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Dear Woodford Folk Festival oraganisers,I write regarding your inclusion of Meryl Dorey on your 2012 program.

Meryl Dorey and the Australian Vaccination Network’s platform is a complete denial of science and objective facts. Their ability to negatively affect the public health of the nation is enhanced by your festival giving them a platform, and by describing her as a “leading expert in vaccination.”

Ms Dorey is not an expert in vaccination, still less is she a leader in the field.

While you continue to accept her and other antivaccinationists for your program, and misleadingly promote them, I will not patronise the event. The health of my family and friends is too important to put it in harm’s way by attending.

I have written complaints to the Queensland Government, the ABC Sunshine Coast local radio station, Triple J and to Santos expressing my dismay at your actions, and displeasure that those organisations (which have a well known and long-term committment to public health in this country) continue to associate with your festival.

Yours faithfully,James C. McPherson

It’s been announced that once again, the Woodford Folk Festival will be giving the “Australian Vaccination Network” a platform from which to speak in 2012. This angers me greatly: antivaccination activists deny that vaccines can do any good for humanity, cherry-pick from research to “prove” their thesis, harrass grieving parents of children who died from preventable diseases, and fraudulently claim to offer health advice.

Sadly, the Queensland Government and Moreton Bay Regional Council are sponsoring the event. I say “sadly” because both bodies have policies regarding non-vaccination, have concerns for the public good (via maintenance of public health), and their involvement in this event gives legitimacy to the anti crowd.Just as frustrating is the sponsorship of Triple J and the ABC’s Sunshine Coast station.

Here is a copy of the complaint I just submitted to the Queensland Government regarding the sponsorship of the Woodford Folk Festival:

The Woodford Folk Festival is giving antivaccination activists a platform to spout their murderous ideology.Since the Queensland Government is sponsoring this event, the festival is sending a message that “it must be ok to not vaccinate, because they wouldn’t sponsor the festival if they didn’t agree with Meryl Dorey.” As a citizen with a very high regard for the work of our state and nation’s scientists who have worked tirelessly for many years to advance vaccine science (as well as the benefits of our public health system) I am _disgusted_ that the Queensland Government continues to sponsor this event.It is my contention that the Festival’s ongoing support for antivaccinationists makes it a public health hazard.

I will be sending similar complaints to the Moreton Bay Regional Council, TripleJ and the ABC, as well as the festival’s other major sponsor, Santos

So how could a festival be a danger to public health? Simple: by continuing to provide a platform and seeming legitimacy to a group whose ideology (which, let us remember, is not based on objective research or facts) is diametrically opposed to the benefits which medical research have brought in the last ~100 years.

I received this email from the Regional Content Manager:

Thanks for your email James.

Firstly ABC Local Radio does NOT sponsor events. We support events by providing editorial support to an event and sometimes that involves an outside broadcast.

ABC Coast FM has supported the Woodford Folk Fest for many years and our broadcast has been networked nationally. The festival is of interest to our audience and the editorial support that we provide concerns itself with the artists that perform there and the general theme of the festival.

If you hear any content on ABC Coast FM that breaches our editorial policies then please feel free to forward a written compliant to this email address.

Kind regards,

John Caruso

Regional Content Manager

To which I responded:

Hi John, thankyou for the quick response, I appreciate it. I’m really glad to know that ABC Local Radio does not sponsor events; the festival sponsors page did not make that distinction clear.

I agree, the event is something of interest to a very wide audience around the country. If your team do happen to get Ms Dorey in a conversation, please don’t make the mistake that 612 made recently when they let her comments pass without challenge from an appropriately qualified public health specialist.

Thankyou and best regards,

James C. McPherson

This afternoon, alerted by a friend and as reported in this article, I sent the submission below to the Queensland Government’s inquiry into Andrew Fraser‘s Civil Unions bill.

While I would greatly prefer that there be Marriage Equality for all, in this nation Marriage is part of the Federal Government’s bailiwick and I’m not confident that either federal party will start listening to all their constituents on this matter.

To whom it may concern

Submission to the Inquiry regarding the Civil Unions Bill

I am writing to express my support for Mr Fraser's Civil Unions bill.

I have very dear gay and lesbian friends who have been in committed relationships for many years. Under current law if one member of the partnership is hospitalised, the other is prevented from being recognised as the next of kin.

This is offensive and discriminatory because in many cases the natural family members who current law elevates over the partner are unable to accept that their relative is in a committed relationship, and who then ignore the expressed wishes of the relative (as known by the partner) in favour of their own opinion.

The situation is similar when it comes to superannuation, where gay and lesbian partners must jump through significant extra hoops to be recognised as a legitimate spouse or dependent. In particular, women are widely acknowledged to be disadvantaged in later life through a lack of sufficient superannuation funds. A recognised civil union will obviate much jumping through hoops in order to prove the validity of the relationship. This, in turn, will help prevent financial stress; something which is acute even in non-LGBT couples when dealing with the superannuation system.

Yours faithfully,

James C. McPherson

On Friday we finally bit the bullet a bought a new set of saucepans. Our local Matchbox franchise at Mt Ommaney is taking part in the current catalogue Scanpan special – a 10 piece set for $499 (rrp $999), and it’s all shiny steel with correctly-proportioned bases and pyrex lids. Wibble!

I’ve been wanting to update our set for years, since it was J’s set when she left home, and they haven’t really kept pace with our needs since the kids came along.

I unboxed and washed everything yesterday, but it wasn’t until today that we had the cycles to rearrange cupboards to fit everything in. Of course, when we looked at what we had and where it was, ’twas a fantasticly awful mess. So, once we started it very quickly became a case of “just one more shelf, then we’ll put the pots away” … and then 2 hours later we had our cupboards organised.

It’s something we should have done when we moved in here four and a quarter years ago (to the day, would you believe), but since we were focused on IVF from the day after we moved in we’ve made do with a jumble of randomness.

It’s a homely feeling of satisfaction to get done, and a little bit jarring when I was cooking dinner tonight – I didn’t have to rummage around in the plastics cupboard to find the bits I needed. I’m sure I’ll get used to it in a day or three.

Back in July when I was on a work trip to our new Beijing campus, I managed to injure my knee. After getting home, seeing the gp, getting an xray and having intensive physiotherapy for several weeks, I eventually got a referral to a knee specialist. An MRI quickly followed which revealed an extensive tear to the medial meniscus. Surgery happened yesterday, and I’ve got a page of arthroscope pics to show for it as well as a pink leg (chlor-hexidene, which will take some effort to scrub off):

Finally, the written notes. Yes, you do see the word macerated – while in the recovery ward I was trying to get my groggy head around the surgeon’s handwriting, thinking “surely he hasn’t written ‘macerated’ – there are no teeth in my knee!”. Update: Courtesy of Team PurpleCow I’m reminded that I was thinking of ‘masticated’ rather than ‘macerated’. That’s what the drrrrgs will do to you!

I’m very happy to finally have this operation done and I’ll be happier when I’m able to walk properly again (about 10 – 14 days). Bandages come off tomorrow, and my post-op followup is on the 3rd of October.

To my astonishment, my request to churn our upstream provider to Exetelwas activated earlier this evening. I only logged the application on Friday arvo (5th August). So I have a complaint: “Damnit, you lot are TOO FAST”.

I’ve been growing more and more annoyed that I have to fire up a VirtualBox to do my RAW photo processing. I’ve got nothing against VirtualBox – it’s a fantastic application for virtualisation. I just don’t want to boot up MS Windows XP and run Adobe Lightroom to do so.

I’ve been watching developments in the Open Source photoprocessing application space for a while now, and recently (since I found a gcc 4.6.0 in pkg(5) format via http://staticdev.uk.openindiana.org:10002) I decided to give Darktable a whirl.

I had to rebuild a few of the dependencies, since the WOS versions were built with the Studio C++ compiler, and there’s no way g++ libraries will talk to Studio C++ applications. That cost me a few days (and nights), but I’ve now got a working installation of Darktable built from the git repo:

this is darktable 0.8+668~gec9a548
copyright (c) 2009-2011 johannes hanika
hanatos@gmail.com

And now, the obligatory screenshot (3200×1200):

I need to tidy up the changes I made and contribute them upstream – for darktable and its dependencies. I also want to contribute pkg(5) manifests so anybody else who wants to can build it for Solaris 11 Express as well. I think there are a few areas I can contribute to the project, and it’s definitely worth my while to do so.

I think the cord is almost cut now. What a fantastic day this is!

Today the cabinetmaker rocked up with the floor-to-ceiling cupboards (he’d had problems getting bits together, apparently those floods had an impact :>) and 3 hours later we had them all ready to start filling with our stuff:

With a bit more work this arvo Alan and I got the blinds mounted over the window frame:

and then after dinner we spent an hour or so installing and populating slotted cable duct along the wall behind the desk:

Chris has done a heap of cleaning – multiple moppings and vac-ings of the floor, cupboards and work on the windows too – but it’s still going to take a few goes before it’s safe enough for C’s 2yr-old feet to scamper across. At this point we’re unsure whether ceramic tiles or carpet would be a better covering, but aside from the minimum required for noise abatement (the ol’ u40m2 is LOUD) we’ll leave that for a few months at least.So we’re nearly done – and by Monday it should all be shipshape. I’m ecstatic at how this has all come together, and that I now have a proper home office. I just wish we’d been more organised and got it done sooner. Chris and Alan have been fantastic, I’m so glad they were able to be here.

Our builder, Dan Trevorrow of Tredmac Pty Ltd and his team (Michael, Joel, Jamie, Josh and Stewart) did a thoroughly professional job, and we’re very happy we chose them.