John Howard was Australia's 2nd longest serving Prime Minister, holding the position from 1996 to 2007. He was known as "Little Johnny", not only because of his stature (he's about the same height as me!) but also because of his "littleness" in many other traits - think mind, values, spirit, integrity etc). Analogous to a company that says its purpose is "to make money" e.g. Enron, Mr Howard's sole purpose in life was to stay in power. In that he was successful, no matter what institutions and values he had to trash along the way.

That littleness of Little Johnny also extended to infrastructure and investment for the future. His successive governments were the recipients of many many windfall profits. In many years Government income far exceeded the budget / Treasury forecasts. That money was never used for any significant infrastructure investment - the timeframes for returns on that didn't suit the political agenda - and I often wondered how long it would take for the chickens to come home to roost. Clearly, a lack of infrastructure spending was not going to show up in economic performance for a long time.

Well it now has. It's official.

Australia ranks #34 in a recent World Economic Forum report on infrastructure quality, which is two spots behind war-torn Slovenia and one spot ahead of Jordan.

That IS frightening. So now we all have to pay for the 21 years of incompetence on the part of Mr Howard and his colleagues, and it is estimated that today's generation will have to fund more than $700 billion of investment  to bring the infrastructure to the level of quality necessary to "sustain national prosperity". That's almost criminal isn't it?

By the way Mr Howard DID invest in one piece of infrastructure. As you can imagine he was a complete troglodyte when it came to the digital world, and the digital economy, and in fact he seemed to surround himself with advisors who were best suited to keeping him in the dark and fed on you-know-what. Every policy setting around digital was a shambles, usually an orchestrated outcome by the incumbents to gain more protection.

But Little Johnny did understand and like trains.

While dithering on everything digital he approved an almost $1 billion "investment" to complete Australia's North to South railway connection. The Alice Springs to Darwin rail link project was the absolute highlight of Mr Howard's infrastructure investment projects. This is at a time when repeated requests and proposals for investment in broadband and related infrastructure were almost lampooned by Mr Howard.

How much economic activity could this new railway line generate?

According to the government - almost unlimited! The gateway to Asia!

The reality? This line runs one freight train per day, that is ONE train per day, and one passenger train per week. Try not to laugh or cry when you read that. How much economic value can one train deliver I wonder, compared, say to a broadband "railway" upgrade? It was so laughable that no one ever even commented.

Unfortunately the untold economic wealth which this public investment was to generate turned out to be less than enough to just keep the operating consortium alive - they folded within three years, and eventually the whole show was sold to a US rail operator for some $200 million. So the public lost out twice, once when they lost all their investment and it was sold for cents in the dollar. And a second time to rebuild what was not built during those 21 years as the money weas squandered on pure pork barrelling - notably to Tasmania as it was important to buy votes needed to stay in power.

The Alice Springs to Darwin rail link is a fabulous example of the squandered opportunities under Mr Howard's reign and why Australia now ranks with Solvenia in national infrastructure quality.

It's a pity. Australia actually had the income, and unlike Slovenia we had no war, and we just wasted it all away.

That waste, and the public debt to rebuild is Mr Howard's true factual legacy.

Walter @adamson

Taken with picplz.

Taken with picplz.

HAHAHAHAHA that's Qantas to the core - smug, self-righteous and arrogant.

http://www.smh.com.au/travel/travel-news/qantas-jet-engine-fails-witnesses-tell-of-hearing-explosion-20101104-17f49.html

If only their PR "spokespeople" had lowered themselves to read Facebook they would have seen their logos on these engine parts, not the mention the smashed walls of houses, where their nicely labelled engine landed after it exploded over Indonesia. They would have not just "found out", but actually seen hours before their spokesperson took to their soapbox in auto-responder mode.

Facebook pics: http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=451031248015&set=a.451030963015.240238.647878015

And just what was the party line? This didn't happen, or those twitter photos of pieces of engine sticking up through the wing are also not from your aircraft, or ....? I guess it's a clue to why PR and social media just doesn't mix, unless you do a wholesale re-education of your PR department and that would include years of internment for those Qantas folk :)

The update is said to be an industry-first wherein the signal bars represent the real phone antenna performance, and not just a nice graphic as in the past. Mind you in the past a nice graphic was all that was needed, but in the light of antennagate Apple thought that some physics and engineering might deflect the perception. That's an odd twist for a "brand image" company, but in any case having a "real" set of bars is good. I suppose 1 bar is half the strength of 2 bars etc, or at last some formula between them. 

I'm not sure what the formula is, although that's sure to be published soon. In this case I just lay two phones beside each other and took screen shots. One was upgraded, and the other not. The upgraded one shows 2 bars, and the old one 5 bars.

I wore my birthday Heart Rate Monitor for the 1st time to Spin class, and discovered that the Maximum Heart Rate calculation for me must be wrong - too low.

I'd set it at 164, being the highest of 4 different ways, and according to Wikipedia another method with the least deviation gives 164.9. But I hit 168 during Spin! So if I get back to basics and think of perceived levels of effort versus what I saw on the monitor then I assess that my MHR is 178.

That's the same as for a 42 year-old male using the "standard" formula 220 - age. A MHR of 178 gives me a Heart Rate Reserve of 178 - 43 (my Resting Heart Rate) which is a healthy number! A higher MHR doesn't mean much actually, there are big variations in MHR in the same age athletes, and it doesn't reflect the ability to perform - according to what I have read today. A wide Heart Rate Reserve simply means that I will end up with wide training zones, and have to pay attention to not training in the lower end if I wish to achieve the results of intensity in that zone.

Anyway, whatever I have had to redo my whole training zone table or otherwise I will be tempted to train at too low an intensity.

Using 178 as my MHR and 43 as the Resting Heart Rate gives my zones as:

Based on what I saw this morning using the heart rate monitor this new MHR of 178 would see me spending 5 - 10 minutes per session in the bottom of the Anaerobic Zone, and occasionally touching the VO2max Zone.

Compare those few minutes of Anaerobic Zone to the Tour De France cyclists racing the whole Time Trial for an hour in their Anaerobic Zone, and who often have Resting Heart Rates of less than 30.

I was wondering WHY the maximum heart rate slows down with age? Googling it doesn't bring up direct answers, as most of the links simply refer to the statement and training zones but not why. However I eventually did find Merck had a good explanation which is basically that your various body parts just stop working as efficiently so you just can't actually get there any more.

I've been going to the gym for while, see everyone intently using their heart rate monitors - OK it's my birthday I'll ask my wife to gift me the starter model as recommended by my Spin instructor. He says the higher price models have a whole ot of things that you don't need. Fine, start with a base model POLAR FT-1 which measures heart rate, average, maximum, duration, and apparently beeps when you enter a pre-set zone - I haven't got that far yet as I haven't yet used it. The zones have to be set manually, so that's the first challenge! Google search "heart rate monitor training zones" and there's a lot of sites, but one offers to calculate your zones if you enter your resting heart rate and your maximum heart rate - so how do I find those?

Maximum Heart Rate isn't so hard, 220 - (your age) = MHR if you are Male, or is it? There are four other ways to calculate it, apparently because these calculations are all estimates of something which can only be found by empirical evidence - trial and measure! My various calculations varied from 158 to 164. How to choose?

The higher you choose the harder you will have to work to get there, and in some forms of exercise that may even prove to be impossible. For example running will use lots of large muscles and get the heart right up there, but cycling uses less muscle so you have to work harder to get the heart to the same rate - according to some sites. Those people say that if you are using it for cycling then calculate the MHR using the running/marathon sites and then subtract 10.

Does that make sense? Not really. Maximum Heart Rate is maximum heart rate, the formulas are an estimate of what various experts think of how an "average body" can perform. If you want to find your real MHR you have to exercise the heart to that level: try running hard 200m on sand, three times, take the highest heart rate; or, do three 400m track sprints as hard as you possible can and take the highest reading. If you ever do any exercise which later gives you a higher reading then that higher reading is your new MHR. That's it, no adjustment needed!

OK so now enter 164, and what about my Resting Heart Rate? I know it is quite low because it's dropped a lot since I've been going to gym. It was about 62/63. I estimate 50. Then I measured it when I slept, average 43, highest 72 (must have been something exciting happening there!!). Great so 43 is good, down about 20 since I started exercising. Enter 43.

This gives my zones as:

So how do I use this?

With my simple watch I have to enter one Zone and it's limits, so that is usually the Aerobic Zone or "target heart rate zone", lower limit 128 and higher 140. Apparently it's not scientifically proven that training with a heart rate monitor produces any better results in top athletes. I can understand this since elite athletes would be very body-aware and therefore very conscious of their perceived performance in relation to their level of actual effort and body stress.

But on the other hand many of the Tour de France cyclists seemed to be wearing them. I imagine that they would use them to pace themselves over the course of the Tour, and for example if they are planning a team attack on a climb stage then they would try to minimise their time in the Anaerobic and VO2max Zones in the days leading up to that attack. 

I figure for an ordinary person like me it would be useful to know if for example you are actually spending too much time in the Recovery Zone. This could be because you are not relating perceived effort to the real stress on your body i.e. it feels harder than it is, or that you are just not so body aware. You might also want to get into the Anaerobic Zone a certain number of times per class, or the VO2max zone. The VO2max "red line" Zone sounds scary, as if your heart will burst. This isn't the case, you can be there as long as you can be there without harming your heart, but you just can't stay there because your muscles can't function there for long.

For me I'd like to know that I was in the Aerobic Zone most of the time and and plan bursts into the higher zones. Frankly I have no idea where I will actually be once I get to a session with the monitor.  I am kind of body aware, I can pace myself at the same time as extending myself to the edge of my potential high intensity limit during a Spin class. I certainly like to get the most fitness bang for my buck when I am there, although I'm not competitive. The challenge would be if the monitor shows that I am working at a lower level than I perceive, because I'm not sure that I can go much harder!!

So I'm waiting for my next class, and will be watching the monitor with great interest. I'm not sure if it will help or not, but having objective feedback usually does provide the basis for change or improvement!

In Australia it's been announced that the 3G-capable iPads will sell for AU$799 with 16GB of storage; the 32GB model comes in at $929, with the flagship 64GB 3G iPad at $1,049. (Apple will begin taking pre-orders for the May 28th release at Apple.com.au from tomorrow Monday May 10th.)

This is about the same price as the UK and the UK Daily Mail cried Rip-off Britain: iPad to cost 25% more in the UK than it does in US stores as did PC Pro UK iPad prices: another great rip-off

But Apple actually responded (or was it the Daily Mail's arch enemy the Telegraph which contacted Apple?) with the news iPad rip-off? Not once you allow for VAT, says Apple

US prices don’t include sales tax but the UK prices do include VAT (The standard VAT rate in the UK is 17.5%).

The US prices – $499, $599 and $699 for the 16, 32 and 64GB wifi models and $629, $729 and $829 for the 3G models with the same storage – would increase by around 10% in California, for example, once you add sales tax. Apple says the fair way to compare the two is to deduct VAT from the British prices.

So US$829 is AU$933, add 10% GST (VAT) and that's AU$1026, close enough to $1049.

Even Steve Jobs Weighs in on iPad International Pricing and Taxes and offered a few sharp bursts:

Please educate yourself. UK prices must by law include VAT, which is around 18%. US prices do not include tax; and,

Blame your government. Germany just added a new copyright levy for computers, to German customers who complained about higher prices even after adjusting for tax.

It's interesting that this post rated 35 Positive and 19 Negative out of 92 comments.

In Japan Softbank, the exclusive iPhone carrier, is selling both the iPad and the data plans (unlike Telstra which said that it will not sell iPads) and the basic 3G model is AU$720 as compared to AU$799. That's a whopping 11% higher price in Australia but perhaps the Japanese price does not include their Consumption Tax, although that is only 5%, so still there is doubt over at least 5% of the higher price in Australia?

By the way, the experts at iSuppli have torn down the iPad and estimated the cost of building the iPad WiFi 32GB model (not the 3G-enabled model) at US$259.60. That returns a hefty gross margin in anyone's language (sale price around US$499).

Conclusion

Rip-off or no rip-off, not sure but it's in the range of 10% or less for non-US buyers.

Walter
Follow me @g2m
Find me in my social spaces and places: http://xeesm.com/walter