AFL Power Rankings: Round 18 2013

RISING UP

North Melbourne move up to 5^th this week, with the Kangaroos gaining over six ranking points from destroying the Demons. The rankings say that North are the third most improved team this season after Gold Coast and Port (yes, even more so than Essendon!), while the ladder says that they have taken a step backwards, languishing in 10^th spot after making the finals in 2012. North has gained most of its points from three games – its massive wins over Melbourne, Richmond, and St. Kilda – and has actually been playing like a top flight team over the past nine weeks … that is, apart from being able to hold on to win more than half its games ….

FALLING DOWN

The rankings have supported the West Coast Eagles over the past couple of months even as the ladder has not. But no longer – the Eagles drop to 11^th this week after losing to the Bulldogs, and they have lost the third most amount of ranking points this season after St Kilda and Melbourne.

ALSO OF NOTE

Sydney retains the #1 position that it grabbed from the Hawks last week. Hawthorn regains some form, and Geelong scores a big win over the Saints, meaning that the top three have put some distance between themselves and the rest.

Pay Equity and the New AWIRS

Earlier this year, the Australian Government announced that it would provide $6.2 million over four years to establish a Pay Equity Unit in the Fair Work Commission to assist with data and research collection, and specialist pay equity information. Recently the Fair Work Commission announced on the ‘Pay Equity Unit’ component of its website that: it would engage an external provider to prepare an equal remuneration report to support future equal remuneration proceedings —and here’s the big one —it would undertake a large-scale Australian Workplace Relations Study to help in its pay equity research. As it says on its website, this ‘will produce the first Australia-wide statistical dataset linking employer data with employee data since the 1995 Australian Workplace Industrial Relations Survey (AWIRS)’.   

I’m not sure that when the Australian Government put aside $6 million to fund pay equity research this is really what they had in mind. While a ‘new AWIRS’ is certainly welcome, I’m a bit concerned that it’s going to come at the expense of getting to the bottom of some potentially important pay equity issues. Now I don’t know exactly what FWC have in mind, but it would be a waste if this is primarily just used to show that – at a fairly broad level - women are paid less than men once you control for their particular characteristics. Sure, that’s very important, but it has been researched so many times, that either you’re convinced there’s ample proof that ‘discrimination’ exists or you’re never going to be. And really, who would it help to show that again? (It was shown again in a report that I was involved with, and alas, I don’t think that report helped a living soul.)

Now I expect that FWC are going to try and do a bit more than that, but I wonder how much more ground specifically related to pay equity they can actually cover given how many other topics they are trying to cover with this new study. Personally, I would have thought that the funds could be used in a much more targeted way to address areas of long-standing concern. Determining whether or not specific groups of women and men are undertaking work of equal value but are not being remunerated equally is a damn difficult thing to do (particularly across different industries), and no-one else has the resources available to answer these questions. Think about how much $6 million could do in this area. I realise that the Australian Workplace Relations Study is also being used to help FWC out in relation to its annual wage reviews, and the General Manager’s reporting requirements. However, the Minimum Wage Panel has not typically shown that it considers this type of research in making its annual wage review decisions, and the GM’s reporting requirements could probably be fulfilled this time around with a much shorter, sharper survey.

Don’t get me wrong – I think a new AWIRS will yield some useful information. And I don’t want to particularly dump on FWC, because I’m sure the people there are working really hard on getting this up and running … I’m just worried that, by following this path, Australia may miss its best chance yet of resolving at least some of its possible pay equity concerns.

The Finger Points Outwards - No. 63

SPORTS: Using advanced statistics to evaluate water polo.

ECONOMICS/SOCIAL POLICY: The gender pay gap is present in pocket money.

STATISTICS/RESEARCH: Data on bar fights.

RESEARCH: How long is the average PhD dissertation?

AFL Power Rankings: Round 17 2013

RISING UP

The Sydney Swans finally break Hawthorn’s 32-round stretch in the #1 spot.  The Swans’ comfortable win against the Eagles in Perth, coupled with the Hawks’ struggle to beat the lowly-ranked Bulldogs, means that the 2012 premiers are now the Power Rankings’ favourites for this year’s flag.

FALLING DOWN

Meanwhile, while Hawthorn are hardly in trouble, it has gone off the boil a bit over its past five matches, losing more ranking points than any other team. West Coast also takes a hit, dropping down two places to 10^th spot.

ALSO OF NOTE

Seven of the top nine ranked teams are Victorian, with only Sydney and Fremantle breaking up the Vics’ dominance.

AFL Power Rankings: Round 16 2013

RISING UP

 

On one hand, Sydney collected four ranking points, and move up one spot, for beating the GWS Giants by 21 goals. On the other hand, Sydney collects only four ranking points from beating a team by 21 goals. The Giants are so historically awful that even dishing out a beating to them of mammoth proportions only gains the Swans a little more than Gold Coast running Richmond close or Brisbane beating North Melbourne.  

 

FALLING DOWN

 

Speaking of which, I wondered last week if history would repeat itself, and if North Melbourne’s rise up the rankings would be again followed by a loss in Queensland against a lowly-ranked team. Indeed it was, though the Kangaroos manage to hold onto a spot in the top eight ranked teams this time around, with Essendon not being able to blow away Western, and West Coast losing to Fremantle.

 

ALSO OF NOTE

 

The Brisbane Lions have been the most improved team over the past five weeks, racking up wins against Geelong, North Melbourne, and Gold Coast.   

 

 

The Finger Points Outwards - No. 62

 

Image: Buzzfeed/Facebook Savannah Yoga Center

 

CULTURE: The 24 most pretentious things ever.

MUSIC: Naming the best albums of 2013 … in June.

FILM: The best Pixar movies, as rated by kids.

TELEVISION/BOOKS: What George RR Martin thinks the Iron Throne should look like.

Graphic Novels You Would Like If You Weren’t Too Chicken To Read Them: The Best Of Image Comics – Chew/Fatale/Manhattan Projects

Image Comics were formed in the early 1990s when seven (super)star comic book artists left Marvel Comics at the peak of their popularity. A main part of their reason for leaving Marvel was so that they could gain complete control over their creations – at Marvel, any character they created was automatically owned by that company and the artists were subject to the whims of editorial interference. It might be tempting then to see the formation of Image as analogous to the rise of ‘alternative’ rock at around the same period. Apart from heightened violence though, many of the early Image titles were quite similar to the type of fare that the artists had churned out at Marvel, and since the artists often took over the writing chores themselves, often with weaker stories. Twenty years later however, subsequent creators have taken the opportunities that those artists opened up for them to create comic books that are better than just about anything being produced by Marvel or DC Comics at the moment.

‘Chew’ by writer John Layman and artist Rob Guillory was a success that took many people by surprise, including me who had to go back and read the first thirty issues through trade paperbacks. It follows the cases of detective Tony Chu, who is cibopathic, meaning he can pick up information from chowing down on any edible object – yes, any edible object. Tony works for the Food and Drug Administration, which came to prominence after a deadly chicken flu outbreak. Chicken is now outlawed, although that does not necessarily stop citizens (including Tony’s chef brother) from endeavouring to cook up some poultry. ‘Chew’ is a winner because there is no other series quite like it – it has cibopaths, a cyborg policeman, a killer chicken called Poyo, a vampire, and more food-related powers than you can shake a drumstick at. Despite its cartoonish art, it can be a bit of a discomforting read from time to time, as the creators don’t shy away from showing all of the gory details. But most of the main characters are engaging, and there’s plenty of humour in the book to keep you turning over the pages.     

  

‘Fatale’ by writer Ed Brubaker and artist Sean Phillips is a tougher read than ‘Chew’, and I often have to work myself up to tackle my way through the issues. Brubaker and Phillips’ books have always been more about their noir-style to me than anything else, and ‘Fatale’ carries on in that vein, except this time with supernatural monsters thrown in. The fatale is Josephine, who has survived since at least the 1930s with nary a wrinkle in sight. This book was meant to be a mini-series, but Brubaker kept growing and growing the story, and it now has ongoing status. By contrast to ‘Chew’, the characters are often cold and unlikable, and that can make it a harder series to get into, but it has all the noir tropes down pat.

‘The Manhattan Projects’ by writer Jonathan Hickman and artist Nick Pitarra, which is based around a bunch of scientists, including Oppenhemier and Einstein, seems like it might be the safest of the three series, if only for its nerdliness. Turns out though, it’s actually the darkest of the lot. The Oppenheimer is not Robert, but his brother Joseph, a psychotic killer who has eaten up Robert’s body and soul. The Einstein is not Albert, but Albrecht, an alternate reality version of ‘our’ Einstein who he pummelled over the head and took the place of on ‘our’ Earth. Add to that things like FDR being a malicious artificial intelligence, and you get the picture. These characters aren’t just cold and unlikable, they’re downright evil. Or at least some of them are, and watching the power struggles between the villainous and the merely odious makes for some entertaining comics.

So there you have it – three pretty good ‘creator-owned’ titles going around in 2013 that are worth a read. I haven’t mentioned the greatest Image title of them all – Brian K. Vaughan’s and Fiona Staples’ ‘Saga’, but I’ve covered that before in a previous blog post. DC’s ‘Vertigo’ imprint, which gave us classics like Neil Gaiman’s ‘Sandman’, has generally been considered the ‘HBO of comics’, but with that imprint currently low on quality titles – or at least successful ones – Image might have that covered now. It’s a far cry from the days of ‘Youngblood’ and the original ‘WildC.A.T.S’ (neither of which you need ever know about).

AFL Power Rankings: Round 15 2013

RISING UP

For the second time in six weeks, North Melbourne make a huge jump up the rankings after recording a mammoth win. Last time they did this, the Kangaroos returned from ‘whence they came’ the very next week, losing to Gold Coast. Coincidentally, they travel to Queensland again next week …

FALLING DOWN

Carlton drop from 8^th to 11^th after getting well beaten by Collingwood. This puts the Blues back closer to where they were at the start of the season, both in terms of ranking and ranking points.

ALSO OF NOTE

I forgot to mention last week that one of the columns in my ‘spiffy’ new Power Rankings presentation, the change in ranking points over the past five games is similar to the Mezzoculo Index over at AFL Footy Maths. However, I can’t match the Mezzoculo Index in terms of having aesthetically-pleasing bubbles.