black and white thinking

Cap'n Kev is an Aussie. Australia has many fine people, and some of them are liberal thinkers. On the other hand, when white South Africa came to an end, the role of world capital of white supremacism fell to Australia, where many Aborigines live in bantustans in poverty, drunkenness and disease.

Albert leaked me a copy of his email correspondence with Cap'n Kev:

Kev: Did you see that TV show that said there was a link between race and intelligence?

Albert: What's the punch line? ;)

Kev: It looks at IQ studies over many years that say the same thing; blacks are dull, east asians are smart. We're somewhere in the middle.

Albert: I reckon IQ is a social concept, not a scientific quantity like speed or weight. I mean IQ is by definition a measure of those human qualities that allow people to function especially well in modern western society.

If the world had developed differently, perhaps with a hotter climate, and Australian Aboriginals had survived best and dominated the world, their culture might measure people using something called perhaps AQ, reflecting people's abilities in tracking, bush tucker, etc. Whiteys might be down at the bottom of that scale.

Thank goodness things didn't pan out that way, or we would be surviving on reservations as no-hopers, with no interests except drugs, coffee, horse racing and slot machines.

Today's photo reflects the infinite number of possible worlds, and the current perfect Albert.

cold wars

Meanwhile, Mingers has reminded me about an old Beach Boys song, which I first heard on Fanny's record player when I was about 14. To me the lyrics seemed almost blasphemous at the time. Wouldn't It Be Nice To ... sleep together. The idea of waking up beside your own real live woman (girl really).

In those days I believed that the reason I enjoyed hanging out with Colin and George was for the smoking and the drinking and the Stones records, but really it was because they were babe magnets, and got me into the company of Fanny, Elaine and Moira. The joy of kissing and minor gropings, and eavesdropping on the chat of girls - I remember them going into a swoon over God Only Knows.

In those days there was a Cold War on, and we sometimes liked to imagine that the cellar where we hung out could become our fallout shelter, where we could snog our way through a nuclear war.



Artist's impression of a mutated albert:

Nowadays, Albert may be entering a new cold war. Obama has just been visiting his place, and announced that he's opening an American military base in Darwin. Now that the middle east is no fun any more for the soldiers, it's time to ramp things up in South East Asia, with Australia as one big U.S. aircraft carrier.

While he was in Oz, Obama lectured the Chinese, telling them to grow up and float their currency. If I was China, I'd start asking for their loans back.

Darwin and I

Charles Darwin and I both dropped out of medicine in Edinburgh before roaming foreign lands to observe unusual biological specimens.

This creature is clearly dead. If there was any life in it, the dog would have taken an interest in it. It may have been electrocuted while running along overhead power cables, but the dog is wearing a protective muzzle in case it may have been possum flu.