Ari's Planet

Somehow I made it to Broome. Whew, it's hot here. Found a couple of guys who are doing the Gibb River Road (GRR). This is a dirt road that goes more or less from Broome to Kununnura (not exactly, see a map). We're planning to leave Saturday and take about 10 days to complete the 660 km track. One of the guys is an Aussie tour guide with 30 years experience and a shiny big 4 WD. The other guy is a Brit with a camper van. This afternoon they took their cars to be serviced. We're hoping to find a couple of more people to go with us and share expenses. There's an outside chance one more guy with a 4WD will join us, and having an extra vehicle will make me feel better. The big thing is the road can get flooded in the "wet", which we're rapidly approaching, making it completely impassable. This is really the tail-end of the season. The road is still open, though there's only one open service station on the way, so we'll be carrying plenty of water, food, and fuel. There are amazing gorges as side-trips, but my understanding is that these are mostly or entirely closed now due to the season.

Guess what? There are holidays in the middle of December! Who knew! That's right, Australia takes off and leaves from around mid-December to end of January. The airlines figured this out before me and know they can charge stupid amounts for normally cheap airfares. For instance, Darwin to Singpapore on Jetstar is often $50 to $100, but during this season it ranges from $300 and up. Not only that, but I'd much rather get to Bangkok, since there are cheaper flights from there to Kolkata, India, which is where I think I'll start my tour there, but there are no flights on the cheap airlines from Darwin to Bangkok. Vayama and a few other services come up with amazing routes taking me to Cairns, to Sydney, and then back up to Singapore, which is absurd. Flights from Cairns aren't cheap either. Options are to leave Australia ASAP, which I don't want to do, or extend my visa for $100. But first, I need to escape Exmouth. There's a bus that comes through, with a transfer, at a stupid hour in the middle of the night and involves a scary number of hours to get to Broome, from which I still need to move on to the next destination. I can get a ride to Port Hedland, but then I'd be stuck there for 4 days waiting for the bus. There is nothing to do in Port Hedland. Hmm.

A batch of photos from my trip up the coast from Perth to Exmouth.

Cape Range NP	Carnarvon area	Coral Bay
Exmouth	Francois Peron NP	Geraldton
Kalbarri and Kalbarri NP	Lake Thetis (stromatolites)	Pinnacles Desert
Shark Bay World Heritage Area	Stockyard Gully NP	West Australia (various)

After Coral Bay we drove up to Exmouth. The starter motor burnt out attempting to start up at the gas station, leading to an impromptu extension of our stay in the Exmouth area. I went for a dive, oggled (literally) fucking Green turtles (the correct and more polite term is "mating", but walking up to your friends and saying "I saw fucking green turtles" is much more satisfying), and we spent a few days push-starting the car around Cape Range NP and being blown over by the winds. Tomorrow our plan is to head out to Karijini NP for a few days and then back down to Exmouth where I will do some more diving. In the meantime, my attempt to burn DVDs turned into a virus erradication effort on one of the dive shop's computers.

Traveling in an old Nisan 4WD and having a ball. Snorkelled the last couple of days--it was stunning. Tomorrow is time for more snorkeling. The thermometer in the car says it's 40C and it feels it. Dry, flat, red sand. It looks like Australia, complete to the Emu crossing the road.

After two weeks of checking notice boards I caught up with a nice British couple heading up from Perth to Broome in their newly-painted matte-black 4WD. Along with a German guy, we'll head out tomorrow after my 3rd JE shot and some food shopping for a ~2-3 week sweep up the west coast to Broome. Lots of fun it will be, so many things to see.

Latest photos from Australia are up:

Collie area	Fremantle	Perth
Rottnest Island	Sydney

If I were a religious man, I might say the following to my fellow Jews on Yom Kippur, when Jews gather to pray and beg forgiveness, when they lament the wrongs that they have done.

On Yom Kippur, our prayers tell us that God will listen to our pleas and, we hope, will forgive us our transgressions against him. It is said, though, that God will not forgive our transgressions against our fellows—for this, we must make amends with those we have wronged. What if those we harm are all creatures, and the Earth, and those yet to be? We are causing the Earth to warm, and to change, and causing the deaths and the ends of many forms of the world. If we do not act to address this within the next few years, but instead allow atmospheric carbon concentrations to increase beyond a critical threshold, then the Earth will suffer massive changes. We may well ruin the Earth for the next 50 generations. Adam and Eve ate from the tree of knowledge, but not from the tree of life, and we were banished from Eden for their transgressions. If we do not now change our course, then for 50 generations the Earth may well be turned into a place of "hell and high water", with terrible droughts and heat waves, extreme storms, rising seas, massive extinctions, wars between people fighting for the remaining scraps, and refugees fleeing an ever-changing climate. The creatures we destroy will never be restored and it will take untold years for the vibrant richness we may observe in our everyday lives to flourish once again.

According to Joe Romm in Hell and High Water, we need to reduce carbon emissions by 8 billion tons per year, which he suggests can be accomplished by implementing 8 "wedges", each of which reduces emissions by 1 billion tons per year. It was unclear whether this needed to be done worldwide or whether he was referring only to steps the US must take. One of the wedges involves replacing vehicles with cars getting 60 mpg (miles per US gallon), or 25.4 km / L or just about 4 L / 100 km. Here, it was unclear , or I cannot recall, if this applied to all vehicles' average fuel efficiency (including trucks and cars, etc.) At any rate, the main point was that he said vehicles need to get 60 mpg and that this can best be accomplished, given current technology, using hybrid vehicles. Does converting to hybrid vehicles make sense?

Yes, the US Congress has done it again! They just stole 700 billion dollars from the rest of us to give to a bunch of big banks, which, due to their short-sighted profit-mongering and the lack of regulation by the government drove themselves into their own poo. As a patriotic American I am so happy to go lick the poo off of their boots. But really, why stop there? I mean, if you need 700 billion dollars, you might not bother trying to, say, raise taxes to pay for it. Oh no, you might, if you were like the gang of criminals Americans have managed to put into power, CUT TAXES BY $110 billion. So how do you pay for things? Maybe they'd cut the US military budget so it isn't nearly as much as the rest of the world's military spending combined? Withdraw from Iraq? Get rid of wasteful programs? No no, I guess they'll just do what they do best: mortgage our financial future by borrowing (as if the current nightmare of US debt isn't enough) or by printing more fake money thus devaluing the dollar.

Letter to Representative Barney Frank (D-MA):

I object to this sham 700-billion bailout plan. It doesn't include proper regulatory mechanisms, public ownership, etc. At least Rep Kucinich had a better thought out plan. Now the bill has grown to hundreds of pages of disgusting pork projects. Sweden dealt with a similar (but smaller) problem in the 90s, and it wasn't by just throwing money at banks and handing out random tax breaks. This is my money you're talking about stealing and giving to a bunch of corrupt rich criminals. We already have bankruptcy laws. Let these rich bastards who stole our money and ruined our economy loose the shirts off their backs before you hand over any of my money. I don't trust a word out of Paulson's mouth, Mr. Investment Banker himself-- they are just paying off their buddies. And to top it all off, this is a 700 billion dollar bandaid on a much larger problem; will you be coming to me in a year's time begging for another trillion dollars? You and the other Democrats failed to bring our troops home, which would have saved lives and drastically reduced government debt (since the US is paying for this war the wrong way--by taxing future generations). You bet I'm angry, and I'm angry with the inept failure of the Congress to exert oversight over the runaway fraud permitted (or encouraged?) by the US government.

According to the NYT article Surveillance of Skype Messages Found in China by John Markoff (1/10/2008), reporting on the discovery by Nart Villeneuve and published on Information Warfare Monitor, China monitors Skype text chats and archives the text and personal information of users whose chats contain various trigger words, such as "Falun Gong" or "milk powder". In the past, the appropriate American response would be something like "Those terrible Chinese! They violate their citizens' rights to free speech and communication! What dastardly dictators!", with the subtext that in America, and perhaps other nations of the so-called "free world", we are better because our governments uphold more noble rights. While such statements about China remain fairly accurate, the subtext has collapsed. The NSA illegally spies on American communications. European countries have taken to archiving, for several months or years, all email communications and record end points of phone conversations.

A little observation from the other side of the world. When I speak with folks back home (that being the USA) they sound like people observing a slowly-unfolding disaster, a train wreck. They can't turn away from the scene of carnage, the news of the latest financial mess, yet they are horrified by what they see. Here in Australia some people think the economy will tank down the road, others seem less concerned. Australia's economy is dependent on mining exports, mainly to Asia and China. When the Chinese economy slows, which it should if Americans stop buying as much Chinese goods, then the Australian economy should also slow, this excluding any other financial effects of the mortgage mess in the US. Everyone in the world seems to remember 9/11. In the US, this was the biggest blow to national perceptions that I can recall, and it was characterized in part by people staring at TVs, their images of carnage and pronouncement, iconic pictures of crowds filled with expressions of shock gathered around public televisions.

After several hours picking out the latest photos and writing short descriptions, followed by much wrangling with OpenOffice Calc (a spreadsheet program with some missing features), Exiftool (which chokes on single quotes and parentheses), Bash shell, and too much (re)uploading of files, I have severly wounded the Beast of No Description or Titles, at least for the new photos. My last major batch of photos from New Zealand is now online, including:

Auckland
Awanui
Cape Reinga
Kerikeri
Northland
Piha
Tongariro

The US military budget is around $550 billion. That's nearly as much as the rest of the world combined. Now they want us to give some rich folks $700 billion dollars. As I recall, dealing with global warming should cost maybe 1% or so of GDP, if we start addressing it now, which is a few hundred billion (yes, I should look this stuff up instead of just spouting from memory but I'm hungry right now). Jeffrey Sachs says we owe (based on prior commitments) about $70 billion a year, which is only a few tens of billion more than we currently spend ineffectively, and if we and a few other developed nations ponied up we could get rid of extreme poverty in the world in a couple of decades. He also added up a few other useful domestic social programs, like healthcare and insurance for old age, and came up with a few percent of GDP, basically less than it would cost to get out of Iraq and reduce our military budget.

Sydney was not my place. A big city. Seemed nice enough. The opera house was nice and iconic. The art gallery had free admission and I admired all the very British romantic paintings from the 19th century. Students in school uniforms--white with tie for a group of young teenagers, yellow shirts for younger kids--were being tought about various works. There was an immense drawing of Russians running away from Napoleon's forces and another painting of British forces repelling 4000 Zulu warriors (I think this got made into a Hollywood movie).

Well, at least we don't live in a Social Democratic country. We have free enterprise. Where you rise or fall by your own wits. Because otherwise we would have this huge government being a nanny to everyone and taxing and taxing and printing money and generally not being a good capitalist nation. It would be terrible. And all that government meddling. That's why, I tell you, we can't have those socialist things, you know, like government provided health care or regulations on emissions of greenhouse gases. It would just end up being a huge nanny government and it would smother the powerful engine of growth and innovation that makes America such a great nation. Yes, we need free enterprise. Because America was founded by free people, and that freedom has made America great. Enterprise and exceptional freedom are what bring us our greatest rewards, the innovation that is a shining light, that all other nations look up to.

My last day in New Zealand was a great success. That day I trundeled into town and picked up a few last-minute gifts. On the way, a couple of fellow hostel inmates sprung for several of my books. Two Germans, in rapid succession, both commented "hey, I've seen that film" on seeing a copy of "The Art of War". Yes, I know that's sad but they're nice guys. Getting rid of the books bought me some cash for gifts, as well as lightening my load an avoiding a repeat of the Great Plastic Bag Burst of 2002. Later I met up with a few more hostel mates and we went fishing outside Auckland. Actually, they went fishing and I took pictures. My rule: teach a man to take pictures and he'll get a photo, teach a man to fish and he may or may not eat that night. I ate some Chinese concoction and we all swilled sandy Irish Cream. The big frenchman made off with a nice snapper, and I got great sunset shots of the Auckland skyline, or rather of the light that was not blocked by man's buildings. The next morning was early and involved a failure to eat my last three tomatos. I did get to the airport properly on time, was given several conflicting opinions about taking matches on a plane, and enjoyed not having to take off my boots to go through security. The flight was uneventful, accompanied by the dreadful Get Smart. I seem to have dozed off at some point, which is the only way I can explain the following events. After landing at a typical airport, I made my way into what looked like a typical city, found a typical hostel, checked in, and went for what I thought would be a typical walk. Now, my flight, at least as I recalled booking it, was from Auckland to Sydney, which if you look up a map is in Australia. Now, imagine my shock when it turned out I was in Brazil! Just a short walk out, and there were all these Brazillian flags, Brazillian girls, Brazillian food, Brazillian music. Now, Brazil is a right nice place, but I just wasn't expecting it on this particular day. I think they may have put up a replica of the Sydney Opera House (probably another Disney production), but other than that, I just can't figure it out. Maybe when I fell asleep a kea escaped from the cargo hold, ate through the cabin floor, and hijacked the plane. That, at any rate, seems like the most plausible explanation.

I was booking a flight with Virgin Blue, one of the discount domestic Australian airlines, to fly from Sydney to Perth. The booking page said I would be generating about 270 kg of CO2* and that I could offset this amount for a bit under AUD$4. The money would go to an Australian government approved abatement program. The link about the program brought me to Virgin Blue's Fly Carbon Neutral page. Here, it is stated that the money will go to either LMS Generation or to a Waste Composting facility operated by the Southern Metropolitan Regional Council. LMS Generation uses gases from waste to generate power. This, in itself, does not reduce carbon emissions.

There is a small remnant of the forest that once covered the north of NZ. There are some 300 plant species, the most massive being the giant New Zealand kauri trees that were mined nearly out of existence in the 18th and first half of the 20th centuries. Tane Mahuta, the largest known surviving NZ kauri, is enormous. Its girth is astonishing, its height impressive. It is estimated at 2000 years old, but I have heard people say it may be 4000 years old. Kauri grow very slowly, a tree planted 12 years ago looks like a seedling of any other tree, a tree is not worth harvesting until it is 200 or more years old. Kauri shed their lower branches, so only the crown is filled with branches and leaves. There, maybe 50 meters up, another more than 30 species of plants make their homes, mosses, epiphytes, flowers, roots streaming in the air. On a rainy day water drips through the forest. Kauri and other trees climb up, ferns and all sorts of things cover the wet ground. The Kauri Museum is misnamed: it should be called the Kauri Logging Museum. Only a living kauri forest can convey what the forest is like. In the museum are impressive logs, ancient wood tens of thousands, even tens of millions, of years old. There is translucent gold kauri gum. There are manequins and displays, machines and gadgets, a wall of love for chainsaws, a light that breaks in the sky (ceiling) above the revolutionary Caterpillar tractor. People fish in NZ. The waters here are not yet depleted, men are so happy to gather food from the seas. Where is the yonder light that breaks over the sonar equipped fishing fleet that so changed the oceans? The fish do not jump into the nets in American waters. Lambs skip across the rolling waves of land that were forested. The museum does not convey the living kauri, it conveys the denuded ocean, by hook and by barb of sharpened steel, the rotating blade of a saw. Tane split his parents and let light into the world, Tane Mahuta lets the light of understanding into the dim heart.