SMH story – who owns what in Kings Cross

As part of a recent string of stories about Kings Cross, the SMH recently published a story listing property owners, business owners and licensees of Kings Cross clubs and businesses.

It also published an interactive map giving the same information.

Enjoy the links.

Sydney Morning Herald comments on a DA by the Trademark Hotel / Piano Room in Kings Cross

The Sydney Morning Herald ran a story last Monday (19/01/09) Heiress’s playground offers more cheek on the strip about the recent development application by the Trademark Hotel and Piano Room in Kings Cross to obtain extended trading hours for a longer period of time than they might otherwise obtain.

The Herald writes:

Greg Magree, who owns the Piano Room and the adjoining Trademark Hotel on Bayswater Road, had been able to keep his venues open until 3am and 5am respectively for the past year as part of a one-year trial.

But instead of applying to the City of Sydney for the standard two-year trial extension, Mr Magree sought approval to keep his existing late night trading hours for a further five years.

“It’s cheeky,” said Dr Sacha Blumen, president of the 2011 Residents’ Association. “It goes against the development control plan, which says that at most they should only get two years. And there’s been huge numbers of community complaints on an ongoing basis about noise.”

The story is absolutely true. And it’s nice to be quoted in the SMH – that’s twice in two weeks.

Proposed 300 patron German wine restaurant in Kings Cross

The Sydney Morning Herald today published a story on a proposed 300 patron German wine restaurant in Kings Cross under the Elan building, featuring quotes from yours truly.

An excerpt:

A PROPOSAL for a German-themed restaurant above the Kings Cross tunnel that would privatise a public forecourt in front of the Elan apartment tower and move the controversial “poo on sticks” sculpture is a Trojan horse for a giant beer barn, residents charge.

The proposal, put forward by a German restaurant chain believed to be linked to a Sydney family smitten with Munich’s beer halls, would significantly expand the existing restaurant and enclose the forecourt with a cement and glass wall, plans lodged with City of Sydney Council show. 

Enjoy the story.

The Quadrant hoax

While at first I was intrigued with the idea of a Quadrant hoax, the whole thing has been a bit of a yawn.

A fake author (“weathergirl” in a previous life) writing a untrue story to show up Keith Windschuttle. Windschuttle not being as pedantic with his magazine as he was with some academic publications. But the standards applying to an editor of a magazine checking articles would be less than the standards involved in assessing academic articles for publication. Is it the claim that he’s a hypocrite? Maybe he is, maybe he isn’t.

The following para from the story in The Australia is interesting:

Former chief scientist Jim Peacock, who was unknowingly quoted in the article, said yesterday it was possible, albeit difficult, to transfer human genes into plants but he was unaware of any research to do so. He described the modified cows and mosquitoes referred to as “absolute nonsense” and said the hoax was “despicable”. “It’s very difficult for a non-scientist to acquire the balanced information you really need to assess a particular topic,” he said.

The Sokal hoax was fun. This is a “so what”.

The City of Sydney’s own targets for greenhouse gas reductions and its proposed cogeneration plant

The City of Sydney adopted its own targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions just before the September 2008 Council elections in the context of federal policy to introduct an ETS.

The City’s justification for introducing its own targets is unclear from its documentation. The document (which I quote below) states that the City has endorsed the principles of the Kyoto Protocol and set its own targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. I would like to find out why it introduced such a policy and how one the proposed outcomes of the policy, a gas cogeneration plant to produce electricity for a swimming pool, would fit into this regime.

I just sent the CEO of the City an e-mail asking these questions. It’ll be interesting to read the reply.

Dear Ms Barone,

I would be grateful if you could answer for me some questions relating to certain matters in the Sydney 2030 documents and the proposed establishment of a cogeneration plant in Prince Alfred Park.

I refer to the Final Consultation Draft – Supporting Information – of the “A Leading Environmental Performer” part of the “City of Sydney Strategic Plan” for the Sustainable Sydney 2030 policy. I understand that the Final Consultation Draft was adopted by Council with minor edits.

The following text appears on p. 99 (p. 5 of the pdf document):

“The Kyoto Protocol is the most important global policy response to climate change. The Protocol, ratified by the Australian Government in December 2007, sets a target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 60 per cent on 1990 levels by 2050.

The City of Sydney endorsed the principles of the Kyoto Protocol, and has established a target of a 70 per cent reduction and offset of greenhouse gas emissions from the City by 2050 from 1990 levels, and a 30 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from 1990 levels by 2020.

For Sustainable Sydney 2030, this means a 70 per cent reduction against current emissions (Figure 2.1 shows what these targets mean for the City of Sydney ). Taking into account local government boundary changes and the last 20 years of growth, this translates to a need to halve current emissions in the next 12 years, regardless of planned growth. Put simply, early meaningful action must be the way forward.

The City of Sydney must stabilise and reduce its greenhouse gas emissions and mitigate the unavoidable impacts of climate change.”

The Australian community has decided that greenhouse gas emissions should be reduced and Australia has now ratified the Kyoto Protocol. This is long overdue.

In dealing with global greenhouse gas emissions, the key parameter in terms of environmental impact is global greenhouse emissions. Any regional targets are irrelevant. A global emissions target of, say, 60% on 1990 levels by 2050 does not necessitate that any individual subregion of the Earth should have the same target, or indeed, necessarily any particular target, as the only important parameter is total global emissions.

In fact, it is highly likely that it would be very inefficient for individual regions (e.g. local governments) to adopt particular targets and attempt to meet them, as it is almostly certainly true that it would be more efficient for the emissions of greenhouse gases associated with activities in that local government area to be different to what they actually end up being. In short, it is highly likely that one could achieve the same result (particular total reductions in greenhouse gas emissions) at lower overall cost if individual regions do not mandate particular reduction targets. This is especially true under a cap and trade scheme employing market mechanisms as the federal government is introducing.

My questions are:

1. Why did the City of Sydney adopt individual targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions?

2. What is the business plan for the proposed cogeneration plant in Prince Alfred Park? (the media release is http://www.sydneymedia.com.au/html/3803-city-proposal-for-cogen-plant-at-prince-alfred-park-pool.asp)

3. What is the proposed anticipated price offered for the sale of excess electricity from the cogeneration plant? How does this compare to standard rates from electricity retailers?

4. What is the anticipated generation capacity of the cogeneration plant?

5. Does the City propose to take part in the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme and annually surrender Carbon Permits to the federal government as would be required by large greenhouse gas polluters?

I look forward to reading the City’s reply.

Kind regards,

Appalling federal government internet censorship policy

Like many people, I’ve been astonished at the federal government’s policy to censor the internet ostensibly on the basis of preventing the accessibility of child p_rn. I can only think that this was an election policy designed to appeal to socially conservative voters following the apparent rise of Family First and the religious element into politics at the 2004 federal election, but it’s a mystery as to why it has hung around. I’m sure that many people who voted for the ALP would be amazed at their policy, which is far less liberal than the Coalition’s.

People much more IT savvy than I have written at length about this astonishing policy and I won’t repeat their comments. Suffice to say that it on sheer technical grounds the filtering doesn’t do its job (letting through some of the material it was supposed to not let through and apparently not filtering out encrypted material) while at the same time slowing down the internet, and on policy grounds, it’s incredibly dangerous for a government to specify a list of material to be filtered out. It is much better for the government to admit that what they want to do is just not possible, let alone a good thing to do.

It would be better for all if the federal government made filtering software available to anyone who wanted it (if this was considered to be desireable) and that this could be used in a decentralised way, possibly wherever kids might access the internet, rather than using the software in a centralised way affecting everyone.

Even the Coalition has come out against this policy. We can only hope that it is defeated in the Senate.

Taleb’s “Black Swan”

I’ve just finished reading Taleb’s Black Swan. It’s very easy and engaging as it’s written in a personal style and directed towards a general audience.

The ideas in it are quite interesting - for me, the most interesting idea was about the limits to knowledge. E.g. how can one use induction to go from the particular to the general in non-narrowly-defined circumstances (e.g. not in mathematics)? There is brief discussion about this in the context of patterns of numbers or dots on a page, with the old exercise of not assuming a linear trend is the method behind the observed data.

This reminds me of multiple choice “IQ” and general ability tests in which there are often questions specifying three or four geometric or numerical patterns and asking for the next shape / number in the pattern. Of course, there are usually non-unique answers to these questions they way they are usually presented, and this is a simple example of the difficulty of using induction even in relatively well-defined circumstances.

The idea of the black swan is interesting and appears to be consistent with reality. It is interesting to think about the use of this idea in the world of public policy. Perhaps it’s more personally interesting to think about it in the context of personal life.

On the $U_{q}(osp(1|2n))$ and $U_{-q}(so(2n+1))$ uncoloured quantum link invariants

I’ve resubmitted my paper on the $U_{q}(osp(1|2n))$ AND $U_{-q}(so(2n+1))$ uncoloured link invariants to the Journal of Knot Theory and its Ramifications. Its abstract is below (in latex).

Update: (3/1/09) the paper has been accepted for publication.

Update: (7/1/09) a preprint of the paper has been published on the website of the School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Sydney.

On the $U_{q}(osp(1|2n))$ and $U_{-q}(so(2n+1))$ uncoloured quantum link invariants

\begin{abstract}
Let $L$ be a link and $\Phi^{A}_{L}(q)$ its link invariant associated with the vector representation of the quantum (super)algebra $U_{q}(A)$. Let $F_{L}(r,s)$ be the Kauffman link invariant for $L$ associated with the Birman–Wenzl–Murakami algebra $BWM_{f}(r,s)$ for complex parameters $r$ and $s$ and a sufficiently large rank $f$.

For an arbitrary link $L$, we show that $\Phi^{osp(1|2n)}_{L}(q) = F_{L}(-q^{2n},q)$ and $\Phi^{so({2n+1})}_{L}(-q) = F_{L}(q^{2n},-q)$ for each positive integer $n$ and all sufficiently large $f$, and that $\Phi^{osp(1|2n)}_{L}(q)$ and $\Phi^{so({2n+1})}_{L}(-q)$ are identical up to a substitution of variables.

For at least one class of links $F_{L}(-r,-s) = F_{L}(r,s)$ implying $\Phi^{osp(1|2n)}_{L}(q) = \Phi^{so({2n+1})}_{L}(-q)$ for these links.
\end{abstract}