A letter to The Age by someone

Prime Minister Jobn Howard's commitment to work towards a long-term aspirational goal for climate change continues to frustrate many concerned young people such as myself. We are the generation that will have to deal with the dangers that are to come if we do not act now on climate change. The science is changing every week - not for the better - and is increasingly telling us we need to do more immediately. Most of the science suggests that to fully prevent climate change catastrophe we must aim for zero carbon emissions by 2030 (www.beyondzeroemissions.org/). We cannot afford to the complacent, and long-term goals should start straight away. We want real policy action on climate change, not vague assurances nor contrived rhetoric. Please listen, Mr Howard and APEC political leaders, we are the future generation.

My comment on this:

In your dreams man! This is really stupid because as i said in my prevous log, APEC never makes decisions. What they can do at most is to make some agreements. At the moment, the Kyoto Protocol is one such agreement committing nations to take some 'baby' steps along the road to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. But a post-such-agreement is desperately needed. I think that's what this man wants because it seems impossible to put it on a policy level.

Also I want to add another humble opinion. To solve the global warming problem, we can't rely on promoting a particular technology to tackle the problem. What we need is to reach an international agreement on that instead of solving it by devoting a great deal of effort individually. Someone has proposed a framework called 'contraction and convergence', for crafting a new protocol. We will see.

PS: We are a generation of extravagance, the awareness of water and waste is the prerequisite to solving the problem. This might not be correct, or totally irrevalent. This is just a thought of mine anyway.

APEC in Australia?

The oncoming APEC summit is said to be the most important meeting which will have ever been held in Australia. But I don't think it's true. According to The Age (4th September, 2007), the most important international meetings held in Australia were in 1942, between Geveral Douglas MacArthur, Prime Minister Jobn Curtin and the War Cabinet. They helped to turn the course of World War II, and changed the future of Australia.

This weekend's summit will gather the most important group of people in Australia. But whether it will have an important impact on the world is unclear, because unlike many other important international meetings, APEC never makes decisions. It's just like, a group of leaders sitting together, talking about how they tackle their own countries' problems and disscuss common problems, such as economic issues, security, trade, environmental issues. Anyway, there's not shortage of issues for leaders to talk about. Let's just take China's undervaluation of its curreny, which has had a dominent influence on the world economy. This makes China very attractive to export from, leading to huge rates of investment - nearly 50 per cent of its GDP - blistering growth in employment and output, soaring living standards.

The meetings that matter are those that change the world. But APEC couldn't be in this kind. Do you expect this APEC summit to resolve the global warming issue? Don't do that, because you'd be wasting your expectation. Hope it goes well though.

finantial hit - Melbourne Model

Melbourne Uni warned over new model 'hype'
Farrah Tomazin and Adam Morton
The Age, September 3, 2007


MELBOURNE University has been warned it risks failing to live up to its own hype and, unless it reins in spending, compromising quality as it shifts to a US-style teaching model.

Confidential documents dated March 2007 show that the elite university faced a "serious mismatch" between costs and revenue of up to $25 million, but was well placed to attempt the biggest transformation in its 154-year history.

According to a risk analysis, potential pitfalls associated with the plan included scaring off top undergraduates, compromising quality if costs grow faster than revenue, and failing to match "Melbourne Model hype" due to exaggerated branding.

Internal economic modelling shows the university expects to improve its bottom line in the medium and longer term, but that several faculties, including law and architecture, face a financial hit during the transition period.

Under the new model, the university will from next year gradually replace 96 undergraduate courses with six "new generation" degrees and move professional programs such as law to postgraduate level.

The report by the university's finance committee, obtained by The Age under freedom-of-information laws, says regardless of the teaching model adopted: "The unambiguous conclusion from the cost analysis is that without a concerted focus on the cost side — a focus which needs to occur as soon as possible — the university will be facing a serious mismatch between revenue and costs."

It says the university has strategies to manage the risks — it introduced a $100 million scholarship program to attract top students — and recommends cutting costs by $20 million to $25 million over the next three to five years.

Vice-chancellor Glyn Davis said the reduction was less than 2 per cent of the university's budget, and was being tackled in part by removing administrative duplication.

Professor Davis said the documents showed the Melbourne Model was not financially driven.

The university should be modestly better off compared with the status quo by 2011, he said.

"If you were going to make money this is not how you would do it … you would just go in really hard to the international, fee-paying market," he said.

"The bottom line of this document is that if we don't change we start to run into significant financial problems, which have nothing to do with what we do internally and everything to do with Commonwealth funding rates."

The Age revealed in July that 10 Melbourne University faculties had initially forecast operating deficits this year, prompting management to devote an extra $28 million, on top of an $85 million transition fund, to help bring in the new model.

Newly available confidential documents from June analysing how faculties would cope with the new model found:

■The law faculty faced a "significant funding gap" during the transition years.

■Architecture, building and planning faced "real financial risks" from potential loss of fee revenue, forecasting deficits for the next three years.

■Arts — which recently announced a 12 per cent staff budget cut, expected to cost dozens of jobs, to rein in a projected $12 million deficit — has been hit by a drop in the number of international students.

■Making the education faculty postgraduate would make it difficult to recruit Australian fee-paying students. Its success would depend in part on gaining State Government and school sector support for a more intensive teacher-training program.

■The university would continue to rely on the economics and commerce faculty for more than 25 per cent of fee income.

According to the documents, the university does not have a good record in making structural reforms to contain costs, but its costs were not at the upper end compared with other institutions.

french fries

Things r fucked up.

Have been thru sum shitty days.

Wil get over it, I'd hope.