election years”

Well, of course Eli Greenblat is sympathetic to what retailers say. He’s the Fairfax “retail reporter” after all (one of the great dangers in specialisation is that the reporter identifies with the speciality instead of the reader. I try to pay attention and avoid this myself).

Here’s the article: “Election call a disaster, says Specialty”

The ‘money quote’ is this: "Election periods always, always, affect us and the fact that it has been called so early is an absolute disaster, [Specialty Fashion Group CEO Gary] Perlstein said.

Oh really? Here’s a quick capture of retail trade since the 2001 elections. I’ve taken the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ seasonally-adjusted retail trade growth for:

-    The quarter preceding the election; and
-    The quarter in which the election was held.

One datum is missing – in 2008, December quarter seasonally adjusted retail growth was left out because of the government’s stimulus package.

Something odd happened in 2003 – there was killer retail growth. If you eliminate the outlier, what do you see?

2001 – growth above average for the preceding quarter and election quarter
2004 – growth on average for the preceding quarter, below average in the election quarter
2007 – growth above average for the preceding quarter and election quarter
2010 – growth on average for the preceding quarter, below average in the election

What about clothing retail alone, since that’s what Specialty does?

Nope. The clothing retail item, seasonally adjusted, in the ABS data set is just as likely to rise ahead of an election as it is to fall.

However, the ground is prepared: if Specialty doesn't perform in 2013, we know what excuse will be given.

A word to the wowsers: try Ms T’s life before you rule it

Here’s a genuine list of things to give up, mentioned in the space of a fortnight. 

1. You really need to get rid of the cigarettes
2. We need to get the opioid painkillers down
3. Drink less
4. Don’t overeat
5. Your potassium is a worry

Now, as to number (4), Ms T is not overeating. Only by dint of paying attention to cramming in extra calories has she stabilised her weight at a snip under 50 kg. Considering that in the last two years, her illness has taken her to 31 kg, at which point she could not walk unaided; or that in the last twelve months, her average has been around 40 kg, which is still weak, we are delighted at a 50 kg weight and gave the idiot nutritionist a fairly terse response.

But pay particular attention to the opioids.

She has no painkillers available to her except opioids. Paracetamol has an instant and devastating effect on her liver, for reasons nobody quite understands – two days of it will take her to emergency. Anything anti-inflammatory – say, asprin or ibuprofen – is anathema to her immune system disorder (the effects are nearly instant).

No paracetamol; no asprin; no ibuprofen. What’s left, to someone whose fourteen-inch surgical scar remains painful? Oh. Opioids. Wine. There is nothing else.

Because of the way that prescription rules are managed, there is a problem: someone at the far end of a telephone from a doctor, working to a call centre script, has to approve the GP’s request for opioids. Which means we can recite the high-speed script that the GP tells the telephone:

“Severe debilitating pain not responding to non-narcotic analgesic not due to cancer less than twelve months’ duration.”

(Pronounce it with no gaps between the words, like he does from long practice.)

Those last five words – “less than twelve months’ duration” – ended this month, but not the pain, and every other word of his script remains true. Which means, from now, that we are subject to a regime that doesn’t recognise her particular constraints, and she lacks a cancer support group. 

No other painkiller is permissible (and not once did she ever fit the profile demanded to reach a hospital “pain specialist”).

Try it yourself, the wowsers whose moral stance would get all opioids off the list for all but the dying (and dying she is: merely, may it please my fortune, not this year or decade). Try it: you have only one painkiller available to you; your pain is debilitating (which I will attest. I don’t even do painkillers for headaches, if I can avoid it; call it a psychosis of my own; Ms T's pain is cry-in-the-night stuff).

But you aren’t permitted painkillers, because there are no alternatives to the 60 to 80 mg of oxycodone hydrochloride each day that makes Ms T able to function (and she does function on this dose, reduced from six months ago, all the way up to performing OCD-level refrigerator-cleaning for our business).

And – added to the hounding of drug-wowsers, we are enjoined to drink less than our shared nightly bottle of red; ordered to relinquish nicotine; instructed as to diet by nutritionists with less experience and education of food than Ms T has acquired by her professional interests …

…And all the time, the big-ticket toxin on her list is cousin to mustard gas. 

I mean this literally: the drug cyclophosphamide is one of the first-generation of treatments developed in the 1950s to try and replicate the effects of mustard gas (nitrogen mustards) on cancers while reducing their toxic effects (by a small amount).

Oh, yes. Cyclophosphamide as an injected infusion is metabolised by the liver. Which was, in Ms T’s case, an organ damaged by her immune system’s attack on her arteries (the others were one kidney, and a carotid that is now completely occluded. That means she’s dead, but for reasons nobody cares to discuss in detail she hasn’t stopped wriggling. Yet) (Honestly, you want to live this life? I’ll give you ten minutes and the high side of the odds, and still will take your money three falls out of five).

Cyclo, which oddly enough turns out to be the treatment she tolerates best, is doing serious damage. The liver likes it, mostly: the stomach goes into meltdown only one week in four; and her immune system is suppressed (not enough, right now: the dosage is going up this month).

The immune-suppression has already been made manifest in two tumours, one on her face, one more intimate. Because, you see, the damaged cells that most people never see, and some people may have to suffer the brief discomfort of the freezer-spray to remove – for Ms T, they run like horses, from “what’s that?” to “get a biopsy” to “remove the Vulval intraepithelial neoplasia Stage 3 RIGHT NOW”.

Now: give me a healthy and comfortable researcher, telling me and Ms T that one her few pathways to nearly-normal function through the pain, that the pathway to function is an evil conspiracy by Big Pharma, and for the greater good of others she must give up everything at once, merely to satisfy a moral argument against everything.

Even though we despise your research-smugness, your data-collection without experience, your anti-something jihad, neither of us can wish our lives upon you. We just want you to get out of the spreadsheet and leave us alone.

If you don’t know “severe debilitating pain” etcetera, you have no standing to pronounce judgement upon its relief. You are no more than a virgin screaming “natural childbirth” over the advice of the anaesthetist prescribing an epidural.

A Question for the Lunar Right: Why so serious?

If there’s one thing I don’t understand about the country’s right-wing complaining column-blog-whinge clique, it’s this:

What the hell soured their whiskey?

To pick a random example, look at Andrew Bolt. In spite of the entire net worth of his TV viewership being somewhat less than a house at Yerranderie with an asbestos ceiling fan, he seems to do okay: the suits, the profile, the income, the News Limited sinecure and so on.

For this, his journalistic output is roughly that of a hobbyist Reddit poster, except without the editorial control.

Bowling leggies on a damp wicket to batsmen with spiked-down feet, this guy is obsessively terrified that he’s being done out of the upgrade from Lexus to Real Mercedes by some academic activist because said activist isn’t black enough. His continual attitude to the world is the bile of entitlement denied, like he hasn't noticed he's rich.

Jesus, Andrew, get a grip. When the repo man comes for the Blu-Ray, come and complain to a world that will ignore you as cheerfully as it ignores anyone else fallen on hard times. We promise not to sympathise, because nobody does. Oh, we'll make noises at the pub, but we'll also bid on your stuff at Grey's.

Or Gerard Henderson. Here, I swear, is the pith and juice and seed and skin of disappointment. In a bottle. With someone pulling a face on the label.

In spite of his obvious privilege, his inside-track to people willing to pay him to write their columns, his long-standing position in the Australian media, and his dignified grey hair …

Gerard has the dog's-bum-lips expression of someone who just found a lemon in his Corona, again! They’ve played this prank since I was in first year at university and I HATE IT! – and nobody ever told him the lemon is the only thing that makes it drinkable, because it’s so much more fun watching him dig with a skewer for the next two hours.

Piers? I really can’t make fun of the preposterous old doughnut. My father died of Alzheimer’s.

Paul Sheehan? Oh, here is a victim worthy. Over the years, he’s worshipped at the alter of magic-water pseudo-science, praised the fake economy of the first dotcom bubble, predicted the collapse of Australian society based solely on the poor rugby teams fielded by GCS schools, encouraged Australia to follow the odious example of oppressive regimes like Singapore, and railed at any and every government that didn’t follow his own insane prescriptions for The Greater Good.

Let me just check, behind that off-milk demeanour. How are you doing, Paul? Okay? Top ten percent? Not left behind with the jetsam of Fairfax’s chronic mismanagement? Haven't flown to London to scratch and whine at the Guardian offices like an ancient Labrador hoping to swap his fleas for food?

Able to command sufficient re-Tweets and complaints to justify your income? So why are you so miserably unhappy with the state of the world?

It’s an enduring mystery, to me. What was, for these and the rest of the vermin brood – whose only prescription, really, is that people below them on the greasy pole of life should sink lower for the Good of The Country – the thing that soured life for them? That made every dissenting opinion evil?

Let's not even start on the country universally acclaimed by these reincarnations of the Whinging Pom: America, life, liberty, and the pursuit of the last damn penny not already claimed by someone offended because they have mere millions while others have billions.

What put the worm in your apple, people?

I don’t earn your income, but life is fun. My wife will die, one day, either horribly or suddenly. But while her tests give us another year, our sons give us another argument, our business gives us another month’s mortgage, we smile and laugh and eat and drink.

Dudes, if I had your life, the biggest problem I’d face in the morning is how to stop laughing. Really. I’d be like a pig with my arse in butter and my face in treacle.

Why. So. Serious?

To John Birmingham: A ‘bottom feeder of the Web’ responds

“Rather than bitching and moaning about the bottom feeders on the web stealing all our best stuff we should seriously think about stealing theirs. Or, here’s a radical suggestion, even paying them for it”,  writes John Birmingham.

I might take exception to being included among his hyperbolic “bottom feeders” tag, since I have certain bits of expertise beyond being an efficient word-assembly machine, but I’m familiar with Birmo’s diction, so I'm not actually offended.

Instead, I’ll give him four reasons why his suggestion won’t go anywhere.

1.    Publishers don’t want to pay

Well, you might argue that there isn’t the money around for such things.

But a publisher torn between a decent analysis of a difficult technical subject and a three-day Canberra correspondent wet-dream over a poll that’s within the margin of error and, oh, a good analysis of technical data? The poll wins.

Actually, your editor probably can’t even put an accurate value on technical expertise, in an editorial sense. He or she lives in a world where photography is being outsourced to your readers – “join the community! Send us your pics for free!”

The editors can just about grasp that a high-profile economist or demographer is worth money, but why pay (say) $100 an hour for someone who understands the NBN when you can get forty-seven opinions for free? When it takes five minutes of a journalist's time to play the fake-balance game on topics they know little about?

2.    Media don’t want to listen

The best way to publicise a half-truth about technology is to give some kind of exclusive to a mainstream newspaper. I still have traumatic memories of trying to explain to one of Australia’s most respected business columnists that light and electricity do not interfere with each other – and failing entirely.

If anyone on the Sydney Morning Herald’s business or sports desks – and anyone at all over at the Australian Financial Review – had cared about facts at the appropriate time, the FirePower scandal would never have happened. It’s like that, really: once your colleagues are convinced they have the inside information, telling them they might be wrong is a waste of time.

Even easily discoverable facts - such as "no, cybercrime is not a bigger business than drugs" - is ignored in favour of a quote. "Is what he said true?" an outsider might ask. "Not my position to judge", the journalist responds, "It's true that he said it."

3.    Why would an expert want a public mauling?

Imagine, Birmo, that I’m an expert – I mean a deep, serious expert who has put years into a subject – on something like telecommunications technology or climate change. Now, ask me to drop myself into a contentious debate, for (frankly) low pay.

Do you remember a couple of Southern Cross University scientists that took measurements of fugitive emissions from coal seam gas facilities? Let me remind you. Dr Damien Maher and Dr Isaac Santos measured fugitive emissions around coal seam gas facilities in Queensland, and put that data in front of a government inquiry (the submission is here as a pdf: http://www.scu.edu.au/coastal-biogeochemistry/download.php?doc_id=12515&site_id=258&file_ext=.pdf).

They caught merry hell for it – from Martin Ferguson (who isn’t a scientist), from industry lobbies (whose objectivity has to be questioned), and even from the Australian Science Media Centre.

And that’s not to mention what happens to an expert if the foam-flecked screaming morons of the far right decide to form an attack pack to bring someone down. Some people seem resilient to this – Tim Flannery for example – but how many experts on any topic want threats and insults?


4.    Who's the expert anyhow?

See, there are plenty of people who pick over this stuff out there on the Web. There is also a near-infinite number of fools, fruits, quacks and crackpots.

The Sydney Morning Herald is currently promoting a "documentary" from 9-11 "truthers". If I took an expert in turd-dropping to the editor who picked that one, and my expert dropped a turd in the editor's coffee-cup, the editor would probably still have trouble recognising the expert's credentials. There would at least be a demand that someone call Ian Plimer to get a dissenting point of view.

I love the idea of introducing facts to the debate, John. Really, I do. You go and convince your editors that they need facts, and I'll happily point you to people who understand them. Sadly, I don't think it's going to happen.

“Sorry son, don’t like the haircut”

DAMN I was going to sleep.

This from Malcolm Turnbull:

“NYTimes: Prison Population Can Shrink When Police Crowd Streets http://t.co/1a6vHnuL”

Oh thank you Malcolm. Another pass-on from America, where someone can get shot for entering the wrong driveway, can get mass-beaten by police, but where the relentless propaganda is that the best way to protect freedom is to curtail the individual and empower the instutution. Let someone carry a gun, but put RFIDs on students; let the gun makers thrive, and use drones to spy on citizens.

Back here in Australia, I am old enough to remember a darker era of policing, exemplified by what was a catch-phrase in the 1970s and 1980s:

“Sorry, son, don’t like your haircut.”

So here’s a story I’ve related before: that I knew someone who was arrested – not gently – on a charge of “resist arrest”. That’s sufficiently recursive to boggle the mind, but the most salient detail – the one that got a 1980s magistrate laughing out loud at an uncomfortable police prosecutor, is this.

At the time of the arrest, and at the court appearance, the individual in question was immobilised by a leg cast (plaster, not one of those plastic scaffolds we use now) that started at the pelvis and ended at the ankle.

The entire thing was a joke: merely a probationary constable getting a dose of the red mist at a cricket match, grabbing someone from behind at random, and taking exception when they tried to brush off the hand. The individual in question is and always was one of the most harmless people imaginable. Not harmless as in “wouldn’t harm a fly”, more “harmless as in Bernie Fraser would need four pounds of dope, a fifth of scotch and a hammer-blow to the head to be so laid back.”

To be more personal. I’ve been spread-eagled by a country cop for the crime of being the first to arrive at a car accident. I wasn’t in the accident, I was just the next car down the road, and someone else called the ambulance, and the ambos called the cops, and my teenage nemesis saw red when he saw me. The ambos talked him down.

Or there’s the friend of mine who didn’t even have to break the speed limit to get hassled: merely driving a 1970s V8 Ford Falcon Cobra (in imitation of the Moffat car that won Bathurst) was enough.

And personally? I’ve never even managed an arrest – which is probably an admission of failure as a journalist – let alone a conviction. I’m boring and somewhat conventional.

No, I won’t feel safer with an infestation of street police to take offence at my haircut or face.

And if I had one wish, it would be for the Liberals to stop telling Australia is should copy America in all things. I vowed long ago never to return to the USA, and I don’t wish it to be imported to Australia.

No, cybercrime isn’t bigger than the drug trade – not even by inflated industry estimates

One of my decisions for 2013 was to moderate how I express myself on Twitter. That doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy other people slinging it around…

Twitter was host to a row between @Asher_Wolf and News’ Claire Porter, @ClaireRPorter about this article: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/day-of-reckoning-is-coming-for-the-web-says-amit-yoran-former-director-of-us-department-of-homeland-security/story-e6frg6n6-1226565364997

Ms Wolf complained that the story was a little too fan-like (euphemism). It’s hard to disagree when the third par says “Amit Yoran is kind of a big deal.”

But it’s this line that I’m going to take issue with:

“Cyber security threats are in fact so common that more money is being made from cyber crime than from drug trafficking, Yoran said.”

Ahem. Here’s a UN source about drug trafficking (http://www.un.org/en/ga/president/66/Issues/drugs/drugs-crime.shtml):

“In 2009, the value of illicit trade around the globe was estimated at US$1.3 trillion and is increasing.”

And here’s a story (http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/cybercrime-costs-338bn-to-global-economy-more-lucrative-than-drugs-trade/57503) about the value of cybercrime:

“Norton reports that cybercrime is costing the global economy $338 billion a year, overtaking a still a lucrative trade in the underground drugs market.”

Norton is wrong, and ZDNet was unspeakably lazy to report it – since it took me just one Google search to find the UN data (search terms: global drug trade billions – it’s currently the number two result).

It’s also lazy for anyone to cite ZDNet’s report to support their own – not because of any systemic problem specific to ZDNet, simply because it’s not a primary source. Just because a journalist printed it doesn’t make it true.

The long and the short of it is this: the drug trade is worth around three times the cybercrime trade. But the computer industry has a long, long history of making itself bigger. A mature industry now, it still behaves like Chester the dog from Loony Tunes, trying to ingratiate itself with Spike, trying to prove it’s important, stealing gravy to add to its own steak.

Cybercrime is important. But it’s not bigger than the drug trade. It’s self-aggrandising for the industry to claim it; it’s lazy for journalists to report it.

Smithsonian feeds the quacks

“Over thousands of years, gold has been used to treat rheumatoid arthritis, inner ear infections, facial nerve paralysis, fevers and syphilis. Now, preliminary findings suggest a new application for tiny grains of gold – destroying cancer cells.”

With that line, the Smithsonian Magazine demonstrates a journalistic habit that undermines science reporting, while at the same time giving comfort to promoters of pseudo-science. A journalist with a story, going in search of a Grand Narrative for the lead.

The rest of the story is fine: a straightforward discussion of research. But the “wisdom of the ancients” is not, I’d suggest, the right “grand narrative” for a serious health story.

“Over thousands of years gold has been used to treat” is linked by the Smithsonian piece to this journal paper. It’s just a throwaway line at the start of the paper, which examines gold-based therapy for arthritis and tuberculosis. Interestingly, that paper notes that “Eventually, gold therapy was extended to arthritis and lupus erythematosus, because of the belief that these diseases were forms of tuberculosis.”

That belief has long been proven wrong … but what of the rest of the list? “Inner ear infections, facial nerve paralysis, fevers and syphilis”. The Smithsonian doesn’t provide a citation, let alone discuss whether any of these treatments were effective.

Ancient Egypt used dung in treatments. That doesn’t somehow suggest they knew something about feces that we since lost; it means they were ignorant and superstitious, and based their treatments on not on science, but on magic.

They’d have used unicorn penis to treat cancer if they could get it: that doesn’t make it an effective treatment, it just sweeps unicorn penis up in the “try everything” pharmacopeia of ancient society.

Spurious credibility is exactly what pseuds, frauds, snake-oilers, ripoff merchants, gull-deceivers, anti-vaxers, crystal-sellers, homeo-sue-anyone-who-disagrees-pathy, chiro-save-a-laywer-for-us-practic and every other quack relies on to draw new, desperate suckers into their net.

Well done, Smithsonian.

Wireless spectrum scare-story: $400 per year per user?

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If Ord Minnet’s data are to be believed, the federal government’s spectrum reserve price is going to add $400 per year to “broadband consumers”.

If, of course, the Daily Telegraph got its understanding of the Ord Minnet numbers right.

Let’s take the number as read, and since I can’t see why a mobile investment would be recovered from fixed broadband users, let’s confine the calculation to the country’s 5.8 million wireless subscribers. Finally, let’s take one other number Ord Minnet’s Brad Dunn gave to the Tele:

“The bill to purchase enough spectrum to cover the 22.6 million population will be approximately $1.5 billion.”

With 5.8 million subscribers, $400 per subscriber would yield $2.3 billion in the first year alone. Or to put it another way: to recover $1.5 billion in a year, the additional cost to users would only need to be $258, not $400.

So that didn’t work.

Not only that, but spectrum is a multi-year investment. Telstra doesn’t have to recover $1.5 billion in the first year; $150 million over ten years would pay it back (yes, I am ignoring the cost of capital).

If you ignore any kind of ramp-up, then Telstra’s current 4G customers – around 375,000 last August according to ComputerWorld – would have to repay $150 million in the first year.

Would you be surprised to find out that $150 million divided by 375,000 is $400?

But that’s only the first year (and from the laziest calculation possible). If you presume that Telstra wants to have 10 million 4G customers after ten years, and use a simple linear ramp-up, the per-year spectrum cost recovery by the tenth year falls to $15 per user.

A more complex calculation is to assume that Telstra would spread the $1.5 billion over ten years so that each user pays the same amount towards spectrum costs. Then, ignoring the cost of capital, the extra burden on subscribers is a paltry $29 per year (or less than $2.50 per month).

Even with a 10% cost of capital – if my spreadsheet is correct, which I don’t guarantee, but it's good enough for this case – the annual per-user recovery with a ten-year ramp up is $132 – or a little over $10 per user per month.

There’s plenty of room in a 4G premium alone to cover that.

If any of my numbers are close to reality - closer, say, than $400 per user per year - then perhaps the government's spectrum floor price isn't as stupid as people are saying.

A post for a friend I haven't met

You might say I’m writing this for a friend.

Call it an awareness thing. I’m not competent to diagnose my friend’s condition, but I know how difficult it can be if your body decides to lay out a puzzler for the experts. So here’s the early history of Ms T’s condition, as always related with her permission.

Disclaimer: yes, I have told some of this in a disjointed way, before. This is more linear timeline, with a specific purpose. I won’t be offended if you skip over it.

The reason we want to set this on the record is to illustrate how, with a rare condition, the symptoms can deceive.

Ms T’s condition is the immune system disorder known as vasculitis. The immune system – I guess it’s the T-cells because they’re on the list of “things we look for in blood tests” – has decided to nuke her blood vessels.

That’s not particularly common, but there’s more. In my limited understanding, vasculitis typically starts with things like capillaries – there are some typical symptoms, purpling near the skin and so on. Ms T’s started with major arteries: one carotid, the celiac artery, one renal artery.

The celiac artery was the one that delivered the symptoms that got us a diagnosis. The rest ran under the radar at the time. And the symptoms didn’t actually point to the cause.

What happened – nearly three years ago now – was that her stomach shut down. Between January and March, she went from steak-after-bushwalks (15 km was a good day) to not eating (because every attempt ended in pain), and only able to walk with assistance. We tried a walk in February to see if her appetite would recover; I carried her he 200 meters back.

Yes, we were seeing the doctor. After several visits and nothing working, he referred us for imaging. The clinic had a six-week waiting list.

So we waited.

Things got moving once the specialist took a look. Ms T couldn’t eat because there wasn’t stomach there, just ulcer. So with the specialist speaking kind of urgently down the phone, the imagers waived the waiting list and opened early the next day for an CRT (or was it an MRI? Anyhow, a big machine that takes pictures).

The next day we were in hospital – and still running with the wrong diagnosis (a rare liver cancer).

So: most of Ms T’s condition was (externally) asymptomatic – the extent of damage was only revealed by imaging. Here only symptoms where symptoms not of vasculitis, but of the collateral damage.

Now, I could make a political point of this, something about the state of the health system, public versus private, blah blah blah. Once in the hands of the public specialists of RPA, I’ve got nothing but good things to say. Others have a different experience; I’m not responsible for that, nor am I going to change my report.

What I’m relating is how difficult a diagnosis can be if you have a rare disease. The GP got it wrong; the first specialist got it wrong. RPA – with six specialists taking their shot over nine weeks – ended up with a coin toss, vasculitis or endocarditis.

There simply isn’t an easy test. We tossed the coin the right way. She lived. Rough, but alive. We have the chemo, but right now it’s going in through a vein, which is roughly that we’re killing the T-cells from a safe distance and the side-effects are manageable.

The point of this story?

Right now, someone I know only on Twitter is threading through the labyrinth of mysteries. It won’t be the same thing as Ms T, unless the universe is throwing up the kind of thundering coincidence that makes you throw aside a whodunit in disgust.

But if something is taking months to work out, I’ll place a small side bet on “rare”. And if it’s not racing ahead, I’ll place a much smaller bet on “not cancer” and hope I’m right. But this difficult, I’ll guess that my Twitter followee is on the long road down rare chronic illness.

I hope not. I hope it turns out to be easy and innocuous and temporary.

If not, there’s good news and bad.

The bad is that it’s a very, very rough road.

The good is that many, many of us will stand alongside you. One last story in this overly long post.

In the darkest days – when Ms T was about 35 kg, we were still waiting for the first round of imaging, and I was watching her die – the previous owner of Bunjaree Cottages (which we now operate as our labour of love) gave us a free weekend in a cottage. We’d missed a regular booking, she phone, I told the story, and bingo.

That wasn’t all.

She also gave some life-saving advice – she’s a trained nurse – that kept Ms T going long enough. Just. She suggested something that was revolting, but extremely nutritious in small amounts. Ms T’s weight bottomed out at 31 kg, but she lived. Mrs A – the nurse – had experienced catastrophic weight loss before.

Right now, I can only pass on support and advice. But any of us in the same world are here to help, whether it’s moral, practical, whatever. Because governments aren’t helping: we only have each other.

Go well, Ms C. Our thoughts go with you.

Harvard Business Review goes crackpot with “green the Australian desert” scheme

Please remember this: what I’m about to discuss is an article in Harvard Business Review. You know: a highly respected publication with an international reputation.

In so far as a single article suffices for this, I’m about to drop that reputation in the blender and ask the immortal question “Will it Blend?”

The article in question is this one, “When Social Enterprise Demands Mega Scale”, in which a guru of e-mail marketing, Arthur Middleton Hughes, suggests solving climate change by turning on the desal plants on a vast scale, to turn 80 percent of Australia’s deserts into Paulownia hardwood plantations. This, he confidently asserts, would soak up about 80 percent of the world’s excess CO2 and pay for itself through hardwood sales.

The numbers are all wrong.

Quote: “Australia has 834 million acres of desert”.

No, we do not. According to Geosciences Australia:

“The total desert area equates to 18 per cent of the total mainland area of Australia” – which, given Australia’s total area, means the desert area is around 137 million hectares – or 339 million acres (2.47 acres per hectare).

In other words, whatever source Mr Middleton Hughes used for our area of desert, it was more than double the actual area.

“If 80% of the Australian deserts were provided with fresh water and planted with fast-growing trees, Australian deserts could reduce the CO2 in the atmosphere of the planet by 7.4 billion tons per year.”

Nope. Because of the simple error in research, the total carbon capture available isn’t 7.4 billion tons per year – it’s 2.9 billion tons.

How does Mr Middleton Hughes propose to pay for this vast project?

“If fresh water were pumped to 80% of these deserts and trees were planted, the result could be a world hardwood export business eventually worth $2.4 trillion per year.”

Ahem: according to Globaltrade.net, the global hardwood market in 2006 was $257 billion. So there isn’t demand for $2.4 trillion worth of hardwood; the price would collapse.

And all of this ignores the environmental impact.

Australia’s deserts aren’t some kind of Martian landscape where nothing lives or grows. Rain brings the deserts into bloom: they are vital and diverse ecosystems.

Thanks, Mr Middleton Hughes, but we aren’t going to hand over deserts to a crackpot scheme that won’t work.

Ethics and activism: more than fifty shades

I’ve stayed out of the Jonathan Moylan debate because recent events have left me a little fearful of controversy. More on that later*.

If you came in late, Moylan issued a fake press release that briefly caused the price of a company called Whitehaven Coal to fall. The fall was only temporary, because the hoax was discovered and reversed; but the outcome has been a frenzy of pro- and anti-Moylan moralizing.

Apart from simplistic 140-character attack-defend-change-tack arguments on Twitter, there’s been serious words written by Bob Brown, Christine Milne and others on both sides. Because The Greens decided to endorse Moylan’s activism, they’ve become a secondary target for criticism from the centre and the right.

(Personally, as a strategy I’m not so sure their position will harm The Greens. If their constituency is genuinely “old Reds”, hardline activist positions will help them more than trying to become filthy Fabians!)

I’m not competent to assess the legality of what Moylan did, so I’m happy to leave that question to the courts. If he’s charged and found guilty, it would seem pretty clear that he broke the law; if he’s charged and cleared, it’s pretty clear the other way. It’s only an open question if ASIC decides not to lay charges.

What of the ethics?

Unlike Edward Spence, http://theconversation.edu.au/whitehaven-hoax-was-an-unethical-act-that-was-harmful-to-all-11571 writing in The Conversation, I don’t see it as a simple ethical question. I don’t regard the “informational environment” with the same awe as Spence, for a start – mostly because I don’t think such a thing exists as a single thing. A cat video on YouTube isn't quite the same as a climate denier blog isn't the same as a stock exchange announcement.

It seems to me that the essence of disobedience and activism is that you must be aware of the possible or likely consequences of your actions, and willing to accept those consequences.

In short: there is no “clean” act of resistance.

There is no way to break a law without creating an ethical quandary.

When Mahatma Ghandi led the Salt March, he was encouraging his followers to break a law (a tax on salt).

It’s easy, 80-plus years later, to endorse his position; but as it happened? When one of the immediate results of the march was 60,000 individuals sent to prison, the ethics must surely have troubled Ghandi’s sleep. He was human.

The ethical example we get from Ghandi is more complex than good-versus-evil. The activist must renounce violence; and the activist must be prepared to accept the consequences of his resistance.

It’s interesting to note that Ghandi did not consider financial harm to be the same as violence, by the way. The Salt March was directed against a particular, oppressive tax, and he wanted all Indians to boycott British textiles.

Institutions are legitimate targets of resistance. They must be: because that’s what resistance is for, to force change upon institutions. An act may be wrong-headed and ineffective (which is where I feel Moylan went wrong), but it’s not evil merely because it’s directed against a particular institution that a particular ethicist feels is sacrosanct.

*I mentioned a fear of giving offence. I’ve found myself subject to a sustained campaign against the business that I run with my wife. In particular, there are those on social media who, if they dislike what I say, bring the business into the argument. There is also a persistent troll on TripAdvisor.

Because the impacts are immediate and devastating, it is an effective threat, and one that I have to work hard to resist.

But people who will hide behind anonymity to attack individuals on the basis of what they say or believe must be resisted. To do otherwise is to cowardly hide from cowards. So I guess the risk I bear is that I will continue to be attacked. Fortunately, I have more than one way to pay the mortgage. For now, we will survive.

Sex and chemo: don’t try this at home

To echo a previous post, I write this with my wife’s consent and endorsement.

Apart from shit, another thing you’re not warned about in chemotherapy – I guess, chronic illness in general – is what will happen to your sex life.

Oh, yes. Before anyone gives me the smug and obvious: don’t bother. I’m not talking about what’s obvious, I’m talking about what’s acceptable to talk about. If you need to know the difference, you’re too jejune to understand why publishing a problem is important.

OK. The kids have left, the adults can talk. 

It’s bad enough that nobody warns you that chemotherapy can lead to an utterly catastrophic and unpredictable case of the shits. It is, perhaps, worse that doctors don’t say “we will save your life, but only if you’re ready to be celibate”.

Let me recap for people who haven’t read my previous posts on my wife’s health – Ms T to those who don’t know her, and those that know her don’t need her name.

She suffers from an extremely nasty and uncommon immune disorder. Since her T-cells have decided that blood vessels are The Enemy to Be Destroyed, the T-cells have to be suppressed. Otherwise, her arteries die. Major arteries that became useless prior to treatment included the celiac, one carotid, and one renal artery.

Unlike a cancer patient, for Ms T, chemo will be forever. If it ceases, she will die.

Now, let me present a timeline of 2012.

January: liver infection

February: replacement of celiac artery, involving a 14-inch belly incision, like a failed seppuku, matched on her left inside thigh (where the replacement blood vessel came from).

March: bone marrow failure with blood transplants in ICU

April: further surgery because the major scar wasn’t healing right (immune-suppressed, surprise me!)

May: What we thought was an infection emerged in an intimate spot. Later, this would be diagnosed as a tumour. Tumours are a risk of immune-suppression, because (obviously) there’s no response to abnormal cells. This month also involved the removal of a fast-growing facial skin cancer of the same origin.

Forget June to August: the intimate tumour was being treated as an infection, and sex was out of the question. A gynecologist finally diagnosed the growth, and surgery was scheduled for September.

September: removal of a vulval tumour. Write off this month and October for healing.

October: Post-op infection that gave us a second tumour scare.

November: All clear from everyone.

In other words: with very rare and sporadic – and occasionally drunken “fuck it, let’s try anyway” exceptions – the year 2012 from January to November offered almost no opportunities for intimacy.

It’s probably worth saying, at this point, that Ms T and I have, in our relationship, been lucky beyond any possible expectation. We met in 1987, and moved in together in the same year. We have argued, mortgaged, parented, starved, prospered, cared for my mother, raised our sons, and never lost the delicious tingle of touching each other, holding each other, the joy of a kiss or the electricity of a hand on a cheek, fingers on the arm, words we whisper when nobody else can hear. She can catch my breath in my throat, and our sons are a wonder and a joy (and, to be truthful, too damn loud and boisterous to tolerate!).

And for nearly a year, we were, perforce, celibate.

Since circumlocution is not my style, and since Ms T has okayed this: the bio-availability of a cyclophosphamide infusion is not 100 percent. Some of it is excreted: via the kidneys, sweat, tear ducts, and other fluids.

Which means that even some aspects of sex that we might both enjoy are denied us. As she said when we were discussing this post: “Oral sex is out. I don’t want to kill you.”

Is the picture forming? Good. There’s more.

In all of this a couple of other aspects arise.

The first is that a secondary treatment that Ms T suffers is high-dose steroids. These have a side-effect that skin and membranes are paper-thin.

Go on, fellas: any careless move during sex will bleed. Now, if you love your wife: try maintaining an erection after hearing the word “ouch”.

Really, it doesn’t work.

And the other problem is me. I’m an erotic wreck, brought down by worry and stress, business and mortgage, the fear of losing my wife and the fear of losing our life. I have nothing of a stiff teenager left to offer.

Whenever we can, we hold each other in the night, and wish for better. As do a million others going through this experience. We know you, and share your frustration. Nobody warned us, and quite probably, nobody warned you.

Bushwalking again

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I hope you might understand how much this means to us: for the first time since very early 2011, Ms T attempted a bushwalk.

For the first time in nearly two years, I had the delight of holding her hand over steps and rocks, talking about the flowers and birds we saw, and stopping to admire yabbies in the creek. The kind of stuff that makes bushwalking worthwhile.

Until she fell ill, we were pretty keen bushwalkers. Not “extreme sports” types – we’re too old. She’d come to bushwalking in her early 40s (one of the reasons we love and now operate Bunjaree Cottages is its proximity to bushwalks), and because it made her feel good, we continued. We’re not campers, we’re wimpy day-walkers who used to pick out walks in the 15-20 km range as our favourites.

She could be pigheaded. Once, on the Southern Highlands, she rolled her ankle on a tree-root, came down on both knees, and left pretty deep cuts. We treated them with antiseptic and gauze, and revised down to a 5km walk.

The GP later noted, “if you’d gone to hospital, this wouldn’t have scarred.”

Ms T: “Who wants to sit around in a hospital waiting room instead of walking?”

For me, it was a revelation; for our marriage, a delight. Our sons loved it as well, which (since they were 7 and 9 when we started) was a bonus. There’s nothing like bushwalking for a host of things, including getting a couple of too-loud boys somewhere where their voices no longer upset you!

And they loved it – in one case, so much that he’s made nature his study at university.

And there were benefits for a total sook like me. Since Ms T never – even if we walked 24 km in a day – developed “powerful” ankles or a good sense of balance, steps, rocks, or unstable inclines meant I got to hand-hold her through it. I loved that aspect of bushwalks.

Ms T: "I didn't actually need help on that bit."

Me: "I know. I just like to touch you when we walk."

And then she fell ill, and everything changed. The immune system, for those that might doubt it, really can kill people. Ms T’s normal weight – about 55 kg – has dipped as low as 31 kg. Apart from four months in hospital in two years, there have been three months in a wheelchair, and a lot more of the time when her health was, at best, feeble.

So, no bushwalking.

Yesterday, we made our first small attempt to walk together again. We were very, very conservative: we chose the Darwin Nature Walk at Wentworth Falls, going in the reverse direction (starting at the end of the walk, near the falls) to keep us near the park and let her decide “that’s far enough”.

We covered about 4 km out-and-back, which stunned us both – and we learned that even a gentle-ish 50-meter climb with steps is hard on her surgical scar. We were so slow on the inclines that we attracted a bit of comment from more agile walkers (mostly cheerful and solicitous, so that’s okay).

And here’s just a couple of photos – excuse the camera-phone quality.

This is a grevillea servicea, otherwise known as the pink spider-flower. They were in profusion on the Darwin walk.

And this boring patch of land is actually very important. For much of the Darwin walk, there is hanging bog to the west of the boardwalk, just like this:

That’s what feeds the creek and keeps it flowing year-round. Without this “useless” land (as a developer would see it), creeks only flow after rain. The bog absorbs water, filters it, and releases it steadily into the creek. That creek eventually ends up in the Warragamba catchment – as do many other creeks and rivers, fed from bogs like this one.

Cartoonist versus climate science - the book promotion

It’s that time of year where copy-stretched editors get lax with their briefs, so it’s probably no surprise that The Age would let one of its cartoonists, John Spooner, loose on the climate science debate, here: http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/sceptics-weather-the-storm-to-put-their-case-on-climate-20121228-2bz91.html.

The article is a book promotion – but that little detail is held until the end of the article. I’ll start at the start, in which Mr Spooner outrageously equates climate science to the Mayan apocalypse:

“WELL, so much for the 2012 apocalypse. If the ancient Mayans ever knew anything about the future, they made a serious miscalculation. The same fate has befallen the international climate change emergency brigade.”

See how clever that was? How funny? Climate science – which is based on measurement and observation – is the same as the faked-up media “Mayan apocalypse” scare story? We’re still here, so both the Mayans and the scientists are wrong.

In Mr Spooner’s logic, the science was proved wrong not by scientists, but by the failure of a political process. In other words, politics determines the validity of science.

He then indulges in a bit of name-calling (which is OK if you’re calling climate scientists names; anyone calling a climate sceptic names is indulging in group-think), before moving on to this:

“Anyone familiar with the judicial process knows the gravest issues of liberty and fortune are often determined by a jury selected from the public. Expert witnesses can give evidence in support of either side at a trial. The judge must rule on questions of admissibility, but in the end it is the jury that decides which scientific evidence is to be believed.”

In other words, because courts accept the decisions of the inexpert, the whole world is bound to accept inexpert opinion on science.

Then there’s this:

“In the climate debate, the only "judge" is the scientific method - a testable hypothesis followed by factual or experimental challenge.”

Wrong, Mr Spooner. You don’t understand the scientific method.

Science doesn’t start with a hypothesis – that’s a misapprehension pushed by journalists who don’t understand science. It starts with an observation. For example, quantum physics came to us, courtesy of Max Planck, because of the observations of energy radiating from black bodies. Hypothesis follows observation (as it indeed does in climate science). A hypothesis can be considered sound if it can be used to predict the behavior of a system.

“For example, everybody agrees that the warming trend paused 16 years ago, despite a corresponding 10 per cent increase in atmospheric CO2.”

No, everybody does not agree this. There is noise in atmospheric observations, but most of the extra heat is taken up by the ocean; there is no “pause” in global warming. Here’s a decent debunk, over at Discovery. http://news.discovery.com/earth/no-global-warming-hasnt-stopped-121017.html

“The reason why scientific consensus emerged in this debate is because political activists want to get things moving”, Spooner writes.

In other words, the entire IPCC process – including the review and editing of IPCC reports – is captive to activists. This is pure conspiracy theory.

The whole thing boils down to a book promo:

“I still feel that the voices of highly qualified sceptics are not heard enough. In an effort to redress this imbalance, an unusual book on the sceptics' view will be published in 2013.”

Enough said.

Seeking comment: is a “birds up close” experience a good idea?

This is on the personal blog rather than the Bunjaree Website, because I’m merely testing an idea.

I have tested this with my brother-in-law, a birder and bird photographer of 40 years’ experience, and I’d like feedback on it before I try it in earnest.

The idea is a birding weekend at Bunjaree Cottages – not for experienced birders, but for those that would like to see some of the most difficult-to-spot birds of the Australian bush close-up.

The weekend would be led by Dr Graham Cam, who has an intimate knowledge of Australia’s bird species and their ecology, and is also a noted bird photographer.

The activities would take place on the grounds of Bunjaree Cottages, and in other nearby Blue Mountains locations. We’re still working out some of the details, so feedback would be welcome.

1.     Netting

“Mist nets”, which catch birds harmlessly, have to be laid before the birds are active. Getting up before sunrise to help set the nets is optional, but certainly part of the experience!

2.     Checking the nets

This is where the fun and education happens. The party will tour the nets, getting close-ups of bird species that don't often sit still - and are murder to photograph. The birds then get sexed and banded – and if any of them have been previously banded, their bands will be recorded to be reported to the Australian Bird and Bat Banding Scheme overseen by the Department of the Environment.

Graham will be on hand to talk about all the birds found in the nets. It will be, as far as possible (remembering that the birds’ well-being is paramount), a real “bird in the hand” experience.

3.     Breakfast

You’ll be getting hungry by now, so it’s back to your cottage for breakfast.

So far, so good. The next question is this: after breakfast, which is better:

A.   Organised bird-spotting / photography

B.    Leave guests to themselves for the rest of the day

Under option A, we would select a destination that doesn’t need a 4x4 to reach, arrange a meet-up time, and spend a few hours on a photography / bird-spotting bushwalk. Under option B, guests spend the rest of their Saturday taking in the other delights of the Blue Mountains.

Anyone interested in an idea like this – let me know your thoughts in the comments!