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    <title><![CDATA[Ockham's Razor]]></title>
    <description><![CDATA[William of Ockham was an English monk, philosopher, theologian, who provided the scientific method with its key principle 700 years ago. 'What can be done with fewer assumptions is done in vain with more,' he said. That is, in explaining any phenomenon, we should use no more explanatory concepts than are absolutely necessary. Simplicity should never be despised. Thoughtful people have their say, without interruption, on important science-related topics.]]></description>
    <link>http://abc.net.au/rn/ockhamsrazor/</link>
    <copyright>Australian Broadcasting Corporation</copyright>
    <language>en</language>
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      <title><![CDATA[Ockham's Razor]]></title>
      <link>http://abc.net.au/rn/ockhamsrazor/</link>
    </image>
    <itunes:author>ABC Radio National</itunes:author>
    <itunes:summary><![CDATA[William of Ockham was an English monk, philosopher, theologian, who provided the scientific method with its key principle 700 years ago. 'What can be done with fewer assumptions is done in vain with more,' he said. That is, in explaining any phenomenon, we should use no more explanatory concepts than are absolutely necessary. Simplicity should never be despised. Thoughtful people have their say, without interruption, on important science-related topics.]]></itunes:summary>
    <itunes:image href="http://abc.net.au/rn/podcast/feeds/image/itunes/orr_600.jpg"/>
    <itunes:category text="Science &amp; Medicine"/>
    <item>
      <title><![CDATA[2008-11-16 The return of the Osprey ]]></title>
      <description><![CDATA[Ospreys are a bird of prey and are found in costal regions worldwide. Unfortunately, in the UK at the start of the 1800s these birds were high on the list of species to be destroyed. Today Bob Holderness-Roddam, Project Officer with Volunteering Tasmania, tells of his experiences as a volunteer in Scotland in the 1960s, protecting the nests of the few remaining breeding birds.]]></description>
      <link>http://mpegmedia.abc.net.au/rn/podcast/current/audioonly/orr_20081116.mp3</link>
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      <pubDate>Sun, 16 Nov 2008 00:00:00 +1000</pubDate>
      <guid isPermaLink="false">8ce79d01c845440cc0872bb803a95c4f</guid>
      <itunes:author>ABC Radio National</itunes:author>
      <itunes:summary><![CDATA[Ospreys are a bird of prey and are found in costal regions worldwide. Unfortunately, in the UK at the start of the 1800s these birds were high on the list of species to be destroyed. Today Bob Holderness-Roddam, Project Officer with Volunteering Tasmania, tells of his experiences as a volunteer in Scotland in the 1960s, protecting the nests of the few remaining breeding birds.


 TRANSCRIPT: 
Robyn Williams: One of the joys of watching the skies off various parts of coastal Australia is to see the big birds soaring, catching the up-currents of wind, or just hanging there, looking down. Plenty of pelicans of course, sometimes in squadrons of four or five, and of course, the Osprey. Occasionally these great white eagles get chased across the sky by smaller birds, which eventually drop away when the Ospreys head home to the nest.

Now youīd think a great predator like that would be vulnerable to nothing very much, but that kind of niggling harassment, no more than a nuisance. But top predators are vulnerable. Not only when the prey becomes rare, but also from the likes of us humans. In some countries, weīve wiped them out. 

Fortunately there are folk like Bob Holderness-Roddam, who lives in Tasmania, who are willing to go to the most unlikely lengths to save these magnificent creatures. Hereīs his story.

Bob Holderness-Roddam: Back in 1965 and 1968 I had the great privilege of spending a week as a volunteer, guarding a pair of nesting Ospreys at Loch Garten in Speyside, Scotland. The deal was that volunteers gave their time, and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) provided tents and fed us.

At the time these were the only known pair of Ospreys breeding successfully anywhere in the British Isles. Another pair had attempted to nest nearby, but unfortunately the female had ingested enough DDT to make her egg shells too thin to allow the chicks to develop.

Ospreys are a bird of prey which almost exclusively eat fish, which they catch by plunging feet first into the water, and snatching in their talons before taking off again and either taking it back to the nest for their partner and chicks or to a convenient perch to eat it themselves. (Not all Ospreys succeed in their fishing endeavours. The British field sports magazine, The Field, for 20th March 1958 had a photograph of a large carp caught in Saxony with a skeleton of an Osprey attached!)

Ospreys are found pretty well all over the world in coastal regions, including Australia. The Scottish Ospreys migrate to southern Europe or North Africa for the winter.

I am indebted to the book, The Return of the Osprey, by Philip Brown and George Waterston for the background information on the destruction of the Osprey as a breeding species in Scotland and its eventual successful return.

Records show that Ospreys were distributed throughout Scotland in the early 1800s. There were also some historical records of Ospreys breeding in the English counties of Devon, Cornwall, Somerset, and Westmorland.

Unfortunately the perfection of the shotgun at the start of the 1800s gave gamekeepers and ghillies the ability to destroy any bird of prey they considered a threat to their Lairdīs sporting interests. Needless to say, the Osprey with its exclusive diet of fish, including brown trout, was high on the list of species to destroy. Eighteen Ospreys were shot on one estate alone in 1837-1840. The young were seldom allowed to survive to flight. Indeed most nests were probably robbed by egg thieves, as there was a good market for eggs, records showing that nests were being robbed as far back as 1832. Skins of adult Ospreys were also collected.

Despite attempts by some landowners to protect breeding Ospreys in the 1850s, they were reduced to two breeding pairs in Scotland by the beginning of the 20th century.

By the late 1940s, increasing numbers of Ospreys were sighted on passage over Scotland. They probably had a break from persecution during the war years, as many gamekeepers and ghillies were away at the war, and landowners had bigger worries than the odd Osprey on its way to breed in Scandinavia.

However, once the war was over the ghillies and the gamekeepers returned to persecute Ospreys and other birds of prey. Even Ospreys on passage to Scandinavia from their winter homes in southern Europe and North Africa were destroyed.

Scandinavian bred birds attempted to colonise Scotland from the 1950s. Six birds on passage to Scandinavia were reported in each of 1951, ī52 and ī53. Two were known to have been shot in 1951, two in 1952 and one in each of 1953 and 1954. In 1952 there were unconfirmed rumours of a nesting pair.

By this time the RSPB was taking active steps to protect any Ospreys attempting to nest. Dangers were identified as egg collectors, forestry, fires and shooting.

There was possible breeding in 1953 and 1954 in Speyside, with a confirmed attempt at nesting in 1955, although the nest was probably robbed.

The RSPB established their first lookout hide in 1956, but again the nest was robbed.

There were rumours of a female bird being shot in 1957, so the RSPB developed more extensive plans to guard any nesting pair in 1958. The descriptions of the preparations in Brown and Waterstonīs book reads rather like a crime thriller, which it was in a way.

A pair of birds built on the remains of an old eyrie at Loch Garten, with the local staff members using a code word to advise London head office staff. This set in train the previously agreed plan to guard the eyrie. However the team had to be wary in order to avoid disturbing the nesting birds. For this reason they initially did not want to set up their observation hide too close to the nest, but they quickly changed their minds when a known egg collector climbed the nest tree to see how many eggs were there. He was caught and sent packing back to his home in the south of England.

Unfortunately all their efforts were in vain, for in June the nest was robbed one early morning, the eggs being replaced with hens eggs. The robber escaped.

The RSPBīs, and the Ospreysī, luck changed in 1959. Three chicks hatched successfully. The news attracted 14,000 visitors to view the family after hatching. The following year two chicks were reared with 20,000 people visiting the visitorsī observation hide and in 1961 three chicks were reared, with 21,000 visiting.

My first week as a volunteer guard was in 1965, shortly before leaving on my first trip to Australia. By this time the RSPB really had its act together. There was a forward observation hide, with a public observation hide a few metres further back. The forward hide was staffed by one volunteer during the day, when the danger from egg thieves was considered to be relatively small, and by two at night. These two volunteers took it in turns to sleep, fully clothed, in order to be able to respond immediately to any raid by egg thieves. It was eerie, peering into the gloom of the relatively short Scottish summer nights, with a pair of earphones linked to a microphone located at the base of the nest tree. I must confess to a considerable feeling of relief when daylight arrived at the end of my night shifts without any untoward happenings.

The public observation hide was usually pretty busy, fielding questions and selling souvenirs - I still have a much treasured (and unused) ash tray as a memento of that time. The public were able to observe the sitting bird through a pair of high powered binoculars mounted on a tripod and if they were very lucky, the male might bring a fish to the sitting female and hand over incubating duties while she flew off to a nearby perch to enjoy her meal.

I was able to repeat the experience in 1968, whilst preparing to move permanently to my new home in Tasmania. Things were pretty much the same, and the people responsible for co-ordinating volunteers were kind enough to show us other interesting avian sites, such as a black grouse at the lek (thatīs a courting ground) early one morning and Red-throated Divers in a local lake.

The Red-throated Diver trip was my first experience of a `twitcherī. No sooner had we seen the Diver then a member of the party insisted we move on to look for some other species he hadnīt recorded in his little book yet. Personally, I like to enjoy watching a new species and learning a bit about its behaviour. For me, `twitchingī is just feathered train-spotting!

In 2003, during my first visit back to the UK in thirty years, my youngest daughter Avril and I visited the Loch Garten site to see the descendents of the Ospreys I had played a very minor role in helping to become established. Sadly a strange male had chased off the femaleīs rightful partner, but had not taken over the maleīs duty of feeding the incubating female. This meant that she had to leave the nest to catch her own fish. Even if crows did not steal the unattended eggs, the embryonic Ospreys would certainly die when the eggs became chilled.

So what is the story with the Scottish Ospreys today? Itīs terrific news. There are now about 160 pairs of Ospreys breeding in the UK, mostly in Scotland but also in Cumbria, the lower midlands and in Wales.

But what about the original Loch Garten nest site? Itīs still in use, despite an attack by vandals with a chain saw many years ago. RSPB staff now write a regular web blog to keep fans around the world informed of events, and thereīs an `Osprey Camī so you can see the birds at the nest.

However, the breeding Ospreys have mixed fortunes. In 2007, for example events got off to a nervous start when the regular female (known as `EJī on account of the letters on her leg ring) returned from her over-wintering site in North Africa ten days later than the previous year. The following day she was joined by a male (known as Orange VS) an old flame but not her regular mate. He tends to arrive before the established male and mates with EJ. Thatīs OK, but he then gets chased off when the regular mate, `Henryī arrives. Also, Orange VS is a poor provider of fish for EJ. He disappears for long periods and returns empty-taloned. There are suspicions that heīs a two-timer. In 2005 Henry chased off the impostor and kicked three eggs resulting from that mating overboard. Well, in 2007 Henry eventually arrived nearly three weeks after EJ and again promptly kicked the existing eggs (and two subsequent laid to Orange VS) overboard - like most blokes he doesnīt like being cuckolded. He also showed he still cared about EJ by catching some fish for her, and chased off the impostor.

In the second week of May EJ started laying a replacement clutch of eggs, fathered by Henry. RSPB staff state this was only the second time in 25 years that a replacement clutch has been laid by an Osprey.    

As the RSPBīs Loch Garten blog for Friday 17 May said, `So our season starts now - our true resident pair are together, they have an egg and we now look forward to hatching a fledgling.ī

Over the next few days two more eggs followed, giving a clutch of three and a total of eight for the season. Unheard of in Scottish Osprey circles before!

All the RSPB team and the hundreds of well-wishers, many from overseas, could do now was to wait for the eggs to hatch. Sadly, one egg failed to hatch and the chicks from the other two eggs died. So season 2007 was pretty much a write-off, unless you were an aspiring Mills and Boon novelist seeking inspiration for a plot!

This last year (2008) was a different story altogether. As with 2007, EJ and Orange VS mated and produced three eggs. However, this time Henry did not return to reclaim his partner from previous years. The eggs duly hatched, although the weakest chick died. However the other two chicks fledged successfully. Before leaving the nest these chicks, christened Nethys and Deshar were ringed and fitted with lightweight radio transmitters. Sadly Deshar, the male, flew off course during his migration flight in mid-October and ended up en route to South America. He became exhausted and plunged into the mid-Atlantic. However his sister, Nethys, survived her migration flight and had arrived in Senegal, West Africa, a bit after mid-October.

In future years you can follow the trials and tribulations of the Loch Garten Ospreys by tuning into the RSPB Weblog and the Osprey Cam, and then follow any surviving young on their migration back to the Mediterranean basin. The easiest method is to Google `Ospreys + Loch Gartenī. However Iīve included the website URLs for anyone who downloads the transcript of this talk.

Robyn Williams: Which was by Bob Holderness-Roddam who lives in Hobart. Isnīt it good to think that there are people whoīll go to such trouble to look after wild birds.

Next week, Dr John Carmody and something equally uplifting - The Meaning of Life.]]></itunes:summary>
      <itunes:duration>13:49</itunes:duration>
      <itunes:explicit>no</itunes:explicit>
      <itunes:keywords><![CDATA[environment,endangered and protected species]]></itunes:keywords>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title><![CDATA[2008-11-09 I wish I had become a scientist ]]></title>
      <description><![CDATA[The Managing Director of Centurion Enterprise Management Services in Victoria, Dr Ron Harper, wonders what might have been if he had chosen a career as a scientist. However, he chose a career in management and today tells us what makes a good and efficient manager.]]></description>
      <link>http://mpegmedia.abc.net.au/rn/podcast/current/audioonly/orr_20081109.mp3</link>
      <enclosure url="http://mpegmedia.abc.net.au/rn/podcast/current/audioonly/orr_20081109.mp3" type="audio/mpeg" length="6629776"/>
      <pubDate>Sun, 09 Nov 2008 00:00:00 +1000</pubDate>
      <guid isPermaLink="false">95ffe992932ca65e0ba314067017b296</guid>
      <itunes:author>ABC Radio National</itunes:author>
      <itunes:summary><![CDATA[The Managing Director of Centurion Enterprise Management Services in Victoria, Dr Ron Harper, wonders what might have been if he had chosen a career as a scientist. However, he chose a career in management and today tells us what makes a good and efficient manager.


 TRANSCRIPT: 
Robyn Williams: Whatever your feelings about George W. Bush, there is a case to be made that his successes or failures could be put down to matters of management. If you do insist on invading Iraq, why not work out what happens when you get there? If you are keen on the free market, why not check that it knows what itīs up to? 

If you are determined to be a firm leader, why not have one or two lieutenants who are bold enough to tell you, you might, just might, be wrong. 

Management you see, is a skill, an art, not just an appointment or a charmed path to upgrading. And some managers, like Dr Ron Harper in Melbourne, where he runs an outfit providing management services, like to compare the job to science.

Ron Harper: Whenever Iīm contemplating the `what ifsī of my life, I often think I would have liked to become a scientist. As a scientist I could have had the chance to win a Nobel Prize, if I were lucky enough. I could have carried out work that would have been praised as advancing humanityīs wellbeing. I could have developed improvements to peopleīs health. I could have devised ways of reaching for the stars. I could have confounded my friends and stroked my ego with the Latin codes of my discipline. I could have been praised by Robyn Williams on The Science Show.

But none of this will happen now, for as fate would have it, I became a manager, first as a business practitioner and then as an academic teaching the theory of management. And while science gets the bouquets, management gets the bricks. Management is the bit that gets blamed when science goes wrong. Let me give you some examples of what I mean. Take the Challenger disaster in the NASA space shuttle program. We all know it was a technical error that caused the shuttle to explode just 73 seconds into its flight. It was a faulty `Oī ring seal in the solid rocket booster. But the commission of inquiry found the problem to be more one of management. NASA personnel had known for years that the `Oī ring was faulty. The NASA engineers warned that launching on such a cold morning was not a good idea. But the organisation rolled onto the launch-pad with disastrous inevitability. The scientific flaw of the `Oī ring has been almost lost as blame was directed at workplace ethics, managerial culture, workplace structures, occupational health and safety procedures and ultimately communication breakdown, all elements of bad management.

The `Columbiaī disaster happened in 2003, nineteen years after Challenger, but again most of the blame was directed at managers and management issues. In the words of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board, most of the blame was put down to, `organisational barriers that prevented effective communication of critical safety information and stifled professional differences of opinion; lack of integrated management across program element; and the evolution of an informal chain of command and decision-making processes that operated outside the organisationīs rules.ī Same old bad management problems.

The space industry has lots of examples of heroic science coupled with bad management. It hasnīt always meant loss of life but it has meant loss of money. The 1998 Mars surveyor program lost its orbiter because the NASA sub-contractor Lockheed Martin used Imperial units instead of the metric units as specified by NASA. This caused the Mars Climate Orbiter to drift off course and enter the Mars atmosphere in a lower orbit than planned, causing it to burn up from the atmospheric friction. The report of the Mishap Investigation Board recommended changes to address management shortcomings in organisation, emphasising the need to combat the defensive mechanisms amongst staff, opening up communication lines, and adequately staffing projects.

We donīt have to limit ourselves to the space industry. Medicine likes to think of itself as more science than craft. Start investigating the mishaps in our hospital systems and you soon begin to discover that management issues are at the base of most problems, from poor surgical decisions to accusations of over-servicing. In this regard, it will be interesting to watch the Bundaberg Hospital case that is in the process of coming to court. It frequently appears to be the case that organisations have a way of rolling on, with deathly consequences, despite people within the system having knowledge of the problems, but just not knowing how to manage them.

Why do we find management so difficult? After all, itīs pretty straightforward; itīs not rocket science. And you donīt have to be a brain surgeon to do it. People do it in all sorts of circumstances and all kinds of industries and organisations. You can even study management at secondary school. And I believe itīs quite popular. After all, who wouldnīt want to boss other people about? Our salary structures are largely based on bossing up other people. the more people you have to boss about, the more money you earn. But all of this is simply to misunderstand management. Yet I suspect that the students who graduate at 17 or 18 from a management studies course still go out into the world looking for a job where they can be the boss of other people.

Part of the problem is that our appreciation of the study of management is several centuries behind that of the physical and natural sciences. Before the 17th century, interpretations of how the world works were based on a mixture of suppositions, religious faith, and belief in alchemy. It wasnīt until Galileo and others insisted that the proof of experiment displaced mystical faith that science emerged as a discipline that could deliver the riches of knowledge and technology. And then it was not clean-cut; even Isaac Newton continued to pursue alchemy after he had already published his epic scientific work Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica. See how much more high-minded that title sounds compared with Introduction to Management.

Our appreciation of management appears to be in a similar epoch to that which science was in, in its early establishment days, caught between snake-oil alchemists and serious discoverers of an academic body of management theory proven by laborious, methodical research. In the lead-up to the 2000 Sydney Olympics, the comedian John Clarke and his team produced a very clever series about management called The Games. In one episode, the management team that is responsible for mounting the 2000 Olympics go to a management retreat, where they pretend in a workshop to be animals or insects. John Clarkeīs character spends the afternoon as an `aphidī. This brilliant piece of ridicule should have put an end to these sorts of sham workshops that companies sometimes buy to solve their management problems. Unfortunately it didnīt. Workshops in which people are encouraged to pretend they are animals in the hope that this will reveal some deep management insight are still hawked around. I find it difficult to see any well-researched management theory underpinning some of these products. In my view, such gimmicks are a waste of money as much as the notion of the `one-minute managerī, which is the title of a well-known popular management book. Would we expect that a first-class physicist could be educated in one minute?

I have an acquaintance who trained as a biochemist, spent a large slab of her career working in a laboratory before moving into the commercial side of the pharmaceutical industry and becoming a director of marketing. She commented to me once on the differences she perceived between the worlds of the scientist and the manager. `When I was a research scientist,ī she said, `my day was fairly predictable. I would come to work, go through the post, or by the end of my research career, go through my emails. Then I would check the results of the previous dayīs experiments. Then having recorded this I would set up that nightīs experiments to run, and go home. But in this management role, every day is different. I never know what to expect.ī Thatīs why management is about internalisation and not just about following a set of rote-learned techniques.

I once knew of a company managed by someone who had done a short basic management course and seemed to practice the technique I like to describe as `management by numbersī. He ticked all the boxes; he established a staff comment box, which quickly filled with anonymous notes of dubious quality, but which did provide some humour for the staff, he held long consultative staff meetings in which people drifted off, but he spent most days sitting on the top floor of the building in a very, very large office behind a very, very large desk, possibly wondering why the company was stagnating. The whole thing seemed at times like cargo-cult management. All of the material trimmings were in place but there was no connection with reality, and that lack of connection meant that the crucial ingredient of good management was missing - leadership.

The world of people is as complex as the world of physics, so does it not deserve as careful and dedicated approaches to learning about it as scientists give to the rest of nature? We need to avoid the notion of the quick fix and recognise that mastering an understanding of management is no different to mastering an understanding of the physical universe. Itīs methodical and long-term.

But it is also important to understand the difference between the disciplines. Fundamentally, one of the distinguishing characteristics of management is that mastering it often requires us to attempt to change our behaviours in ways that the discipline of physics or biology does not. Making those changes is painful. And yet we must endure in order to master the discipline of good management. It is a lifetime study, like any other serious engagement with a discipline.

However, on this program, Ockhamīs Razor, we seek to reduce to the simplest understanding. Having discarded the quick fixes of the short workshops, what simple reduction of management can I make? I propose four principles: firstly, accept the difficulty of management. Just because it is practiced in plain language doesnīt mean that itīs not rocket science. As we have seen in the NASA examples, it is the `art of successful rocketryī. And it must be difficult - even rocket scientists and brain surgeons donīt seem to be much good at it.

Second, develop a commitment to honesty. Thatīs a characteristic of good science, and itīs a characteristic of good management, though I could argue that the temptation to be dishonest is greater in management than in science. But thatīs for another time. Thirdly, develop the behaviour of reflection. This last is founded among some others on the work of Donald Schoen, a leading management theorist, although educationalists and philosophers could also claim him. You can read his book, The Reflective Practitioner: How professionals think in action. The first of many management texts you should want to read.

Finally, stay connected with reality. I believe the best managers know the business they are in. So chin up, scientists, you already have one of the most important ingredients for managing a scientific organisation well. But remember to stay connected to reality. Too often getting into management is seen as an escape from the nitty-gritty end of the business. So if you are managing a scientific organisation, keep up a role in the lab, even as a junior. If you are running a university, make sure you teach at least one course a year. And donīt just do guest lectures, really run a course.

So there it is, my views on why the discipline of management is as difficult as brain surgery or rocket science, and my four principles on how to get started on the road to learning and practising good management. And if I still have not convinced you of the integral nature of management and science, then take a look at the authorship on contemporary scientific research papers. For example, a recent article on `The Trichoplax genome and the nature of placozoansī in the journal Nature had 21 authors. Science no longer belongs to the heroes; itīs become a team pursuit and think of the management issues in that. Perhaps the real hero will be the good manager.

So as we reach for the stars, remember this. We might be clever enough to build the most marvellous star ship, but wouldnīt it be a waste and a pity if we destroyed it just a few years into the journey of a lifetime.

Robyn Williams: It would indeed.

Dr Ron Harper, who runs a management systems firm in Melbourne. And he avoided management jargon there for an entire 12 minutes.

Next week: The flight of another kind, that of the osprey trying to survive against the terrible odds in Scotland. The story of how some dedicated folk, some from Tasmania, made all the difference for this magnificent bird.

Iīm Robyn Williams.]]></itunes:summary>
      <itunes:duration>13:47</itunes:duration>
      <itunes:explicit>no</itunes:explicit>
      <itunes:keywords><![CDATA[business,economics and finance,industry,transport]]></itunes:keywords>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title><![CDATA[2008-11-02 Kidney disease amongst Aboriginal people ]]></title>
      <description><![CDATA[Health Director of the Jimmy Little Foundation and film maker Don Palmer tells us that kidney disease amongst Aboriginal people in Central Australia runs somewhere between 30 to 50 times the national average. Nearly 200 people are receiving dialysis treatment in this area alone.]]></description>
      <link>http://mpegmedia.abc.net.au/rn/podcast/current/audioonly/orr_20081102.mp3</link>
      <enclosure url="http://mpegmedia.abc.net.au/rn/podcast/current/audioonly/orr_20081102.mp3" type="audio/mpeg" length="5924080"/>
      <pubDate>Sun, 02 Nov 2008 00:00:00 +1000</pubDate>
      <guid isPermaLink="false">351959bd04adbae19db7666ad894bd98</guid>
      <itunes:author>ABC Radio National</itunes:author>
      <itunes:summary><![CDATA[Health Director of the Jimmy Little Foundation and film maker Don Palmer tells us that kidney disease amongst Aboriginal people in Central Australia runs somewhere between 30 to 50 times the national average. Nearly 200 people are receiving dialysis treatment in this area alone.


 TRANSCRIPT: 
Robyn Williams: Have you been watching that marvellous series about the First Australians on SBS television? The thing that struck me, looking at the old pictures of Aboriginal people, was how lithe and healthy they looked, when living in the traditional way, close to the land.

Even now, when doctors do experiments with town folk suffering Western diseases like diabetes and enable them to return to the old ways in the bush, many people are transformed, becoming near symptom-free with all that good diet and solid exercise. But itīs not just a physical effect, there has to be a recovery of the spirit that goes with the physiology.

Don Palmer combines two jobs, at least two. Heīs a film maker and also Health Director of the Jimmy Little Foundation, and his connections go back a long, long way.

Don Palmer: Recently a group of scientists began the most audacious experiment in human history. Using the Large Hadron Collider, they began trying to recreate what it was like the split second after the Big Bang. 

The need to understand our primordial origins has captured the imagination of thinkers since time immemorial. Being able to reach way back to explain the genesis of our very existence is at the heart of every belief system, religious and scientific.

This is equally true for those who listen to the Dreamtime to find their bearings in the universe. Travelling across Australia itīs not uncommon to see groups of large football-shaped boulders. To name them, European explorers reached into Christian mythology and said they resembled something Satan had spewed out from the bowels of hell. So theyīre usually called `The Devilīs Marblesī.

But indigenous people usually call them the Eggs of the Sacred Rainbow Serpent. One senior Aboriginal man joked that he knew Adam and Eve were not Aboriginal, because given the choice of an apple or a snake to eat, Aboriginal people would eat the snake every time!

Now these are just stories, arenīt they? So why does it matter? Well, the differences are not simple curiosities. In fact they have a powerful way of working themselves out in a manner that influences matters of life and death.

Let me try to explain. Just outside Alice Springs is the grave of the famous Reverend Doctor John Flynn, founder of the Royal Flying Doctor Service. The site takes the simple form of a large egg-shaped boulder sitting on a rectangular plinth. The original boulder was taken from the Karlu Karlu, a cluster of boulders hundreds of kilometres away. This was done against the wishes of the traditional owners, the women whose families have been responsible for them since long before the Pyramids were built.

Itīs a little ironic that a man who had a policy of banning Aboriginal people from the Australian Inland Mission hospitals should have such a memorial. Nonetheless, when he died, this memorial was built.

For twenty years those women fought to have the egg returned. Eventually, in 1972, the authorities relented. The women, as an act of good faith, offered another rock, the one thatīs there now, to replace the original. The authorities, in good faith, decided to clean up the old one a little before returning it. When it arrived back in its place the colour had changed from rusty red to a smudgy white.

The people were mortified. The ancient story is that when one of the Rainbow Serpentīs eggs turns white, then the Dreaming begins to end.

But surely this is only a story, superstition, a myth?

Well it was around this time that the tsunami of chronic diseases, heart disease, diabetes, kidney failure, started to be felt. It was around this time that Aboriginal health started on its downward plummet from which there seems little prospect of recovery.

So was this the beginning of the end of the Dreaming? Is there a causal relationship? Now Iīm just a whitefella with only partial knowledge, but to me the two things, the Dreamtime story and the facts, sit uncomfortably alongside each other.

Kidney diseases in Central Australia now runs at somewhere between 30 to 50 times the national average. Nearly 200 people are stuck on dialysis in Central Australia alone. And there are 200 more identified as pre-dialysis. If that situation pertained in a city like Sydney, there would be more than 13,000 people in dialysis every day!

A simple visit to the dialysis unit in Alice Springs is a sobering experience. Nurses work tirelessly to provide leading-edge care. A phalanx of haemodialysis machines grind away all day and into the night dragging out the blood, cleaning it and pushing it back into often uncomprehending patients. The light has gone from their eyes.

Some epidemiologists even say this raft of chronic diseases will lead to extinction.

One board member of the New South Wales Aboriginal Land Council said, `Iīm 56 and all my friends are dead. Iīm sick of going to funerals. And to make it worse, there are so many people who canīt afford a coffin.ī

For many indigenous people there is no real `narrativeī to make sense of kidney disease. Itīs widely believed that the kidney has no physiological function. It is, rather, where the soul resides. Sick kidney: sick soul!

Many believe that a sick kidney indicates that they have been cursed. And certainly the life they have to live with kidney failure becomes a curse. The Ngangkari, the traditional healers, the people of first importance in the tribe, they say that kidney disease is the one thing they cannot fix!

The Ngangkari also say that at night they transform into eagles and fly over the country looking for the sick so they can begin the healing.

Surely thatīs just a primitive belief? But how about this: Every day, right across the planet, 2.1 billion people say they talk to a man who died two thousand years ago! They say he rose into the sky and one day he will return. They say they talk to him and ask for help for everything from world peace to finding their car keys or trying to win Gold Medals at the Olympic Games. These people are called Christians. So perhaps the night flight of the Ngangkaris isnīt all that fanciful?

But all is not lost. Take the Pintubi people, whose traditional country is the western desert. These were the last to encounter Europeans, and that was in 1984. Eight years ago seven of the 500 people had kidney failure. Today there are nearly 40!

The only prospect was for people to dislocate 500 kilometres away to Alice Springs and begin the relentless, grinding regime of haemodialysis.

This had major challenges. Firstly, itīs considered shameful to be sick on another personīs Country. Most Pintubi canīt speak much English and there are limited translation services in Alice Springs. Once off their ancestral tribal land, people canīt look after their family, or their community or their sacred responsibilities to Country.

They saw the trip to Alice Springs as a one-way journey, and they were usually right. The Pintubi people decided they could do better than waiting for the health system to respond to their plight. They decided to purchase their own dialysis machine and put it in their remote community. This had never been done before. Now it would be done by the last Aboriginal people to encounter Europeans.

The men and the women collaborated on creating powerful art works. Sothebyīs auctioned the paintings and raised over a million dollars and now they have a dialysis machine in their homeland. 

They take their people home from Alice Springs for regular trips, life-nourishing visits. These people are resilient, responsible, determined, but itīs a daily struggle. 

Now the government sees the wisdom behind this and supports the work. But over time, my experiences in the Centre have taught me something more. Itīs taught me that at the heart of the problem lies a far deeper thing than education services, health facilities, and other aspects of infrastructure, important as they are. It has to do with what the people in the Centre call the kurrunpa, the spirit, the life force. This has major implications for any project to close the gap in life expectancy.

So how can we respond to this? Whatīs the answer? The answer begins, I think, by simply asking people, `What do you need most?

The creative solutions to the health conundrums, the ones that actually work, are those that come from the people themselves. So letīs listen. We could call it Narrative Therapy, call it human decency, call it what you like. But only when the listening really happens can the real healing begin. Not just the flesh and bone, but of the spirit.

The kurrunpa must be nourished. It can be done.

The people say that to sustain hope they need to be on their Country. Back in early 2006, Kidney Health Australia put their finger on the solutions. One was to have a federally funded national transportation system so indigenous people could connect with the health system enjoyed by every other Australian. Governments are yet to act.

So others rolled up their sleeves and launched spirit-nourishing short term trips back to Country, to home, sometimes as much as 700 kilometres each way. One senior man said, `It makes me strong, it makes all our spirits strong.ī

Tom Calma, the indigenous Social Justice Commissioner, reminds us frequently that this is a matter not simply of health, but of social justice. The people only ask for equity, not special favours.

When we reflect on indicators of health on our planet - global warming, wealth distribution, social unrest, war - very few would think of Dreamtime stories. But perhaps we are wise to recall that how we understand our place in the cosmos actually does have a material effect on the will to keep breathing, keep doing, and surviving.

After living much of his life with the Arrente people in Central Australia, the anthropologist Ted Strehlow said that `Aranda reality is a unique combination of a sense of tragedy, strongly coupled with a capacity for joy.ī

Perhaps if we respond with wisdom and respect, then life for indigenous Australians will have less tragedy and more joy.

Robyn Williams: Something thatīs often in short supply these days. Don Palmer, Health Director of the Jimmy Little Foundation.

Next week, something that may or may not include joy, Iīll leave you to judge. Ron Harper takes a scientific look at Management Theory. 

Iīm Robyn Williams.]]></itunes:summary>
      <itunes:duration>12:19</itunes:duration>
      <itunes:explicit>no</itunes:explicit>
      <itunes:keywords><![CDATA[community and society,indigenous (aboriginal and torres strait islander),health]]></itunes:keywords>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title><![CDATA[2008-10-26 Under the hammer ]]></title>
      <description><![CDATA[If you worry that 'Big Brother' is everywhere, watching us via CCTV or other devices, imagine a future that's even worse. Melbourne author Andrew Herrick delves into the not too distant future to tell us what can happen, and it's a very worrying picture which, according to the author, is not all science fiction.]]></description>
      <link>http://mpegmedia.abc.net.au/rn/podcast/current/audioonly/orr_20081026.mp3</link>
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      <pubDate>Sun, 26 Oct 2008 00:00:00 +1000</pubDate>
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      <itunes:author>ABC Radio National</itunes:author>
      <itunes:summary><![CDATA[If you worry that 'Big Brother' is everywhere, watching us via CCTV or other devices, imagine a future that's even worse. Melbourne author Andrew Herrick delves into the not too distant future to tell us what can happen, and it's a very worrying picture which, according to the author, is not all science fiction.


 TRANSCRIPT: Robyn Williams: Have you noticed how the British police, at least on telly, depend almost entirely on CCTV? The cameras are everywhere, and itīs a rare crime that doesnīt get picked up on video to help The Bill, or even the guys from Spooks to find the villain. Weīre always being watched.

Professor Paul Wilson from Bond University in Queensland has even asked for proper studies to be done on the way cameras seem to be following everything we do. 

So letīs look to the future. Andrew Herrick, in Melbourne, has done just that.

Andrew Herrick: Who would have thought, just a few years ago, that one day weīd all be able to peer down like God into anyoneīs backyard, with a home computer. Or that almost anywhere thereīd be a camera watching us, recording what we do? Or that every word we uttered or wrote electronically was being judged by distant machines?

Well, like it or not, this is the New World, and we must be Brave. But letīs also be wary, and try to imagine the future before it comes knocking on our doors, or knocking them down. Though science fiction is often predictive, the following story is not strictly fiction, because most of it has already happened, or is already possible.

So letīs remember the most powerful law in the universe: Murphyīs Law. If it can happen, it will happen. And because we can never know quite when, it might be best to turn off your mobile phone right now. Just in case.

Like most people, John Hooper spent days inside waiting for a chance to go out when it rained. Clouds didnīt stop them targeting your phone implant, but rain was said to absorb and scatter the beam before it could strike you down. On overcast days, Hooper sometimes saw a neat circular hole burn through the cloud layer, meaning someone nearby had been zapped. Too close to home.

Global warming enforced long waits through the many dry spells. Blue skies and starry nights saw the city emptied of pedestrians. Hooper could feel the tension, all those people pacing indoors, unwilling to go out on foot, millions of eyes watching the sky through slitted curtains, fingers tapping barometers, nerves yearning to sense a change on the way.

And then, when it finally did rain, the streets would fill with smiling people. Laughing neighbours shared umbrellas, in the teeming euphoria complete strangers exchanged moist kisses, felt the shape of each otherīs bodies under sodden raincoats, all the while using sign language to arrange to meet indoors. For a brief time, it felt like the old days again, for while it rained, you didnīt have to cringe under the sky. While it rained you could enjoy that rarest and most illicit pleasure: privacy.

If he had to go out in fine weather Hooper always paused at his front door to ask himself the usual questions. Is my trip strictly necessary? Is it legitimate? Is it wise? Then he stepped out fast, and kept moving along the almost deserted footpaths to the subway. He always avoided blending with groups of hunched, scurrying people. There was no protection in numbers. The targeting was so good now, they could pick you out, fry your brain with microwaves so precisely focused that people standing either side didnīt even feel warm. `Surgical strikeī was no longer a metaphor.

Like most people, Hooper didnīt know what exactly got you on the HAMMER target list. He wasnīt convinced by footage aired on the embedded media showing graphic strikes on terrorists about to detonate bombs, paedophiles downed in the act of delectation. He was certain there must be cases of mistaken identity, justified after the fact by a campaign of bad PR, that hoary old Catch-22, the `pre-emptive strikeī. You heard of people being zapped and you wouldnīt have suspected them of anything. Everyone was a suspect now. Nowhere was safe. But what to do? How could you press charges against the controllers of devices in the borderless, lawless frontier of space? You couldnīt even shake your fist at the sky. They might be watching.

Hooper was old enough to remember when it all began, back in 2005. Seven years before becoming President, Governor Jeb Bush had authorised the GPS tracking of Floridaīs sexual predators, and before long, terror suspects and anti-globalisation activists were fitted with chipped anklets, along with convicted paedophiles. And who was going to defend them? Military satellites already spied using GPS, and the stalled anti-ballistic system had to be used against something. Why not criminals? The new generation of HAMM satellites (High Altitude Morphographic Monitoring) proved ideal platforms, and by the time someone in the Pentagonīs acronym division added `Evaluation and Response", HAMMER was hanging over humanityīs head. With help from Israeli targeting experts the first successful kill from low Earth orbit was achieved in 2012 in Paris, when a terroristīs fingerprints were identified from space as he prayed in an open courtyard.

Like most people, Hooper had to work for a living, and Brysonīs industrial bakery was a short pre-dawn trip by subway. In the huge loading bay his van was waiting, stacked with warm bread, ready to roll. Hooper always climbed into the driverīs seat and hit the streets with mixed feelings. He was out and about, and the van shielded him from the sky and made him legit. But while on the job he laboured under a regime of triple invigilation. The companyīs computer tracked the vans via GPS, tracker cams constantly scanned his progress, or lack of it, and the ID chip in his phone implant pinpointed him to homeland security. Like most people, Hooper was sick of being scrutinised.

The companyīs computer had designed each route to maximise efficiency. This was not necessarily the shortest trip from A to B, as hills and the extra fuel used to climb them were taken into account. It was all about accounts: reduced costs, increased margins, maximised shareholder return. Hooper had driven his predetermined route so many times that he no longer had to glance at the dash screen or listen to the irritating voice prompts that nagged him to turn left, right, stop, a lofty, condescending womanīs voice that he couldnīt turn off.

What really got on Hooperīs wick was knowing the computer was peering over his shoulder, logging and judging his every tiny action as he drove. It monitored the pressure of his foot on the accelerator, when he braked and how hard, the lateral g-force as he cornered. Hooper knew what would happen if his driving style, his unloading pace, if the number of times he halted in traffic crept outside the narrow confines of the computerīs Route Efficiency Quotient. At the end of his shift he would be called to the office and presented with a dreaded hard copy. Indisputable proof of his inefficiency.

The computer didnīt seem to appreciate that with fewer people willing to go out on foot, the roads were increasingly snarled with traffic. Hooper would sit in the gridlocked streets grinding his teeth, dreading the inevitable call from Chatfield, the distribution manager. Chatfield would pout at Hooperīs excuses - heavy traffic, parking problems, slow retail staff, Hooperīs aching bladder. Hurrying to make up time only made things worse. `Brake pads donīt grow on trees,ī Chatfield would growl, scowling at the red figures on the readout, `and look at this rate of tyre wear ...ī

Now they wanted him to start even earlier, to avoid the traffic. It would mean a wake-up call, that nagging, synthetic voice inside his head, that told him where to go all day, at three oīclock in the morning. Hooper would have liked to tell it where to go. But he didnīt dare. There was always someone listening.

At the end of his shift, Hooper was glad to get back inside. Driving the van let him get out, but it wasnīt the kind of out he wanted. These days, out was a dirty word. People spoke of going outside their dwellings, even into their small, desiccated, neglected gardens, the way prisoners talked about getting out from behind bars into the exercise yard. When you did go outside, you even had to be careful what you carried in your pockets, now that metal detection had been added to HAMMERīs capabilities. The tabloid media had celebrated the triumph of finally giving the free world what it had long hankered for - a box-cutter defence shield. Hooper knew some people felt safer knowing an all-seeing eye was protecting their loved ones from all the insurgents out there somewhere. But Hooper sometimes wished he hadnīt buckled and had been implanted all those years ago. If he knew then what he knew now. If only he had had the foresight to realise that the first step had been to make mobile phones compulsory.

Hooper remembered back in the noughties when authorities began to insist that lone yachtsmen and polar adventurers wear tracking devices. After 2012 anyone entering a wilderness area was legally required to carry a GPS-equipped mobile or face heavy fines along with rescue fees. Then the Finns miniaturised phones with reliable voice-recognition, and it was a small leap to the wrist-mounted model, minus clumsy keypad, and only another three years before the first successful bio-phone was inserted, initially in the forearm and then, using cochlear implant techniques, behind the right ear. When governments provided a free locator implant for every toddler as protection against sexual predators, no parent dared refuse.

Law enforcement authorities had supported implants because it made ID scanning and revenue collection friction-free. Consumers liked them because it meant they no longer had to sort, choose and swipe dozens of credit cards at retail outlets. Supermarket items were charged to your account the instant you voiced your selection. You soon got used to talking to products, and before long they were talking back, complimenting you on your purchase. You felt more secure, because your identity had finally merged with your credit rating.

By then phone implants featured everything you needed to get by in the modern world. Travelling overseas? The new system promised to eliminate airport security hassles - as long as you had your phone implant. If not? Expect the delays and harassment a rogue element deserved. Before you knew it, saying no to an implant was just not an option.

And yet Hooper seldom made actual phone calls nowadays. He knew his low phone usage profile attracted high low-usage fees - his bills proved it. And he knew the voice recognition chip in his phone alerted the Echelon network whenever it detected a proscribed word or phrase, even during face-to-face conversation. But it was difficult to find a happy balance. When talk is cheap, he reasoned, silence is suspect. So how much silence? Hooper hoped his radical lack of prattle didnīt automatically raise his status as a HAMMER target. There was no notice given once your points were used up. No warning that you were about to be zapped.

Instead, Hooper spent time doing the two things they couldnīt see, didnīt know about. He would pull down the shades, wrap himself in his tight ration of privacy, and read and think. Hidden in his flat was a tattered copy of a magazine that had briefly appeared in the underground markets, before a chipped invoice for printing ink revealed its publisher to the eye in the sky. An article in the magazine mentioned an intriguing possibility. It claimed that by using a non-invasive method, ID chips could be re-programmed, thus avoiding the alert signal trigger if the chip was subjected to physical interference by an unauthorised person. This procedure, the article claimed, would not alter the bearerīs identity, just his apparent co-ordinates, introducing enough error to throw the GPS out a few metres. Suddenly invisible, you could breathe again. Hold your head up high. You could poke your tongue out at the sky.

Using street sign language, Hooper made discreet enquiries in the underground markets. After being flick-passed through an odd array of people he was finally given the address of a phone-repair shop, deep under the city. Early on the appointed day he made the required pass-sign to a swarthy man behind the counter.

`You want to be free?ī the man signed, with an elegant flourish.

Hooper nodded.

`Then youīll need to trust me.ī

The man held out his hand, and Hooper passed him the folding money. The man immediately reached for a scrubber and cleared the notesī embedded chips.

In an hour it was done. On the way back to the surface through the markets, feeling jubilant, Hooper lashed out on a nice pair of gloves, socks, handkerchiefs, and underpants. And for once, when he stepped out into the crisp, blue morning, the sunīs warmth felt like a blessing, not a threat.

But then, on that fine day, a signal was sent from the sky to a distant computer, then back to the sky:

Target: Hooper John J. 2306987T: subject in possession of chipped underpants label revealing country of origin in violation of World Trade Organisation regulations. STRIKE AUTHORISED.

As he paused on the footpath to try on his new gloves, Hooper heard a rising hum in his right ear, as if his phone was trying to warn him about something.

Robyn Williams: And it was ... but too late. Hooper seems to have disappeared.

Andrew Herrick is a writer and lives in Melbourne. Both he and I were fascinated by what you were doing as he told that tale. Try the other hand next time.

Next week Don Palmer goes Dream Time, where itīs safer.

Iīm Robyn Williams.]]></itunes:summary>
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