Unhealthy numbers

Yesterday, the SMH published a letter from Dr Glenn Pereira, Forbes, which started with:

I had the pleasure of being involved in the birth of an Aboriginal baby in our small rural hospital just after 9am on Wednesday, as the Prime Minister delivered his address to Parliament. My wife is also due to deliver in the next few days. It struck me that, statistically, the child born on Wednesday is about three times more likely to die in her first years of life than my child, and can expect to live 10 to 20 years less, even though they will have been born just days apart in the same hospital.

While the sentiments in favour of reducing the health disparities can only be a good thing, I suspect the doctor's mathematics/statistics is not so good. The much-quoted infant mortality and life expectancy figures that he seems to be using are national estimates. Applying them to children born in a particular hospital assumes that the situation there is like the national average, so they definitely can't be used to suggest that having been born in the same hospital doesn't make a difference!

I'm no expect on life expectancy and so on, and don't even know if anyone has figures for siutations this specific. Knowing how the disparity for kids in Forbes compares with the country as a whole might give the government a bit of an idea what health policies could actually help.

If only writing a thesis were as interesting as finding mathematical errors in the news...

Sorry

It is good that the Australian parliament is apologising to the Stolen Generations, their families and communities for their legally sanctioned removal through much of last century.

As you would expect from politicians in parliament, the apology was accompanied by a lot more talking, with both the Prime Minister and the Opposition Leader rambling on for a full half hour each. They spent some time speaking on behalf of the Australian people as whole, indigenous and non-indigenous, but both seemed to a greater or lesser extent to even then still talking very much from the whitefella's perspective of what that means.

I suppose things happen one step at a time, and so saying less would probably be more.

Spoilt rotten

Is what we are, having so many wonderful caring friends on both sides of the world!

Sport and honesty, or national honour?

On Monday, the president of the United Indian Association was quoted saying,

Considering that the Monkey God is one of the revered idols of Hindu mythology and worshipped by millions, it is surprising it was considered a racist term. Even more surprising is that the word 'monkey' is considered by the match referee serious enough to slap a three-match ban on Harbhajan Singh.

Tomorrow's SMH publishes this response from me:

The president of the United India Association, Raj Natarajan, says "monkey" is not a racist term in India ("'Monkey' not racist: Indian Aussies", smh.com.au, January 7). This is very easy to believe - it is not commonly used in that way in Australia, either, probably because the racial group that it is most often used to abuse is not a significant part of the population.

I can easily accept that many Indians would not think of the term as racist. However, if any player used the word to address Andrew Symonds, just months after spectators in India had been arrested for similar behaviour, then, at the very least, their actions were incredibly stupid.

It is ridiculous to suggest that placards referring to Symonds were comparing him to the Monkey God. It is equally ridiculous to suggest that the Indian team were not aware of these incidents and the subsequent commitments to clamp down on racism in cricket crowds.

This is all true, but I think the point was in what I also wrote, but was not published,

In this context, it is hardly surprising that a ban was handed down by a match referee from a country where these issues are now taken particularly seriously.

Perhaps a suspension was not the best solution, but we should also consider the possibility that one of the factors damaging relations and leading to these incidents is the way that supporters and others on both sides immediately leap to the defence of their team and accept any excuse, however unbelievable. We should acknowledge that our star spinners are not perfect, whether the issue is drugs, a hot temper, or racism.

It seems to me that there are several people in cricket administration, as well as supporters, who are quite happy to throw around accusations of cheating and racism, but go quite mad if similar accusations are officially laid against (a member of) their own team. It is one thing to appeal an decision that you think was wrong, it is another to say, as the BCCI secretary did, that "we will not tolerate" any accusation of racism.

I am still not sure how to respond to our culture's emphasis on racist actions at the expense of any other wrongdoings,¹ but it is there, and the Indian team had plenty of reasons to be aware of this. True, Symonds didn't seem to think it was a big deal and Ponting seems to have made it one out of a desire to make a point or have some sort of revenge, but you would have to have your head in a hole to think that the match referee would not take this sort of allegation extremely seriously. There's nothing "surprising" about that! The only question is whether the allegation about what was said is true.

Neither Ponting nor Kumble come out of the recent exchanges looking good at all, but I'm more disturbed by the mass of irrational defenders on both sides. As long as that goes on, it will always be about nationalism, not a sporting contest.

¹Remember the judge who said "fat bastard" is ok, just don't mention his colour?

Quite a punt

To me, the real connection between the words "boxing" and "sport" is the cricket Test match at the MCG. Australian captain Ricky Ponting has some views about how the selectors should pick the team this year. "Old Testament-like" floods or not, I think they will miss Stuart MacGill. But apparently Punter has picked a retirement date already, too and the reporters say he "will retire with every batting record in the game." Ending up with a 100+ average definitely would be impressive!

Unthinking protest

It seems quite a few people are kicking up a stink about a Saudi rape victim who has been sentenced to 90 lashes, calling on Western governments to make protests. At least one news outlets has published reports which conveniently skip half the story and imply that the woman is being punished for being raped. In fact, the sentence is for the crime of being in a car with an unrelated male, before they were both attacked by the group that raped her. The rapists have been separately tried and punished. In terms of the connection between her punishment and the rape, the situation is like that of someone jailed for posessing stolen goods when they were raped.

I suggest that, in that light, going on about a rape victim who is being whipped is unhelpful. At worst it implies false accusations about the woman is being punished for, and at best it muddies the waters and confuses the issue. Consider the slightly less extreme comparision with a hypothetical scenario where a woman in, say, Australia, is charged with dealing dope after reporting a rape that occurred on the way to a customer. Whatever we think about the legal status of various drugs, it wouldn't make much sense for, say, liberal Dutch media to describe her as a jailed rape victim.

It's one thing to protest against whipping as a punishment for mingling with the opposite sex - if that's the issue, then make a big deal over all the people who are facing such punishement, not just the one that happens to have been raped. Some have suggested that there are cases where rape victims are punsihed as adulterers simply because of their rape - if that is so, publicise the plight of these victims, not someone who isn't being punished for that reason. It just doesn't make sense to focus on this one person unless you think that rape victims shouldn't be held responsible for anything they might have done before their rape.

Of course, there is an argument in favour of some level of amnesty being given to victims, so as to encourage not discourage the reporting of crimes such as rape, but that's hardly a black and white issue, or something we can say is only a problem in one part of the world. Rather than looking for any excuse to feel superior and criticise justice in Saudi Arabia, why not look for the more subtle steps to support rape victims wherever they are? Apart from anything else, ridiculously constructed accusations thrown at Saudi justice are hardly going to help the hearing the more serious arguments receive, are they?

An outside view

As far as I could tell from here in London, the recent Australian election campaign featured a lot of talk about education and industrial relations/union bosses as well as Iraq and climate change. However, most British media reports seem to suggest the result was all about the latter two, and then start talking about Rudd's republicanism. I guess Brits aren't that interested in Australian domestic issues, despite down under's status as one of the top destinations for British emigrants.

A BBC report just before the election also said that Australians had only sacked their government four times since World War II. I suspect they actually meant since the Liberal Party first came to power in 1949, although I guess they might have argued that the Governor-General got in before the electorate in 1975.