Pasta...Again!

You're getting a bit of cooking lately...it must be the colder weather!

Use the pasta recipe from the previous post to make some delicate tagliatelle or pappardelle.

Take two leeks, top and tail them so that you are left with the white, tight part of the leeks. Split them down the middle and then slice each half very finely - transversely. Throw about 25g of unsalted butter in a pan and gently sweat the leeks. You want them to be soft and translucent but not in any way browned.

Take 4 large, brown mushrooms, start at one side and slice them thinly, including the stalk. Add them to the leeks along with a dollop of olive oil and continue to cook on a low heat until very soft and well cooked down. There should be only a little moisture in the pan.

Put on your pasta water.

In another pan heat about 50ml of olive oil and add 2 finely sliced small, hot, red chillis and 4 anchovy fillets. Fry off until the anchovies disintegrate. Add 600g of chicken mince and cook on a moderate heat until cooked but still tender. Add the leek and mushroom mixture, and 3 finely chopped sage leaves, mix and cook on a moderate heat.

Put your pasta on.

Add about 80ml of pouring cream to the chicken and vegetable mixture, adjust the seasoning and mix through.

Drain the pasta. Take the chicken sauce off the heat and sprinkle a quarter of a cup of finely chopped broad leaf parsley onto it.

Serve the pasta and sauce with a bottle of good olive oil for sprinkling and some good grated parmesan.

Magic Pasta

This is a wonderful pasta dish. First make the pasta: put 500g of strong flour and 5 large eggs into a food processor. Pulse process until it comes together in a crumb. Turn it out onto a board and knead until it forms a silky dough. Wrap the dough in cling wrap and set aside at room temperature to rest for an hour.

After the pasta has rested process it through a pasta machine, making sure that it is well laminated. Then progressively work the pasta down to the finest setting on the machine. Once it is thin enough, use the die of your preference to cut into strips - tagliatelle, parpadelle or whatever you prefer.

Meanwhile take 8 or 10 leaves of cavolo nero and strip the leaves from the stems. Roll the leaves and cut into a coarse chiffonade. In a fry pan add a good dollop of olive oil, a couple of crushed cloves of garlic, six anchovy fillets and a finely chopped hot red chilli. Saute until fragrant and then add the cavolo nero. Put a lid on and braise for 20 minutes, you probably won't need to add any water.

Put on the water for the pasta and when it boils salt it and add the pasta.

Meanwhile steam two heads of broccoli until very well cooked. When it is well cooked crumble it and add to the cavolo nero along with 200g of finely sliced smoked salmon. Mix well and warm through.

Drain the pasta when al dente. Serve with the cavolo nero sauce, freshly chopped flat leaf parsley, grated parmesan, ground black pepper and a good olive oil to sprinkle on top.

Buon appetito.

Note: The word "laminate" may be alien to you when used with respect to pasta. In my view it's the key to getting good home made pasta. Maybe the real experts get to the same place another way, but if they do I'm not aware of it. Lamination is a simple process. Set the pasta maker on the thickest setting. Take pieces of dough and run them through. As they become wider fold the two sides together and put them through again. As they become longer fold the two ends together and put them through again. You need to put the dough through about 10-12 times. At the end the dough will have changed. It will now be durable and flexible, not like a biscuit dough as it may have been at the start. The dough should be about 1/3 to 1/2 the width of the pasta machine rollers and ready to be rolled thin. This is in my experience the way to get pasta that is delicate yet robust at the end of the process, when it's cooked.

Autumn

I've always had mixed feelings about Autumn. When I was younger - still at school - I disliked autumn because I knew that meant the rain was coming. We'd have to work outside on the farm in wet weather gear, we'd never be dry, and there'd always be mud. It would be like that until October usually.

I like summer, I don't like the searing heat of the really hot days but the milder days of summer are just right for me. Autumn has its own share of beautiful days but it means winter is coming. Shorter days, colder and (with luck) some rain. This year autumn has been like an Indian summer, the days have been warm and sometimes hot and the nights mild. We've had little rain until the last week or so.

For us it's also the time of the year when we can at last grow a decent garden. We only have a small rooftop area and so we plant in containers. The summer makes such an approach very inefficient in terms of water use so we have given up. Instead we focus on getting seeds and seedlings in as soon as the fiercest part of summer is over.

This year we're growing rocket, coriander, lettuce, cima di rapa, curly and flat leafed parsley, buok choy, cavolo nero, radichio, mint, basil and chives. I miss Italian winter vegetables, they're hard to get in the shops and they are closely connected with winter in my mind. So we're taking the opportunity to grow them for ourselves. It's pretty rewarding because the cima di rapa in particular is so fast growing. It germinates in a week and is ready to eat from about 40 days.

It also gives me a real feeling of satisfaction to wake up in the morning and to see the garden, the plants seeming to have grown overnight!

What's been particularly interesting is the lettuce. We planted mixed red and green lettuce. The green lettuce has been a pretty dismal failure but the red lettuce has really boomed away and we've had several lovely salads from it already.

Enough of the garden however. What's perhaps more interesting is that we have the winter parliamentary recess coming up and then sometime soon after that a general election. The incumbent government have done the impossible and despite their substantial majority and first term status it is a real possibility that they may lose the election.

The core issue for this government is performance - or a woeful lack of it to be exact. They're great at making announcements but they just can't carry through. They either try to deliver and completely stuff it up (the insulation program, the aboriginal intervention, the schools infrastructure program) or they simply fail to get off the ground - computers in schools anyone?

I think that part of the issue is that the Australian population is turned off by Kevin Rudd. He's shown himself as, by turns, querulous, ill-disciplined, incomprehensible and arrogant. Not a good mix I wouldn't have thought.

The question is: can we bring ourselves to vote for Tony Abbott? He is too right wing for many, he alienates women, he has the light of zealotry in his eyes and he just appears a little flakey across the board.

Still it will make for an interesting few months. That situation is made more interesting by a state election in Victoria due around the same time. So we have plenty of politics to keep us warm this winter.

Note: If you are interested in getting some Italian vegetable seeds then have a look at the Italian Gardener. They are the Australian agents for Franchi Sementi - a premier Italian seed producer. The range is excellent and the customer service is great. Give them a ring for great advice.

Golden Threads

Yesterday was the kind of day that often comes along in autumn and winter here. A high pressure system had parked over the top of us. When we arrived at the boat the fog was quite thick and there was a light northerly blowing - maybe 2-3 knots.

There were 11 of us on board for the day and as others arrived the fog started to slowly lift. We got underway and as we motored out we raised the yankee and the main. There was just enough breeze to keep us moving very slowly but there were large glassy patches as well with no wind at all. So up went the big asymmetric, our speed picked up slightly and we trickled away to the east nearly close hauled!

The wind was pretty fitful. It had gone to the east as we got underway and it came and went. It was the kind of day where the helmsman could both steer and trim the asymmetric. The crew settled on deck and down below, chatting, lazing and generally chilling out. This was a very special crew. The links were long and deep.

Reaching the eastern side of the bay we tacked and again came as high as we could, following the lifts along the edge of the bay. The wind freshened slightly and a fog bank well to the south made the air slightly chilly. We tacked again and headed southwest, this time with eased sheets. The breeze was still only 5-7 knots, a gently zephyr. We brought food on deck and ate as we chatted and sailed. Finally we eased sheets even further and headed for home.

I came back to the dock feeling happy, and deeply contented. Connections do that to you.

Nearly forty years ago, in my second year in high school, my parents sold their house and moved to one far extremity of the country. We bought a block of land and lived in a tent and caravan whilst we built a house. It rained, and rained then rained some more. I was one of those children who felt very keenly any difference from my peers and living this way was pretty different. I also disliked school intensely.

The thread of gold in this situation was D, he was one of my new teachers and he was the first teacher who had ever treated me like an individual and a real human being. We called him by his first name. He taught me to sail, to canoe and generally how to live as an adult. He trusted us deeply. The only time I, or anyone else, ever heard him raise his voice was when I clowned around and knocked all the freshly cooked sausages - our camping dinner - into the dust. The response was short and pithy!

They were golden years. We would go sailing every Thursday afternoon, sometimes not returning until Friday morning - going direct to school. We had fun, we learned stuff and we began to grow up. D had a wonderful capacity to get alongside young people and to challenge them to learn and develop. He was well educated, had impeccable manners and a ready sense of humour.

D, his wife and two small children, lived for a start in a school house behind the school. Out the front of the house was a 28 foot yacht which D was building. The lucky amongst us were recruited as labour on the project.

I left school and moved a long way away, later I moved to another country and still later shifted to a new city in that new country. Nearly 30 years passed until someone told me that D's son, T, lived in the same city. I had first met T when he was about 3 years old and hadn't seen him at all in the intervening time. We began to sail together and I renewed my contact with D as he visited T.

We attended T's wedding, he and I shared rough and windy Bass Strait crossings and we sailed together when the opportunity arose. Each time D and his wife visited we'd get together and try to do some sailing. It was a satisfying thing, sailing on our boat with the person who taught me to sail. D was now retired from school teaching but still working incredibly hard as a sailing coach.

Yesterday our crew consisted of my wife and I, our daughter and her friend, D, his wife, T his wife and their two sons and another great sailing friend of ours. We talked and learned from each other, I realised that much of my seamanship - such as it is - was learned during that time with D as a child. We remembered scary incidents and I realised, perhaps for the first time how D had gone out on a limb, probably often, to let students take the risks that they need to take to grow.

This connection is one of the longest in my life and it's one of the golden threads that connect me to who I am.

It was a very satisfying day.

Jessica Watson - The Picture!

This snap, taken at 9:19 am local time today, shows the current position and course of Ella's Pink Lady. She's the "purple" vessel almost directly off Curl Curl on a NW course.

So close!!

Economic Inefficiency

Imagine that you are a coal buyer, a ship owner or just someone who is affected by the cost of coal or the sale of coal. The picture above (which was a snapshot made at 8:57 am today) tells a story of your pain.

Each of the green squares represents a ship at anchor. Each of the green "ship" shapes represents a ship moving. The "moving" ships in amongst the anchored ships are likely to be either coming to anchor or getting underway.

That picture is not unusual and shows at least 21 ships at anchor off Newcastle. They're waiting their turn at the Newcastle coal loader!! Every hour that a ship sits at anchor costs someone something. Ultimately the cost of steel or power is increased because these ships are sitting idle. This goes on week in, week out. There are always ships at anchor off Newcastle simply because there is insufficient coal loader capacity.

The other "cost" is that each and every one of those ships is at risk of being driven ashore in a gale (think Pasha Bulker), a fact that the ATSB commented on in their report on the Pasha Bulker. So there is an environmental risk to them sitting out there like that.

My question is this: Why, with historically high commodity prices for a number of years (despite the hiccup of the GFC), has Australia not invested effectively in the infrastructure to enable it to efficiently export its product? Why does the ACCC continue to allow a monopoly situation with the Newcastle coal loader?

Jessica Watson's Position

About 2 hours ago, at 10:42:01 UTC, Jessica was at 33.94 degrees south 151.81 degrees east, she was on a course of 017 degrees and doing 3.6 knots.

For those without the means to decipher that, that position is about 25-30 nautical miles off the coast near Sydney and a little south of the harbour - roughly between South Head and Botany Bay. That UTC time is 8:42:01 pm Sydney time.

Home soon!!

An update on Saturday morning:

During the night, Jessica sailed in a NNW direction to a position about 10 miles to seaward of Palm Beach. Then she turned and began sailing back along her course! It must be frustrating for her playing this waiting game! At 19:08:04 UTC she was a 33.65 south and 151.62 east, on a course of 148 degrees and at a speed of 4.4 knots. That position is about 12 or so miles off the coast and only just south of her most northerly point off Palm Beach. With the wind offshore as it is, Jessica will be able to smell the land. That's one of the things I always remember about making a landfall - smelling the land for the first time.

I imagine that Jessica will quietly trundle SE during the morning and at some point around 9:00 local time begin her run into the harbour. What a great achievement!!!

Misery, Distress & Disappointment

Increasingly in places like the UK and Australia it seems that the voters are prepared to give the government of the day a fair shot at it. In NSW a Labour government has been in power for 13 years. Ditto in the UK where the conservatives have just come to power. John Howard and the Liberals (conservatives for those overseas) were in power here for 11 years.

That means that over a period of time the country (or state) moves towards the direction of the party in power. I mean that in an institutional sense. Appointments of judges tend to reflect the political persuasion of the day, laws and policies reflect the ideology of the mob in power.

When governments change we, the voters, expect that the new mob we elect will stamp their mark on the country. In so doing the pendulum, which may have swung too far one way, now gets the opportunity to swing back the other way.

What it also means is that governments can expect voters to support them as they make those changes. Voters in Australia do not vote a party in. Rather they decide they've had a gut full of the mob in power and, if there is a half reasonable alternative, they throw them out.

That brings us to the current mob. They came in - on one of those moments of change - with a sizeable majority. That's normal and expectable. But that's where the fun ended. They've proved, in their first term to be a massively ineffectual disappointment.

Here's why:

1. Instead of carving a path, and delivering on it, they've inherited that Howard era sin: they've sniffed the wind at every step and sought to follow a path that they think will displease the minimum number of people. In so doing they've made no meaningful change to the way the country runs and displeased the majority.
2. They have demonstrated an utter incapacity to deliver on anything. Computers in schools? Emissions trading and climate change legislation? The NT "intervention"? The insulation scheme? Meaningful and humane changes to asylum seeker policy? NAPLAN - a shambles? Health reform - nothing to show except words? All trumpeted loudly and all not delivered on.
3. A massive belief in their capacity to "spin" anything. To the point that the Prime Minister speaks only gobbledegook. The only person who comes close to speaking in a straightforward manner and giving the news, good or bad, is Lindsay Tanner. By the way Lindsay, don't think that's a compliment - it's not, you're simply better than your colleagues.
4. An arrogant failure to understand the political imperatives of an unfriendly senate. If you want to implement things then you'd better do your deals before you go mouthing off in public and alienating the people you need to pass your legislation.

What it amounts to is a massive and unacceptable failure. We get a Labor government less than twice a generation. My son was born during the Hawke/Keating years and became a voter in the Howard years.

What right do you, Kevin Rudd, have to fail your country in such spectacularly miserable form? Where is the tough team of reformers that you need in order to make real change? Where is the self discipline and humility that delivers real leadership?

Just for completeness: I acknowledge that Australia has weathered the "GFC" remarkably well. I don't give you much credit however. I think the credit goes to Ken Henry and Glenn Stevens (although Glenn's too quick on shifting rates) and our mineral resources.

Just as a bit of a score card. Here are the nearly-competents:

• Lindsay Tanner - at least he seems to nearly speak his mind and he has got one;
• Greg Combet - It's a pity he's relegated to cleaning up other peoples' messes;
• John Faulkner - It's a credit to John, strangely, that the Defence portfolio has gone silent since his arrival. Things must be working;
• Stephen Smith - dull as ditchwater, but maybe that's a good thing in a foreign minister. At least he appears to be a safe pair of hands;

Here are the failures - at least the most obvious ones:

• Kevin Rudd - Start delivering, that's all, stop spinning, stop being arrogant, and start delivering;
• Nicola Roxon - A term as health minister and we've seen what change precisely? What is the benefit of your latest excursion into health funding exactly? If you can't articulate it then why are you bothering?
• Jenny Macklin - You're a nice person, but the aboriginal population need more than a nice person. Deliver some real change in those communities Jenny and stop trying to take everything over;
• Wayne Swan - The Henry review, the opportunity of a lifetime, and the response from you is a great big fail. As for the mining super-tax, who haven't you alienated?
• Julia Gillard - you have delivered what Julia? What precisely? And attended by what ructions and disharmony? We expect much more.
• Peter Garrett - as a government minister you make a hell of a good singer. To the backbench and soon.

So Kevin and team. Are you going to be the ones who do the impossible? Are you going to be the ones who lose an election, after one term, to Tony Abbott? I mean losing to Tony Abbott for goodness sake - you'd have to really be trying to do that. But that looks like where you are going right now.

Or are you simply going to shrink your majority to a wafer thin irrelevance and lose a few more senate seats in the half senate election so that you can achieve even less in your last term than your first?

Or are you going to stop trumpeting announcements and then failing to deliver on them? Are you going to get fair dinkum, in the way Hawke and Keating were? In the way John Howard did? Are you going to deliver real reform and real change?

If not you might as well go at the next election because you are failing to deliver what we elected you for.

That is such a bitter, bitter realisation.

Political Extremism?

This week Liberal Senator, Cory Bernardi, wrote here that the "burka" should be banned. I understood by the way that the anglicised spelling was burqa.

Bernardi had two points:

1. That the burqa is increasingly being used as a disguise by bandits and that it also creates two tiers of "identifiability";
2. That the burqa is "repressive" and "un-Australian"

Let's take these points one by one. I have no evidence one way or another for the "[burka as] the prferred disguise of bandits and n'er do wells", as Bernardi asserts.

On the basis asserted by Bernardi you could also ban the wearing of scarves, bandannas and a range of other items of clothing for "security". Indeed if as Bernardi asserts, "the burka separates and distances the wearer from the normal interactions with broader society" then there is good argument for banning the wearing of any clothing that differentiates one wearer from another. We could reasonably take that to banning the wearing of all clothes. Really it's quite silly and not to be countenanced. It falls into the same basket as the Government's proposed Net Nanny filter. The utterly wrong response to issues best managed otherwise.

To the second point, Bernardi asserts as follows:

In my mind, the burka has no place in Australian society. I would go as far as to say it is un-Australian. To me, the burka represents the repressive domination of men over women which has no place in our society and compromises some of the most important aspects of human communication.

This is now starting to become overtly xenophobic, jingoistic and not terribly rational. Firstly let me be clear that I have no idea what the Qu'ran says about wearing the burqa, and to me that is not an issue here. But Bernardi draws a bow too far when he asserts that "To me, the burka represents the repressive domination of men over women". It's fine that he should feel like that, but not that he should urge change in public policy on the basis of how something makes him feel. How does he know that it's repressive? Has he ever spoken to a diverse group of women who wear the burqa? Does he know why they wear it? Does he know if they are forced to wear it or choose to wear it?

Next we get to the very heart of the matter. Bernardi goes on to say:

Perhaps some of you will consider that burka wearing should be a matter of personal choice, consistent with the freedoms our forefathers fought for. I disagree.
New arrivals to this country should not come here to recreate the living environment they have just left. They should come here for a better life based on the freedoms and values that have built our great nation.

Which values and which forefathers are those Cory? Are they the Afghani camel drivers who opened up the interior of Australia? Perhaps they are the Italian prisoners of war who chose to come back and settle here after the war? Perhaps they are the Vietnamese boat people who came here in the 1970s. Or perhaps it was the thieving Irish convicts sent here by the British government in 1788.

Get over it! Australia is a culturally diverse country. Bernardi's rant is simply ultra-conservative xenophobia. If he feels uncomfortable about women wearing burqas then perhaps he should do something about his discomfort rather than seek to change others.

As a final aside, if we all applied Bernardi's standard "I feel that it's..." then a bucket load of changes in clothing regulation would need to be made. Here's my (tongue in cheek for the most part) list, tell me yours:

• Police should get rid of their weapons, it makes me feel like the State is repressing me and I feel uncomfortable when I see them;
• Catholic clergy should get rid of their clerical garb - it's become the symbol of an organisation ridden with paedophiles;
• Judges and lawyers should get rid of their robes and wigs, they are a sign of 18th and 19th century legal repression;
• Politicians should be banned from wearing budgie smugglers - they make me feel really uncomfortable - and no I don't intend to see anyone about that. Just lose them!

Medical and Surgical Safety

Patients expect that when they are treated by doctors, they will be helped not hurt in the process. This is particularly true in developed countries with sound health systems.

Throughout the world however there is evidence that patients can be hurt by the medical care that they receive. There are obvious outliers - such as the current manslaughter trial of Dr Jayant Patel in Queensland. In that case the legal authorities have determined that Dr Patel has a case to answer. Fortunately such cases are rare, and all the more unfortunate because of it.

Of more concern is the day to day occurrence of death or adverse events due to medical care. Most health jurisdictions in Australia have instituted measures to improve the performance of health care. Examples include The Australian and New Zealand Audit of Surgical Mortality. These are good initiatives, they focus on understanding causes and providing educational support to ensure that standards of treatment improve. The Victorian regional section of the ANZ audit, VASM, has only recently begun and is still gathering momentum. Nevertheless the 2009 report has already generated useful data, particularly a suggestion that venous thromboembolism prophylaxis could be improved. In simple terms that's preventative treatment to reduce the number of blood clots that can cause problems after surgery.

Numerous other initiatives are underway and some of these highlight the systems nature of health care - it's not just individuals that influence care outcomes but the structure and function of the system in which they work. These are also important initiatives.

There are however at least two other linked issues worthy of consideration:

1. As a "health consumer" I have a right to determine, within sensible limits, who I choose to undertake a procedure;
2. Evidence suggests that publication of performance of individual clinicians leads to enhanced performance.

Let's look at these to points. If I seek to choose a surgeon, to operate on, for instance, my back what are the sort of things I'd want to know? In my case I'd like to know things like:

1. Does he/she regularly undertake this specific procedure?
2. How many has he/she done in the last 12 months?
3. What proportion of adverse events has he/she had in this procedure in the last 12 months and over longer time periods?
4. What outcomes has he/she achieved from this procedure over time?

This isn't a comprehensive list however it does start to focus in on the particular clinician's appropriateness to undertake the specific procedure. There is strong evidence linking frequency of undertaking a given procedure to the achievement of good outcomes.

Of course there is then the question about the likely outcomes for me, given my specific condition. That question for me comes after the question about who is appropriate to see for my condition.

I cannot know these things publicly in Australia at the moment, I cannot see how doctor X compares to doctor Y. This data is not published. This despite evidence that such publication leads to improved clinician performance. This makes it difficult for me to act as an informed consumer and is in my view an area that requires urgent change. I acknowledge that my doctor will have to fully inform me of risks, side effects and outcomes so that I can make an informed consent. This doesn't provide me with comparative data however.

As a side note I also wish to know about the performance of the hospital in which the procedure is to be undertaken. This will also have a bearing on my outcome and is therefore important information.

So my question is, when are we going to bite the bullet in Australia and publish outcomes data for all clinicians performing procedures and all hospitals in which those procedures are conducted? It is only then that I can be a fully informed consumer and only then that, as a society we can reap the benefits of the performance improvements that would likely follow.

Jessica Watson - The Last Slog to Sydney

Well Jesse again came through the rotten weather of the last few days with flying colours. She's now somewhere off the eastern mouth of Bass Strait it appears from her website. Unfortunately the weather isn't going to be too kind. Here's this morning's MSL analysis chart from the BOM:

Those headwinds that Jessica has talked about in her blog will go around to a nice beam or broad reach for the next day or so but then the inevitable will happen - another front. I guess the only question is whether it forges straight through like the one that's currently east of Tasmania or whether it gets pushed away south by those two highs as they move across the country. Either way probably some more headwinds in 36 to 48 hours.

Jessica's support team is predicting that she won't be in Sydney until Saturday 15 May. That's a slow trip by any standards as she only has about 500 nm or less to go. Jessica sounded pretty laid back in her blog so she doesn't think it's a race either.

In fact I'd be guessing that she'll get a little frustrated over the next few days, jilling around at sea when she could be at home...

Jessica Watson - A Fabulous Achievement

Jessica Watson has met every challenge along the way and triumphed. Those who have been to sea in small boats will know how much of a challenge she has faced. This is a very raw and confronting experience, there's not much between you and the elements. Disaster can be close and sudden.

I have a sense however that Jess is facing her greatest challenge right now. Jessica and her team have always said that she won't go through Bass Strait, but rather will pass south of Tasmania. That's good and sensible, the passage through Bass Strait has some elements of "threading a needle" particularly if you are solo and sleep deprived. There's plenty of shipping, as I well know. You can see that here. Just home in on the Bass Strait area and you'll see the traffic as well as the geographical obstacles.

Here's the rub however: Jess has come a long way north due to weather and is now almost loitering at the entrance to Bass Strait - off the mouth of the Hunter Strait really. This is the time of year when low pressure systems sweep through - on about the latitude of Tasmania and about every 4-7 days. If Jess is to pass south of Tasmania she will have to turn south and run down the west coast of Tasmania. I'm not in the least convinced that that is a good move.

Ocean Passages for the World is an Admiralty publication that has been published since the days of the sailing ships. It adjures masters as follows:

...and thence west of Tasmania...It is often necessary, and in heavy weather, desirable to make this passage at a considerable distance from the coast of Tasmania; namely at from 120 to 250 miles from the W coast...

Now that's the summer route! The winter route is as follows:

For the rest of the year, and as an alternative to the summer route, pass through Bass Strait...

Now let's be clear. Jessica is sailing a vessel that's much more weatherly than the old sailing ships. She is also naturally disinclined to take the risk of another encounter with shipping. However there is real risk in running the west coast of Tasmania at close proximity at this time of the year and solo. Without sufficient sea room Jess doesn't have the option of running before any weather until it abates. Instead she must continue to sail and to claw offshore.

If the conditions do deteriorate with the inevitable passage of a front then she may be placed in a difficult situation.

To put this in perspective. This week, as a front passed, the Cape Sorrell waverider buoy registered a maximum wave height of around 13.5 metres and was at or above 10 metres for a period of nearly 3 days. It can be very hard or impossible to make progress to windward with wave heights like that. Add to that there really aren't any safe havens on that west coast.

It's a tough decision, however I reckon I'd rely on my AIS and run through Bass Strait. Of course that is not to underestimate the unpleasant conditions that form in Bass Strait in a SW gale.

Whatever the decision I think that Jess has demonstrated a fantastic determination and skill and I wish her a safe and quiet run to Sydney.

Storms at Melbourne Storm

The story so far, as told in the media, seems to be this:

$20,000 a week - a total of $1.7 million - was being paid for a "hospitality tent" when in fact that tent was being provided as part of another contract. Instead the money was being paid to an unknown number of players in breach of the salary cap. This was discovered when the NRL salary cap auditor was tipped off to the existence of a number of side agreements, between Storm and player(s), which were held in a separate room at Storm HQ. We are told that only the ex-CEO knew anything about this. His ex-deputy has been stood down. Neither the NRL, the Storm Board, the owners of Storm, the other executives at Storm, the players, nor it seems anyone else knew about these payments.

I'm actually finding all of this a little difficult to understand. If I was investigating this, or if I were the owners, I'd like some questions answered:

1. What was the nature of the agreements found in the "other room" and who were they with? What did those other parties think they were for?
2. What form did the payments take and was that form such that it should have been questioned?
3. What did the company's auditors think of the regular payment of such a large amount of money and in conducting their audits what documentation did they review for these payments?
4. What review process did the Audit Committee of the Storm Board undertake with respect to payments being made and the correlation between contractual obligations and the payments made under contracts?
5. How is it that payments of this sort could be made and yet no other member of the executive team was aware of them? What control mechanisms does the Storm have in place for the review and control of payments?

At the moment one person appears to be taking the fall for this. I don't know whether that's right or wrong. However, generally accepted corporate governance standards provide checks and balances which mean that payments of this magnitude and duration should be identified and questioned.

No doubt there are simple explanations for these questions and we will hear them in the fullness of time. I await the investigation with interest.

Tailwheel Travails - Lessons Four & Five

I promised more on my ham-fisted attempts to learn to fly a tailwheel aircraft. It's been a while but here we are. In the meantime I've been flying tamer aircraft - ones with the third wheel on the other end. I've also been doing some time in the right hand seat which is fun. Just as an aside: as I understand it there is no "command" seat in the Australian regulations. You just have to be able to reach all required equipment from the seat you are in. But a big word of warning: some people find it relatively easy to fly from the right hand seat and others don't. So until you know and until you are confident in a range of conditions, don't try it without an instructor. I've done a bit now in a range of aircraft and I like it, but I still want more time with an instructor.

So to the tailwheel. This time we've been flying a slightly different version a Zlin Savage Cub, rather than the Classic we were flying before.

First lesson back was a brush up on 3 pointers and general handling, just getting my hand back in really. For those of you new to tailwheel flying the 3 pointer is where all three wheels land at the same time, it's sometimes called a "full stall" landing (though as Langewiesche points out it isn't necessarily stalled on landing). That's because you are doing what you would normally do in a nosewheel aircraft - holding off in a nose up attitude. With a tailwheel aircraft they are basically finished flying when they settle and they have very little tendency to want to bounce or start flying again. They're also generally flying quite slow. That means if anything goes a little squirrelly - as it can - it does so at a slow speed. That's kind of comforting.

The problem is that because you are going so slow you are a bit susceptible to crosswinds. You don't have the lateral control to stop the aircraft from weather-cocking into wind and you may also be a bit prone to wind shear - stopping flying before you planned to!

Langewiesche on this subject says: "The three point landing is not the only way to get an airplane down. It is not even the best way."

This is where the "wheel landing" comes in. The late Pip Borman once told me - in typically blunt Pip style - "If you can't do a wheel landing you can't fly a taildragger". So we moved on to wheelers.

How do you do a wheeler? Not to bore you with the mighty Langewiesche, but he says it better than me:

Coming in with a good deal of speed, break your glide so that the airplane shoots along level, half a foot or a foot above the ground. Then, when the spot arrives at which you want to make ground contact, simply push over forward and "plaster" the front wheels on. Then as you feel the ground, keep right on pressing forward on the stick so as to hold the ship on.

Sounds easy doesn't it? Well it is and it isn't. We started by choosing a higher approach speed and first stage of flaps. That means that the aircraft is in a high lift, modest drag configuration. We came in and did just as the master suggested - flew along level just above the ground using small amounts of thrust as necessary to keep the aircraft airborne. As we reached the end of the strip we powered up and went around. The idea was to learn to control the aircraft in the attitude in which it would land - a flying attitude, and to learn to visualise the actual height we wanted to fly at. It also gave us a chance to judge the inevitable 90 degree crosswind.

Having done that a couple of times we then came around for real. This time the idea was to minimise the sink rate and to kiss the ground. Unlike Langewiesche our idea was to let it settle and then to pin it by pushing the stick forward. The problem of course is that when you do a three pointer you progressively pole back to arrest the sink rate. You can't do that in a wheeler. So instead you have to very finely judge your height and very gently fly it on. That's counter-intuitive to all of us pilots who are used to flying tricycle gear.

So the inevitable happens - you bounce. Not much but you bounce. Here it's a case of just letting it settle again and getting that stick forward. With the stick properly forward, even though you have flying speed, the wing is at zero or negative lift angle of attack. It is "pinned" to the ground. You can get on the brakes quite hard and then slacken off as you slow down.

After a few of these the bounces got less and my judgement improved. Now it was time to go for a full flap wheeler. This meant that to keep the aircraft flying a fair bit of thrust was needed - we were behind the curve. So we came in with plenty of throttle and just held off the ground a few inches. Closing the throttle slightly allowed the aircraft to sink onto the ground and then I just poled forward to hold her there. You can use thrust at this point to maintain control and keep the tail up.

That's the thing about a wheeler, you can just keep pushing forward as the aircraft slows. You need to do that if you want to keep the tail up. As you slow you eventually lose elevator effectiveness the tail gently settles into a three point attitude.

These were fun landings. I really got a kick out of them and I can't wait to do a few more.

The other thing that's happened is that my tricycle undercarriage landings have improved as well. I reckon everyone should have to fly a 'dragger at some point in their training.

Note: Stick and Rudder: An explanation of the art of flying. Wolfgang Langewiesche, McGraw-Hill Inc, 1944, 1972. A book every pilot should read.

A Story of Love & Travel

I attended a wedding this weekend, to protect the innocent in this story I will use initials for the key players.

"A" was marrying her fiancee "B"; B's identical twin brother "C" had returned from overseas to be B's Best Man. Like a proper Best Man, C had slaved for weeks to prepare his speech. However at the reception he got up and said: "I'm not going to give the speech I prepared, instead I'm going to tell you a story of Love and Travel which I have just heard this week". Here's the story:

More than 8 years ago when A and C had just got together they were forced by circumstance to spend a few weeks apart over Christmas. Being in love, A wrote B a love letter. B was sharing a student house with C and with another guy "P"; he didn't want them to read the beautiful letter that he had received from A so he hid it...in a slit in the cushion of the old sofa that they had in their student house.

Later B and C moved out of the house and sold the sofa to P; B forgot the letter hidden so carefully. Later P moved out of the house and, after carefully cleaning the sofa, he sold it to another person. The letter still didn't come to light, B had hidden it well.

The new owner of the sofa happened to feel something in one of the cushions one day and the letter at last came to light. Not quite knowing what to do with it, the new owner stuffed it in his knapsack. Shortly afterwards he travelled to Amsterdam and stayed there in a random house. Finding the letter in his knapsack, and still not knowing what to do with it he gave it to the owner of the house.

This woman thought it was a beautiful letter and so she put it up on the wall of her kitchen.

Much later another Australian visitor came into possession of the letter, after seeing it on the wall of the same Amsterdam house. This Australian returned to Australia and being equally moved by the letter he put it up on the wall of his house.

By chance P visited that house and saw the letter and its envelope - he recognised the addressee. Though never having seen the letter before he, after many years, again became the "owner" of the letter. Along with the letter came the missing story of its discovery in the sofa and its travels to Amsterdam and back - handed from each "owner" to the next as it travelled.

When C arrived in Sydney for the wedding he met up with P and P said "I've got a letter and a story for you".

The whole audience at the reception were awestruck by the story and when C reached into his pocket and pulled out the letter, in its original envelope, there was rapturous applause. He opened it and read the first paragraph. It was simple and it said something like: "I missed you so much this Christmas that I realise that it's you I want to spend the rest of my life with."

By this time the Bride and Groom were both in tears.

How big is too big?

I spent a long time in the car yesterday. It was pretty boring, but at least there's time to think. One of the things I ended up thinking about was the relationship between the "size" of a country or state and the effectiveness of its government. By "size" I mean the number of people and the complexity of services provided. I think there's an inverse relationship between size and ability to deliver.

In Australia, very few direct government services are provided by the Commonwealth. Kevin Rudd wants to change that with regard to the hospitals, because he has a view that he can do it better than the states. Two things concern me about that. Firstly I think that's the naive view of someone who's never had to do it - deliver direct health services; secondly the Rudd government has, disappointingly, shown itself to be completely unable to deliver anything except mindless blather. I don't expect that to change if they get their hands on the hospitals. And just whilst we are digressing: it seems (from what little we have been told) that one of the key planks of the "Rudd Hospital Plan" is to give more power to, inter alia, the doctors. Wrong move! Assuming that doctors know how to improve or run the health system is just plain wrong and confused thinking. It confuses the delivery of clinical services with the management of a highly complex and resource hungry system. I have great respect for the ability of doctors to deliver clinical services. That does not mean that they have the ability to manage a complex beast like the health system. Demonstrably they are part of the problem and their role in the solution needs to be carefully managed.

But back to the subject in hand. The most populous state in Australia is NSW (around 7 million +) followed by Victoria (5.5 million +). NSW seems to be chronically unable to deliver services and chronically unable to make the money stretch. Hospitals in NSW, in particular, are creaking and groaning at the seams. If you also think about places like the US and India it appears that they have similar problems.

Now I know that this is painting with a very broad brush, but give me some license here! This is an embryonic thought. Let's just assume that my hunch is right - that at some point government becomes too big and hard and we start to fail to deliver. I came to thinking that this might be because of a pair of linked issues:

• Is our system of government designed to cope with the scale issues that emerge as the scale grows? Systems theory shows us that systems develop emergent issues as they grow and change - issues that were not previously apparent but which emerge due to some change in system scale or structure;
• Are the humans who manage the system reaching the limit of their capacity to manage the complexity and the issues that arise? It's an interesting point to ponder. Management is a process of simplification and distillation. We make the complex understandable and manageable. I wonder if there is a limit to our capacity as humans to do that and whether we see that arising in government performance.

If this is an emergent issue of government systems, at what size do these issues emerge? Is it between the size of Victoria and the size of NSW?

PhD students and other researchers can take this idea and run with it - with attribution - just tell me what you find out -;) I'm interested!

An Easter Message - for the Catholic Church

The catholic church doesn't get a few facts. Most of all they don't get that they are facing the largest crisis that they have ever faced and that they are facing it entirely through their own actions and inaction.

Around the world, like the rolls of thunder from a massive electrical storm, comes revelation upon revelation of sexual abuse. This, years after it became clearly apparent to all that the church had a problem that it needed to deal with.

About the only sensible thing I've read from the church so far is the statement from Archbishop Robert Zollitsch in Germany acknowledging that the church put its own reputation ahead of the needs and rights of victims. That is the crux of this issue.

Allegations have surfaced that Joseph Ratzinger, whilst Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, was ineffective and inappropriate in dealing with matters of sexual abuse by clergy in the US. Those allegations are of course unproven but, as the current Pope, Ratzinger has an obligation to allow those allegations to be properly tested.

However in response to those allegations, and more generally the abuse performed by US priests, the Vatican and supporters of the Pope have come up with a number of interesting strategies:

1. The church has long claimed that the priests in question don't work for the Vatican therefore the Vatican is not responsible. If that is the case why is it also the case that those same priests can and are subject to excommunication by the Vatican when involved in matters of theological deviancy for instance? Why have those same priests not been excommunicated for matters of sexual abuse? How can the Pope be the ultimate authority as per catholic teaching and yet at the same time not responsible? This seems to me to be mere legal wrangling to avoid liability;
2. In direct response to the allegations that Ratzinger was ineffective at dealing with abuse matters and a subsequent bid to have those matters tested in court, the Vatican has claimed immunity. They say that as head of State the Pope is not able to be subject to such actions. Sounds like Silvio Berlusconi's argument to me. It isn't a valid argument and indeed it stinks simply of a strategy to avoid having the question explored. It is neither honest nor just;
3. The Pope's preacher, Raniero Cantalamessa, at an Easter service attended by the Pope, argued that the attacks on the Pope were similar to anti-semitism in that they sought to move from individual responsibility to collective guilt. Now prima facie that't a fair point, however it doesn't stand up. We are back to the same problem. At one moment the church seeks to make all clergy responsible to the Pope and yet to reject any notion of responsibility for their actions. Further, the point being raised is not only that the Pope is responsible for the actions of priests who are responsible to him (and that is an arguable point though not simple) but that if the Pope is shown to have, by act or omission, had involvement in the abuse then he is personally, not collectively responsible for his own actions. That allegation is, as I have already said, not proven however it is reasonable to raise it as a matter to be tested and it is not an argument of collective guilt. Cantalamessa is engaging in sophistry and using emotive images in his quest.

The bottom line here is that the catholic church has an abuse problem: its clergy abuse children and adults. Further this situation has long been known within and beyond the church yet it has not been effectively tackled.

This problem is structural - the way the church is governed and organised has given rise to the circumstances which have fostered this abuse. Church doctrine must lead me to believe that the Pope is therefore responsible and able to act to resolve this unacceptable situation. That is quite separate to the allegations about his potential personal involvement - not in abuse so much as in its ineffective control.

Governments and police forces all over the world need to take aggressive action to root out the abusers and to ensure that the catholic church's doctrine and structure do not lead to a continuation of this abuse.

Put that another way: because the problem is structural the response must be structural. The catholic church cannot face that reality. However, any government that funds or supports catholic institutions is supporting institutions that are structurally favourable to the conduct of abuse. That is surely not acceptable public policy. The difficulty for governments is that, for instance, around 5 million Australians are baptised catholics - around 26% of the population. Catholics are a big voting force.

What is right is that governments actively pursue structural change in the catholic institutions that they fund. That is unfortunately highly unlikely.

In addition the catholic church needs to live up to its dogma and answer the questions about the Pope's actions or inactions honestly, quickly and publicly.

Shoes and ships and sealing wax...

Guglielmo Marconi (1908)

Not quite about those things, but related. I was thinking about "technology" and it's impact on our lives. In particular I was thinking about the "march" of technology, the way technology develops and changes and the rate at which it does. Modern things like mobile phones and iPods are relatively new conceptually and relatively new in terms of their length of use. I can remember the first time I saw a "mobile" phone. It was 1988 and it was a large installation in the boot of a car. The dialling prefix was 007 I think! How things have changed, and quite rapidly too. Within about 2 years of seeing that I was regularly seeing handheld phones.

Three of the things I use in my daily life date back a relatively long way however in "technology years":

• The sextant dates back at least 250 years in its present form and longer in concept. Yes the sextant really is not required equipment today but it does a very effective job and it's relatively unchanged over a long period of time;
• The 35mm camera. Oskar Barnack built the first prototype of the 35mm camera in 1913 and after a delay because of the first world war the camera went into production in 1924. Very little has changed with the 35mm camera in that time - particularly if you still use a Leica.
• HF radio. Marconi is credited with the invention of HF radio, though there are many challenges to that claim and many contributors. Nevertheless, HF radio has been around for over 100 years. Sure the rigs of today are very different to Marconi's spark gap rigs but the propagation and principles haven't changed. You can hear morse used every day on the bands. Some people use it exclusively and manually key it as well.

The thing that gets me thinking is that although each of those technologies (and Morse as well) is, to some extent, anachronistic they are each viable and effective tools today. Why do some pieces of technology endure and why do some come and go? Will any of the "inventions" of today endure for 100 years or more into the future in a largely unchanged form?

And another thought - why have I used so many inverted commas today?

Solitude and Connectedness

I've been thinking about those two - perhaps polar - concepts recently. Think about undertaking an ocean passage in a small boat. If you're like me, without all the technological gee-gaws, that means a period of enforced disconnection. Except for your fellow crew you are largely cut off from the world.

Contrast that with daily life. Increasingly we are connected everywhere and always. Walking down the street, riding on the tram, we are always able to send and receive email, tweet, or browse the web. We can get the news, indeed we can report the news. Take a snap with the phone, email it to a news gathering organisation or just tweet it. If we wish we are always connected.

I first saw this sort of ubiquity of communication back in 2002. I had been doing business with a guy in the States and he would reply to my emails immediately, whenever I sent them. It seemed strange. When I visited him in the States I found him welded to his Blackberry. He said he responded to email on it whenever it arrived. I was appalled, how can you live like that?

I don't think that I've ever reached that level of obsession, but I do think I'm partly addicted. I feel disconnected if I'm out of contact. I want to "connect" and contact, I want to know, to browse, to read. All good you say. I suspect not. I suspect that it has got "bad" when you don't go to sea, for instance, because you can't bear to be disconnected.

When I finish an ocean passage, however sedate or gruelling it might have been, I always feel refreshed and relaxed. I'm often dog tired with weird sleep patterns, but I'm mentally refreshed. I think that the fact that I've had to disconnect, the fact that I may have had to challenge myself physically and mentally, the fact that I've lived and worked with others in a confined space means that my brain has some peace.

So why does this matter? The bottom line is that the sense of "connectedness" that I get from modern technology is probably false. I think that it leads to disconnectedness at a real level. I don't connect, at a real level, with myself and with those around me. Technology actually gets in the way. My mind buzzes, I can communicate at some level with others all over the world, but ultimately it's not real.

What do you think?

Celestial Navigation - With an iPhone Touch!

How many of you have got one of these? How many of you use it? I'm very fond of my Cassens & Plath. It's both a connection to the past and a thing of today. It's accurate and it doesn't rely on satellites. It also gives me a huge kick every time I reduce a sight and draw a line of position on the chart.

My problem is that I hate paying money to somebody for the tables and the almanac. I keep forgetting to make sure that they are up to date and they always seem to disappear just when I want them.

For some years now I've been using StarPilot for the Texas Instruments TI-89 Calculator. It's simple and robust and has a heap of functionality. But as with most calculator applications it's limited by the calculator interface. The calculator interface is not what you'd call modern!

The solution is at hand however. For the past couple of weeks I've been testing StarPilot for the iPhone and for the iPod Touch. It's brilliant! The functionality is much the same as the calculator version but the interface belongs very much to 2010.

I'm not going to do a detailed review right now. But just a brief run through. A more detailed review will follow.

When you first start StarPilot you need to enter some data in Settings. Things like your DR position, the ZD and Watch Error and the Date. In addition you enter IE for your sextant and Height of Eye. Once you've done that StarPilot is basically ready to go. First step is probably to compute the sky so that you know what sights are available. You can project forward to a future time and indeed you can also compute the sun and the twilights so you have a good feel for the time that you want to compute the sky for.

Having computed the sky you get a plot of the sky with a series of "triads" which you can cycle through. Each triad consists of three sights with suitable azimuths. Touching any of the celestial bodies brings up details - name, Hc and Zn - I've done that for Betelgeuse. In use it makes a very good star finder. You can also list the bodies and their ephemeris data in text form.

Having shot your bodies you then choose Sight Reduction. For each sight you simply need to pick the body from a searchable list and enter the Watch Time from a time picker and the Hs. StarPilot calculates Ho and reduces the sight - it's fast and simple. Once you've entered the first WT StarPilot offers that as the first choice for your next sight.

Once you've entered a set of sights you can use StarPilot to produce a fix - based on your DR and speed/course parameters. Fixes can be arrived at by plotting or by computation.

There are also a bundle of useful utilities in StarPilot for calculating things like the Sailings - either Rhumb Line or great Circle, distance off, set and drift, wind and a range of utilities for things like UTC by Meridian Passage and the one I like: UTC by Lunar Distance.

If you are stuck at home, away from the sea, there's no better test of your skill with the sextant. Shoot a few Lunar Distances and you'll really find out how good you are. This particular process dates from the time before time - at least the time before reliable chronometers. Through a time consuming process of calculation - called "clearing" - you can derive your time from the distance measured between the moon and another celestial body. StarPilot takes the grind out of the calculation. You just have to measure an accurate Lunar with the sextant and enter the data. Great fun and a test of skill.

This is the quickest of overviews of StarPilot on the iPhone/iPod Touch. There is so much more there. What I would urge you is if you are a celestial navigator, a user of StarPilot on the calculator or if you have always hankered to use a sextant then check out StarPilot. It will be in the App Store in the next few days. There is no other application like it as far as I can determine in the App Store. It's brilliant.

When I've a little more time I'll write up the step by step process of using StarPilot. Until then get a copy for yourself and have fun!