A K Haart

Police state

2012-03-11T07:00:00.001Z

from telegraph.co.uk

Sometimes you have to take a subject and push it a little to make a point. The UK is not a police state in the global meaning of the term, but we have initiated certain trends which should be watched with an acutely critical eye.

Because the modern world seems to have learned a few lessons from the last century, not least on the question of tight social control. The crude Stalinist police state has given way to more subtleand superficially relaxed control measures which arouse far less oppositionthan a man with a submachine gun on every street corner.

North Korea is in many respects a misleading totem of GeorgeOrwell’s nightmare vision, a reminder of the past and a distraction from other, more covert ways of micro-managing whole societies.

If you want a police state these days, the way to go aboutit is firstly to downplay the size of your police force. It’s best if mostaren’t even referred to as police officers and don’t wear uniforms. We in theUK are in not remotely in the same situation as North Korea, yet vast numbersof people in the public sector have some kind of policing role.

It’s a trend and as usual we aren’t really acknowledging it as such.But we could so easily driftinto situations we never would have planned. If we simply list a few institutionswith policing powers, then maybe the potential for drift becomes clearer.

Defra
The Environment Agency.
HMRC.
HSE.
Local Authority planners.
Local Authority public health officials.
Local Authority trading standards.
LEA.
Fire brigades.
Doctors.
Teachers.
Social workers.
Traffic wardens.

And so on and so on. These trends aren’t necessarily dangerous,but to my mind they should be seen for what they are and discussed as such.What we have today in the UK is mass-policing where a large percentage of the population hassome kind of official role in the enforcement of minutely structured social control.

But our addiction to polite euphemism has its penalties andan obvious one is how we fail to describe mass-policing as policing at all. Yet a vast number of people may in their official capacity, fine, direct or entangle their fellow citizensin legal proceedings - it’s part of their job.

They may also be expected to act as informers, even thoughthat side of things will not be explicitly laid down in the job description. Wedon’t do explicit.

We have wandered along the path towards a full-scale policestate without the wit to tell ourselves in plain language what weare doing. I see it ending in tears.

Science for hobbyists

2012-03-10T07:00:00.001Z

From Wikipedia

Post-normal science, in spite of its academic nuances, is policy-driven science where the ends justify themeans. Essentially a political activity in the guise of science-backed policy-making, it has infiltrated the scientific method overthe past few decades and really, we should not be surprised.

Radical students of the seventies committed to left-wingideology or even avowedly communist sympathies, now occupy positions of powerand influence within the scientific establishment. A few may even be finescientists within their field, but beyond their specialism, many quiteobviously cannot tell fact from fiction and seem to have no wish at this latestage to learn how.

If we stir into this mix the widespread funding of scienceby government and big business, then ends overhang means to such anextent that scientific principles are now left to philosophers and science enthusiasts. Even the most prominent and distinguished scientists may be remarkably naive about what can and cannot be said within the scientific method.

Andrew Montford who runs the Bishop Hill blog has written a GWPF paper on the decline of the Royal Society, how it is being turned into just another policy-driven quango. It is well worth reading, but the analysis will surprise few.

The scientific method is alive but not well. It liveson in individuals who have acquired for themselves a grasp of scientific history, almost as if it has changed from being a key aspect of the profession to a separate hobby, essentially unrelated to the parent body. Ina sense it always was a hobby, one generally pursued by enthusiasts, but the enthusiasts were once influential. Today they are not.

About a couple of decades ago, I noticed a term had slippedinto the lexicon of the scientific world and that term was hobbyist. A hobbyist was a scientist who wanted to find things outin their own way, someone who didn’t follow the rules of their institution.It was a decidedly pejorative label - one to be avoided by the career-minded.

In the modern world, many scientific professionals seem to treatthe scientific method as an optional extra, as a philosophical hobby lying beyond the professional world. It isn’t seen as essential to ascientific career and may even be detrimental. Again, I’m not convinced it wasever otherwise, but while there were discoveries to be made, it was an extrathat many scientists found helpful.

Now things have moved even further. Discoveries requirefunding and funding requires a compliant attitude towards the source of thosefunds and the scientific method doesn’t necessarily deliver either.

It survives of course and for all I know may prosper againsome fine day. But I have my doubts.

Sophia

2012-03-09T07:00:00.001Z

Sophia began to be teased by a little fear that Gerald was not his usual self. She did not think of him as tipsy. The idea of his being tipsy would have shocked her. She did not think clearly at all. She was lost and dazed in the labyrinth of new and vivid impressions into which Gerald had led her. But her prudence was awake.
Arnold Bennett (1867 – 1931) - The Old Wive's Tale

For those who haven't read the book, Sophia is a beautiful young Victorian woman, born and bred in the Five Towns (now Stoke on Trent). Her world is her mother's draper's shop, but she rejects the narrow confines of this middle class life to elope with Gerald Scales, a wealthy but foolish and unreliable commercial traveller. This is her first taste of a glitzy Parisian restaurant.

If we return to B F Skinner's observation on writers who seem to show a grasp of human behavior which is beyond the methods of science, I think we see what he meant, what we all know to be true, from just one of Bennett's sentences.

But her prudence was awake.

In spite of Sophia's rebellious nature, her background is important too and this reaction to Parisian glitz is entirely within character. For me, this one sentence sums up the lasting effect of Sophia's provincial upbringing, a moral history which cannot be described as accurately or as neatly in scientific language.

Stimulus, response and reinforcement are all there as Bennett unveils Sophia's character, but he does it more fully and more to the point, more credibly than any technical narrative. Not only that, but I suspect this will always be the case as long as we value and seek to encourage the art of good writing.

Checkouts and trumpets

2012-03-08T15:29:00.000Z

From Wikipedia

Today, I discovered that the lady on our Sainsbury’scheckout plays the trumpet in a brass band. Everybody does somethinginteresting don’t they? So why doesn’t Sainsbury’s use her talents and have a brass bandoccasionally?

I don’t just mean the Salvation Army at Christmas, but aproper brass band somewhere near the fruit and veg where there’s a bit of room.

I’m sure it would help sales because I for one would surely popan extra black pud and a bottle or two of brown ale into my trolley. The timingof brass band days could be themed to coincide with promotions on Hovis,faggots and special offers on frozen chips.

But they lack imagination these supermarkets, don’t they? Weknow all about their games where the big packet is more expensive than twosmaller packets. We aren’t convinced or conned by any of it. But a bit of brassband music of a Wednesday say – that would surely add a touch of emotional zest toour shopping habits.

Because they aren’t really convincing are they –supermarkets? For example - why not try a whiff of blue haze in the coffee shop atmosphere– while the early morning fry-ups are being prepared. That would be more convincingthan a kind of sterile tang of coffee and blueberry muffins.

A brass band though – that would be even better.

Venture To Be Wise

2012-03-08T09:31:00.000Z

Abraham Cowley - from Wikipedia

Begin, be bold and venture to be wise.

He who defersthis work from day to day,

Does on a river’sbank expecting stay,

Till the wholestream that stopped him shall be gone,

Which runs, andas it runs, for ever shall run on.

Abraham Cowley (1618 – 1667)

Cowley took the first line from Horace which most of his readers at the time would have known. It's a bit of versification I use as a kind of mantra for getting on with life, a reminder that there are always more possibilities to explore. It encourages me to write, to read more widely and in my quiet way to make the most of now.

Samuel Johnson saw Cowley as one of the metaphysical poets of whom he did not have a high opinion. He says as much in his inimitable style in Lives of the Poets:-

The metaphysical poets were men of learning, and to shew their learning was their whole endeavour: but, unluckily resolving to shew it in rhyme, instead of writing poetry they only wrote verses, and very often such verses as stood the trial of the finger better than the ear; for the modulation was so imperfect, that they were only found to be verses by counting the syllables.

UFO Hotline

2012-03-07T20:22:00.000Z

Ripley and Heanor News reports on the world's first hotline for people who believe they have been abducted by aliens.

...one Langley Mill woman is convinced of the existence of UFOs.

Joanne Somerscales, who has founded the world’s first hotline for people who believe they have been abducted by aliens, is attracting attention from callers all round the world.

I know Langley Mill and being abducted by aliens isn't necessarily the worst thing that could happen to you.

Sustainable

2012-03-07T18:31:00.000Z

While tootling down the M180 earlier today, wesaw a bunch of wind turbines, most of which were not rotating.

My better half counted 14 static and 2 rotating - so 87.5%not working.

This is called sustainable power generation. Coal, gas andnuclear which work 24/7 – they are not sustainable.

Got that? Good. We were well impressed.

Free will

2012-03-07T07:00:00.001Z

A while back I wrote two posts called Magical Me and MagicalYou. These were deliberately provocative in denying any non-causal aspect tothat inner homunculus we think of as “me”. As a development of my general principle of trying to hold at least two incompatible theories, I’d like to revisit this idea fromthe basis that there is indeed a Magical Me and a Magical You.

To my mind this is where complexity steps in.

If we say all our actions, thoughts and sayings aredetermined by our history and outside contingencies, then that is aphilosophical and not a scientific position. Obviously – because we can’t possibly prove itexperimentally. But suppose we accept this and still insist that we are rigidly determined because we live in a rigidlydeterministic universe, what then? Isn’t this philosophical viewpoint rathercompelling?

Not necessarily.

We know from chaos theory that even simple non-linearequations may generate results of enormous complexity where tiny differences inthe starting parameters have a huge impact on the result. It’s sometimescalled the butterfly effect. A non-linear process in this sense is one where state B depends on state A and state C depends on state B and so on.

Tiny uncertainties in State A can be magnified enormously by the time state Z comes along. Uncertainty can be such that even in principle state Z can never be predicted from state A. For example, a prediction of state Z may require a nonsensically accurate understanding of state A.

Imagine applying this to human actions. If the deterministiclinkage between stimulus and response is non-linear, which one might assume isvery likely, and the stimulus is also non-linear, then we may have a situationwhich is rigidly deterministic but predictable only within certain boundaries, which themselves may be unpredictable.

In other words, it is rarely possible to say that aparticular stimulus will definitely produce a particular response. So the cause of theresponse isn’t nature, nurture, the outside world and nothing else. There issomething more – a unique, complex, unpredictable, causally inexplicablesomething else.

Why? Because we can't say the causally inexplicable bit is causally explicable in principle, or some other fudge. It's causally inexplicable - live with it.

So the cause of the response is nature, nurture, outside worldand X, where X is something within us, yet forever beyond the reach ofscientific prediction.

X is Magical Me and Magical You, the soul or whatever else you wish to callit. Looping back to yesterday's post on Skinner’s quote about literature, maybe there is something within us which in Skinner's words is beyond the methods of science.

Skinner on literature

2012-03-06T07:00:00.000Z

B F Skinner the behavioural psychologist, gained a BA in English literature and spent a year at his parents' home attempting to become a writer of fiction before moving into psychology. He always placed a high value on literature, sometimes seeming to believe that great writers have more to tell us about human behaviour than great scientists. For example, this quote from his book Verbal Behavior.

Human behavior is an extremely difficult subject matter. The methods of science have come to be applied to it very late in the history of science, and the account is far from complete. But it is a field in which literature is most competent, secure and effective.

A Dostoyevsky, a Jane Austen, a Stendhal, a Melville, a Tolstoy, a Proust, or a Joyce seem to show a grasp of human behavior which is beyond the methods of science. Insofar as literature simply describes human behavior in narrative form, it cannot be said to show understanding at all; but the writer often seems to "say something" about human behavior, to interpret and analyze it. A person is not only described as taking part in various episodes, he is "characterized".This is a significant expression, for it suggests where metaphor, as a pre-scientific vocabulary, finds its place.

Google Ngram Viewer

2012-03-05T17:06:00.000Z

Anyone who has played with the Google Ngram Viewer will have seen this kind of thing already. Google has produced a tool to analyse word frequency in its vast array of scanned texts dating back centuries.

Here is a plot for the word frequency of liberty,duty and wisdom from 1700.

It's easy to make too much of a word declines like this and turn yourself into a sociologist, but if you fancy a go yourself, try gender or democracy.

Playing games with sea level

2012-03-05T07:00:00.001Z

Also posted at OoL.

As we all know far too well, dramatic rises in sea level areone of the key catastrophes promoted by the climate alarm game. What is alittle less noticeable is how quiet the sea level narrative has become. A fewwild-eyed loons are still on the pitch, but many erstwhile players seem to havesneaked off down the player’s tunnel.

Because the oceans are not playing ball.

The graphic below fromaviso is a little out of date, but hasn’t changed significantly. Tidal gaugereadings dating back to 1870 are spliced onto modern satellite altimetry datafrom 1993 onwards. As you can see, the two data sets splice together prettywell.

Global mean sea level evolution over the 20th and 21st centuries. The red curve is based on tide gauge measurements [Church and White, 2006]. The black curve is the altimetry record (zoomed over the 1993-2009 time span). Projections for the 21st century are also shown. The shaded light blue zone represents IPCC AR4 projections for the SRES greenhouse gas emission scenarios. Bars are semi-empirical projections. Red bar: [Rahmstorf 2007]; dark blue bar: [Vermeer and Rahmstorf, 2009]; green bar: [Grinsted et al. 2009].

Allow me to note three things.

Firstly eyeball the IPCCAR4 projection range.

Secondly note the big coloured vertical bars. These arecrazy projections from climate models, critically important for the but it could get much worse narrative.

Thirdly, the two newest and most accurate altimetry satellitesare Jason-2launched in 2008 and Envisatlaunched by the ESA, the European Space Agency in 2002 at a cost of 2.3 billioneuros. This is an Envisat sea level graphic from the same source giving a risingsea level trend of 0.621 mm/year or 6.21 cm per century. In other words, aboutone fifth of the rise quoted in the first graphic (3.3 mm/year) and hardlysomething to worry about.

In fact Envisat data shows a slight decline in sea level trendsover the past four years. That wasn’t the point of those 2.3 billion euros.Among other things, the satellite was supposed to confirm sea level riseslinked to climate change.

Measurement of many different parameters, all affecting our global climate, its changes and the natural and anthropogenic parameters triggering such climate changes.

The rise in sea level - Envisat will improve our understanding of the causes and the impacts.

Jason-2 has been operational for less than four years and is so far showing a rising sea level trend of 1.06 mm/year. The data series may be limited, but again it shows nothing to worry about.

You probably won’t have seen or heard the BBC on this. They haven’tyet got round to telling us how benign Envisat and Jason-2 data is compared tothe alarming claims still being made about sea level rises linked to CO2emissions. Sea levels are rising at a rate far below IPCC projections made inAR4 according to our two newest and most advanced altimetry satellites.

It’s embarrassing. Even the most modest IPCC projections maybe seriously exaggerated. Keep it quiet seems to be the current approach, so nosurprises there at least.

Mad jet bike

2012-03-04T11:16:00.000Z

The UN says this guy can make his bike carbon neutral by buying pieces of paper called carbon credits. My guess says he isn't quite that mad.

Pundit groupies

2012-03-04T07:00:00.000Z

It seems to me that one of the characteristics of ourculture is the way celebrities extend the boundaries of their celebrity. Theyinvolve themselves in areas outside the one where they earned their celebritystatus, particularly the area of punditry. Added to that and coming from the other direction, wehave pundits who need to be celebrities in order to be counted as proper pundits.

We’ve all seen entertainers willing to give their views onanything from green politics to armed conflict to criminology. There’s nothingwrong with it in moderation of course, but I do wonder if there is a tendencyfor it to crowd out serious debate.

It’s not so much the sheer number of celebrities scrabblingfor our attention, but the way celebrity culture threatens to become the only culture.

For example, Polly Toynbee, the Guardian columnist. Somehowit has become mildly important to refute or agree with her material, even though thequality of her output is variable and rarely rises above the level ofpredictable.

Or the BBC Radio 4 programme Today. It has become a kind ofcelebrity news outlet, yet again it is predictable and to my mind limited and uninteresting. Butpeople listen and often feel the need to take it to task over aspects of itsoutput. Why? The programme is second-rate and formulaic - it needs norefuting.

The audience
I’ll labour the idea because the point I want to make is oneabout audiences. Who is the audience when celebrity pundits air their views like this? I see them as celebrity groupies who seem to rely on celebrity pundits for a kind of newsy entertainment instead of doing their own investigations.

To my mind, the weirdness of celebrity pundits and their groupies is seen at its strangest in programmes likeBBC Question Time. In case you haven’t seen it, it’s a kind of current affairsshow with David Dimbleby in charge. An groupie audience is invited to lob questions into apanel of pundits. The point of the show seems to be topical entertainment - nothing more.

Anyway, to me, the weirdness stems from the way the audienceturns up be entertained by celebrity pundits. But who in their right mind cares what TV pundits actually say? They speak well, but only to promote their own brand of pundit-style entertainment.

Well I find it weird anyway.

Arctic sea ice update

2012-03-03T18:24:00.001Z

Arctic sea ice extent is now within two standard deviations of the 1979-2000 average. This is the kind of statistic many scientists might naively class as not alarming.

Within the more rigorous realms of climate science, it means the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are ready to ride so give us lots more funding.

It's as well to be aware of these little differences.

The politics of Angst

2012-03-03T07:00:00.003Z

From Wikipedia

Along with many other folk, I see political left and right as much the same. There is a tradition that this shouldn't be the case in a socialism versus free-enterprise sense, but this old distinction seems to have faded away. Political differences have largely disappeared as political parties discover the advantage of collusion and global bonds sap their lukewarm appetite for change. Old political labels are rapidly evolving into brands with all the distinguishing characteristics of baked beans.

The real political divide seems to be between those mavericks who value ingenuity and creativity against a backdrop of enabling tradition against devotees of Angst who don't. By valuing ingenuity and creativity, I mean in it's widest sense, from relishing a piece of purple prose to a clever piece of engineering to a new musical performance.

Our three main political parties in the UK are all Angst with only a few stranded mavericks to confuse us. Angsts don't believe in ingenuity or creativity, don't accept they can be relied on to generate progress, much less that they should be relied on.

Angsts think resources are finite and don't understand how maverick ingenuity stretches resources and finds new ones, substitute resources, better resources. In the end, Angsts don't believe that two ears of corn may grow where one grew before.

Angsts think education must be applied to a child like jam to a slice of toast.Every one of them should be, as their crowning glory, smeared with a degree from the University of Angst. Tick!

Angsts take refuge in mantras about equality and environmental worries they never really understand. They affect to believe even the most ludicrous climate change nonsense, being anxiously suspicious of mavericks who make wild claims about liberty and even appear to enjoy creativity and solving problems.

Angsts are frightened of cigarettes, motorcycles or mavericks who value their own culture and those truly awful mavericks who threaten them with changing something sacred such as the tax system or the NHS or state education. They are anxious about alcohol while trying their very best to appreciate a chaste glass of wine from Waitrose.

Angsts dare not be outspoken about enabling traditions, such as the nuclear family, nation state, rigorous personal honesty and moral values that cast no anxious glance at political correctness. Once upon a time this would not have been the case, but by an ironic twist of political expediency, Angsts have been turned into anxiety-ridden parodies of the anti-tradition progressive, the social idealist of yesteryear where equality was the great totem of pseudo-reform.

Unfortunately our three main political parties understand only too well the politics of Angst. The lights are going out in more ways than one.

Acid alarums

2012-03-02T17:16:00.000Z

From Wikipedia

Earth Magazine has a new claim about ocean acidification :-

Human emissions of carbon dioxide are currently acidifying the oceans at a rate unprecedented in the last 300 million years — since well before the dinosaurs evolved — according to a study published today in Science. More acidic water can dissolve the shells of many marine organisms, including reef- and shell-building species, such as clams, oysters and corals, as well tiny organisms that form the base of the food chain.

However the potential for alarm, or even serious consideration, is somewhat inhibited when we learn :-

An international team of about 20 researchers, led by geochemist Bärbel Hönisch at Columbia University’sLamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, conducted a literature review to compile a record of ocean pH levels extending back to the Permian, the longest acidification timeline put together to date.

So it's some kind of reading group telling us what they've read. They should get out more.

Song of the Dark Ages

2012-03-02T07:00:00.000Z

From the Francis Brett Young Society

We digged our trenches on the down
Beside old barrows, and the wet
White chalk we shovelled from below;
It lay in drifts of thawing snow
On prados and parapet:

Until a pick neither struck flint
Nor split the yielding chalky soil,
But only calcined human bone :
Poor relic of that Age of Stone
Whose ossuary was our spoil.

Home we marched singing in the rain,
And all the while, beneath our song,
I mused how many springs should wane
And still our trenches scar the plain:
The monument of an old wrong.

But then, I thought, the fair green sod
Will wholly cover that white stain,
And soften, as it clothes the face
Of those old barrows, every trace
Of violence to the patient plain.

And careless people, passing by
Will speak of both in casual tone:
Saying: "You see the toil they made:
The age of iron, pick and spade,
Here jostles with the Age of Stone."

Yet either from that happier race
Will merit but a passing glance;
And they will leave us both alone:
Poor savages who wrought in stone-
Poor savages who fought in France.

Francis Brett Young (1884 - 1954)

A touch of plague

2012-03-01T16:08:00.000Z

I'm a bit under the weather at the moment. It feels like a touch of bubonic plague with various complications, although my better half says I have a cold.

Blogging may be a bit erratic while the leeches and hot poultices do their stuff, but I'd be astonished if you notice the difference.

Decline and fall

2012-03-01T07:00:00.000Z

from time.com

There’s one perplexing issue that floats* across my mindfairly regularly and that’s the issue of decline. I don’t mean personaldecline, although that's scary enough, but social, political and possibly economic decline. History suggests civilisationsdon’t go on forever. They are either conquered by outside forces or enter aperiod of decline usually ending in some kind of collapse and a new regime. Sohow to view our own civilisation? Optimistically or pessimistically?

*Floats in what though?

Optimistic examples.

We have a number of well-known issues such as moreinternational competition for fossil fuels and raw materials, but new resourcessuch as shale gas could sort that out. After all, we can do anything if we have reliable sources of energy. Gene therapies, new materials and communications may all be set to change our lives for the better.

Pessimistic examples.

Democratic accountability has all but disappeared from the EU. What little elbow room there is left is taken up by vested interests. Climate change is an obvious global fraud where ordinary citizens don’t count except as a resource to be controlled and subdued. The nuclear family is disintegrating and corruption and dishonesty are rife among the global elite.

So pessimist or optimist?

I think one could look at our own times from many angles, eitheroptimistically or pessimistically. In line with the principle of having at least two competing theories, I opt for both. However, I do have a leaningtowards pessimism, mainly because of the problem of complexity.

To handle complexity, we don’t need complexity managers inWhitehall, we need flexibility and the freedom to succeed or fail. Idon’t think we have that and far too many people seem not to want it.

Allow me to float just one obvious indicator for a society in decline, because certain simple indicators can be more compelling that the super-complex nuances of social and political analysis .

Take awalk through any town centre on a Saturday morning and check out how manypeople have failed to control their calorie intake to the point of seriousobesity. Why has this happened? I don’t know and really it's none of my business, but I suspect it happens whetherpeople want it to or not. To my mind this is the social indicator - the likelihood that obesity is usually involuntary.

I see this as a warning flag that people are not in control of their own bodies, let alone their personal destiny. Something is seriously wrong. Widespread obesityis only one issue and anyone may ignore it if they so choose, butfor me it’s important. I see it as evidence that things are going wrong with what we usually call personal responsibility.

It isn’t a problem for governments to resolve though, becausethat simply takes away one more bit of personal responsibility. It's a logical bind that governments cannot deal with by more of the same. Having taken away personal responsibility, they have to allow it to reinstate itself. Which it will if we are allowed to run our own lives.

Otherwise the monumental complexity of trying to manage our lives centrally will simply defeat them. Both the UK government and the EU have taken on a hopelessly one-sided battle against complexity where they stupidly try to defeat the symptoms by more complexity.

So complexity will win.

The only outstanding question is the scale of the defeat. In order to mitigate it we need a society where social support for the afflicted does not snuff out personal responsibility. In that way we learn to live with complexity and adapt ourselves to its unending vicissitudes.

So pessimism prevails with me, although I’m always preparedto hold optimism in reserve. I don't think I'll need it though.

Zombies go global

2012-02-29T07:00:00.000Z

From Wikipedia

Also posted at OoL.

Climate science designed to foster the UN equality agendahas often been described as zombie science. It may be as dead as a dodo but itwon’t lie down.

Of course the reason the apocalyptic CO2 corpse won’t liedown is because it is still propped up by UN treaties plus EU and national lawsand policies. So it won’t expire properly while there is still enough fundingfor it to lurch around spewing putrid nonsense.

The same applies to the IPCCwhich is busy casting the runes for another report (AR5) onthe state of our climate with the same policy agenda as the four previousreports. What will it say? Hardly anyone seems to care. The number of peoplewho know it to be an international fraud grows year by year, yet still it blunderson trying to scare the pants off the gullible and their children.

But the problem of zombie bureaucracy is wider than the IPCCand its brain-dead antics. Too many bureaucracies relapse into a zombie state decadesbefore they are closed down. If indeed they are ever closed down. They survive asthe undead by promoting their own funding rather than doing something useful.

The UK is infested with zombies, the BBC, NHS and stateeducation to name only three. Reorganization isn’t the answer because we end upwith the same people pursuing the same zombie agenda.

In many ways this is what free enterprise is all about. It’sabout maintaining a certain dynamism where the zombies are actually laid to rest.Free enterprise has its problems, but the dead hand of zombie bureaucracy poses greater dangers.

Because the zombies have gone global.

Looping back to the IPCC and behind that the UNFCCC, we have two major zombies in direneed of cremation. They are costing the global economy hundreds of billions in absurdlymisdirected energy and environmental policies, yet we have no means of killingthem off. Poking holes in the science has become too easy and in many waysmisses the point because the science is zombie science propped up with funding.The undead don’t generally respond to even the most telling criticism.

What to do? The only option I see is to draw back from our hopelesslynaive foray into too many binding international treaties, particularly with theEU and UN. To have any chance of achieving that, we have to vote moreradically. The three main UK political parties joined the legions of the undeadyears ago and it’s time to wake up and smell the stench.

Speedy Gonzales in La La Land

2012-02-28T07:00:00.001Z

From Wikipedia

As most folk probably know, Speedy Gonzales is acartoon Mexican mouse dating back to the nineteen fifties. Speedy is the fastest mouse in Mexico and our grandson loves his cartoon capers which are available on Warner DVD for him to enjoy. But there's an issue with Speedy which Wikipedia puts like this:-

In 1999, the Cartoon Network ceased to air Speedy Gonzales. In an interview with Fox News on March 28, 2002, Cartoon Network spokeswoman Laurie Goldberg commented, "It hasn't been on the air for years because of its ethnic stereotypes." This is widely believed to refer to Speedy's fellow mice, who are all shown as being very slow and lazy, and sometimes even appear intoxicated.

Intoxicated? Well the Waybuloo characters are off their heads as far as I can see. Actually the mice in Speedy Gonzales are also depicted as easy-going, poor and downtrodden by petty tyrants in the form of fat cats. The world of Waybuloo by contrast, is a tyrant-free zone of politically correct imbecility. No surprises there then.

The Speedy cartoons are simple but typical hero stories, which as a type of fiction dates back at least as far as Homer. But as part of the DVD intro, Warner has this notice:-

The cartoons you are about to see are products of their time. They may depict some of the ethnic and racial prejudices that were commonplace in American society. These depictions were wrong then and are wrong today. While the following does not represent the WB view of society, these cartoons are being presented as they were originally created, because to do otherwise would be the same as to claim these prejudices never existed.

Yet the DVD is classified U, which according to the British Board of Film Censors includes this requirement:-

No discriminatory language or behaviour unless clearly disapproved of.

So Warner's notice is a way of complying with UK film censorship provisions. Such are the ways of human silliness I suppose.

Windows 8 to be more caring

2012-02-27T17:16:00.000Z

Sunday walk

2012-02-27T07:00:00.001Z

We went for a superb walk yesterday. About twelve miles, so just right for a fine day. We set out from Hathersage in Derbyshire

...and from there climbed up to Stannage Edge under a blue sky

...then past the Redmires Reservoirs where the water level seemed low to me.

Then it was moorland walking past the Ox Stones

...on Burbage Moor and back down into Hathersage to the evocative call of curlews. I have to admit that when absorbing some truly beautiful views, there were times when I wondered why I choose to spend precious time in front of a computer screen.

It doesn’t even have to be true

2012-02-26T07:00:00.000Z

Most of us are aware of the power of narrative, particularly in politics. Narratives compete mainly within mainstream media and the winner is hard to dislodge because it defines where the debate starts and the issues round which it revolves. But most of us also know the dominant narrative doesn’t have to be true.

It just has to dominate.

There are areas of life where narratives compete and truth has to sit on the sidelines as a lowly spectator. Anyone who joins a mainstream political party for example, must commit to a series of narratives some of which they may know to be untrue, or more likely, meaningless. It goes with the territory, with the fact of commitment to the mainstream narrative game.

Yet joining political parties is very much a minority interest. People vary a great deal in their attachment to narratives. Those of us who want a society based on principled liberty find it difficult to compete with the emotional claims, exaggerations, lies and distortions, the simple crowding out of principles by dominant, paid-for narratives.

Because dominant narratives are usually bought - it’s how politics works and power is maintained in spite of blatantly obvious failures. Failure often does no lasting damage to dominant narratives. They are merely adjusted, rephrased or even simply repeated more often until the failure lies safely behind us.

Principles are a positive hindrance because they clarify the debate and open the door to moral rather than political imperatives. Power must have its dominant narratives and the more authoritarian the society, the more dominant its narratives must be. Dominant but not necessarily true, because even nonsense will do.

The concept of harm.

Environmental narratives paid for by big government and pseudo-charities are designed to skew a whole range of debates in favour of more and ever bigger government. Environmental narratives are popular with big government because of their emotional appeal and flexibility with respect to policy.

Environmental narratives have also been used as a covert way to introduce new and previously unfamiliar ideas. These are disguised as principles using the ancient concept of harm. Many people have been induced to extend the concept of harm to the natural world, obscuring the fundamental difference between harm to humans and harm to non-humans.

So we end up with familiar notions of harm applied to the natural world and mingled with exaggerations and lies which are difficult for the unreflective to resist. Environmental narratives based on distorted notions of harm are easy for children to grasp too, because many are inherently childish, their appeal stemming from a naive view of the natural world.

Economics.

Economic narratives are more complex and seem to be deliberately confusing. Narratives constructed to hide responsibility and waste, deliberately mingling cause and effect. One might almost suspect economic theory of being disjointed by design - as a way of introducing plausible nonsense into official policies, both overt and covert. Because in the end, it is difficult to see how big government would gain any advantaged from economic clarity - so we don’t get it.

Persuasion.

Paid-for narratives exert a powerful influence over our lives, many people believing them to be true, or at least acceptable by virtue of their consensual status. We all know how difficult it is to persuade somebody that they are mistaken, to persuade them that it may be better to believe nothing rather than the official narrative.

It remains to be seen whether blogging will damage mainstream narratives or whether money and power will in the end prevail. Climate change is a good example of an obviously false mainstream narrative damaged by persistent blogging. The damage seems to be irreversible, the lies and distortions impossible to maintain, yet we still have climate change laws and policies in place and the BBC has yet to tell the truth about climate.

So tell it as it is and never give in. It’s the only way.

Airborne wind power

2012-02-25T21:09:00.000Z

A new type of wind-powered generator for aircraft has been developed by boffins attached to the Department of Energy and Climate Change. As the aircraft moves through the air, these wing-mounted turbines will generate enough electricity to power the aircraft's main kettle. Free hot drinks all round.

Another first for the government's green technology policies!

False memories

2012-02-25T07:00:00.001Z

Elizabeth Loftus
The work of American psychologist professor Elizabeth Loftus has been controversial but enlightening. Her work on the misinformation effect and false memories is what she is famous for, particularly her uncovering of false memories of child-abuse implanted by so-called therapists.

This has been an extremely controversial area as anyone may soon discover by following the above links, yet her work fits very well with Skinner's behavioural psychology. Our memories are fragile as Sam Vega observed in a comment on an earlier post.

Maybe we see a car pass by while walking down the street, a trivial event we may soon forget, but if it is suggested to us that the car was blue, then we are likely to remember it as blue, even if it was actually white. Of course this is less likely if there was some reason to take note of the car, such as it being unusual in some way.

Memories are not fixed records, but aspects of an overall picture which will be modified as we adjust the new circumstances. It may well be that memories are supposed to be mutable, their mutability being a key element of social cohesion. In part, it's how we reach agreement.

One of Elizabeth Loftus' most famous cases was that of George Franklin who in 1990 was suddenly accused by his daughter Eileen of raping and murdering her best friend twenty years earlier. Loftus was brought by the defence to testify on Franklin's behalf, specifically on the unreliability of so-called repressed memories reported by his daughter.

However, the jury didn't accept Franklin's defence and he was convicted of rape and murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. Fortunately for Franklin the verdict was overturned on appeal.

The booklet experiment.
This experience led Loftus to design experiments where she would implant false memories under controlled conditions. She recruited twenty four subjects and with the help of each subject's family members designed a small journal with four written accounts of past incidents in family life, one of which was false.

The subjects were then given their own family journal and asked to elaborate on the four incidents from their own memories. If they had no memory of the incident, they were instructed to write I don't remember this.

What Loftus found was that the false incidents were "remembered" with remarkable clarity and in great detail, subjects going on to elaborate them far beyond what was written in the jounal. One subject (shown in the above clip) "remembered" being lost in a shopping mall as a small child and wrote out details such as how scared he was and how an old man with glasses had come up to him in the mall.

But none of this ever happened. It was implanted via the journal and the three family incidents which were true. They authenticated the false incident and a repertoire of other memories supplied the detail.

Prison work

2012-02-24T17:00:00.000Z

A quote from William Thackeray’s novel Men’s Wives publishedin 1852. At the time, Thackeray was almost as highly regarded as Dickens, but Dickens could never have written this, or ever made such a comparison :-

Mr Dickens, in his Americal book, tells of the prisoners atthe silent prison, how they had ornamented their rooms, some of them with afrightful prettiness and elaboration. Women’s fancy-work is of this sort often –only prison work, done because there was no other exercising-ground for theirpoor little thoughts and fingers; and hence these wonderful pincushions areexecuted, these counterpanes woven, these sonatas learned.

Why Ed?

2012-02-24T07:00:00.002Z

Why did the Labour party elect Ed Miliband as leader? Did he sneak up on one of their many blind sides? He doesn't look impressive or sound impressive, so surely that counts for something.

Well maybe not - evidence is evidence - so it didn't count.

Does that imply political parties are now too small to throw up [sic] worthwhile leaders, let alone a worthwhile government? The BBC published these figures here last August.

2011 party membership

Conservative 177,000

Labour 190,000

Lib Dem 66,000

I make that 433,000 overall, or about 2.2% of an adult population of 20 million between the ages of 30 and 59. I'm assuming candidates to be unlikely outside this age range, because those over 59 usually don't give a toss anyway.

So Ed was selected from about 1% of the 20 million, Dave from about 0.9% and Nick from about 0.33%.

The numbers say it's a clique and if the clique becomes state-funded we'll end up with many more like Ed, Dave and Nick - but worse.

So that's good news isn't it?

Dumping opinions

2012-02-23T17:16:00.000Z

No – not opinions about dumping. We all have opinions – at leastin my opinion – but how useful are they?

I’ve just been trawling through some comments on anIndependent piece about Jeremy Clarkson. Apparently he made some comment comparing the size of a new Japanese car with people who have growths on their face.

Something like that anyway. The comments were more interestingthan the original article, which in my limited experience of the Independent isno surprise at all. Most seemed to hate Clarkson for some reason. Presumably theywatch his shows for long enough to find that out, so one could ask why they even bother, but maybethey need to be offended.

My interest was centred on opinions, because most comments expressedwhat we usually call opinions and the holders of said opinions were sufficiently outraged totype them into the comments box. Normally I'd treat this to a mental shrug and move on, but one of my recurring opinions is that inthe end, opinions do us no good.

My ideal would be to have no opinions at all – apart fromthat one of course. It avoids being wrong and in my opinion (oops that’sanother) being wrong is to be avoided, even at the expense of withholding judgement,so missing out on the chance of being right.

Clarkson does what he does and his BBC show is pretty infantile - but so what? He didn't go to war, lose billions or chuck away a democracy.

They grow - we shrink

2012-02-23T07:00:00.000Z

As I’ve posted before, many aspects of life are a matter ofscale. We live our lives and do what we do while the world around is just keepson getting bigger. By that I mean big government and big business just keep on growing. As they getbigger, in relative terms we get smaller and therefore less important to them.

It’s been going on for centuries of course, but does itmatter? Well maybe it does matter if we little folk are the cogs in themachine. Maybe there is a limit beyond which big business and biggovernment cannot go without losing contact with the cogs. Unfortunately we never seem to find out that contact has been lost until it actually has been lost.

Because how else would we know?

The scale-insensitive elite don’t hold with such ideas of course. They have their endlessstream of laws and regulations, their micro-management with which they think cogscan be kept whirring. But maybe it isn’t so.

If there is an optimum limit to the scale of human organisations, then it may of course beinfluenced by technology, particularly communication. The Romans held together an empire, not just by the sword, but with good roads, bureaucracy and an inclusive policy with respect to non-Romancitizens. Even so Rome eventually fell.

I know the problem of scale is a vague and rather nebulous idea, but there maybe merit in it. Scale may well be important in the sense that organisations of whatever type can grow too big, too difficult to manage. In the public sector it is certainlytrue. The UK National Health Service has probably been too big to manage for decades. Itsperennial problems may be that simple.

I suspect the EU is too big too. In which case, current instabilities will not be resolved by greater central control of economic policy. Matters may be patched up by central control, but political instabilities will soon take over from the economic issues. The cracks and fissures don’t seem ready to heal themselves and why should they?

It may be a case of forget peak oil – that’s not the worst of our worries. Peak scale could be worse. Globalization could be a step too far.

Arctic sea ice

2012-02-22T19:00:00.000Z

Arctic sea ice extent is currently just above the 2006-2007 average according to NSIDC. In other words it has not changed over the past five years.

If humans are not rational

2012-02-22T07:00:00.000Z

Waterfall - M C Escher - from Wikipedia

Suppose humans are not always rational. It isn’t a wildlyimprobable assumption is it? We just have to look around the world, considerthe things that happen which rational beings wouldn’t get involved with. I’llnot labour the point because only an irrational person would disagree.

So what are the consequences? Well of course, as we allknow, it depends how rational or irrational people are, but there’s no measureof irrationality, so we can’t say exactly.

We only identify irrational behaviour when we come acrossit, either in real life or in fiction. But if you come across it in real life and tell an irrational personthey are behaving irrationally, they don’t understand why.

Because if they understood you they’d be rational.

The same logic applies to a society as to the individual. An irrational society can’t tell it is has become irrationaland can’t be told why or do anything about it. This is a simplification of course, but enough I think to establish a point of exploration.

So in a social sense, irrationality could become something like an epidemic.It could become contagious because human behaviour is largely imitative. Of course onecould say the same thing about rationality, but not quite.

There is a difference.

One aspect of rational behaviour is where we identify irrational behaviourand avoid imitating it. There is no corresponding avoidance mechanism for irrationalbehaviour.

Oh dear...

A rambling old mansion

2012-02-21T15:56:00.001Z

This guest post is from a superb comment by rogerh in response to Knowing and thinking. Concerning our political elites...

Ignore them, prattling about them only tickles their egos. Get on with something interesting, translating from a dead language, or growing cauliflowers - anything.

As I see it the public inhabit a rambling old mansion (Britain) and at some time hired staff to answer the door and clean the windows. The blighters found the keys to the cellar and the deed box and now charge us rent to live in the stables.

As I said translation or cauliflowers - it's the only antidote.

Blog comments

2012-02-21T10:48:00.000Z

If you leave comments on Blogger blogs like this one, you'll know that word verification has changed to the above pain in the arse format. One option is to use OpenID and get rid of word verification, but for that you need an OpenID. Let me know if this would be a problem.

Knowing and thinking

2012-02-21T07:00:00.000Z

There seems to be a difference between knowing stuff andthinking it through so it sort of hangs together.

An example of what I mean is how weknow our political elites are no good. We know they tend to be vain, greedyarrogant liars – sometimes all of those things in one person. Sifting throughthis knowledge, trying to stitch it together with theory or reason, or tryingto elevate what we know to the more exalted status of what we’ve deduced - wellI’m not entirely convinced there is a point to it.

We know those ghastly toads and we know their ways. For allI know, everybody knows what they are apart from the weird ones who join their parties. Maybe even they know.

Yet these elite bunglers are the main reason we don’t really make a good job of thesimple business of living. They stick their silly fingers in, taking while pretending to give - prattling at us rather than learning from us. Learning not to prattle would be a start - but no, we'll not get that any time soon.

So we end up with a society which is okay if you don’t looktoo hard or insist on some principles from on high. We end up with comfort instead ofprinciple, plus killing, destroying, pointless games, paperwork or whatever ghastliness slips in and out of fashion.

Live and let live we don’t do so well.

New book of short stories

2012-02-20T21:38:00.000Z

My new book of short stories has just been published on Amazon Kindle.

BBC skews booze news

2012-02-20T17:09:00.000Z

State TV has a programme on alcoholism tonight. It's another of their low-brow Panorama offerings, no doubt entirely unconnected with Cameron's recent attack of the vapours on alcohol consumption. Almost exactly a year ago, State TV told us alcohol consumption is falling.

A maladaptive species?

2012-02-20T07:00:00.001Z

To date, species evolution and social and economic progress have beenall about consequences. If any organism from a bacterium to an elephant iseither unlucky, in the wrong place at the wrong time, or makes a seriousmistake, then there are consequences.

So the bunglers have to learn life’s lessons or run the riskof their genes not being at the top of the list for the next generation. It’show all species lose bunglers. In human terms, serial bungling isn’t supposedto drag everyone else down – just bungler and co.

Or something like that. The details vary, but it’s mainly thefact of there being consequences that matters. We need to make mistakes to recognisethem as mistakes and learn lessons. Pretending mistakes are not real mistakes though – that’s areally big mistake. It screws the anti-bungler mechanism – the one thing we arereally not supposed to screw up.

Because unfortunately, in our pursuit of fairness, equality,a just society or whatever other euphemism we use to flatter our imbecility,consequences have to work themselves out. A bungler’s actions, and for thatmatter inactions, must have consequences appropriate to said bungle. Otherwisethere is a rather massive risk weaving its way into our future – the risk thatwe’ll turn human progress around.

In other words, there is a real danger of making ourselvesinto a maladaptive species. It’s not so much a genetic hazard, as a social and culturalone. Civilisations decline because they become maladaptive. They forget howthey arose and what their strengths were, how they learned from mistakes. As adirect consequence they lose internal support and become vulnerable because theyhave forgotten the blood sweat and tears, the trial and errors and theconsequences of those errors.

Today, particularly in the developed world, the lessreflective among us seem to think we can devise a way of living without seriousconsequences.

It isn’t going to happen.

There will be consequences; we just don’t know what they areyet. The more we try to design them out for bunglers, the bigger they willeventually be for all of us.

How big? I don’t know – obviously. But we may well collapsesocially, culturally and economically into some other social, cultural andeconomic state. History suggests it won’t be comfortable.

Has it begun? Well has it?

Kulula Airline

2012-02-19T11:57:00.001Z

From Paul R via email

Antarctic Sea Ice

2012-02-19T11:38:00.000Z

Antarctic sea ice extent is currently significantly greater than the 1979-2000 average according to NSIDC.

Monthly horoscope - Pisces

2012-02-19T07:00:00.000Z

Pisces (February 19 - March 20)

Magical birthstone - Coffinite.
Lucky phrase - Don't answer it.
Lucky dictionary - Oxfod English.

Pisceans have a hard-headed, no nonsense approach to almost everything but real life. This can be a disadvantage, but the Piscean's natural charm and unfailing good nature usually make up for it. I'm thinking of last year of course, when too many Pisceans simply would not heed my warnings about mauve wallpaper. Still, enough of that because it's the future we are all interested in now. At least I hope so.

Now then - to more serious matters. What are we going to do about the Olympics? Because the stars insist you haven't a prayer in the long jump and as for synchronised swimming - well we'd better not go there - which of course you won't. Not with that attitude anyway. Is a gold medal in synchronised swimming a laughing matter though? I don't think so.

Neptune cavorting around the fifth quadrant suggests there may be some good news due on the origami front. In fact craft work generally looks favourable - anything creative on wood, nice fabrics or even ice-cream strangely enough. The only thing the stars advise you to avoid here are big ideas, especially relating to industrial quantities of Play-Doh.

Brings back memories

2012-02-18T19:34:00.000Z

The STAG report

2012-02-18T07:00:00.000Z

The Safer Toast Advisory Group (STAG) has produced its preliminary report on the hazards of domestic toast production. The report will eventually be incorporated into the forthcoming EU Advisory on the safety of domestic food preparation.

Dr Jez Anstruther, STAG chief scientific adviser takesup the story:-

People generally tendto underestimate the risks of domestic toasting activities. Apart from the mainclimate change gas CO2, we have found a whole range of chemicalcompounds, smokes and other particulates are released into the domestic atmosphere even when something assimple as toast is being produced.

When asked to elaborate, Dr Anstruther continued:-

Within the toasting cavity of your typical domestic toaster, the starches in breadbreak down under intense thermal stresses, sometimes with surprising,even catastrophic results. A range of possibly toxic or potentially carcinogenic compounds are released into the domestic atmosphere where of course they may easily be inhaled by young children. Really, it's no better than passive smoking, so we definitely see old-fashioned toasting as a serious potential danger.

We are working closelywith toaster manufacturers to design an EU-approved range of toasters whichwill produce a new kind of toast resembling lightly heated bread, whatever the toastersetting. It's actually much nicer that old-fashioned crusty toast which sprays crumbs all over the place. I see this as a real step forward. Approved design is the STAG approach, because in the end that's what works. After all, we have no wish to ban toast or anythingdraconian like that.

People with soft hands

2012-02-17T12:00:00.000Z

Our burden is the silly people with soft hands - impractical hands they wave about as if to weave dishonesty into the very air we breathe. They lack practical experience, judgement and even the ability to speak with conviction or passion, simply because of their limitations which in the end are down to the limited compass of their lives.

Yet they succeed in a personal sense, destined as they are to live in comfort among those of their own kind. Once they are found wanting or the political fun has faded, there will be lucrative offers to smooth the way to an easy, soft-handed life. Abetting these comforts will be the pleasant fantasy of achievement, even if all they ever did was use their feet to good effect, treading perhaps on more able people in their mad scramble to the top.

The delusions of the soft-handed loons are not easily tackled, simply because those that might do the tackling are too often disinclined to enter the fray, to be lied about and belittled whenever they disturb powerful interests. And really our problems stem from the way our soft-handed leaders are bought up wholesale by those same interests because that's where the power of money comes from, where illusions are fabricated, narratives are spun and deals done.

Bird cake for Chris

2012-02-16T21:29:00.002Z

A tasty reminder of all those windmills with their speeding* blades.

*Allegedly.

Kindle self-publishing

2012-02-16T07:00:00.001Z

It has suddenly occurred to me to do a post on Kindleself-publishing. After all, I initially set up this blog with the intention ofpromoting my Kindle books, because that is what those who know advise.Unfortunately, the blogging elbowed out the writing. Ah well, I supposeblogging is a form of writing and I certainly enjoy it. For one thing, it's much less lonely than novel writing.

So first some history. A year ago, I had two completed novels whichI was touting round literary agents and publishers. I had some very encouragingcomments sent back too, but for me the problem was time. These people, at least inmy experience, take ages to reply to a submission and usually it’s just astandard rejection slip. Even the comments are extremely brief.

For a while I’d been interested in self-publishing as a way round this problem, but then I bought a Kindle, liked it and stumbled acrossAmazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP). So I tried publishing the Amazon way and find it suits me and what I do very well. The reasons I went down the KDP route were:

I already had a Kindle and liked it very much.
KDP is free.
And it’s easy.

The strongest reason though was that it allowed me to move on. I needed to write something else,but I have this strong tendency to fiddle around endlessly with what I’ve alreadywritten even if I know I've given it my best shot. So I gave theKindle route a try.

If you fancy self-publishing in this way, then you need anAmazon account and a reading device with a Kindle app – it doesn’t have to bethe Kindle itself. Your book needs to be some suitable format such as MS Wordand you need a cover picture. You don’t need an ISBN, although if you have oneyou can add it. Drop me an email if you want the benefit of my limitedexperience.

The other thing I’ve recently discovered is - if yourbook is free you get lots more downloads. Hmm.

Life after death

2012-02-15T07:00:00.001Z

Life, Death and Time
by Philippe de Champaigne (17th century)
From Wikipedia

Do you expect to continue in some way after death? I'm not asking how that might come about, the question is - do youexpect something else to occur to what you think of as "me" after breathing your last?

I expect total personal extinction, which of courseis not an expectation at all because it is akin to expecting nothing – justtotal cessation of me. Like a kind of dreamless sleep, but rather deeper thanusual I suppose.

I find this view comforting because extinct is how I preferto think of loved ones who are now dead. I would not like this clean andunambiguous state of total extinction to be muddied with other possibilities. Icertainly prefer it to a kind of transmutation into another state where we areourselves but at the same time are obviously no such thing.

In the end, I suppose these are personal matters, becauseinevitably we apply them to those we once knew and loved - at least I do. Matters sometimesworth articulating perhaps, but not often and not stridently, because they tend to befixed points in our lives. It really isn’t worth disturbing these fixed points for the sakeof controversy, even if disturbance of something so personal was at all likely.

After all, there are more than enough concerns on this sideof the grave for us to worry about what may lie beyond. Extinction suits me - but perhaps not yet.

Free Kindle books

2012-02-14T17:00:00.000Z

From today and for the next five days, my Kindle books The Pillbox and Green Bread can be downloaded free. It's not a big deal because I've kept the price low anyway, so there isn't a huge saving, but it's an Amazon game so I may as well play. Click here for my books blog.
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Crikey - I've just checked and I've "sold" over 150 copies since this morning. That's more than usual by the way - near enough 150 more.

Inside our heads

2012-02-14T07:00:00.001Z

From Wikipedia

From the National Science Foundation we have an interesting abstract of a paper on the neural basis of metaphor published in September last year.

Metaphors are not just ossified expressions in grammar books. Rather, they are living, evolving expressions that pepper our language far more heavily than one might think. Many expressions that we take for granted are actually metaphorical, that is, they represent one concept by referring to another. For instance, the sentence 'He was feeling down' actually involves metaphorical usage of the spatial word 'down.'

The researchers are studying links between areas of the brain that process aspects of the physical world such as colour, texture and spacial location and our use of metaphor. For example, is the same area of our brain activated when we touch something rough and when we use the metaphor rough?

I find this kind of research mildly interesting, but I'm never quite convinced of the practical implications - or applications for that matter. Long-term knowledge-building I suppose we might call it, yet these brain activities always have to be calibrated against what we already know.

We already know there is a physical basis for many of our metaphors and the additional knowledge that we may link this to specific forms of brain activity may add something extra, but I'm not sure how much, or how important it may turn out to be.

I suppose what bothers me is that findings such as this will eventually be turned around and some scientists and their backers will lay claim to arcane knowledge about what is really going on in our heads. We of course will already know what is going on, but if history is any guide, somebody in a white coat will one day claim to know more.

In a sense, this is the assumption behind psychotherapy - that the therapist understands you better than you understand yourself. It isn't expressed in that way of course, but claimed or implied access to arcane knowledge has been a feature of most human societies, so we shouldn't be surprised when we come across it. So it seems to me that arcane knowledge is exactly what therapists must lay claim to, however covertly they do it.

Maybe it's a problem we ought to sort out before we let people loose on the inside of our heads. Not so much because of what they may find, but what they may claim.

Blogland stroll

2012-02-13T07:00:00.001Z

When I take the occasional stroll around blogland, looking for sites with something new or different to say, I often stumble across one of the seriously popular ones. No surprise there, in view of the way the internet works.

Anyhow, many of these popular sites have posts which regularlyattract comments well into double figures and sometimes hundreds. WhenI read through the comments though, the quality of the original post is notalways maintained. Why is that?

It’s not that the comments are of poor quality, althoughsome are, but it’s more a problem with people missing the point or wanderingaway from it. I write a very minor blog and get good relevant comments, butmany big blogs attract some strange stuff indeed.

It seems to me that blog posts have to be taken as a moment in time, a current standpoints on an issue, range of issues, event or whatever. After all, a blog post is closer to a first draft than a first edition. It is alwayspossible, and I do mean always, to add something worthwhile or advocate some other standpoint and manycomments do exactly that - of course they do.

Fine – no problem.

But then the original blog writer or another commenter feelsthey have to jump in with both feet to refute something they don't like. Then another commenter jumps in – thenanother. And so on and so on. So we get comments about comments about comments whichquickly become quite heated – but why?

Why indeed. To my mind blog posts and comments should beseen as exploratory – nothing more. Offerings if you like but not to be takentoo far. That can come later – in another post and with luck we’ll getsomewhere.

Even so, I enjoy the blogging game, particularly the comments and disagreements. It all tells you something if you stand back and allow it to without feeling that corrosive need to take your own views too seriously.

Global warming in Switzerland

2012-02-12T15:18:00.000Z

tomsguide.com has a great story on Pascal Prokop of Switzerland. Pascal has ingeniously tackled the current episode of severe global warming by installing a wood-burning stove in his car.

This is Pascal Prokop. Pascal drives a 1990 Volvo 240 station wagon, which he has, uh, improved, with the addition of a real wood-burning stove. According to the captions on the photos, which are credited to Reuters, Mr. Prokop obtained an operating permit for his stove-car from the Swiss Technical Inspection Authority, making it perfectly legal to operate. We're sure it's perfectly safe. Apart from the fire.

If it doesn't float my boat...

2012-02-12T07:00:00.001Z

I recently had a brief exchange with regular commenter Sam Vega vaguely connected with Marxism. It left me wondering how long it is since I read much Marx and I soon realised I don't know - decades possibly. A similar example for me is Chomsky who is cited quite regularly across the web. Not surprisingly, Google searches for Marx and Chomsky give millions of results :-

Marx 24,000,000
Chomsky 4,560,000

So both men are important in terms of past and current thinking, yet at different times in my life I have dismissed Marx and Chomsky as not worth the effort - or to be more accurate, not worth much effort. Because if certain ideas don't float my boat, then on the whole I veer away from them after a brief but disappointing dalliance, not wishing to spend more time on them than necessary.

It has to be like that though, doesn't it? We can't make an exhaustive study of ideas we are not really attuned to because there isn't time. The ideas we get on with take long enough. The trouble is, particularly when browsing the web, there are controversies that interest me, but they involve thinkers whose ideas I have already rejected, possibly years ago. So it isn't always easy to join the debate without a certain amount of superficiality creeping in.

In my experience this problem isn't something we usually admit though. We use tactics such as emphasising the stuff with which we are familiar, steering the debate away from shaky ground, skewing the discussion perhaps. Not a huge sin of course, but an issue I think.

Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta

2012-02-11T17:40:00.001Z

From Paul R by email.

The iron law of chaos

2012-02-11T07:00:00.000Z

Henry Fuseli's painting of Odysseus
facing the choice between
Scylla and Charybdis.
From Wikipedia

If you take a handful of Cornflakes and throw them all over the kitchen floor instead of into your breakfast bowl, then you've made a bit of a mess. It's the kind of thing I do all the time, being a clumsy cove, always thinking of other things rather than the task in hand. Not that I actually eat Cornflakes, even before they've been on the floor.

Anyway, back to messes. We all know there are far more ways for things to end up messy rather than tidy. Tidy is an abnormal situation, as are neat, well-run, reliable and useful. Messy, badly-run, unreliable and useless are easy to achieve. Do nothing or do something badly and there you are. Job done - or rather undone.

In a sense, harmful and damaging situations sit there waiting for us to drift into them, simply because there are more of them. It's a statistical thing and very often the path of least resistance too. Like Scylla and Charybdis, messy, unclear and damaging situations will trap the unwary and if we have the unwary leading us then we really are stuffed aren't we?

The iron law of chaos is just that. Chaos will come knocking if we don't smarten up and run our complex world in a simpler and less furtive way, more transparent way. If we don't give people the liberty to adapt or fail because that is how we learn to steer a course through the vicissitudes of life.

Yet a caring society is the modern trend, caring without a thought that we might be taking away the need to learn. We have to learn life's lessons, but how are we to do that without trial and error? A grown-up society needs its hard edges where there are knocks and setbacks and even tragedies, but lessons are learned and digested and genuine progress is the result.

Otherwise the iron law of chaos takes a hand and that's something we really shall find difficult to cope with. In fact we already are.

Trotsky on intelligentsia

2012-02-10T17:00:00.000Z

Leon Trotsky - from Wikipedia

The idealists and their almost deaf andblind disciples, the Russian subjectivists, thought that mind and criticalreason moved the world, or in other words that the intelligentsia directed progress.As a matter of fact, all through history mind limps after reality.

Leon Trotsky. Literature and Revolution

Trotsky was only partly right. We rationalise after the fact but theories often come before the facts that eventually support them. Otherwise there would be no progress.

Kant on beauty

2012-02-10T07:00:00.000Z

Immanuel Kant - from Wikipedia

The beautiful is that which pleases universallywithout a concept.

If we judge Objects merely according toconcepts, then all representation of beauty is lost. Thus there can be no ruleaccording to which any one is forced to recognise anything as beautiful. Wecannot press upon others by the aid of reasons or fundamental propositions ourjudgement that a coat, a house, or a flower is beautiful.

Immanuel Kant - Critique of Judgement

In other words, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. There is nothing to be gained by trying to fit beauty into a conceptual framework of its own - it belongs in cultural frameworks.

Pantomime notes

2012-02-09T17:00:00.000Z

Widow Twankey

Hmm - there seems to be an error in the picture caption. Not a good start is it?
I'll sort it out later.

Tyrannical trifles

2012-02-09T07:00:00.000Z

Edith Wharton - from Wikipedia

An Edith Wharton quote from The Age of Innocence, her 1921 Pulitzer Prize winning novel.

The young man, as he followed his wife into the hall, was conscious of a curious reversal of mood. There was something about the luxury of the Welland house and the density of the Welland atmosphere, so charged with minute observances and exactions, that always stole into his system like a narcotic. The heavy carpets, the watchful servants, the perpetually reminding tick of disciplined clocks, the perpetually renewed stack of cards and invitations on the hall table, the whole chain of tyrannical trifles binding one hour to the next, and each member of the household to all the others, made any less systematised and affluent existence seem unreal and precarious.
Edith Wharton - The Age of Innocence

The novel portrays upper-class New York society in the 1870s. Here, the main character Newland Archer enters the home of his wealthy in-laws. I particularly like this phrase - the whole chain of tyrannical trifles binding one hour to the next.

Working life can be like that, an endless series of futile exactions, particularly in the public sector.

Eco blog

2012-02-08T17:00:00.000Z

Here at Haart labs, we've been working hard to make this blog entirely vegetarian, multi-cultural and carbon-neutral with 100% recycling, lots of diversity and no artificial colours. To that end we've moved away from fossil fuels to a caring, sustainable operation based on purely vegetable-derived input - bio-alcohol.

So it's to be alcohol-powered blogging from now on.

A K Haart - Proud to be eco-green.

Situation 3

2012-02-08T07:00:00.000Z

This is the third and final post about viewing thingsslightly differently via situations. The first post is here and the second here.

Aspects

Situations have two aspects, a physical aspect and a logicalaspect. When situations change or evolve, new situations may be generated with different physical and logical aspects. In otherwords, natural laws may evolve and change as the logic of situations evolve andchanges. Natural laws applied to complex situations such as social trends, arenot so much inexact as variable, possibly even unique.

People

People are said to be broad-minded, tolerant or scepticalwhen they understand the complexity and range of linked and embedded situationsencountered in real life. People are said to be narrow-minded, intolerant orgullible when they take too few situations into account.

Analysing real life via situations is what we actually do,but our personal situations differ, often markedly, so we are unable to analyseall situations in exactly the same way and equally unable to reach exactly thesame conclusions.

Similarly, we are not able to analyse all the situationsenfolding another person with precision, simply because we ourselves areenfolded within different situations to which different logic may apply.

Politics

Political life is about promoting some situations over others with the aim of causing them to become dominant. As already touched on in the David Cameron example, the issues to be analysed are the comparative stability of social and cultural situations and the resulting trends.

Evolution

Situations, their stability and their changes are what weexperience as evolution, in its broadest sense biological and possibly non-biological.

Finally

That’s it. All I wished to do in these three posts is todemonstrate how easy it is to view things from a very slightly differentviewpoint – and maybe how necessary. Success or failure is not the point – thepoint is to explore - and it surely isn’t difficult.

Fish flake fun

2012-02-07T17:00:00.000Z

From the book Advanced in Food Research by C. O. Chichester:-

Alginates are useful polysaccharides extracted from, among other sources, seaweed. I don't know if this technique is still used, but at one time fish fillets may have looked okay, but were not necessarily what they seemed.

As the book says, the flake-like appearance of whole fish can be simulated using fish mince and alginates. Yet consider the traditional fish and chip shop - those places health fascists want to go out of business. There you see real fish being dipped in batter before frying. What you see is what you get.

Situation 2

2012-02-07T07:00:00.000Z

This is the second of a series of posts about viewing thingsslightly differently via situations. The first was here.

Change and irreversibility

Situations change, depending on their stability and onlinked or embedded situations. For all macroscopic situations, change is notexactly reversible. Change has direction and this is what we experience as time,as well as using regular, repeating situations as measures of time.

Situations A, B and C generate situation D.

Situation D decomposes to A1, B1 and C1

Situations A1, B1, and C1 generate situation D1.

Situation D1 decomposes to A2, B2 and C2 – and so on.

So the whole may be greater than the sum of its parts andreductionism may fail as an explanation. A complex situation cannot beidentical to the sum of its parts - otherwise the whole would not be asituation at all, because it would not have its own logic. A molecule is notidentical to its component atoms - water is not a mixture of hydrogen andoxygen.

Boundaries

Situations have boundaries which are commonly inexactbecause all situations are linked to or embedded in other situations. Artisticproductions for example are always embedded in cultural and often financial situations.

Analysis

We understand situations via our ability to do what if analysis. We imagine possible oreven impossible situations and compare them to known situations. It may be thatthis is a basic feature of social life - both human and animal – comparingsituations and communicating those comparisons.

Imaginary stimulus + imaginary response = imaginary situation.

So entertainment is similar to analysis as imaginary situations are involved in both - politics too.

Science

Science is most successful where situation boundaries arenarrow and clearly defined and where other situations offer minimalinterference. These situations are contrived by scientists to facilitate theirstudies.

However, for any scientificwork, there are always at least two major situations - scientist and situationbeing studied. The two cannot always be usefully separated because there is nosituation where they are not linked.

Climate science has failed at a scientific level, becausethere are too many linked physical situations and because of interferingpolitical and funding situations. Currently, it is common for technicalscientific situations to be embedded in political, institutional, cultural andfunding situations. In fact it is rare for things to be otherwise.

Who is she?

2012-02-06T17:00:00.000Z

From bakewelltoday.co.uk

A mystery clothing model from the 1930s features in Bakewell Today. I can imagine a short story or even a novel based loosely on a real-life discovery like this.

They may be over 80 years old, but a collection of stylish photographs are causing some intrigue at a famous clothing company in Lea.

Workers at John Smedley Ltd at Lea Mill are researching its archive and have unearthed stills of a beautiful model for which they are appealing to Mercury readers for information.

The professional black and white pictures are thought to have been taken sometime in the 1930s and there are hopes that details of the woman can be pieced together.

Sloe day

2012-02-06T13:46:00.000Z

A slow day today, so I bottled the sloe gin. Tastes good, but I have to leave it for another six months according to Janet, whose recipe it is. Thanks Janet - looking good so far!

Actually there's some left over so it's sloe gin and dark chocolate this afternoon. Either that or clump through brown slush to the shops.

Decisions, decisions.

Situation 1

2012-02-06T07:00:00.002Z

This is the first of a series of three posts about viewing things slightly differently. It certainly isn’t original or a new philosophy or anything grandiose, it’s just something I do when trying to untangle complex issues. I thought of calling the series Maverick, because I think we need more genuine mavericks to shake us up, but in the end I left it as it is.

Anyway, here is a simple and perhaps a slightly different way of looking at things. Many people must do this already but maybe call it something else. Make of it what you will.

Situations.
Situations are basic to what we are as observers. The universe is real enough, but we know it as a super-complex, dynamic froth of linked situations. Our basic interaction with reality is a reaction to a stimulus.

stimulus + response = situation.

Everything from an atom to a galaxy may be seen not just as an object with properties, but also as a situation with properties, always involving the observer in some capacity and to some degree.

Yet situations are only our commonsense way of looking at things, the way we protect ourselves from the elaborate language of academics, which may suit their situation, but not ours. Situations are what matter to us, especially their similarities and differences.

There is a reality out there, but we must observe as a complex of situations. Reality may be divorced from situations, but is often more clearly understood through them.

A government minister is a situation.
His or her ministerial post is another, separate but linked situation.
An atom is a situation – a particular atom is a particular situation.
A galaxy is a situation – a particular galaxy is a particular situation.

There are no isolated situations - situations are always linked to some other situation or embedded within bigger situations. So situations are complex – often far too complex for future situations to be predicted with any accuracy.

Stability
A basic property of all situations is their stability. Unstable situations change into other situations, the rate of change being a measure of their stability. Stability may vary between similar situations if they are linked in different ways - the situation of the situation. One situation may prey on another, absorb it, link to it, or destroy it.

Linking
Situations link together by overlapping. I call it overlapping as a way to bring out the way linked situations involve themselves with each other, changing their mutual logic. Another kind of overlap is embedding, where a minor situation is entirely contained within a bigger situation. An atom in a molecule for example.

So linking is rather like joined soap bubbles and real life is a super-complex froth of bubbles of varying size and stability.

Example.
As quick example of seeing things through situations will do for one post.

Consider the UK Prime Minister. This is a stable, long-term situation with David Cameron MP temporarily linked to it. I find it misleading to view David Cameron as the UK Prime Minister. I prefer to view him as a situation in his own right, temporarily linked to an older and more stable political and cultural situation we call Prime Minister.

As a situation, Prime Minister (PM) has numerous pre-existing linked and embedded situations which do not depend to any great extent on the temporary and comparatively unstable linked situation David Cameron (DC). For example, PM is strongly linked to the large and complex situation we call EU.

DC himself is linked to many situations such as the Conservative Party (CP) and personal relationships which have various degrees of influence on him. The resulting complex of situations depends largely on the logic and relative stabilities of EU, PM, CP and DC as well as many other linked situations.

Because situations PM and EU have evolved into very complex interlinked networks, we cannot expect the temporary situation DC to have a significant effect on them. DC is a temporary situation within PM and EU with little permanent causal relevance to either.

Bad Parrot

2012-02-05T14:50:00.000Z

From Wikipedia

A young man named John received a parrot as a gift. The parrot had a bad attitude and an even worse vocabulary. Every word out of the bird's mouth was rude, obnoxious and laced with profanity.

John tried and tried to change the bird's attitude by consistently saying only polite words, playing soft music and anything else he could think of to 'clean up' the bird's vocabulary.

Finally, John was fed up and he yelled at the parrot. The parrot yelled back. John shook the parrot and the parrot got angrier and even more rude. John, in desperation, threw up his hand, grabbed the bird and put him in the freezer. For a few minutes the parrot squawked and kicked and screamed. Then suddenly there was total quiet. Not a peep was heard for over a minute.

Fearing that he'd hurt the parrot, John quickly opened the door to the freezer.. The parrot calmly stepped out onto John's outstretched arms and said :-

I believe I may have offended you with my rude language and actions. I'm sincerely remorseful for my inappropriate transgressions and I fully intend to do everything I can to correct my rude and unforgivable behavior.

John was stunned at the change in the bird's attitude. As he was about to ask the parrot what had made such a dramatic change in his behavior, the bird spoke-up, very softly,

May I ask what the turkey did???

Sent by PaulR via email

Do we still do things like this?

2012-02-05T12:00:00.000Z

An "artificial leaf" made by Daniel Nocera and his team, using a silicon solar cell with novel catalyst materials bonded to its two sides, is shown in a container of water with light (simulating sunlight) shining on it. The light generates a flow of electricity that causes the water molecules, with the help of the catalysts, to split into oxygen and hydrogen, which bubble up from the two surfaces.

With the current cold spell and the welcome resignation of our UK Energy and Climate Change Minister, it may be worth revisiting a development announced by MIT back in September.

As we all know, the problem with both wind power and solar is energy storage. This MIT development is in one sense, merely another step on a scientific search that has been going on for a long time - mimicking the way plants are able to break down water into oxygen and hydrogen through photosynthesis. The attraction of course lies in the fact that the energy generated may be stored until required in these two reactive gases.

There is probably still a long way to go, but for me, this is the kind of sustainable energy technology we should be researching rather than rushing into current solar and wind technologies that don't work.

I like to see this kind of research make progress, but somehow I'd be mildly surprised if it had been done in the UK. These days I tend to expect UK research to be far more politically correct. I suppose that also means more exaggerated and misleading, which is surely a little sad.

Read more about this work at http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2011/artificial-leaf-0930.html

Alarming global warm-freeze

2012-02-04T20:10:00.000Z

The Independent is promoting the line that global warming has caused the current freeze in Europe.

Unfortunately one has to read through this mess before finding it's all about computer models. Nobody has discovered anything. Nobody has even done any science.

It's appalling. It makes me sick. I need a drink.

German Rain

2012-02-04T17:00:00.000Z

C H Sorley
Born 1895
Killed in action 1915

The heat came down and sapped away my
powers.
The laden heat came down and drowned my
brain,
Till through the weight of overcoming hours
I felt the rain.

Then suddenly I saw what more to see
I never thought : old things renewed, retrieved,
The rain that fell in England fell on me,
And I believed.

C H Sorley

The Night Hunt

2012-02-04T07:00:00.000Z

Thomas MacDonagh - from Wikipedia
Shot by firing-squad during the
Easter Rising - 1916

In the morning, in the dark,
When the stars begin to blunt,
By the wall of Barna Park
Dogs I heard and saw them hunt;
All the parish dogs were there,
All the dogs for miles around,
Teeming up behind a hare,
In the dark without a sound.

How I heard I scarce can tell –
‘Twas a patter in the grass –
And I did not see them well
Come across the dark and pass;
Yet I saw them and I knew
Spearman’s dog and Spellman’s dog
And, beside my own dog too,
Leamy’s from the Island Bog.

In the morning when the sun
Burnished all the green to gorse,
I went out to take a run
Round the bog upon my horse;
And my dog that had been sleeping
In the heat beside the door
Left his yawning and went leaping
On a hundred yards or more.

Through the village street we passed –
Not a dog there raised a snout –
Through the street and out at last
On the white bog road and out
Over Barna Park full pace,
Over to the silver stream,
Horse and dog in happy race,
Rider between thought and dream.

By the stream, at Leamy’s house,
Lay a dog – my pace I curbed –
But our coming did not rouse
Him from drowsing undisturbed;
And my dog, as unaware
Of the other, dropped beside
And went running by me there
With my horse’s slackened stride.

Yet by something, by a twitch
Of the sleeper’s eye, a look
From the runner, something which
Little chords of feeling shook,
I was conscious that a thought
Shuddered through the silent deep
Of a secret – I had caught
Something I had known in sleep.

Thomas MacDonagh. (1878-1916).

We don't know who they are

2012-02-03T07:00:00.000Z

The UK death penalty was suspended in 1965 and abolished in 1969 – 1973 for Northern Ireland.

So - abolition of capital punishment - murder rate rises alittle, although by how much it is not easy to say. More work for the state, more work for state employees and private businesses. Suppose a lifercosts £50,000 per annum. Say over 30 years that’s £1.5 million, although the numbers aren't that important.

Did those who abolished capital punishmentforesee this outcome, at least as a possibility? Did someone look at the likely costs and a few more murders and see it as a worthwhile trade?

If so, was it the case that MPs didn’t fancy more and more protests and vigils every time ahanging took place? Were the costs and extra murders deemed worthwhile for that reason? It certainly allowed MPs to escape both the moral questions and the opprobrium each hanging inevitablybrought with it.

Or was it purely a moral question? Capitalpunishment is just wrong and the risk of hanging an innocent person is just too high.

I suggest the last viewpoint is too simple. Many powerful people benefitted and continue to benefit from the abolition ofcapital punishment - too many to put these benefitsand their continuance down to purely moral causes.

Those murder victims against whom the benefits mustbe set, are unknowns – people who might not have been murdered if capitalpunishment had not been abolished. They don’t have a voice or a life, but the powerful beneficiaries have both. Conversely, there are those unknown people who might have been hanged in error to add to the equation.

That isn’t to say capital punishment is right or wrong, orthat it was abolished for this reason or that reason. Yet some have benefittedfrom its abolition - MPs in particular. They have escaped moral responsibilityand this undoubted major benefit continues to this day. Escaping moral responsibility - yes they're good at that.

As for those extra murder victims, well there is no danger of them forming a support group, because that's the beauty of it from the MP's point of view - we don't know who they are.

Slow down dude

2012-02-02T15:41:00.000Z

From slowdownnow.org

Time magazine reports that morning routines are creativity killers. If we value our good ideas or off the wall thought, then we should take our time, allow ourselves a little space before the daily pressures take hold. There are some suggestions too:-

So what would our mornings look like if we re-engineered them in the interest of maximizing our creative problem-solving capacities?

We’d set the alarm a few minutes early and lie awake in bed, following our thoughts where they lead (with a pen and paper nearby to jot down any evanescent inspirations.) We’d stand a little longer under the warm water of the shower, dismissing task-oriented thoughts (“What will I say at that 9 a.m. meeting?”) in favor of a few more minutes of mental dilation.

We’d take some deep breaths during our commute, instead of succumbing to road rage. And once in the office — after we get that cup of coffee — we’d direct our computer browser not to the news of the day but to the funniest videos the web has to offer.

Risk-incompetence

2012-02-02T07:00:00.001Z

From Wikipedia

If I happened to be a psychologist keen to make a name for myself, I’d be sorely tempted to invent a condition based on risk-incompetence. Maybe I’d give it a name such as RID or Risk-Incompetence Disorder. That would be the name I’d promote in my book, TV interviews and newspaper articles. Fat chance though.

You see there is a nasty little catch to this wonderful wheeze - governments both ancient and modern got there first. What is worse, they make extensive use of it as the number one technique for controlling the behaviour of Mr and Ms Citizen, so I’d get no funding to promote my RID baby.

I'd do the research later of course - after I'd made a success of the theory. Eventually even the neatest ideas have to be defended with some carefully chosen research - look at climate change disorder (CCD).

But I digress. All governments at all times have felt the need for their citizens to assess risk incompetently. It’s one of the basics of social control.

Why? Because incompetent elites need incompetent citizens.
Why? Because competent citizens would get rid of incompetent elites.

So we end up with -

The risk of voting outside the Big Three.
The risk of being outside the EU.
The risk of an unhealthy lifestyle.
The risk of eating red meat.
The risk of a glass or two of wine.
The risk of eating salt.
The risk of second-hand cigarette smoke.
The risk of improving the NHS.
The risk of being a child.
The risk of cuddling a child.
The risk of being a teenager.
The risk of being a parent.
The risk of failure.
The risk of giving offence.
The risk of getting a new job.
The risk of challenging authority figures.
The risk of building more houses.
The risk of crime.
The risk of climate change.
The risk of oil running out.
The risk of nuclear power.
The risk of coal power.
The risk of chemicals.
The risk of not recycling.
The risk of emigrating.
The risk of immigration.
The risk of free enterprise.
The risk of change.
The risk of armed citizens.
The risk of new ideas.
The risk of thinking.
The risk of knowing.
The risk of understanding.

Risk-incompetence is what supports the status quo and thereby its elite beneficiaries. It has been promoted by incompetent elites at all times in all societies and civilisations as the single most important aspect of top-down social cohesion.

All societies are based on risk-incompetence and the more complex the society, the more risk-incompetent its citizens must be.

Lethal cold in Europe

2012-02-01T17:21:00.000Z

This report from The Globe and Mail is a summary of deaths and incidents caused by recent severe cold weather in Eastern Europe.

Marginalized by English

2012-02-01T07:00:00.001Z

A report from SMU Research claims that two thirds of EU citizens do not speak English and are thereby marginalized and linguistically disenfranchised.

The European Union has 27 member countries and 23 official languages, but its official business is carried out primarily in one language — English. Yet the striking findings of a new study show that barely a third of the EU’s 500 million citizens speak English.

What about the other two-thirds? They are linguistically disenfranchised, say the study’s authors.

Curiously enough I am unmoved by this information. Perhaps it gets worse.

For the EU’s non-English speakers, their native languages are of limited use in the EU’s political, legal, communal and business spheres, conclude economists Shlomo Weber, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, and Victor Ginsburgh, Free University of Brussels (ULB), the authors who conducted the study. Those who are disenfranchised have limited access to EU laws, rules, regulations and debates in the governing body — all of which may violate the basic principles of EU society, the researchers say.

No - still unmoved.

Fuel-efficient aircraft

2012-01-31T17:00:00.000Z

There's an interesting 2010 post in the delightful Low-Tech magazine claiming that piston-powered aircraft were as fuel-efficient as modern aircraft on a per passenger mile basis.

Stillness

2012-01-31T07:00:00.001Z

James Elroy Flecker - from Wikipedia

When the words rustle no more,
And the last work's done,
When the bolt lies deep in the door,
And Fire, our Sun,
Falls on the dark-laned meadows of the floor;

When from the clock's last chime to the next
chime
Silence beats his drum,
And Space with gaunt grey eyes and her brother
Time
Wheeling and whispering come,
She with the mould of form and he with the loom
of rhyme :

Then twittering out in the night my thought-
birds flee,
I am emptied of all my dreams :
I only hear Earth turning, only see
Ether's long bankless streams,
And only know I should drown if you laid not
your hand on me.

James Elroy Flecker (1884 - 1915)

Mist in the hills

2012-01-30T16:53:00.000Z

Out walking in Derbyshire yesterday. It was a frosty, misty start, but once up in the hills we could see the valleys below still full of mist, great lakes of it bordered by grey-blue hills. A beautiful sight. I didn't have my camera, so the picture above will have to do.

It was one of those sights where you just stand for a while and gaze, drinking it in because it can't last and only rarely will it be repeated.

Elections and frauds

2012-01-30T07:00:00.001Z

In Science News there is a report on statistical research into correlations between voting patterns and election fraud.

Scientists analyzing data from several recent international contests, including the questionable 2011 parliamentary elections in Russia, have proposed a new mathematical measure to discern fraudulent elections from fair ones.

Fair enough.

The researchers examined voter turnout and votes received by the winning party for recent parliamentary elections in Russia, Austria, Finland, Switzerland and the United Kingdom and for presidential elections in Uganda and the United States. Graphing the relationship between turnout and votes for the winner revealed unusual peaks in the data for the elections in Russia and Uganda — a signature of funny business, the scientists contend.

Excellent work chaps. But then we are told :-

Thousands of precincts in Russia and districts in Uganda reported 100 percent voter turnout with 100 percent of those votes for the winning party, the researchers found. Graph these data various ways and the fraud signature pops out.

Graph these data various ways? I'm not sure I'd need to go that far - and I'm not even a statistician. In fact the words Russia and Uganda would be enough for me.

Economic outlook lookout

2012-01-29T07:00:00.001Z

Henry Hazlitt - from Wikipedia

I don’t do economicsin this blog, partly because I’m not an economist and partly because I’m notreally sure if anyone else is either. This is what Henry Hazlitt says in his classic Economics in One Lesson, first published in 1946 and still in print. I don't entirely agree with him about medicine.

ECONOMICS is haunted by more fallacies than any other study known to man. This is no accident. The inherent difficulties of the subject would be great enough in any case, but they are multiplied a thousandfold by a factor that is insignificant in, say, physics, mathematics or medicine—the special pleading of selfish interests.

While every group has certain economic interests identical with those of all groups, every group has also, as we shall see, interests antagonistic to those of all other groups. While certain public policies would in the long run benefit everybody, other policies would benefit one group only at the expense of all other groups. The group that would benefit by such policies, having such a direct interest in them, will argue for them plausibly and persistently. It will hire the best buyable minds to devote their whole time to presenting its case. And it will finally either convince the general public that its case is sound, or so befuddle it that clear thinking on the subject becomes next to impossible.

Of course there are other areas which this criticism fits equally well, climate science being just one. To my mind, this well-known, long-term problem with economics doesn't feel resolvable. Who would resolve it and how? Whom are we to believe when listening to all the money-talk?

Maybe blogs are a start, because as far as I can see, many bloggers on economic matters seem to want much more clarity and honesty in economic debates. Official sources of economic lore are presumably no so good in Hazlitt's terms because they are paid-for sources. But that applies to many other subjects too. Most of them in fact.

Wind power fail - again

2012-01-28T19:57:00.001Z

From bmreports.com

Proverbs

2012-01-28T17:00:00.000Z

There is real wisdom to be found in proverbs, yet to someextent they seem to have gone out of fashion.

A lot of what you fancy does you good.

Never do today what you can put off till tomorrow.

A penny saved is a penny.

A problem shared is a problem sorted.

A word to the wise is rarely enough.

Few good things come to he who waits.

Barking dogs bite too.
Indiscretion is the better part of valor.

Cheats always prosper.

Do as I do, not as I say.

A place for everything and nothing in its place.

Don’t mount your chickens before they are hatched.

The left hand has a pretty good idea what the right hand isdoing.

Many a true word spoken in a vest.

He who laughs last laughs alone.

The buck stops somewhere over there.

Ugly idols

2012-01-28T07:00:00.000Z

A sour view of social life from George Eliot. For me this is one of Eliot's most uncomfortable quotes, almost impossible to read through without thinking of real people one knows or once knew.

The beings closest to us, whether in love or hate, are oftenvirtually our interpreters of the world, and some feather-headed gentleman orlady whom in passing we regret to take as legal tender for a human being, maybe acting as a melancholy theory of life in the minds of those who live withthem – like a piece of yellow and wavy glass that distorts form and makescolour an affliction. Their trivial sentences, their petty standards, their lowsuspicions, their loveless ennui, may be making somebody else’s life no betterthan a promenade through a pantheon of ugly idols.

George Eliot – Daniel Deronda.

Topiary

2012-01-27T21:19:00.003Z

By email from DaveH

Crime in your genes?

2012-01-27T07:00:00.000Z

Research by Dr J C Barnes et al, from the University of Texas, Dallas, claims to have found a strong genetic link between genes and criminality. However, Dr Barnes also believes there is no single criminality gene:-

The overarching conclusions were that genetic influences in life-course persistent offending were larger than environmental influences. For abstainers, it was roughly an equal split: genetic factors played a large role and so too did the environment. For adolescent-limited offenders, the environment appeared to be most important.

If we’re showing that genes have an overwhelming influence on who gets put onto the life-course persistent pathway, then that would suggest we need to know which genes are involved and at the same time, how they’re interacting with the environment so we can tailor interventions.

But there are likely to be hundreds, if not thousands, of genes that will incrementally increase your likelihood of being involved in a crime even if it only ratchets that probability by 1 percent. It still is a genetic effect. And it’s still important.

Honestly, I hope people when they read this, take issue and start to debate it and raise criticisms because that means people are considering it and people are thinking about it.

As ever, this kind of nature/nurture research comes across, at least to me, as inconclusive, simply because there is no demonstration of a gene causing a criminal act. Maybe that is too stringent a requirement, but until it is met, there is no demonstration of cause and effect. Even so, the attitude expressed in the last paragraph is refreshing.

What about the comment so we can tailor interventions though? Where does that lead us I wonder?

Being ignored hurts

2012-01-26T07:00:00.001Z

A new study from the Association For Psychological Science begins:-

Being Ignored Hurts, Even by a Stranger

Feeling like you’re part of the gang is crucial to the human experience. All people get stressed out when we’re left out. A new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, finds that a feeling of inclusion can come from something as simple as eye contact from a stranger.

As with many such studies, the first obvious question is how come they didn't know that? Actually I suspect they did, but I suppose all professions need their pot-boilers.

Anyhow, it set me wondering if our political elite are in the same boat as these behind the curve psychologists. Maybe they have theoretical difficulties with the importance of human contact too?

Because surely the point of democracy is human contact writ large. Democracy is supposed to involve us with the ruling elite and involve the ruling elite with us. Instead of riding by in their carriages, eyes averted from the common throng, the elite are supposed to have learned the mutual benefits of social cohesion. We get a few more crusts and they don't get so many riots and rude words scrawled on their carriage paintwork. Democracy is supposed to promote exactly that kind of give and take across the divide.

It's a social thing we are supposed to have learned and tucked away forever in the treasure-chest of important lessons we must never forget.

Except we've forgotten it.

The elite have reverted to being strangers - and as of old seem sublimely unaware of their own behaviour. They always tended that way of course, but democracy was supposed to maintain some kind of balance - at least as far as the ballot box and electoral law might contrive.

So that's another lesson we have to relearn, step by bloody painful step.

Death in the shrubbery

2012-01-25T17:00:00.000Z

Science News reports on a global shrubbery threat from Boxwood blight, caused by a Cylindrocladium fungus which was...

...unknown to science before 2000 but has now spread through Europe and New Zealand. In October, U.S. authorities confirmed that the blight had jumped continents, with infections confirmed in North Carolina and Connecticut. By mid-January, with growers and pathologists on alert, the fungus had turned up in at least five more states — Virginia, Maryland, Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Oregon — and British Columbia.

The blight starts with spots on leaves and black streaks on twigs. Within a few weeks, a plump shrub can turn into a clump of bare sticks.

I saw a cloud pruned box hedge like the one pictured quite recently. Personally I wouldn't have the patience and I'd probably treat a bit of blight as an opportunity to grow something easier. Like a fence.

Lines in the sand

2012-01-25T07:00:00.001Z

One of the dilemmas we are frequently faced with, is how to drawboundaries to acceptable behaviour without falling foul of ambiguous caseswhere the boundary rules lead to situations we didn’t foresee or want to happen.

As I grow older, I tend to grow more tolerant (don’t laugh)but I also tend to think we need our boundaries warts and all. Why? Because itseems to me that in trying to accommodate all those tricky cases where ourboundary rules don’t quite work, we just end up losing the boundary.

What triggered my musing on this was a post by thatwise old blogger David Duff who wrote a post about abortion clinics being allowed to advertise on TV. David drew a veryclear line in the sand, and although I’ve never been what you might call apro-lifer, I found myself agreeing with him.

Lines in the sand may indeed lead to a harsh inflexibility which we didn’t intend, but if they aren’t there, then the outcome may wellturn out worse. Lines in the sand do at least allow us a fighting chance to avoidmalign social trends we never would have planned.

Huxley on ancient wisdom

2012-01-24T17:00:00.000Z

Aldous Huxley - from Wikipedia

The peoples of the West no longer share aliterature and a system of ancient wisdom. All that they now have in common isscience and information.

Aldous Huxley. The Olive Tree

There are so many quotes which hit the nail on the head, it's a wonder we manage to go wrong with such impressive ease.

Alien Dreamers

2012-01-24T07:00:00.003Z

Imagine an Earth-like planet one thousand light years from Earth. Because I have a touch of mawkish poetry in my soul, I'll give it the name Dream. Intelligent beings have evolved on Dream and to nobody’s surprise they are called Dreamers.

Now it just so happens that Dreamers understand Euclidian geometry so the angles of a Dream triangle add up to two right angles. However Dreamers choose to measure angles, the three angles of their triangles must add up to two right angles.

What's the alternative? It seems to me that the alternative is one where Dreamers do not understand the properties of triangles because geometry is a human invention unique to Earth. Let us be daring and dismiss this as anthropocentric simply because it is anthropocentric.

Imagine a Dreamer named Veracity. One day Veracity travels to her favourite spot to be alone for a while. This favourite spot is a lake near to her home - a body of water much like ours with Dream fish in it and Dream insects flitting across the surface. The sun sets slowly in the East as Veracity sits by her lake and for some reason begins to reflect on the properties of triangles - and yes I know how unlikely that is.

Language aside, Veracity’s thoughts should have something in common with ours when she considers the three interior angles of her triangle. Veracity should know the angles add up to two right angles and may be able to prove it. As she sits by the lake, the logic in her thoughts must have the same logical form as our thoughts because the logic of triangles is the same for Veracity as it is for us. It is not possible for the properties of a triangle differ between Earth and Dream because if they did, then the universe would be unintelligible.

In my view, this thought experiment suggests that human minds and Dreamer minds cannot form theories which are all unique to Earth and Dream. The natural ability to theorise about reality cannot arise in complete isolation on Earth and Dream. Our theories cannot be entirely shaped by unique locally-based evolutionary pressures.

In other words, John Prescott notwithstanding, understanding must to some extent be moulded by what is understood.

It is tempting to assume that intelligent aliens will be entirely different to human beings because this seems to presuppose nothing and feels much less anthropocentric. But although intelligent aliens may be physically different to human beings with entirely different senses, at least some of their true theories must reflect the logical form of natural law as ours do.

Our ability to theorise is a natural ability – as natural as the way gravity makes water flow downhill and caused the mythical apple to fall on Newton’s head. Our theories must reflect the reality of what is possible and not possible, what makes sense and does not make sense, what is necessary and what is not.

So tell me - how did Nick Clegg evolve?

Rubbish that sells

2012-01-23T17:00:00.001Z

My Bed by Tracey Emin. From Wikipedia

It was rubbish, but – annoying! the sort of rubbish that wouldn’t sell. As every Forsyte knows, rubbish that sells is not rubbish at all – far from it.
John Galsworthy - The Forsyte Saga

The Chaldon wall painting

2012-01-23T07:00:00.001Z

If you are ever in the Caterham area, it's worth visiting the Church of St Peter and St Paul, Church Lane, Chaldon which has one of the earliest known English wall paintings dating from about 1200 and said to be without equal in any other part of Europe.

My photo above doesn't do justice to this extraordinary work - it is 17ft x 11ft and I'd have needed a stepladder to take a better view. It is thought to have been painted by a travelling artist-monk and depicts the Ladder of Salvation of the Human Soul together with Purgatory and Hell. As I gazed at it, I couldn't help feeling I'd like to have known that travelling monk. A robust character I suspect.

The whole picture is in the form of a cross, formed by the Ladder and the horizontal division between Heaven and Hell. Starting at the lower right, we have the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, loaded with fruit, with Satan as a serpent in the branches.

Two devils hold up a bridge of spikes which dishonest tradesmen have to cross. First, the blacksmith making a horseshoe without his anvil, then a mason without a chisel, the spinners without a distaff, and a potter without a wheel. Below the bridge, the usurer is sitting in flames. He is blind, money pours from his mouth, and he has to count it all (avarice). On his right two figures represent envy, while on the left, two figures embrace - lust. The remaining deadly sins are scattered around in small scenes to the left of the ladder.

The church itself is very attractive too - here it is in the snow:-

If you are interested, then the mural is a rare and remarkable sight and well worth a bit of a detour.

Poly Ticks

2012-01-22T18:16:00.001Z

This is good fun if you haven't come across it before.

Johnson on trades

2012-01-22T17:00:00.000Z

No man forgets his original trade: the rightsof nations and of kings sink into questions of grammar if grammarians discussthem.

Samuel Johnson

Or economists, scientists, engineers, accountants, statisticians, lawyers, politicians, bishops...

Worm boozers live longer

2012-01-22T07:00:00.001Z

From healthylifecarenews.com

From UCLA we learn:-

Minuscule amounts of ethanol, the type of alcohol found in alcoholic beverages, can more than double the life span of a tiny worm known as Caenorhabditiselegans, which is used frequently as a model in aging studies, UCLA biochemists report. The scientists said they find their discovery difficult to explain.

However, the researchers are shocked by the results of their research:-

"This finding floored us — it's shocking," said Steven Clarke, a UCLA professor of chemistry and biochemistry and the senior author of the study, published Jan. 18 in the online journal PLoS ONE, a publication of the Public Library of Science.

Unfortunately, the level of alcohol involved does not amount to a great night out: -

"The concentrations correspond to a tablespoon of ethanol in a bathtub full of water or the alcohol in one beer diluted into a hundred gallons of water," Clarke said.

But for me it's a reason enough for another round. Cheers!

Research note

2012-01-21T19:46:00.001Z

This evening I'm busy working to save the planet by devising a low-carbon, low energy version of toast. I'll probably call it bread.

Lived-in history

2012-01-21T07:00:00.000Z

I’ve reached that age we all reach sooner or later where a scary chunk of historyhappened during my lifetime and I’m wondering what to make of it in anoptimistic kind of way. Because I don’t want to sink into that cast of mindwhere you remember everything as better than it is now - the good old days that were no such thing.

Even so, after giving this question quite a bit of thought,I do think some things are getting worse. On the whole I think important areas of my bit of theuniverse have gone into decline.

It isn’t necessarily a catastrophe, because we adaptand we’ll no doubt adapt to whatever it is lurking just below our horizon. No use trying to predict what that may be though. It’ll justhappen and we’ll react, but if the lot in charge don’t change more thansomewhat, we’ll won’t react in time and we’ll not make the best of things. Asusual.

I certainly don't see a uniform decline - some things are betterthan they were. We have more money, better access to information and life isgenerally more comfortable for most, even those living in so-called poverty. But in getting to where we are now, we didn’timprove many of the things we should have improved and others we made worse.

For me, a major aspect of the decline is being lied to by political leaders, big business, the BBC and major institutions as a matter of routine. I don’t like all the lying – apart fromanything else it isn’t dignified for a supposedly civilised country. Lying should not be a profession, a business-tool or a career move, but it has become all of these things. We don't confront it properly either - because all that lying gets in our way.

We are evasive too. Of course all periods of history had their taboo subjects, those things which should have been brought out into the open but never were. But during my life we've disposed of some taboo subjects and replaced them with others, or we've made some subjects difficult to discuss, such as attitudes to racial and cultural differences and the decline of the nuclear family. The lying we barely discuss at all, yet truthfulness was once seen as important.

We in the UK can't pretend to be a nation any longer either - not in the sense I grew up with. The loss of our British nation and with it our democracy looms large for me,because I can’t see any possibility of resuscitating what my father helped fight a war topreserve. In a way I feel responsible, that my generation has taken most of life's goodies and allowed the important things to slide, democracy and respect for truth being the big ones for me.

Education too. It's a complex issue I know, but I feel that at the veryleast it hasn’t been improved during my lifetime. For example, who now trustsexam results?

How about science? Well science was my career, but it has declinedenormously even during my lifetime. Now much of it is silly, exaggerated or even downright fraudulent and polluted by ghastly would-be science celebrities who say things for effect and play down uncertainties. As for climate science - well utterly shameful is all I can bring myself to say about that at the moment.

Materially things are better and the freedom to write thisblog and say these things is a great plus. I’m sitting here in a warmroom with my laptop and with a few clicks I canexplore a world far bigger than anything I ever imagined a few decades ago. Inthat respect life is good.

But it should have been better, more honest, more civilized and less silly. To make it so, I’d havewillingly done without some of the material progress - maybe even all of it. Now I suspect it's too late.

Monthly horoscope - Aquarius

2012-01-20T06:00:00.000Z

Aquarius (January 20 - February 18)

Magical birthstone - Blingite.
Lucky virtue - Sobriety.
Lucky breakfast - Tinned prunes.

All you aquarians out there are in luck, because an unusually vivid flash of inspiration will blow your mind the next time you buy socks from the Post Office. Quite what this flash of inspiration may be, the stars aren't prepared to say, but it could be either a completely new shade of bathroom paint or a cunning plan to avoid global Armageddon. Exciting times.

Next Tuesday is another unusual day as you are invited to contribute to British Knitwear Week. Quite how you became a knitwear expert is impossible for even Saturn to discern, but get in some training is what the stars advise because this may be your big break. But a new set of knitting needles is step one and I hope I don't have to explain why. No more hints, but this isn't Fairisle territory so think dramatic!

The next big thing in your life is a cruise or screws - I can't quite make out which, but surely it could be good news either way don't you think?

As usual we have to consider work and your prospects of promotion. Things are a little murky at the moment, but you may as well speak your mind at work because your colleagues will respect you for it. Well Librans won't, of course, but what do you expect from them and their silly scales and so-called rational arguments? Stick to your guns and don't volunteer crucial information without a real flourish may be the best tactic.

If you are a decision-maker, then try to make your decisions more mysterious than perhaps they may have been in the past. Just a hint, but clarity isn't always a good career tactic - as the stars seem to know well, blast them.

Lewis on chains

2012-01-19T17:00:00.000Z

Theatrical release poster.

He was chained by every friend who had madelife agreeable – bound not to shock or lose them. He was chained by everydollar he had made, every automobile he had manufactured – they meant a duty tohis caste. He was chained by every hour he had worked – they left him stiff,spiritually rheumatic.
Sinclair Lewis – Dodsworth

Sinclair Lewis' 1929 novel was turned into a play in 1934 and a film.in 1936. My quote is from the novel and it sums up the theme of the book quite succinctly. Sam Dodsworth is an automobile manufacturer going through a late mid-life crisis as he realises how much his material success has simply loaded him with obligations, the main one being his shallow wife.

Eventually Dodsworth finds fulfillment by leaving behind both wife and business obligations. No real surprises I suppose, but I like Sinclair Lewis and this is a novel I'll probably read again some day.

In 1930 Lewis won the Nobel Prize for literature. He died in Rome on January 10, 1951, aged 65, from advanced alcoholism.

Climate Relief

2012-01-18T21:37:00.000Z

As most of us know, as soon as you poke around the murky world of major charities, you soon run into a mysterious tangle of issues and links which could soon lead even the most generous of us to wonder why we give to big charities at all.

For example, Comic Relief seems to be linked indirectly with the European Climate Foundation (ECF), one of many climate propaganda outfits. The link is through the Children's Investment Fund Foundation (CIF) to which Comic Relief has contributed, along with the Elton John AIDS Foundation and The Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund.

For some reason CIF has taken an interest in climate matters and is listed as one of ECF's funding partners - as the ECF rather coyly refers to its donor organistations.

I'm sure there is nothing improper going on here.