Off to Europe again

I will get back to the constructivist view (see previous posts) but not yet.
With some Long Service Leave, Tania and I are doing a winter tour this time but not on the bikes. General plan is fly out to Rome on November 22nd and then onto Riga (Latvia) for 4 nights. Latvia is my mother's homeland and I actually own her old house there as well. We visited there in 2001 and I was the first of the family to return there since mum had left in 1948 so it was a very emotional time for me. It will be great to see what has happened to the place in the 10 years since especially the 2008 finance problems and with the country being so dependent on EU money to survive as a country.
After that, we're down to Calabria for a couple of weeks before meeting up with the boys in December for a meeting in Milan with Romanian relatives and then Chamonix ski/snowboarding for a week. Then onto New York for Christmas and NewYear and home by early January.

A 'Subjectivist' view of the "boat-people crisis"

If you remember, objectivism involves the object having an inherent meaning just waiting to reveal itself to you. How the meaning is revealed and what that meaning is, depends on the questions you use to represent the meaning that you suppose the object might have. The end result of this interaction with the object is that you reveal a particular meaning, and only one particular meaning, of the object. The ‘object’ I used as an example was the ‘boat people crisis’.

What about a subjectivist viewpoint?

Subjectivism is fairly different and somewhat similar except that the object has no inherent meaning until you impose one on it. Your imposed meaning does not come from any interaction with the object – it comes from the cultural heritage into which you were born which has already imposed meanings on objects before you see them. When you look at an object for the first time you might think that you have a ‘gut-understanding’ of the meaning of that object and thus impose your own meaning on it. But this is not the case – meanings are generally culturally pre-determined – it might just be the first time that you have actually articulated the meaning to yourself.

Now how is this helpful when discussing something like the ‘the boat people crisis’?

Keen readers will already see that if cultural heritage is how you gain meaning, how can you critique prevailing meaning? It’s a little like a gang mentality I guess. So if the predominant view portrayed in the mass media and among family and friends (include here anything that contributes to your cultural heritage) of ‘boat people’ is that it represents a "crisis", then a subjective treatment of that will be that your imposed meaning on the object of ‘boat people’ will be the same.

This is not helpful for developing a critical awareness of issues – this is uncritically accepting object  meanings at face value. Objectivist treatments ask ‘how’ questions while subjectivist treatments tend to ask ‘what’ questions and as a result, the types of 'solutions' offered by the ‘subjectivist’ treatment are limited in scope to the information provided by answering 'what' types of questions eg:

• What is the ‘boat people crisis’?
• “The ‘boat people crisis’ is typified by the almost daily arrival of boats filled with mainly Afghan and Sri Lankan people seeking asylum in Australia”.
• What do I already know about the boat people crisis?
• “I have seen on the TV that some of them have mobile phones and call 000 when they get near Australia”.
• What is being said about the boat people crisis by my cultural informants?
• “Family, friends, TV, newspapers etc – all say that the numbers of people arriving are too high”
• What meaning most closely matches what my cultural informants are telling me?
• “While I know that these people come from war-torn countries, I think the numbers of people coming to Australia and the manner in which they are coming is not good”.

You can see that subjectivism is not all that different from objectivism really. Objectivism is impossible to achieve in reality because the questions you ask (how) are subjectively derived.

So that’s a subjectivist treatment. Has that been helpful? The next post will look at a Constructionist treatment and see how helpful that might be.

How do we know that we know something - "Boat people" and objectivism

I am puzzled by media reports of 'facts' about issues - many of these I find a bit like 'advertorials' in magazines - you read about some medical wonder treatment thinking that it represents scientifically proven fact but then read the fine print to find that its really an advertisement for the treatment.
But see even in that little sentence, I've mentioned a phrase that is frequently used to describe discoveries which can be believed because they are "scientifically proven" - but have you ever wondered what that really means? And what makes "scientifically proven" better than "common-sense proven" or "experience-proven"?
So it got me wondering a bit further about how do we know things and how do we know when we know? I want to call this 'ways of seeing the world' and want to apply them to the current media-named "boat-people crisis".
Philosophically and epistemologically there are basically 3 ways of seeing the world:

1. Objectively;
2. Subjectively; and for want of a better term -
3. Constructively.

Let's have a look at each.

Objectivism
This is the view that things exist as objects independently of consciousness and experience - so things exist even if we don't know that they do. This bit makes sense but what about this next bit - some methods for knowing the true meaning of an object independent of its context include:

• verification - (Ayer and Wittgenstein) - no statement is meaningful unless it can be verified through sense data like "seeing is believing". This is a central thought in what is called logical positivism. Therefore things that cannot be sensed are not meaningful eg. various forms of religion - if they don't have measurable size, shape, capacity then they cannot be verified 'objectively'.
• falsification - (Popper) - scientists make a guess and find themselves unable to prove it wrong
• uncertainty principle - (Heisenberg) which is the basis of quantum theory - he refers to the idea that the very act of observation changes the behaviour of the object under scrutiny.
• counterinduction - (Feyerabend) - examination of objects and theories through comparison with external standards as well as the 'scientific' method.

In the objectivist tradition, a researcher will posit a hypothesis about an object and then, depending on their theoretical perspective and methodology, will proceed to prove or disprove it using quantitative methods of data collection and verification. Generally a separate reality is created by the researcher in order to find the meaning of the object. The underlying theoretical perspective is essentially positivist using methodologies from the scientific tradition of experimentation in controlled contexts with dependent and independent variables of analysis.

The positivist Thomas Kuhn questions the usefulness of the scientific method because of a tendency towards convergent thinking that tends to say more about the method than it does about the object and how to ask good questions to elicit data. 

Robert Pirsig (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance 1974, p. 273) is more direct:

"Traditional scientific method unfortunately has never gotten around to saying exactly where to pick up more of these hypotheses. The scientific method has always been at the very best, 20-20 hindsight. It's good for seeing where you've been. It's good for testing the truth of what you think you know, but it can't tell you where you ought to go, unless where you ought to go is a continuation of where you were going in the past".

Let's see what might happen if we used objectivism as our reasoning guide in the "boat people crisis" as various newspapers are reporting the arrival of Afghan and Sri Lankan refugees by boat into Australian waters. 

(As an aside - it is interesting to see the language being used - "boat people" has become objectified as a "crisis". In Marxist terms, this is called 'fetishising' ie. the story of the boats arriving have become a 'crisis' because the various media have written about it in that way, not because it really is a crisis, but because it suits their object of selling papers or stories given that it becomes a political issue if they fetishise it enough. Note this technique applies equally across all theoretical perspectives about knowing - not just objectivism).

But let's return to objectivism as our reasoning guide - in order to know about the "boat people crisis", objectivism would propose that the "boat people crisis" is a product or object with no social history, but with inherent meaning waiting to be discovered through experimentation. This would involve the researcher (or you as the curious person wanting to know about things) taking an objective view (ie. no prior assumptions about the object or what might happen) by isolating variables to control and measure. The "crisis" would need to be reconceived in such a way as to be represented by particular artefacts which can be more easily measured and which probably suit the purpose of the researcher eg. 

• how many boats? 
• how much accommodation is available? 
• how many died on the voyage? 
• how long does it take to process each person?
• how does this affect the popularity of the current government policy?
• and so on and so on...

You can see that the objectivist reasoning guide is represented by lots of 'how' type questions. This type of question makes it easy to quantify the representation of the "crisis" because numbers are easy to count and easy to report and make comparisons with. This type of analysis is most often reported by the media outlets because it can be presented as 'fact'. What the objectivist reasoning guide does is certainly useful in a limited way, but of course only represents part of the whole story. The representation of the "crisis" as a series of 'how'  questions is reductionist and sacrifices the gifts of significance, relevance and complexity to the gods of the easily measured.
The objectivist treatment does not ask "why" questions because they cannot be verified or falsified using the tools of positivism. As a result, the types of 'solutions' offered by the objectivist treatment are limited in scope to answering the 'how' questions eg:

• "We can reduce the number of boats arriving by turning them back before they enter Australian waters"
• this has already been shown to be unrealistic with insufficient detection capacity
• easily verified
• "Christmas Island cannot provide sufficient accommodation to house the arriving people"
• no argument and easily verified
• "There is a need to move the people to mainland sites or create other off-shore processing centres"
• The mathematics of numbers makes this easily verified.

I could go on but you get the idea. As Pirsig points out above, the scientific method "...can't tell you where you ought to go, unless where you ought to go is a continuation of where you were going in the past..." ie. answering questions of 'how' does not allow scope for a change of thinking as it does not allow a challenge of the original thinking of: 

• "the high numbers of boat people arriving in Australian waters is bad - how can we decrease the numbers arriving?"

It does not challenge that dictum by asking "why" type questions for example:

• why are such high numbers of people leaving their home country?
• why is Australia a seemingly preferred destination for at least some of the people?

Maybe a Subjectivist treatment might? The next post will look at how that might pan out.

Beaudesert to Brisbane

Wednesday 7th July:
Rest day at Beaudesert with Mum and Gerard. Coffee at Everyday's Cafe and catch up with changes in my hometown. Weather closed in again in the afternoon with some heavier rain. Got in touch with "Transit Queensland" (ph: 13 12 30) about how we could use public transport to get to Brisbane. The old train service is no longer in operation. There is a bus service (6.00am, 9.00am and 3.30pm - buy ticket at bus door) but it does not take bicycles. So we hoped that the weather cleared and we could ride onto Brisbane in the morning.

Thursday 8th July:
Beaudesert (7.20am and 0km) - Jimboomba (8.30am and 24km) - Moorooka (11.30am and 60km) - Ascot (1.20pm and 73km) - Brisbane Airport Novotel Hotel (3.30pm and 79km).
Ride time = 4hrs 46 mins
Trip distance = 78.76km
Average speed = 16.5km/h
Max speed = 52.7km/h.

Well the morning dawned fine 'ish and we headed off into cool grey skies and a great coffee shop at Jimboomba - can't remember the name of it Cascade maybe? - good coffee, scones. The road has a great verge to here and we had a tailwind all the way. The roads from here on have changed quite a bit. Just after the Jimboomba Creek, there is a Service Road that runs all the way to the Logan River bridge at Maclean and is traffic free. Back onto the highway for a few kms and then the new 4 lane road kicks in from Park Ridge onwards. Unfortunately the amount of glass on the verge for the next 20 km or so was astounding! Tania got a flat front tyre here - our first and only flat for the entire trip.
We followed Beaudesert Road all the way into Moorooka High Street for lunch at the bakery - excellent salad rolls. From here onwards, we used the footpaths quite a bit as our friendly wide road verge was now gone. This makes for much slower but much safer riding. We passed the "Clem 7 Tunnel" via a new bike bridge and continued along Annerley Road (as Beaudesert Road becomes) over the bike path on the Story Bridge on the Brisbane River and stopped here for photos.

Amazing how many apartments are now built along the river here - looks a bit like Glasgow.

We used footpaths to get across to Breakfast Creek and then Kingsford Smith Drive. We called in on Lynne's mum at Ascot for great conversation and a cup of tea before battling the traffic on the East-West Arterial Road to get to the Novotel at the Airport - great location and double-glazed windows make for a quiet room. Unfortunately they are the only place for dinner unless you have a car to get over to Hamilton or eleswhere - there are plenty of shops nearby in the DFO complex but all the food shops are only open for breakfast and dinner. DFO itself is open 10-6.
Met up with Vick and Nev for dinner and laughs at Hamilton Wharf (cinemas and restaurant complex) and hit the sack about 10pm. There is no shuttle bus to the airport (unusual for an airport hotel!).

Friday 8th July:
Up early to pack the bikes back into their bags and a relaxed breakfast at the Coffee Club - their House Toast is excellent value at $4.00. Checked out and ordered a maxi-taxi to take us to the VirginBlue terminal ($27.50!) to catch our flight back to Sydney (Virgin were 1hr late this time!).
A great trip though way too short - I was just getting some fitness into the legs and now its over until next time.

Hopkins Creek to Beaudesert

Tuesday 6th July:
Hopkins Creek (7.45am and 0km) - Border Gates (9.00am and 15km) - Cedar Lake (11.00am and 50km) - Canungra (1.00pm and 65km) - Beaudesert (3.15pm and 92km).
Ride time = 6hrs 10 mins
Average Speed = 15 km/h
Max speed = 71 km/h

Tough ride today testing legs and our ability to find somewhere for coffee! Not many shops between these two places.
Headed off from Hopkins Creek down the hill to the Numinbah Road and then straight into the 10 km climb up to the Border Gates to Queensland.

Gentle undulating 25 km of riding from here to the start of the Hinze Dam bypass where it gets quite hilly for 10km or so. Wouldn't have minded a coffee at Natural Bridge Cafe (closed!) and certainly at least a drink at Numinbah Valley cafe (also closed!) but we had to wait until the Cedar Lake Resort at the 50km mark at 11.00am for any sustenance - Gatorade and ice cream. Roads were good with little traffic and decent verge most of the way and great scenery - apparently the traffic situation however is quite different on a weekend.
From here we rode up past the Beechmont turn-off (another time we might do the loop around there) and made a left onto Clagiraba Road and rode over Mt Clagiraba - this has got a couple of decent hill climbs on it but cuts off about 4km than if you went right around to the Canungra turn-off just before Nerang. This road has also been sealed since last time we rode it which has made it easier to ride but it now carries a bit more traffic than I remember.
Turned onto the Gorge Road and rode the final 15km or so into Canungra - this road is again pretty hilly with one hill in particular about 5km out of Canungra just about got us off to walk! We were also starving and having coffee withdrawal symptoms so lunch in Canungra was fantastic. Tania had a Salmon Salad wrap and I had a Greek Salad at the motorbike cafe - excellent service and food with toilet attached.

As the weather started to close in a bit - some mizzling and rain along the 35km to Beaudesert. Took the Wonglepong turn-off (cuts off about 8km) to cut across to the Beaudesert-Beenleigh road - very little traffic, a short (1km) section of good dirt road and get to ride past where my grandfather used to own a farm here at Biddadaba. We used our front and rear lights all the way from here to Beaudesert as it was getting quite dark even though it was only around 3.00pm but the main road was pretty busy. Lots of trucks use both the Gorge Road to Canungra and the road into Beaudesert. At least the road verge isn't too bad.
We were glad to ride into my mum's place at about 3.30pm and get off the road - a great day's ride but pretty tough going at times.

Home to Hopkins Creek

Friday 2nd July:
Caught the 4.53 train with the bikes in their GroundEffect bags for the airport. The bags worked out well with partially dismantled bike and one pannier carrying helmet, pedals, tools, waterbottles etc. Checked in at VirginBlue and my bike weighed 19kg and Tania's weighed 16kg. We were going to have our second pannier as hand-luggage but checked them in as well as we didn't really need it on the plane. The check-in lady said that they are pretty lenient anyway with sports equipment up to another 5kg over the 23kg limit we bought with the ticket.

Got into the Gold Coast (45 mins late!) at about 10.45pm and caught a taxi to the Greenmount Resort - taxi situation with bikes was so well organised at the airport - there are staff there who call the taxis for you and line people up to suit taxis to destinations - brilliant!
The Resort room (1013) was very good as was the breakfast next day. The room was $150 for two with full breakfast in a "sea-view" room and I can recommend it with very friendly staff. Had a second breakfast with Veronica at the Surf Club next door because it had a great view up to Surfers Paradise.

Saturday 3rd July:
I assembled the bikes in the room while Tania went for a swim and then took various bike paths and coffee shops to get to Kingscliff - about 24 km. We went via Fingal Heads and Chinderah both of which provide some easy riding and great views.
Total Km = 27.47km
Average Speed = 12.31 km/h
Max Speed = 34.42 km/h
Riding between 10.30 and 2.00pm

Sunday 4th July:
Headed off about 9.30 and went via bike paths to Cabarita Beach and then over Clothiers Creek Road to the Art Gallery at Murwillumbah (11.30am and 34km and hilly at times but quiet roads). Scones and coffee for morning tea and a look at the picture window and then on towards Tyalgum (24km) along quiet roads again and very scenic around Mt Warning.

Stopped for an ice-cream at Flutterbies cafe - it was packed for late lunches (2.00pm) and then over to Chillingham by 2.50pm and up to the farm on Hopkins Creek by 3.35pm. 77km all up and quite hilly in parts and we were ready to stop. Great day's riding in beautiful country over pretty quiet country roads.
Route:
Kingscliff (0km) - Cabarita Beach (15km) - Murwillumbah (34km) - Tyalgum (58km) - Chillingham (70km) - Hopkins Creek (77km).
Riding Time: 4hrs 38 mins.
Average Speed: 16.52 km/h
Max Speed: 68.5 km/h

Monday 5th July:
Monday was a rest day at Hopkins Creek with Adrian and Lesley along with entertainment provided by Lochie and Mihaiela.

Mihaiela

Lochie

Food was also on the agenda of course!

And Lochie had a good play with the iPhone...

Katoomba and Sun Valley

Stayed up late watching the ever-so-promising, but ultimately grindingly-boring, World Cup game between Portugal and Brazil and so missed riding with Tania up to Katoomba this morning. The roadworks through Lawson can now be circumnavigated using new bike/foot paths but Wentworth Falls is still problematic. Cold and drizzly from there up but 2.5 hours up was pretty good going and a total of 73km.
I fitted the V-Strom brake pads and then did a hills run with two laps of Sun Valley and one lap of Endeavour Drive for a hilly total of 31km. The new Continental tyres are superb and finally I have a speedo which works reliably - its a Sigma BC1106 from CellBikes online. A wired one with good contrast for reading by my failing short eyesight.
We also did another test ride at night to the shops at Winmalee the other night to make sure all our lights are OK - Tania's Petzl helmet light is as bright as any car headlight.

Rear Brake Pad Replacement DL-650

Well it was supposed to be pretty straightforward - just follow the manual (free download) on page 7-69 - until some retaining spring fell out of the caliper housing and the manual didn't mention or show it in order to return it to its proper spot.

My somewhat blurred photo (sorry about that) shows where it is supposed to sit - this took me about an hour of testing different spots to find this but in the end it only goes in one way and works (I think) to stop the pads lifting under braking. I initially reassembled without it and went away and thought about it and then came back and had another go at finding where it goes.
BTW - the manual recommends only undoing the rear caliper bolt and leaning the housing forward to remove and refit the pads but this is how I knocked the retaining spring out in the first place in trying to refit the new pads. I thinks its easier (now that I've stuffed it up and fixed it!) to remove both caliper bolts and lift the whole assembly off, clean everything up, locate the new pads and then drop the caliper over the top of them. I also had to press the piston of the brake back out to accommodate the new pads - easiest way was to fit the outside pad, drop caliper on top and then press on the piston housing (the big circular bit labeled Nissin) until there is enough room to fit both pads).
I fitted EBCFA174HH pads for $55 from Western Motorcycles in Penrith.

The grubby world of politics - Rudd v Gillard

I think it was a very dark day for politics generally in Australia – the female side of things is not relevant except that historically men (who generally run the back rooms and are the power-brokers) put a women up to run the show when they can’t find a credible male. Thatcher, Keneally, Bligh are all examples of this. They are not expected to save the show really but if they do well that’s a bonus.

This seems to me to be more about grubby deals to try to hang on to power rather than an honest attempt to run the country better – if they spent as much time in running the country and consulting with the right people at the right time as they do in plotting to keep power, wouldn’t the world be a wonderful place?

The media has played a disgraceful role in the lead-up to this. The Sydney Morning Herald has seemed to run a hate campaign against the State and Federal Labor and has taken every opportunity to whip up frenzy around leadership speculation and poor performances on selected issues – building education revolution, roof insulation, and completely disregarding amazing achievements like financial management, health reform, tax reform.

I think Kevin Rudd was given a mandate by the people to make change and yet he was thwarted at every turn by the Senate and the procession of opposition leaders (except Malcolm Turnbull – I still fancy him as being a good prime minister). What this does is disenfranchise voters who thought they had done the right thing and said what they wanted and yet are thwarted by an unelected bunch of party power brokers.

Young voters – eg my 17 and 20 year old sons – are completely uninterested in any of this as they see it as being irrelevant to them – just a bunch of old fuddy-duddys who are over-paid and over-empowered (a bit like football players really!).

If we, as a country, are not careful, the federal government will turn into an impotent government because the whole system on which it is based is out-dated, unrepresentative and therefore irrelevant.

So what should happen? I think the representative system is failing our modern way of life and people (male and female) who are in the system are just fighting about power and not fighting for our country and the people who can’t fight for themselves. That’s why you are a politician – to help people who can’t help themselves!

Sorry for the rant but it makes me very angry that all people are focusing on is the female aspect which is completely irrelevant – it is the system that has failed and has been failing for some time.

And lastly – what about the loss of Lindsay Tanner? I have always fancied him as a person of high integrity and extremely well-spoken. I am pleased in some ways to see that he is not involved in any of yesterday’s grubby politics and will walk away but not pleased in other ways that the country has lost the skill and thinking of such a person.

Graham West – State Labor Minister for Jails etc – resigned recently and said that he was so frustrated by politics and that he felt he could achieve way more outside of politics than he could by staying. If that’s not an indictment of how the present government system is failing the people it was put there to support, then I don’t know what is.

Penrith Run today

We were up early watching the England-Algeria World Cup match (why did I bother? Honestly 0-0 is not worth the lack of sleep!) and so headed off soon after sunrise to Penrith for a spot of haircutting, good coffee and bike bits shopping. I test drove the new CellBikes nicks and leg warmers as it was about 3 degrees in Emu Plains as we went through.
The nicks were disappointing I have to say - there are seams in the seat pad where there shouldn't be seams and so ended up being quite uncomfortable. The leg warmers however were excellent once I worked out that the top part of them go underneath the leg-grippers of the nicks. My legs have never been so warm on a cold ride.
The new Continental CitySport tyres were superb - they really do roll quite a bit quicker than the Schwalbe Marathons - about 7km/h down a typical rolling hill so it is significant. I doubt whether they'll be as good on less smooth roads but we'll see.
Went to Anaconda Outdoor shop in Penrith and bought 4x26x1.25 tubes and finally got round to replacing my laces in the Shimano SPD shoes - they were still the originals after 6 years so not bad really. Found some 3mm purple climbing rope and got them to cut it into 2x2metre lengths - perfect laces.
Went on to Blackman's Bicycles and got some EBC green replacement rear brake pads for $35 (resin) - fitted when I got home as the originals were had it. Bought a spare Shimano XTR gear cable (teflon and stainless steel) as well $16.
Mitchell's Pass is a fantastic bike route down the mountain from Glenbrook now that it is closed to all traffic. We use it to go down and back from Emu Plains now - much safer and quicker than the usual Lapstone Hill route.
All up about 52km and with shopping in Springwood on the way home to see Ben at work we were home by 12:30.